Recently I made the 1940’s superhero the Black Condor the Official Superhero of Balladeer’s Blog because of his sheer goofiness. As a followup I’ll be providing mock captions for various Black Condor covers.
BLACK CONDOR: Make a wish before one of your arms gets torn off, you bastard! There will be NO climbing across laundry lines on MY watch!
Filed under humor
CLOSE UPSETS – The LSU- SHREVEPORT PILOTS (riverboat pilots) rose up and took out the (8) PIKEVILLE UNIVERSITY BEARS! After leading at halfime 44-35 the Pilots withstood a spirited rally by Pikeville in the 2nd half and advance to the Sweet 16 with a 91-87 victory. ### And the MARTIN METHODIST REDHAWKS upset the (11) WESTMONT WARRIORS. The Redhawks were up by 7 at the break then had to go blow for blow with Westmont in a fast’n’ furious 2nd half to come out on top 71-65.
TAKIN’ CARE OF BUSINESS – The number one seeds, the COLUMBIA (MO) COUGARS, sent a message to the rest of the tournament field yesterday, eviscerating the OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY STARS by a score of 68-37. ### And in more bad news for the Sooner Athletic Conference the UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND ARTS OF OKLAHOMA DROVERS got eliminated by the Continue reading
Filed under College Basketball
No, not The Werewolf Of Washington, which is a whole other movie, but The Werewolf of Woodstock, site of the famous multi-day music festival in 1969 New York. Enjoy this atrocious attempt at a rock’n’roll horror film. And for more bad movie reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/
THE WEREWOLF OF WOODSTOCK (1972) – Category: Bad enough and with a classically weird premise but not fun-bad enough for my highest rating
This made for tv movie presents the weirdest variation on the werewolf legend this side of Curse of the Queerwolf. The story begins the night after the conclusion of 1969′s Woodstock music festival when a Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know that words like eccentric, oddball, offbeat, weird and damn crazy come to mind when describing me. So, that being the case the most appropriate superhero mascot for this site is the Black Condor.
That’s the Golden Age Black Condor, who debuted in 1940 and is now in the public domain, not the newer comic book characters going by that name. The original Black Condor appeals to me in the same way that bad movies do. Here are the six reasons why this figure has long been my favorite weirdass Golden Age superhero: Continue reading
Filed under humor
MULWINDA – The goddess who protected the royal clan. Each of the 46 clans of Bunyoro had its own protective deity. They each also had their own totem-name which could be an animal, e.g. Kiroko (hippopotamus) or a plant, e.g. Bulo (millet), a utensil, e.g. Kaibo (basket), or a part of the body, e.g. Amara (stomach). No one was Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
Here’s a look at two forgotten early ventures into the form of story- telling that we now call science fiction. My fondness for the ancient Greeks prompts me to examine a pair of works by Lucian, the Greek philosopher who lived in the 2nd century C.E. Lucian was noted not just for his philosophical observations but also for two works that defied definition by his contemporaries but would easily fall into the category of science fiction today. Both works are from roughly 150 C.E.
1. ICAROMENIPPUS – The title, obviously, was inspired by the myth about Icarus using wings crafted by his father Daedalus to fly too close to the sun, which hubristic act led to his death. In this work Lucian depicted his hero Menippus using one wing from an eagle and one from a vulture to fly to Mt Olympus, and from there to the moon. He discovered that 
the moon (on which he could breathe just like on Earth) was populated by the souls of the deceased (roughly twelve hundred years before Dante’s Paradiso). From the moon Menippus made the astonishing observation that Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
PSI Factor depicted a series of investigations into the paranormal conducted by the fictional Office of Scientific Investigation and Research, or OSIR. This Canadian-made series was often unfairly dismissed as “X-Files Light”, but that in no way does justice to a very entertaining program. The members of the OSIR’s various field teams went about their business in a much more convincing mock-scientific way than conspiracy kook Fox Mulder ever did, and that helped the audience suspend their disbelief.
Each episode featured Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television
Balladeer’s Blog presents its latest examination of a neglected pantheon of deities. In the Americas alone I have previously written about gods and goddesses of the Navajo, Inuit, Hawaiians, Choctaw, Iroquois and Aztecs.
Those familiar with the Creek people are aware of how many different sub-classifications there are, so I will remind readers that this article deals only with the deities of the Muscogee Creek. In the future I will eventually do examinations of the gods of the Tuckabatchee, Yuchi, Tuskegee and others generally regarded as Creek.
9. NEREHVURESSE – The Muscogee Creek moon goddess. She was the wife of the sun god and, as with the moon goddess of the Choctaw people, it was said that she spent moonless nights having sexual relations with her husband. The differing phases of the moon were explained as Nerehvuresse covering her face in varying degrees of embarrassment over Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
I’m continuing my look at Frederick C Davis’ pulp hero the Moon Man. In reality police detective Stephen Thatcher, the Moon Man stalked the night-darkened streets of fictional Great City clad in his black costume and his helmet made of one-way Argus glass. Armed with an automatic pistol plus limitless courage and ingenuity the Moon Man captured or killed Great City’s most dangerous criminals – both white collar and blue collar – and robbed them of their ill-gotten booty. He would then distribute that money to the city’s Great Depression-ravaged poor. All this made him hunted by both the crooks AND the cops. For more on the Moon Man and other neglected pulp heroes click here: https://glitternight.com/pulp-heroes/
22. THE CRIMSON SHRINE – The story opens with the Moon Man raiding the hideout of a quintet of deadly criminals who have been running a con on many of Great City’s wealthiest citizens. He relieves them of the tens of thousands of dollars they had grifted from their marks but in the shootout that follows Continue reading
Filed under Pulp Heroes
This French-produced (but English language) series about William Tell was the perfect antidote for fans of derring-do who were bored with the umpteen versions of the Robin Hood legend.
The series starred Will Lyman as the crossbow- wielding Tell and Jeremy Clyde (of Chad and Jeremy fame) as Gessler, the tyrant Tell opposed during the Swiss Uprising against the Austrians in the 14th Century. Each episode featured Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television
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