A large collection of cover scans and track listings for K-Tel albums (primarily US, Canada (two languages), Australia, and the odd New Zealand entry). The starburst-filled primary-color interface is highly appropriate, and scary. I wish there was more info on the individual albums, or some personal connection, somehow. But seeing the vast variety (if that’s the right word) of K-Tel over the years is pretty overwhelming as it is. Or should that be underwhelming?
the Sun Online:
AN ECCENTRIC bookworm was rescued by emergency workers after being trapped for two days in his apartment under an avalanche of reading material.Patrice Moore, 43, hoarded more than 3,000 books, catalogues, and newspapers, piled from floor to ceiling in his New York home.
He was arranging some in a stack on Saturday when the load collapsed, burying him up to the neck.
Saint Reverend Jen Miller: Performer, Prophet, Painter, Preacher, Poet. etc. awkward front page. interesting weirdness beyond. that hairless dog gives me the creeps.
Uchu Kara No Messeji
via Japan and the ever resourcful Kinji Fukasaku, we have “Message from Space” also known as “Acorns from Space”, “Galactic Wars”, and other sobriquets.
AUM conference: the First Message from Space. No, it ain’t the sarin folks, and it ain’t about the movie; beyond that, I haven’t a clue.
Quanto the side-kick robot. More from the TV series “San Ku Kai” (which was a spin-off). nice images.
San Ku Kai Is Not Dead! say these Francophones. Then they go back to French. Don’t you just hate a monoglot? several small images from the TV series.
Movies.com credits.
Details on the soundtrack CD. Elsewhere the site has more info on other monster music. Here is the gateway page to the above CD. with more, if you didn’t believe me the first time.
Brief, unfavorable review.
In French, the title is Les Evad�s de l’espace.
BadMovies.org has a great review, nice set of images and .wav files. and the below excerpts:
Things I Learned From This Movie:
-Military robots rate full funeral honors.
-Police spacecraft are equipped with flashing lights and sirens.
-Respirators can be used to survive in a vacuum.
-Being a master swordsman is impressive, but of dubious use when the enemy is armed with laser rifles.
-Suspension of belief can be improved with cross-training.
-Killing an old woman in a wheelchair is harder than it sounds.
-A planet’s destruction will always pause so that a father may bless his daughter.
-Forty people is robust enough of a gene pool to populate a new world. ”
STUFF TO WATCH FOR:14 mins - There is no reason for the space patrol ship to fly that low, except to facilitate crashing.
25 mins - A fishing net… …on a spaceship. Okay, sure.
31 mins - Ouch, right in the face. That is going to leave a mark.
38 mins - Where are we again? Europa? Looking for wolves on Europa?
46 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A WINDOW!
64 mins - “I have a nut in my drink.”
70 mins - Should they run into a bat-rat-spider monster, I will surely die of laughter.
77 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST THE MOON!
97 mins - Lucas so ripped off this scene in “Return of the Jedi.”
They also have some interesting comments by viewers.
I don’t know what they are saying, here, as it’s all in Japanese. See my above comment on monoglots. Some nice images.
Er, this claims to be an alien message from space. Don’t look at me; I just work here.
Neat, brief review, that also points out that footage from MfS was used in a couple of laser-disc based video-games.
Another review and follow-up threads.
Mostly concerned with the influence upon Star Fleet and X-Bomber.
Spanish Language page that has a small poster I haven’t seen elsewhere.
At least one model spaceship from the movie of TV series was made.
Summary of the TV-series-edited-into-a-movie version.
B-Fest 2003 screen MfS instead of Battlefied: Earth. hijinks ensued. small, blurry photos included.
Alternate version of Toei Studio film posters.
The Dr. Who episode, Enlightenmnet, has some origins in MfS, according to the BBC.
Salon.com article on the crazy, mad Spaghetti space wars of 1979.
Another ultra-brief review, in which we learn that Quanto was known as Sidero in France. Oh, those wacky French!
Yet another ultra-brief review with a lesson for us all: don’t loan movies to your so-called “friends.”
Those wacky French are at it again. Some more pictures.
the Egyptian Theatre (Hollywood, CA) presented a retrospective of Mr. Fukusaka’s films a few years ago. This is a nice guide to his films. On a personal aside, I was fortunate to catch two of the films and take in a Q&A. No mean feat as I live in Pennsylvania….
A automated Google-translation of yet-another French Page. You gotta see it to believe it. I presume it makes sense in French. On the other hand, the movie doesn’t make a whole lotta sense in any language, so that may not be true.
In the year seventy of the calendar space, human beeches quitaires the ground to join other galactic systems like XV �me solar system for example, that Ci is composed of three planets: “Sheita” nearest to the sun then “Analis” and “Belda”.
But XV �me solar system will be invaded by warlike people, the stressos , which want to extend their domination on the universe. They are under the orders of certain Golem XIII which are with the head of ninjas and of supposedly dedicated monsters body and heart with their Master.
If it’s not obvious, I like this movie very much. For rather unkown reasons.
title="we always use butter, instead" width="100" height="100" hspace="5" vspace="5" />
The modified recipe that my mother uses to make kugelis is now in
foundlings 2, which now exists. foundlings 1 has been modified, as well.
