6/30/10
Cthulhu Chorus Line
I couldn't stop myself from filming a little dance number of these three before I ship them out to their new owners.
Auction Pick: Monster Lab
I have loads of virtual cash in my paypal account from selling sculptures on etsy, so I've been siphoning some of that over to ebay purchases in the last couple weeks. I'm currently satiated with my lot of 10 super-8 science fiction film reels, my Kreepy Krawler Kollektor Kase, and my MPC monsters, but I located something for the rest of you to battle over.
The Ideal Monster Lab was a big hit in its time, but is now so rare that I can't even locate a complete one for sale anywhere on the interweb. Monster toy collectors have been known to pull out their own eyeballs at the mere mention of this item.
From a write-up in the December 1964 issue of Popular Mechanics, “Opponents try to keep the monster away from their end of the Monster Lab as buttons make him walk back and forth. If he reaches either end of the lab, he raises his arms, emits a growl and the mask over his face drops off.”
This miracle of technology cost $16, which translates to $110 when adjusted for inflation. Who knows what a full working game in a box would cost, but currently on ebay you can get just the figure and his helmet. Proudly display him as one of the world's most sought-after unholy relics. And just like a saint, he's been tortured and disfigured; looks like someone took a soldering iron to his left arm there.
As of this posting, you have 56 hours. Place your bid here.
Bonus Monster Lab promo, in all its 80's awfulness:
6/29/10
The Cars 1978-1981
With this playlist I'm avoiding most of the hits, and pretending "Heartbeat City" never happened.
The Cars developed their precision sound and vocal harmonies as "Ocasek and Orr", an acoustic duo with backing musicians that covered pretty pop tunes of the 50's like this one, as well as protean forms of their later songs, on the coffeehouse circuit. But adding the synthesizers and Eliot Easton's searing lead guitar made them a futuristic-sounding band with tons of studio polish, but still founded on pop hooks and rockabilly cool.
I'll never forget listening to the synth solo from "This Could Be Love" on my 8-track as a 13-year old, and deciding at that moment "yes, someday I WILL own a synthesizer and know how to play it." Sure enough, a few years later I was covering Cars songs on my hard-earned Casio CZ-101 with my highschool band. Ah, the music of teenage fantasy.
(related playlists here and here)
Work in Progess 6-29
The first and second dioramas are all done, and I built the box for the third part of the triptych simultaneously with the second. For the third box I'm planning on a pepper's ghost stage effect, brought down to 1/72 scale. To do this I need "breathing" LEDs that will gradually fade between off and on, like a sleep light on a computer. I found a schematic online, and got the parts I would need via mail-order.
A couple days later I put it together and got nothing, other than one of the timer chips becoming too hot to even touch after a couple seconds of turning on the switch. It's a very simple circuit, so I don't know where I went wrong. Take a look, if you know anything about circuit building; I'd be curious to know if there's something flawed in the design, or if I'm just a 'tard. After three days of trying I had to give up, and instead spent a few hours making these little 1/2" tall sculptures of our two cats, which I gave to my fiancee as an engagement gift:
Then I spent a day combing through the stores in Chinatown, looking for a ready-made piece of junk that could be modified. I found a cut glass tchotchke stand with an AC plug and several different colors of LEDS that cross-faded with each other. I invested $10, took it home, switched it over to run on a 9-volt battery, removed all the LED's I didn't want, and….
yessssssss, it does exactly what I hoped it would do, transitioning smoothly from completely off to intensely bright, and back down again. And like my heart sculpture, it does so at random intervals of varying speed, which is even better than what I would have built.
But still, I need to learn arduino programming for things like this. Discrete electronics are a drag.
6/28/10
Secrets of the Wax Museum
A Futurechimp associate has returned from the front with images of a wax museum's storage room somewhere in America. The name of both the photographer and the museum have been withheld to protect the guilty.
Click the above image to start a slideshow.
6/27/10
FutureCat
from the BBC youtube page description:
A cat named Oscar, who had its back feet severed by a combine harvester, has been given two prosthetics in a pioneering operation. The new feet are custom-made implants that "peg" the ankle to the foot. They are bioengineered to mimic the way deer antler bone grows through the skin.
