The ghoul goes west, part one.

Sorry to have been away, but I know you can help yourselves and keep the place (relatively) clean and pub-like.
But I've been involved in some musical/recording work, a few voice-over sessions (more to come about that, very monstery-fun!) and now another very neat 'happenin'.

This is so cool.

I've just gotten off the phone with a kind fella named Eliot Brodsky who happens to own/run/organize a 'little' classic horror convention in Burbank known as MONSTERPALOOZA, which for 2010 is coming up in just a few weeks.

Click the name, go to the site, and understand that this massive convention was a huge success last year (I had a blast!), exhibiting some of the finest Hallowe'en and horror artists in the world, as well as the greatest make-up artists and mask makers (and collectors!) of the age.

Well, Eliot happens to be a fellow soldier in the Universal Monster Army (enlist now!) and recently happened upon pictures and video I'd posted there last Fall to display my dear, devilish Uncle Forry...

 ... and Eliot thought it would be a neat idea to have me come out to MONSTERPALOOZA with my Forry animated skull to display in the Forrest J Ackerman section of this year's monster Museum! 


He will be on display the entire weekend, amidst some of the real Uncle Forry's personal items and memorabilia, provided by Mr. Ackerman's long-time personal assistant Joe Moe. According to Eliot, Joe loves the idea and believes that Forry would have gotten a big chuckle out of my skeletal version of him.

I am so excited -- it will be a real thrill to be a part of such a fun and fine tribute to the late, great, pioneering hero of Horror and Sci-Fi (he coined the term!) fandom.

So, the Ghoul is going west. For a weekend.

I am now spending some serious time making sure he will work as reliably as I can make him work, and I will need to pack him very well and ship him out ahead (ba-dump-bump!) of time with all of his power supplies and so on. This all sort of spun up just in the last week so my head is swimming a bit.

Boy! I figured I'd just made him for a hobby project to run on Hallowe'en nights... and now this?
I'm so happy that I can extend the tribute to the people who really knew the man, and that I can give a little Hallowe'en Forry to the classic horror lovers attending the convention.

An honor, and a very high point for the Skull & Pumpkin.

Now pacing, praying that everything stays bolted, wired and running right!

This is one hell of an audience.


O'ZOM-beeee!

What's that up there? (part three)

Oh that?

That tiny thing next to the register?

That, my friend, is a peculiar little treasure, one I had for years before I knew anything of its background.

It's called a Popsie:

Made in Japan by Pride Creations in the early '60s, these guys were designed by Rolly Crump.

This Rolly Crump. 

One of the first and surely the most unique of the legendary Disney Imagineers, Crump was a key designer for the look and effects of the Haunted Mansion, the Enchanted Tiki Room, the Adventureland Bazaar, and likely his most popular and best known design, the incredible clock and facade for It's A Small World. Few people who ooh and aaah at his work know the name of the artist who has just moved them so.

These little figures are also called Push-Down Popsies, because when you push them down...

... a little tombstone-shaped, irreverent message pops out of the figure's head!

In this case, it's like a little voodoo doll, a fetish figure, and I keep one of the needles in that message so that it doesn't retract back into his head. 

When I found this little guy at a junk shop some 12 years ago, I had no idea what it was. I'd never heard of the product line, and had certainly never seen one, and therefore had no idea it was associated in any way with Rolly Crump, one of my heroes.

Then again, I did see it from quite some distance, ran over to the shelf and grabbed it knowing it was a rockin' design, so the Crump influence must have been showing even if I was ignorant of it.

It was sitting on the shelf with the message retracted, and when I picked it up, I noticed the feet kind of bouncing, and knew I had to push down... and I fell in love with the odd little thing. I think I paid fifty cents for it, maybe seventy-five.

According to a number of collectors, there were some 175 or so different designs in this line. Some devils, bats, Frankenstein-type monsters (looking quite a lot like this fella) can be seen here and here.

