Boris, Phyllis and The Mummy Wish You A Safe Halloween

Monsters Crash The Pajama Party

"Not 3-D but real flesh and blood monsters!" was the tagline for this astonishingly stupid film, and back in the day it delivered the goods; wherever this movie screened, actors in monster costumes identical to the ones onscreen would rush into the theater, grab a girl from the audience (a "plant") and bring her back into the movie! Amazing!

A tactic similar to this was used in The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Other than that, I can't think of any other example of live performance worked into a film.

Movie-wise, this is the closest we'll get to a real, actual Spook Show, the popular 1960's live-action phantasmagoria that would play in cinemas at midnight every Halloween season. For that, it's something very special. Otherwise, the pacing is sluggish. Thankfully, the video here is a ten-minute edit of a 45-minute film, so it doesn't outstay its welcome.

At 9:44 is the big shocking moment when the live actors rush the audience (in this truncated youtube video you see the stock-footage lightening for a few seconds, but it lasts for a couple minutes in the unedited version, allowing lots of time for the players to run around the theater, grab the girl and provoke general mayhem). I love the moment at 10:03, where the mad scientist returns onto the screen acknowledging the camera with his arms outstretched, as if to say, "I was just in the theater! The fourth wall has been broken forever!"

If you want to see the whole thing, buy the DVD. It's down to five bucks on amazon. It includes the full version of this film, but the real treasure is 45 minutes of spook show previews, which are indescribably wonderful. There are also lots of horror-themed vintage home movies, and a 3D short film. You even get two pairs of 3D glasses, which you can also use on this blog! Over 3.5 hours of wholesome fun! What are you waiting for, you big jerk?!?

very related: get over here to download your free spook show wallpaper.

Somewhat related: I must direct you to today's stupendous pizzateen.com post.

Dinner with Drac

Zacherly The Cool Ghoul started as a TV horror host in 1957. By 1958 he already had recorded "Dinner with Drac", a hit top ten single with a bullet. I bought this on 45 at a record fair, way back in the pre-internet days without having heard it, but based solely on my knowledge that the Cramps played it before their annual Halloween concerts.

The single had the original version on its A-side, and a tamed-down version with less gory lyrics on its B-side for airing on TV and Radio (which is the one heard here).



Zacherly is now 91 years old and still a Cryptkicker. You can see him this weekend at the Chiller Theater Expo in Jersey. Keep up with him at his website.

Very related: I just realized that American Scary, a feature-length documentary on horror hosts which includes lot of info on Zacherly, Vampira, Svengoolie et al, is available on Netflix for rental and instant viewing.

Spider Baby

This special Halloween Edition of Movie of the Week showcases the first feature of Jack Hill, who went on to make Switchblade Sisters (one of my all-time favorites) and four of Pam Grier's best films (including Coffy and Foxy Brown). Also stars cult favorite Sid Haig, the weird-looking Carol Ohmart (from House on Haunted Hill) and legendary drunk Lon Chaney Jr. This much-loved quirky classic was adapted into a stage musical a few years ago, and a remake is currently in pre-production.

If you haven't the time or patience to sit through the whole thing, at least watch the first couple minutes for the bizarre opening song, narrated by Lon himself.

A website dedicated to the movie is here.

Two Halloween Soundies

Happy Halloween

(related: last year's Halloween Playlist)

Crocoduck

The Crocoduck is Kirk Cameron's secret weapon. His trump card. His Ace in the Hole. He releases it to win any argument against science:



Here he goes again! Do it, Kirk! UNLEASH THE CROCODUCK!



Kirk's religion has given him license to be a jerk for a long time now. From wikipedia:

In 1987, Kirk Cameron became a born again Christian. Afterward he began to increasingly raise objections behind the scenes to what he viewed as the depiction and promotion of immoral behavior on the show.

After Cameron's religious conversion, his beliefs frequently interfered with production of the show. He insisted that no "adult themes" be incorporated into episodes, and he often demanded that entire episodes be re-written when he objected to the content (when one planned episode revolved around Julie giving Mike the key to her apartment, Cameron objected to the sexual connotations, and he forced a new script to be written). Cameron at one point went so far as to call the President of ABC on the phone, and refer to executive producers Dan Guntzelman, Mike Sullivan and Steve Marshall as pornographers, due to the content of some of the episodes.

