Category: Complete And Total Genius

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Fuck Me, Don’t Tell A Soul Is 30

Released February 1, 1989. This makes me feel older than turning 50. To put it in perspective, this post is the equivalent of the 20-year-old me in 1989 talking about an album that came out in 1959.

Wiki-wiki-wikipedia says …

Don’t Tell a Soul marked the debut of Bob “Slim” Dunlap, who replaced founding guitarist Bob Stinson. The album was recorded at Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles and produced by Matt Wallace and the band. It was mixed by Chris Lord-Alge, who decided to give the record “a three-dimensional, radio-ready sound”. However, singer and guitarist Paul Westerberg was not satisfied with the new direction, commenting: “I thought the little things I’d cut in my basement were closer to what I wanted.”

To celebrate, let’s all take a moment and watch one of my favorite rock ‘n’ roll moments.

As explained by a lesser blog …

Before the show, they were told they needed to change the line, “We’re feeling good from the pills we took.” Well, fittingly, Westerberg did no such thing, and the censors were obviously ready for it, as the tape goes silent during that section of the song. What the censors at ABC didn’t anticipate was this: Near the conclusion of “Talent Show” the lyrics address the time when the band hits the stage and there’s no retreating: “It’s too late to turn back, here we go” is repeated twice on the album version, but here Westerberg has changed the line to “It’s too late to take pills, here we go”—ha! The censors missed it and they’ve pissed everyone off again! To add insult, the line is sung three times.

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I Really Want To See This

And I don’t care what you say.

Laurel & Hardy, one of the world’s great comedy teams, set out on a variety hall tour of Britain in 1953. Diminished by age and with their golden era as the kings of Hollywood comedy now behind them, they face an uncertain future. As the charm and beauty of their performances shines through, they re-connect with their adoring fans.

The tour becomes a hit, but Stan & Ollie can’t quite shake the specter of Laurel and Hardy’s past; the long-buried ghosts, coupled with Oliver’s failing health, start to threaten their precious partnership. A portrait of the most tender and poignant of creative marriages, they are aware that they may be approaching their swan song, trying to rediscover just how much they mean to each other.

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The Muck Monster

When I was a kid, my mom would take me grocery shopping. I would practically run to the magazine stand and then she’d collect me after check out. What she still doesn’t know is that I read TONS of inappropriate shit, from Creepy to Creem and whatever else you can think of. On one of those trips, I came across this story. Me being me, it had a profound effect. Unfortunately, I could never track down a copy as an adult, not knowing the artist, story name, or publication. Occasionally, I would ask other horror fans about it, but no one ever knew what I was talking about.

Of course, after I gave up looking, I accidentally found it online. According to some comic historian with a blog, “The Muck Monster” was originally published in the September 1975 issue of Eerie (#68) as a color insert. Comix International then reprinted it in October 1975, and then, a few years later in November 1979, it was reprinted in black & white for issue 113 of Creepy. (Which is when I must have initially read it.)

So here it is, pretty much as I remembered it. I uploaded the color version because it’s higher resolution, but the black & white version is much more impactful. I should have guessed Berni Wrightson was the artist and writer.
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Check Out These Early Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse Animatics

So sayeth animator Alberto Mielgo …

As I mentioned before, I was hired to direct the animation test for the new Spiderman film.

Here you can see my original storyboards and animatics that I produced for such a test. My main intention was to explore the language of comics and cinema and merge them together. We finished only 4 of this shots. And everyone ended up pretty exhausted!!!
The shots that we produced with an incredible technical team were some of the most amazing thing Ive seen, and Im extremely proud of them and the team involved. With those shots we open a door to a pipeline and possibilities and help to estimate the overall film.
I hope Sony will allow me to share the finished shots some time in the future .

Im really happy to see that most of my shots on this early boards made it to the final film. Again I would like to congratulate the whole team that finished the final film for preserving the compositions and the original intention of these shots. It shows that everyone felt inspired and that they really cared for this particular vision.

As you can see the 3 versions are very different in tone. It was early and I was not too sure yet what would be the final mood of this film yet.

I work with pencil, photoshop, I do the comp in After FX and my edits in Premiere, with my own sounds and all bunch of crap in Audition… Did I ever say how much I love adobe?

Music on this obviously temp score just for the edit.

My pick temp track artist:
v1: SON LUX
v2: LEFTFIELD
v3: MAXIMONO

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Sunny Prestatyn

By Philip Larkin

Come To Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
Behind her, a hunk of coast, a
Hotel with palms
Seemed to expand from her thighs and
Spread breast-lifting arms.

She was slapped up one day in March.
A couple of weeks, and her face
Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed;
Huge tits and a fissured crotch
Were scored well in, and the space
Between her legs held scrawls
That set her fairly astride
A tuberous cock and balls

Autographed Titch Thomas, while
Someone had used a knife
Or something to stab right through
The moustached lips of her smile.
She was too good for this life.
Very soon, a great transverse tear
Left only a hand and some blue.
Now Fight Cancer is there.

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A Personal Letter From Steve Martin

My ancient obsession with comedy legend Steve Martin continues to manifest itself. From Letters of Note …

Celebrities are faced with a dilemma as their star ascends: the fan mail that used to trickle to the front door now needs its own home, and replying to those messages of support is suddenly a full-time job of its own. A small few battle on valiantly, determined to respond personally to each and every piece of correspondence regardless of the trouble, expense or delay; most, however, take the easy, altogether more sensible route and produce a form letter, to be signed and used as a stock reply for every fan. Impersonal and slightly disappointing, yes, but a response nonetheless.

Trust comedy legend Steve Martin to plump for the latter option but still, thanks to a dab of perfectly pitched humour, come out smelling of roses. Back in the day, he replied to fan mail with “A personal letter from Steve Martin,” a form letter in which just a few words were personalised for each recipient, and which was hilarious precisely for that reason. This particular example was sent to a 17-year-old fan named Jerry Carlson in 1979, the year The Jerk, arguably one of the funniest films he has ever starred in, was released.

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Speaking Of Cthulhu …

Received this in the mail yesterday! Even better than I expected, and the photo doesn’t really do it justice. Shout out to sculptor Joe Broers, who was nice enough to ship this thing in the middle of a massive snowstorm. The free demon magnet (also one of his originals, I assume) and the little doodle on the box were nice touches, too.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

H.P. Lovecraft
“The Call of Cthulhu”
1928

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That Thing I Say About Talented People? Still True

I should probably explain that Westworld is one of my all time favorite sci-fi movies, at least from the Seventies. It inspired The Terminator (and most likely Halloween) and was the first film to reference computer viruses, if I’m not mistaken.

Behold, Westworld’s Gunslinger … as portrayed by the great Yul Brynner. At Monsterpalooza, we chat with sculptor Nick Marra about his amazing portrait of the character. This silicone sculpture not only captures Brynner’s likeness, but is mechanized to reveal his true robot face in spectacular fashion. Draw!

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Steve!

Youngsters watching this today won’t realize how funny and irreverent this was for 1978. You just didn’t make fun of self-important movie stars like this back then.