A Valentine’s Day card designed by Dr. Jose of Camera Viscera based on the 1990 flick, ‘Frankenhooker.’
 
Though I hate to admit it, I am, in fact, a grownup. I also happen to know most adults are not in the habit of sending out Valentine’s Day cards, though you would be hard-pressed to believe this was the case after a quick trip down the greeting-card aisle of any local drugstore this time of year. I, however, like to throw a monkey wrench of sorts into events such as Valentine’s Day by breaking the rules and doing something different—and I’m always on the lookout for new ideas. Like the “Vile Valentines” I recently came across while in search of amusing anti-Valentine’s Day inspiration.

Dr. Jose, the curator and owner of website Camera Viscera started making the “Vile Valentines” featured in this post in 2015, and they were quite the hit with horror fans. Dr. Jose’s Valentines feature brightly colored images from classic horror slashers like My Bloody Valentine (1981), and campy horror flicks such as Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), and 1990’s Frankenhooker. The best thing about Dr. Jose’s cards is they have been provided to all us sick freaks for FREE. All you have to do is click here, or here, select the card you want to print and voilà! You now have your very own Vile Valentine to give to the one you love (or like just a little). I’ve posted images of Dr. Jose’s horrifying messages of love below—some are slightly NSFW.
 

A Valentine based on the 1986 film starring Jeff Goldblum, ‘The Fly.’
 

A Valentine featuring a creepy image of actor Donald Sutherland from the 1978 film ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’
 

Actress Mia Farrow on a Valentine homaging the 1968 film ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’
 
More Vile Valentines, after the jump…

 
Jesus of Nazareth, known in certain circles as “Christ” and regarded among members of that fellowship as the spiritual redeemer of humanity, has a long-standing reputation as a worker of miracles. Supernatural interventions attributed to him include the transformation of matter, healing, walking on water, the resurrection of the dead, and even surviving his own execution.

But all of that was a very long time ago, and in more recent years, this allegedly supernatural figure seems to have limited his miraculous activities to causing his image to appear in various foods. And a dog’s asshole. While not unimpressive, these miracles seem rather prosaic under the long shadow cast by his divine reputation, which prompts one to wonder if that reputation isn’t perhaps a tad exaggerated? But such sightings have become sufficiently infamous that toasters and sandwich presses are available for faithful who don’t wish to wait for a miracle to be be touched by His bready visage.

And now, it seems, that this Jesus fellow has been joined by some illustrious company.

The iconic American musician and composer Frank Vincent Zappa has few miracles attributed to him in his lifetime, though he arguably cheated death in 1971. Death, as it is wont to do, finally claimed its victory over Zappa in 1993, but unlike Jesus, he has made no credibly documented miraculous reappearances—until now, in an Alabama shitter. A Fairhope, Alabama resident who boasts the wonderful name Patrick Mutual made a public Facebook post last week offering incontrovertible photographic proof of his father’s discovery of a Frank Zappa miracle bathroom doorknob.
 

 

 

 

 
As is clear if you read the post, Mr. Mutual is attempting to sell the doorknob for a hefty premium, but though the FB post states a $30K asking price, the actual eBay listing sports a Buy It Now price of only $25,000 plus $3.64 shipping. (Dangerous Minds officially loves anyone who’d sell a doorknob for 25K and still add a shipping charge.) As this is the only big ticket Zappa-related sale we know of in the last couple years that doesn’t benefit the massively depressing Zappa Family Trust, and because he’s committed 20% of the final sale price to benefit African Children’s Charities, we wish Mutual the best of luck in finding a buyer.
 

 
Much worldly love to Matt Verba for hipping us to this religious experience.
 

Queen hanging out on the tennis court at Ridge Farm with a couple of gal pals in 1975.
 
Prior to heading into the studio to record their fourth album, A Night at the Opera, in 1975, Queen would spend time at Ridge Farm rehearsing in a barn. The band was there for around a month, and according to drummer Roger Taylor, they would spend their downtime swimming in the pool on the property, playing tennis and billiards, as well as hitting up The Royal Oak Pub down the road. During their time in the barn, as Taylor recalls, they started to lay the groundwork for their future titanic hit, “Bohemian Rhapsody.” No wonder the barn was quickly converted into an actual working studio later that year—it had been blessed with magical Queen dust.

Frank Andrews, a lighting technician who toured extensively with Queen and The Rolling Stones saw the writing on the wall, so he took on the task of converting the barn (which resided on property owned by his parents) into a studio. Here’s Andrews remembering the summer of 1975 he spent with Queen:

“Queen came here in our first year, as I had toured with them in Europe and Scandinavia. They were relatively unknown at that stage, and that was just at the point where it took off for them. They liked it here as they could all focus on what they were doing, and all live together. There was a family atmosphere, and the band would stroll around and play with the dog we had at the time. Queen played a lot of tennis too, and I remember Freddie, in particular, was very good.”

