A surreal shot of Jayne Mansfield floating in her pool surrounded by her novelty hot water bottles designed by Don Poynter.
 

“I stayed in California sculpting her for the mold for a week. I could have done it in two days but thought — why rush it?”

—the creator of whiskey-flavored toothpaste and other weird delights, inventor and designer Don Poynter musing about his collaboration with Jayne Mansfield

A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Don Poynter showed an aptitude not just for creating things, but also possessing a good head for business as a young child. When he was eleven, Poynter began making and selling remote-controlled tanks with working cannons. While a student at the University of Cincinnati, Poynter formed Poynter Creations (later changing the name to Poynter International) and the company would begin its weird journey making bizarro novelties of all kinds for decades, the first being the wildly successful partnership of booze and good oral hygiene, Whiskey-Flavored toothpaste in 1954. In the early 60s he created the boozehound icon “melting wax” that appears to drip from the top of Maker’s Mark whiskey bottles. In 1967 he put out “Uncle Fester’s Mystery Light Bulb” (an homage to actor Jackie Coogan’s portrayal of lightbulb-loving Fester Addams in The Addams Family television show) and sold a staggering fourteen million of them. He was a champion baton twirler at UC, and this particular talent got him a gig touring with the Harlem Globetrotters. As cool as Poynter’s many life achievements are, there are few things cooler than the nearly two-foot-tall hot water bottle he sculpted in the image of blonde temptress—and good pal of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey—Jayne Mansfield.

Poynter had a knack for taking the public’s temperature as it pertained to embracing novelty items. In other words, Poynter knew you wanted a talking toilet seat before you did. When the idea came to him to make a hot water bottle in the image of Jayne Mansfield in a black bikini, he was fully confident such a product would sell like crazy. He spent weeks sculpting the water bottle while negotiating with Mansfield’s Hollywood honchos, who weren’t at all keen on the idea of their star becoming one of Poynter’s novelties. It seems Jayne was fond of the idea from the start and she asked Poynter to come to Hollywood so they could work on their joint venture.

In 1957 Poynter flew to Hollywood where he would remain for a week sculpting the actual Jayne in his studio on a daily basis. Poynter had to throw away his original sculpture of Jayne and start from scratch after realizing the 5’5 actress was not as tall as he had imagined. He also had the pleasure of shopping for a cheeky nightie for Mansfield to wear in a pin-up-style promotional ad for the bottle. Jayne didn’t own any herself as she slept in the nude.

Poynter paid Mansfield five grand for her time, and before the actress’ untimely death in 1967 his company sold 400,000 water bottles for ten bucks a pop. As of this writing, as far as I can ascertain, Poynter is still hanging out in Cincinnati “acting much younger” than his age of 94. Photos of Jayne and Poynter posing with her water bottle, and the gloriously bodacious bottle itself follow.
 

Another shot of Mansfield in her pool with her water bottles.
 

The illustrated ad for the Jayne Mansfield Hot Water Bottle. One should presume Mansfield is wearing the nightie purchased by Poyner for the promotional ad.
 

A very pleased looking Poynter pictured with Mansfield and her hot water bottle.
 
Continues after the jump…

The arresting artwork from a vintage package of Black Bat flashlight crackers made in Macau, China.
 
Aside from an annual 4th of July family event I am quite fond of attending (let’s drink together next year, Atlanta), I’m not huge into celebrating Independence Day. One of the reasons is as a pet owner and animal lover, I hate to see how dogs, cats, and other animals in the wild react to the sound of fireworks. Alternatively, I have zero sympathy for the parade of idiots who end up parting with their fingers or even an entire hand lighting off fireworks. Every year someone blows off bodyparts on the 4th of July—it’s a stone-cold fact. They also start fires and one set off by fireworks in September of 2017 burned 48,000 acres I have traversed through extensively in the majestic Columbia River Gorge. Sure, I’ll kick back and watch firework shows on the television because guess what? The other thing I hate is crowds—especially if the said crowd is A: drunk, and B: armed with matches and packages of firecrackers and cherry bombs. My holiday crankiness aside, as a lover of art, I can’t help but appreciate the vintage artwork used to adorn packages of fireworks. Whoever came up with the idea of using a werewolf to help sell fireworks is a damn genius as I’d buy a pack for this reason alone.

