Tales of True Adventure for Rugged Men Not Unlike Yourself
The horror, the horror.
Sylvester Stallone designed this pen and watch set a few years ago as part of cross-promotion for The Expendables. The watches ranged in price from $5,000.00 up to $75,000.00!
So, basically the guy who sat next to you in 8th grade study hall is now making pens.
Or …
For the man who has everything … except taste.
Or …
EXOTIC. MAJESTIC. IMPOSING. A pen that feels like a steel dick in your pocket, stabbing your actual genitals.
Burnt Offerings, the 1973 inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining, was made into a movie in 1976 starring Burgess Meredith, Bette Davis, Oliver Reed, and Karen Black. I’m almost certain it’s one of those horror flicks that scared the everliving shit out of me when it aired on network television back in the day.
The story concerns a family who moves into an old house that regenerates itself by twisting the life force of the occupants who become violent and either kill each other or are killed off while the member of the household who becomes possessed by the spirit of the house survives and becomes a sentinel (in this case “elderly Mrs. Allardyce”), awaiting the next family to be lured once the powers of the existing sentinel wear down and a successor must be found.
We watched it on Amazon Prime the other night – for nostalgia more than anything. It’s pretty slow by today’s standards, but suitably creepy. I kinda want to read the book now, which is recently back in print.
Okay, let’s see if this works.
Anybody a fan of Return of the Living Dead?
UPDATE: This is an experimental server upload of a documentary about the film.
Who is Pogo, you may ask?
Pogo (Nick Bertke) is a music producer and remix artist based in Perth, Western Australia. His music has garnered over 110 million plays on YouTube and integration with many major studios and agencies around the world. Pogo also takes his work on the road having performed at the Guggenheim Museum, The Highline Ballroom and in most major cities across North America.
It would be fun to learn how to do this, doncha think?
Portland graphic artist Rian Callahan used to have a blog called Man Is the Warmest Place to Hide, where he posted these fake trading cards for The Shining. They are beautiful, and the attention to detail is astounding. Anyway, I think he works [BROKEN LINK] now.
Bonus points for creativity!
“The Shiner,” from MAD Magazine issue 221 (March, 1981).
Art by Angelo Torres, written by Larry Siegel.
Some of you bastards may recall my obsession last year with Nick Derington’s Cthulhu idol sculpture, of which he only cast 28. (What a bastard.) As a refresher, here’s how H.P. Lovecraft describes the idol in “The Call of Cthulhu” …
The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher’s elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally life-like, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it shew with any known type of art belonging to civilisation’s youth— or indeed to any other time. Totally separate and apart, its very material was a mystery; for the soapy, greenish-black stone with its golden or iridescent flecks and striations resembled nothing familiar to geology or mineralogy. The characters along the base were equally baffling; and no member present, despite a representation of half the world’s expert learning in this field, could form the least notion of even their remotest linguistic kinship. They, like the subject and material, belonged to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it; something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part.
Something got me looking online recently to see if any of Derington’s 28 were for sale. No dice, and even if any were available, there’s no way in hell I could afford one. There are tons of awful other interpretations out there, but I did find some substitutes that are pretty cool. In fact, I bought this one on Amazon for about $20.00.
Even better, I stumbled onto a sculptor named Joe Broers, who casts his resin sculptures on demand for about $60.00. Here’s one based on Lovecraft’s original sketches.
I LOVE EET. So much in fact, that I’ve contacted Broers and will be making a purchase in September.