NIGHTHAWKS 2007-2017

My late friend Jannah Ortstadt slapped the first image together, the second is from Getty Images, but the basis is Edward Hopper's NIGHTHAWKS. I've been trying to get press releases to the local papers and I might as well quit while I'm behind. Remember when I mentioned the Southown nStar in the last post?

This from Richard Chwedyk: That's because the Southtown Star was bought by Pioneer Press, which was bought by Wrapports, which was sold to the Tribune, which is now called tronc (lowercase intended).

This is what happened while Chicago slept for the last 35 years.

I am not making this up.

-- Rich

DAILY SOUTHTOWN 1996 (will the Southtown Star throw me a bone this week?)

TRUE STORY, AS RELATED TO MIKE STERLING

And let me wrap up things with his amazing story from longtime ProgRuin-ite Wayne, who left this remembrance in the comments for the one post I don’t have in my numbered links up there:

“Here’s [my true story]. I have no photos, because I am certain the funeral home in question did not want to be sued.

“It was a gig I had for about two weeks in October of 1989. I was broke, ready to take any job. And I ended up dressing in a Keaton Batman-like suit and attending wakes and funerals in a suburb South of Chicago. The funeral home honestly thought that the kids would be less sad if they knew that whomever was in the casket was friends with Batman. No idea why ANY kid would believe that, but there I was, bat-ears and all, sitting in the back of the viewing room and on at least four occasions, being a pallbearer and standing at the gravesite looking properly somber.

“I was in college and was paid $15 in 1989 dollars for each viewing I was able to attend, with an extra $2 thrown in if I was a pallbearer.”

This is insane. Is this a thing that happens now? Do people go to funerals in character costumes today to, um, lighten the mood for kids? I’m half-tempted to Google search but I don’t think I really want to know if someone’s dressing up as, let’s say, Twilight Sparkle to keep the children calm during the service.

I can see maybe having like a side thing to entertain the children while the actual funeral is going on…MAYBE. But Wayne was actually carrying the coffin. Like, four times.

So if you ever had any doubt just how much of an influence that first Tim Burton Batman movie was, there you go. Batman was everywhere you looked, and followed you everywhere you would go…even into the cold embrace of the grave.

 

THE SHROUD OF ELVIS, MY BLANKET AT MANY CONVENTIONS

Should be posting my photos from Arcana tomorrow, thanks T Mobile you suck!

In the meantime, I've been wanting to show my fans what Peggy Nadramia gifted me sometime around 1988. Since people often piled into hotel rooms at cons to keep it cheap, but we'd be short on blankets, Peggy bought me my own blanket. In which Elvis had an oddly shaped erection and was holding onto it. But okay, it kept me warm on many a night. Still does, in the winter, when the moon burns full and bright.

And for fun, you can even hold it up and then stick the lips into your mouth and then the face would make you look all creepy like it did with Clutch Cargo or Space Angel (see left) who used Lip-O-Vision or something like that. My dog does seem to like it when anyone goes to kiss him like that.

So, yeah. There's saliva from at least a dozen people on this thing.

PHOTOS FROM ARCANA 41

I'll eventually post my photos once T-Mobile lets me do so. For now, here's one of Rodger Gerberding, a fantastical artist and stage actor from Council Bluffs, Iowa, Paul Dale Anderson, author of Claw Hammer and a million other books, Roger Dale Trexler, who published two books of mine and has published several books of his own. Now a filmmaker, his first film, PLATYPOSSUM, was shown at a theater in Carbondale, Illinois. Then there's me with my mozzarella sticks. The second photo was taken by a very serious looking kid with a Wausau t-shirt on and he honestly looked like Snake Plisskin in Escape From New York. The third is of me in Paul's backyard in Rockford as we waited for Roger.

NEVER DID MAKE IT TO AXEMAN'S SURPLUS

Never did get a chance to go to Axeman's. I thought about taking a cab, it was only three miles away, but just gave up on the idea as Arcana 47 chugged along. Also, I was worried about money, but I did sell more books in the last few hours of the convention then I had expected. In retrospect, I should have gone.