So in honor of Independence Day, let’s take a look at some old-school firecracker and firework packaging. Many are from Macau, a region of China located on the country’s south coast. During its heyday, the Taipa area of Macau was the largest producer of fireworks, employing more than one-third of Macau’s residents. In a single day, the factory was capable of turning out three million firecrackers. The Iec Long Firecracker Factory (established in 1926) still stands after closing its doors in 1984 in an effort to help to preserve the long history of firework manufacturing in Macau. In the latter part of the 80s, Macau looked once again to its history with fireworks and threw the first Macau International Fireworks Display Contest. The contest has since expanded to several days of firework displays in September and the first week of October. Anyway, enjoy the kooky photos below, get your pet some earplugs, and try not to shoot your fingers off this week!
 

 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
The psychedelic sci-fi graphic novel Rock Wars concerns a group of twelve volunteers from Galaxcentra (the center of the galaxy), who have been sent to earth—in the form of a rock band dubbed “Children at Arms”—to reunite the Beatles.

Quite a concept, ‘eh?

Published in 1979, Rock Wars came about during an era when there was a strong desire to see the Beatles reunite. The group broke-up in 1970, and rumors that they were going to reform periodically sprouted over the decade. By the mid ‘70s, the interest in seeing a Beatles reunion happen was very much in the zeitgeist. On April 24, 1976, Lorne Michaels famously appeared on Saturday Night Live to make the Beatles an offer of $3,000 to perform on SNL. Later in the year, a New York promoter said he would pay a reformed Beatles $230 million if they played a one-off concert. The public so wanted a Beatles reunion to occur, many believed the 1977 rumor that the Canadian group Klaatu were actually the Fab Four incognito.
 

 
Though Rock Wars didn’t include any creator credits, it was written by brothers James and Kenneth Collier. The Colliers spearheaded the project, bringing in an artist they knew as Shakti to illustrate it.
 

 
The Colliers were certainly motivated individuals. They were the force behind a rock band called Year One, and managed to secure performances for the group in the Grand Canyon and on top of the World Trade Center. The brothers also wrote the lyrics for Year One’s rock opera, which is said to share the Beatles reunion quest concept with Rock Wars (listen to the Year One double album here).

The Colliers were also journalists, and spent decades investigating voter fraud in the United States. The result was Votescam: The Stealing of America (1992).

There was a plan to turn Rock Wars into a film, but as far as I can tell, it was never completed. The murder of John Lennon on December 8, 1980, might have been the tragic reason the movie was abandoned. It certainly put an end to the idea of a Beatles reunion—for the time being.

Both James and Kenneth Collier died in the 1990s.

More brain-warping images from Rock Wars:
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…

 
Progress doesn’t always end in the best results. Take Hollywood. Once, this great movie industry was driven by women screenwriters like Anita Loos, Frances Marion, and Dorothy Arzner who together wrote dozens of screenplays. There were also more women directors making movies in Hollywood’s early years than the tiny 6% produced between 2013-14. Moreover, these women writers and directors produced original work with strong female leads rather than today’s tokenistic and unwanted reboots like Ghostbusters and Ocean’s 8. Where it all went wrong is a moot point—perhaps the Hays Code had something to do with it or the easy common denominator of crash commercialism.

I prefer ye old Golden Age movies than the majority of dire, sloppy, flicks churned out today, which, in large part, is why I dig this vintage scrapbook featuring newspaper and magazines clippings of some of Hollywood’s greatest stars. This scrapbook was compiled by I. F. Grant—who s/he was is a mystery but they were certainly assiduous in their dedication to collecting some choice pix and stories of Hollywood’s stars. Another reason this volume appeals is a liking for collage, with many of the following pages reminiscent of work by Grete Stern, Matthieu Bourel, Deborah Stevenson, and John Stezaker.