Revisit the future through the past of Seventies Design. This is what the world will look like when people are made of plastic and right-angles are forbidden by law.
presenting Mr/Ms. Genesis P. Orridge & Family
Maccabeus M. Altomeal
BookofRuth O. Valtine
Job G. Rits
Leviticus O. Atmeal
Ezekiel K. Ashi
Nehemiah M. Aypo
Haggai W. Eetabix
part of a Christmas letter from South Dakota, penultimate paragraph….
Gerry got a deer last night without firing a shot. At 7 p.m. on his way home from the Governor’s budget address, he encountered a dying deer lying partly on the road which had just been hit some five miles from home. He raced home, changed clothes, and took his pickup back to pick it up and take it to the farm to “process.” He says it doesn’t look too banged up and if nothing else, it will be a road-kill treat for the neighbor dogs! He called the authorities to get off the hook as far as taggin it is concerned.
SANTA CLAUS: the Fifth-Dimensional movie.
WEIRD SCIENCE
One of the things which makes SANTA CLAUS a fantasy classic is the absolutely amazing, daring, bizarre production design. There are numerous wonderful, colorful, lurid, cheesy and surreal f/x and objects, an exceptional combination of baroque and ultra-modern, reflecting no doubt significant cultural changes in Mexico at the time.For instance, Santa’s “Fantastic Crystal Laboratory” is surely one of the most amazing things ever designed for children’s cinema as well. (Disney surely stole many of the concepts for the scientific toy factory in his BABES IN TOYLAND musical, which was released the next year).
An entirely expressionist view of cutting-edge scientific technology, this astonishing super-lab boasts many amazing new inventions, many, curiously, of a “covert surveillance” nature.
via Scrubbles.
Breakfast Cereal Hall of Fame - Marky Maypo
When Marky Maypo first appeared on television in 1956, nobody thought he would be a hit. The cereal he pitched was a type of maple flavored hot mush that had been on the market for decades. The man who created him was a former Disney animator who had been blacklisted in the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. Even Heublein, the company that owned Maypo, was hoping that Marky would be a failure, so that they would have some substantial losses to write off. But Marky defied the odds and made his mark on a generation of cereal lovers with his timeless warcry, “I want my Maypo!”
Aluminum Christmas Trees
Never had one. Seen ‘em. They terrified some in a Charlie Brown Christmas. But now that they are pretty far in the past (they are, aren’t they? I’m not counting those gaudy “tinsel trees” they sell &emdash; cheap, shoddy, pliable knock-offs), I’m quite enamelled of them. Er, enamoured. Whatever.
OldChristmasLights.com has an awkward layout, I think, but a lot of stuff to be seen here. Go elsewhere on the site for vintange trees (real) and ornaments! Actually, when you go out to the main page, you’ll see that the site has far too much information on Christmas light patents, etc. Wow! (It was a Yahoo! pick in Dec 2002)
This auction for a vintage 6ft Evergleam Aluminum Tree ends soon! (three days as I write…)
more sales at
forgotten-treasure.com.
Are these pages fully automated? If not, who the heck creates them?
http://www.christmas-trees.christmas.nu /Vintage-Aluminum-Christmas-Trees.htm
http://www.christmas-trees.christmas.nu/ Aluminum-Christmas-Tree-Color-Wheel.htm
http://www.christmas-lights.christmas.nu/ Homemade-Christmas-Tree-Lights.htm
How to decorate your Aluminum Tree.
(click on the succeeding pages only at your own risk. argh.)
another guide, with photos:
LIN’S ANTIQUES HAS SOME MORE FOR SALE ON A LOVELY ALL-CAPS PAGE
On a side-track, here’s how to decorate a metal-ornament tree.
the Xingyan Online showroom (where you find the product!) has Metal Christmas Trees.
something to do with really big viaducts, and how the earth crumbles around them from the rain. maybe bicylces down in there, maybe not.
definitely later on there was this guy from work–Ed–only it wasn’t ed, becuase I knew he was >Steve<, only it really wasn't Steve, either, becuase I knew that he was--you know, they way you >know< things in dreams--that he was something like an >agent< or a >puppet< of...some.thing.else. anyway, we weren't getting along to well and I had to kill him. which wasn't easy as none of this was particularly real (it was, er, digital?) and as I'm sawing through not-really-Ed-or-Steve's torso with a manilla folder, I'm only half or two-thirds of the way through (from, say, armpit to armpit), and not-really-Ed-or-Steve is >Really< pissed off and mouthing off something fierce, but eventually I sever the two halves.
Plants might have been involved as well. And perhaps a gazebo.
The 8bits of Christmas: lo-fi old-skool bleepness. feliz e-navidad!
>Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, and a commentary.
Puck
(mythology): Puck’s trademark laugh in the early ballads is “Ho ho ho.” In modern mythology, the “merry old elf” who works with magical swiftness unseen in the night, who can “descry each thing that’s done beneath the moone,” whom we propitiate with a glass of milk, lest he put lumps of coal in the stockings we hang by the hob with care, and whose trademark laugh is “Ho ho ho” –is Santa Claus.
