TOR: A PREHISTORIC ODYSSEY (2008)

This hardcover collection of the recent six-issue DC Comics mini-series is due out in March and I have decidedly mixed feelings about it.

A PREHISTORIC ODYSSEY is the latest installment of comics grandmaster Joe Kubert's would-be caveman epic featuring Tor, a rather generic stone-age hero who, barring minor facial differences and footwear, is a dead ringer for the artist's signature rendition of Tarzan of the Apes but not one eighteenth as interesting. Tor, after being kicked out of his tribe for being demonstrably smarter than the rest of his people — demonstrating this by improving the means for catching greater amounts of food with maximum efficiency, crafting advanced tools via stone-knapping, and the invention of the Mullet (no, seriously!) — sets off on the well-worn (and in this case tired) Campbellesque "hero's journey" into the unfamiliar wilderness, there to be tried by hostile forces of nature, monsters and other disgruntled QUEST FOR FIRE rejects. Our hero encounters groups of shaggy ape-men, rescues a shaggy child from what is perceived to be a sacrifice (the kid then becomes a tagalong annoyance toward whom Tor eventually warms), faces an alligator and a tiger, falls in with a bunch of misshapen prehistoric freaks (exactly what they are is left unclear) including a topless woman with jet-black skin and a long mane of snow-white hair who ends up as his lover, runs afoul of two more ancient and bestial races (including a bunch of what could best be described as an ageing tribe of Yeti), is nearly made a meal of by a huge Lovecraftian wiggly (paleontological accuracy is obviously not a consideration here), endures torture and near-sacrifice a couple of times, and whole bunch of other rote shit that we've all seen about a million times since the dawn of pulp fiction.

The story here is a strictly-by-the-numbers, sub-par Edgar Rice Burroughs knockoff (reminding Yer Bunche of some of ERB's Pellucidar yarns, which, to be honest, weren't all that in the first place) whose narrative could easily have been told in a single issue rather than a wholly unnecessary six, and as if the story weren't uninteresting enough, Kubert actually has the nerve to end the damned thing in such a way as to leave the door open for the continuing so-so adventures of Tor and his nameless jet-black squeeze. (After kicking the ass of a senior citizen Yeti who wants to use Tor's woman as breeding stock because all the Yeti chicks are too old and bred-out to be viable for procreation, Tor and his woman walk off into the snowy distance. THE END.)

But while the story is a mediocre cavalcade of "been there, done that" caveman adventure malarkey, it's key to remember that Joe Kubert's strengths have never been rooted in his scripting. The guy's no writer, but he sure is one hell of an illustrator, one of my very favorites in fact, and his fantasy world in which prehistoric man lives in the same space as dinosaurs and creatures that only existed in their illustrator's imagination is very much a fully-realized and believable entity, even with its over-the-top fantastic elements taken into consideration. Kubert's mastery of the visual storytelling medium is evident in every panel and the story is seamlessly propelled along with only the most simple of narration, text that reads like a stripped-down and almost unnoticeable version of Hal Foster's integration of written bits into the incredible tableaus of his classic PRINCE VALIANT strip. The sparse narration works in favor of the visuals, not focusing the reader on Kubert's inadequacies as a scripter and instead allowing his flair for visceral depictions of ERB-style savagery to play out to bloody and sometimes agonizing results. (There's a bit when Tor and his woman fight off a hostile group of albino cavern-dwellers and the woman uses her nails to pretty much rip an enemy's face right off of his head, and I have to admit I didn't expect that level of very nasty violence from a class act like Kubert. But that's not to say I'm complaining!)

So what the reader is left with is a graphic novel that bites the big one as a scripted narrative, but completely rules as an example of what happens when one of the seminal creators in the medium is allowed to hit the drawing board with minimal editorial interference (as is evident from the uncorrected spelling errors) and a pen full of old school piss and vinegar. It's visually beautiful but a derivative dud otherwise, and it should only be picked up by hardcore Kubert completists or those who care nothing whatsoever for the quality of a story's written narrative and are satisfied by the kickass visuals provided. If you fall into the latter category, by all means dig in. If not, you are advised to give this a miss unless somebody hands it to you as a gift (or if you receive it as a part of your assignments as a freelance reviewer).

