I can take kitschy "Halloween." As an occurrance during the year and its appearance in the fall, its a great time. Horror movies generally don't bother me. I love the classic Universal monster movies, and still can't decide if I am more in the "Hammer" camp or "AIP" camp when it came to horror movies of the '60's and '70's. If you ask me, I blame the crop of "sympathetic" vampires, such as Anne Rice's, the Buffy tv show, and the current fascination with "Twilight" squarely at Dan Curtis and Art Wallace. Barnabas Collins was supposed to be a villain and would not be on the show for long. Staked and gone, on a show headed for cancellation. But Jonathan Frid became a daytime television heart-throb, and the show writers had to find some way to keep him, hence the "vampire with a conscience." BID.
Casper, Spooky, HotStuff--they were just neat little characters drawn by Warren Kremer and others for Harvey. When I decided I wanted to work in comics, one of my goals was to draw HotStuff. Sabrina was just a kooky witch at family-friendly Archie Comics. The EC stuff and early Warren mags were just "cool." I adored Burton's "Sleepy Hollow," and thought Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" was a pornographic orgy of over-the-top violence. Nothing more than a glorified snuff film. (You can imagine how well that plays with the evangelical church crowd.) My favorite movie is "The Wizard of OZ."
Oh, and I'm drawing up a caricature piece based on some of the kids at Worlds of Fun I work with. Here it is as a rough sketch...
Somehow, this has helped me to get back to drawing.So now the segue to our Carthage, MO trip...In my last post, I outlined the basics of our trip to south Missouri. All in all, Carthage was very peaceful, and my wife loved a lot about that community. We did find out that meth is a problem there, but most communities, large and small, have some kind of substance abuse going on. It's just a reality.
The people were friendly, the food at the restaurants was good(I heartily suggest eating at Iggy's Diner, by the way--wonderful burgers!) and it reminded me of all those movies from the past where small town life was good, decent, and wholesome. Lots of antique stores, as well. And in them was lots of Americana, religious stuff, etc. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled on to this...
Needless to say, it stuck out like a sore thumb. The store owners were kind and let me photograph it. It had a $2400 price tag. Here's what the footings of the box looked like...
Creepy, eh? Here's some more pics, with details of the frontaspiece and face...
I told my wife I'd found something creepy, but I wanted to see if she could find it herself. She did, and was stunned, too. Moreover, the most sour faced woman I'd ever seen seemed to be skulking around her when she went back for a closer look. Let me describe her as I was not smart enough to sneak a picture of her--she was dress "Amish" style with the apron, bonnet, etc. But not in the Amish black/gray motif. She was dressed in reds. I'm sure someone out there will correct me that she wasn't out of the ordinary, but she disturbed me more than that antique clock!
We told the sponsor lady at the library about this, but she wasn't surprised. Maybe there are more than realized who put on the conservative, church-going facade, yet go dancing naked, or chanting in druid robes, in the moonlight. Nor am I damning Carthage. I'm just reminded of Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Browne."
Nor is KC that great. Since we've lived in KC, there've been at least 2 serial killers caught--Bob Berdella and John Robinson--not to mention BTK in Wichita, KS. And up the road about an hour from us is Chillicothe, MO where an old couple were killing off migrant farm workers. Now you know why I titled this "Every garden has a snake." Sometimes plural.
Next up...a positive as I show some stuff from the Precious Moments Chapel...
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