Y'all Need to Be Here

in south Milwaukee on Saturday night.


From the Angry Young Men, Ltd blog:


You see, we've got a show coming up next week Friday. Char and the gang at Soulstice Theatre are throwing a benefit - One Night Only - and asked us if we would like to throw our puppets into the mix.
A little background - many of us at the core of Angry Young Men have worked with Soulstice over the last decade. Soulstice is a wonderful  Community Theatre, but not in the way you'd expect. They do thoughtful, provocative, and lesser-known pieces, not another @#$%-ing version of "Our Town" starring bored suburbanites. They even donate a percentage of ticket sales, every show, to a local charity. Who else does that?
 So when we were asked to 'Bring our puppets", we decided we were going to do so much more. First off, the whole of Act 2 is the NOTLD puppet show. If you missed us around Halloween, here's your chance to see us live. If you've seen us in the past, there's plenty of surprises up our sleeves for this time around.
It's never the same show twice, trust me.
We've also come up with some new characters that'll be capering underfoot during Act One. We were well overdue for singin', dancin' puppets, anyway.
So come on down to the Marion Center (3195 S Superior St, Milwaukee) on Saturday, March 19th. There'll be a Reception and cash bar starting at 6:30, and the show starts at 7:30.
Oh, and, it's Pay-What-You-Can.
So Give, Baby, Give!

Just do what yer Mama says and GIT down there.

Long Overdue

While I was on my extended leave of absence, I was very saddened to hear that Ingrid Pitt had passed away. I was especially down because I was working on a portrait of her and planned on sending her a print. I was just about finished with it when I heard the news. 

I really only had the background to finish - so I went for a kind of ethereal feeling. 

I took this from one of her glamour shots from the 60's - I wanted to avoid the more iconic photos of her (although I love them).

 I was really looking forward to contacting her again - I wrote her once about five years ago, and she was kind enough to write me back. I'm glad I did that - I just wish I'd done her portrait sooner.

I used watercolor and only blue and burnt sienna again. I'm working on a second watercolor of Ingrid, larger (this one is only  5 x 7) and not limiting the color palette this time.

EQUINOX!

Equinox….a movie so great in its badness that it’s part of the Criterion Collection. Which also means it’s stupidly expensive. So rent it.

It’s about a crazy group of kids that decide to picnic in the woods, find an ancient book that is all kinds of evil ‘n stuff, and fight off stop motion monsters.  Oh yeah, and there’s a castle and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  Neat!

Our movie begins with some dude yelling and running through the woods and almost getting run over by a car with no driver. Then some other dude finds him and takes him to the hospital.

I agree, it's always faster to run THROUGH the trees than around them.

So, cut to a year later, and our tree jumper, David, has been hanging out in the psych ward. Apparently nobody really knows the story, so it's time to get it out of him, don't you think?


So one day David, his friend Jim, and their be-scarfed dates, Susan and Vicki get their Colonel on and head out for a picnic in the woods. Oh yeah, it also has something to do with some geology thing and a professor.

But when they get there, the professor, Dr Waterman, is nowhere to be found - and his cabin is all kinds of crazy messed up. Wonder how that happened?

But these kids aren't all alone in these woods - they have a ranger who likes to magically appear every once in a while:

Don't let my eyebrows scare you. Oh wait, on second thought, they probably should.

Not only does this forest have a ranger, it has a castle!

When forced perspective goes horribly wrong.

There's also this cackling bastard who lives in a cave:

He also gives the kids a BIG Book O EEEvil to read at their picnic.



Rockin' the KFC:

The kids learn all kinds of groovy things from this book. Including finding out what happened to the professor's cabin:

Yes, you guessed it. A freaking sea serpent destroyed it. Because, as we all well know, one of the many dangers of being out in the wilderness is the potential to run into SEA CREATURES.  Oh well. In my book, that's what you get for CAMPING. 

So the kids decide that this forest is just one freaking EVIL ass place, so they better make some totems to protect themselves. You know, as opposed to JUST GOING THE F**K HOME. They consult the book and get their Blair Witch on with sticks and string:

Good for keeping Rangers and Sea Serpents at bay.

