Starting In The Wrong Direction

 

This post is done in conjunction with the tape uploaded onto Mixcloud here. 

Starting In The Wrong Direction indeed. I made a lot of mixtapes growing up, and often forced them on my friends. Go ahead, ask 'em. I dare ya. CD burners weren't an affordable mass market thing until I graduated high school, and iPods probably only existed in William Gibson novels at that point, so tapes were the working man's (or high schooler's) mix medium of choice. I probably made a tape a week. It was like a compulsion. I guess it sort of still is, which might explain why I currently do my online radio show thing. When I look back, I realize there hasn't been a time–with the exception of my pre-teen years when I didn't really have access to music beyond what my parents listened to at home–when I didn't do this sort of thing. Even when I was a tyke in the 1980s I would set my little boom box next to the tv to record things like episodes of The Green Hornet and Batman, or when Superman II was the Sunday night movie, I made sure to turn the tv on and record the audio to tape (or at least as much of it that would record until the tape ran out) so I could listen to it after school the next day. Later I would do the same thing with Art Bell's Coast To Coast AM when I adopted severe insomnia in high school, and would then subsequently drive around my hometown in my 1987 GMC Jimmy, listening to the taped episode chunks. 

It's an illness.

First thing's first. Looking at what I was consuming at the time this was made, I see a lot of angsty white dudes. The emphasis is on dudes, because even though I was definitely listening to female artists at the time, this particular cassette is loaded up with dudes only. While not exclusively caucasian, the ratio is definitely in their favor. My tastes have changed and/or evolved over the years; and while I still listen to punk rock, I'm now definitely more interested in the formative stuff than the 1990s Epitaph/Fat Wreck version of the genre than I was then.

Second thing's second. The cover. Yes, it's a small child with a massive handgun. The child is me. I was three. This was in 1984. This is the environment I grew up in. This picture is still hanging in my parents' house for all to see if you want to stop in to take a peek. Word of warning, you may get shot if you do.  In case you are thinking it's a fun little Photoshop thingy I whipped up, I'll post the original below.

See! Told you. We have fun together, don't we?

When I was finally old enough to realize exactly what this was and who my parents were, and was able to question them about it, they assured me that the gun wasn't loaded at the time. I have to take their dubious word on that. Either way, the point had been missed entirely and that kind of illustrates our relationship from that point on.

Don't worry, I'll get back to the tape here in a sec. Gotta unpack some stuff first. Scroll ahead if you have to, I won't know the difference. If this isn't what you clicked through for, and want to tap out now, I completely understand.

I figure there are two paths my life could have taken, growing up in the environment that I did: either I could be the guy with the perpetual three day beard, wearing the same grubby baseball cap at all times except when in bed or the shower, working in a factory or warehouse (nothing against factory or warehouse workers), instantly set off or offended by anything I wasn't immediately familiar with and breathing heavily over a picture of Lauren Boebert; or, I would attain reading comprehension and find Joe Strummer and grow up to be a rational person. Not that there aren't perfectly great people working in factories and warehouses, and that there aren't people who like Joe Strummer that aren't buckets of beer battered dicks. I'd like to think the outcome would have been inevitable, but who can say. I'd like to say I'm a decent person but I guess I can't say so objectively. Wouldn't you say? You'd have to ask people I know. Just not my enemies, those guys are jerks.  

As the music, and, potentially the cover (photocopied at the Winona Public Library, no doubt) might suggest, I harbored a fair amount of frustration at the time, but tried to temper things with a heavy dose of self-deprecating humor. 

But enough of my bullshit! On to the tape! You might notice varying volume and audio qualities. I didn't make any effort to really spruce things up. There's even a 20 second dead air gap at the end of Side A that I left intact. When you're the only one listening to the thing, it's easy to either fast forward to the end of the tape so the dashboard tape player does the auto flip thing, or, just let it run out so you can manually flip it, which I did when I was listening via boombox while playing basketball on the driveway. I wouldn't want to rob you of that experience, so I left it in. You're welcome.

