kopper said:

Andy Seven said:

Giorgio Brutini is a pretty reliable designer. I'm getting a pair in goat hide and they're dyed blue-black. As soon as I get 'em I'm posting pics!

Where did you get yours?

Zappos is good, 6PM.com is good, sometimes Overstock is good. There's a few sites out there that have fair prices, NexTag breaks down all the price differences for you.

Andy Seven said:

Giorgio Brutini is a pretty reliable designer. I'm getting a pair in goat hide and they're dyed blue-black. As soon as I get 'em I'm posting pics!

Where did you get yours?

Giorgio Brutini is a pretty reliable designer. I'm getting a pair in goat hide and they're dyed blue-black. As soon as I get 'em I'm posting pics!

Just ordered a pair of these Giorgio Brutini '60s-style Beatle boots from Zappos.com. I'm new to buying Beatle boots... anyone else around here have a pair of these? The reviews on that page sold me on 'em. Yes, it sounds like the sole is pretty thin and I'll probably end up taking these to a cobbler to have some protective rubber soles put on, but other than that I think they'll be perfect, and I'm really looking forward to wearing them. Maybe not quite as cool as the Cavern Boots that Beatwear UK sells, but a helluva lot cheaper and close enough for rock'n'roll.

This film just got snubbed by the Academy Awards for Foreign Film. As to the music it's from Per Gessle's old band Gyllene Tider. Per is the male half of the Swedish duo Roxette...

Never seen it, but I have a 'thing' for Swedish culture as well. I know a little bit of the language and am way into their cheeseball Eurovision music. And Gunilla Thorne!

I'm just sad they left Northern Ohio's Superhost out of the works.

Damn, I just NOW discovered this documentary about TV horror hosts: http://www.americanscary.com/ Looks great! Does anyone know if this ever going to be released on DVD?

There are werewolves in Ilsa? Do I own the same Ilsa films as everybody else(i have all of them including wicked warden, which isnt technically an Ilsa film)? arkive said:

The Ilsa series is damn fine top notch grindhouse. Leave it to Sleazy Mike to bring up by far the greatest werewolf, Naziploitation, sex horror comedy ever made)

I thought QT made the first bunch of girls unbearably bad because we were going to see them die and he wanted us to somehow enjoy it. Jungle Julia irritated the shit out of me so when her leg got ripped off, I didnt mind so much. Otherwise, the film was quite enjoyable(including another great soundtrack from QT per usual). Considering the slew of shitty car movies that have been enjoying a week in the spotlight before being forgotten(Fast and Furious w/ Vin Diesel, anything with Jason Statham, not to mention the slew of bad B-boy bikerz type movies all using hunks of plastic and chrome spinners to appeal to its audience, QT pulled it off just right, with a blend of retro styling(and rawkin') backdrops, the usual semi-obscure name-dropping(that I usually end up learning about something cool that I had never heard of before) and of course the classic cars tearin up the road instead of H3s or some crap with Will Smith. Id say it suits me just fine. JensLowcut said:

Death Proof was horrible with inane dialogue, uncharismatic idiot girls, trite plot, hollow nastiness...an embarrassment, worst film I've seen all year. And I'm a QT fan. Good soundtrack though. Planet Terror was almost as bad, but not as boring. Both films have absolutely nothing to do with 'grindhouse' cinema and was only enjoyed by friends of mine who usually hate exploitation films of the 70s. Fodder for the clueless.

Did anyone catch BLOOD FREAK a couple of weeks ago? That movie is a total mindblower and the fact that a "classy" channel like TCM is showing a movie with topless hippie chicks blowing reefer while spewing nutty dialogue tickles me to no end. I was kinda disappointed they showed AMITYVILLE HORROR Friday night instead of having a tribute to Ray Dennis Steckeler (like they would have done if it was an "established" mainstream director), but I guess that's asking a little too much. At least now they will occasionally show INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES at times other than TCM Underground. Andy, Raquel is great during that time period, even if the movies she's in aren't so great. Thanks for commenting though, you've got good taste...you always post about interesting stuff. Andy Seven said:

I just burned "Kansas City Bomber" starring Raquel Welch, (off TCM) pretty good 1970's sleaze.

I just burned "Kansas City Bomber" starring Raquel Welch, (off TCM) pretty good 1970's sleaze.

tcm is my favorite channel im always either watching that or cities of the underworld. or cage fighting

Here's my profile: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/764075 I have a bookshelf called "Rock Sleaze" you might like. "Hollywood Babylon" might be up your alley as well. I'll check out your profile, too!