Rolly Crump is still alive, still creating, still inspiring others to create.

I also recently had a collector tell me that the less-than-a-buck I paid, even a dozen years ago, was a pretty absurd little price -- apparently these guys are quite collectable.

As I began this post, I went looking for images of other Popsies, and now I'm very much afraid that I have a new obsession brewing.

Golly, Rolly... I think you deserve a lolly. Prol'ly.

Thinking of you...

O'ZOM-beeee!

Starin' o the green.

Slainte'!

A foine, foine day to be in a pub, aye?

And let's not be forgettin' that the Irish, upon coming to America, are most responsible for giving us Hallowe'en as we know it.

 

Ireland and All Hallow's -- it's almost like you can't remove the one from the other...

 

... and it might be exceedingly dangerous to try...

I found him! O'ZOM-BEEEE!

(source)

Happy Feast of Saint Patrick, dear S&P patrons; green-dyed libation on the house!

And Happy Birthday, Julie.

O'ZOM-beeee!

OH, and looky here, Donkey...

In the words of loyal S&P patron Miranda, who sent me this image:

DUM DUM SHREK PEEPS!

The search for the Skull & Pumpkin's Easter Slogan is over.

Thank you Miranda.

O'ZOM-beeee!

Not that anyone was worried...

... but I feel like I've been away far too long.

An empty pub doesn't make for much excitement, does it?

I've been into other silliness elsewhere -- and a few of the features I've been planning are being held up a bit because of it. Makes me feel cold...

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't visit; our house is yours, you all know that. There are things you've probably not read or seen or heard still crouching in the shadows, lingering in hallways, hiding in the dark behind a candle flame.

Come haunt and hang. I reserve the blood red ruby port for myself, but every other bottle is fair game, and on the house until I return. 

(I'm pretty generous with the make-believe hootch, ain't I?)

Anyway, I hope you are all well and making ready for Spring to... uh, spring. 

We'll have a fine evening here for the Feast of St. Patrick, though with a decidedly All Hallowed's twist...

O'ZOM-beeee!

Just had to note...

... that this post is actually visit number twelve-thousand, three hundred and forty-five.

As in 12345.

HAH! I thought it was funny.

O'ZOM-beeee!

What's that up there? (part two)

Yeah, I see you staring.

I was wondering when you were going to ask.

One of the stranger (and therefore cooler) bits of old school Hallowe'en detritus adorning the walls of this humble homely house:

 

I can't recall precisely when I found this, but it's been in the collection for many years. Neither do I recall exactly where I found it (one of a half dozen flea markets in my neck of the woods, no doubt) but I recall seeing the edge of it poking out behind a stack of LPs and thinking Score! Vintage Hallowe'en paper! but when I pulled it free it became part of a bizarre mixing of worlds for me.

Now, Linus had some good advice about the "three things never to discuss with people -- religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin!" Well, here at the S&P we discuss the latter all the time, but we do have a fairly strict policy about avoiding the first two; you know how pubs can get.

But in this case, I'm just having fun with Americana.

For some reason I can't seem to find out the election year for which this door hanger was made ('68 or '72), but about the message of the piece there can be no doubt -- the Great Pumpkin is a Nixon supporter.

Well... forgetting for the moment that there is nothing at all Republican about free handouts, the big laugh for me is that the greatest core tenet of the Great Pumpkin mythos is the utter sincerity of the pumpkin patch from which he rises. Yet somehow when I think Nixon-Agnew, 'sincerity' is not the first thing that comes to mind.

On the other hand, Nixon and 'pumpkin paper' do have a shared past so maybe it's not too big a stretch after all.


At any rate, one of my favorite pieces -- one heck of a fine piece of Americana and old school Hallowe'en, and a fairly rare one that doesn't have the name of a local political organization inked around the handle (and the perfectly intact handle is rarer still).

Now... aren't you glad you asked?

O'ZOM-beeee!