You'll note the tiny, crooked scrawl on the back of the homemade cover. It's a trademark of mine. I adroitly failed to plan my spacing well and even forgot to write down a few songs included on the actual tape. Guess there's a reason I never made it in the world of graphic design.

SIDE A starts with a recorded station ID blurb from Winona's KG-95. Even in the 1990s they largely played 10cc, Vanessa Williams and other "light FM" stuff, occasionally mixed in with Sugar Ray and Smash mouth and whatever else was popular but not too heavy at the time, to maintain their listening numbers, I guess. I thought it was funny to preface a tape with punk and alternative tunes with it. Unfortunately it meant sitting with an index finger hovering over the record button, listening for it to broadcast.

1. Bad Religion - American Jesus: BR were huge for me in high school. They showed me there could be punk music with intelligence to it. The confluence of angry and smart was important for me, because I was surrounded by a lot of angry, but not so much smart. There was a year or two where I was heavily into the Fat Wreck / Epitaph stuff of the mid-90s but it really wore out quickly. That whole scene seemed like an alternative music version of frat jock culture, and really mirrored the stuff that most of the people I knew who were heavy into that claimed to oppose, and Bad Religion I guess are one of the few bands from that scene that have aged well for me. While a lot of the early BR stuff sounds like 23 minute albums full of the same song on repeat, and was maybe a little too thesaurus heavy, it helped guide me. This may be not only the best Bad Religion song, but one of the best songs ever recorded, in my opinion. I wore a BR anti-cross logo shirt to school regularly, completely oblivious to the effect it had on the people around me. I had two shit kickers threaten to beat me up at the bus stop one day. A hometown local punk fixture who was infamous for getting wasted and dancing around at concerts with his clothes off while other people chanted "Naked Nick!" made fun of me for listening to Bad Religion because he didn't like The Gray Race album, and also scoffed at me for reading MAD Magazine at lunch one day. He suggested that it was cooler to read National Lampoon because "it's like MAD but with tits in it." Touché. None of this is anything I lose sleep over, they're just fun little tidbits I'm throwing in.

2. Mudhoney - Acetone: Not my favorite Mudhoney album by a long shot, but I've always had a special love for this tune. I wasn't into grunge at all, not even Nirvana (don't hit me). Mudhoney were lumped in with that movement but were definitely more Stooges-esque, which is great. Even though I had no idea who the Stooges were at this point in time. 

3. The Specials - Bonediggin' : It's kind of a weird choice. I guess it's kinda Misfits-y with the bass line and the graveyard subject matter. Also this was the 1990s comeback album released when punk and ska bands were allegedly making bank on the Warped Tour so the Descendents, the Specials, etc were all getting back in the studio to try and capitalize on that. I say weird choice in the sense that I thought I would've used on old school Specials song, but I guess I was listening to this cd a lot at that point.

4. Fugazi - Waiting Room: The opening bass line to this tune is the first one I learned to play when I started bass lessons in 1998. This song somehow got into moderate rotation on the local "alternative" station 105.5 The Buzz, out of LaCrosse, WI, and as a result, found the owner of Winona's Face The Music special ordering many copies of the 13 Songs album. I know this because I stopped in to purchase it after school one day and he told me that. Memories. I knew who Fugazi were before I was aware of Minor Threat.

5. Davíd Garza - Kinder: When I was a teenager I would spend a lot of Friday and Saturday nights playing basketball by myself on the driveway while listening to KQAL, Winona's college radio station. Some student DJ working the weekend shift at the time really liked the Disco Ball World single from this album when it came out, and as a result it was played quite often. I liked it. It sounded different that anything else I was hearing at the time. I found a copy at Winona Pawn & Gun for like $1, and I still listen to it all the time.