That movie was so good that The Ghastly Ones wrote a song for it: "Los Campiones del Justico" off the incredible "A Haunting We Will Go." Play them at the same time and enjoy!

Viva El Santo!

You''re not missing anything. Hundreds upon hundreds of pages worth of lame name dropping. *yawn*

Yep. My lovely wife said I seemed nearly as bummed out today as I did on the Christmas Morning when I awoke to find that James Brown was gone...

Thanks for posting that, Mike. All I want to say is, all those words in this guy's article do nothing to explain what Bettie Page and her image were really about compared with the picture at the top of the article, which completely explains it using no words. The image of Bettie Page, but sadly, not so much the actual person, will live much longer than all of us.

From the LA Times http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-page12-2008dec12,0,6058175.story By Louis Sahagun December 12, 2008 Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85. Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died Thursday night at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler. A cult figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957. The photos showed her in high heels and bikinis or negligees, bondage apparel -- or nothing at all. Decades later, those images inspired biographies, comic books, fan clubs, websites, commercial products -- Bettie Page playing cards, dress-up magnet sets, action figures, Zippo lighters, shot glasses -- and, in 2005, a film about her life and times, "The Notorious Bettie Page." Then there are the idealized portraits of her naughty personas -- Nurse Bettie, Jungle Bettie, Voodoo Bettie, Banned in Boston Bettie, Maid Bettie, Crackers in Bed Bettie -- memorialized by such artists as Olivia de Berardinis. "I'll always paint Bettie Page," De Berardinis said Thursday night . "But truth be told, it took me years to understand what I was looking at in the old photographs of her. Now I get it. There was a passion play unfolding in her mind. What some see as a bad-girl image was in fact a certain sensual freedom and play-acting - it was part of the fun of being a woman." "The origins of what captures the imagination and creates a particular celebrity are sometimes difficult to define," Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner said Thursday night. "Bettie Page was one of Playboy magazine's early Playmates, and she became an iconic figure, influencing notions of beauty and fashion. Then she disappeared. . . . Many years later, Bettie resurfaced and we became friends. Her passing is very sad." In an interview 2 1/2 years ago, Hefner described Page's appeal as "a combination of wholesome innocence and fetish-oriented poses that is at once retro and very modern." According to her agents at CMG Worldwide, Page's official website, www.BettiePage.com, has received about 600 million hits over the last five years. "Bettie Page captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," said Roesler, chairman of the Indianapolis-based CMG Worldwide, who was at Page's side when she died. "She was a dear friend and a special client and one of the most beautiful and influential women of the 20th century." A religious woman in her later life, Page was mystified by her influence on modern popular culture. "I have no idea why I'm the only model who has had so much fame so long after quitting work," she said in an interview with The Times in 2006. She had one request for that interview: that her face not be photographed. "I want to be remembered," she said, "as I was when I was young and in my golden times. . . . I want to be remembered as the woman who changed people's perspectives concerning nudity in its natural form." Bettie Mae Page was born April 22, 1923, in Nashville. She was the oldest girl among Roy and Edna Page's six children. Her father, an auto mechanic, "molested all three of his daughters," Page said in the interview. Her parents divorced in 1933, but life didn't get any easier for Bettie. "All I ever wanted was a mother who paid attention to me," Page recalled. "She didn't want girls. She thought we were trouble. When I started menstruating at 13, I thought I was dying because she never taught me anything about that." After high school, Page earned a teaching credential. But her career in the classroom was short-lived. "I couldn't control my students, especially the boys," she said. She tried secretarial work and marriage. But by 1948 she had divorced a violent husband and fled to New York City, where she enrolled in acting classes. She was noticed on the beach at Coney Island by New York police officer and amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs, who introduced her to camera clubs. Page quickly became a sought-after model, attracting the attention of Irving Klaw and his sister, Paula, who operated a mail-order business specializing in cheesecake and bondage poses. Under contract with the Klaws, Page was photographed prancing around with a whip, spanking other women, even being hog-tied. She also appeared in 8-millimeter "loops" and feature-length peekaboo films with titles like "Betty Page in High Heels." "I had lost my ambition and desire to succeed and better myself; I was adrift," Page recalled. "But I could make more money in a few hours modeling than I could earn in a week as a secretary." Her most professional photographs were taken in 1955 by fashion photographer Bunny Yeager. They included shots of Page nude and frolicking in waves and deep-sea fishing, and a January 1955 Playboy centerfold of her winking under a Santa Claus cap. At 35, Page walked away from it all. She quit modeling and moved to Florida, where she married a much younger man whose passions, she later learned, were watching television and eating hamburgers. Page fled from her home in tears after a dispute on New Year's Eve in 1959. Down the street, she noticed a white neon sign over a little white church with its door open. After quietly taking a seat in the back, she had a born-again experience. Page immersed herself in Bible studies and served as a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade. In 1967, she married for a third time. After that marriage ended in divorce 11 years later, Page plunged into a depression marked by violent mood swings. She argued with her landlady and attacked her with a knife. A judge found her innocent by reason of insanity but sentenced her to 10 years in a California mental institution. She was released in 1992 from Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County to find that she had unwittingly become a pop-culture icon. A movie titled "The Rocketeer" and the comic book that inspired it contained a Bettie-esque character, triggering a revival, among women as well as men, that continues unabated. With the help of admirers including Hefner, Page finally began receiving a respectable income for her work. In an interview published in Playboy magazine in 2007, Page expressed mixed feelings about her achievements. "When I turned my life over to the lord Jesus I was ashamed of having posed in the nude," she said. "But now, most of the money I've got is because I posed in the nude. So I'm not ashamed of it now. But I still don't understand it." She spent most of her final years in a one-bedroom apartment, reading the Bible, listening to Christian and country tunes, watching westerns on television, catching up on diet and exercise regimens or sometimes perusing secondhand clothing stores. Occasionally, however, Page was persuaded to visit the Sunset Boulevard penthouse offices of her agents at CMG Worldwide to autograph pinups of herself in the post-World War II years of her prime. The agency controls her image and those of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, among others. During one such event in early 2006, Page needed about 10 minutes to get through the 10 letters of her name. As she pushed her pen over a portrait of her in a negligee with an ecstatic smile, she laughed and said, "My land! Is that supposed to be me? I was never that pretty." She is survived by her brother Jack Page of Nashville and sister Joyce Wallace of Blairsville, Ga. Sahagun is a Times staff writer. louis.sahagun@latimes.com