In 1991, after the show's sixth season, the three men quit the show as a result of Cameron's actions and statements. Cameron's conflicts with the writers were frequent in part due to his low level of tolerance for "immoral" behavior. For example, one scene which he objected to would have shown Mike in bed with a girl. The camera would then pull back to reveal that the two were on stage, rehearsing a scene for a play. Even this oblique reference to sexuality was too much for Cameron. The most significant instance of Cameron's editorial interference occurred in the 1989-1990 season which was supposed to involve Mike marrying his girlfriend Julie. However, Cameron objected to the fact that actress Julie McCullough, who played the popular character Julie Costello, had once posed nude for Playboy. Cameron demanded that the producers fire her or he would quit. McCullough was fired, and Julie was written out of the series.

Since then, Kirk has gone on to star in the movie adaptation of Left Behind (see it here) and has renewed internet fame due to the banana incident.

Now he's giving away free copies of Origin of the Species, with special annotations:



More about this over at Salon.com. And if you don't see Kirk handing out books on your college campus, download a PDF of the whole thing, including the "supplemental" material here.

And look, Richard Dawkins is selling Crocoduck T-Shirts!

It's Alive: Spanish Fly

A Spanish fly is actually a beetle, Lytta vesicatoria, common name European Blister Beetle. It's called this because it contains up to 5% cantharidin, which is an irritant. when ground into a powder and dissolved into a drink, and it passes through the body and is released through the urethra, it causes inflammation of the genitals and priapism.

It really is an "aphrodisiac" in this sense, albeit a dangerous one; it only takes a tiny bit, and the window between a substantial enough dose to make someone horny and a dose too large which causes permanent urinary system damage or death is very narrow. It's illegal for humans in the United States, but it is used for livestock breeding. The stuff actually works, it's not just a fantasy from the back pages of High Society magazine.

Spanish fly has a rich cultural history. From Wikipedia:

• In Roman times, Livia, the scheming wife of Augustus Caesar, slipped it into food hoping to inspire her guests to some indiscretion with which she could later blackmail them.

• Henry IV (1050-1106) is known to have consumed Spanish fly at the risk of his health.

• In 1572, the famous French surgeon Ambroise Paré wrote an account of a man suffering from "the most frightful satyriasis" after taking a potion composed of nettles and cantharides.

• In the 1670s, Spanish fly was mixed with dried moles and bat's blood for a love charm made by the black magician La Voisin.

• It was slipped into the food of Louis XIV to secure the king's lust for Madame de Montespan.

• In the 18th century, cantharides became fashionable, known as pastilles Richelieu in France.

• The Marquis de Sade is claimed to have given aniseed-flavored pastilles that were laced with Spanish fly to prostitutes in 1772.

• In the movie Screwballs, the boys accidentally dump a monster dose of Spanish fly into the punch at a school ceremony, kicking off a bodacious orgy (I added this last bit myself).

If you Google Spanish fly you'll find some companies selling legal imitations like this one, for those willing to pay $70 for a tiny bottle of something which may already be in your kitchen (most common active ingredient: cayenne pepper).

Melting Man

Around Christmastime of 1977 I saw this commercial on TV with my family:



Just after it finished my dad said to me, "we have to go see that". I was eight years old and a little too freaked out, so just my older brother went with him.

All these years later I still haven't seen the movie that intimidated me so much as a kid. But I still appreciate it for being one of the last productions to come out of American International Pictures, which folded in 1980; the end of the drive-in era.

Anyway, earlier today I was flipping through a 1978 Halloween Costume Catalog over on plaidstallions.com and happened across this:


Fuckin' cool. But strange. This was a sleazy, gory R-rated movie; it would be like selling kids' costumes of the guy from Basket Case.
I googled for other Melting Man merchandise, and could only find what looks to be a paperback novelization:



The whole movie is on youtube, but I doubt it's worth it. However, there are two scenes that are standouts, and they're the only ones my brother told me about back in 1977; one is "a part where the melting man rips off a fisherman's head then throws it in the river, and then it goes down a waterfall!"



and the ending, in which the Melting Man meets his logical, eponymous fate:

Russ Meyer Double Feature

Russ Meyer movies are difficult to find; his estate still owns all the distribution and home video rights (with the exception of my single favorite movie of all time, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which is owned by 20th Century Fox) and you can't rent them from mainstream chains like Blockbuster or Netflix.

So it's nice to get two full features from his early, gritty, southern-gothic black & white period available on Google Video. Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is the better of the two, but you might have seen it too many times already. Motorpsycho is a little weak for a Meyer film, and it's probably the darkest themed of anything he's done. But Haji makes it worth seeing, and I personally believe it was the inspiration for Mad Max.