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE AN INTREPID SCRAWLER

For all it turned out to be worth, this sign may as well have read "Can I mambo dogface to the banana patch?"

On my way home from visiting Soren at the Rusk Institute the other night, I passed a fenced-in area full of delivery trucks and such that bore a "No Trespassing" sign. The fence was between eight and ten feet high and all of the hinged entrances were securely closed off with lengths of thick chain, so getting would have been quite an undertaking and would have had to occur in the pitch black dead of night. But, as this post's title advises, never underestimate an intrepid scrawler (Mega-City One slang for "graffiti artist").

As I passed the enclosure I absent-mindedly glanced at the graffiti on the side of one of the vans and stopped in my tracks when my brain processed the words, whipping out my camera to record the sight for posterity.

There, right next to a clearly visible "No Trespassing" warning, was emblazoned the following on the van's door:

I swear I heard the mocking laughter of THE SIMPSONS' Nelson Muntz as I read the message.

Nelson Muntz: given voice on the side of a van by unidentified paint-wielding miscreants.

PROVING I'M NO DAVE VANIAN

"I can't stop to mess around...I've got a brand-new rose in town!!!"

I'll get to the whole story soon enough, but this is a shot of Yer Bunche rockin' it karaoke-stylee at Erin Samuelson's Birthday BarMitzvah this past Saturday night. I did three tunes, decked out in my oh-so-glam glaucoma shades and coat fashioned from the top half of a gorilla suit (specifically the one I used this past Halloween as Robot Monster, aka Ro-Man), but above pic is of me putting my all into "New Rose" by the Damned, a kickass tune in the first place that's also notable for being the first UK punk tune ever released on vinyl. (And for the record, the other tunes were Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses" and "Thunderball" by Tom Jones.)

Yer Bunche air-guitars the solo from Cream's "Tales of Brave Ulysses."

MISS DON'T TOUCH ME

Another assignment in my capacity as a reviewer for a certain every-seven-days periodical geared toward the publishing industry, this graphic novel, a best-seller in its native France, is a look behind the scenes at a Parisian brothel in the days before World War One and follows Florence, a woman determined to avenge the murder of her best friend at the hands of a serial killer dubbed "the Butcher of the Dances" by the press. Her amateur investigation leads her to a high class brothel where she takes a job as the joint's resident "Miss Don't Touch Me," in which role she caters to the masochistic needs of the rich and powerful but retains her virginity. Florence's quest leads her (and the reader) into a world of fleshly pleasures and a rich cast of characters who bring what could have been a by-the-numbers bit of whorehouse titillation to vivid and engrossing life, portraying the whores and madams as well-defined individuals, most notably "madame-monsieur" Josephine and the doe-eyed and childlike Annette, the favorite of the most extreme paying sadists. And while this is a story steeped in the dynamics of day-to-day brothel existence and contains a bit of sexual content, it's very tastefully done and in no way should be considered yet another example of four-color spank material; in other words there's sex in in it, but that ain't what it's about.

This was my first exposure to the work of husband and wife team Hubert (writer and colorist) and Kerascoet (artist), but if the rest of their output is even half as good as MISS DON'T TOUCH ME, they can add me to their roster of adoring fans. Excellent story, charming cartoon-style art that works perfectly with the narrative, not one wrong step taken in its entire ninety-six pages. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

IT WAS TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO TODAY...

NOTE : every word of the following story is true (or rather remembered as exactly as humanly possible given that nearly three decades have elapsed since it happened), and if you find some of it offensive at this late date, imagine being in my shoes at age fifteen!

December 8th, 1980-

It was the start of my tenth grade school day morning and I was disgruntled (as usual) at being denied sleep and instead being herded along with the rest of the cattle at Staples High School into yet another inane class. The first item of regurgitation/education of the morning was English with Mr. Dyskolos (not his real name; changed for reasons soon to be apparent), a late-forty-something red-headed guy who then looked like what Danny Bonaduce looks like today who was also among the minute handful of teachers whose classes would keep students awake because he was genuinely interesting, did not talk down to the kids and had not allowed the thankless teaching system to beat him down and force him to consider his job a mocking reminder of wage-slavery (I'm the son of a teacher, so I speak with a working knowledge of such things).

