Blog Archives
Tea’s Weird Week: Hot Cryptid Fall (Cryptid Fests, Part 2)
Back in May, I was inspired to write a listing of cryptid-themed festivals across the country, but I found so many that I decided to split it into two parts. Here’s a listing of celebrations of cryptids and folklore that covers the rest of August through October.
Fearsome Folklore Festival (Aug. 23)
Murfreesboro, TN
This one doesn’t focus on a particular entity but is a free, “family friendly folklore and cryptid themed celebration.” Speakers, live music, cryptid drawing workshops, and a petting zoo– I’m assuming the zoo is of known animals and not cryptids. Both Squonkapalooza and this one are created by Cryptid Comforts.
More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1256884292699296
Mothman Festival (Sept. 20-21)
Point Pleasant, WV
The grandpappy of monster fests, this one celebrates the Mothman sightings in Point Pleasant in the late 1960s. Since then Point Pleasant has gone all-in on Mothman, with a famous statue, museum, and this annual fest that features music, vendors, and guest speakers. I attended Mothman Fest and wrote a chapter about my experiences in my book Monster Hunters (2015). The first thing I saw upon arriving was a group of clog dancers dressed as the Men in Black, dancing to Will Smith’s song from his movie of the same name. It was fantastic.
More info: https://www.mothmanfestival.com/
Van Meter Visitor Festival (Sept. 27)
Van Meter, Iowa
Celebrating a series of sightings of a large, bat or pterodactyl-like creature that swooped over the skies of Van Meter. This fest has rolled out since 2013 and features a special walking tour, guest speakers, and more.
More info: https://www.facebook.com/vanmetervisitorfestival
Cryptid Block Party (Oct. 4)
Covington, KY
A celebration of all cryptids, great and small. This event has vendors, food, art, edutainment, and my favorite: antics.
More info: https://cryptidcov.blog/
Beast of Bray Road Presentation & Hay Ride (Oct.4)
Elkhorn, WI
In the early 1990s, reports began to roll in about sightings of a werewolf-like creature running around the farm lanes of Elkhorn. I also wrote about this magnificent cryptid in my books Monster Hunters and Wisconsin Legends & Lore. Big bonus points on this one for offering a hay ride!
More info: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1998619394295140
Goatman Festival (Oct. 10-11)
Louisville, KY
Old Goaty gets around, there’s a legend of a Goatman here in Wisconsin, but a more infamous version come from Kentucky. The Pope Lick Monster, a goat-humanoid creature, is said to appear if you cross a train track trestle bridge over Pope Lick Creek. Please do not attempt– several people have died after venturing out on the unsafe bridge.
This fest has guest speakers, tours, movies, music, and a haunted attraction with the Pope Lick Monster itself.
More info: https://mostfunyoueverhad.com/goatmanfest/
Goblin Con (Oct. 17-18)
Hopkinsville, KY
I love this story from 1955, another Kentucky tale– in Hopkinsville 70 years ago, a UFO sighting was followed by a group of 5 men and 7 children claiming that their farm was invaded by goblin-like extra-terrestrials that they kept at bay with gunfire for hours. Aw, they look kinda cute to me.
This fest has 70 vendors, speakers, panels, workshops, etc. More info: https://www.goblinconky.com/home
Rougarou Fest (Oct.17-19)
Houma, LA
The Rougarou is a cajun werewolf story and this festival is a big one that seems like a fun mix of folklore and Louisiana culture. Carnival rides, costume contest and parade, a howling contest, food and drink, a haunted house, a “Ghouls on the Run” race, and some tasty cajun music.
See also: “TWW: What the Rougarou Do“
More info: https://rougaroufest.org/
Green Eyes Festival (Oct.18)
Chickamauga, GA
Ole Green Eyes is a story of supernatural folklore from the Chickamauga region of Georgia, a ghostly entity with glowing green eyes. Vendors, music, a scavenger hunt, and tabletop roleplaying games will kick off this first year event.
