It’s no surprise that I read many books this past summer. Here are five of my favorite summer reads.
Good Morning, Monster by Catherine Gildiner. I listened to the audio version of the books while driving to and from work during the early summer months. Therapist Catherine Gildiner shares her thoughts and memories of some of her patients that stood out during her career. Some of the stuff she shared literally made my jaw drop! Try to find the audio version if possible. Her shared memories will definitely absorb your day!
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier. 18 years old and pregnant and delivers pizza. She becomes fascinated with one of her customers, Jenny. And a weird relationship starts, and yes, a lot of pizza is discussed.
So I had this book FOREVER lying in my room and finally decided to read it a couple of months ago. I will never know why it took me so long to read it! However, Bette Davis wrote candidly about her career and life experiences during her later years. I had an ancient copy that made most of the pages loose when I finished it.
There was a Little Girl by Brooke Shields. I was really into memoirs during the summer, but this was my favorite one. Brooke Shields talks about her relationship with her mom, the ups and downs, and intermixes it with humor and sadness.
What the Dead Know by Barbara Butcher. Mrs. Butcher discusses very openly her struggles with alcoholism and how the twists and turns in her life led her to work as a death investigator in Manhattan. This was beyond exciting and totally worth a read!
If you haven’t seen it yet, that’s OK! It’s now available on Blu-ray through AGFA and Vinegar Syndrome!
Video Diary of a Lost Girl is a rock and horror fantasy where we meet the immortal Louise and her beloved Charlie. Unfortunately due to Louise’s supernatural origins, every man she sleeps with must die, so that she can survive. A heart-felt love letter to 80’s horror, punk, VHS, and German expressionism. PMS has never been this deadly!
My cinematic universe has been expanding into What’s Inside Pandora’s Talk Box? (dun dun). A TV series spin-off of Video Diary! In the attic of the family run video store Adult Sinema, Pandora’s newest bloody creation is a living TV made out of human flesh, with access to channels from other worlds! Channel surf every universe in this MST3K inspired monstrosity!
The kind people at Whammy! Analog in LA have been premiering the whole series inside their microcinema all summer! I will be in attendance for a Q&A on August 31st!
And NOW, my piece de resistance…
KILLER MAKEOVER (Coming 2025!)
Killer Makeover is about a beauty school dropout that gets cursed by a witch, so that anyone she puts makeup on…DIES! Our heroine starts working as a mortician to make ends meet, but finds out something sinister is going on at the funeral home… Set in the same cinematic neon universe as Video Diary of Lost Girl, Killer Makeover is a supernatural romantic comedy about following your dreams, even when they become nightmares!
(Karen (Sarah Fensom) witnessing the horror that her curse brings.)
The long awaited Killer Makeover will be beginning it’s festival run in 2025! How did Killer Makeover come to be you ask? Well, it’s a long, long story… so check out this EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with two of the creators: Sarah Fensom and Chris Shields.
(Sarah Fensom and Chris Shields, writers and leads in Killer Makeover)
Heads up, this BIG in-depth interview is definitely meant for the hardcore fans 😉 Thank you so much to Lady Cult for letting me show-off what’s inside my Talk Box! Give me a follow on my YouTube and Instagram for updates! “
So, I have a list of topics I will eventually write about in my blog. This topic has been on my list since I made it. I am not really sure why it took close to nine years to write about it, but we are finally here writing about it.
Grave Robbing for Morons was made possibly in 1990 or earlier. The footage was on a VHS tape, and this short was extremely popular and passed around the VHS community. It was finally made part of a DVD called “Ensuring Your Place in Hell Volume One” which contained a total of four short films that included ” Grave Robbing for Morons,” “Mortuary of the Dead,” “Cooking with Huck Botko” and “Exploding Varmints.” Below is a Cinemas Underbelly discussing “Ensuring Your Place in Hell” in Volumes One and Two.
“Grave Robbing for Morons” is the first short film (which is about 26 minutes in total length) in volume one. It centers around a young man who goes to great lengths and describes how to rob graves. While he goes into detail, he carries a skull as a visual aid, has a bit of a stutter, and goes by the name Anthony and talks about the other people who help him rob graves.
There could be a possibility that the skull he is holding could have been a recently grave robbery that he committed, although who knows for sure. The mystery of this video is that throughout the entire history of this short film, it has been out on the internet and talked about for decades. No one knows who the people in the video are and what happened to them. But then were confident in continuing in robbing graves after the video was made.
Also, we do not know why this video was made, but there is so much speculation about this short film. Has anyone else seen this video? If so, what are your thoughts? Is it real or fake? Or weird?
