Pooch Island is the website of artist Michael Pucciarelli. It’s a delightful, dizzying sideshow infused with cultural symbolism.
This may be my favorite. NEMO’S ETHNOBOTANICAL EXPERIMENT NO. 5:
Raised on a diet of Ray Harryhausen films, H. P. Lovecraft novels, comics, Walt Disney World and other Florida tourist traps, Pooch paints images that seem to exist in a bizarre afterlife. His art is a visual cocktail of these influences—with a shot of lowbrow culture—shaken and stirred, then served up in a souvenir tiki skull on the Day of the Dead. -From artist bio on site
I am away from my craft supplies (and experiencing separation anxiety) while in LA with family. So instead of crafting an elaborate costume, I vowed to spend UNDER FIVE DOLLARS on whatever I made. The result?
RABID MOUSE ATTACK! Careful…he’s a bit foamy.
Total cost: $2.49
Materials:
Mouse ($1.00), Fake blood ($1.49), Black Sharpie, Old shirt, Hotel sewing kit, Elmer’s glue, Cotton balls, Nail polish, White paper
Monday starts THRIFT HORROR week here at SheWalksSoftly, where I share some of the worst toys, artifacts and items to be found on thrift store shelves nationwide. Should you have any horrific thrift photos, please submit them!
Lazy-Eyed Dog will be very disappointed if you don’t come back to see the treats.
Posted in halloween with tags halloween on October 31, 2008 by shewalkssoftly
Just a few more bits and pieces to celebrate.
Tribute to one of my classic favorites (wish I had made this):
Some more pumpkins:
How fitting when spending Halloween in LA:
French illustrations, 1904:
Meditating zombies is certainly a novel concept. I love it! You’d never peg them for spiritual, introspective types.
Here’s a lovely gallery of (SFW) vintage Halloween pinups. This was an age of glamor, femininity, healthy body shapes, and things left to the imagination.
I much prefer those images over our bony, plastic, chemical filled modern society.
And if anyone loves Vincent Price as much as I do, check out his appearance on The Dating Game.
Any music post seems dreadfully incomplete, due to my incurable music obsession. But here are a few fun things.
I’d first like to share some fantastic vinyl art I found over at LP Cover Lover:
I think any commentary would only detract from the image here, so I’ll just let you absorb it…
Hm. Androgynous sorcery.
I hate to think of what unsavory things Dracula may be whispering to her:
Hooray for the Netherlands…
Soul Dracula is my favorite:
As far as I can tell, THIS is Soul Dracula (don’t miss this video). Could there be more than one disco vampire? For the record, a “disco vampire” image search is completely unspectacular…I tried.
And if you’re on a last minute search for a Halloween Party Soundtrack, have no fear…SheWalksSoftly is here to help:
I have plenty more Halloween mixes of deathrock, psychobilly, doo-wop, etc (along with countless classical horror scores). I’ll gladly upload them if anyone is still on the lookout for tunes.
I’m sneaking in one more song: Now I’m Feeling Zombified by Alien Sex Fiend. This band is just a delightful carnival of b-movie horror aesthetics.
(I still thank Ronnie for playing ASF albums in their entirety on his radio show many years ago when I was searching everywhere and couldn’t find them in stores).
I leave you with my favorite vintage horror theme song: THE BLOB. It’s just so smooth and catchy! I dare you not to shimmy, tap, snap, bob or twist.
Amidst the Halloween posts, I thought it would be refreshing to explore the ghosts of another culture.
In mid-1870’s Japan there was a brief circulation of nishiki-e; colorful woodblock prints, generally depicting the shocking crimes and scandals featured in newspapers. However, many told stories with a more supernatural bent. There was a swift government ban on these “unreliable” information sources, but a number of them were collected and preserved.
This print shows the ghost of a disgruntled candy store owner who grew ill and died after falling deep in debt to his neighbor, the owner of a successful tempura restaurant. The ghost has returned to settle the score.
This print shows the restless ghost of a woman whose husband neglected her so much that she fell ill and died. Upset at the way he was raising their young child, she returned from the spirit world to complain in his ear while he slept. The baby woke up and began to cry, so she cradled it in her arms and began to nurse it. When the man awoke and screamed at the sight of his undead wife, she vanished.
Many more colorful prints, along with their anecdotes here.
Here is my 2008 roundup of favorite Halloween culinary atrocities from Cake Wrecks. Enjoy the wrong!
Let’s start with some fiercely baffled spiders, shall we?
This poor bastard is…arachnologically wrong, having only six legs (though that may be the least of his worries):
And onto some pumpkins…
The above is actually the Krispy Kreme seasonal donut (for the record, they couldn’t make a Krispy Kreme so ugly that I’d refuse to eat it):
At first I thought the “face” was mold or burnt patches:
More misery…
I’m not sure what’s going on in this cake. There appears to be a small army of cake dolls who’ve been decapitated and had their heads replaced by giant eyeballs…yet they cling tenaciously to their old plastic heads for good measure:
Curious Expeditions posted a fascinating legend about Gloomy Sunday, a song written by Hungarian composer Rezső Seress in 1933. It is about a man who loses his lover to an untimely death and plans to commit suicide in order to join her.
“Hauntingly beautiful, the story goes that the song was so sad, so depressing, so completely soul crushing, that upon hearing it even once, Hungarians were driven to suicide. And not just a few, during its era, hundreds of suicides were attributed to the melody.
The legend grew. One story went that a young paperboy who had everything to live for heard the song in passing and immediately threw himself into the Danube. Rumors about the song that hypnotized any who heard it into walking straight out of the first open window became became so pervasive that Hungary is said to have responded with a nationwide ban of Gloomy Sunday.”
That being said, you can listen to the song here if you wish. I actually find it quite beautiful.
I always do a bit of extra searching beyond my original sources, and I discovered that Sarah McLachlan does a cover of Gloomy Sunday, also posted on youtube.
SheWalksSoftly 