Shades of Clark Ashton Smith

I had the high (only?) bid on this thing at a recent fundraising auction to help folks recover from early autumn flooding in Miami, Arizona, my favorite small town that I've discovered since we moved here in 2021. 

Now the thing sits on my bookshelf. 

It reminds me a little bit of the eerie sculptures of Clark Ashton Smith, which I wrote about in 2017.

Also, I've read enough paranormal short stories and seen enough episodes of "Night Gallery" — not to mention those episodes of "The Brady Bunch" with Hawaii, the tiki idol and Vincent Price — to realize that I'm now cohabitating with a cursed object, and I should probably tread very lightly.

Saboteur (1942, Alfred Hitchcock)

(Apologies to Norman Lloyd)

(P.S.: Spice is 110% fine. She's standing on a shelf.)

Milkwalker knows where you live

I drank from a lot of milk cartons during my K-12 school days in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida (maybe that's why I've never had a broken bone). But I never came across anything as creepy as Milkwalker. 

Indeed, Milkwalker is real. Or, at least, the milk-carton public service campaign by Darigold that featured Milkwalker was real. When I first came across Milkwalker in one of my social media feeds, I figured it was too good to be true. It had to be a clever fake, because it looks too much like something that someone would invent as Slenderman's weird cousin. 

But Know Your Meme has the lowdown:

"Milkwalker, an anthropomorphic milk carton, was originally created by Seattle-based dairy and agricultural co-op Darigold, Inc. [in the mid 1980s] as the mascot of the company and a public service announcement character that encourages children to remember their full name, address and telephone number in case of emergencies. On November 28th, 2016, over three decades after its introduction, various images of the obscure mascot began circulating online after it was highlighted by the Tumblr blog Heck-Yeah-Old-Tech."

I even found this short article in the June 5, 1985, edition of the Whidbey News-Times of Oak Harbor, Washington (click to embiggen):

Some folks embrace Milkwalker and reject the creepypasta angle of it being just another thing to fear. In a Facebook comment in August 2024, Holly Gee wrote: "Yes, the milkwalker definitely looks like a spooky cryptid, but I like the idea of him being a force for good, protecting the innocent by milkwalking all over the wicked from the shadows. He's terrifying, but terrifies only the deserving."

But while Milkwalker seemingly originated with Darigold in the 1980s, how long has it actually been around? Is it, perhaps, ancient? I'll leave you with this curious excerpt from the March 24, 1876, edition of The Stockport Advertiser in Stockport, England. Interpret it as you wish: 

Strath Haven's David Letterman Club

In February 1988, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story about the coolest club we had at Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, Pa. Yes, indeed, we had a David Letterman Club, in which students gathered after school to watch VHS tapes of his shows on a rolling AV cart.

The Inquirer story was reported and written by Gloria Hoffner¹, with a group photo that was taken by Al Tielemans. I'm way in the back of the photo and clearly in need of a haircut. This wasn't my only appearance in the Inquirer. I was also mentioned numerous times, in conjunction with the Steve Jeltz Fan Club, in Jayson Stark's Baseball Week in Review. And a ridiculous full article about that club, with a photo of me wearing a tie, was published by the Inquirer in, I think, the summer of 1990. I'll have to dig that one up.

Here are some excerpts from Hoffner's article:

• Each Wednesday afternoon, about 20 Strath Haven High School students gather around a TV set in science room 211. But instead of of watching the usual educational-television fare, they watch stupid pet tricks.² Did someone sabotage the videotape? Nope. It's Late Night with David Letterman, and it's no mistake.
• Armed with a fast-forward control button, the club members search past the commercials³ for the meat of the programs. They say their favorites are the animal acts and the sports foul-ups.
• Rick Kosel, a Strath Haven science teacher and the club's adviser, said that "about three or four years ago" Jamie Hooper, a resident of Swarthmore who is now attending Dartmouth, asked if we could have a club to watch taped videos of David Letterman because the show comes on at 12:30 p.m., and he didn't want to stay up that late. "We have a school policy that if a student comes up with a club idea, has 10 interested students and an adviser, then it can be considered an after-school club," Kosel said.
• "When I heard about the David Letterman Club, I thought it was a good idea because there are many students from one-parent homes or from homes where both parents are working, and this was a place they could go while waiting for their bus," [Activities Director Charlotte] Higler said.
• [Higler] said the David Letterman Club costs the district about $200 a year — the cost of Kosel's adviser's salary of $11 per hour. Kosel pays for the tapes, and the school already owned the videotape player.
• "I think it is a good thing because this way the kids who love David Letterman don't stay up until 1 a.m. watching, and it keeps their minds on their homework rather than on TV," Higler said.

