The ghoul goes west, part four.

Packing.

Just about ready. Am I forgetting anything?

DUMDUMSHREKPEEPS!

Congratulations.

... to a drunken, severed head...

Severed Heads, Theodore Gericault, 1818 (Nat'l Museum of Scotland)

Max got his Rondo Award for Best Blog!

Hell's mean temp today is an icy 32F. Pigs, as Max himself helpfully points out, have been spotted flying all over the country.

The World is in the unmaking.

Maybe I should buy my big lottery ticket today...


Congratulations Max, my friend. I hope some of the votes came from S&P pub-goers. A very fun run for Rondo glory, and well deserved.

DUMDUMSHREKPEEPS!

The ghoul goes west, part three.

It won't be long now.

There is a bit of nervousness, a lot of anticipation, and some literal tummy-butterfly-ed-ness, and it's not from the coma-inducing amount of chocolate eggs and jelly beans over the weekend.

Well, mostly not from those things.

No, this week I finish preparations for traveling to southern California and MONSTERPALOOZA 2010!

I'm trying to compile last-minute lists of  'do I have it, do I need it, did I already ship it, is there one waiting there, can it be replaced,' and so on.

When you do something like I'm going to do this weekend, you have to pack as if you're going camping... or maybe into outer space.

And anyway, 'luggage'? What's that? I have skulls to animate! 
-Hhmm, maybe I should take that extra pair of shoes in case there's an event requiring more than sneakers... NO! More room is needed for electrical tape and a soldering iron.
-Come on, some slacks instead of jeans, for the same rea-- NO! MUST leave room for monster goodies!

Of course, I'm not really too lost about it all. I'm not exactly new to it -- I attended last year, and took loads of pictures. I thought I might show you a few which display the kinds of things you will see there...

 

New and Vintage toys, model kits, comic books, music, posters, books...

 

Movie memorabilia...

 

Props and figures from film and TV...

Masks created by the best sculptors and casters in the industry...

The works of dozens of the world's greatest Hallowe'en artists...

 ... and custom made figures from some of the industry's greatest creators, like:

Mike Hill, and 

Casey Wong.  

I wonder if Casey's bringing this remarkable Forrest Ackerman piece for the Museum this year... I hope he is. 

And of course, I'm adding a little touch of the Skull & Pumpkin to this year's festivities.

I'll be taking you and the S&P with me, and will update with pictures and hopefully video, when it's later at night and the creatures are sleeping. That's a good time to talk Monsters...

Oh, and

DUMDUMSHREKPEEPS!

Here's a lid for a lady's dome...

... happy Easter.

We had a ball over here at the S&P decorating in our own, weird way.

Eggs, especially.  

The haunted house egg is hard to see in a single image, so:

Then we added another design to complete the set, and make it just perfect for our little pub:

But they looked sort of lonely, languishing there among the purple paper grass and the dead flowers, so:

Yes, Count Orlock is the Easter Bunny. You never knew that? Come on, how could it be otherwise? Seriously, best Bunny ever:

Nosferhoptu. Sounds Egyptian.

Anyway,

- Happy Easter -

 from the Skull & Pumpkin pub.

DUMDUMSHREKPEEPS!

Come she will.

April, that is.

And with her comes a bit of new music for the jukebox over in the dark, dusty corner.

As always, the whole thing begins with Vince Guaraldi's The Great Pumpkin Waltz, the official theme song of the Skull & Pumpkin.

It will always end, I think, with the official incidental music of the S&P, the Anger-Higbie Quintet's Pumpkintime.

Now for the new tunes.

Maybe not exactly new, at least for the second song on the player. I have offered Waltz For A Witch before; being a rarely heard track from Maury Laws' remarkable score from Mad Monster Party (1967), it's perfect Hallowe'en pub fare any time of year. But for Easter, it has an actual connection -- Maury used this piece again in the Hallowe'en segment of the 1971 Rankin Bass special Here Comes Peter Cottontail. I win.