If you haven't seen the Meyer episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show, you should. Can't find the first few minutes, but the rest of it is here.

Not Coming to A Theater near You

from telegraph.co.uk:

Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin's "struggle between faith and reason" as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie. The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated. The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published. "That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said. "The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up. It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules."

"Charles Darwin is, I suppose, the hero of the film. But we tried to make the film in a very even-handed way. Darwin wasn't saying 'kill all religion', he never said such a thing, but he is a totem for people."

Creation was developed by BBC Films and the UK Film Council, and stars Bettany's real-life wife Jennifer Connelly as Darwin's deeply religious wife, Emma. It is based on the book, Annie's Box, by Darwin's great-great-grandson, Randal Keynes, and portrays the naturalist as a family man tormented by the death in 1851 of Annie, his favourite child.

Early reviews have raved about the film. The Hollywood Reporter said: "It would be a great shame if those with religious convictions spurned the film out of hand as they will find it even-handed and wise." Mr Thomas, whose previous films include The Last Emperor and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, said he hoped the reviews would help to secure a distributor. In the UK, special screenings have been set up for Christian groups.

Americans have no problems seeing nationally distributed movies about evolution, just as long as they're lying, pea-brained religious propaganda like Expelled. And check out this shameful graph (click to enlarge):



My point is not to correlate religious belief with denial of evolution. The fact is, 85% of the population of evolutionary frontrunner Iceland belongs to the Evangelical Lutheran church. In comparison, only 78% of the U.S. population identify themselves as Christian. So maybe the problem with we Americans isn't our religion, but our stupidity.

Auction Pick: The E.T. Video Game

Revisit the smash hit of the 1982 Christmas season! From wikipedia:

E.T. is an adventure game in which players control an alien (E.T.) from a top-down perspective. The objective of the game is to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone. The pieces are found scattered randomly throughout various pits (also referred to as wells). The player is provided with an on-screen energy bar, which decreases as time passes. To prevent this, the player can collect Reese's Pieces, which are used to restore the energy of the character; when enough are collected, the player can call Elliot to obtain a piece of the telephone. After the phone pieces have been collected, the player must guide the character to a "call-ship" area, which allows him to call his home planet. When the call is made, an interplanetary spaceship appears on-screen, and the player must reach the spaceship in a given time limit. Once the spaceship is reached, the game starts over, with the same difficulty level, while changing the location of the telephone pieces. The score obtained during the round is carried over to the next iteration. The game ends when the energy bar depletes, or the player decides to quit.

Sounds thrilling! Here are some tips for maximum gameplay excitement:



In 1982, this game sold for $49.95. According to my inflation adjuster, that's $100.03 in today's dollars. But you can pick this up on ebay at a considerable savings; in fact, here's one for 49 cents with zero bidders. Get your 2600 out of the garage (or buy one here) and place your bid HERE.

For more about the infamous New Mexico Landfill where millions of unsold E.T. cartridges were crushed and encased in cement, go here.

A Sample Track from "Underwater"

This is a rough mix from Underwater, a suite of songs about scuba diving that I've been recording ideas, on and off, for the last couple years (since finishing Insecta) The full album won't be done for a while, so I was inspired to post an advance track.

Popularity Parade

Massacre! (The Texas Chainsaw Musical)

2 Halloween Books

Two of my favorite books from when I was in the first grade, How to Care for your Monster and The Witch's Catalog, are profiled in the excellent Haunted Closet Blog. The first reads like a practical instruction manual, the second is like the best Johnson Smith catalog you could ever hope for. Both of them are unique in how they treat the occult and the unnatural as something anyone can acquire from the mail or a pet shop.

Click images below for synopses and page scans:

2 Halloween Party Recipes

It's extremely out of place for this blog to dispense any useful information. But in preparing for our fourth annual Pumpkin Carv-A-Thon, I've recently made two homemade beverages which turned out so well that I have to share them here.


Pumpkin Martini
Make this at least three days in advance; pour a standard 700ml bottle of decent vodka into a jar and add a few cubes of fresh pumpkin, along with 1 cinnamon stick, 1/2 a nutmeg, a few pieces of whole allspice, and a couple of thin slices of ginger. Seal. Taste teste every day or two, removing or retaining elements as needed. (I recommend removing the pumpkin after three days, otherwise it gets too intense). Strain when ready.

To serve, coat the rim of a martini glass with triple sec and dip in a mix of equal parts pumpkin pie spice and bar sugar. pour 1 oz. of pumpkin-infused vodka and 1/4 oz. triple sec (or cointreau) into an iced cocktail shaker for every serving. shake and strain into glasses.

