QWERTYFEST MKE took place this past weekend and it was just fantastic. I don’t even know where to begin, but me and my event co-organizer Molly Snyder are incredibly grateful to everyone who participated and made it a great experience. Hundreds of people showed up for QWERTY events at State Street Pizza Pub, Turner Hall, Central Library, Interstate Theater, Newsroom Pub, Forest Home Cemetery, and Falcon Bowl. There will be lots to sort through and discuss and photos to share in the future.

It was a lot of work moving dozens of typewriters, boxes of merch and supplies, tables and chairs, etc. so I took Monday off for rest and recovery, to lay in bed and watch TV. I decided to check out the new Monster: The Ed Gein Story on Netflix, but I was so tired I kept falling asleep during the show and somewhere around episode 3 or 4 I just shut the TV off and passed out. I didn’t see enough to say if I can recommend it or not, but I can definitely recommend not using it as a portal to dreamland, cause I had some real weird dreams about Ed Gein hanging around at QWERTYFEST. Yikes! From what I did see, it seemed to be wildly inaccurate, but that’s show biz for ya. Anyway, I just wanted to share some random Ed Gein related notes:

–If you want to read a really well done (but disturbing) and much more accurate telling of the Ed Gein story, I recommend the graphic novel Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Did? by Eric Powell (The Goon) and Harold Schechter.

–I was glad to see Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, depicted (by actor Ethan Sandler) in scenes talking with Alfred Hitchcock (played by Tom Hollander) about Gein on the show. Bloch spent his formative writing years in Milwaukee, he lived for many years in an apartment above Glorioso’s (old location) on Brady Street, where he clacked away thousands of words for pulp magazines like Weird Tales. I wrote about him for Milwaukee Record ten years ago: https://milwaukeerecord.com/city-life/bloch-buster-milwaukees-connection-to-psycho-h-p-lovecraft-and-robert-bloch/

More recently, I wrote about Bloch for QWERTY Quarterly, and I’m actually reading some of Bloch’s work right now and plan to write more about him for an upcoming project I’m hoping I’ll be able to announce soon.

Like other things in the Netflix show, this conversation between Bloch and Hitchcock likely did not happen. Bloch didn’t know a lot of the details of the Gein case (many details did not come out until later) and didn’t have an understanding of Gein’s psychology as he appears to have here. Bloch said the main theme he got from Gein to create Norman Bates was Gein’s solitude in a small town setting. Gein and Bates also share a very unhealthy relationship with their mothers.

–I don’t know if they went there on the show, but one of my favorite Gein stories was that the great Werner Herzog was interested in filming a Gein documentary. It’s speculated that Gein might have exhumed his own mother’s grave, though this was never investigated. Herzog was ready to dig the grave up (without permission) and actually showed up with a shovel, but his directing partner chickened out and it didn’t happen. I talke about this and other wild Herzog moments in a TWW column from 2022, “High on the Herzog.”

Tea’s Weird Week, Episode 002: QWERTY
Tea talks to his QWERTYFEST MKE co-organizer Molly Snyder; Tea and Heidi talk weird news about Super Tardigrade Soldiers and more; Jenny tells us about her “Long Days Travel” to North Carolina. 
https://teasweirdweek.podbean.com/e/teas-weird-week-episode-002-qwerty/