During its 25-year history, Ridge Farm Studio attracted groups and artists like Thin Lizzy, The Slits, Roxy Music, Peter Gabriel, Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Smiths. Before its next transformation which turned it into a popular wedding venue (as it is to this day), the Joe Jackson Band would be the very last to record material for their 2003 album Volume 4 in the former barn. Now that we have our musical history lesson out of the way for today, let’s get to checking out images of Queen hanging out playing tennis in their bellbottoms and shooting pool at a place which sounds like a summer camp for rock stars. Taylor’s fond memories of Ridge Farm sound a bit like he’s reminiscing about summer camp, doesn’t it? I mean, aside from the trips to the local pub and the lack of a lame archery range, you’d almost expect the boys to be writing home to mum requesting she forward some proper tea and biscuits along with her next letter. Awww. As a bonus, I’ve also slipped in some choice shots of a shirtless Freddie Mercury playing tennis in Ibiza—a place which was like a second home to him during the last decade of his life. Enjoy.
 

Brian May on the tennis court at Ridge Farm in his bellbottoms.
 

Roger Taylor strutting around the court in his bellbottoms.
 

John Deacon looking happy to be on the tennis court in his bellbottoms.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
Most young men in the sixties didn’t look like Charlie Manson in beads and a kaftan. Most wore button-down shirts, drainpipes, and sported short hair. Despite all those documentaries television likes to feed us (e.g. The Sixties), not everyone was at Woodstock. Not everyone was out of their tits on LSD. Not everyone looked like an unwashed extra from The Walking Dead. Most people looked normal. Lived average lives. Wore everyday clothes. It might be nice for the TV execs and the film studios and those with something to sell to make us all think kids in the sixties were far-out freaks who lived off a diet of mind-blowing drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll—certainly a few did and many of them were wannabe or fully-fledged rock stars—but most were like the young men in these photographs—straight, average, happy, and quite dull. Just like the rest of us.

I look at these pictures and see most of my wardrobe—the narrow lapels, the straight-leg pants, the white tees, and the plaid shirts. Denim and cheesecloth ain’t something for me. Indeed, most of these outfits wouldn’t look out of place today, though I’m fairly sure future generations will look back at this decade and believe all young men had man-buns, waxed their beards into novel designs, wore tartan waistcoats with striped shirts and polka-dot bow ties and were master artisans who knitted their own yoghurt.
 

 

 

 
More real-life fashions from the swinging sixties, after the jump…
 

A lovely Motörhead duvet featuring three images of Lemmy Kilmister’s unforgettable mug. 86 bucks. Get it here.
 
If you follow my posts here on Dangerous Minds, then you know at times my thoughts are often occupied with all things heavy and metal. Any day I get to jaw about any of my personal headbanging heroes is a good fucking day not only for me but for all you DM readers still carrying a torch for the genre. For today’s post, I feel like I’ve found the “adult”(?) equivalent of a tricked-out teenage bedroom with rock posters wiping out any trace of wallpaper—duvet covers with prints of your favorite bands. Because of course, you want to go to bed with Motörhead, don’t you?

The boss duvets below feature artwork and images from a plethora of punks and a multitude of metalheads such as the Plasmatics, The Clash, The Cramps, Van Halen, King Diamond, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden and others too numerous to call out by name. I do feel compelled to note a duvet cover featuring an image of Nick Cave looking like a neon-colored Batman exists, and it is as excellent as it sounds. Most of the duvets can be had for less than 100 bucks (depending on the size) over on REDBUBBLE, and from the reviews, they all appear to be well worth the investment. Plus, I’m pretty sure a possible perk of owning one of these unique duvet covers just might lead to you getting lucky. (Or maybe not...) In most cases, the prints can be put on other items such as pillows and such because who really wants to grow up. Not me, that’s for sure.
 

Alice Cooper’s famous eyes on a duvet cover.
 

MANOWAR! The duvet cover.
 

Black Flag logo duvet.
 
More after the jump…

 
There have been plenty of songs written about cops, but what about those written by cops?

Meet Blue Thunder, the crime fighting rock and roll band from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Formed in September 1991, Blue Thunder was comprised of four acting municipal police officers and one citizen volunteer from the Halifax Regional Police Department. Yes, they were real cops.

Over several years, the five-piece would play to over one hundred schools and local events in the Atlantic Canada region. As you may have guessed it, their mission was to warn the youth of the dangers of drugs and alcohol - with a rock ‘n’ roll twist! And believe me, if you saw five cops on stage singing about shooting up, you’d put the fucking needle down, too.