luscevious drummer said:

well i have several b movies trailers(soundclips) and have watched my fair share, i could send the sound files to anyone who is interested, NOT MUSIC but the trailers. as for music, that is a bit tough to find here in greece...

Sorry, you're a bit late (as I am, too, in responding to your message...). Steve Sherman (Uncle Yah-Yah) is doing one for us now (Haunted Shack Theater). Check it out if you haven't yet!

R.I.P. forry, he will be missed

THIS MAN WAS ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE ON MY YOUNG LIFE & MOST OF THE WEIRDOS OF MY GENERATION. THERE WOULD BE NO FANDOM IF IT WEREN'T FOR HIM (AT LEAST NOT IN THE SAME WAY). HERE IS HIS OBITUARY FROM THE L.A. TIMES...

Forrest J Ackerman, writer-editor who coined 'sci-fi,' dies at 92
The Los Angeles native influenced young fans with his Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and spent a lifetime amassing a vast collection of science fiction and fantasy memorabilia.
By Dennis McLellan
1:37 PM PST, December 5, 2008
Forrest J Ackerman, who influenced a generation of young horror movie fans with Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and spent a lifetime amassing what has been called the world's largest personal collection of science fiction and fantasy memorabilia, has died. He was 92.

Ackerman, a writer, editor and literary agent who has been credited with coining the term "sci-fi" in the 1950s, died Thursday of heart failure at his home in Los Angeles, Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman's estate, told the Associated Press.

As editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Ackerman wrote most of the articles in the photo-laden magazine launched in 1958 as a forum for past and present horror films.

"It was the first movie monster magazine," Tony Timpone, editor of Fangoria, a horror movie magazine founded in 1979, told The Times in 2002.

Timpone, who began reading Famous Monsters as a young boy in the early '70s, remembers it as "a black-and-white magazine with cheap paper but great painted [color] covers. It really turned people onto the magic of horror movies."

Primarily targeted to late pre-adolescents and young teenagers, Famous Monsters of Filmland featured synopses of horror films, interviews with actors such as Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, and articles on makeup and special effects.

Famous Monsters reflected Ackerman's penchant for puns, with features such as "The Printed Weird" and "Fang Mail." Ackerman referred to himself as Dr. Acula.