And finally, like I. F. Grant, I spent way too much time compiling my own scrapbooks on likes and loves over the years, but these are far more special.
 

 

 

 
More vintage pages from Hollywood’s Golden Age, after the jump…
 

“I love movies. It’s still my candy store, and I’m the biggest kid in it.”

—Scarecrow Video founder and owner, the late George Latsios

In the early 90s, Scarecrow Video founder George Latsios would spend every Saturday night behind the counter of his store, offering movie recommendations to customers he knew by their first and last names, including young Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana. Scarecrow buyer for the last 25 years Mark Steiner fondly recalls his former boss and friend saying, “There was no other place George would rather be on a Saturday night.”

In the early 80s, Latsios started loaning out selections from his 600-800 title collection of giallo and horror VHS tapes through Backtrack Records and other locations. By 1995 Latsios and his then-wife/Scarecrow co-founder Rebecca Soriano had amassed approximately 26,000 titles (noted in the book Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store). 1995 would also mark the year Latsios received a life-altering medical diagnosis—he had brain cancer and only six months to live.

At the time of his diagnosis, Scarecrow had been doing business at their 5030 Roosevelt Way North East location for several years and was in dire financial trouble. Instead of shuttering Scarecrow’s doors, Latsios focused on expanding the store’s video collection. He also aspired to open other stores not just in the U.S. but globally in destinations like Japan—one of Latsios favorite spots for buying trips. To some, Latsios’ spending habits and his aversion to paying taxes in a timely fashion appeared reckless. But as Steiner plainly states, this was far from the truth. Latsios was very “level-headed,” and those who knew him didn’t confuse actions driven by his passion for film as symptoms of failing health. Was George in denial about his spending habits? Perhaps a little bit. This chapter of Scarecrow Video’s history sounds like the plot of a gritty-yet-endearing film, which seems fitting as it illustrates Latsios’ love of cinema and his desire to share it with everyone. Here’s more from Steiner, who I spoke to in Scarecrow’s homey in-store screening room last week, on what made George Latsios tick:

“He spent money to curate the store he believed in. It was his baby, and we (the employees of Scarecrow) were all his family. He treated us generously like you would treat your actual family. We’d have meals together, and they were always special. If your paycheck bounced, he’d turn on a dime and ask you how much money you needed to tide you through and go get it from the till. One of the most telling things about George is when you consider the name “Scarecrow.” You see, the endearing Scarecrow was his favorite character in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. He often wore an old t-shirt with the Scarecrow’s famous quote/lament “If I Only Had a Brain.” One of my favorite memories of George was the time a woman and her young teen daughter came to the store and struck up a conversation with him. At some point, the woman asked George to help her understand the difference between an R-rated film and an NC 17 one. After a brief pause, George replied, “An R-rating = titties with no bush, and an NC 17 rating = titties with bush.”

By 1999 Latsios was over-burdened with financial woes, and reluctantly put Scarecrow up for sale. Then, as if from a movie, two Scarecrow customers who happened to be making a pretty good living during the day over at Microsoft, John Dauphiny and Carl Tostevin, joined forces and bought the store. Though they told George they would love for him to stay on as long as he’d like, Latsios declined and moved back to his native Greece where he passed away at the young age of 44 in 2003. For three decades, Scarecrow has been a come-one-come-all custodian of pop culture for Seattleites and host to avant-garde and counter-culture heroes of the movie industry like John Woo, Troma‘s Lloyd Kaufman, Alex Cox, and Alejandro Jodorowsky. There was also the time director Quentin Tarantino, in town for the SIFF International Film Festival and without a car, called the store to ask for walking directions, noting he was “not going to take the bus, alriiiight.” Later, as Steiner was jawing with a friend while on his way to work, he noticed a very sunburned Quentin Tarantino striding up Roosevelt Way North East and into Scarecrow. During his visit, Tarantino asked permission to browse through the store’s vast library, which he did for several hours, later hanging out with the staff.
 

A very sunburned Quentin Tarantino hanging out at Scarecrow Video in 2001. Photo courtesy of Mark Steiner.
 