More info: https://www.greeneyesfestival.com/
And a shameless self-plug: I’m the director of Milwaukee Krampusnacht, happening Sunday Dec. 7 this year.
Website: www.milwaukeekrampusnacht.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/milwaukeekrampusnacht
Tea’s Weird Week: QWERTYFEST schedule is live, stage magic, Krampusnacht art, and more
QWERTYFEST MKE, a celebration of typewriters, Milwaukee history and innovation, writing and the lost arts, music, and fun happening Oct. 3-5, is something me and my co-organizer Molly Snyder have been hard at work at. We’ve got a schedule and I have to say, I’m really happy with everything about it. We have FANTASTIC people involved at every event and I’m especially glad that the venues– Turner Hall Ballroom, State Street Pizza, Central Library, Interchange Theater, Newsroom Pub, Forest Home Cemetery, and Falcon Bowl– are all places of rich history.
You can find the full schedule and tickets at our website: www.qwertyfest.com
BTW, still looking for View-Masters for a “View-Master Theater” at QWERTYFEST. Thanks to Irvin Orlandini for gifting a View-Master and a nice collection of reels. That was a great start!
I’m also quite proud of our official publication, QWERTY Quarterly. Every issue is a powerhouse of talent– poems, fiction, short articles, columns, fun pages. This month we released issue 9. A great way to support QWERTYFEST is to buy an issue or a subscription– 4 issues delivered to you is just $25. See our Etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/qwertyquarterly
What else have I been up to?
-I wrote a feature for the August issue of Milwaukee Magazine (out now) about magician and illusionist Bill Blagg. I think it turned out well. It’s a story about the magic biz but also being determined to follow your dreams. That’s been a theme I return to– my article on local surfers springs to mind.
-I also have a feature in the September issue of MilMag on the legends of Whitewater I’m really thrilled for you to check out, so look out for that.
-I’m the director of Milwaukee Krampusnacht. This is our 8th year, and Stinky Goblin Emporium dropped our art (below) for this year. It features some characters from the previous 8 art designs they’ve done and they are also compiling a publication showcasing art from all 8 years you can pick up at this year’s event. I wrote a short intro for it. Vendor applications for Krampusnacht (Dec. 7 in the Brewery District) are currently open: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1S2rT5-JQng72kuxmI2INdQVVsp2RIoT2oLpHdN0sJFw/
-A reminder I’ll be on The UnXplained on August 15. A lot of people have asked– no, I didn’t get a chance to meet host William Shatner. They film his narration segments separately, but I’m thrilled I get to be on a show he hosts.
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Tea’s Weird Week: I Love Central Library (and a last call for help in QWERTYFEST fundraising)
Last month, I penned a piece for the Shepherd Express titled “A Love Letter to American Science & Surplus,” which was about the unique store’s fundraiser to stay in business (I’m glad to say they’ve since met their goal and are close to meeting a stretch goal). It felt good to write about a place that I think is great, so with QWERTYFEST MKE 2025 fundraising wrapping up, I wanted to say something about another place I love: Milwaukee Central Library.
We are going to be hosting QWERTYFEST presentations, workshops, and a library tour there on Saturday, October 4 and I could not be more thrilled to be there and to have our festival attendees check it out. Central Library is like a cathedral to me, and it looks the part. I can’t wait for QWERTYFEST guests who haven’t been there to see the rotunda lobby. It is just stunning.
I appreciate Central’s resources greatly. I’ve written five non-fiction books and an unknown number of articles and many research materials for that work have come from there. Being on a pretty thin budget, I’ve been able to borrow almost anything I’ve needed. When I was 20 and interested in listening to classic Blues music, I checked out a bunch of CDs from Central. It was nice to go somewhere to get out of the house but without needing to spend money. When I wanted to read collections of superhero comics while researching Heroes in the Night, they had them. More recently, when I wrote an article on the history of Serb Hall for Milwaukee Magazine, the library’s online newspaper database archive was the key to getting that article done.