"He put a lot of his personality into the magazine," said Timpone, who later became friends with Ackerman. "It was a pretty juvenile approach to genre journalism, but as kids that's all we had."

Among those who reportedly grew up reading Famous Monsters of Filmland was author Stephen King. Other childhood readers included movie directors Joe Dante, John Landis and Steven Spielberg, who once autographed a poster of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" for Ackerman, saying, "A generation of fantasy lovers thank you for raising us so well."

Ackerman was a celebrity in his own right, once signing 10,000 autographs during a three-day monster movie convention in New York City.

This, after all, was the man who created and wrote the comic books "Vampirella" and "Jeanie of Questar" and was the ultimate fan's fan: a man who actually had known Lugosi and Karloff and whose priceless collection of science fiction, horror and fantasy artifacts ran to some 300,000 items.

For years, Ackerman housed his enormous cache of books, movie stills, posters, paintings, movie props, masks and assorted memorabilia in his 18-room home in Los Feliz.

He dubbed the house the Ackermansion.

The jam-packed repository included everything from a Dracula cape worn by Lugosi to Mr. Spock's pointy ears; and from Lon Chaney Sr.'s makeup kit to the paper plate flying saucer used by director Ed Wood in "Plan 9 From Outer Space."

For Ackerman, a native Angeleno born on Nov. 24, 1916, it all began at age 9 in 1926.

That's when he stopped at a drugstore on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Western Avenue in Hollywood and bought his first copy of the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

From then on, Ackerman was helplessly hooked.

By his late teens, he had mastered Esperanto, the invented international language. In 1929, he founded the Boys Scientifiction Club. In 1932, he joined a group of other young fans in launching the Time Traveler, which is considered the first fan magazine devoted exclusively to science fiction and for which Ackerman was "contributing editor."

Ackerman also joined with other local fans in starting a chapter of the Science Fiction Society -- meetings were held in Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown L.A. -- and as editor of the group's fan publication Imagination! he published in 1938 a young Ray Bradbury's first short story.

During World War II, Ackerman edited a military newspaper published at Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro. After the war, he worked as a literary agent. His agency represented scores of science fiction writers, including L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, H.L. Gold, Ray Cummings and Hugo Gernsback.

In 1954, Ackerman coined the term that would become part of the popular lexicon -- a term said to make some fans cringe.

"My wife and I were listening to the radio, and when someone said 'hi-fi' the word 'sci-fi' suddenly hit me," Ackerman explained to The Times in 1982. "If my interest had been soap operas, I guess it would have been 'cry-fi,' or James Bond, 'spy-fi.' "

At the time, Ackerman already was well-known among science fiction and horror aficionados for his massive collection.

After a couple from Texas showed up on his doorstep in 1951 asking to view the collection, Ackerman began opening his home up for regular, informal tours on Saturdays.

Over the years, thousands of people made the pilgrimage to the Ackermansion.

The Dracula/Frankenstein room featured a casket as a "coffin table" and the cape Lugosi wore in the stage version of "Dracula." A case displayed one of the horror film legend's bow ties, which, Ackerman would gleefully note, contained a drop of blood.

Among the collection's other highlights: the ring worn by Lugosi in "Dracula," the giant-winged pterodactyl that swooped down for Fay Wray in "King Kong," Lon Chaney's cape from "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Metropolis" director Fritz Lang's monocle.

The affable Ackerman would escort his visitors through the priceless warren of books, posters and memorabilia, settling into a chair in each room and answering questions.

"He was always just a big kid," said Fangoria's Timpone. "I really cherished all the times I've been with him."

Ackerman wrote more than 2,000 articles and short stories for magazines and anthologies, sometimes under his pseudonyms Dr. Acula, Weaver Wright and Claire Voyant.

He also wrote what has been reported to have been the first lesbian science-fiction story ever published, "World of Loneliness." And under the pen name Laurajean Ermayne, he wrote lesbian romances in the late 1940s for the lesbian magazine Vice Versa.

As an editor, Ackerman edited or co-edited numerous books, including "A Book of Weird Tales," "365 Science Fiction Short Stories" and "The Great Science Fiction."

Over the years, he made numerous cameo appearances in films, including Dante's "The Howling" and Landis' "Innocent Blood." Landis also had Ackerman eating popcorn behind Michael Jackson in the movie theater scene in his "Thriller" video.