That was 37 years ago. In 1993, Letterman left NBC's Late Night with David Letterman and began hosting Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. He retired in May 2015 after more than 4,200 episodes at CBS, including being the first talk show to return after 9/11. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert took over the famed Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan after Letterman retired, and Colbert was still going strong when CBS abruptly announced Thursday that his show will be canceled effective May 2026. There are strong indications that CBS's announcement represent a form of appeasement to the president of the United States, who has long expressed disdain for Colbert. Silencing comedians who poke fun at you is apparently what we do now in our democracy.

Speaking of the president, this is what David Letterman himself had to say about him way back in an interview with The Associated Press published on July 10, 2017:

QUESTION: Speaking of the current administration, late-night seems to have become mostly Trump jokes and tirades. Do you miss not being part of that?

LETTERMAN: "Here's what I keep saying: We know there's something wrong, but what I'm tired of is people, daily, nightly, on all the cable news shows telling us there's something wrong. I just think we ought to direct our resources and our energies to doing something about it. And other people have made this point: If the guy was running Dairy Queen, he'd be gone. This guy couldn't work at The Gap. So why do we have to be victimized by his fecklessness, his ignorance? But it's just the behavior is insulting to Americans, whether you voted for him or not — and I feel bad for people who did vote for him because he promised them things that they really needed and one wonders if he's really going to come through. I know there's trouble in this country, and we need a guy who can fix that trouble. I wish it was Trump, but it's not, so let's just stop whining about what a goon he is and figure out a way to take him aside and put him in a home."

That was eight long years ago. Which paradoxically seems even longer ago than when I was watching Letterman VHS tapes at Strath Haven in 1988.

Related posts

• Sorry "Infinity War," the greatest Avengers crossover was 34 years ago
• 33 years in perspective: It was really all about a monkey washing a cat

Footnotes

1. What a cool story Gloria Hoffner has! Here's an excerpt from her About the Author page on Amazon: "When I was a little girl my dream was to be an astronaut. So in 7th grade I wrote to NASA to ask what I needed to study in high school and college to travel into space. NASA sent me a form letter. It said study Latin and German, the language of scientific papers at the time, to study physics, math etc. Then as I reached the bottom on the page, in blue ink, handwritten, was a note that said, 'Of course we do not accept women into the space program.' It was 1967 and discrimination against women was legal and accepted. So, I turned to my second love, science fiction, and decided I would be the next Jules Verne. I read and wrote stories constantly(asked my teachers, family and friends to read them) and planned my career. I met a science fiction writer in high school and applied to college. I realized that I needed a full time job as I worked towards a career in fiction, so I majored in journalism." That led her to a career at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and later she published the award-winning book Science for Seniors: Hands-On Learning Activities.

2. Some "Stupid Pet Tricks" trivia from Wikipedia: "When Letterman left [for CBS], NBC asserted their intellectual property rights to several of the most popular Late Night segments. ... Notably, however, 'Stupid Pet Tricks' originated on Letterman's 1980 early morning show The David Letterman Show, to which Letterman, not NBC, owned the rights. This meant 'Stupid Pet Tricks' was able to cross over to the CBS show with its name and concept unchanged."

3. Nowadays those commercials would make those VHS tapes (if they still exist) pure gold. VHS tapes are making quite the comeback, as I plan to delve into later this summer. But even more valuable and collectible than certain commercial VHS tapes are home recordings of shows, movies and live sporting events onto blank tapes. They can contain commercials, news broadcasts, bumpers and other content that would otherwise be long lost. If you have these from the 1980s or 1990s, they usually sell for a decent price on eBay.

