Technical issues caused delays yesterday but I have added on to the Holyoke Comics pantheon for this superhero-obsessed society.
CLICK HERE
Monthly Archives: November 2016
MORE HEROES ADDED FOR THE HOLYOKE PANTHEON
Filed under Superheroes
HILLARY BLAMES THE G-MEN FOR FOILING HER CRIMINAL PLANS
Not even Hillary’s killer James Cagney impression could cheer up her frantic supporters.
Call her Hillary “Bugsy” Clinton or the Coughing Capone or the Kingpin in a Pantsuit or the Incontinent Queen of Corruption or whatever you like, but this career criminal has never been accused of possessing self-awareness.
Recently the Hillarytron borrowed from the likes of Machine Gun Kelly and other gangsters by blaming her downfall on the FBI instead of on her long list of crimes. Bernie Sanders – the man Hillary stole the Democrats’ nomination from – wisely pointed out that her loss came because Hillary and her hagiographers in the media drove away the working class. Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES
YOUNGER COACHES ARE THE NEW TREND IN COLLEGE FOOTBALL PROGRAMS
Coach P J Fleck
In the recent past, schools have preferred to seek up-and-coming coaches, such as P.J. Fleck or Tom Herman when they need a new head football coach instead of looking for veteran coaches with a proven track record like Les Miles. Last season, FBS schools recorded the youngest average age (43.2 years old) of head coaches signed up by various teams in the last six years.
Out of 26 hired coaches, eight of them had not attained the age of 40 at the time of employment. In the 2010 and 2011 season, FBS schools hired 48 coaches with an average age of 47, with eight of them under 40 years of age. This trend should help the teams reach their goals and at the same time, should move around the college football odds for most major games that are left in the season.
Various FBS schools have unique needs and those hiring coaches for them defy trends to pounce on the right employee in the market. Currently, the market favors young coaches, such as the 35-year-old Fleck of Western Michigan and the 41-year-old Herman of Houston, while overlooking veteran coaches like the 62-year-old Miles. The ex-LSU coach completed almost a dozen seasons with Tigers and won 77 percent of his games to clinch a national title before his September sacking. Continue reading
Filed under college football
STEPHEN A SMITH AGREES THE CORPORATE MEDIA TRIED TO HAND THE ELECTION TO HILLARY
Stephen A Smith of ESPN has joined the chorus of voices pointing out the obvious – that the corporate media was completely in the tank for Hillary “Bugsy” Clinton. Anyone with common sense noticed how extreme the bias was but worshippers of Hillary “No Billionaire Left Behind” Clinton live in a fantasy world.
That pantsuited gangster robbed the nomination from Bernie Sanders, as proven by Wikileaks, which also laid out Hillary’s criminal culpability. Anyway Stephen A Smith set straight the whiny white boy at his side regarding media bias, saying said media “literally” tried to win it for the Hillarytron HERE
CBS NEWS also did some soul-searching about their unprofessional conduct HERE Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES
HOLYOKE SUPERHERO PANTHEON
This has become a superhero-crazed culture. Balladeer’s Blog’s previous looks at the superhero rosters of now-defunct comic book companies have been so popular I decided to examine the heroes and heroines of Holyoke Comics.
Any of us could stick a drawing pencil up our butt and draw a better picture.
DOCTOR DIAMOND
Secret Identity: Drake Gorden, MD
Origin: While on a passenger ship in the South Seas Dr Drake Gorden was swept overboard during a typhoon. He washed ashore on an uncharted island inhabited only by a monk formerly from Tibet. The monk decreed Doctor Gorden to be worthy of the Egyptian black diamond he guarded. That jewel bestowed super-powers on Gorden, who returned to the U.S. and fought crime as Doctor Diamond.
First Appearance: Cat-Man Comics # 1 (May 1941). His final Golden Age appearance came in 1942.
Powers: The black jewel granted Doctor Diamond the strength of fifty men and an impressive degree of invulnerability.
Comment: This hero’s foes included Najar the android and the mad scientist Doctor Borcia. Doctor Diamond is one of those Golden Age superheroes who had potential but whose career was tantalizingly short. In my opinion heroes with actual super-powers are preferable to that period’s endless array of ordinary people who simply donned a costume and fought crime.
