Balladeer’s Blog covers a lot of mythology and folklore, so here’s a look at five monster legends of the U.S. (Non-Bigfoot categories).
I don’t believe that there was anything truly supernatural in any of these tales, but life is less fun without legends like these. All of them are ripe for embellishment and screen adaptations.
THE VAN METER VISITOR
First Appearance: 1903
Lore: From September 29th to October 3rd of 1903 the Iowa town of Van Meter was supposedly plagued by at least two 8-9 feet tall batlike creatures who could fly, stand upright, climb up and down telephone poles and shoot a noxious odor as a defense mechanism. The three-toed creatures also had a blunt horn on their heads and said horns could supposedly cast light beams via bioluminescence.
Over the course of the visitation multiple shots were fired at the beings as they flew around town, perched on rooftops and telephone wires and roamed around a nearby brick and tile factory as well as an abandoned mine. By October 3rd an armed crowd of Van Meter citizens investigated the factory and the mine. They spotted two of the batlike creatures emerging from the mine and opened fire on them again to no effect.
Eventually the two winged beings retreated into the mine and the crowd quickly blocked off the mine entrance for good, thus ending the rash of sightings.
THE BUTTERFLY PEOPLE
First Appearance: 2011
Lore: On May 22nd, 2011 Joplin, Missouri was hit by an F5 tornado which killed 160 people, destroyed 900 homes and injured hundreds. Among those injured were multiple children and early teens who attributed their survival to the intervention and/or protection of winged butterfly people. Continue reading →
Balladeer’s Blog, the Independent Voter site, presents even more demonstrations that the Democrats are no longer the party of FDR and JFK. AND REMEMBER: Any time the Democrat Fascists dislike a verdict from a jury they riot.
EVEN BARACK OBAMA’S FORMER WHITE HOUSE ETHICS CHIEF AGAIN CALLS OUT THE CORRUPTION OF THE BIDEN REGIME. Especially regarding the “revolving door” that lets government staff cash in with lobbyists and influence peddling. If you’ll recall, Biden’s predecessor shut down that revolving door via signed agreements not to use it, which was one of the reasons America’s notoriously corrupt political parties fought him.
FOUR OVER TWO – In NCAA Division Two the 4th ranked defending national champions, the UNIVERSITY OF WEST FLORIDA ARGONAUTS, welcomed the number 2 team in the nation – the VALDOSTA STATE BLAZERS. By Halftime the Argonauts held a 24-21 edge over the Blazers. The 3rd Quarter ended with the University of West Florida on top 45-35 before putting it away in the 4th, 61-42.
DOWN GOES NUMBER FIVE – Over in the NAIA the number 13 SOUTHWESTERN COLLEGE MOUNDBUILDERS took it on the road to battle the 5th ranked KANSAS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY COYOTES. The Coyotes led 7-0 in the opening Quarter but the Moundbuilders were up 13-7 at the break. Southwestern College had a 28-21 advantage in the 3rd Quarter and ultimately won the game 42-24.
SERVICE ACADEMY MANIA – This game pitted the UNITED STATES MERCHANT MARINE ACADEMY MARINERS against their archrivals the COAST GUARD ACADEMY BEARS. The Mariners seized a quick 21-0 lead in the 1st Quarter and never looked back from there. In the end they embarrassed the Bears by a score of 49-14 in their own house.Continue reading →
Here’s Part Eleven of Spider-Man 1970s Classics. For Part One click HERE.
GIANT-SIZE SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #2 (October 1974)
Title: Masterstroke
Villain: Fu Manchu
NOTE: For anyone unfamiliar with the way Marvel licensed the rights to Fu Manchu and other Sax Rohmer characters and with the differences between the novels and Marvel’s use of Shang-Chi as the son of Fu Manchu I covered the first twelve issues HERE.
Synopsis: Still rooming with Flash Thompson after the destruction of his and Harry Osborn’s old apartment, Spider-Man is swinging around New York City one night. He comes across a robbery at the Guggenheim Museum and attacks the robbers.
That gang of criminals are secretly operatives of Fu Manchu and use their martial arts skills and weaponry against Spider-Man. He overcomes them all and when he interrogates one of them about who they work for, the thief does as ordered by Fu Manchu and instead claims he works for Shang-Chi. (Part of Fu Manchu’s plan is to pit his son Shang-Chi against Spider-Man.) Continue reading →
Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog takes a Friday look at the ongoing scandals and failures from the disastrous Joe Biden, whose policies continue to crush the working class and the poor. *** UNRELATED UPDATE – I CANNOT BELIEVE THE WAY DEMOCRAT MEDIA OUTLETS IDIOTICALLY THINK KYLE RITTENHOUSE SHOT BLACK PEOPLE. HE SHOT WHITE PEOPLE, YOU MINDLESS HACKS!
Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault! In the middle 1980s, way down on Level 31 Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, machine-gun toting Film Vault Technicians First Class hosted this neglected cult show. Balladeer’s Blog continues its celebration of this overlooked Movie Host program.
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Unknown but definitely before May of 1986. One of the old newspaper articles from early May of that year refers to Glen or Glenda as one of the movies having already been shown on The Texas 27 Film Vault. Anyone with more specific info feel free to contact me.
SERIAL: Unknown. Again, if you have info contact me.
COMEDY SKETCHES: Unknown. We’ve exhausted the episodes where I DO know the date, serial and sketches.
THE LAST GENERATION – A STORY OF THE FUTURE (1908) – Written by James Elroy Flecker. A poet longs to see beyond his own era and experiences. He is visited by a time-travel phenomenon which is similar to a wind. The Time Wind transports him to various periods in the future.
