El Bandito Jalapeno con El Accesorio Prominente, and other Taqueria Folk Art in San Francisco

Walking along Mission Street in San Francisco on a recent afternoon, I did a serious double-take while passing by a colorful taqueria.
Visible through the open door of El Gran Taco Loco is this ▼ memorable image, painted on the wall...

Wow. So many questions.
Not just the jalapeno's 'stem', but the taco's eyeglasses, the gun - -
- - What exactly are we witness to in this scene?

Immediately I cursed myself for not having my camera with me.
Thinking about it this morning, I decided that others before me must have documented this fascinating piece of artwork.
- - And sure enough, that's just how amazing the internet is.

- Click here for another view of the above image. Larger, slightly different angle. (Source)

All of the images in this post come from the home page of Burritoeater.com, a site providing a valuable public service, having reviewed (and "mustache-rated") over 725 burritos (so far) all around the City and County of San Francisco, California.











I loves me a good burrito AND being transfixed by art, so clearly, there's much to explore...

(click on images to enlarge in a new window)

(link:) 'I Love Ethel' - A trove of scrapbook photos, memorabilia and other treasures from the estate of Vivian Vance

Follow link to read an article that ran last week in SF Gate:

"I Love Ethel - A Vivian Vance Archive Uncovered"

The photos posted here are taken from the large online gallery linked to the article.

Writer Bob Bragman's column, The Collective Mind is a regular feature geared to
Bay Area antique hunters and anyone who enjoys a good find.

In this installment, Bragman tells an interesting and circuitous tale of an antique dealer friend's connection to
New York publisher John Dodds, the husband of actress Vivian Vance, and of various items from the Vance/Dodds estate that were passed along after Dodds' death in 1986.

Furniture, artwork, and a scrapbook filled with clippings and personal photographs taken from various points in Vance's life and career - - all steeped in showbiz history.

Also included (and excerpted) is the manuscript for Viv's unpublished autobiography, including tales of troubled portions of her life and rumors about the nature of her relationship with co-star Lucille Ball.

Fascinating and well worth a look. Check it out!

(Big thanks to Joe Sixpack for the link)

Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 10/23/09

Hello again!
Yes, months have passed and there has been not a peep from this blog, and it's been many more months since I've posted any sort of regular 'Reasons To Be Cheerful' entry.

Simply put, things haven't been cheerful.
Mostly things have been difficult, mostly in the same ways they've been difficult for mostly everyone everywhere.
Perhaps you've noticed these things.

Personally, I hate reading blogs with excuses, so for me it's been easier to say nothing.

(Above: 'This Is Not A Peep'▲ found in the flickr stream of Coyote Crossing, via Aristocob)

Thanks to everyone who has written, whether wondering about my whereabouts, expressing concern or wishing well.

While all my stuff continues to sit boxed up in storage hundreds of miles away, for the forseeable future it seems the only stuff I can enjoy sharing with you on this blog are things I've bumped into recently, and stuff I can point you towards that I've seen on the interwebs.

But it's still great fun to share, so let's get to it!

1. Comic Soupy Sales crosses the finish line at age 83. Bon Voyage Soup!

- Follow link to the New York Times obituary.

At right is the cover image from an LP I had as a little kid, one that I played over and over again on my little variable-speed portable phonograph, although I'd never seen the TV show.

I'd never caught Soupy's schtick with Pookie or White Fang or the rest of his puppet friends, but was still fascinated and entertained.

- Follow another link to a nifty collection of Soupy Sales Memorabilia.

And so on to fashion - -

2. Perhaps photos of 'Woolies' have already found their way to you?

It was news to me, and to a friend who passed them along to me. She says she was innocently googling for information on knitting with wool and came across photos of wool fetishists in various parts of the world.

These photos are from a French fetishists forum (Not quite safe for work), as featured at Izismile.Com.

Whatever makes you happy is fine with me, but my first reaction was to naively wonder how long I could be able stand the heat and the itchiness - -

- - followed by wondering about how soon a fully wool body-suit would start to stink, how you deal with stains and are they machine washable.

Too practical, I know... I've heard it before...
























3. And then there are the average people we see around us everyday as we set about our erranding...

The administrators at People of Walmart.Com are quick to stress that their site is not affiliated with Walmart.

We'll see how long that lasts as they continue this fascinating cultural anthropology project.

Folks from all over the U.S. are sending in photos they've taken of assorted "Wal-Creatures" they've encountered in the wild.