6. The Aquabats! - Chemical Bomb: I didn't know at the time they were all a bunch of mormons. Maybe it doesn't matter. I don't know what their politics are. I was/am a fan of comic books and enjoy this band's shenanigans. This one was particularly funny and I put it on multiple tapes.

7. Archers Of Loaf - White Trash Heroes: What's not to like.

8. Los Straitjackets - Lurking In The Shadows: At this point I was starting to receive the Norton Records catalog in the mail, probably from being on the Something Weird and Sinister Cinema mailing lists, maybe? I don't know. I was definitely starting to get into surf and rockabilly and old school r&b, as indicated by at least one of the other inclusions on this tape. Los Straitjackets and Man Or Astro-man kind of bridged the classic surf and modern indie/alternative rock gap for me and I was/am pretty obsessed with them.

9. Goo Goo Dolls - Flat Top: Yeah, I know. Roll your eyes if you must. Still, if this song were recorded by DOA or Circle Jerks, it would probably be considered a punk classic. Say what you will, at one point they were a pretty rockin' rock band who played rock music songs for rockers who liked to rock out. Rock.

10. ? And The Mysterians - Midnight Hour: As previously mentioned, was starting to discover gems from the past thanks to mysteriously receiving the Norton catalog in the mail one day. Started ordering Link Wray repro 7"s instead of buying NOFX albums, and I think I made the right decision (for me).

11. Die Toten Hosen - Disneyland (Stays The Same): Die Toten Hosen are huge in Germany. Like U2 huge. I first was made aware of them via some documentary on the Warped Tour in the 1990s. My wife (then my girlfriend) had lived in Germany and her parents went back often. On one trip her dad brought this cd back because he accidentally purchased it, thinking it was something else. This is the only album I've heard by Die Toten Hosen but it's pretty great. Their name translates to "The Dead Pants". Why, I don't know.

12. Swervedriver - Duel: Imagine, if you will, a world where there could be songs that didn't consist solely of 16th notes, lyrics that amounted to something other than"fuck you", and melodies dabbling with textures and other audio input. The tightrope wrapped around, one slip and you tumble down. Very relatable at that age and I guess even today.

13. The Misfits - Rat Fink: What needs to be said, really. Never was really into the whole violence-fetish thing Danzig has going on, but the b-movie/Famous Monsters stuff hooked me. 

14. Armchair Martian - Brodeo: A merging of alt rock and country/folk leaning indie rock. Never got into Wilco or the Jayhawks or anything like that. What I remember of this band was that it was basically the frontman Jon Snodgrass and a constantly changing backing band and that all of the output sounded same-y enough where if you kind of enjoyed one song, you'd probably kind of enjoy the other ones. Once I saw a kid wearing an Armchair Martian t-shirt at the mall in St. Cloud when I lived there. It was weird.

15. The Lemonheads - The Great Big No: KQAL played a lot of Lemonheads as well. It's hard not to like, though I've never really tried not to like. it.

16. The Hellacopters - Hey!: No idea where/how I first heard The Hellacopters. Maybe it was on some comp or something. I had no access to classic rock, all my parents listened to was then-contemporary country of the 80s and 90s, and on occasion The Eagles. I liked that The Hellacopters were pumping out hard driving rock and roll with a sort of Dead Boys edge to it, but also referenced things like Sabbath and fuzz rock (once I learned what Sabbath and fuzz rock were).

17. Sloppy Seconds - Take You Home: This band was big for me too. They were clearly Ramones-inspired but didn't seem to desperately want to sound like NOFX or Screeching Weasel, which seemed to be the two poles of punk polarity at the time. They referenced a lot of "junk" pop culture like b-movies and stuff. They had a controversial 7" with a song called "I Don't Wanna Be A Homosexual" which caused a stir, but it isn't really anti-homosexual, it's written from the POV of a narrator who is afraid of accepting the fact that he is in fact gay, and by the end of the tune comes to kinda maybe grips with that? This song isn't that song. I forgot to add this song to the track list on the cover. 