As the students took their chairs we all noticed that Mr. Dyskolos's usual laid-back manner seemed somewhat "off" that morning and after nearly a minute of total silence as he stared into space as though contemplating some cosmic truth or inevitability, he suddenly focused himself, looked at us and said, as serious as a heart attack, "By the look of you, you haven't heard what happened this morning. I'll just get right to it. John Lennon, de facto leader of the Beatles, was shot dead by some lunatic fan." Most of the class had indeed not heard about Lennon's murder, and those of us who hadn't, myself among them, were stunned. But before the horrible truth could fully set in, Mr. Dyskolos continued. "You kids probably know a lot about the Beatles from what your parents or maybe your older brothers and sisters played for you, but you can't even begin to imagine the worldwide pop culture impact those guys had at the time. Obviously I was there for the 1960's and can tell you firsthand what it was like, but I'm gonna spare you that nauseating, self-indulgent trip down memory lane. I guarantee you that all your other teachers are going to suspend actual teaching for the day and drag you along for their reminiscences of their flower-power salad days, but I'm not gonna do that to you. Instead, I'm gonna tell you a few truths that you won't hear anywhere else in this school, or damn near anywhere else, on what's gonna no doubt be a day of worldwide mourning."

He leaned forward in his chair, his face a mask of utmost solemnity, and uttered words that blew the minds of the roomful of privileged suburban white kids (and me): "The Beatles sucked. They were a bunch of marginally talented 'heads' who started out ripping off the work of their black American influences and made a hell of a lot of money for no good reason, killing real rock 'n' roll in the process and unleashing legions of even less-talented imitators in that godawful British Invasion nonsense. And then they went to India, supposedly to gain 'enlightenment' or some other George Harrison-inspired bee-ess, but if you ask me all it did was make their music more annoying." To emphasize that point of criticism, Mr. Dyskolos began making a nasal and high-pitched "neeeeeeer neeeeeer neeeeeeeeeee neeeer" sound by way of approximating the tones of a sitar.

By this point in his diatribe you could have heard an amoeba fart. Young eyes practically bugged out of their sockets and jaws had fallen into laps. This was rock 'n' roll blasphemy in the extreme, and on the morning of the senseless slaughter of a man held by most in the room to be a hero of peace, love and great music, no less. Our worlds were shaken to the core. And then Mr. Dyskolos continued, still looking solemn, but his mouth betrayed a slight half-smile as he was very obviously enjoying his class' speechless outrage.

"Then they put out that asinine White Album that had exactly two good songs on it — 'Birthday" and 'Back in the U.S.S.R.,' and those two were good because they sound like actual rock 'n' roll! — and had the fucking unbelievable nerve to include that 'Revolution 9' horseshit! What the hell was that? (assumes comedic Liverpudlian accent) 'Noombuh nine? Noombuh nine?' What a load of crap! I'm telling you kids right here and now, remember how 'deep' that bullshit is when you decide to give acid a try!" (NOTE: this was the first time I ever hear a teacher curse when not discussing some of the content in THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.)

Before he could say another word, Mr. Dyskolos was cut off and drowned out by an aural assault of irate dissenting opinion, his every word being tarred as the rantings of an anti-peace & love curmudgeon who "just didn't get it." "Who do you think you are???" shrieked several of my classmates. "The Beatles were the most important band in history! John Lennon and Paul McCartney were two of the greatest songwriters who ever lived! Are you crazy?" Dyskolos responded with a sneer that would have done Vincent Price proud and uttered my favorite comeback heard in all of my teenage years, whether I agreed with him or not: "What the hell did they ever write that was worth a goddamn? 'We all live in a yellow submarine?' Puh-leeeeze. The only reason you kids enshrine those hacks is because of nostalgia filtered down from parents who were barely your age when the Beatles showed up and absorbed by the general public and your older brothers and sisters who used that garbage as a soundtrack for when they'd sneak off to smoke weed in the back of a van. Which also explains how anybody could ever find the stomach to listen to those Doors assholes! Face it, kids. For some of what are supposed to be this country's brightest young minds, you sure are a bunch of programmed parrots!" And when one of the students blurted out that John Lennon was a symbol of "give peace a chance," our sage teacher batted that one aside with "You've obviously never heard about the time when Mr. Give Peace A Chance went to some club and hung out with a Kotex stuck to his forehead," a then-shocking truth that only elicited more teenage keening.

