Ted Williams Estate Auction

Of course you recall the baseball great, Ted Williams. Decapitated after death and head frozen, once the family quit squabbling in public...?

Well, now many of his possessions are up for sale at auction, including, ironically, a number of severed animal-head trophies. And also some fine "space alien" paintings and drawings by daughter Claudia, like the one at right.

Check out an article and photo gallery here.

The Isetta

A car designed and built by a refrigerator company? Yes, that was the Isetta.

Virgin Sacrifice

VIRGIN SACRIFICE completes the trilogy of films contained on a single disc I recently netflixed. We covered the other two--WILD WOMEN OF WONGO--and BOWANGA BOWANGA--here and here.

VIRGIN SACRIFICE was the second-best, after WONGO but before BOWANGA. You're getting the juciest bits in the clip here. But there is a scene in the film not present in the trailer, a shot that lingers on the completely bare breasts of the (white woman) sacrificial victim for longer than a subliminal moment. I thought that highly unusual for the era, but as we are reminded at this site chronicling the history of sex in the cinema, such moments have existed since motion pictures began.

Riding the Rails

Of course we all know that the image of a hand-pumped railroad trolley is a comedy staple. But I find the notion of special little motorized vehicles adapted to ride the rails just as funny. As you might predict, there's an organization dedicated to hobbyists and collectors of these miniature rail-mounted transports, and it's to be found here.

My local newspaper has a great article about a fellow who restored the vehicle pictured to the right.

I imagine a Farelly Brothers movie in which the hero confounds the bad guys by making his unpredictable escape in such a vehicle--at a whopping 5 MPH!

Perfectible Worlds

A new book titled Perfectible Worlds by the photographer Sage Sohier, devoted to people who amass oddball collections, seems a winning item for all readers of WEIRD UNIVERSE.

[Photo copyright by Sage Sohier.]

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.