This side of the tape is sort of rounded out with a clip from an Art Bell Coast To Coast episode. I couldn't tell you which one. Also some dead air. 

SIDE B

1. The Dickies - Golden Boys: I was obsessed with this album when it came out on the now defunct Triple - XXX Records. Even though I like the whole album a lot, my favorite is this Pat Smear cover. Maybe their most/only political song, and it's not even theirs.

2. Jan & Dean - Horace, The Swingin' School Bus Driver: This might be a jarring inclusion amidst the other material, but here it is regardless. Music can be fun and funny and entertaining, apparently. I was learning things.

3. Seaweed - Crush Us All: I found this band and this album without ever hearing them. I don't remember how. Maybe I saw their name on a gig poster with another band I liked, or they were mentioned in the Thank You section of a CD liner booklet for an album I liked. I guess the consensus is that their early stuff is the really good stuff and this was a major label transition or something. I like half the songs on this CD. At the time when I found this, probably a used copy at Face The Music again, I was asking people "You heard this band Seaweed?" and no one knew what the hell I was talking about, like maybe I was making it up. Then the internet happened and I moved out of my small town and it turns out other people knew them too. I remember listening to this song a lot when driving to school in the mornings.

4. They Might Be Giants - Narrow Your Eyes: Wry, smart, thought-provoking, mining multiple genres while staying singularly themselves. 

5. 22 Jacks - So Sorry: This CD was also constantly in my Discman after it came out. 22 Jacks consisted of Joe Sib from Wax, Steve Soto from The Adolescents, and some other people. They were more of a Cheap Trick-ish power pop/rock band than a pop-punk band, which is great. The closer the "scene" got to New Found Glory and Simple Plan, the further I got away from it. 

6. Local H - High-Fivin' MF: Clearly another band that merged punk and classic rock but didn't go straight grunge with it. Some of the songs on this album sound like hardcore songs, including this one, but it ins't over in a minute and thirty seconds. I knew a guy named Curtis in high school who loved Local H, but professed to only like the songs that never got played on the radio. 

7. The Clash - Armagideon Time: Proof rock music can have a conscience. I think I like about 40% of the Clash's output, particularly the first album. The stuff I do like, I REALLY like a lot.

8. Fountains Of Wayne - Denise: I probably picked this one because it matches the energy of the other songs on here. FOW were a great power pop band. It was dumb that they won the Grammy for Best New Artist after that Stacy's Mom song came out in 2003 ON THEIR THIRD ALBUM. People name drop Big Star and The dB's as inarguably great power pop bands, FOW seem to get branded yuppie rock. I don't like every song they've released but they have some great stuff.

9. Frank Black And The Catholics - All My Ghosts: This one is a little embarrassing for a couple of reasons. First off, I'm not a Pixies guy. I used to have a copy of Doolittle and still have a greatest hits cd around somewhere. I knew who the Pixies were at this point, primarily because of a local band of "too cool for school" kids who played at the same all ages club in town every week who idolized them and would whip out their rendition of "Here Comes Your Man" regularly. Maybe associating the band with this particular group of peers left a sour taste in my mouth, maybe that's unfair. Regardless, I listened to Surfer Rosa and didn't like it. I listened to Trompe le Monde and Bossanova and liked bits and pieces of it. Even though I sort of knew who the Pixies were, I didn't know who Frank Black was. No foolin'. I heard this song on KQAL a couple times but always missed the back announcing, so for some reason I thought it was a song by the Swingin' Utters. No idea why. So I emailed them, probably at some hotmail or aol account, and asked which song of theirs this was and what album it was on. Someone from the band emailed back saying they had no clue what the hell I was talking about. Memories. Later I learned this was Frank Black and what the name of the song was. I guess I still kind of like it. There's always a song or two on his solo albums I think are OK, but I guess my favorite bits of the Pixies were Kim Deal parts.