New Etsy Items
I've sold about twelve human thumb drives on etsy in the last week, so I'm trying to develop my brand by beta-testing a couple of new designs. Using the same flesh-tinted rubber as the thumbs, both of these lil' atrocities were molded from vintage carnival prizes in my personal collection. I'm taking advantage of the new, super-tiny flash circuits I discovered a couple days ago; each of these is a mere 1" square (not including the connector).
More pictures at their etsy pages, here and here.
6/24/10
Auction Pick: Chimp Thingmaker
This vintage 1966 Tarzan tray includes two varieties of hominids. So pick up a cheap used thingmaker and several crates of newly-formulated-and-easily-available plastic, and start cranking them out. You have six days. Place your bid HERE.
Pirates XXX: for Kids!
Highlights from Pirates XXX, a hardcore porno with a million-dollar budget. Other than a couple of terms worthy of donations to the swear jar, it's family-friendly.
Netflix actually rents a feature-length R-rated cut of this, under the "steamy romance" category.
(related post here)
6/23/10
6/22/10
Five Great Horror Movies of the Last Five Years
With all the ugly, morally deficient films that exploit pain (Saw, Human Centipede) and the recent slew of remakes (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th), it's easy to forget that once in a while decent new horror movies are made available to the public. Here are five, off the top of my head:
The Mist
A thick fog, along with some terrifying and surreal creatures inside it, envelopes a grocery store and its inhabitants, . Like "Night of the Living Dead", much of the tension is derived from the victims battling each other. But it's also like an old-fashioned monster movie, and the dreamlike, haunting ending has stayed with me.
The Descent
Spelunking and man-eating bat-people are a natural combination for freakery. It takes itself a little too seriously (for a more lighthearted romp, check out director Neil Marshall's followup Doomsday), but it definitely does an admirable feat of sustaining a mood in the most minimal of settings.
Slither
Sure it's derivative ("Night of the Creeps", Cronenberg's "Shivers"), and I wish it didn't have to be so gross, but it deserves credit for trying to bring back the 80's horror comedy. If you're familiar with those sorts of films, you'll pick up dozens of references to them in the script.
Drag Me to Hell
And to think Sam Raimi followed up "Spider-Man 3" (a real lead balloon of a movie) with this, his most fun film since "Army of Darkness". An original script by Sam and his brother Ted, lots of exuberant scenes that balance the line between funny and scary, and a poetic justice ending straight out of a 1950's E.C. horror comic.
Trick r' Treat
This could be my favorite horror film in at least a decade, and it never even played in theaters. Production company Warner Brothers had it scheduled for a Halloween 2007 release, but then got cold feet because they didn't want to compete with "Saw 4". Also, the screenwriter for this had already bombed with his "Superman Returns" script. They delayed it a year, then another, then finally went straight to video in 2009.
I think it's destined to do for Halloween what "It's A Wonderful Life" did for Christmas. This movie IS Halloween. The studio execs are dopes for not giving it a chance on screens, but at least it exists.
The Mist
A thick fog, along with some terrifying and surreal creatures inside it, envelopes a grocery store and its inhabitants, . Like "Night of the Living Dead", much of the tension is derived from the victims battling each other. But it's also like an old-fashioned monster movie, and the dreamlike, haunting ending has stayed with me.
The Descent
Spelunking and man-eating bat-people are a natural combination for freakery. It takes itself a little too seriously (for a more lighthearted romp, check out director Neil Marshall's followup Doomsday), but it definitely does an admirable feat of sustaining a mood in the most minimal of settings.
Slither
Sure it's derivative ("Night of the Creeps", Cronenberg's "Shivers"), and I wish it didn't have to be so gross, but it deserves credit for trying to bring back the 80's horror comedy. If you're familiar with those sorts of films, you'll pick up dozens of references to them in the script.
Drag Me to Hell
And to think Sam Raimi followed up "Spider-Man 3" (a real lead balloon of a movie) with this, his most fun film since "Army of Darkness". An original script by Sam and his brother Ted, lots of exuberant scenes that balance the line between funny and scary, and a poetic justice ending straight out of a 1950's E.C. horror comic.
Trick r' Treat
This could be my favorite horror film in at least a decade, and it never even played in theaters. Production company Warner Brothers had it scheduled for a Halloween 2007 release, but then got cold feet because they didn't want to compete with "Saw 4". Also, the screenwriter for this had already bombed with his "Superman Returns" script. They delayed it a year, then another, then finally went straight to video in 2009.