One orange cat to beam up, Scotty

Merry Christmas Eve from Bandit, who likes to stand 

right in front of the Christmas laser lights. 

He's not helping with the perception that orange male cats have a few loose bulbs in their string of lights, 

if you know what I mean.

Saturday's postcard: Cat luchadores

This awesome-sauce postcard arrived this week from penpal Cynthia in Mexico. The Larenn Syanne illustration shows lucha libre (Mexican pro wrestling), but with cats as the luchadores and the spectators. It's quite the free-for-all taking place in the ring. "It's a really fun activity," Cynthia writes of the human version of lucha libre. "You choose a team and scream to support."

As a member of Gen X, I grew up during peak WWE and Wrestlemania. But, with a few exceptions, I mostly left that behind years and years ago. The fact that the co-founder of WWE could soon lead the U.S. Department of Education, which may subsequently be dismantled, is more than a little sobering.

The most famous luchador of all time is Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta (1917-1984), best known as El Santo. The thing I find most interesting about him is that, at the height of his popularity, he made a long series of movies (more than 50!) featuring El Santo as essentially a crimefighter/superhero. The English version of their titles tell you what kind of films they were. Some of the best titles:

• Santo vs. the Evil Brain
• Santo vs. the Zombies
• Santo vs. The Vampire Women
• Santo in the Wax Museum
• Santo in The Witches Attack
• Santo vs. the Martian Invasion
• Santo in The Treasure of Dracula
• Santo in The Mystery of the Black Pearl
• Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man
• Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dr. Frankenstein
• Santo in The Bermuda Mystery

As a movie buff, I feel an obligation to track down and watch at least one of these some day. We'll have to see if El Santo can live up to Rowdy Roddy Piper's performance in They Live. I'll have to do some research and figure out which El Santo movie would be best. Feel free to make a suggestion in the comments section.

As a final note, Cynthia's postcard was mailed with this very cool Día de Muertos stamp:

Note: This is Papergreat's 3,700th post. At my current posting rate, I won't hit 4,000 until early 2028.

The terror of AI image generation

Deep into the spooky season of Mild Fear 2024 seems like a good time to check in with one of this year's most existential horrors: artificial intelligence. It's fairly certain at this point that AI will lead directly to the the doom of civilization, if not the entire Earth. But while we passively wait for the apocalypse — whether it's from economic collapse spurred by AI, autonomous AI warfare or simply the AI servers swallowing up every available joule of energy on the planet — we can also just sit back and do stupid things with AI.

I asked AI, for example, to generate images of me writing a Papergreat post. So here they are:

My cats and I have no further comment. 

The "magical" world of early 1970s interior decorating

I came across the 1970 book Better Homes and Gardens Creative Decorating on a Budget a while back at a Goodwill store and knew that it contained vast horrifying treasures inside that would be worth sharing here. The late 1960s and 1970s were indeed an, ahem, magical time when it came to interior decorating, and most of that "style" was still around, albeit in grungier and smelling-of-smoke form, when my generation was growing up in the early 1980s.

Weirdly, when I search Google now, I mostly find articles that say 1970s interior decor was unfairly maligned and/or is making a well-deserved comeback. It's kind of crazy. I think most of this must be coming from hip younger folks who didn't live through the era in their parents' and grandparents' houses. 

James Lileks had it right with his 2004 book Interior Desecrations: Hideous Homes from the Horrible '70s. (There's also a valuable website documenting the horrors to go along with it.)¹ 

Without further ado, here are some images from Better Homes and Gardens Creative Decorating on a Budget. Prepare to be triggered.

Leading off with a daily double: 

What if the entire room were green?

I'm not sure this in an upgrade from the green rooms

Wood paneling, a jaguar pattern and Snoopy

I have so many questions. Let's start with the rugs. That little statue. And the chair that looks like it would be at home in "The Changeling."