That was the real meat of it but the back and forth ranting went on for the class' full hour, with order barely being restored with the ringing of the bell marking the rotation to the next class. Each of my classmates and I zombied off to the next class and swiftly discovered that Mr. Dyskolos had been correct in his auguring; indeed, each and every teacher I had to endure for the rest of the day derailed the planned curriculum in favor of rose-colored reminiscences of "a more innocent time" full of free love, "the people getting together, man!"and how the Beatles were the troubadours that saw them through all of it and changed to reflect the time. That was all well and good in theory, but not for hours on end as heard from speakers of wildly varying levels of eloquence (to say nothing of interest), with lunch being the only respite from what was essentially the same story only with the most minor of variations.

When the day finally ended I headed downtown to do my volunteer teaching of a cartooning class at the local YMCA and the journey allowed me some time to process the events of the day and the "truths" imparted. I'd grown up liking the Beatles quite a lot but didn't own any of their albums thanks to their many hits being available in endless rotation on some of the nascent stations that played what would come to be known as "classic rock," and as the seventies ended I avoided the agonizing repetition of disco and such by listening to the excellent oldies station WBLI out of Long Island, a radio entity that served to plant the seeds of my passion for pre-1970's rock that was either primitive and raw of bizarre and very much off the beaten path. WBLI played some of the standard Beatles hits, but they also threw stuff like "Dig A Pony" and "Rain" (nowadays my favorite Beatles tune of all) into the mix and showed me just how much the classic rock stations played the same Fab Four songs over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseum, and taking into account the espoused theory — voiced with absolute certainty of its veracity — that myself and my fellow students may have been a bunch of programmed drones, I began to wonder if Mr. Dyskolos had in fact done his young charges a favor by showing none of the rote reverence extended to the favorite sons of Liverpool by all who drew breath. He had effectively "killed our idol," on the day when one would expect nothing but 100% adherence to the party line, and that greatly intrigued my punk rock-influenced sensibilities.

As I pondered these thoughts, I wandered past Westport Record and tape, one of the town's most accessible record stores, and greeted Jean, the sweet Southern proprietor. I asked her if the shooting of John Lennon had affected her sales that day and she said, "Honey, look over at the Beatles and John Lennon sections. Whadda you see? Tumbleweeds 'n' cattle skulls, that's what! Folks came in and cleaned the place out like they were a bunch of vinyl-eatin' locusts! On sales of Beatles and Lennon records alone, I could close early today." And it was true. Every single Beatles/Lennon platter had vanished into the Westport ether, bought up by fools who believed those perennial best-sellers (okay, maybe not SOMETIME IN NEW YORK CITY) would become instant collector's items.

Later that night as I lay there in my bed staring up at the white stucco ceiling, I listened to my cassette tape of SERGEANT PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND and experienced it in a way that I never had before. I'd listened to it about two dozen times since acquiring it a couple of years previous, but now it served as a poignant grave marker for my favorite member of the Beatles and its words took on a whole new timbre. No one would be "fixing a hole" in Lennon and ensuring he would live to see sixty-four and beyond. He would not be getting better and there would be no more good mornings for him. Yet tragic though it was, this was just another day in the collective life, and that life would go on without John Lennon (though obviously not "within").