10. The Cramps - Ultra Twist: Still one of my top 5 bands.

11. Naked Raygun - Wonder Beer: I was a teetotaler in high school and college. Rarely drink these days as well, so I didn't buy this album because it mentions beer. In the early days of geocities websites, I was often on music sites, especially ones dedicated to old school punk and new wave, and this band was mentioned often. I went to find something by them somewhere and think I bought this one because it had a Mad Max looking cover. I concur that if there are in fact gods, that they must be drunk.

12. Summercamp - Ninety Nine: This band put out one album. They went to record a second and the studio burned down and took all of the tapes with it. They decided to break up. I think that's all accurate. This is another power pop band. I still enjoy this one.

13. The Humpers - Mutate With Me: I still have this 7". One of those weird bands on Epitaph comps that you knew had albums on the label in the 1990s, but you almost never saw any promo for them. Like Red Aunts and New Bomb Turks. Anyway, this is more the New York Dolls and Television version of punk than Pennywise or whatever. Their Dionysus stuff is really great too.

14. Social Distortion - Don't Drag Me Down: Not my favorite band, not my favorite album by them either, but it was what was new at the time and this definitely has the punch to soothe a riled, just-getting-off-work-from-Target-at-10pm teenage me.

15. "Weird Al" Yankovic - Everything You Know Is Wrong: No matter what I'm into musically, I never was and never will be too cool for Weird Al.

16. The Mr. T Experience - My Stupid Life: MTX seemed like the band to gravitate to on Lookout! since other bands like The Queers and Screeching Weasel kind of gave off a meathead-conservatives-in-the-guise-of-a-Ramones-tribute-band vibe. Turns out I was kind of right. Not in the same way that they were. MTX had a sense of humor and were sort of a less annoying/smarter Green Day.

17. SNFU - Fate: I went through a big SNFU phase. Probably because they were from Canada and it seemed exotic, also because their songs were freakin' weird and abstract and I liked to try and figure out what the hell Chi Pig was talking about. Also I'm pretty sure someone on The Kids In The Hall wore a SNFU shirt during a skit, which would naturally send me searching for them.

18. Guided By Voices - Cut-Out Witch: GBV put out a lot of stuff. For every really amazing song there's about 30 clunkers. This was one of my favorite really amazing ones back then.

19. Rocket From The Crypt - Ball Of Fire: Never not great band. 

That's all.  Bye!

The Skelton In The Celluloid Closet

 Gilbert Gottfried appeared on the mighty Svengoolie a couple of times before his passing. During one of his visits, Sven asked Gilbert if he had a favorite Universal Monster, to which Gilbert replied, "Yes, Skelton Knaggs." It probably flew right over the heads of 90% of the viewing audience, but I knew that that little quip was dropped specifically for folks like myself.

Skelton Knaggs as Finn The Mute in The Ghost Ship, 1943; directed by
Mark Robson and produced by Val Lewton.

I watch a lot of movies. And while I watch a lot of all kinds of different films, I have a certain affinity for older American genre films from the 1930s through the mid-1960s. While not always the case, these pictures are by and large B-pictures, made quick and cheap to pad out double bills or to be distributed with other similar films made by the same studio to be sold as packages to drive-ins and movie houses. These pictures not only helped studios make money to help bankroll bigger productions (in the case of studios like Universal), but gave competent actors who perhaps struggled to find a way into the very cliquish Hollywood studio system, a place to actually find work. 

In turn these pictures allowed a number of quirky so-called character actors to rise to a certain prominence by regularly appearing in them and building a cult following. It was good for the actors and the studios, because it assured the former the likelihood of steady work, and the latter could put a Lionel Atwill or a George Zucco or a Tod Slaughter in a low budget horror or murder-mystery, and bank on the notion that name recognition alone would draw some people to the theater, regardless of how bad the thing turned out to be.

Skelton Knaggs (R) as X-ray in the film Dick Tracy Meets
Gruesome (1947). Pictured with Boris Karloff (L) and Ralph Byrd (C).