At least the TV isn't the center of the room

We are not discussing the thing hanging on the wall²

"Butt joints and glue" sounds right

That's one way to establish a maritime theme

We're sitting on WHAT to eat our watermelon?

The infamous beaded divider curtain

Finally, we're not finished until we show a bathroom with a carpeted toilet cover

Footnotes

1. James Lileks was previously mentioned in the 2019 post "Matchbook: Hartwig's The Gobbler Supper Club & Gobbler Motel."

2. And we are definitely not revisiting this clown painting on the wall.

Today's silly thing I made

Many mornings, neighborhood feral cat Creamsicle (aka Creamball Rally) gets into our fire pit and attempts to hide so that he can stalk the birds that feed near the pit. He gets cranky when I blow his cover. It reminds me of Sadako/Samara coming out of the well for vengeance in Ringu/The Ring. Just an amusing image that I thought would be fun to share. (P.S: Nothing about Creamsicle is remotely spooky.)

Book cover: "Will Eisner's Gleeful Guide to Occult Cookery"

Here's a curiosity from the wild and wacky 1970s. Between this and the Lovely post, you might think things are getting too racy here on Papergreat. But it's just a coincidence. I'm doing my best to keep it a PG-13 blog.

• Title: Will Eisner's Gleeful Guide to Occult Cookery
• Subtitle: The Saucerer's Apprentice (the first of many, many puns to groan at)
• Additional cover text: "Brimful with tasty, enchanting recipes anyone can make in any average modern kitchen — each carefully selected to be used in casting spells, leveling curses and causing supernatural results in money and sexual affairs!"
• Author and illustrator: Will Eisner (1917-2005), previously featured in a post regarding Will Eisner's Spirit Casebook Of True Haunted Houses And Ghosts.
• Editor: Ivan Klapper
• Recipes by: Judy Mann
• Dimensions: 8½ inches by 11 inches
• Publication date: 1974
• Publisher: Poorhouse Press. According to the Lambiek Comiclopedia, the other books Eisner did with Poorhouse Press in the mid 1970s included The Gleeful Guide to Communicating with Plants to Help Them Grow; Incredible Facts, Amazing Statistics, Monumental Trivia; Living With Astrology; and How To Avoid Death & Taxes ... and Live Forever.
• Format: Paperback
• Original publication: January 1969, by Doubleday & Company
• Pages: 64
• Cover price: $1.95
• Excerpt from the introduction: "OCCULT COOKERY is designed for the middle-of-the-road citizen who has never consciously compounded a curse or cast a spell ... but would like to know how. If you've ever suspected that a strange psychic force was toying with your fate, or yearned to possess the extraordinary power to alter the lives of friends and foes, this book is for YOU! OCCULT COOKERY is dedicated to the adventurous soul who would like to manipulate others. For good or evil. The anem of this magical force is WITCHCRAFT. You've heard of it, of course. But have you ever really believed it existed? ... Much help in this eerie enterprise was supplied by Judith Mann, a young sauceress and a no-nonsense professional caterer. She furnished all the recipes, which have been scrupulously tested for practicality."
• Recipe names: These names, paired with Eisner's illustrations, are the best part of the book. Here's a large sampling: Bookie Bouillon, Miserable Mulligatawny, Adultery Ghoulash, Pox Meat Loaf, Wrack of Lamb, Drop-Dead Duck, Swamp-Bottom Lobster, Evil-Eye Eel, Toad Stool Flounder, Amorous Beef Stroganoff, Intercourse Pheasant, Grapes of Wraith Salad, Forbidden Zucchini, Fornication Fondue, Lust or Bust Soufflé, Gnome Cake, Inhuman Burgers 'n' Beans, Shrimp Psych-Out, Orgasmic Tidbittys, Cream Obscene, Ghastly Cake, Noodle Nut Necromancy, Chicken Caligula, Rigid Cheese Digits, Agony Niblets, Salmon Succubus, Lost Sole Fillets (groan), ESP Tea, Dracula Toddy and Warlock Wine. 
• Trigger warnings: The book is absolutely a product of its time, containing some offensive material and often using references to sexual assault for "humor."
• Cranky Amazon review: In 2015, Maine Rose wrote: "Not amusing, not interesting, not a good read — nothing."
• More forgiving Amazon review: In 2019, Oldman437 wrote: "The chapter titles are cute, like 'Magic Charms' or 'Terrible Curses' with recipes for Adultery Ghoulash and Drop-Dead Duck. This book was published in the early '70s, so some of the ingredients are no longer fashionable (e.g. real butter, vermouth, etc.), but each recipe we made was delicious — and that's how I judge a cookbook."