I remember the hue and cry when Elvis Presley, the so-called King of Rock 'n' Roll, gave up the ghost and people acted as though the world had come to an end, and I frankly didn't get it. I liked some of Elvis's music but it didn't really speak to me in the way that the Beatles had, and I now chalk that up to the Beatles happening during what could arguably be considered the most pivotal period of the twentieth century, a time that redefined much of American culture and into which my generation was born. We didn't grow up with Elvis, whose music helped set the template of rock 'n' roll, but we did come along during the rise of the Beatles and reached early sentience while under the influence of their sound. We couldn't know at the time just what their contribution meant, but we did know that we liked it. Obsessive poring over the minutia of the whys and wherefores of their lives, art and careers would come later. At that point in our young lives love was indeed all we needed, and in the wake of the plastic disco era and what small impact punk had in the U.S. at the time, that wasn't a bad thing.

So today marks the twenty-eighth anniversary of John Lennon's senseless slaughter and for me the day that it happened becomes ever more remote, so I figured I'd jot down my experience of it before age robs it of what clarity remains. If any of you have tales of that day, please write in and share.

APPARENTLY THERE'S SOME KIND OF TECHNICAL GLITCH

See how it reads CURSE OF BIGFOOT where my profile and archives info is supposed to be? I don't know what's up, but for some reason whatever post occupies the space where that entry can be found has its headline prominently emblazoned for no apparent reason. I thought it might have been a glitch native to Friday's post, SAY "GOOD MORNING" WITH TITTIES, but after deleting that post the one just before it popped up in its place, so I don't know what the fuck's going on. Any of you tech-savvy readers have any ideas on how to rectify this situation?

THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE (1966)

The original run of Hanna-Barbera's THE FLINTSTONES (1960-1966 and ad infinitum in syndication) holds a dear place in the hearts and minds of animation fans of a certain age and can rightly be described as a landmark in American television, its status as the first primetime animated series aimed squarely at a grownup audience and it being the first program aired in color on the ABC network (as of its third season; the first two were in black & white and later colorized) being merely two reasons it could be considered as such. Swiftly evolving past its origins as a literally two-dimensional knockoff of THE HONEYMOONERS, the misadventures of prehistoric everyman Fred Flintstone and his family and friends featured endless bad puns involving references to stone, crazy sight gags involving animals as assorted household appliances (many of whom would break the fourth wall and wearily state "It's a living!"), regular appearances of stone-age caricatures of movie, TV and pop music celebrities (usually voiced by the personalities being lampooned) — perhaps the most famous examples of this being "Ann Margrock"

and "Stony Curtis" —

but when all was said and done THE FLINTSTONES was most simply summed up as a goofy take on American society at the time, and when at its best it was pretty damned funny, a fact all but obscured these days in the wake of nearly four decades of vastly inferior sequels, spinoffs, specials (the special where the Flintstones celebrate Christmas in an era loooooooooong before Jesus is particularly notable) and live-action versions. Believe it or not, there was even a proposed ethnic version of the series called THE BLACKSTONES — I shit you not!!! — that never made it past a concept drawing or two, lending further credence to my theory that the suits at Hanna-Barbera in the 1970's were out of their minds on mountains of blow.

I swear to god I'm not making this up.

How else to explain the nigh-indistinguishable nature of post-SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? shows like THE AMAZING CHAN AND THE CHAN CLAN, GOOBER AND THE GHOST-CHASERS, THE FUNKY PHANTOM, CLUE CLUB and others? Or, for that matter, the truly awful and now-forgotten FLINTSTONES knockoff set durning the days of the Roman Empire, THE ROMAN HOLIDAYS? Or the football-oriented WHERE'S HUDDLES, or....

I apologize. Let me wipe the foam from my mouth... There, that's better.

H/B cartoons after 1967 or so are a sore spot with me, and the mere thought of them grinds my gears. Anyway, back to THE FLINTSTONES.

Yes, the things that made the original series so much fun dwindled drastically with each new turd that fell from the fissure-riddled anus of the FLINTSTONES machine, so the existence of THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE is nothing short of a minor miracle.

The 1966 theatrical release poster: an amusing lampoon of...

...the one-sheet for the previous year's OUR MAN FLINT, considered by many to be the best of the Bond spoofs (I don't care what anyone says, I prefer DEADLIER THAN THE MALE).

