Monthly Archives: March 2021

March 23, 2021 · 2:58 am

THE CRYBABY KILLER (1958) – TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Cry Baby Killer

In the middle 1980s/ Way down on Level 31 …

Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!

EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday June 15th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

SERIAL: Before showing and mocking The Crybaby Killer our members of the Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed and mocked an episode of the Mascot Serial The Phantom Empire (1935). 

Phantom EmpireIn that classically campy serial Gene Autry played a singing cowboy who saves the world from an advanced underground civilization that comes complete with killer robots who wear cowboy hats.

FILM VAULT LORE: The movie ticket give-away this week was for Prizzi’s Honor.

THE MOVIE: Continue reading →

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March 22, 2021 · 1:57 pm

JOE BIDEN: AMERICA’S VILLAGE IDIOT

Joe Biden dem in dementiaIndependent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog decided to take a break this time from examining Joe Biden’s damage to the working class and the poor, to his KIDS IN CAGES which far outnumber anything seen under Obama and Trump, to his ongoing scandals and humiliations, and simply post about his well-deserved ridicule over his repeated inability to climb stairs.

Don’t snivel to me about it, Democrats. As if you wouldn’t run with footage of a Republican president doing this. (Think of Ford in the 1970s.) And considering that you hate-filled zealots paniced over every single thing de facto Third Party President Donald Trump said and did, and the way you flooded the nation with bizarre jokes implying he wanted to have sex with one of his daughters, you trashy hypocrites have no standing to beg for “decorum” when it comes to the Great Pretender. 

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March 21, 2021 · 5:18 pm

NAIA COLLEGE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT DAY ONE RESULTS

Bethel Pilots newDAY ONE: GAME ONE – The (16) BETHEL (IN) PILOTS (Riverboat Pilots) provided the shock of the day in their game against the (1) INDIANA WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY WILDCATS.

The Wildcats were on top 44-39 at Halftime but the Pilots came out of the locker room ready for a comeback. Bethel University outscored their opponents 44-33 in the 2nd Half, thus managing an 83-77 Upset of the top seeds. TreVion Hughes was the leading scorer for the Pilots with his 29 points. 

Jamestown JimmiesDAY ONE: GAME TWO – This game pitted the (13) UNIVERSITY OF JAMESTOWN JIMMIES against the (4) FAULKNER UNIVERSITY EAGLES (should be the Furies).

The Jimmies put Faulkner University on Upset Alert by the Half with a 38-33 advantage. After the break the University of Jamestown proceeded to match the Eagles score for score, with each team notching 50 points. The final tally was Jimmies 88  Faulkner U 83. Mason Walters and Marc Kjos each had 26 points for Jamestown with Walters getting a Double-Double by also grabbing 12 rebounds. Continue reading →

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March 20, 2021 · 12:31 am

X-MEN: THE NEW TEAM’S FIRST TWENTY STORIES

With superheroes continuing to dominate pop culture right now, here’s a look at the first twenty stories of the “All New, All Different” X-Men beginning in 1975. I have a soft spot for superhero stories because reading them as a kid served as a gateway to two of my adult passions – mythology and opera.

new x-men 1GIANT-SIZE X-MEN Vol 1 #1 (May 1975)

Title: Deadly Genesis

Villain: Krakoa

NOTE: This was the very FIRST appearance of the new team of X-Men who replaced the original, blander team launched in 1963. That team’s original series had been canceled and reduced to reprints (reruns).

Synopsis: The story opened with a series of vignettes featuring Professor X traveling the world rounding up a new batch of mutants detected by his invention Cerebro. Three of them had prior history in the Marvel Universe:

*** WOLVERINE (real name unknown at the time), who had fought the Hulk and the Wendigo in Canada. Wolverine willingly joined the X-Men and angrily resigned from Canada’s Department H, which had been sending him on missions up to that point. This would have repercussions down the road.

*** BANSHEE (Sean Cassidy), a sometime foe and sometime ally of the original team of X-Men. This Irishman had also fought Captain America and the Falcon.

*** SUNFIRE (Shiro Yoshida), a Japanese mutant who had fought the original X-Men as well as Sub-Mariner, Iron Man and Captain America.