Recipes!

Here are two pages from the book, complete with their recipes, followed by a couple more recipes.

 

Fornication Fondue

(which surprises me, because it's a non-cheese fondue)

• 3 tablespoons butter
• ½ cup onions, sliced thinly
• 4 tomatoes, peeled and cut in eighths
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons parsley, minced

Melt butter in a saucepan; saute onions until transparent. Stir in tomatoes, salt, pepper and garlic. Cover and cook over low heat 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Noodle Nut Necromancy

• 2 lb. broad noodles, cooked and drained
• 1 pint sour cream
• 4 tablespoons grated lemon rind
• 4 tablespoons grated orange rind
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 cups toasted almonds
• 1 cup white raisins, plumped in hot water
• 3 tablespoons cinnamon sugar

Separate noodes with a fork; add sour cream, grated lemon and orange rinds, sguar, almonds and raisins. Blend well with a wooden spoon, being careful not to mash noodles. turn into a serving casserole and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Serve.

Spacing out with Brad Steiger in Switzerland

While researching the post about Brad Steiger's Strangers from the Skies last summer, I came across a Goodreads review for another one Steiger's books that made me laugh.

The reviewer, Documentally, was writing in 2022 about Steiger's Mysteries of Time and Space, which was first published in 1974. He wrote:

"I picked this up off a shelf in a Swiss mountain hut while working as a Pastore in 1999. According to my journal it was 20th of July and I read it in one sitting. The cows were behaving and there was little else to do.

"It sounded like I enjoyed it. I loved Brad's daring predictions from 1974. I especially liked his writings on how important it is to be childlike and not childish. That it's important to realise you can fashion reality.

"I was also pretty stoned on that particular day and this might have assisted in my appreciation of his book. For that reason I have given it 4 stars."

Documentally has a Substack, if you want to check out more of his writing. It's described as "A human authored journal in search of novelty, exploring what we share, how we share, and where we’re going." Sounds like it shares a lot in common with Papergreat, with the big difference being that I rarely leave home anymore. Also, I'm more of a saké guy.

Lost Corners food humor and a recipe from a Vincent Price book

As regular reader(s) of this blog know, Papergreat has a strong interest in preserving tiny corners of the internet — personal blogs and websites, message boards, social media — that are especially susceptible to disappearing and/or being forgotten. The Lost Corners label features those posts from over the years.

I recently came across a Twitter thread from four years ago that was started by comedy writer Cullen Crawford¹, and I knew I wanted to "tuck it away in an envelope" for preservation. It's a laugh-out-loud look at food horrors that left at least two of us in this household ROTFL.

Here's the original post, plus my curation of the best (most horrifying?) responses, where things really get rollicking.

 

Nothing worse than sleeping at a friend's house and their family has some weird ass thing like calling spaghetti "Billy Dinner" or some shit