I’ve been working a lot on the presentation/workshop line-up a lot this week and it’s a wonderful mix of librarians, typewriter aficionados, poets, mystery novelists, artists, and other interesting characters. It’s everything I hoped QWERTYFEST would be. We’ll be announcing that lineup soon (just got to confirm a couple things) at: www.qwertyfest.com
We are offering all these talks and workshops for FREE. Your support can help us make it happen by supporting our last call for our fundraiser, it is closing in the next couple days. Every little bit helps us fund QWERTYFEST programming: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2025#/
You can also contact us about fundraising/ sponsorship at: qwertyfestmke@gmail.com
I hope I might see you there at one of my favorite places on earth, Central Library.
Tea’s Weird Week: I’m Looking for View-Masters
I got an idea I’m working on, possibly somewhere at QWERTYFEST MKE or a QF related event– a View-Master Theater, where there are maybe 6 or 8 stereoscopes (View-Master is the popular brand name) that people can scope (sorry for the pun) out.
If you’re not familiar, View-Master is a little device, usually red plastic, that you put a reel disc in, then you look into it and advance through the photos with a lever. I used to enjoy them as a kid and they still make them. The first View-Master was marketed in 1939 and it grew in popularity throughout the decades that followed. Companies made reels based on everything from nature to travel to pop culture.
This idea was spun because I discovered some classic reels related to Milwaukee and Wisconsin, there’s one that shows some famous spots around the state and another that looks like it’s maybe from the 70s with slides from the Milwaukee County Zoo, and another for the Domes (and there’s probably others out there, too). I guess what I’m saying is that I’m low key collecting View-Masters and reels.
I’m especially interested in:
-Anything related to Wisconsin.
-Sci fi/ horror/ fantasy/ super heroes
-1940s-1980s travel/ spotlights on cities or countries
-Music/ bands
-Anything weird, of course
-Not looking for: Disney (they made TONS of reels) or pop culture post-80s
If you got ones you’re willing to part with or sell on the cheap, I’m interested. The’ll go to a good home and I intend to share them with others. E-mail me: teakrulos@gmail.com
Please Clap Dept. Speaking of QWERTYFEST, we’re entering the final stretch of fundraising. Every little bit helps, so please donate (and get some great perks in exchange) to help us make it happen: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2025#/
Want TWW delivered to your inbox? You can sign up for my Substack HERE. Follow me on: Facebook Bluesky Instagram
Tea’s Weird Week: We Can Battle A.I. with Dive Bars
I’m honored to say that an article I contributed to, “High Dive,” for Milwaukee Magazine, won a National City & Regional Magazine Award in the “Lifestyle/ Leisure” category. Bar culture is big here in Milwaukee, so this piece lovingly took a look at some of our city’s best “dives.” I’ve spent over half my life hanging around one bar or another, so it was music to my ears. I was assigned what I’ve named the “apostrophe beat,” Just Art’s, Dale’s, Gordie’s, and Mamie’s, all great places in their own way.
The other writers on this package were Chris Drosner (who also edited), Tom Kertscher, and Spencer Creal, fantastic photos by Aliza Baran, designed by Chelsea Mamerow.
I’ve won a few awards now and when that happens, I like to try to reflect on what made it stand out. They ain’t all going to be winners, that’s for sure, so what makes this one special? Well, as my mind tend to do, my thoughts began wander. I’ve been running into a lot stories about A.I. these days and it perks my interest, but usually not in a good way. There are a lot of people trying to “cheat” with their writing by using A.I. to do the heavy lifting for them.
I really don’t get it– why be a writer if you don’t like to write? People are publishing books written by A.I. RFK Jr.’s recent “Make America Healthy Again” report had fake citations as A.I. generated papers “tend to hallucinate references,” as Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch says in a USA Today article (the White House says it was a “formatting error.” Yeah, sure.) It’s all kinda depressing to me.
But not everything is online and able to be stuffed into an A.I. meat grinder, and it struck me that this piece was a great example that. Some of these places have little internet presence at all. Part of the package was a guide of signs that you’re in a dive bar. I think one we forgot is “Facebook page that is only updated once every three months” or “stopped with status updates six years ago, but still open.”