First the wind takes him to future Birmingham, England, where a mad fanatic named Joshua Harris and his co-conspirators are planning to launch their coup the next day. He and his followers aren’t motivated by pure politics but by their belief that all of life is nothing but misery and can be ended only by death. They plan to seize power and set the human race on the path to extinction. Continue reading →
We need alternate political parties. Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog presents another look at the ugly hoax (or maybe I should say Big Lie) about Trump collusion with Russia. Even some Democrat reporters over the years covered how false that story was (see below). No matter how much I despised George W Bush or Barack Obama, for instance, I wrote multiple blog posts about how ridiculous it was when people claim Bush planned the 9-11 attacks or that Obama was “a Muslim sleeper agent.”
At any rate, the latest developments in the ongoing investigation of the perpetrators of the Russian Collusion hoax prompted news stories around the world, including Australia.
and here
And, to quote from Democrat reporters who have covered what a hoax the entire Russian Collusion nonsense was …
From December 16th, 2019:
ROLLING STONE REPORTER MATT TAIBBI, who is very anti-Trump, has once again risen above his own feelings – like reporters are SUPPOSED TO DO – and pointed out that the IG report actually verified the claims made by Congressman Devin Nunes and President Trump himself about the FBI’s political assault on Trump. Taibbi’s Rolling Stone piece shows how damning the IG report was for the FBI, Schiff and the Democrats’ media outlets. “Democrats are not going to want to hear this” are the most appropriate words in his article.
In a previous article, Taibbi (like Sharyl Attkisson one of the few actual “journalists” left in the country) pointed out that the “Russian Collusion” nonsense was “WMD’s times a million” (CLICK HERE ).
Now, in his latest article, Matt points out how the anti-Trump forces need to stop deluding themselves that there isn’t something deeply wrong at the FBI and with the entire FISA process. The link is below, but first some excerpts:
“Horowitz describes at great length an FBI whose “serious” procedural problems and omissions of “significant information” in pursuit of surveillance authority all fell in the direction of expanding the unprecedented investigation of a presidential candidate (later, a president)” (NOTE FROM BALLADEER: The fact that the Democrats are willing to ignore this Gestapo-style approach by the FBI just because they hate the man being investigated shows how low that party has sunk.)
“…Officials on the “Crossfire Hurricane” Trump-Russia investigation went to extraordinary, almost comical lengths to seek surveillance authority of figures like Trump aide Carter Page”
“…Likewise, the use of reports by ex-spy/campaign researcher Christopher Steele in pursuit of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authority had far-reaching ramifications. Not only did obtaining a FISA warrant allow authorities a window into other Trump figures with whom Page communicated, they led to a slew of leaked “bombshell” news stories that advanced many public misconceptions, including that a court had ruled there was “probable cause” that a Trump figure was an “agent of a foreign power.” There are too many to list in one column, but the Horowitz report shows years of breathless headlines were wrong.” (NOTE FROM BALLADEER: Yes, those headlines were VERY wrong.)
“Press figures have derided the idea that Steele was crucial to the FISA application, with some insisting it was only a “small part” of the application. Horowitz is clear: ‘We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.”
“… The Steele report reads like a pile of rumors surrounded by public information pulled off the Internet, and the Horowitz report does nothing to dispel this notion. At the time the FBI submitted its first FISA application, Horowitz writes, it had “corroborated limited information in Steele’s election reporting, and most of that was publicly available information.”
“Horowitz says of Steele’s reports: “The CIA viewed it as ‘internet rumor.’” Worse (and this part of the story should be tattooed on the heads of Russia truthers), the FBI’s interviews of Steele’s sources revealed Steele embellished the most explosive parts of his report.” (NOTE FROM BALLADEER: And this is exactly like the way J Edgar Hoover’s FBI would allow even the most salacious and unconfirmed rumors about his political targets to be included in FBI files, knowing that to laymen the fact that something comes from “an FBI file” lends it undeserved credibility.)Continue reading →
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE
PART 60 – As always, this installment of The Fool-Killer included sentiments that would tick off people from both the left and the right. Some of the Fool Killer’s targets in the October of 1912 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s publication:
*** MILLIONAIRES, because after all the expense and trouble it takes to clothe, feed and educate a millionaire “as a rule he isn’t worth a damn to the country after it gets him.”
*** POLITICIANS who spend more time talking about property instead of human beings.
*** WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, incumbent U.S. President. Pearson and his Fool Killer had preferred Theodore Roosevelt and thought Taft was a weak successor. (For my take on the election of 1912 click HERE.) Continue reading →
THE HOOKED GENERATION (1968) – Directed and co-written by the one and only William Grefe. William is known to me and my fellow fans of bad movies for Florida-filmed cult turkeys like Sting of Death, Death Curse of Tartu, The Wild Rebels and Impulse, with William Shatner.
The Hooked Generation is horribly mistitled. That title makes it sound like one of the many over-the-top, heavy handed anti-drug movies of the past. Instead, the film is really about a sleazy, violent gang of small-time drug dealers who bite off more than they can chew when they try to move up in the crime world.
Balladeer’s Blog
For a glib description, think of it as a “gangsters headed for a bad end” flick like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Edward G Robinson used to appear in, but with a low-rent cast that is more like the type of overdone hippie/ counter-culture felons you’d see on 60s and 70s episodes of Hawaii Five-O. There’s plenty of violence, drug use and lurid appeal, though.
The small-timers whose abilities don’t match their ambitions use their boat to make a clandestine pickup from their Cuban connections out at sea. Those connections are sailors from Castro’s navy who make side money dealing drugs in between the coasts of Florida and Cuba. Continue reading →