— Cullen Crawford (@HelloCullen) May 14, 2019

• @karakabangpow: "Sleepover at my friend's house, 8 years old, she served us an appetizer of saltine crackers with some weird spread on top. I asked her what it was she said 'its more crackers but I chewed them up!' like it was a normal thing."
• Cullen Crawford: "Jesus lord!"
• @karakabangpow: "I forgot she called them Kelly Crackers!!"
• @RecreantA: "That’s enough internet for one...lifetime."
• @MaraWilson: "My aunts made macaroni from a box of macaroni and cheese but without any cheese or butter or salt. It might have also been cold?"
• @Arithered: "Other People's Families are like the first experiences we ever have with the warning signs of cult indoctrination."
• @snartdeco: "I knew someone whose entire family called spaghetti 'daddy noodles' and I cannot"
• @alexvtunzelmann: "I’ve never forgotten some absolute lunatics who claimed that in their household they put orange juice on their breakfast cereal instead of milk. I assumed they were joking. Then they did it and lapped it up"
• @SocksUnterShoes: "Reminds me of my cousin. Always went to this friends house after school. They had something called 'sweet milk' and he loved it. Then he slept over. Sweet Milk is when you finish your cereal and pour your leftover milk into the Sweet Milk container."
• @mimva: "SCREAMING INSIDE MY SOUL FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I CAN NEVER UNREAD THIS."
• @mtobey: "It was always something normal that was ruined by an extra ingredient like spaghetti with raisins"
• @Blarrknulp: "This tweet has opened up a secret door in humanity's unconsciousness."
• @EricDSnider: "I don't think we ever inflicted it on guests, but my mom made something with macaroni, cream of mushroom soup, and ground beef that she called 'Hamburger Whoop-Dee-Dee.'"²
• @LynnAAR: "I had a college roommate who made soup with chicken broth, a ton of pepper and a can of spray cheese.  Sometimes she'd throw in chopped celery."
• @HELLA_GIRTH: "my idea of spaghetti as a kid was plain noodles covered in a mixture of melted velveeta block cheese and milk, with chopped-up hot dogs"
• @AdamPateman: "My family would eat cereal 3 hours after dinner and call it Bed Lunch."
• @Gadgetgirlkylie: "My dad would make something he liked to call 'Daddy’s Gunge' it was a mixture of crushed up spam and tomatoe ketchup. It was gross. Yet he seemed proud of it like it was the best food ever made."
• @emikaj2: "my dad made 'Dad Ramen' which was ramen, black beans, and feta cheese. 2nd grade was a nightmare."
• @pixelkitties: "Went to have dinner with a new boyfriend's family for the first time.  Sat down and there was nothing to drink at the table.  No glasses, no water, nothing. Partway into the meal I asked for a glass of water and they looked annoyed, like I farted at the table."³
• @emzeewoolzee: "This cursed thread made me recall a repressed memory. Must have been 8-10 yrs old...first and only sleepover at strange friend’s house. They gave me honeydew melon with kraft singles melted on top in the microwave. oh god."
• @HoustonBig3: "First time I ate a meal with girlfriend and her parents, they crack out an appetizer and I thought it was a joke. A banana sliced lengthwise...with mayo slathered on it...and the mayo topped with crushed peanuts. They were not pranking me. I respectfully declined to partake."
• Cullen Crawford: "I didn’t ask for any of this"

* * *

OK, we need a palate cleanser, after all that. So, obviously, we'll turn to Vincent Price. It's my 10-year anniversary this month of switching to a pescetarian diet, so here's a summer recipe for ice-cold gazpacho from Sobrino de Botín in Madrid, Spain. The recipe was included in Price's 1965 book A Treasury of Great Recipes. (I'm going to take a much deeper dive into that incredible volume one of these days.)

Vincent Price at Dodger Stadium

Footnotes

1. Papergreat is in full solidarity with the Writers Guild of America in its ongoing strike. Writers deserve fair payment and fair residuals payments for all uses of their work.

2. We had "Mommy's Favorite Hamburger Hash," which, to the best of my recollection, was ground beef, cream of mushroom soup and chopped-up hard-boiled eggs poured over toast.

3. That same thing happened to me once, and it's probably my only uncomfortable experience while eating at someone else's house. I guess I was pretty lucky. But now I'm wondering if I really examined all the crackers and spread I've had over the years.