KITTEN
Secret Identity: Katie Conn
Origin: When she was eleven years old Katie’s parents died in a train accident. She was taken in by her criminally-minded uncle who trained her in acrobatics, unarmed combat and cat-burglary. By age twelve the girl was an expert thief until Cat-Man (Holyoke’s most famous original superhero) nabbed Katie’s nefarious uncle and adopted her. (And you thought Batman’s relationship with Robin was questionable.)
The strong-willed girl donned a costume of her own and – calling herself Kitten – was determined to fight crime as Cat-Man’s sidekick. The superhero tried to dissuade Katie but her independence and streetwise nature made that impossible. Deciding she was safer working at his side he accepted her as his partner.
First Appearance: Cat-Man Comics # 1 (May 1941). Her final Golden Age appearance came in 1946.
Powers: Unlike Cat-Man, Kitten had no super-powers. However, she was more agile than an Olympic gymnast and was in peak condition for a female her age. In addition her cat-burglary skills and street-fighting abilities made her a very capable superheroine. In a few stories her gloves were clawed.
Comment: Kitten often teamed up in separate adventures with Mickey Matthews, the boy sidekick of the Holyoke superhero called the Deacon. The pair fought criminals and Nazi supervillains as the Little Leaders. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
COLLEGE FOOTBALL RESULTS FROM NOVEMBER 12th
*** HEADLINES ***
POINT UNIVERSITY CONQUERS THE NCAA – Once again a team from the NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) toppled a team from a higher division. In this case the POINT UNIVERSITY SKYHAWKS took it on the road against NCAA Division Two’s BENEDICT COLLEGE TIGERS. The Skyhawks won handily in a 22-7 statement game.
NUMBER ONE GETS UPSET AT HOME – The 16th ranked JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY BLUE STREAKS paid a visit to the number 1 UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT UNION PURPLE RAIDERS yesterday. A 13-0 1st Quarter lead for the Blue Streaks became a 13-7 advantage by Halftime and a 21-13 lead for the Purple Raiders to end the 3rd. JCU came from behind to eke out a 31-28 victory. Continue reading
Filed under college football
THE VISITOR (1979)
THE VISITOR (1979) – This Italian-made movie deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following so I’m surprised that it’s still com-paratively unknown. The film is directed by “Michael J Paradise” (Giulio Paradisi) and features appearances by such name stars as Franco Nero, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, Shelley Winters, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Mel Ferrer.
Paradisi directs this film in such a way that the actual point of most scenes is lost because virtually every shot includes extraneous footage completely irrelevant to the storyline. The extra footage just distracts from what otherwise might have been a halfway passable sci-fi thriller.
Never before has anyone used the words “This movie could have used more Kareem Abdul- Jabbar” but they apply to this flick.
All that being said I want to point out that I disagree with the general consensus that The Visitor makes no sense. Sure, it has plotholes, inconsistent behavior from the characters, poorly chosen reaction shots and villains who over-complicate things for themselves, but the basic story DOES make sense. In fact I bet X-Files fans would like it and would immediately understand what’s going on.
Part of the confusion can be attributed to the edited version that omits so much footage that it’s difficult to understand what is going on. It’s not always easy to understand what’s going on in the complete 108 minute version, either, but at least it retains all the relevant footage. Since so many people seem lost when they first watch this movie I’ll provide a handy synopsis of the film. It’s not quite right to say there are spoilers ahead since most people apparently don’t understand what is going on when they watch the film anyway. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
SEVEN AMERICAN FLYING ACES OF WORLD WAR ONE
Eugene Bullard
For my final Veterans Day post I’ll do another shoutout to the Flying Aces of World War One. The movie Flyboys is a good fictional film about their mystique (but based on the real-life Lafayette Escadrille).
EUGENE BULLARD – This African-American boxer from Columbus, GA served in the French Foreign Legion as early as the Battle of Verdun in 1916 and had already won a Croix de Guerre before joining the legendary Lafayette Escadrille on a bet.(!) He qualified but the prejudiced Frenchman Dr Edmund Le Gros rejected him for service.