Pumpkin Ale
I've made this several times since 1996, and through all the trial and error I've arrived at this seasonal beer which is very light on the malt and hops, allowing the pumpkin and spices to stay in the foreground. I started it three weeks ago and tried an advance bottle just now, which has surpassed all expectations. It's too late for you to have this ready for this year's Halloween party, but not too late to buy a pumpkin at the supermarket and start brewing:

7 lb. Light Malt Extract (liquid)
1 lb. 2-row pale malt
1 lb. cara-pils malt
7 lb. whole pumpkin
1 oz. of 5 AAU cascade hops
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
bottling:
3/4 cup corn sugar
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon

cut pumpkin lengthwise into quarters. Scrape out seeds and stringy bits. Roast in a 350 oven until soft all the way through (@30 minutes). Cool, peel off the skin and put the rest through a food processor.

do a partial mash with the crushed 2-row and cara-pils in 1 gallon of water, maintain at 154 degrees for 45 minutes.

Bring to a boil with malt extract, all of the pumpkin and the cascade hops. Boil for 60 minutes. In the last couple minutes add the pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon.

Cool and pour through a colander to strain out larger pumpkin pieces (finer pulp will strain through). After cooling to @75 degrees, pitch the yeast (I used american ale powdered yeast in 1 quart of starter, prepared two days earlier) . Ferment for one week. Rack to a secondary carboy (expect more trub than usual, due to the pumpkin), ferment for 1-2 more weeks.

For bottling, boil the additional pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon with the corn sugar.

The Walk-Through Cell

Text and images lifted from the Kevin Kidney blog:

German-born designer Will Burtin was a graphic designer for Fortune magazine and the Upjohn Company, specializing in "scientific visualization." He had designed Upjohn's entire product line of medicine bottles, ointment tubes and packaging - and even the company letterhead. In 1957, Burtin convinced Upjohn's president Jack Gauntlett and Dr. Garrard Macleod, director of special projects, to fund the construction of a large-scale scientific model, a human red blood cell 24 feet across and 12 feet high. It was so big, folks could enter and walk around inside.



Built of plastic tubing, wires and colored lights, the soon-to-be-famous model would be a tactile representation of a virtual human cell. Not an actual representation of a cell, since too much was still unknown about cells, but a "giant, physical manifestation of a designer's vision" of how a cell functions.

The walk-thru model, one million times larger than life, was unveiled in September 1958 at the American Medical Association's meeting in San Francisco. It was a sensation, and would eventually pave the way for Burtin to create four more fantastic scientific models for Upjohn during his career.

More about Will Burton here.

R.I.P. Captain Lou Albano

from the A.P:

With his trademark Hawaiian shirts, wiry goatee and rubber bands hung like piercings from his cheek, Albano was an outsize personality who, in a career spanning nearly five decades, was known as much for his showmanship as for his talent in the ring.

Albano was born July 29, 1933, in Rome. After moving to the United States, his family settled in Mount Vernon, N.Y. His career in the ring began in 1953 in Canada. He retired from the WWE in 1996. Survivors include his wife, Geri, four children and 14 grandchildren.

The Uncanny Monkey

from sciencedaily.com:
Princeton University researchers have come up with a new twist on the mysterious visual phenomenon experienced by humans known as the "uncanny valley." The scientists have found that monkeys sense it too.

The uncanny valley, a phrase coined by a Japanese researcher nearly three decades ago, describes that disquieting feeling that occurs when viewers look at representations designed to be as human-like as possible -- whether computer animations or androids -- but somehow fall short. Movie-goers may not be familiar with the term, but they understand that it is far easier to love the out-of-proportion cartoon figures in the "The Incredibles," for example, than it is to embrace the more realistic-looking characters in "The Polar Express." Viewers, to many a Hollywood director's consternation, are emotionally unsettled by images of artificial humans that look both realistic and unrealistic at the same time.

In an attempt to add to the emerging scientific literature on the subject and answer deeper questions about the evolutionary basis of communication, Princeton University researchers have found that macaque monkeys also fall into the uncanny valley, exhibiting this reaction when looking at computer-generated images of monkeys that are close but less than perfect representations.

"Increased realism does not necessarily lead to increased acceptance," said Asif Ghazanfar, an assistant professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, who led the research. It is the first such finding in any animal other than human. The work, according to its authors, is significant because it indicates that there is a biological basis for the uncanny valley and supports theories that propose that the brain mechanisms underlying the uncanny valley are evolutionary adaptations. "These data demonstrate that the uncanny valley effect is not unique to humans and that evolutionary hypotheses regarding its origins are tenable," said Ghazanfar.