Sadly, not everyone who toiled in bit parts as creeps, killers or the second cowboy from the right, was able to find that kind of footing in the industry. One of those largely forgotten background faces belongs to one of my personal favorite supporting stars–Skelton Knaggs. 

Knaggs as Rudolph in Dick Tracy Vs Cueball (1946).

I'm not sure when I first saw Skelton Knaggs on the screen, I imagine it had to be in Universal's House Of Dracula (1945), because I was religiously devoted to the Universal Monster pictures as a kid, and endlessly watched and re-watched them whenever they appeared on AMC in the 1980s and '90s. At that time all eyes were on the titular creatures, so I doubt the nebbish, soft-voiced little villager named Steinmuhl really even registered when the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster were romping around. I think the first time I really took note was in college, when I was on a Val Lewton kick. A number of his productions were being released on DVD as double features in the early 2000s, and the campus library had a number of them in stock. I knew who Lewton was at that point, had seen Cat People and The Body Snatcher, because both ran semi-regularly on AMC's Saturday afternoon creature feature programming in the early 1990s, but when I sat down with the 1943 feature The Ghost Ship, I had no idea what I was in for. What I found was a steadfast fixation with an odd performance by an actor that, as far as I knew at the time, appeared out of the fog for this film, and folded back into it when he was done, never to be seen again. And I was well entrenched in the Sinister Cinema and Something Weird video catalogs at this point!

Who the heck was this pockmarked little gnome of a man with a sinister leer and an oddly cool voice that fell somewhere between Peter Lorre and Sterling Holloway?

Knaggs as Steinmuhl in House Of Dracula (1945).

For context, this was around 2005; the Internet was definitely a household tool at this point, but still in relatively nascent stages compared to what it is today. IMDb was woefully incomplete, and movie chat groups seemed to be more abuzz over the announced potential for a Wolfgang Peterson Batman/Superman movie than minutia about long forgotten character actors from the golden age of Hollywood. Fortunately time and persistence occasionally pay off in the form of enlightenment, even in the case of this somewhat trivial matter.

Skelton Barnaby Knaggs was born on June 27, 1911 in Hillsborough, Sheffield, England. Apparently his family emigrated to the Canada in 1923, then on to the States in 1927, settling in New York. Skelton returned to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, apparently some time in the 1930s, because he starts to appear in bit parts in British films in 1936, starting with an uncredited role in the thriller Everything Is Thunder. He continues to pop up in small parts, including with the previously mentioned Lionell Atwill (The High Command, 1938), in British features until 1939's Torture Ship, Knagg's first American film work. Between studying at RADA and taking mostly uncredited parts in movies, Knaggs appeared on stage, television, and allegedly on radio dramas. Skelton appeared in a comedy titled "Climbing" at the Embassy Theatre in Camden in January of 1937. There is a blurb in the October 15, 1937 issue of the British publication The Radio Times (p. 18), which lists Skelton as appearing in a television program called "The Happy Journey To Trenton And Camden" (below).

There is also note in the May 7th, 1937 issue of the The Wireless Radio World publication, that boasts Skelton Knaggs as one of a handful of new talent tapped for work on upcoming BBC radio dramas (below). I could not find any evidence of any existing radio programs that Skelton was featured in, but if anyone out there knows of any, please let me know. I'd love to hear them.

Based on the obituaries for both Skelton's father Harry, and brother Harry Cecil, we know the Knaggs family relocated to the Los Angeles area in 1940, perhaps fueled by Skelton going to Hollywood and getting work there. It appears he was still somewhat active on the stage between film gigs, as he appeared in the Henry Miller Theater's production of "Heart Of A City" in 1942, and James Whale's production of "Hand In Glove" in 1944 (both in New York City). Sadly, his luck in the American film scene didn't garner much better status than his British work, as nearly all of the roles he would get over the next decade and a half, ending with his death in 1955, were uncredited bit parts, usually as a cab driver, random villager or pub extra. 