Released at the height of the 1960's James Bond craze — to be precise, between the James Bond blockbusters THUNDERBALL (1965) and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967) — THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE is a feature-length 007 parody that puts the "modern stone-age family" and their neighbors/best friends, the Rubbles, through just about every 007 trope that existed at the time (let's face it; all the elements that we now consider carved in stone when it comes to a Bond plot were in place as early as GOLDFINGER, the third film in the series, and THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE came out just shy of two years later).

Opening with a great gag that substitues Wilma Flintstone for the Columbia Studios mascot,

the film involves Fred becoming the unlikeliest of secret agents when the real deal, one Rock Slag, is seriously injured just before embarking on a mission of grave international importance; Slag's ongoing task has been to bring mysterious criminal mastermind/megalomaniac the Green Goose to justice before he takes over the world with a deadly missile, and his number one lieutenant, Tanya, volunteers to betray her boss in exchange for some "quality time" with the virile chick-magnet Slag, but Slag's hospitalization throws a monkey wrench into their rendezvous in Paris unless another option presents itself.

The Green Goose and his kitty, "Ferocious": Blofeld he ain't.

Luckily for the free world, Fred Flintsone just so happens to be an exact ringer for Rock Slag and gets recruited to work the mission as Slag's covert double, with all the perks of being a super-spy: gadgets, beautiful women, international travel and everything, all expenses paid. The one hitch is that Fred has to accomplish his goal during a family vacation to "Eurock" with the Rubbles in tow and he can't fill any of them in on what he's actually doing, so from there it's off to the races.

Fred meets Tanya, international woman of mystery. I've loved silly-yet-cool idea of the eye-holes in her hat since I saw this movie during a re-release when I was six.

The plot's kinda/sorta like a G-rated FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, bouncing the characters out of their familiar Bedrock locale to Paris and Rome, with Fred's closed regarding his mission leading to serious misunderstandings that make Fred appear to be cheating on Wilma (which, if you know anything about Fred, he would never dream of doing), but it all works out quite nicely in the end.

Yet that's not to say that the movie is an animation classic , although it works as a fitting coda to the original-era Flintstones. The film's few problems stem largely from two elements: the decision to make the content more kiddie-matinee-oriented than the more grown-up sensibility of the TV series and several musical numbers that range from passable to downright saccharine, especially two featuring toddlers Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm that may drive you to suicide. Horrendous musical numbers have been the bane of animated features since day one, made de rigeur by the early Disney opuses and thus imitated worldwide by other animators in the ensuing decades, but while Fred and the gang frequently engaged in musical bits on the TV series, those segments were more often than not entertaining — and in the case of Ann Margrock downright kickass — or great excuses for total silliness (the bizarre absurdity of the Way-Outs and Rock Roll's immortal "Bedrock Twitch being sterling examples), but the musical stuff here is quite lackluster with the exceptions being the excellent title song (accompanied by a fun parody of Maurice Binder-style 007 themesong credits), a Louis Prima tune during a sequence in Italy, and "Spy-Type Guy," a song illustrating the fantasies that run rampant through Fred's imagination upon being sworn in as a cloak-and-dagger agent.

Fred imagines himself as a "Spy-Type Guy."

The other problem is a minor quibble voiced only by those of us who consider ourselves old school Flintstones geeks, and that has to do with the Flintstones having already mined this satirical territory in a televison episode aired just under a year before THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE was released, namely the 1965 episode "The Stonefinger Caper." It's a much tighter handling of the "Flintstones meet 007" concept, but that's what one would expect when trying to achieve the same results in a third of the feature's running time.

That said, THE MAN CALLED FLINTSTONE is still a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy the pre-1970's adventures of the characters. And (in my opinion anyway) it's a much better film than the current James Bond movie, QUANTUM OF SOLACE, and I say that as a firmly-entrenched 007 booster, so make of that what you will.

JURASSIC PORK: THE MAGIC OF "PTERODACTYL PORN"

My old pal Rhymin’ Jay alerted me to this one, and frankly I’m surprised that none of my other friends among the porn cognoscenti had encountered it.