As a testament to Latsios’ unrivaled love of film, the vast majority of Scarecrow’s employees and volunteers have been working there for decades, ensuring Scarecrow can continue to provide access to the largest publicly accessible video collection in the world. A staggering selection of 130,000+ titles can be found inside, including thousands you can’t stream anywhere else (sorry, Netflix). Some titles in Scarecrow’s catalog can only be viewed on the premises, such as a series of John Frankenheimer television dramas gifted by the director personally, and Japanese 70s superhero series Spectreman on VHS in its entirety which is extremely rare. Latsios mused about Scarecrow being a candy store of sorts for film buffs, and I can attest from first-hand experience, it is absolutely a magical labyrinth full of motion picture treasures, including a well-curated selection of movie soundtracks you can purchase on vinyl. Films are expertly categorized not only by genres, but also by region of origin, director, and a dizzying array of sub-categories with intriguing classifications such as “Little Bastards” (anything small wanting to kill you), “Rock Hell” (heavy metal themed horror films), as well as both a “Women in Prison” and “Men in Prison” sections. Scarecrow has something for everyone. Even the extensive XXX section is broken down with care including by director.

As of this writing, the now non-profit is turning 30 and is in the midst of a fundraising campaign to help keep them in business for the long haul. Trust me when I say anything helps, including sharing this post to spread the word. Right now your financial contributions will be doubled thanks to a recent $25K donation from a generous Scarecrow supporter. I’ve posted photos of the store as well as some neat artifacts from Scarecrow’s past including a rare video that hasn’t been seen since the early 90s (and only then if you were watching the tube in Seattle), which drives home the importance of keeping Scarecrow, and other champions of pop culture like them, around.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
After the first three KISS studio LPs failed to sell, album #4 was a do or die situation for the band and their label, Casablanca Records. The company had sunk a ton of money into the group, but had little to show for it. They were so broke, they couldn’t afford to make royalty payments, forcing KISS to borrow money to stay afloat. By mid-1975, attendance for KISS concerts was on the upswing, but that wasn’t reflected in album sales. During Halloween night 1975, Casablanca president, Neil Bogart, and his vice president, Larry Harris, took Bogart’s children trick-or-treating, and saw one kid after another made up to look like their favorite member of KISS. Despite KISS’s lack of commercial success, there was certainly something brewing in the zeitgeist.
 

 
Though the members of KISS each have their own unique makeup and costumes, highlighting their personas hadn’t initially occurred to the band or anyone else in their orbit. In a TV commercial for the band’s second record, Hotter Than Hell (1974), they’re referred to as “the demons of rock,” depicted more as a marauding gang than as an group of intriguing individuals.
 

 
After KISS’s third LP, Dressed to Kill (1975), didn’t make much of an impact, it was decided that rather than go back into the studio, the group would record a live record. For a number of reasons, this was a risky proposition. Live albums generally weren’t big sellers at the time, and they acted as a kind of live greatest hits, but KISS didn’t have any hits. The release would be a double album housed in a gatefold sleeve with a booklet, adding to the manufacturing costs, which the label could scarcely afford. With band and record company hemorrhaging money, if Alive! tanked it had the very real potential of sinking both Casablanca and KISS.
 

Their earliest promo photo.

For the first time, an advertising agency was hired to design the packaging for a KISS album, and Dennis Woloch at Howard Marks Advertising was given the task. In the book, Shout It out Loud: The Story of KISS’s Destroyer and the Making of an American Icon, Woloch talks about the inclusion of handwritten messages from KISS pictured on the inside of the Alive! gatefold:

I don’t remember if it was me or Bill [Aucoin, KISS’s manager] who came up with the idea, but the image of KISS was just starting to form. We told those guys, ‘You’re different characters. You each have your own persona. How about writing a little personal note to the fans from each of you?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, sure, fine.’ They just went along with everything in those days, because they weren’t hot shit yet.