We’re still a ways off from an A.I. robot putting on a pair of pants or a bathrobe, heading down to the corner bar, taking a shot with the bartender and chatting with some regulars about the weather or the Brewers or sharing a dirty joke. A.I. can’t really duplicate that experience (yet). They can’t hear the slamming sound of a game of bar dice or smell the mixture of rail whiskey and frozen pizza and secondhand smoke wafting through the door when someone opens it.
Thank the stars for that. The next round of Schlitz is on me (but only if you can prove you’re human).
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Please Clap (and donate) Dept.: Speaking of not being A.I.-generated: Fundraising for QWERTYFEST MKE is underway and we got a long way to go to meet our goal. Our fundraiser page is here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2025 and includes great perks like tickets, shirts, zines, even a historic bobblehead. We’re also doing a “Telethon” at Sugar Maple (which will also be livestreamed) on Sunday, June 22. More info here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1529533825125088/ Please help make it happen!
Tea’s Weird Week: If You Don’t Support QWERTY, You Might End Up Butt-hurty (Revisited)
I wrote a similar column title last year in a plea to get people to support something I’m proud of– QWERTYFEST MKE. QF was officially started by me and my co-organizer Molly Snyder in 2023. This year will be our 3rd annual event (though I should note we do smaller events throughout the year, too). It’s been a wild ride, but I absolutely love some of the things we’ve accomplished with the resources we’ve had available.
So what is QWERTYFEST? The inspiration comes from a Milwaukeean named Christopher Latham Sholes. Sholes was an inventor, newspaper editor, and politician. He worked with collaborators at the Kleinsteuber Machine Shop, which was kind of like a Makerspace of it’s day, located on State St., right next to Turner Hall (where our QWERTYFEST opening night party will take place), it was located where State Street Pizza Pub is today. Although there had been attempts at a typing machine before, Sholes developed the first commercial typewriter. Part of that design was the QWERTY keyboard configuration (named after the first 6 letters of the first row), which we still use on our computers and phones today.
Oh, by the way, I’m giddy to say we teamed up with the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame to create a Sholes bobblehead, which you can pre-order HERE.
I won’t go on and on about typewriter philosophy, but in a world filled with parasitic AI programs, deep fakes, spam bots, disinformation, trolls, cyberbullying, privacy concerns, vapid influencers, social isolation, etc. etc. it is a relief to sit in a space with your brain and a piece of paper you can clack-clack-clack away at. QWERTYFEST gives you a chance to do that and hang out with other people who love creativity– writers, readers, artists, musicians, builders, and other creators.
But as much as we love to see (and hear) typewriters in action, QWERTYFEST is more than a “typewriter convention.” We like to celebrate the QWERTY keyboard in all iterations. This year we’re going to be working with DarkFusion Systems to feature more mechanical keyboards people can try out. Our Quick Brown Fox Typing Contest will be back with manual and electric typewriter categories, as well as a texting one. Equally important– we want to celebrate writers of all genres who use these keyboards. New opportunities for local writers to connect and showcase their work is something we love to see.
We also have an appreciation for other analog/ vintage technologies and are working some of that in– pre-digital cameras, board games, records, stamp collecting, stereoscopes– if anything like that is your passion, let us know. Last, me and Molly are both advocates of Milwaukee culture in general, so we like to share Milwaukee history and innovation and collaborate with local businesses we feel are making the city a better place.
Me and Molly are the familiar faces of QWERTYFEST, cause we’re the organizers, but I want to mention the incredible support we’ve gotten both locally in Milwaukee and in the typewriter community. It’s humbling to say that there’s too many people to thank– I would feel awful forgetting anyone. So this is just a huge blanket THANK YOU to everyone who has helped support QWERTYFEST and our related projects (like our zine, QWERTY Quarterly).