In recent years I’ve noticed that many of us who are still interested in porn aren’t into it for “self-help” purposes, but rather for the frisson of seeing some weird and twisted shit, and thankfully for those of us too jaded to find much of interest in stuff like ANAL HOUSEWIVES PART 17 or THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO the internet has opened up an alternate universe of literally balls-out crazy material that proves the long-held theory that if you can conceive of it, some other fucker has made a dirty movie about it. It would not surprise me one bit if somewhere there exists footage of a four-hundred-pound woman with a glued-on Moses beard and a shepherd’s crook squatting and extruding from her nether bits a kid’s bathtub toy of Noah’s ark, complete with paired-up animals, spat out two-by-two and glazed with Bartholin’s gland fluid, all while the stirring score to THE TEN COMMANDMENTS plays on the soundtrack, so I’m kind of shocked that I’m as surprised as I am at the existence of a clip identified as “Pterodactyl Porn.”

Apparently this masterpiece of JURASSIC PARK-meets- CO-EDS WITH RAVENOUS HOLES tenderloin entertainment has been making the rounds on the web for some time, and when it comes to tarting-up the old in-out-in-out I believe it deserves some kind of recognition for its thoroughly novel and completely ridiculous imagery.

A true "What the fuck?!!?" moment if ever I saw one.

The clip can be found on several sites (just Google “Pterodactyl Porn” and you’ll be presented with dozens of links), and features about two minutes of a cute blonde getting railed in the cowgirl position by a supine gentleman in a full-body winged dinosaur outfit. As our pornographic paleontologist pogoes on this raunchy Rodan, the talented actress performs some trained seal action on two more prehistoric avian life forms located on either side of her, a sight made even more hilarious by the addition of a puppet baby dino that looks at the action before turning to the audience and squawking up a storm.

None of this is erotic in the least and for the life of me I cannot figure out what audience it was intended for, but I’m delighted that it exists. It’s kind of like some weird piece of performance art or an explicit interpretation of one of H.P. Lovecraft’s couplings between a human female and some of “the Old Ones,” only this time being pleasurable for all involved. But the thing that pleases me most about this is that the dinosaur suits and puppet are actually quite good and would have passed muster in any given episode of LAND OF THE LOST (either version), although the naming of the dinosaurs in question is in error; the critters depicted are Pteranodons, not Pterodactyls. A common error, but if you can’t trust the makers of pornography to be paleontologically accurate, then who can you trust?

My only complaint about this clip’s Internet ubiquity is that none of the research I’ve done has yielded the one piece of info I would truly love to have, specifically the name of the stick-vid it’s originally from. In my quest to unearth the name I referred my question to an old friend who’s involved in the professional makeup FX biz and he had no idea, adding “No one I know would admit to doing it,” so I’m back to square one. If any of you out there can tell me where this comes from I will be most appreciative and track the film down so it can get the proper review treatment such an effort deserves.

TWO GREAT THINGS THAT GO GREAT TOGETHER: HOKUSAI AND KING GHIDORAH MERGE IN A PORNOGRAPHIC HOMAGE

Hokusai's iconic The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" (published in 1832), a beautiful print by a guy whose ultra-pervy porn work was equally beautiful in its own special way.

God damn it, I love the Japanese. A fascinating people for a million reasons, their art is among my very favorite on the planet and I hold the work of Edo period painter and printmaker Hokusai (1760-1849) in the highest regard. His sense of color and composition was impeccable and his work has crossed the barriers of international culture to be deservedly revered by art historians and casual observers alike. Best known for his instantly recognizable "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa," the gifted artist was also responsible for some very imaginative shunga pieces (aka erotic prints) that stood head and shoulders above the run of the mill kimono smut crafted by some of his contemporaries. My favorite of his contributions to the genre — in fact my favorite piece by the guy, period — is "Dream of the Fisherman's Wife" (approx. 1820), a filthy yet charming work depicting a nude woman laying flat o her back at the bottom of the ocean being given what looks to me like some serious head by a huge and very friendly octopus while a smaller eight-legger delights her with a kiss.

"Dream of the Fisherman's Wife," a fun frolic with a couple of friendly cephalopods.