The rest of the mutants Xavier rounded up were new:

*** STORM (Ororo Munroe), from Africa, where her weather-controlling powers had made her revered as a goddess by an isolated tribe.

*** NIGHTCRAWLER (Kurt Wagner), a German circus performer whose monstrous appearance made him the target of a mutant-hating mob from which Professor X saved him.

*** COLOSSUS (Piotr Rasputin), a Russian teenager working on a Collective Farm in the Soviet Union.

*** THUNDERBIRD (John Proudstar), a Native American mutant from a reservation in the American Southwest.

Once they were all assembled at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, the professor introduced them to Cyclops (Scott Summers), the leader of the original X-Men, who briefed them. He had led the original team – Iceman, Angel, Marvel Girl, Polaris and Havok (Beast was joining the Avengers at this point) to investigate a new mutant detected by Cerebro on a Pacific Ocean island called Krakoa. The original team vanished and only Cyclops escaped in their aircraft, but with no memory of what happened there. Continue reading →

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March 18, 2021 · 7:26 pm

NAIA COLLEGE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT RESULTS

ALEXANDRIA REGION

Talladega College Tornadoes NEWBRACKET A: GAME ONE – The 2 seeds – the TALLADEGA COLLEGE TORNADOES – did battle with the 3rd seeded LSU-ALEXANDRIA GENERALS.

The Tornadoes were clinging to a slender 30-27 edge at Halftime, then got more and more separation from the Generals after the break. Talladega College went on to win the game by a final score of 77-68. Both Darryl Baker and Amir Yusuf contributed 16 points, with Yusuf notching a Double-Double by also grabbing 19 rebounds. Continue reading →

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March 18, 2021 · 12:01 am

TRUMP VINDICATED AS WASHINGTON POST ADMITS ANOTHER ANTI-TRUMP HIT PIECE WAS WRONG

President Trump and flagHere at Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog I’ve often pointed out that the only people lower than the career criminals who hold office in this country may be the members of the corporate media.

Within the past several days the Washington Post at last apologized for their demonstrably false story about de facto Third Party President Donald Trump supposedly telling Georgia officials to force themselves to find vote fraud in their jumbled 2020 results. (links below) Not only that, but more vindication came Trump’s way in other ways as ANOTHER judge has ruled about the illegalities of the electoral “cheat by mail” scam last year. (links below)

This time it was in Michigan where Trump got vindication for his public accusations about the illegality of that state’s Democrat Secretary of State’s orders regarding ballots. Judge Christopher Murray ruled that the Democrat broke the law by issuing unilateral decisions regarding the counting of ballots with non-matching signatures. The State Legislature in Michigan needed to be involved for such measures to be legal.

I will point out again that the 2020 election will be forever remembered for being as crooked as the 1876 and year 2000 elections. More and more information – from SEVERAL states – keeps coming out about how tainted the 2020 results are. (links below) Continue reading →

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March 17, 2021 · 1:45 am

THE IRISH WILD GEESE

irish flagThough purists reserve the label Wild Geese strictly for those Irish Jacobin troops who left Ireland after the Williamite War ended in 1691, romantic military tradition has tended to consider almost all Irish expatriates who served in overseas armies from the 1580s into the 1800s and beyond as part of “the flight of the Wild Geese.”

The popular image of these wandering Irish warriors is of tragic exiles nobly fighting for the cause of freedom “in every land but their own” to twist the most famous poem about the Wild Geese. Their opponents in various conflicts would dispute that claim, naturally, but since this is Saint Patrick’s Day we’ll have none of that in this blog post. 

