“Wooly Willy” is takin’ it waaaaay back. I remember this children’s toy from my early childhood in the 1970’s. (I was thrilled to receive this damned thing. The gimmick, if you can’t tell, is that you used a magnetic pen to draw features on Wooly Willy’s face out of those magnetic filaments encased over it. To a little boy, that seemed like magic.) I’m curious if anyone else remembers this guy.
These first hit shelves in 1955, according to Wikipedia, for the princely sum of 29 cents.
I keep wanting to correct the spelling of “Wooly” to “Woolly,” because I’m old and I hate fun, I guess.
Today’s Throwback Thursday is something that I don’t actually remember — the trailer for 1973’s “Westworld” was a bit before my time. But this was too good not to share. (I’ve been on a weird “Westworld” kick lately — probably because I recently happened across this quite promising trailer for the brilliant HBO remake’s third season.)
It’s funny seeing the same plot setup and motifs for the campy-looking original film (which was, surprisingly, written and directed by Michael Crichton). I must say that Yul Brynner looks like he made a pretty decent bad guy, though.
The nice folks over at A Story In 100 Words have published a new science fiction/horror flash fiction tale of mine. Its title is “Hungry Hannah,” and it’s my own riff on the creepy doll trope. You can find it right here. (If you’d like to take a look, however, please note beforehand that it does depict extreme violence.)
A Story In 100 Words is a terrific site devoted to 100-word stories. Its goal is to illustrate the “power of flash fiction, both as a storytelling art form in and of itself, and also as a writing exercise.” I’ve found it’s a great place to peruse a variety of great voices in indie lit.
Give the site a look! The nature of the work there means you can enjoy a complete story in only a few moments, and it’s loads of fun.
It was interesting to hear Lev Parnas comment to Anderson Cooper today that he once had such “a shrine” to Trump in his home, and that he “idolized him” and “thought he was the savior.”
It exemplifies the apparently religious fervor that many of Trump’s most ardent supporters express.
I am loathe to give Trump credit for anything. But I am always surprised at his ability to instill loyalty in his base.
He truly could shoot someone in broad daylight and still retain his followers, as he once so infamously claimed. That’s why it’s naive to think they’d care about graft or election interference or collusion with foreign powers.
What is it about the man? He has zero charisma. He’s mercurial and confusing about his positions, he’s inarticulate, and he’s sometimes incoherent. He isn’t handsome. And his habit of attacking people seems to contradict every Dale Carnegie training course I ever heard of.
But watch footage of his rallies. The attendees devour his every word with elation. I am a reasonably intelligent and likable adult. And so, presumably, are you. Yet we will never know such adulation in our lifetimes.
No matter how vague or dumb or muddled or ugly his message may be, he inexplicably induces euphoria in them. The psychology of that is blackly fascinating.
Recall, please, that Trump’s supporters (if not his base) comprise roughly a third of the American electorate. How can so many people have brains that are so tragically wired like that?
The Age of Trump has me worried not just about him, or about his base, but about human beings in general.
I found the picture below floating around Facebook — it’s part of the selection of masks advertised in The Johnson Smith Company Catalog, probably sometime in the late 1970’s. (As I’ve mentioned a few times here at the blog, I cherished that catalog and anything I could afford to buy from it when I was a kid.)
If memory serves … these were more expensive by the time I got my hands on the catalog in the early 1980’s. Maybe the prices went up by then? (I thought the masks sold for $20 or $25. I desperately wanted several of them, but my spending range capped at maybe $10 when I was a second or third grader.)
It was the monster masks that excited me. (Characters like the “Dirty Old Man” or the presidents had their genesis in some kind of weird grownup humor that befuddled me as a kid.) That “Skull” mask was one that I desperately wished for. (I also remember some sort of screaming skull face with sharp teeth that I wanted even more badly. It had a protruding mouth and a black cloth over its head, maybe?) The “Werewolf ” also would have attracted my attention.
If you look closely, you can see that some of these masks aren’t all that impressive. The “Alien” is probably a little less menacing than its designer intended, and “Santa Claus” feels problematic. “Frankenstein” is just sad; he looks like Michael Myers fathered a child with Smurfette. Oh, well.
Anyone want to place bets on the precise start of the president’s Twitter meltdown following Rachel Maddow’s interview of Len Parnas? Or maybe the number of tweets from him in the subsequent 24 hours?
You see that bird? That’s some kind of hawk or falcon.
I can’t be sure what kind. As you can see, the picture admittedly isn’t all that great. It had spots on its belly, but there are actually a bunch of birds of prey that have that trait.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 