The Baron of Arizona

Bernie Madoff was a piker.

He stole a few score billion dollars.

But how much is a whole state worth? All the land, natural resources, and structures?

That's what James Addison Reavis stole--almost getting away with the theft too.

Last night I watched THE BARON OF ARIZONA, a 1950 film by Samuel Fuller and starring Vincent Price. It tells the true story of Reavis, who cooked up an incredible con job to lay claim to the entire territory of Arizona in the year 1883.

You can read a fascinating essay about it here.

This is one film definitely worth renting for those with a taste for weird history.

1979 Disco Riot

With these hard times, who's to say that anti-disco riots will not spontaneously break out again?

The Camisards

A group of fanatical religious terrorists, holed up in their mountain redoubts and battling an occupying government. Surely this description must apply to some modern-day group and situation, such as in Afghanistan, or perhaps Africa...? And the terrorists will in all likelihood be Islamic, right?

Well, not all the time.

Consider the French Protestant dissenters known as the Camisards.

I learned about this historical incident from reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey. (You can find the entire text of the book here.) Stevenson traveled through the region once ruled by the Camisards, and evoked the romance of their rebellion.

There, a hundred and eighty years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, "Count and Lord Roland, generalissimo of the Protestants in France," grave, silent, imperious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed in his wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's apprentice with a genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards at seventeen, to die at fifty-five the English governor of Jersey. There again was Castanet, a partisan in a voluminous peruke and with a taste for divinity. Strange generals who moved apart to take counsel with the God of Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an unguarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their hearts! And to follow these and other leaders was the rank file of prophets and disciples, bold, patient, hardy to run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles of brainsick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets.

Pretty weird, huh? And right in Europe, not all that long ago.

The last sentence from Stevenson is particularly intriguing, since it conjures up comparisons to the Mai-Mai rebels in the Congo today, who believe that certain magical charms protect them against bullets; that their own bullets are invulnerable to counter charms; and that ritual cannibalism of their enemies is still a grand idea.

Once Europe had its own Mai-Mai's. Perhaps someday Africa will be rid of theirs.

Psych-Out

Once you have experienced the 1968 film PSYCH-OUT, you will be unable to return to your square, plastic, uptight lifestyle. Just the sight of Jack Nicholson's fake ponytail alone will trip you out!

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

Butlin’s Crazy House

Old amusement park attractions are inevitably weird.

Consider the Crazy House once to be found in Felixstowe, UK.

These old postcard images come from the Flickr set of a fellow who uses the handle Photoaf.

The house was part of a Butlin's Amusement Park. For the history of the founder, Billy Butlin, eventually knighted for his recreational achievements, visit here.

Wouldn't you have loved to experience this park during its heyday, some seventy years ago?

Wild Gals of the Naked West

Could Russ Meyer be considered the grandfather of the popular Deadwood TV show? Check out this trailer for his WILD GALS OF THE NAKED WEST, and decide for yourself.

Utterly (or is that "udderly"?) NSFW.

PS: bonus clip after the jump!

More >>

Name That List #2

It's time again to play "Name That List." Identify where the items in this list come from. Googling is cheating.


Answer on the comments page and in extended.

More >>

The Glass Delusion

An unusual psychiatric disorder swept through Europe during the late Medieval period. Many people came to believe they were made of glass "and therefore likely to shatter into pieces." Historians call this the Glass Delusion.

A typical sufferer might have believed he was "a urinal, an oil lamp or other glass receptacle, or else he might himself be trapped within a glass bottle." (A "urinal" during the middle ages referred to a small flask... essentially a glass pee pee bottle.)

One famous early sufferer: the French king, Charles VI, who refused to allow people to touch him, and wore reinforced clothing to protect himself.

A 1561 medical account describes a patient "who had to relieve himself standing up, fearing that if he sat down his buttocks would shatter... The man concerned was a glass-maker from the Parisian suburb of Saint Germain, who constantly applied a small cushion to his buttocks, even when standing. He was cured of this obsession by a severe thrashing from the doctor, who told him that his pain emanated from buttocks of flesh."

In modern times, the glass delusion has disappeared. "Surveys of modern psychiatric institutions have only revealed two specific (uncorroborated) cases of the glass delusion. Foulché-Delbosc reports finding one Glass Man in a Paris asylum, and a woman who thought she was a potsherd was recorded at an asylum in Meerenberg."

One sign of the glass delusion's vanishing is that there's not much information about it on the internet. Not even a wikipedia entry about it. The above factoids came from "An odd kind of melancholy: reflections on the glass delusion in Europe," by Gill Speak, published in 1990 in the History of Psychiatry.

Sign language among medieval monks sworn to silence

Medieval monks who had taken vows of silence developed a simple form of sign language to communicate (predating the development of modern sign language by centuries), and scholars know many of the signs they used. This could be potentially useful if you plan on doing any time travel (or try it out at a renaissance fair). From the essay "Sign Language and Gestures in Medieval Europe: Monasteries, Courts of Justice, and Society" by August Nitschke:

I want to eat: repeatedly move the first three fingers towards the mouth.
I want to drink: place the tip of the thumb on the lips and tilt the fist like a bottle.
I am fasting: press together the lips with thumb and forefinger
Bread: make a circle using both your thumbs and the fingers next to them.
Milk: place all the fingers of your right hand around the smallest finger of your left and stretch the latter, imitating someone who is milking.
Honey: Let your tongue protrude for a moment and move your fingers close as if you intended to lick them.
A book: stretch our your hand, moving it as if turning the page of a book.
Crying: take the index finger, which has been placed below the eye, moving it downward twice.
The Hallelujah: raise one hand and move the slightly curved upper side of the fingers in a way that suggests a flying motion.
Fire: Blow on the tip of the forefinger, which is held pointing up.
A fish: Keeping the fingers together, move the right hand, keeping it straight, in front of the body in a zigzag maner like a swimming animal.

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.