The uncanny valley hypothesis was introduced by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970. The "valley" refers to a dip in a graph that charts a human's positive reaction in response to an image on one axis and a robot's human-likeness on another. People like to study other human faces, and they also can enjoy scrutinizing countenances that clearly are not human, such as a doll's or a cartoon figure's. But when an image falls in between -- close to human but clearly not -- it causes a feeling of revulsion.

"This study makes a significant contribution to existing knowledge of the uncanny valley," said Karl MacDorman, an associate professor in the School of Informatics at Indiana University, who has led important experiments in the fields of android science and computational neuroscience. "The research design is novel, the experiment is carried out with a high degree of rigor, and the results are compelling, important, newsworthy, and support the [hypothesis]."

He believes the results will be of broad interest to scientists and non-scientists, including "ethologists, animal behaviorists, cognitive psychologists of human perception, evolutionary psychologists, primate social cognitive neuroscientists, humanoid roboticists and human character animators."

In the experiments, the monkeys, which normally coo and smack their lips to engage each other, quickly avert their glances and are frightened when confronted by the close-to-real images. When asked to peer at the less close-to-real faces and real faces, however, they viewed them more often and for longer periods.

Despite the widespread acknowledgement of the uncanny valley as a valid phenomenon, there are no clear explanations for it, Ghazanfar said. One theory suggests that it is the outcome of a "disgust response" mechanism that allows humans to avoid disease. Another idea holds that the phenomenon is an indicator of humanity's highly evolved face processing abilities. Some have suggested the corpse-like appearance of some images elicits an innate fear of death. Still others have posited that the response illustrates what is perceived as a threat to human identity.

Madame Tussaud's in 3D

Next in an interminable series of homemade 3D museum photos, we visit the newly opened Tussaud's in Hollywood.

Although I prefer the dioramas, deranged workmanship and all-around showmanship of next door's Hollywood Wax Museum, there's something to be said for well sculpted figures and good lighting. This place wasn't worth the money, but the photos are pretty rewarding.

get your glasses on and click the above image to be directed to an automated slideshow.

Random Moments with Ron Ormond

The Trailer for the much-loved classic Mesa of Lost Women (1953):



(this film is public domain, so you can stream the whole feature here)

Innocuous mother-to-daughter chitchat from Please Don't Touch Me (1963):



A representative clip from The Exotic Ones, a.k.a. The Monster and The Stripper (1968):



Shortly after The Exotic Ones, Ron Ormond survived a plane crash. As a result, he turned to Christian morality tales. The most famous, and by a long shot the most entertaining, is If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (previously plugged on this site). A collaboration with baptist nutjob Reverend Pirkle which has something to do with Jesus and Communists:



And a moment of Lynchian freakery from The Believers Heaven, another Pirkle movie:

LDS7

Sehr Kosmische

Halloween III

another movie review by Timmy (age 6)

All the kids everywhere want a Silver Shamrock Mask, because the TV tells them to.



But they aren't just ANY masks. They have a special tag on the back. The tag contains apiece of rock from a place called "Stone Hedge". The mask factory owner is the bad guy in this movie. He uses computers to make witchcraft so when you wear the stone hedge masks and watch a TV Show on Halloween night it makes bugs and snakes come out of your eyeballs.



The bad guy says why he's so bad. Then he gives the good guy a scary mask.



But good guy escapes, and he rescues his lady friend.

But oh no! She's not his lady friend! She's a ROBOT IN DISGUISE! So the good guy punches her so hard that her head falls off.



After killing the bad robot, the good guy calls the TV people and tells them they better not show the flashing pumpkin OR ELSE!!!?!?!?!?!!



And then all the kids die, but at least the parents will have lots of snakes and spiders to keep as pets. The End.

Happy Halloween!

Auction Pick: Beast(s) of Hollow Mountain

It's that time of year: another huge (1,100 items) Hollywood memorabilia auction from profilesinhistory.com is going on the block tomorrow. Among the many finds is a set of 20 T-Rex models from the non-classic Beast of Hollow Mountain.

These models were used as "replacement animation" figures; instead of being posable, they're made of solid fired clay. So if the T-Rex is running, you replace the entire model with another one in a slightly different pose (these models are numbered on the bottom of the feet to keep track). As you'll notice in the scene here, the replacement models were used to great effect for long shots, and close-ups employed a posable armature-and-latex T-Rex whose appearance and movement is no better than the one from Land of The Lost:



Opening bid for the lot of 20 figures is $20,000, and you have 24 hours as of this posting. More HERE.

