The Art of John Wayne Gacy

WU readers are surely familiar with John Wayne Gacy, if only because his middle name is Wayne. Convicted of at least 33 murders. He liked to dress as Pogo the Clown at charity events. Executed in 1994. And (what I didn't know) is that he took up art while in prison. He liked to paint Disney characters, clowns, and skulls.

According to Wikipedia: "Exhibitions of Gacy's artwork have been held since the 1980s and continue to be held. Gacy dismissed criticism that he was permitted to keep money from the sale of his paintings, claiming his artwork was intended 'to bring joy into people's lives'."

Beat Nixon Board Game

Where is the 2012 version?

Original ad here.

Color scans here.

All Natural

OH...MY...GOD! 13 pounds 13 ounces, 23.5 inches long by natural childbirth. I repeat, no c-section and no painkillers. I bow to her prowess as a woman.

Winky Dink and You

The voice of Betty Boop launched a thousand TV screen scribbles and parental curses....

Have fun playing with your "winky dink" at home!

Full story here.

Some Unusual Beauty Pageants

• Miss Cicciona: open only to women who weigh more than 220 pounds.
• Miss Beautiful Morals: Held in Saudi Arabia. All contestants are completely covered by black robes and veils.
• Miss Penitentiary: For beauties behind bars.
• Miss Landmine Survivor: You have to pay a pretty steep price to be eligible to enter.
• Miss UFO: Sometime in the 1950s. Exact date unknown. Winner pictured below.

Giant Pants on a Giant

From a blog devoted exclusively to Giant Pants of the '30s.


(via Sloth Unleashed)

Editor’s Notes (January 31, 2012)

News of the Weird Editor's Notes

January 31, 2012
(datelines from January 20 or later) (links correct as of January 30)

Great News-Story Lede:

It was still summer when Jim Hershberger packed up his 22 cats at his homestead in the Mentasta Mountains, hauled them down a mountain on a sled and loaded them into a raft. After a short river trip, he drove 250 miles to Anchorage, where he moved into a friend's shipping container. Hershberger's plan: get supplies, visit the veterans' clinic here, and find a woman. He is no ordinary man, his cats are not ordinary cats, and so far, he hasn't found that extraordinary woman who wants the whole package.

Duh! Anchorage Daily News

From a review of Rachel Herz's That's Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, from Robin Marantz Henig in the New York Times, 1-22-2012: "To prepare the thick beverage [an allegedly popular Ecuadorean drink called chicha], a group of women put handfuls of corn flour in their mouths, chewed it until it 'vaguely resembled the vomit of an infant,' spit it out into a collective milk jug and repeated the process until all the flour was gone. Then the women capped the jug and buried it the yard to ferment." Herz's assistant reported that a well-aged jug of chicha tastes "warm" and "vinegary." At least. New York Times

From the Annals of Improbable Research's Marc Abrahams, highlighted last week on BoingBoing under "My Favorite Museum Exhibit" . . an actual rectum cut from the corpse of the Bishop of Durham, Thomas Thurlow (1737-1791): "A rectum showing the effects of both haemorrhoids and bowel cancer." This is preserved, floating, in London's Hunterian Museum. Good to know. BoingBoing

The murderer convicted in the famous 1983 "Headless Body in Topless Bar" New York Post headline case made the news last week by requesting parole. (Hell, no, they said.) (Charles Dingle, now 53, had ordered one of his hostages--a mortician--to cut off the head of the man he had shot so the police couldn't trace the bullet.) New York Post

Unforced Error: Here's a short surveillance video of a bank robbery in Parana, Brazil, in which one of the gang shoots himself in the foot. Daily Telegraph (London)

Johnson Smith Catalog Item #18

"Junior, why is the cat glowing?"

From the 1950 catalog.

Doll Head Wine Glass

Thehairpin.com offers step-by-step instructions for how to make wine glasses out of dolls. Totally useless for drinking from, unless you find a doll with a waterproof head. But creepy!

Meat Loaf Every Day!

If you had to eat the same thing every day, why not make it meat loaf? Sounds good to me.



Ad from Good Housekeeping, August 1969. (via JB's Warehouse and Curio Emporium)

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.