In June of 1995, Blue Thunder performed at the 21st G7 Summit in Nova Scotia. Known as the G20 Summit today, the conference brought together the leaders of the world’s richest industrialized countries. Being at the right place at the very right time, Blue Thunder performed at the expo finale to a crowd of 10,000 people. Sometime around then, the band gigged its way to the post-communist Republic of Slovakia for a concert that was the focus of a one hour special on the Associated Television Network.
 

 
I reached out to the Halifax Regional Police Department for more info and was connected with (retired) Constable Steve Saunders from Blue Thunder who wrote me with the following:

The band started in the early 1990s when drummer Darryl Lysens, a crime prevention member, became aware of a number of former musicians serving in the department and wanted to put something together for a multicultural dinner/concert.

Darryl had played in the 60s with a number of musicians prior to joining the police. Cedric Upshaw soon became the lead guitar and vocalist having played in bands in the 60s and 70s heavily influenced by the blues (great voice and guitar).

Ron Morgan, Dogmaster from Dartmouth Police, played guitar having a more jazz background with bass starting with a close friend of Daryl’s, Sandy Bryson (civilian) soon replaced by Ernie Retti, a staff member working out of the police garage and well known in the music circuit.

I have a long music and sporting background having played in bands for years and even joining a high school pit band for six years for their annual musical (also coaching the high school football team).

The band really took off for the first five years playing in middle schools, public concerts, a giant G7 (now G20) concert, the Nova Scotia Tattoo and travelling to the Republic Of Slovakia to introduce western policing to police and citizens.

After the jump, watch the Blue Thunder perform in all their law-enforcing glory…

Rob Halford and Freddie Mercury.
 

“I’ve always found it ironic that a certain aspect of gay culture has also chosen to dress this way. I’m not into that kind of thing though. I guess it’s whatever floats your boat y’know? I’m what you’d call a very vanilla kind of gay guy.”

—Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford on his fashion choices.

Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford is known for many things. Aside from being one of the greatest metal vocalists of all time, Halford’s cultivated image of head-to-toe leather and spikes is synonymous with heavy metal itself. In fact, when the band performed on Top of the Pops on January 25th, 1979, Halford’s badass bondage-style getup spread like wildfire across the world and would soon become the go-to look for headbangers. Another thing Halford is widely known for is his love of motorcycles and if you’ve seen Priest live, then perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to see Halford ride out on stage on one. Which brings me to another mythical story involving Halford and a man he refers to as his “ultimate hero,” Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury.
 

Rob Halford circa 1979/1980.
 
The year was 1980 and Queen had just released their eighth record The Game in June. Audiences went completely bananas for the album and showed a particular affinity for two songs you likely know all the words to, “Another One Bites the Dust,” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The band would later earn a reputation for releasing unique videos for their songs, and the video for “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” is no exception. In the video, Mercury is dressed up like an outlaw biker in a stage production of the 1961 film West Side Story complete with an authentic but stationary motorcycle which Mercury straddles along with his blonde video girlfriend. And Rob Halford was having none of it.

According to Halford, after he saw the video he went on BBC Radio 1 and challenged Mercury to a real “motorbike race.” I know I’m not going out on a limb saying if the event had actually transpired, it would have been one of the greatest moments in TV history. Sadly, Mercury never responded to Rob’s challenge. Here’s more from the Metal God who walks among us on that:

“I never heard back from him. Freddie is my ultimate hero. The closest I ever got to Freddie was in a gay bar in Athens on the way to Mykonos with some friends from London. We kind of glared at each other across the bar, in a kind of smiling, winking way. When we got to Mykonos, I was determined to track him down, but I couldn’t because he’d rented this huge yacht. It was festooned in pink balloons and it just kept sailing around the island.”

More after the jump…

 
Though it lasted for only two seasons and a total of 64 episodes between 1964 and 1966, The Addams Family has become such a staple of popular culture it’s reckoned that every day somewhere in the world an episode of the show is still being watched by fans old and new. Adapted from Charles Addams’ original comic strip in The New Yorker, The Addams Family shared the strange adventures of a kooky and macabre family headed-up by Gomez (John Astin) and Morticia Adams (Carolyn Jones), their daughter Wednesday (Lisa Loring), son Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax), Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan), Grandma (Blossom Rock), and, last but not least, the family butler Lurch (Ted Cassidy).

The Addams Family TV series was produced by Nat Perrin, a gag writer-cum-scriptwriter who had worked with the Marx Brothers. This might explain why Gomez had a touch of Groucho Marx about him. But it’s not Gomez I want to talk about. I want to share with you a small nugget of video Heaven featuring Ted Cassidy as Lurch singing (if that’s the right word) about a new dance craze he wants everyone to do called “The Lurch.”