I'm sure I'd enjoy wandering the site more if the captions included for the photos weren't often so mean-spirited, but - -

- - even so...







... It can be...







... awfully...








... danged...







... difficult...







... to look away.





Compelling and important evidence!

Head over to
People of Walmart.Com and see for yourself.

4. Speaking of the rich pageantry of fancies and foibles found surrounding the human animal, the new Coen Brothers movie has opened.

Once again they've provided that brilliant balance of great story and visuals, superb casting and perfect left-field unpredictability that I always hope for in their films.

I'm so pleased that I managed to see 'A Serious Man' before I'd heard a thing about it.
No reviews, no synopsis, no mention of who was in it.

It won't happen very often, but I think that for most films (good, bad or indifferent) entering a theater without a clue is the best way to go, if you can possibly manage it.

Probably it helps if you have a good track record with the filmmakers.

As with other flicks from the Coens, 'A Serious Man' includes an interesting soundtrack with some note-worthy recordings.

It makes great use of several cuts from Jefferson Airplane's 'Surrealistic Pillow' album and a couple of other choice bits of '60s psychedelia, but the biggest surprise is a beautifully haunting vintage vocal piece sung in Yiddish by operatic baritone Sidor Belarsky.
◀

- Listen to Sidor Belarsky's 'Dem Milners Trern'
('The Miller's Tears') (click on link)

This film may not do for Mr. Belarsky and Yiddish Folk, Cantorial and Art Song what 'Oh Brother, Where Art Thou' did for Ralph Stanley and Bluegrass, but still it's always nice to see a little spotlight land on an artist that's off of most people's radar.

Follow these links for more:
- A nice little article from the San Francisco Examiner about Belarski (who died in 1975), his long and illustrious career, and his daughter's efforts to perpetuate his music.

- The Man & His Music, a tribute site.

- A Yiddish music archive, featuring mp3 download links for several of Sidor Belarsky's 78 RPM recordings.

- 'Dem Milners Trern' leads off Belarsky's LP 'Jewish Melodies', streaming in it's entirety on a page at Florida Atlantic University's Judaica Sound Archives.
Further investigation shows that 20 other Sidor Belarsky records may be heard there, in addition to over 8000 songs by dozens of other performers ranging not just from Jewish religious music and folk song, but klezmer, children's music, comedy records and more.

5. Speaking of vintage tuneage rediscovered, it's been out for a few months now, but I still can't stop listening to
Loudon Wainwright III's High Wide & Handsome -
The Charlie Poole Project.

- - Or trying to recommend it to people. (Thanks again to my pal Joe Sixpack for turning me on to it!)

From the website: "Loudon Wainwright III revisits the life, times, and recorded legacy of legendary singer and banjo picker Charlie Poole (1892-1931). ▼

"A grand gathering of songs both old and original..."

So not merely a collection of cover tunes, the 2-disc set also mingles in some new songs by Wainwright telling tales about the colorful life of Poole, as performed by Loudon and various musical friends and family members - - several assorted Wainwrights and Roches, Chris Thile of Nickel Creek and Geoff Muldaur from the old Kweskin Jug Band.

Some of LW3's fans may argue that it's not what they expected from him, but the whole project reeks of 'labor of love', and he's the perfect one to channel the spirit of a previous rowdy fellow troubadour.
Check it out!

- - And finally, a different stripe of musical archaeology, but nonetheless esoteric...

6. The lyrics to the theme from 'Mission Impossible'.

A little while back I was googling about while trying to remember obscure lyrics I'd heard to some old TV theme song or another, and found the best thing I could have hoped for;

'Seldom-Heard TV Theme Lyrics' posted at You Don't Have To Visit This Blog.

A 2006 post, and it looks like the blog may be dormant (a lot of that going around), but as of this writing, the download links are still active for a great mix of old TV themes - - most of which you never realized ever had lyrics.

The mix runs mostly to the 1960's and 70's, with a few more contemporary renditions or parodies thrown in.

In many cases, these television themes only had lyrics after the fact, a bit of padding on a record release trying to capitalize on a show's popularity - - Or perhaps adding extra verses to the short and familiar version sung on TV.

In some cases there had been lyrics all along, written for contractual or copyright reasons that were never used.
Usually it was the right choice, especially when the themes to many action series were inexplicably forced into the role of love songs when given the vocal treatment.

I urge you to investigate this group of tunes, and to try to keep your jaw off the floor while absorbing the lyrics to The 'Hogan's Heroes' March or 'The Odd Couple', or while listening to Sammy Davis, Jr. sing the theme from 'Hawaii Five-O'.