Like something from the pages of a classily-produced Tijuana Bible, the piece titillates, amuses and perhaps even disgusts thanks to its fusion of the shunga genre's "anything goes" attitude, exaggerated genitalia (though the vaginal equipment seen here is considerably more restrained than most other such depictions that I can think of) and its employment of bestiality involving tentacled sea-dwellers usually scooped from their watery home and devoured right next to heaping helpings of tuna and other assorted sashimi. Personally, I don't find it the least bit offensive and when I first saw it some twenty-three years ago I laughed my ass off.

Along with a love of Hokusai's stuff I also have a burning passion for Japan's wild and crazy bestiary of giant monsters — or daikiju for my fellow purists/geeky shitheads — many of which sprang from the Toho Studios opuses helmed by the late, great Eiji Tsuburaya. One of the most popular of those creatures was the visually-impressive and incredibly destructive extra-terrestrial menace King Ghidorah, best known to us Western devotees to the genre as simply Ghidrah (the most common of the name's several transliterations into English).

King Ghidorah, doing the Urban Renewal Boogie.

A gigantic, golden-scaled, winged three-headed nightmare that spits lethal microwaves, King Ghidorah is one hell of a sight to see (especially while zonked on mushrooms) and he's been brought back to the screen several times since first bursting to life from inside of a flaming meteor in 1964. But never in my most insane imaginings did I ever expect to see this enemy of both Godzilla and the entire world put to lewd use in an homage that incorporates the seemingly disparate influences of giant monster movie mayhem, the popular schoolgirl exploitation genre, "tentacle porn" and a Hokusai classic. Illustrator Mokoto Aida manages to pull all of that together in the impressive "The Member of the Giant Ico Chan Vs. King Gidora" from 1992.

Needless to say, I must obtain a print of this ludicrous and lewd masterpiece.

It's an interesting piece and it works for what it attempts to do in a post-LEGEND OF THE OVERFIEND kind of way, but thankfully removes the agonizing rape/explosive mutilation angle to create an oddly detached fantasy mood. If this piece is meant to depict Toho-style scale of enormousness, the woman must be gargantuan indeed and one can only imagine the reaction of fleeing citizens when faced not only with their homes being utterly destroyed by giants (again, for fuck's sake!), but also with the incredible sight of a schoolgirl (or does the headset indicate that she's a flight attendant?) with her thighs splayed wide, skirt hiked up and one of King Ghidorah's heads lodged deep within her Holland-Tunnel-sized vagina. The giantess does not seem terribly perturbed by this state of affairs and appears to be involved in a dreamlike state, but one apparently not as pleasurably moving as that of her fishwife predecessor from just shy of two centuries past.

I don't know about the rest of you daikaiju cognoscenti, but I wonder what King Ghidorah's distinctive warbly cries would sound like when muffled by those colossal samurai sugar walls...

THE BAD NEWS KEEPS ON COMING: PINUP GODDESS BETTIE PAGE HOSPITALIZED

What the fuck is going on today? First Forrest J. Ackerman, and now this. From the Associated Press:

By JAMES BELTRAN, Associated Press Writer – 13 mins ago

LOS ANGELES – Bettie Page, a 1950s pinup known for her raven-haired bangs and saucy come-hither looks, was hospitalized in intensive care after suffering a heart attack, her agent said Friday. "She's critically ill," Mark Roesler of the Curtis Management Group told The Associated Press. He said the 85-year-old had the heart attack Tuesday and was hospitalized Friday in the Los Angeles area. A family friend, Todd Mueller, said Page was in a coma. When asked to confirm, Roesler said, "I would not deny that," but he would not comment further on her condition.

Page, a secretary turned model, is credited with helping set the stage for the sexual revolution of the rebellious 1960s. She attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure that were tacked up on walls across the country. Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses. Page later spent decades away from the public eye, and during that time battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.

After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken. Mueller credits his business dealings with Page for bringing her out of seclusion. He said he first met her in 1989 when he offered her "a bunch of money" to show up at autograph signings. "I probably sold 3,000 of her autographs, usually for $200 to $300," he said. "Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40-$50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all."