The aforementioned The Ghost Ship is a standout performance, nuanced and empathetic. Shamefully, despite being the narrator of the film, the proverbial Greek Chorus that not only gives insight into what is happening between the lines of the script, but expounds on his own musings which, as a mute, he isn't able to voice aloud. Yeah, the movie is narrated by an internal monologue provided by a guy who cannot speak! That's bonkers! But it works! And he's not even credited on the poster! Even worse, a lawsuit over the screenplay effectively got the film pulled from theaters directly after it was released, and kept it out of the public eye for half a century, so audiences weren't really able to see Knagg's potential break out performance.

“There the sense of being constrained, of being unimportant—of having to strum up a hyperbole of gargoylish effects all in an instant that some- how still comport with the idea of ‘soul,’ of having to lay down intimations of depth across the flat signatures of sudden triviality—makes it Knagg’s most poignant and socially meaningful moment as a screen actor.” - Alexander Nemerov review of The Ghost Ship

 Had there been no lawsuit, would Skelton Knaggs now be a household name? Would a heavily stylized caricature of Skelton Knaggs pop up in those Hollywood-lampooning Merry Melodies shorts? Probably not on the latter, because The Ghost Ship's ill fated release wasn't until two years after "Hollywood Steps Out" premiered in 1941. Even though the film was shelved, studios and directors had to have seen it, or known about Knaggs's performance. How the hell did that not get him more offers or at least some clout in Hollywood?

Knaggs featured in the playbill for James Whale's 
"Hand In Glove" 1944.

Write up of Knaggs in playbill for "Hand In Glove".

Playbill credit for "Heart Of A City," 1942.

Bio for Knaggs in playbill for "Heart Of A City" 1942.

Skelton Knaggs returned to England one time, as far as I can tell, during his Hollywood years. In 1949 he returned to the UK to marry his wife Thelma, before bringing her back to California. Knaggs died from cirrhosis of the liver on April 30, 1955; he was only 43 years old. He was buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. While we have the documented birth and death dates, and obviously the existing footage of his film work, Skelton Knaggs remains very much a mystery. What was the impetus behind the alcoholism that ultimately took his life? What was he actually like as a person, outside of the creeps and cowards he predominantly played in the blink-and-miss bit parts in low budget horror and crime pictures?

Perhaps we'll never know. I was unable to find any anecdotal information about the actor at all. I did find this nicely produced video biography which incorporates a lot more info on his family than I did with this post. When an actor is gone, their existing work becomes their legacy. In that regard, I highly recommend checking out The Ghost Ship (click link to be directed to streaming movie), the two Dick Tracy films Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball and  Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. Despite not making the poster or credited with a leading role, Skelton is front and center for the whole picture, and even winds up being the hero of the film. While the Dick Tracy adaptations are quick, short matinee fluff, they give him some great slimy characters to work with.

Even Knaggs's grave marker is small and unassuming.

Illos for Invites

Here are some doodles I recently did in my sketchuh-ma-book that I thought my make some neat illustrations for some Halloween Party (or some other kind of party) invites. 

Pioneer Trance

 

Manga! Part I

This past May I was able to check off a lifelong ambition to visit Japan. My wife and I spent 10 days traveling around the island, riding bullet trains, climbing a mountain, eating ramen and, of course, enjoying the pop culture.

Since I love comics and classic animation, I've always enjoyed manga to a degree. It's like when you say you like comics; that covers a lot of ground. But people have a tendency to think that "I like comics" means you're in line for every comics IP movie that comes out, and have a pull box filled weekly with the latest Marvel/DC/Image titles. Yeah, I like manga, but not indiscriminately. Like American comics, I have a yen for the older stuff. I like the older style(s) of art, the silliness of comics that didn't feel the need to compete with the New York Times Bestseller list as far as content, and could just be a periodically (pun intended) amusing diversion from everyday life. 