One oddball selection that's missing from the 'Seldom-Heard TV Theme Lyrics' mix is the amazing and twisted vocal rendition of the Mission: Impossible theme, performed by The Kane Triplets, a sister act popular in Vegas clubs and on The Ed Sullivan show in the 1960s.
Not sure when or how the vocal interpretation of composer Lalo Schifrin's familiar theme song came about, but the result needs to be heard.



- Listen to The Kane Triplets sing the 'Theme from Mission Impossible' at the Kane Triplets MySpace page, at the Kane Triplets website, or by clicking here.

The lyrics cruise past at a speedy clip, so you'll need to listen close to catch them all.

Looking around the web, it seems that most previous attempts to list these lyrics have either disappeared or were incorrect, so please allow me my attempt to keep them alive a little longer...

- 'Theme from Mission Impossible'

(verse 1)
Fly away
Disappear
I'll be there
Waiting

Run high
Run low
Don't stop
Go no matter where
You are bound
I'm around
Waiting

Hypnotized
On a string
Following
Wanting

Lead me there
Anywhere
I don't care
Cannot stop
And I won't stop
Till you're mine

(bridge)
I keep on dreaming of you
No doubt about it
You took my head and made it spin
Somewhere it's never been
I'm in the desert
The middle of nowhere
With no shoes I calmly bear
Burning coals of fire
But when I get through
That's when I'll begin to
undertake a mission that's impossible

(Repeat verse 1)

(Verse 2)
Run
Don't try to hide
Don't stay beside
I'm gonna get you

Get on a plane
Go far away
But any day
I'm gonna get you

Don't be afraid
If you may find
I'm on your mind
Don't try to fight it

Love's
A waiting fuse
You can't refuse
You're gonna light it

(outro)
Fly away
Disappear
I'll be there
Waiting

No matter where
You are bound
I'm around
Waiting

Reasons To Be Cheerful: Isabel Samaras

It was in a previous 'Reasons To Be Cheerful' post, a little over a year ago, that I happily reported that I'd found a new website for artist Isabel Samaras.

- That post mentioned how the various mythologies at play in her paintings had been changing in recent years; It also displayed a few examples, provided links to more, and excitedly mentioned that a book collecting her work was being planned. (Follow link)

Now here we are, Spring of '09, and I'm excited to have received word of an Isabel Samaras double-whammy in the offing...

◀Her long-awaited monograph from Chronicle Books, 'On Tender Hooks: The Art of Isabel Samaras' is due to make its appearance any day now, and looks lovely.

Chronicle is also simultaneously releasing a fancy limited edition of the book that's packaged with a print, and a handy paperback book of 30 Samaras postcards, which will surely feature some of her earlier 'classical' riffs on pop-culture icons.


But wait! There's more - -


A new series of Isabel Samaras paintings will be unveiled in a few weeks in
San Francisco!

- Into The Woodz: New Works by Isabel Samaras will show at The Shooting Gallery, 839 Larkin Street in San Francisco, from 5/9/2009 - 6/4/2009.

◀ The new paintings take the childrens classic 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', and re-works it as a more contemporary romantic tale.

In a preview posting at her blog, i feel it too, Isabel gives some details:

"When I started working on the paintings for this show I was thinking about the Princess culture being sold to little girls – how your highest aspiration is to be rescued, married off and whisked away to a far off castle.

"But what happened to the girl who didn’t hook up with a Prince, who stayed in the woods?

"I wanted to explore that story, so for this show I picked Goldilocks, and as I so often do I created my own version of a happier ending — that the moment when she and Baby Bear lay eyes on each other it was love at first sight. (Goldy has definitely gone to the bears.)

"In my imagination the girl who stayed in the woods got to find herself after she got lost — she didn’t trade her identity in for a tiara, and she found true love (because love conquers all, even inter-species romance)."


- Read more of Isabel's thoughts about these paintings and sneak a few further peeks of them at her blog.

- Read more about the gallery show at Happenstand and at Juxtapoz.

A recent visit to Prehistoric Gardens (flickr link)

- Please follow link to my flickr set: 'Prehistoric Gardens, 3.29.09'
(29 photos)

Prehistoric Gardens is a roadside tourist attraction nestled in lush rainforest next to
U.S. 101 on the Oregon Coast Highway,
just a few miles south of the small town of
Port Orford and Humbug Mountain State Park, not quite 50 miles north of the California border.