More after the jump…

 
This morning I legitimately woke with an image of Kermit the Frog with soulless stoner eyes staring through my soul, wondering if I was remembering a terrifying image I had actually seen on if it was conjured in the darkest nightmare-worlds of the subconscious. It bothered me enough to do a google search to jog my memory, and I was relieved to learn that I’m not actually losing my mind—Muppets With People Eyes is (or was) an actual thing.

Rewinding to eight years ago, a tumblr page with that title appeared and quickly got its fifteen minutes of fame. In this case, it was almost literally fifteen minutes. The page, created by WONDER-TONIC only lasted for about two weeks in 2010. After eleven posts, I suppose the novelty wore off, but these images—I dare say—are timelessly horrific.

There’s an “uncanny valley” quality about slapping realistic human eyes onto slightly humanoid-but-not-really forms. Our brains—or at least mine—immediately perceive such visages as foreign and threatening. The ones that don’t look straight-up terrifying, look… somehow… HIGH AS FUCK.

Muppets with People Eyes might be old news to some of our readers—possibly not to some of our younger readers. If you have never seen these off-putting images before, be forewarned: you too may awaken from a dream, a decade later, wondering if the images that haunt you are imagined… or real-life crap from the Internet.
 

 

 
More Muppets with people eyes after the jump…

 
When asked what he would do if he was ever elected Prime minister, Mark E. Smith replied:

“I’d halve the price of cigarettes, double the tax on health food, then I’d declare war on France.”

Daft questions got daft answers. Smart ones were few and far between. Most questions were recycled answers from previous interviews. No matter the question, Smith always stayed true to what he thought was right and what he believed in—he never softened his answer to suit more fashionably sensitive times. That’s what made his band the Fall so special—it led, it never followed, even if it was just Smith and “your granny on bongos.”

Among the more interesting questions came in 1981, when the NME asked Smith for a list of his favorite things. The list was for the paper’s column “Portrait of the Artist as a Consumer” which centered around the idea the way to the heart of artist was through the food their brains consumed. Or something like that… In his answers, Smith offered up an eclectic mix of genre and cult writers—including Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Norman Mailer and two novels by Colin Wilson; artists, in which he includes soccer player-cum-manager, Malcolm Allison; comedians where he gives a nod to “Ian Curtis derivatives,” Bernard Manning and drag artist/comedian/actor Alan (Alana) Pellay; and some of his favorite albums/cassettes. All of which ran as follows in the NME 15th August 1981:

READS

Gulcher—Richard Meltzer
A Small Town in Germany—John Le Carré
A Scanner Darkly—Philip K. Dick
The Sirens of Titan—Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The Deer Park—Norman Mailer
The Black Room—Colin Wilson
Ritual in the Dark—Colin Wilson
Cogan’s Trade—George V. Higgins
At the Mountains of Madness—H.P. Lovecraft
Beyond Good and Evil—Frederich Nietzsche

....AND

U.S. Civil War Handbook—William H. Price
How I Created Modern Music—D. McCulloch (a weekly serial)
True Crime Monthly
Private Eye
Fibs About M.E. Smith by J. Cope (a pamphlet)

WRITERS

Claude Bessy
Burroughs

ART

Wyndham Lewis
Malcolm Allison
Virgin Prunes Manchester live, Manchester Dec. ’77

COMEDIANS

Lenny Bruce
Alan Pellay
Bernard Manning
All Ian Curtis derivatives

FILMS

Polanski’s Macbeth
Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety
Fellini’s Roma
The Man with X-Ray Eyes and The Lost Weekend starring Ray Milland
Visconti’s The Damned
Days of Wine and Roses with Jack Lemmon
Charlie Bubbles with Albert Finney

TV

Bluey
John Cleese adverts

MUSIC

Take No Prisoners—Lou Reed
Peter Hammill
Johnny Cash
The Panther Burns
God Save the Queen—The Sex Pistols
Raw and Alive—The Seeds
Pebbles Vol. 3—Various
16 Greatest Truck Driver Hits cassette
Radio City—Philip Johnson (cassette)
Der Plan
Alternative TV
Land of the Homo Jews and Hank Williams Was Queer, live—Fear (L.A. Group)
We’re Only In It for the Money—Mothers of Invention

 
MES on interviewers ‘waging war on you with your own words,’ after the jump…
 

All photos by Glen E. Friedman
 
A few months ago, I told you about the Cedar Crest Country Club and the importance it played within DC’s skate punk scene. The political climate of the capital in the early eighties inspired a revolution significant of the times, one that would continue to influence underground culture up until present day. And we have Ian Mackaye to thank for much of it.