I think it's destined to do for Halloween what "It's A Wonderful Life" did for Christmas. This movie IS Halloween. The studio execs are dopes for not giving it a chance on screens, but at least it exists.
6/21/10
The Book of Lucy
The tragic tale of Lucy the Chimp is recounted in Radio Lab, my second-favorite show on NPR (after "Prairie Home Companion", of course [not really]).
Go here to listen to a stream of the hour-long podcast. You can also download it.
It's Alive: Eternal Jellyfish
Turritopsis nutricula may be the only immortal animal in the world. Excerpted from the UK times:
Jellyfish usually die after propagating, but Turritopsis reverts to a sexually immature stage after reaching adulthood and is capable of rejuvenating itself. Theoretically, this cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.
Found in warm tropical waters, Turritopsis is believed to be spreading across the world as ships’ ballast water is discharged in ports.The jellyfish and its reversal of the aging process is now the focus of research by marine biologists and geneticists.
It is thought to achieve the feat through the cell development process of transdifferentiation, in which cells transform from one type to another. The switching of cell roles is usually seen only when parts of an organ regenerate. However, it appears to occur normally in the Turritopsis life cycle.
New 3D Galleries
We just spent a few days rolling around Northern California and catching some fresh new anaglyphs. Clicking the above image will trigger an automatic slideshow of the newly reopened Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. These are easily the best natural history dioramas I've photographed, partially because of the excellent lighting and reflection-resistant glass, and also because I've improved my shooting technique. I'll be converting these to Viewmaster format soon, and maybe put some up for sale at my Etsy store.
And clicking up here will show some additional and equally lovely photos of Muir Woods and other NoCal spots.
6/15/10
Work in Progress
second in a series of three dioramas, all contained in identical lightproof black boxes with stereo viewers (seen at the end of the video) and each with a different motorized element. This particular box will have a three-way switch to select between daytime and nighttime lighting. Pictures of the first one are on my website. Third one is getting started.
I've also just redesigned the website, and if you're in NYC, one of my Cthulhu sculptures is allegedly on display at this gallery in an H.P. Lovecraft-themed exhibit curated by the guy behind Atlas Obscura and Curious Expeditions, two of my favorite blogs. So check that out if you can.
Futurechimp
Remember when Futurechimp used to be an evolution-themed blog? Let's get back on track with that, starting here:
"when it comes your turn to die, you'll find out you're not a monkey, but a fool".
Viva The Futurechimp.
"when it comes your turn to die, you'll find out you're not a monkey, but a fool".
Viva The Futurechimp.
6/14/10
6/13/10
6/11/10
Slithis
If you sat through more than five seconds of The Black Sleep, here's your chaser: SLITHIS. My dad took me and a huge car full of other kids to the drive-in for this fondly remembered movie in 1978.Shot on Venice Beach in just 12 days, and boasting an impressive 1.9 out of 10 stars on imdb.com, Slithis The Movie isn't so impressive as Slithis The Marketing Juggernaut. The filmmakers rolled out the PR on this one, dressing up a guy in the Slithis suit to make personal appearances all over the country:
And when you entered the theater, you got a Slithis Survival Kit. To replicate the experience, print the below images on a half sheet of cardstock (both sides) and fold it lengthwise:
Watch the whole movie below in chaptered low-rez youtube frustrato-vision. Not available through netflix, but you can get it on a somewhat-affordable DVD from Code Red, distributors of other rare-but-essential films like "Beyond the Door" and "Stunt Rock". Check out their incredible catalog.And thanks to this fine blog for the images.
6/9/10
The Black Sleep
Hollywood legends Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, Bela Lugosi and Tor Johnson gathered together in 1956 for one of the worst movies ever made. I haven't seen it yet, but have been wanting to for about 20 years. It's hulu, so you get a steady stream with a couple of commercials.
6/5/10
6/4/10
Radio Controlled Larva
Feel free to play the Mothra song while reading this post:
From the seller's description:
Collectible 1994 Tokyo Marui remote control Morthra larve, mint in its original box. Very rare in this condition, considering the company has been out of business for over ten years. The Morthra has five different functions (forwards, left and right turns, up and down head movement, mouth opens to shoot silly string and also has scream feature). Batteries were inserted once to make sure all functions are working. All original accessories are included: hardware with glue, remote control, two cans of silly string and instruction manual.
Buy it HERE.
6/2/10
6/1/10
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