Since 1953, visitors here have wandered among an assortment of full-sized dinosaur statues that look quite at home in this primeval paradise.

I was a toddler when my folks first brought me by, one Summer vacation en route to Grandma's house, long, long ago.

My innate love for 'dinosaur stuff' was fostered by further visits over the years, in an age when there was much less fodder available for the young dino-enthusiast.

Since the onset of my adult (?) years (also long ago), visits to Prehistoric Gardens have become much less frequent.
Twice a decade, maybe, if I'm lucky.

For me, it's still a thrilling and magical place.

The dinosaurs are like old friends, and it's always great to check in with them again, to see how they've changed (and so, how I've also changed) and to see what remains just the same.

Yes, the dinosaurs are still the big draw, but what really makes the place precious to me (and many others,
I'm sure) is the verdant setting.
All the best shades of Oregonian green, soft coastal air, and a spectacular array of rich and thriving foliage. At its very least, a perfect tonic for the road-weary traveler.

Things were quiet and soggy there during this most recent trip through. I was excited to see some of the dinosaurs dressed in new colors since my last visit.
As I once again walked around and said hello and grinned and breathed, I once again shot a batch of photos. I was very aware that I was likely shooting new versions of the same snapshots I'd taken several times before, so I tried to concentrate just a wee bit more upon the setting and not merely the subjects.

- Please follow link to my flickr set:
'Prehistoric Gardens, 3.29.09'

Hope you enjoy.


A few links for your further investigation:
- Also on flickr, TimSpfd's Prehistoric Gardens photo set has splendid shots of the park from 2002, featuring much better views of the dinosaurs than I've provided here, sporting that previous round of 'extreme' paint jobs. He also provides further PG flickr links of interest.

- Mary H's Prehistoric Gardens Fansite has some great pictures that go back further still to even earlier color schemes.

- Prehistoric Gardens listed at
Roadside Oddities and at
Roadside America.Com.

Scopitones in Archie comics, 1965

I've been working on updating some of the previously posted Archie Comics-related material I've gathered here on the blog, adding some more examples of how those comic books mirrored various aspects of 1960s and '70s pop culture.

Here's a little preview
(more below), one that might benefit from just a little background info...



Scopitones were the name of one variety of 'film jukebox' that first appeared in the early 1960s. ▶

It's also the name of the films themselves, which were precursors to today's music videos.

They were popular in Europe and in the U.S. throughout the sixties, and on the wane by the seventies.

Scopitones weren't part of my experience at that time, but I've been a big fan of Scopitones.Com (sister site to Bedazzled!) for several years.

- Follow the link to Scopitones.Com NOW and watch some fascinating and groovy musical performances!

Betty and Veronica's brief interlude below at Pop's Chok'lit Shoppe occured in
Archie's Joke Book #93 (1965).

(Click on image to enlarge in a
new window) ▼












































- Follow link to another informative site,
Scopitone Archive,
for a bit more history and background.

'Strictly Personal' illustrations by Charles Rodrigues (1964) - - Plus: The tawdry world of Leo Guild

Like many, it was in the 1970s that I first took notice of cartoonist Charles Rodrigues' work.

It was for his strip 'The Aesop Brothers, Siamese Twins', which ran regularly in the comics pages of National Lampoon.

That would always remain my personal association with his name and his artwork, though over the years I'd discover that it had been just one publication among several to print his cartoons on a regular basis.

Rodrigues was born on September 9th, 1926, was of Portuguese heritage, and lived most of his life in rural Massachusetts.

After his service with the Navy in WWII, he married and raised a family.

His long affiliation with the magazine Stereo Review (now called 'Sound & Vision') began with its first issue in
February of 1958 (when it was called 'Hi-Fi and Music Review', later 'HiFi Review' and then 'HiFi/Stereo Review', until 1968 when the name settled to 'Stereo Review').

His cartoons for that magazine were geared for audiophiles, and the humor would often (but not always) depend on a reader's knowledge of audio equipment.

Rodrigues remained a regular contributor there for decades, and drew similarly-themed Ham and CB Radio-centric cartoons for 'Electronics Illustrated' magazine in the '60s and '70s.

In addition to the Lampoon and occasional appearances in Playboy and magazines like Look (see below) and others, his gag cartoons also ran regularly in Cracked Magazine for many years.

He was also a syndicated newspaper cartoonist, with two long-running strips; 'Charlie' (described as being like a gloomier 'Ziggy') and 'Casey The Cop' ▼.