So - we have A Ranger, Sea Serpents, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Blair Witchy totems. What else could this movie use?


YES- STOP MOTION MONSTERS!!!

Forced perspective is just NOT this movie's strong suit.

So at some point, we figure out that Ranger Rick is really a bad guy, and also turning himself into these crazy ass monsters....I think. 
One thing I know he can do is open up some kind of crazy portal and suck people into it:

HAHAHAHAHAHA

David can't pull Jim and the book out, so he ends up jumping in the vortex himself:


And it turns out that the inside of the vortex is pretty much the same as the OUTSIDE of the vortex.....only redder.

Then they both escape but it's soon clear that Jim is not really Jim after all. 

That crazy Ranger!

Well, you know that this whole evil possession thing just ain't gonna end good, and it doesn't. Which brings us back around to the beginning of the story, with Jim flailing about on the side of the road and ending up in the nut house.  Oh yeah, and Jim says something about being told that day that he would die in one year and one day.  And guess what today is? Derp.


I thought I had a screen shot of Susan walking up to the hospital - with some consipicuous dark circles under her eyes. But I don't. Trust me, it's not that exciting.  As almost as soon as we see her, we get this:

And that's it. 
I almost feel bad for Equinox because i want to like it more than I do. Of course I mean like it in the way that I love bad movies, like I want to tuck them under my pillow and protect them from the cold, cruel world. And while there are times that Equinox veers towards Awesome Badness ( A Freaking Sea Serpent in the Forest? Be still my beating heart!), at times it's just, well, boring.

Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt by the end of this movie.

But it's fun for a one time viewing - which is why Mama would never pay Criterion Collection price for this mess. Maybe five dollar bargain bin. But I do think it's very cool that a movie like this got the Criterion treatment. So, Criterion, where's my Abby? Vampire Hookers? Death Bed: The Bed that Eats?


Oh well. We can always hope. 
Till next time, friends.....go get yerselves some KFC and for god's sake, stay out of the woods.
-Mother Firefly

How Awesome Is This?

Just when I think I can't love The Angry Young Men any more, they go and prove me wrong. I can't help it - when you turn one of my childhood icons into a zombie, you have my heart.


Behold the genius:

Back At It

Yes, I'm back, and Mama is feeling GOOD.   Finally my new place feels like a home, the cats have adjusted, and we're getting back to something resembling a life. Except since this is my strange version of a life, ghost hunting shows clog my DVR, Elvis and Barry White are on the stereo, and I tuck myself into bed at night with HorrorHound magazine.  AND - best of all - The Scary is coming back around again.

Although it was never gone - I played Dawn of the Dead at least twice last weekend when I opened every last dang box in the place. Wherever I am, I always have Peter, Roger and Flyboy to keep me company.

And I've been discovering things I'd forgotten I had - before I moved to Milwaukee eight years ago, I packed up my collection of all things horror and stored it in the attic - where it's been hanging out all this time. I can't believe the things I'd forgotten - like my signed certificate from Ted Mikels saying that I'm of sound mind and body and cleared to watch The Corpse Grinders.....totally forgot I had a Lily Munster doll .... and do I really have a Leatherface bobble head?  Yep. I sure do.

Finally this week I stopped working on this place and watched something filled with awesome badness and deserving of the Mama treatment. Expect that in a day or two.

The Firefly Ranch has relocated and we're back open for business, friends. Just take off your shoes, please, those rugs weren't cheap. Who needs Papa Cash, anyway? Mama is making this all her OWN.

And who knows? maybe someday, some tall drink of nerdy horror lovin' man will come over to the Ranch and say, Mama, you are some MESSED up chick.....and I love it. And I'll be all, MmmHmm, You KNOW it, Baby.

But for now, this girl is loving hanging out with her friends, doing what she wants, when she wants, and not having to watch ANYTHING that falls under the category of what I like to call 'Arty Relationship Movie'.   Ew.  

Take care, my friends, and Mama will be back soon with a martini in one hand and screen shots of bad monsters in the other.....

-Mama Firefly