Next up, a nod to my own religious and musical leanings. I know we do not discuss religion in here, but allow this pubkeep to simply say Easter is a memorable and moving holiday for a fallen Catholic... A Beautiful City is one of my favorite Stephen Schwartz songs from the 1973 film version of his marvelous Broadway musical Godspell. It makes me think of new beginnings, bright skies, and happy times. You'll like it. By the way, the lead vocalist, the Jesus character, is Victor Garber -- he who portrayed Thomas Andrews, the designer/builder of the Titanic in the iconic 1997 film.

Then, we get a little alternative... the late, incredibly great Nick Drake's mellow River Man. I did have it here before because it is an Autumn song, but it's also a Springtime song in the sense that new beginnings can cause a kind of wondrous uncertainty about the future, and about one's past beliefs coming into new question. Add the 'lilac time' lyric and you know I will return it to the playlist for Spring.

We are staying with the aforementioned Stephen Schwartz's great first act closer from his musical hit Wicked, Defying Gravity. It is endings, beginnings, an affirmation of drive and a sloughing off of emotional ice. Plus it's just too good to drop just yet. Rock on, Elphaba.


But then we are appending that song with the Overture from the film that started it all, The Wizard of Oz. If the main theme of a movie dealing with a Midwestern tornado isn't April-appropriate for a pub originating from my neck of the woods, well... it's there, deal with it.

And then, a song choice obviated by the title of this very post. Simon & Garfunkel's April, Come She Will was one of the more innocent and wistful songs from their breakthrough 1966 album, Sounds Of Silence.

I think most Hallowe'en People agree that Spring is the opposite of Fall. It ends up that way on the calendar, sure. But for many of us, Spring is kind of annoying on a superficial level -- oh, we love the warmer weather, the longer sunlit hours after a seemingly timeless Winter -- but even Christmas can't hold a candle to Easter's bunnies, chickies, flowers and pastels for rubbing against the grain of a dyed-in-the-wool Hallowe'en fanatic.

Yet Spring, and its cornerstone holiday Easter, are a welcome time, and when one realizes it's just the B Side of Autumn, it takes on a certain hopeful brilliance.

Besides... you can still make Easter creepy and kooky...

(source)

There will be ample evidence of that notion in a few days... but until then, as Miranda quipped, and is now the official April slogan of the S&P:

DUMDUMSHREKPEEPS!

The ghoul goes west, part two.

Well, ol' Uncle Forry is officially on his way.


Westward Fo'.


In two fair-sized but otherwise unassuming boxes, he is heading (get it?) to Burbank, CA. as you read this, unless you're reading after 2 pm PDT Friday because in that case it's already there and you are sort of time traveling now. Send me some racing forms.

To be more accurate, it's going to Northridge, CA., then to Burbank. Just so we're all clear.

I tried as best I could to pack tightly, durably, and with enough foam, packing peanuts and bubble wrap to make a fall from a fifth story window feel like a gentle recline on a feather bed.

I hope.

Nothing I can do now but wait to hear from the receiver...

Of course, you have to take precautions when you're packing up an animatronic talking skull that's supposed to look like a dead Forrest Ackerman but often looks like Vincent Price and in a parcel inspector's x-ray machine might at this moment look surprisingly like Del Moore after a long bender.

I wonder what all those parcel-post-mail people make of this sort of thing...

(Berni Wrightson artwork for the mail pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine)

It's not that I'm worried about anyone thinking it's a real skull or anything so unlikely (and stupid). It's more about the box of wires, metal tubes, servos, power supplies and batteries... I placed a giant note, quite readable by their x-ray machines, atop the mess just before I taped it shut:

DEAR PACKAGE DELIVERY PEOPLE-

THIS IS NOT A BOMB.

THIS IS NOT A WEAPON OF ANY KIND.

IN FACT I DON'T THINK IT COULD HURT ANYONE

UNLESS YOU THREW IT AT THEM REALLY HARD

AND EVEN THEN ONLY IF IT SCRATCHED THEM

AND THEN IT GOT INFECTED.

I then placed a note in the second box:

P.S. THERE ARE NO INFECTIOUS DISEASES

IN THESE BOXES EITHER.

Just trying to cover all the bases. I'd hate to have them tear open something and then not be able to put it back right because I really used every square millimeter of space.

