Hereās to another decade of living fuller, loving harder, learning quicker, and walking into every new opportunity with the wisdom of my past and the excitement of my future.
Love yāall!
Nothing like putting all the 45s back in their tidy little home. Some folks like them all over the place, itās really warm and aesthetically pleasingā¦ but I keep mine surgical. š§
@klauswerks Iām so proud of you my friend!!! Congrats on making this incredible film @bringashovel_doc !
When I arrived in Kansas City in 2006 I sent out about 50 resumes hoping to keep my blossoming (ššš) film career going. Out of all those submissions I only heard back from one person, a guy called Chris Weaver @weaver15pix who said āI see you worked at Troma, howād you like to come PA on a movie about Jeffrey Dahmerās dad?ā - weird choice, but sure! I was super excited, but also so nervous. When I showed up on set day one everyone seemed super professional and confident. These were real film technicians and crafts people, very different than the typical short film sets and Troma movies I was used to. I started getting introduced to the crew and felt out of place and out of my leagueā¦ until I met the Camera Assistant. This long haired skateboarder kid named Shawn Wright (who everyone called Klaus for some reason). He was incredibly good at his job and seriously knew his way around film cameras, but on top of that, he was comfortable and confident on set in his skate shoes and band shirts. I instantly felt more at ease just having someone on set who had some shared common ground and was willing to show kindness to this kid that really had no idea what he was doing on set. After that, the ice was broken and it made making friends on that set a breeze. Iāll forever be grateful to that show for giving me lifelong friends and co-workers like Shawn that Iāve had in my life for over twenty years now!
Shawn is an incredible filmmaker and an incredible human. If you get a chance to see his documentary Bring A Shovel about the @harrisonstreetdiy in Kansas City, you wonāt regret it!
Shawn, Beautiful storytelling my friend, excited for this film to find its audience and make its mark! ššš
Someday, I hope some kind soul takes pity on me and helps me complete my Talk Talk collection. This Lawrence KS Zine is one of my favorite artifacts from the 70s/80s Punk and Ska scenes. An unlikely place (on paper) for such an informed musical resource for kids in the midwest, loooong before the internet overwhelmed and devalued the personal importance of information retention. Most of these copies came from the man with impeccable taste @rickhellman , who wrote many of these reviews and has graciously shared countless stories of going to these shows and interviewing these bands with me. Iām sure there is a pile of these sitting in Lawrence right nowā¦ Iāve just never had any luck finding them! Iāll tag a few folks, if anyone has any thoughts or leads on where I can find the issues Iām missing, Iāll be forever grateful! ššš
Had a great time at LAās @thevinylcon this weekend with @ihuntvinyl ! Found tons of killer records and hung out with some great people. I think my favorite find from the show was this 1962 OG copy of Forrest J Ackermanās Music For Robots! A full electronic score by Hollywood Sound Editor Frank Coe and a spoken word intro from Forry himself. Itās even autographed by Ackerman with his clever 4E signature that he would sometimes sign. This is just a couple years after Famous Monsters Of Filmland started and was sold through the magazineās mail order. Canāt imagine too many of these survived over the years. Great show! Looking forward to next year!
My first job as a kid was at a Blockbuster Video. If you got stuck with the opening shift, your first task of the morning was to pull out all the overnight returns and check for unwound tapes. We had three winders on the counter and as you checked movies in you were supposed to rewind the tapes and charge the account a rewind fee. I hated rewinding those tapes, but I never once actually charged anyones account for it. Guess Iāve never been good at the business side of this thing.
Iāve loved Italian horror films as long as I can remember, and Giallos have especially held a special place in my heart. The history of these films doesnāt seem to be as well known as the films themselves in the states, but Iāve always found it super interesting. In the 1930s an Italian publisher named Mondadori started printing American and British crime thrillers in Italian language and releasing them with yellow covers, signifying that the pulp books could be easily identified by the color. The Italian word for yellow is Giallo and quickly the genre itself became known as simply Giallo. When Mario Bava started making films in the style of these books nearly thirty years later, they too were called Giallos. Blood and Black Lace is a great place to start if you have never seen a Giallo, and one of my all time favorites is A Blade In The Dark, made by Mario Bavaās son, Lamberto. While in Italy I decide to try and track down a handful of these books, and I looked everywhere. Flea Markets, Vintage Swaps, old bookstores (one even that fills with water at high tide, so the books are in boats and bathtubs!). Here are a few of my favorites I foundā¦ and a couple other fun and weird ones!
Marissa and I spent our Halloween deep in the catacombs of Paris. Roaming tunnel after tunnel stacked high with the bones of over six million Parisians. The perfect place to spend All Hallows Eve! š ššŖ¦
#halloween #halloween2025 #pariscatacombs #halloweeninparis #paris #catacombs #catacombsofparis
