Iroquois Confederation
AIRESKOI – The Iroquois god of war, identified with the Aurora Borealis. While other Iroquois souls would go to the conventional afterlife warriors slain in battle got to reside with Aireskoi in the heavens, their souls glowing with the grandeur of their battlefied heroics, thus accounting for the brightness of the Aurora Borealis. Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
ABRAHAM BALDWIN AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE STALLIONS
Location: Tifton, GA
Division: NJCAA
Conference Affiliation: Georgia Collegiate Athletic Association
Comment: This respected institution was established in 1908 and sits along Georgia’s Lake Baldwin. All of the Stallions sports teams are noteworthy but when it comes to baseball prominent alumni include Major League players Tom Cheney, Ralph Bryant and Kyle Farnsworth. Continue reading
Filed under Cool names and cool logos
Beautiful Keisha Evans with a kind shoutout to Balladeer’s Blog
Sex symbol and breast goddess Keisha Evans has a well-earned reputation for driving men and some women wild! Not only is she an engaging, charismatic and beautiful lady but Keisha was kind enough to provide this shoutout to Balladeer’s Blog! If you’re interested in seeing even more of Keisha – and who isn’t – read on: Continue reading
Filed under Sex Symbols
Yes, it’s the 16th of June, better known to James Joyce geeks like me as Bloom’s Day. The day is named in honor of Leopold Bloom, the Jewish advertising sales rep and Freemason who is one of the major characters in Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The novel also brings along Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of his earlier novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. For those unfamiliar with this work, Ulysses is Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novel in which he metaphorically features the events from the Odyssey in a single day – June 16th, 1904, in Dublin. (The day he met Nora Barnacle, the woman he would eventually marry after living together for decades) Bloom represents Ulysses/Odysseus, Stephen represents Telemachus and Leopold’s wife, Molly Bloom, represents Penelope.
The novel is jam-packed with Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the neglected Pulp Hero G-8. This marks the beginning of a story-by- story look at the adventures of this World War One American fighter pilot who – along with his two wingmen the Battle Aces – took on various supernatural and super- scientific menaces thrown at the Allied Powers by the Central Powers of Germany, Austria- Hungary and the Ottoman Muslim Turks.
G-8 was created by Robert J Hogan in 1933 when World War One was still being called simply the World War or the Great War. Over the next eleven years Hogan wrote 110 stories featuring the adventures of G-8, the street-smart pug Nippy Weston and the brawny giant Bull Martin. Our hero – whose real name was never revealed – served as an aerial commando and spy as well as a sort of Indiana Jones/ Brisco County Junior figure against his archenemy Doktor Krueger and a host of other mad scientists, aliens and monsters that the Central Powers had up their sleeve.
The regular cast was rounded out by Battle, G-8’s British manservant and by our hero’s girlfriend R-1: an American nurse/ spy whose real name, like G-8’s was never revealed.
1. THE BAT STAFFEL (Oct 1933) – This debut adventure of G-8 and his Battle Aces (Bull Martin and Nippy Weston) featured their very first clash with Germany’s brilliant mad scientist Doktor Krueger (Freddy’s ancestor no doubt). During one of their aerial commando raids on a Top Secret German installation our heroes discover that Doktor Krueger has harnessed the power of an entire flock of gigantic plane-sized bats who breathe a deadly gas that kills human beings upon exposure, shriveling them up until they are nothing but powder.
G-8 and the Battle Aces escape to warn the Allies what they will soon be up against and are sent back on a daring, desperate mission to nip this bizarre menace in the bud before the giant bats and their “halitosis of death” can turn the tide of the war. Ultimately G-8 and his wingmen wind up inside an enormous cavern which houses the flock of gigantic bats. In a showdown with Doktor Krueger they learn that the bats are really just gigantic android creations of the good doctor, who also developed the deadly gas that the constructs “breathe”. Continue reading
Filed under Pulp Heroes
FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977) – H.H. Munro must have turned over in his grave at this adaptation of one of his short stories. This quasi-horror film was re-released in 1979 as just The Orphan and despite the original title it has no connection to the Friday the 13th series of slasher flicks. At least, no REAL connection. I’m surprised some unscrupulous distributor never tried sneaking this into theaters in the 1980’s as a “prequel” to the slasher movies by presenting the insane young boy in the movie as the grandfather of Jason Voorhees.
Even so the title makes it hard not to think of our wealthy young protagonist “David” (Mark Owens) as an ancestor of the hockey- masked slice and dice man from Crystal Lake. In the 1920’s David’s mother accidentally shoots his African Big Game Hunter father Kevin to death during an argument about his frequent overseas trips. David not only witnesses this but sees his mother put the gun in her mouth and kill herself immediately afterward. Next David gets VERY disturbed when a presumed family member (an uncredited Christopher Lloyd in a “blink-and-you’ll- miss- him” appearance) forces him to kiss his dead father as he lies in his coffin. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
ONHDAGWIJA – The moose goddess. Onhdagwija wandered the forests interacting with and looking after the animals she ruled over. The most prominent myth featuring her depicts her falling in love with an Iroquois hunter. She assumes human form and begins preparing acorn bread for him in his temporary bark cabin while he is off hunting during the day. Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
FRANK PHILLIPS COLLEGE PLAINSMEN
Location: Borger, TX
Division: NJCAA
Comment: The Plainsmen are notorious with Balladeer’s Blog and the world at large for both their catchy team name AND their thoroughly butt- kicking logo. Continue reading
Filed under Cool names and cool logos
Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, the legendary Casey James
Casey James is as lethal as she is lovely and among her many roles in life she is kind enough to be Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess. This time around this voluptuous embodiment of men’s and many women’s desires is presenting the first in a series of my reviews of the more obscure Spaghetti Westerns – the ones not well known to viewers who are only familiar with Sergio Leone’s films.
THE PRICE OF POWER (1969) – There were literally more than 550 Spaghetti Westerns made in the 60’s and 70’s since when the Italians do something they do it in a big, big way. Those hundreds of films vary in quality from pretty good to hilariously awful and the creative talents behind them often tried to outdo each other in terms of colorful heroes and oddball plots. My favorites include those movies where the Italians took more liberties with Western history than American filmmakers ever dreamed of.
That brings us to The Price Of Power which was also released under the title Texas. The point of this film is … well, it’s hard to say really. Even after repeated viewings. It’s difficult to determine if the filmmakers were trying to make a statement about the alleged conspiracy behind the assassination of President John F Kennedy or about the civil rights movement, or about capitalism’s impact on the political process in a free society or what. Whatever they were trying to do the end result is like a history lesson taught by Ed Wood himself. Let’s compare the historical record to the plotline of this very odd movie. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Sex Symbols, Spaghetti Westerns
Previously Balladeer’s Blog has done a story-by- story examination of the neglected pulp heroes Silver John, the Moon Man and Northwest Smith. Now begins a look at the pulp adventures of the 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
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