And it still cost me $13,732.97 to ship. I suppose I didn't need to insure it for half a million dollars, but paranoia strikes deep.

At any rate, it will be awaiting my arrival the day before MONSTERPALOOZA opens, and then... well, I'll cross that particular creaking, treacherous suspension bridge when I get to it.

I am very excited, very nervous and completely baffled that just a week or so ago I had been planning to stay home this year.

Now I'm boxing up and sending one of my Hallowe'en hobby creations to what amounts to a three day museum exhibit to be displayed alongside the work of the best and brightest in the business, to be seen and enjoyed by the best and brightest in the business, all the while sitting among personal items from the Ackermonster himself.

I'm so there.

Who says traveling's never any fun...?

DDSP, everyone!

New tunes coming for April... but as it's still March:

O'ZOM-beeee!

Even the Great Pumpkin is voting for...

Now, I know I've mentioned before that when it comes to appropriate topics for pub talk here at the Skull & Pumpkin, we hold fast to the mid-20th Century wisdom of one Linus Van Pelt:
"There are three things I've learned never to discuss with people -- religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin!"
However, in the case of this entire blog, we always exempt the last subject (there'd be no S&P, heck, no Hallowe'en, without the ol' Orange Gourd Overlord!)... and in the case of this post, I am exempting politics.

Well... okay, not really. This has absolutely nothing to do with politics in any manner whatsoever. I was just gunning for a way to get into the subject in some witty way.

I got to type 'ol' Orange Gourd Overlord', anyway.

Okay, listen up pubgoers -- this is the final week to cast your ballot for the

2010 RONDO AWARDS!

These purely-fan-driven Horror Awards were begun in 2002, the idea of David Colton and Kerry Gammill at the Classic Horror Film Board. They have no commercial sponsor, and any Horror lover can propose nominees and decide who gets one of these beauties, sculpted by Kerry Gammill (and cast by Tim Lindsey)...

... named, of course, in honor of one of the most iconic-yet-unsung 'heavies' in B-movie history, the acromegalic Rondo Hatton:

So... I want all of you to go here for the whole Rondo Awards story, and especially to copy/paste this year's ballot and submit it by the end of the week!

But I have another reason for begging your favor.

There's this buddy of mine, Max... another Hallowe'en and Horror nut who also happens to be a drunken severed head -- here he is with an old girlfriend:

Max here is nominated for TWO (2) Rondos this year.

Nomination #1 is for Best Blog. 

Now I suppose it's fair to ask "Is it in fact the best blog?", but then I'd have to say "Of course not, silly, that would be the ol' Skull & Pumpkin. What a stupid question."

BUT given that the Skull & Pumpkin truly resides in a realm far removed from mere awards, I am quite certain that of all the blogs actually on the ballot, you can't do better than Max's Drunken Severed Head blog. Seriously, please vote for him, would you?

Nomination # 2 is for Best Article.

Max wrote a tremendous (and tremendously loving) article for the June 2009 issue of Scarlet, The Film Magazine in posthumous tribute to one of the greatest artists in the genre, the late and very missed Linda 'Meek' Miller.

You can read the article and Max's annotations here.

Here's a sample of her incredible artistry:

I borrowed this image from artist Frank Deitz's Sketchy Things blog.

Linda passed in 2008 at a far too youthful age, and was one of the nicest, quirkiest, funniest ladies you could have ever known, and that was before you ever knew she was an incredibly gifted artist. Her hyper-realistic renderings of the classic icons of the Golden Age of Horror Film are finally being noticed by Horror fandom at large;  Max's article, along with his many tributes to her memory and her art at conventions and on the Web, are almost wholly responsible for the recognition her work is, at long last, beginning to enjoy.

Max's article is, in my estimation, the Best Article of the year without a doubt. I'm sure my brief but very fun and inspiring friendship with Linda 'Meek' Miller through the Universal Monster Army colors my view, but I sincerely cast this vote in Linda's natural Black & White. 

Won't you go vote for Max's blog and article in this year's Rondos?

I'm the proprietor of the Skull & Pumpkin and I approve this message.

O' ZOM-beeee!