Cassidy was a six-foot nine-inches tall actor whose stature meant he was usually cast as extraterrestrials, villains, or deeply menacing tough guys. You may recall the scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when Cassidy as a knife-wielding bad guy squared up to Paul Newman only to be righteously kicked in balls. But Cassidy was more than just a physical presence in feet and inches, his vocal skills led to him being regularly hired to voice numerous cartoon and TV series—including the narration and voice for TV’s The Incredible Hulk. He was adept at playing the organ and also co-wrote the movie The Harrad Experiment about a sexually liberated student campus directed by Ted Post. Though obviously more than capable of doing other things, Cassidy will always be best remembered for his performance as the cadaverous, monosyllabic, giant of a servant, Lurch.
 

A life mask of Ted Cassidy as Lurch made during the making of ‘The Addams Family.’
 
In October 1965, at the height of The Addams Family popularity on TV, Cassidy cashed-in on his fame as Lurch with a one-off single called (unsurprisingly) “The Lurch.” Intended to hit the Halloween market this novelty record written by Gary Paxton, who had previously produced “Alley-Oop” for the Hollywood Argyles in 1960 and “Monster Mash” for Bobby “Boris” Pickett in 1962.

Hear it, after the jump…

Instructions for the ‘Spank Your Blank Blank’ dance. The instructions came along with Chicago-based artist Morris Jefferson’s sole record of the same name from 1978.
 
I’ve always been a bit jealous of people blessed with the gift of being able to dance—if it were possible for a human to have four left feet, I would be that human. And if I do try to bust a move, it’s in the privacy of my own home with the shades drawn just in case. In other words, if you recall the infamous episode of Seinfeld “The Little Kicks” (Season eight, episode four) where Elaine shows off her dance moves, I make her look like fucking Baryshnikov. I do however love to watch practitioners of the art, as well as professionals, strut their stuff in films and I’m not ashamed to say I’ve seen the 1984 film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo more (a lot more) than once. So perhaps in an attempt to help myself as well as anyone else suffering from more than one left foot, today’s post features a large collection of instructions for various vintage dance moves from “The Watusi,” “The Shag,” “The Ska,” and, of course, the disco staple, “The Travolta Point.”

One of my favorite artifacts in this post are the instructions for the so-called “Spank Your Blank Blank” dance (pictured at the top of this post) which came along with Morris Jefferson’s only album of the same name released in 1978. Another gem is a sheet of instructions for “the Time Warp” which was a part of the 15th Anniversary CD UK Box Set for The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1989. Check them all out below.
 

“The Bug.”
 

Examples of four different dance moves; “Rowing the Boat,” “the Popeye,” “the Dean Martin,” and “the Dracula.”
 

“The Zulu Stomp.”
 
More smooth moves after the jump…

 
It’s one of the most indelible scenes from one of the most memorable and quotable cult films in cinema history: John Goodman as the unhinged blowhard Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski, scattering the ashes of his newly-deceased bowling teammate Donny, eulogizes his friend after spending countless years of his life constantly telling him to shut the fuck up. The ashes are in a Folgers coffee can because the cost of an urn was too dear, and Sobchak utterly ruins the simple, two-person funeral with a pointless detour into his own Vietnam war shell-shock and by scattering the ashes all over the funeral’s other guest, Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski.

It’s easy to imagine that at least some among the film’s fanatical devotees—self-identified as “Achievers” after a throwaway detail early in the film—have envisioned using a Folgers can as a final resting place in homage to that scene, and if you’ve ever gone to a bowling alley in a bathrobe and ordered a White Russian, I might be talking about YOU. Well, you’re in luck. Purveyors of gorgeous handmade cremation urns Memento Memorials have tracked down the period-correct cans and mismatched lids (Folgers has never used blue lids, the one in the film is almost certainly from a Maxwell House can) and paired them with pedestals made of bowling balls to create replica Big Lebowski urns.
 

 

 

While there are plenty of Folgers coffee cans to be had on the internet, the exact version of the coffee can used in the movie was made in the mid 90s and not in the kind of quantities that make it easy to come by.  The style itself can be found with some effort but nailing down the “For All Coffee Makers” version is even rarer. There are size variations and condition factors as well. As an extra kicker, the blue lid is from a Maxwell House tin from the same decade that is just as difficult to source.

There are times when we have to buy a group of unrelated coffee cans in order to get the one sweet prize within in order to say goodnight to one sweet prince. We will accept cans that are “Automatic Drip” (or other grind styles as we find them), cans that are unopened and still have what might be coffee in them. Sometimes a seller is wise to the rarity and possible end use as a Big Lebowski Urn and jacks up the price.

 
This is apparently a key detail.

Because Memento Memorials can only sporadically procure the extremely specific cans and lids required, these urns haven’t been available very often, so instead of selling them outright, they’ve taken to auctioning them to benefit the Prevent Cancer Foundation. This month, they’re auctioning three of them. The individual auctions run from January 9-13, 16-20, and 23-27.
 

 
More after the jump…