The origins of skateboarding are rooted in Southern California surf, but many can say its attitude came from DC punk. Bands like Government Issue, Bad Brains, SOA, and of course Minor Threat, brought a much needed edge to the sport, substituting the sunny beaches with grit and concrete. The only issue was, in DC there was nowhere to skate. So, the punks had to improvise. Later in 1986, the ramp at Cedar Crest Country Club opened, a steel halfpipe oasis just an hour outside the city.

In October 1983, Ian MacKaye, founder of Dischord Records and frontman of Minor Threat, Fugazi, Embrace, and Teen Idles, penned a “scene report” for skateboarding magazine, Thrasher. The article, set to describe the skate vibe of the nation’s capital, characterizes Ian not as a hardcore punk legend, but rather as a DC kid who lives to skateboard. The young MacKaye was a member of ragtag boarding crew Team Sahara, along with another punk forefather, Henry Garfield (now known as “Henry Rollins”). Ian’s piece is a nice little snapshot of the spirit of skate culture during the era; his feature goes on to describe the team’s favorite ramps, a legendary wipeout by Rollins, their first empty pool, and an infamous team session at the Annandale halfpipe. Also in the issue is a photo spread of vertical sequences, a story on a Swedish skate camp, competitions in Del Mar and Oceanside, and a music piece on a punk band called The Faction.

Read Ian MacKaye’s article in Thrasher magazine, along with a complete transcript below:
 

 
Much more after the jump…

 
Harrison Ford wanted his character, Han Solo, to die in Return of the Jedi. Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan agreed. Kasdan thought Solo’s death would freak out the audience and make ‘em appreciate no one was safe. George Lucas nixed the idea. Lucas wanted Return of the Jedi to deliver a huge payload from merchandising and as Ford later explained, “George didn’t think there was any future in dead Han toys.”

Merchandising was certainly one influence in making of Return of the Jedi. Stars Wars merchandise had given Lucas a “Golden Ticket” and he was determined to use it to get everything he wanted. Lucas had ambitions to use this money to fund his dream of an independent studio, Skywalker Ranch. It’s long been discussed by fans as to just how much Lucas changed things to help him achieve his ambitions. Keeping Solo alive was one. Changing the Ewoks from butt-ugly lizards to cutesy teddy bears was another. As were the multiple feel-good endings—something probably inspired by the double-ending of Oscar-winner Chariots of Fire. At one point in its development, Return of the Jedi closed on Luke Skywalker wandering off into the sunset like a war-weary samurai. In another, he turned to the Dark Side after the death of his father Darth Vader. These were a bit too downbeat for Lucas who wanted to make a “kid’s film.”

Aside from the merchandising and “Nub Yub,” Lucas had some far-out suggestions for the film’s director. He originally wanted Steven Spielberg, which is understandable, but then he offered the film to David Lynch and then David Cronenberg which would have been pretty awesome if one or the other had signed-up. They both turned the offer down. It was eventually given to BBC TV director Richard Marquand to helm, as Lucas wanted a safe pair of hands as he thought movie-making really happened in the cutting-room. It’s also been long rumored Marquand didn’t direct all of the film as he had a difficult relationship with the cast.

Return of the Jedi merchandise made Lucas gazillions. It may not be the best of the first three Star Wars movies made but it is a damned sight better than some of those that were made afterward.

As any fule no, during a movie’s production, make-up and wardrobe take Polaroids of cast members in their different costumes and slap to ensure continuity. Here’s a little collection of continuity Polaroids featuring Luke, Han, Princess Leia, and co.
 

 

 
More on-set Polaroids, after the jump…