Bonkers book title: "Garlic, Grapes and a Pinch of Heroin"

• Title: Garlic, Grapes and a Pinch of Heroin
• Cover secondary text: "Disappearing heroin and a missing brother ... can she prove his innocence and stay alive?"
• Author: Elaine Turner, about whom I cannot find any biographical information. Contact me if you can help out!
• Cover illustrator: Unknown, but we can assume the artist knew very little about the plot or actual genre.
• Publication date: 1977
• Publisher: Manor Books, which was in business for about a decade, from 1972 to 1981. As Wikipedia notes, "A marketing gimmick used by Manor was the Seal of Guaranteed Reader Satisfaction, which offered compensation if the customer was not pleased with his purchase." This book, however, does not offer that guarantee.
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 226
• Cover price: $1.50 (about $7.44 today)
• Strange hyphenation in back cover blurb: "hi-jacker"
• First sentence: Wisps of fog danced, slowly encircling the evergreens.
• Last sentence: "I don't think we have to worry about his answer, but whatever it is, not much, not much at all."
• Sentence from the middle #1: Her detecting had produced a big fat zero.
• Sentence from the middle #2: Violet's formidable array of cosmetics were arranged on the dresser, a magazine lay on the slightly mussed bed.
• Excerpt from the middle #3: "Well, howdy, it's sure been good to see ya'all. The tour's been mighty dull without you," Bernie boomed.
• Online review: This book is rated 3.33 stars (out of 5) on Goodreads and there are no ratings on Amazon. But there's only one actual review online, and it served as the inspiration for this post. The review is by Justin Tate of SpookyBook, and it begins: 

"Let’s take a moment to admire that title. Wow. I mean, if that doesn’t catch the eye, what will? Of course the cover is less appealing. It has all the ingredients of Gothic standard, but on an eighth-grade art class budget. Nevermind that the novel itself is 0% Gothic."

Please go and read the entire excellent review. Other books reviewed by SpookyBooky include Lord Satan, The Ladies of Holderness, The Bishop of Hell and Other Stories, and the wonderfully titled Let the Crags Comb Out Her Dainty Hair. In addition, Tate wrote wrote a journal in the first half of 2020 that combines thoughts on the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic with a first reading of Stephen King's The Stand. It's well worth reading and an important time capsule of a moment in history.

Varmint-enhanced eBay listing of the day

It takes some true chutzpah to list this copy of The Haunted House Handbook on eBay for $11.98 plus $4.50 shipping. At least there's full honesty in the description: "Front cover shows considerable varmint damage to top, side & lower edges -- otherwise this copy would have been graded as Good Minus, with wear & chipping to edges & corners, plus creases, scratches,folds, indentations, small tears, rub-wear, browning pages, soiling, etc -- OVERALL CONDITION = Fair"

"Fair" might be pushing it.

The Haunted House Handbook, by D. Scott Rogo (1950-1990) was published in 1978, and it's moderately sought-after by folks who collect that genre. Good copies aren't cheap, but a quick search found some nice ones on Amazon, eBay and AbeBooks in the $25 range. And there were also a few paperbacks in the $10 range that could definitely be considered ragged — but far less ragged than this mouse-eaten one.

But who knows? Maybe collecting chewed-up or weirdly battered paperbacks is a hobby for some collectors. They can have their unique charm, I reckon, though I don't think I'd pay the $16.48 (plus tax) in this instance to be able to hold this one and call it my own.

I've certainly stumbled upon some books at the end of their usable lives over the years, including Mystery of the Third Mine and a volume from an 1882 encyclopedia set. Crucially, I paid a combined 25 cents for the two of them. And I no longer have them — I'm not one of the Collyer brothers! I do, however, still have the "Best. Book. Ever." that I detailed in 2015.

Related posts

• How much is that haunted doll in the eBay window I have open?
• Worst eBay copy of "The Shining"?
• You'll never be able to unsee this creepy life mask
• Creepiest eBay listing of the year

The cats of Papergreat join the Barbie movie meme fun

I'm a sucker for a fun and easy-to-use meme-making tool. So I joined the fun this past week and made these movie posters with the Barbie Selfie Generator that's an ingenious part of the marketing for Greta Gerwig's upcoming film.

Enjoy!

Swords & sandwich flags of the 1970s

I saw this ridiculous reminder of the 1970s on eBay and it spurred a nostalgic and fun conversation with Wendyvee of RoadsideWonders.