There is a great chain of manga shops in Japan called Mandarake (Mahn-da-rah-kay). We visited one in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. It was genuinely overwhelming. The place was in a sub-basement and was huge, filled with rows and rows of bookshelves packed with manga. Obviously, not being able to read Japanese, it was even more so. Another astounding thing about the manga at Mandarake, is how inexpensive most of it was. Most of the books I'll be showcasing here were between 200 and 400 yen, which is about $1.41 to $2.82, per book! 

With exception of the Astro Boy and Super Jetter magazines I picked up at a vintage shop. But more about that later.

First off we have Doraemon. Doraemon is a robotic cat from the 22nd Century who travels back in time to help out Nobita, the child who will become the grandfather of his inventor. It's fun, funny stuff. Lots of site gags. It was created by Fujiko F. Fujio and is huge in Japan. If you go to department stores or stop at the ever-present banks of gashapan machines, you're bound to see some Doraemon merch somewhere. I know people say Astro Boy is the Mickey Mouse of Japan, but in all honesty, I saw much more Doraemon while out and about than I did Astro Boy. 

In a similar vein we have Gaikotsu-kun, or "Skeleton". It's another whimsical manga from 1966, by George Akiyama. Akiyama, I guess, is known in Japan as a controversial manga artist who, after this, his first comic strip, did some more dark, taboo-themed material. If I understand the translation, the skeleton in question is actually the grandfather of the boy in the comic. He's come back to make sure his son and grandson are taken care of. There are a lot of site gags, as seen here with the dog stealing his bones and burying him. 

Next we have, of course, a staple, a manga version of Ultraman. This was produced in conjunction with the television series, and this particular volume (#2) is from 1968. It what you'd expect from an Ultraman comic: Ultraman battling giant monsters. The cartooning is amazing and dynamic! I believe the artist on this is Daiji Ichimine. Look at the giant bat-starfish monster rising out of the ocean above! It attacks oil tankers, and, as you might guess, causes a lot of fires.

To be honest, when I found this next one, I thought I'd happed upon an El Santo themed manga. Not the case. It turns out it is in fact titled Masked Shinigami, Wrestling Villain Series (per Google translate) and the character on the cover is NOT El Santo, el Enmascarada de plata, but Silver Faced Reaper. It's a fairly brutal comic, as you can see from above. No punches are pulled (tee-hee) in depicting brutal ring violence. There's another motif I've noted in some of the manga I purchased, which is animal abuse. There's some of that in a number of the Osamu Tezuka works I've picked up, as well as this one. Fairly graphic as well. 

This next one is admittedly a little different from the others. It's by Ichiro Iijima, and one of his Black Punch Complete Works volumes, titled "Gorilla Marriage". It's a number of Twilight Zone/ E.C. Comics-esque horror and sci-fi stories with an albeit more adult content. Some are downright upsetting, particularly the last story in the collection, about a chef who is trying to please the odd taste preferences of some new employers. The Gorilla Marriage story itself is fairly tame. It hypothesizes a world where gorillas have evolved to the level of humans and are integrated into society as such. It highlights the difficulties one might encounter engaging in a gorilla/human relationship. Bizarrely, it's not as lewd as the cover suggests.

Not To Brag

 

You can try it yourself over at MeTV.

The Plight Of Silent Sam

 This story from the March 1949 issue of Gabby Hayes Western Comics, is presented with the presumption that it is currently in the public domain. This is a well-worn issue, the previous owner apparently decided to re-staple it, presumably after the original staples came out? I don't see any evidence of oxidation or holes that would indicate as such, so I guess it's possible that it was just originally bound in the wonky way it is; which is fine for reading, but not great for scanning purposes, so forgive the slight cropping you might see at the edges of panels.

I did my best to position things so all of the text was visible, at least.

I hope y'all enjoy this taffy-fueled comic western mishap!