This week’s contributor’s spotlight is from Marty Sokol (IG: @clubcobra )
“If you’re old enough, say, to scour the world for a cream – or anything to stop the neck creping, you might tie on a summer scarf and head out for a walk, but it won’t be long before shadowy spirits really come up on you – ghosts really, and if you don’t look for them, they will walk right through you in line to make a call on a public pay phone long gone.
Lines and Lines of people, all over Midtown and throughout The City, waiting to use the pay phone, itself, living on well past the time affordable cell phones had eclipsed their usefulness to the strains of Celine Dion ‘I Will Go On’ warbling down every Avenue, store front & passing car & indeed they did, nearly to the end of the Millennium.
Pay Phones, the way they smelled like flesh rot. The way we’d rub it across our shirt and think – ’It’s Fine’. …Keeping the folding door open with your back to breathe through the pee…
But it’s not the pay phone itself that’s missing, it’s The Lines. These Lines were miserable, maddening, anxiety induced suffering & they were everywhere, but by the close of the 90’s The Lines themselves were all but gone — absolutely no one noticed.
The absence of The Gay Piano Bar is much like that. It’s just Gone. The struggle of The American Gay Bar & Nightclub has been well documented. (Read ‘The Bars Are Ours’ by Lucas Hilderbrand & ‘Who Needs Gay Bars’ by Gregor Mattson)
— Only The American Gay Piano Bar had died in it’s sleep decades earlier, not many noticed, really everyone was fine…
…Turn another corner and it’s 1985 Back Bay, Boston, it’s dark, you’re a 17 year old Freshman walking narrow cobblestone streets – cowpaths you were told at orientation. The friends joining you – you will know forever, whether you see them or even speak to them.
(Napoleon Club Present Day (2018) Boston Herald)
You walk up to a large Colonial brick townhouse possibly standing since the Revolutionary War – a torch light by the door & a brass plaque ‘Napoleon Club’.
(Original Sign)
Enter a hallway — deep red flocked wallpaper — an actual marble bust of Napoleon on a pedestal, at the end of the hallway a bouffanted woman in the coat check charged you, although, I can not remember how much, or even ever having any money. She would never ask for an ID & you were in…
Over the years I have looked everywhere for photos or any information on Napoleons – I am shocked at how little exists online. — So here a quick tour!….
There are three main rooms downstairs with a piano & well dressed piano player seated at each one & bartenders formally suited in red vests. The rooms elegant & overstuffed… Cozy Ivy League Country Club vibe. A bar in the center room & the furthest, The Empire Room, an actual ballroom with a stage I can only remember being open once.
Men in sport coats with leather patches on the elbows – college professors, art collectors, Men of Industry, Men Of The Cloth even. These were cultured people. Drunk, singing, laughing, smoking, sometimes handsy, a little randy & always happy to buy a young man a drink.
If downstairs was Harvard House, upstairs was Fire Island — Josephine’s was a fully lit, low ceiling Disco, whose walls were inexplicably lined & lit with dozens of black light velvet clown portraits & a room filled with Gay Joy. Every night the DJ would close with ‘Old Cape Cod’, a 1950’s Patti Page regional radio hit & the men would slow dance together till the lights came up.
The nights spent at Napoleons were Grand in every way — it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. …The night we took mushrooms & went to The Ringing Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, ourselves spinning over the 3 Rings in the Nose Bleeds at The Garden & then running to Napoleons only to be greeted by a dozen Circus performers drinking & laughing at the bar — including famed Lion tamer Gunther Gebel-Williams in a fur coat!
I have confirmed this night actually happened – frankly even I sometimes have doubts & I was there(!) — so I corroborated the lore with my friend David who concurs it did actually maybe happen — but in all fairness, David, on another unrelated night at Napoleons, was, point in fact, accused by the bartender of stealing his rag — incredulous — outraged — I rushed to my friends defense — “Why would he do that?!” I demanded. Later, as we drunkenly walked home towards Beacon Street, David pulled the wet rag from his pocket, waved it in the air & literally rolled on the street laughing. I was gobsmacked.
Look, 1985 was a scary time to be Gay & frankly a scary time in general. Listen closely & you’ll hear the Ghosts of Men of a certain age singing & laughing at the piano. Most of them had left us by the time I left Boston in December ’88 & Napoleons, well it became condos.
Funny how those men – most likely years younger than me now, seemed so old & funny to us… out of touch — the irony, of course, after so many decades without older Gay Men on this planet, we finally filled that gap ourselves.
So step on a crack & spin in place — listen to the laughter swirling around us on empty street corners. Is the Circus in Town or is that David whirling a wet rag?… let me make a call.”
—————————————————————-
Marty Sokol is a writer/producer & entrepreneur who owns & operates nightclubs in Los Angeles for over two decades. SokolWorld01@gmail.com
ladycultblog 