And one of those supporters could be YOU. We launched our 2025 fundraiser on Indiegogo. We are trying to raise a lot of money. Venue rental, paying entertainers, artists, and other guests, plus a ton of other costs that pop up here and there adds up to a lot really quickly, but we’re glad to say that almost all of that money goes to local businesses and creators. Our pledge levels include great perks like subscriptions to QWERTY Quarterly, our beloved “We Built Milwaukee on Beer and Typewriters” T-shirt, tickets to our QWERTYFEST events, typed letters or poems, and more. Donations help, so does sharing the fundraiser on your social media, email lists, or wherever you can.
Look, here’s the short version: we want to do big things with QWERTYFEST MKE and you can help make that happen by supporting our fundraiser here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2025#/
Next week on TWW: The Nadine Zine! Want TWW delivered to your inbox? You can sign up for my Substack HERE. Follow me on: Facebook Bluesky Instagram
Tea’s Weird Week: Apocalypse Every Show Now
My third book, Apocalypse Any Day Now, was published in 2019 (by Chicago Review Press). I talked to a wide range of people on their ideas on how the world as we know it might end, and some of their plans for the apocalypse. It was deeply stressful at times, but I had some fun with it, too. For example, I thought it would be interesting to read some dystopian fiction, so I started a book club, The Apocalypse Blog Book Club (I had renamed my website here The Apocalypse Blog while I was working on the book) in 2017. We read some classics like Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and many others. You can see a list of our selections here: https://teakrulos.com/apocalypse-any-day-now/
Anyway, I thought of all this recently after I binged a show called Paradise (which was released in January on Hulu), a post-apocalyptic murder mystery. I really enjoyed it, even if it managed to earworm “Another Day in Paradise” in my damn head for over a week. But I was also like, wow there are a lot of shows on this theme lately, aren’t there? Maybe I was too distracted studying the theory I explored in Political Monsters about the correlation of zombie, vampire, and killer clown movies and politics to dwell on it too much.
But yeah, the shit hitting the fan scenarios, dystopias, and that post-apocalyptic lifestyle is a popular theme in shows like Silo (2023-present), Fallout (2024-present), The Walking Dead and all the spinoffs (2010-present), The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-2025), The Last of Us (2023-present), Westworld (2016-2022), even shows like Severance (2022-present) play on this theme. And that’s just naming off the top of my head.
Why are shows like this so popular now? Oh gee, I dunno– art imitating life? Women’s rights being taken away, like in The Handmaid’s Tale. People are being disappeared in cases of mistaken identity, as seen in Brazil. Reality is being redrawn and renamed, like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, some real “Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia,” type of stuff. Homeland Security is even thinking of doing a reality show that sounds like an idea out of The Hunger Games.
I don’t expect this trend to stop any time soon. These are tough, dismal times. I wish you all well– may the odds be ever in your favor and all that.
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Next week on TWW: If you don’t support QWERTY, you might end up feeling butt-hurty (Part II). Want TWW delivered to your inbox? You can sign up for my Substack HERE. Follow me on: Facebook Bluesky Instagram
Apocalypse Any Day Now: Deep Underground with America’s Doomsday Preppers (2019, Chicago Review Press) can be bought here: www.chicagoreviewpress.com/ApocalypseAnyDayNow
Tea’s Weird Week: TWW Returns! (plus, a psychedelic time travel boat dream)
As things tend to go with me, at a certain point I was overworked and struggling to keep up and so my beloved column, Tea’s Weird Week, fell into hiatus. I think politics played a hand in this, too. It has felt overwhelming and fruitless to write about weird topics with the current climate of turmoil. But in times like these, we need to find our happy places to hide out in and take a break, and one of those refuges for me is writing about some strange shit.
I’ve missed having this venue to write about whatever I want and to update on some of the many projects I’m working on, so Tea’s Weird Week is back! Every Thursday (except the ones I don’t). We (me and my collaborators) had a good run of a Tea’s Weird Week podcast. Can we bring it back? I hope so. I’m thinking about it. But to start, here’s a weird dream I had and some brief updates.