See the whole rest of the auction starting here. Some other highlights include:

-a laser cannon from Forbidden Planet

-Michael Beck's vest from The Warriors

-A chimp costume from Planet of The Apes

-The Black Dahlia, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Secrets of The Candy Factory

This is the Harlem avenue CTA train platform in Oak Park, bordering the central West side of Chicago. A 1/4 mile away from this spot is the house I was raised in for 18 years. And here you see the Ferrara Pan Candy Factory, origination point of the World's entire supply of Lemonheads, Red Hots, Boston Baked Beans and Atomic Fireballs.

On some nights, particularly in the Summer, the smell of red hots would hang in the air of our backyards like heavy fog. My friends and I would always wonder what the inside of the factory might look like. They didn't give tours, so the closest we ever got was the factory outlet store, which was no more than a window with an ornery old hag on the other side of it, begrudgingly scooping candy into brown paper bags to sell by weight (it's still open).

But now, thanks to the interweb, the secrets are out. Ferrara Pan's website has flash animations of how their most popular items are made. Click on the candy of your choice, and all will be revealed:











Amazing bonus fact: Ferrara Pan still uses trains to get their sugar delivered, and they go through a rail car full of it every day.

Darwin IV

Several years ago a friend turned me on to Wayne Douglas Barlowe, an artist whose work falls somewhere between science fiction and biology (his parents were both natural history artists). My favorite of his books is Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV. It hasn't been reprinted since its initial run in 1990, but you can still get an affordable copy on Amazon.

None of the text (a technical account of the life discovered on a distant planet in the 24th century) can be found online, but a small selection of paintings can be viewed on the artist's website.

In 2005, a 90-minute 'documentary' of Expedition was produced for television. The results are surprisingly good, and the whole thing can be seen here:

Do The Tantrum

(referred by boingboing.net)

Your Brain on God

Something to consider, especially if you're a fellow atheist (from wired science):

Brain scans of people who believe in God have found further evidence that religion involves neurological regions vital for social intelligence. In other words, whether or not God or Gods exist, religious belief may have been quite useful in shaping the human mind’s evolution.

“The main point is that all these brain regions are important for other forms of social cognition and behavior,” said Jordan Grafman, a National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist.

In a study published Monday in Public Library of Science ONE, Grafman’s team used an MRI to measure the brains areas in 40 people of varying degrees of religious belief.
People who reported an intimate experience of God, engaged in religious behavior or feared God, tended to have larger-than-average brain regions devoted to empathy, symbolic communication and emotional regulation. The research wasn’t trying to measure some kind of small “God-spot,” but looked instead at broader patterns within the brains of self-reported religious people.

The results are full of caveats, from a small sample size to the focus on a western God. But they fit with Grafman’s earlier work on how religious sentiment triggers other neural networks involved in social cognition.

That research, published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggested that the capacity for religious thought may have bootstrapped a primitive human brain into its current, socially sophisticated form.

Grafman suspects that the origins of divine belief reside in mechanisms that evolved in order to help primates understand family members and other animals. “We tried to use the same social mechanisms to explain unusual phenomena in the natural world,” he said.

The evolution of our brains continues, said Grafman. “The way we think now is not the way we thought 3,000 years ago,” he said. “The nature of how we believe might change as well.”

Not a case for the existence of supernatural deities, but an interesting hypothesis that belief in such things is an important aspect of evolution.

Auction Pick: Abused Hugo

Look, there's an ebay listing for the 1975 toy catalog holy grail, Hugo, The Man of A Thousand Faces. Yes, he with the beatific / creepy smirk and staring blue eyes, who used to be included with a variety of wigs, beards and prosthetics. But he was cool enough without the disguises to have been employed as a hypnotist by Pee Wee Herman:



This auction is just for the doll itself, and someone really did a gender-bender assault on the poor guy with the cosmetics.



He's been abused and humiliated for the last 35 years and could use a break. A complete Hugo set in good condition sells for over $100, so here's your chance to snag a cheap sorry-looking one who needs clean-up and redeeming. Place your bid HERE.

Something I just learned: Hugo was the creation of Alan Ormsby, who also wrote the screenplay for, and starred in, the very, very strange movie Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. He also authored Movie Monsters, a much-loved children's monster make-up book from the 70's.