EIGHTY YEARS WAR – In 1585 an English Catholic named William Stanley raised an Irish Regiment to serve on the Continent with Queen Elizabeth’s forces. Stanley selected his 1,400 troops from the most volatile, hard-bitten Irish rebels whose battle prowess he admired even though he had fought against them only a few years earlier. The Irish Regiment under Stanley helped take Doesborg in August of 1586 and Deventer in October of that year. Continue reading →

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March 16, 2021 · 5:19 am

WILL THE 2021 NCAA TOURNAMENT BRACKETS BE THE MOST CHALLENGING EVER?

basketballWith all of the postponements and outright cancellations over Covid it is difficult to feel that any of us have gotten the real feel of which teams truly are the hottest in the nation going into the 2021 NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Almost every team played games in which some of their best players had to sit out over a Covid diagnosis, or may have only performed well because the opposing team had some of their best players sitting out because of Covid. Continue reading →

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March 15, 2021 · 2:08 pm

ANDY NGO’s BOOK UNMASKED IS A BRAVE EXPOSE ABOUT ANTIFA

UnmaskedHere at Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog I found Unmasked, courageous journalist Andy Ngo’s expose about Antifa, the fascist group which pretends to be anti-fascist, very interesting. Antifa (really KLAN-tifa) is not just an American hate group which uses anonymity and hatred to push its agenda, they are active in multiple countries. If you support mask-wearing thugs who use violence, violence and more violence then YOU are the fascist, not the people you criticize.

Andy Ngo has been physically attacked by the mindless mobs of Antifa, who continue threatening the brave reporter. Unmasked includes details on the plight of the innocent victims of the group during their celebration of hatred and violence in the summer of 2020. In some parts of the Pacific Northwest such riots on the part of Antifa continue to this day.

The bookfascists of the future also features some of Antifa’s documents expressing its views and methods. The fact that the group does not want its views and methods to receive such scrutiny reveals how terrified of the truth they are. Antifa – officially or not – has powerful politicians supporting them as a de facto intimidation group for one side of the aisle, so it’s good to see a courageous reporter willing to speak truth to power. 

In my opinion Antifa is a recent manifestation of a phenomenon the world has seen a lot of in the past. Masked, weapon-wielding haters like this often band together to try to make up for what useless, impotent little people they are individually. In fact a good definition for these black-clad Nazis would be: “Large numbers of simple-minded fascists acting in concert.”

Think of the way an army of ants, strictly by virtue of their numbers, can sometimes overwhelm and devour entities far greater than themselves.  ANTIFA: Their colors are red and black, just like the insects they so resemble!

Antifa is that you 

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March 14, 2021 · 4:53 pm

SKYWALD SUPERHEROES

mascot sword and gun pic

BALLADEER’S BLOG

How much Seventies can you handle? If dialogue like “Think I’ll take the money and just groove for awhile. Man, I can dig it!” appeals to you get ready for some “relevant” “now” and “with-it” comic books! Skywald Publishing tried to make its mark with adult black & white comic books in the 1970s. Some of their horror and sci-fi titles picked up a little momentum but when it came to superheroes, Skywald made the biggest blunder imaginable. They screwed up the copyright, making their superheroes like Hell-Rider and Butterfly public domain.

Their female horror character Lady Satan partially suffered that same fate, but changes to copyright law in 1974 made it so that only her first two issues from 1973 fell into the public domain and from the third story onward she was an owned IP. Anyway, the adventures of Hell-Rider and Butterfly (the first black female superhero) stood out with their toplessness, drug use and references to sex. Otherwise they were mediocre. Here are Skywald’s two public domain superheroes. Solid! … And all that stuff.

Hell-Rider

VICTIM: Hey, stop shooting that flamethrower in my face! WOMAN: That man is the worst nuisance on the beach!

HELL-RIDER

Secret Identity: Brick Reese (“Brick?”)

First Appearance: Hell-Rider #1 (August 1971)

Origin: Brick Reese (“Brick?”) rebelled against his affluent background. After graduating from Harvard Law School he drifted around the country, experimenting with sex and drugs, eventually joining the roguish but “heroic” biker gang called the Wild Bunch (Think the Howling Commandos meet the biker gang craze of the 60s and 70s).

After 6 months of this lifestyle, Brick got drafted and sent to serve in the Vietnam War. When he had just a few weeks left in his tour of duty he was seriously wounded, with his injuries being such that they threatened to paralyze him at any moment for the rest of his life. Rather than live with that forever hanging over his head, Brick volunteered to be a human guinea pig for the experimental drug Q-47. Injections of that drug every day for a month cured Reese but, unknown to anyone but him, also granted him superpowers with which he battled the forces of evil as the superhero Hell-Rider. Continue reading →

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