Nevco's Sandwich Flags are just that — little flags to place on sandwiches at gatherings so that people will know what's what. Because otherwise how would the people of that era have known the difference between a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a turkey sandwich?

These Nevco flags allow sandwiches to be marked as turkey, shrimp, ham, olive & egg, sausage, jelly, bologna, salmon, cheese or bacon, lettuce & tomato.

Think how many picnics and baby showers were saved by these flags!

Imagine your Aunt Ethel buying these at the A&P!

Wendyvee said, "My paternal grandmother would have been over the moon with these." Her grandmother also deployed both those toothpicks with the colorful plastic at the end (I learned they're called "frill picks") and those little plastic swords around the house. "Not on special occasions or anything ... just with a regular lunch or nighttime snack," Wendyvee added. "When I was little, I thought that this meant they were rich."

I have two recollections regarding the little plastic swords. First, I'd stash them away, thinking I could use them with my Star Wars figures. Turn Han Solo into a pirate or something.

Second, we got them when the family went to the Wagon Wheel in Montoursville, Pennsylvania. As I wrote in a 2018 post: "Our family went there often when we were living on Willow Street. Sometimes we'd have dinner there. I would get a Howdy Doody to drink and Adriane would get a Shirley Temple; they were both the same thing — 7 Up with grenadine, I believe. What I remember most are the arcade games and the jukebox. After we ate, Mom and Dad would hang out with friends at the bar and give my sister and I a supply of quarters for the small game room."

The Howdy Doody/Shirley Temple would come with a maraschino cherry pierced through by a plastic sword. 

On this topic, Wendyvee said, "I remember being on vacation at the shore when I was little. Even though I liked Shirley Temples better, I used to ask for a Roy Rogers just so that my drink wasn't the same as my sister's drink."

Wait, I asked, are these alcohol-free "cocktails" for kids different? First, I turned to Wikipedia. 

Roy Rogers: Cola, grenadine and a maraschino cherry. It's the boys' version of a Shirley Temple. It's possible that Rogers himself didn't drink alcohol, and so this was his drink of choice at business meetings.

Shirley Temple: Ginger ale or lemon-lime soda with grenadine and a maraschino cherry. Alternately called a Kiddie Cocktail.

I'm not, however, finding any references online to Howdy Doody being used as a Kiddie Cocktail name. Did anyone else get this in the 1960s, 1970s or early 1980s? Maybe it was only a regional thing, but I can't be the only one who ordered this as a kid. If so, at least it's recorded here for posterity. Let the historians of obscure history rejoice. Stick a Nevco flag that says "WEIRD" in this post.

Adolf Born's groovy title illustrations for "The Girl on a Broomstick"

The Girl on a Broomstick is a delightful 1972 comedy from Czechoslovakia that's still perfect for the Halloween season. It's about an alternate-universe witch-in-training named Saxana who is transported to our modern-day world, where she learns that school is no more fun here than it is in her own universe. There's plenty of hijinx — with jokes that work across all cultures — plus broom-riding and rabbits aplenty.

I don't know of all of the places where you can track down a copy, but it's currently available, in full, on YouTube. I first learned about the movie last year from the podcast The Projection Booth.

The opening credits set the kooky tone for The Girl on a Broomstick (Dívka na koštěti) thanks to the wonderful artwork by Adolf Born (1930-2016). It could be said that he was Czechoslovakia's version of Edward Gorey, though that comparison is a bit too simplistic. 

One of the more interesting footnotes Born may be remembered for is that he provided the artwork for the first movie version of The Hobbit, a 12-minute film that was rushed out in 1967 so that a producer could maintain the movie rights to Tolkien's novel. The film is barely animated, consisting mostly of camera movements and zooms on Born's artwork. While mostly unrelated to anything involving The Hobbit, it does include Bilbo stealing a magic ring from "Goloom."

Getting back to The Girl on a Broomstick, here is some of Born's artwork from the opening credits. Check out the movie itself; I don't think you'll be disappointed!