Bullard instead flew a Spad 7 with French Escadrille 93. Eugene still had an uphill fight against prejudice and the French supposedly failed to credit him with all of his kills, limiting him to just 2 in the official records but tradition credits Bullard with between 5 and 9. He had what may be the best nickname outside of the Red Baron and was called the Black Swallow of Death. On the side of his plane he painted the words “ALL blood runs red” in reference to the bigotry he had faced. Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History
AMERICAN FOOLS OVERREACTING TO ELECTION RESULTS
NOT PICTURED: Hitler and Stalin GROW UP
The best part of being an Independent Voter here in the U.S. is that I don’t fall victim to bizarre doomsday ideas like Democrats and Republicans always do.
After Barack Obama won reelection in 2012 I posted the item below to try to calm down right-wingers who were having absurdly dramatic reactions to the election results. Here in 2016 I’ll post it for those ridiculous drama queens of the political left who are overreacting to hopefully calm them down.
Before I post it I will point out again for the benefit of overseas readers THIS IS WHY OUR CONSTITUTION TRIED TO LIMIT THE POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT!
Throughout the Obama years I kept asking Little Barry’s deranged worshippers why they didn’t more openly oppose Obama’s abuse of powers. I would ask them how they would like it if a man they really hated was elected president some day since Obama was trying to establish a precedent of poutishly churning out Executive Orders instead of negotiating with Congress like he’s SUPPOSED TO.
The symbol of the nonexistent Balladeer Political Party
If you’ll recall his actions got struck down as unconstitutional NEARLY TWO DOZEN TIMES by the Supreme Court … WITHOUT ANY APPOINTMENTS HAVING BEEN MADE BY TRUMP! If it had happened AFTER the Orange One was elected and had appointed some Justices you drama queens would have INSISTED they struck those things down ONLY because they were appointed by Trump.
MANY REPUBLICANS IN OFFICE HATE TRUMP! They spent the whole election cycle telling the country that Trump “wasn’t a real Republican and certainly wasn’t a Conservative.” They never seemed to realize THAT WAS PART OF TRUMP’S APPEAL. People are fed up with dogmatic Conservatives and dogmatic Liberals. The only ones who still don’t acknowledge that development are dogmatic Conservatives and dogmatic Liberals. If this election year didn’t make it clear to them then nothing will.
Okay, that venting done, below is the item I wrote to give some perspective to panicked right-wingers in 2012. It also applies to panicked left-wingers here in 2016. If you know any pathetic liberal drama queens feel free to share it with them. Here is the post:
“Part of the fun involved in the week following any election is laughing at the ENORMOUS overreaction of Liberals and Conservatives to the outcome. The winning side will claim a “mandate”no matter what. The losing side will wail and gnash their teeth and pretend the outcome proves that the voters are “stupid” and “racist” (pretentious Liberal asses) or “communist” and “unpatriotic” (nationalist Conservative asses).
Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES
G-8: A WORLD WAR ONE PULP HERO FOR VETERANS DAY
For a light-hearted Veterans Day post how about a Balladeer’s Blog shoutout to the fictional American World War One pilot code-named G8.
THE HERO: G-8 was the codename of an American flying ace of World War One. The character was created by Robert J Hogan in 1933 and over the next 11 years Hogan wrote 110 stories featuring the daring figure. G-8, whose real name was never revealed, was a master of disguise in addition to his piloting and hand-to-hand combat skills.
Hogan’s hero (see what I did there) was unswervingly patriotic and fiercely dedicated to the defeat of the Central Powers.
THE STORIES: With his two fellow operatives “The Battle Aces” G-8 conducted aerial commando raids, carried out special forces missions and even undertook espionage missions against the Germans, Austro-Hungarians and the Ottoman Muslim Turks. In true Pulp Story fashion the Central Powers threw a vast array of mad scientists, monstrous creatures and alien super-science against our heroes, who always prevailed in the end. Continue reading
Filed under Pulp Heroes
Balladeer's Blog 