(Follow this link for another example of the 'Casey' strip.)

Charles Rodrigues died at the age of 77 on June 14, 2004, following a brief illness.

The tone of his cartoons (if not the artistic style) was often similar in dark temperament to cartoonists like Charles Addams or Virgil Partch or his contemporary, Gahan Wilson.

Though the work of Rodrigues was seldom overtly macabre, certainly within the pages of
National Lampoon he more than adequately portrayed 'taboo' subjects with regularity, to the point that in my own case it was almost more shocking (having first associated him with NatLamp) to discover how relatively tame and genteel his cartoons could be that appeared elsewhere.

In describing Rodrigues in his book 'A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever', author Josh Karp wrote:

"Charles Rodrigues was a devout Catholic who despised humor of a blasphemous or sexual
nature yet thought nothing of submiting thick, fuzzy cartoons that made humor out of the handicapped, epileptics and dwarfs as they tried to use the toilet or perform other everyday activities."

Collected here are a few Rodrigues illustrations from an old paperback, 'Strictly Personal' - - A "hilarious" collection of (supposedly authentic) newspaper 'personals column' ads.

The book was first published in 1964, and its tendency towards the mildly risqué fit right in with many of the slightly racy humor and cartoon paperbacks printed at the time by Fawcett's Gold Medal Books.










(click on images to ENLARGE
in a new window)
















































































































































































































(click on images to ENLARGE in a new window)

Below, ▼ two one-panel Rodrigues cartoons that appeared in Look Magazine in 1968.






- And one more 'Stereo Review' panel (date unknown).
◀


















ADDENDUM, 1.13.09: Check out some more Charles Rodrigues cartoons from a 1966 paperback collection, 'Spitting On The Sheriff And Other Diversions' in a follow-up post!


- - Finally, a bit of tangential info with regard to the 'Strictly Personal' book.

The 'compiler/editor' was Leo Guild, a name that may be familiar to readers of trash fiction and old
'tell-all' celebrity biographies of questionable authenticity.

Guild had been a publicist for Warner Bros. beginning in the 1940s, had a long-running column in
The Hollywood Reporter, wrote Radio and TV scripts, and was occasionally credited as a Hollywood Producer.

Some time in the late '40s he began authoring books, mostly pulp fiction, but also celebrity biographies, gambling guides, 'bachelor' joke books and others, well into the 1970s.

He received perhaps his best credits for the bio 'Zanuck: Hollywood's Last Tycoon', while his work 'The Fatty Arbuckle Case' is viewed as being largely embellished fiction.


A few other titles by Leo Guild - -

-Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman
(by Hedy Lamarr and Leo Guild)

- Hollywood Screwballs

- Confidential Sex Survey

- What Are The Odds (follow link for a review at
Your Neighborhood Librarian)

- Cons and Lovers

- Mistress of Cuba (as Rita Benuto)

- The Girl Who Loved Black: White Girls Who Love Black Pimps,
the True Story of One Who Did

- Street of Ho's

- Black Bait: the True Story of Lila, a Foxy, Fast
Race Track Swinger

- Black Streets of Oakland

- The Senator's Whore

- I Was Kidnapped by Idi Amin










Leo Guild's masterpiece (or his 'Plan 9', if you will) would appear to be his 1972 novel 'The Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman', described as "...the most craptastically awful book ever written".

A 2007 article in Seattle's The Stranger supplied an overview of Guild's career, and a description of this novel.

- Follow link to 'The Worst Pulp Novelist Ever: Remembering Leo Guild'

Author Paul Collins followed this piece with some further elaboration at his Weekend Stubble blog.
- Click over to 'King Hack'.

- As if that weren't sufficient, you can read a further review of 'The Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman' over at The Groovy Age of Horror.

Leo Guild and Charles Rodrigues' book 'Strictly Personal' was released early in 1964.
When the Fall TV season began that year, Leo Guild received writer's credit for the new CBS sitcom
'My Living Doll', though essentially all he'd provided was the idea.

The program starred Bob Cummings as a psychologist given the task of caring for Rhoda, a robot fashioned to look like a real human female, played by Julie Newmar.

The series was basically a variation on the formula CBS had used the year before with their show 'My Favorite Martian', though capable of employing saucier situations than might be attainable with Ray Walston.

- Follow link to one of several video clips available at YouTube.

'My Living Doll' lasted only one season, though it did leave us with the phrase 'Does not compute'.

The following year, NBC countered with 'I Dream of Jeannie'.