IT COMES TO LIFE!

Sadly, it's the seventh and final day of the Boris Karloff Blogathon over at Frankensteinia. The LGA's last contribution organically morphed into a culmination of the most talented people in my world--Jen Lobo, J. Mendez, and of course, Boris Karloff.

Illustrator Jen Lobo took it  upon herself to "give J. Mendez the day off" by inviting Karloff's Frankenstein into her natural world with The Softer Side of Boris. Her amazing contribution was a complete surprise for us and we couldn't be more in awe of Karloff in her hands.

J. Mendez rounded out his fourth and final contribution by creating a pop art collage of Karloff's Mummy. Karloff as Ardath Bey studies his script for The Mummy while his chilling character and alter-ego Im-Ho-Tep looms above him.

Being a part of the blogathon has been so great! Thanks to Pierre at Frankensteinia for putting it all together.

FRIENDLY BORIS

There's something about monsters in daytime settings that I just adore. That's why this photo of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, hanging out on the sunny shore of a lake in the middle of the afternoon was a no-brainer. Thanks again to J. Mendez for helping complete the picture.

SILENT BORIS

Here's LGA's second installment of Boris Karloff affection by J. Mendez. We present to you a silent and sinister-appearing Karloff, complete with top hat, dapper timepiece and classy cane behind a wall of post-modern polka-dots. Enjoy!

FRANKEN-BORIS

Thanks to J. Mendez at Where Next? for putting together this amazing graphic in honor of Boris Karloff's 122nd birthday. There is much more to come from LGA for Frankensteinia's Boris Karloff Blogathon. And be sure to check out all of the other awesome entries!

Scar Stuff

While you're patiently waiting for LGA's latest contribution to the Boris Karloff Blogathon, check out this monstrous Halloween/spook archive. Jason of Scar Stuff, bless him, wherever he is, has assembled the most amazing historical record on 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond Halloween, scary spoken word and monster memorabilia. That's him, below.

His blog is also a treasure trove of punk fliers, Halloween safety videos, and loads of rare MP3s I assume he has recorded from his own vinyl collection. He even throws in two of his personal mixes, complete with tracks from Roky Erickson, The Cramps, Misfits and '60s ghoul groups, and  more, cut up with vintage Halloween tracks and sound effects. NOTE: not corny. Take my word for it and download them both before the links disappear. Who are you, Jason?

And check back later today for LGA's tribute to Boris Karloff!

Blogging for Boris Karloff

I am pleased to announce that The Ladies and Gents Auxiliary--in conjunction with the amazing people at Frankensteinia--will be participating in the Boris Karloff Blogathon, taking place November 23-29, 2009. There are more than 100 participants, spanning the Internet realms of Tumblr, Blogger, Word Press, Twitter, and beyond.

Help Frankensteinia and hundreds of others celebrate the 122nd birthday of this so-deserved master of horror and sign up your own blog! And don't you dare forget to hit us back next week...

Funeral Parade of Roses

This dark '60s Japanese film is considered to be the direct inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange."

Pop Artifact

John Wilcock is one of the originators of Village Voice Media and later Interview magazine, alongside Andy Warhol. Today he's a snarky, old relic from the good ol' days of journalism, holed up in his apartment/zine factory in Ojai, California.

Thanks to my time spent at the Utne Reader, I was fortunate enough to become acquainted with John's current monthly zine masterpiece, The Ojai Orange, on the regular. Think of your 5th grade nephew's Social Studies collage project about the seven continents meets Black Dice psychedelic art direction, and you can conjure the image of one of these amazing rags. To say the least, Wilcock still possesses a fresh take on independent publishing--printing each and every copy from his nifty little ink jet printer for the past several years.

Wilcock also wrote quite the seemingly-salacious book about Warhol back in the days before Interview--The Auto-Biography & Sex Life of Andy Warhol, by John Wilcock and a cast of thousands. Wilcock considered himself an expert of sorts on Warhol, due to the sheer amount of time he spent with him. Its first edition copy alone can fetch $350. Oh, and there was no "sex" in it.

"Andy himself was ever an enigma, always friendly, but never volunteering anything. I quickly learned that although he loved to have everybody telling him things he was unwilling, or perhaps unable, to answer direct questions. He’d “hmm” and “hah,” and somehow end up saying nothing at all. So prudence dictated that one didn’t ask questions, but try to figure out what was going on.

"Understandably, this prompted endless conversations away from the Factory. Why, for example, did he wear a wig? “When you’ve got gray hair,” he’d once said, “every move you make seems ‘young’ and ‘spry’ instead of being normally active. It’s like you’re getting a new talent. So I dyed my hair gray when I was about twenty three or twenty four.” Okay, but why the wig? I never dared to ask. Keeping my eyes open and my mouth shut, I tried to figure things out for myself."

--John Wilcock

I haven't come across many stories about him, other than one AMAZING feature by a local Ventura journalist, who was understandably delighted to find Wilcock's own factory operating right in his backyard.

>>Order a personal subscription to The Ojai Orange or check out Wilcock's own autobiography, Manhattan Memories: An autobiography of John Wilcock in 25 installments, which reads like a series of essays, all online. Oh, and he's also got his own TV show on public access. He is a most fascinating character.

Get Rich Quick

Andy Warhol's "200 One Dollar Bills" was auctioned off for a cool $43.8 million yesterday. What a steal.

WR: Mysteries of the Organism

Sex and communism, circa 1971, courtesy of Yugoslavian director Dusan Makaveje. There's a great piece in The Nation on why Makaveje became one of the most revered and then forgotten avant garde filmmakers in Eastern European cinema. Here's a hint--anti-authority movies about free love and funny fascism didn't go over too well in the Soviet bloc.