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Tea’s Weird Week: Cotton. Balls. The Nadine Zine is on the Loose!
I’ve collaborated with illustrator extraordinaire David Beyer for close to 20 years now. He’s done illustrations for my books and events. There’s been art shows and pet portraits and David edits the Currents Comix Page in the Riverwest Currents, a page I founded 22 years ago (time flies?!) What can I say, the guy has style! So when he asked if I would contribute to his Twin Peaks fanzine, I immediately got a coffee as black as Midnight on a moonless night and several dozen pies and donuts and got to work.
I have fond memories of Twin Peaks. When I was in my early 20s (this was the late 1990s), I lived with a bunch of roommates in the Riverwest neighborhood. One of my roomies, Shelly, had a complete VHS box set of Twin Peaks. I had seen a few David Lynch movies by this point but had never seen the show. For weeks we had a ritual where all the roommates would gather in the living room at night, drink beer and watch a couple episodes. “We’re gonna have a TV party tonight,” as the song goes. It was a carefree time.
I loved all the weird characters, of course. And the strangest of the strange was probably Nadine. She sports an eyepatch, is obsessed with noiseless drape runners, and for some reason has superhuman strength. She has a particularly kooky storyline in season 2 where she awakes from a coma and thinks that she’s still a high schooler.
The piece-de-resistance of The Nadine Zine is a comic David drew, a-ahem-Nadine’s eye view (Oh, Ed!) of some of the plot points of Twin Peaks. I contributed a short appreciation of one of my favorite characters– the no nonsense Special Agent Albert Rosenfield. The talented Anna Alicia Rodriguez (who I’ve also collaborated with a few times) wrote and illustrated a nice tribute to Audrey Horne. Some of David’s other pals contributed some vibrant gallery pages. Get me a glass of water cause my socks are on fire!
Well done! In a truly Lynchian twist, the publication is only available via eBay. Haaaaa, I love it: AN EBAY EXCLUSIVE. Order a copy right here. It’s $15 shipped, you don’t have to snipe someone’s bid on it: https://www.ebay.com/itm/236087374601
And remember: the owls are not what they seem. Want TWW delivered to your inbox? You can sign up for my Substack HERE. Follow me on: Facebook Bluesky Instagram
Tea’s Weird Week: Quest for the Weirdest Movies
There’s a Tea’s Weird Week Facebook group that is a clearinghouse for weird news that we often get our Tea’s Weird Week podcast news from. With the Oscars approaching this weekend, I wondered who would take the Oscar for best weird movie of all time. I decided to set up a poll in the Facebook group and as of this writing, there’s over 60 nominated films.
The frontrunners in the poll as of this writing:
1) Eraserhead, David Lynch’s 1977 weird masterpiece, his first film. I haven’t seen this one in many years, but I do remember seeing the trippy, dream-like black and white film. I also nominated my favorite Lynch movie, 1990’s Wild at Heart. But every Lynch movie could be on this list.
2) Tatsuo the Iron Man. I haven’t seen this one– Billy (who also nominated Eraserhead) says this 1988 movie, by Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto, is like “Eraserhead crossed with Terminator and Akira in the body horror style of David Cronenberg.” Yikes! Akira also made it to the 10 spot of this poll.
3) Howard the Duck. Long before the Marvel Universe became a million jillion dollar juggernaut, there was this incredibly strange 1986 adaptation of a Marvel property. Andrew, our podcast sound engineer, nominated this one, which was directed by Willard Huyck (and executive produced by George Lucas). It was a commercial and critical bomb, but has been quickly rising in out poll.
4) Swiss Army Man. Stephen nominated this 2016 film directed by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. I haven’t seen it and only know that it stars Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe, the latter of whom plays a corpse.
5) a tie between Terry Gilliam’s beautifully weird 1985 film Brazil, nominated by Alicia and Todd Browning’s taboo 1932 movie Freaks, which starred actual sideshow performers, nominated by Christina.
So there’s the top noms if want a weird movie night. I’ll be announcing the poll winners in the Facebook group when red carpet coverage starts for the Oscars on Sunday.
Please Clap Dept.: Thanks Bubbler Talk for tapping into my expertise on extraterrestrial parking structures/ It’s a fun and interesting short piece: Art? Landing site for aliens? The story behind the giant metal circle at Milwaukee’s Cupertino Park | WUWM 89.7 FM – Milwaukee’s NPR
SEE ALSO: More weird film related writing on the wild life of Werner Herzog: TWW: High on the Herzog.
Tea’s Weird Week, S4 ep08: Quest for the Weirdest Movies: I set up a Zoom with the people who nominated the top weird movies in the poll, me and Heidi discussed more weird film and other news, a Psycho trivia question from Miss Information, and a closing track by Xposed 4heads, “Suggestion Box.”
Listen here: Tea’s Weird Week, S4 ep08: Quest for the Weirdest Movies (podbean.com)
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My latest books are:
Brady Street Pharmacy: Stories and Sketches (2021, Vegetarian Alcoholic Press)
American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness (2020, Feral House)
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