Famous Monsters of Filmland ceased publication in 1983. But the magazine returned a decade later with Ray Ferry as publisher and Ackerman as editor. Ackerman, however, reportedly had a falling out with Ferry and left the magazine. Years of litigation followed. In 2000, after a civil trial, Ackerman won a trademark infringement and breach-of-contract lawsuit against Ferry, though he said a year later that he not yet collected a penny of the judgment.

In recent decades, according to a 2003 Times story, Ackerman slowly sold pieces of his massive collection in order to survive. Because of health problems and his still-unresolved legal battle, he put up all but about 100 of his favorite objects for sale in 2002.

The same year, he moved out of the Ackermansion and into a bungalow in the flats of Los Feliz. But he continued to make what was left of his collection available for viewing by fans on Saturday mornings.

"I call it the Acker Mini-Mansion," he said.

A list of surviving family members was not immediately available.

McLellan is a Times staff writer.

plus:

LOS ANGELES – Forrest J Ackerman, the sometime actor, literary agent, magazine editor and full-time bon vivant who discovered author Ray Bradbury and was widely credited with coining the term "sci-fi," has died. He was 92.
Ackerman died Thursday of heart failure at his Los Angeles home, said Kevin Burns, head of Prometheus Entertainment and a trustee of Ackerman's estate.
Although only marginally known to readers of mainstream literature, Ackerman was legendary in science-fiction circles as the founding editor of the pulp magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. He was also the owner of a huge private collection of science-fiction movie and literary memorabilia that for years filled every nook and cranny of a hillside mansion overlooking Los Angeles.
"He became the Pied Piper, the spiritual leader, of everything science fiction, fantasy and horror," Burns said Friday.
Every Saturday morning that he was home, Ackerman would open up the house to anyone who wanted to view his treasures. He sold some pieces and gave others away when he moved to a smaller house in 2002, but he continued to let people visit him every Saturday for as long as his health permitted.
"My wife used to say, 'How can you let strangers into our home?' But what's the point of having a collection like this if you can't let people enjoy it?" an exuberant Ackerman told The Associated Press as he conducted a spirited tour of the mansion on his 85th birthday.
His collection once included more than 50,000 books, thousands of science-fiction magazines and such items as Bela Lugosi's cape from the 1931 film "Dracula."
His greatest achievement, however, was likely discovering Bradbury, author of the literary classics "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles." Ackerman had placed a flyer in a Los Angeles bookstore for a science-fiction club he was founding and a teenage Bradbury showed up.
Later, Ackerman gave Bradbury the money to start his own science-fiction magazine, Futuria Fantasia, and paid the author's way to New York for an authors meeting that Bradbury said helped launch his career.
"I hadn't published yet, and I met a lot of these people who encouraged me and helped me get my career started, and that was all because of Forry Ackerman," the author told the AP in 2005.
Later, as a literary agent, Ackerman represented Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and numerous other science-fiction writers.
He said the term "sci-fi" came to him in 1954 when he was listening to a car radio and heard an announcer mention the word "hi-fi."
"My dear wife said, 'Forget it, Forry, it will never catch on,'" he recalled.
Soon he was using it in Famous Monsters of Filmland, the magazine he helped found in 1958 and edited for 25 years.
Ackerman himself appeared in numerous films over the years, usually in bit parts. His credits include "Queen of Blood," "Dracula vs. Frankenstein," "Amazon Women on the Moon," "Vampirella," "Transylvania Twist," "The Howling" and the Michael Jackson "Thriller" video. More recently, he appeared in 2007's "The Dead Undead" and 2006's "The Boneyard Collection."

Haven't seen that one yet. Found this 'tho

Hi Sara, This is an orchard fruit wine compliments of my friend Tommy. He uses five kinds of apples: yellow & red delish, northern spy, ida red & stamen winsap. It's fruity, more tart than overly sweet. Great cold, but even better when you warm it up and throw in some pumpkin pie spices & cinny stix and the common mulling spices. I like it plain, but you can top it off with a dollop of ice cream. Tried a few times to do my own (with grapes to start), but just can't get good at wine making. The last time was more like poisonous, bubbly, fermented liquid and flying corks of death. Sara said:

mmmm, what's Tommy Appleseed wine? How do you make it?

Mad Mojo Marmalade said:

I just like the nog, without the eggs.
This past weekend I made a nice toddy with some homemade Tommy Appleseed wine. YUM YUM