Family of the Mystic Arts

I have a friend who's a couple of decades older than me. Recently, he happened to mention that his daughter, when a teenager in the Sixties, had been a member of a hippie commune in Oregon, the Family of the Mystic Arts. He recalled that Life magazine had done a photospread on the commune back then.

I remarked that all of Life's photos were now online.

We found several photos. (Alas, his daughter is not pictured.)

One is posted below.

For the other two, I'm directing you to the Life archives, rather than reproduce them here.

Why?

Because they feature bare-breasted female children.

Yes, that's right. Due to the prevailing cultural insanity, this blog cannot safely feature photos which a general-interest G-rated magazine that sold millions of copies each week could show forty years ago.

So here's a little tribute to a more innocent and less paranoid time, when "weird" was almost the dominant cultural mode.

Offending Photo No. 1

Offending Photo No. 2

Hot Thrills and Warm Chills

What you will witness in the video to the right is the first few minutes of HOT THRILLS AND WARM CHILLS. (It's totally Safe for Work, though the film itself is not.) But the trailer can only begin to convey the true stupefying awfulness of the film.

The gal doing the dance is actress Rita Alexander, and she's the ringleader of a trio of female jewel thieves. She meets with her cronies in her apartment, where they discuss their sex lives, with flashbacks of some assorted mattress workouts. The gals are topless during these bouts, but both males and females retain their underwear during the tussles. The love noises are dubbed in, over unmoving or unsynced lips. And the mambo soundtrack makes everything seem as if it's taking place at a bullfight or a Herb Alpert concert.

Anyhow, the girls--who live in Reno--are planning a heist-- During Mardi Gras! That's right, I bet you never knew Reno had an annual Mardi Gras, and a "French Quarter" as well. But they do in this universe, even though all the exterior shots are plainly shot in New Orleans. Reno seems to have been chosen as "Sin City" because New Orleans wasn't bawdy enough!

Having outlined the heist, the girls go out on the town, to a club that features an energetic but awkward topless dancer. One gal picks up a stranger, but our protagonist decides to go home with a local cop she knows!

In due course, the fabled heist is committed--off camera and past tense! One cop chases the fleeing Rita and a pal through the Mardi Gras parade and into one of New Orleans' famous above-ground, crypt-filled cemeteries. Rita eludes him by darting into a crypt, but gets locked in. She freaks out--despite having plenty of air and light and a gun in her hand with which to shoot off the lock--and commits suicide, and the closing credits roll.

You may now pick your jaws up off the ground.

Sexy Camo

What does the luscious Sarah Palin wear, when she's lounging around the Alaska Statehouse on an evening when she's trying to determine which books to censor from the state libraries? Possibly this sneak-up-on-your-man camouflage camisole and shorts ensemble from the hunting and fishing supplier Cabela's.

Master Jack

For no discernible reason, I had this song running through my head yesterday. I'm thinking of polling Alex and Chuck to see if we can make it the official theme song of WEIRD UNIVERSE.

Read about 4 Jacks and a Jill here.

Harvey Comics

I loved reading Harvey Comics as a kid, and into "adulthood." (They're not published anymore, alas.) Their universe was quintessentially wacked and weird. As famed comics scribe Grant Morrison has remarked in an interview, sometimes the willed naivete of Silver Age writers following the Comics Code produced much stranger stuff than any consciously avant-garde writer could.

Take the two page strip to the right for instance, from an old digest-reprint of some Casper stuff. To parse it is to risk madness.

Is Nightmare indeed a mare, ie, female? if not, and even if so, is that the gayest hairdo ever, on horse or human? Why does a forest gnome like to hang out with a ghost horse? Why is playing human cowboys popular among the gnomes? Likewise riding an airplane. And finally, how demented does a ghost horse have to be, to stick planks up its butt and into its chest, and then purr like a cat, all in an effort to emulate a mechanical device so as to placate a gnome?

How I miss Harvey Comics! Thank goodness Dark Horse is reprinting some.....

Black Magic Woman

Now it can be told!

Carlos Santana and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi are one and the same person!

Check out the identical looks to the right! But if seeing is not believing, further proof is offered in this article from today's New York Times, in which "Qaddafi" rhapsodizes about his favorite babe Condoleezza Rice in unmistakeably lyrical terms:

After all, the Libyan leader had professed his “love” for the American secretary of state. “I support my darling black African woman,” Colonel Qaddafi told the network Al Jazeera last year. “I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders.”

He continued: “Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza... I love her very much.”

Atragon

Recently I watched the 1963 Japanese SF flick ATRAGON. I knew I was in true weirdo territory when the undersea empire of Mu turned out to be ruled by Cyndi Lauper.

Not really, but check out the gal in the pink wig in this trailer for the film.

Follies of the Mad Men #11

[From Good Housekeeping for December 1958.]

Just one comment on this ad: why is this woman trying to scorch her own eyeball? Is this a hairdryer aimed at masochists?

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.