On Tuesday, me and QWERTYFEST MKE co-organizer Molly Snyder had a meeting to discuss plans for the fest (Oct.3-5 this year!) but we took a break to watch the effort to finally remove Deep Thought, a boat that was beached and ditched way back in October. The abandoned, soon to be graffiti covered boat became a local celebrity of sorts, with lots of local media interest. After several failed attempts, a local towing company was called in to pull the sucker off the beach. We observed part of this effort (it took a long time) as they yanked the boat up onto the rocks, eventually hauling it away on a flatbed truck.
That night I had a dream– I was back at the beach, and Deep Thought was still wrecked there, but we had both time travelled back to the 1960s. The beach was filled with hippies, sitting around smoking weed. A guy with long hair and a beard was walking around hawking a newspaper (I would guess Milwaukee’s 60s underground paper, Kaleidoscope). Hippies were circled around playing hacky sack (this part of the dream might not be historically accurate) and some were playing acoustic guitars and bongos. The hippies offered me a joint, and I took some tokes. Sleepy, I climbed up on the Deep Thought and fell asleep in the sunlight. I woke up in my bed. The boat was gone. Faaaaaar out, man. Far-fucking-out. Good-bye Deep Thought.
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QWERTY Quarterly: Speaking of QWERTYFEST MKE, QQ is a zine edited by me and Molly, that is the official publication of the festival. I’m very proud of it, every issue features the work of talented local writers (poetry, fiction, articles, columns) and artists. You can pick up a copy at Lion’s Tooth and Woodland Pattern here in Milwaukee, Quimby’s in Chicago, or get it mailed anywhere via our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/qwertyquarterly
More QWERTYFEST MKE news soon!
Other recent writing: I wrote two short pieces for the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine, about local ham radio enthusiasts and a travelogue about a guy who faked his kayaking death here in Wisconsin, then took a meandering escape route to eastern Europe. I’ve got some entries in the Summer Guide issue out in June, and I wrote about a local “hoedown throwdown” between line-dancing groups for their website HERE.
Clownwatch 2025: last fall, I published a zine/ ebook titled Political Monsters, which explores the correlation between the party in power and the number of films starring zombies (higher during traditional Republican presidencies) vampires (Democratic Party), or in the case of Trump, killer clown (MAGA) movies being made. Trump’s first term saw the largest spike of killer clown themed movies in film history. Are the clowns back? We’ll see– I am tracking and cataloging all killer clowns released over the next 4 years, starting here with our first entry for Trump 2.0. I will update on more films as they are released.
1. May 9: Clown in a Cornfield (directed by Eli Craig) release date. Based on a 2020 novel by Adam Cesare, features a cornfield-lurking clown named Frendo, who enjoys killing horny teens.
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Next week on TWW: It’s going to be a hot cryptid summer!
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Tea’s Weird Week: Favorite Words of 2024 (and where I wrote ’em)
Words! Some just feel better rolling off the tongue than others. I’ve been trying to keep track of some of my favorites over the last year. Here’s 12 I love (and by extension, some of the best articles I’ve written for various publications this year). I’m looking forward to more word usage in 2025. Happy New Year!
LANDLUBBERS: “Goth Barge has developed a following for their Dark Wave fueled boat cruises, but they do plenty of sets for landlubbers too.” —Madcap Milwaukee Calendar: Who Will You Ask to the Goth Prom?, Shepherd Express, Jan. 30.
LYNCHIAN: “If you want to make the experience even more immersive, show up ‘dressed in your Lynchian best’ to win a prize in the costume contest.” — Madcap Milwaukee Calendar: Furries and Motorcyclists Assemble; Music for Your Lynchian Lifestyle, Shepherd Express, Feb. 14
PENDING: “Pending approval, the statue will be placed in a corner of Elm Park they hope to rename Gygax Park and will feature a likeness of Gary Gyagx sitting at the head of a table, where visitors can sit down and join him for a game.”– Dungeons & Dragons All Started In This Tiny Wisconsin Town, Atlas Obscura, March 28
CAPRINE VINYASA: “Share your yoga mat with a baby dwarf goat in a session of “caprine vinyasa,” or goat yoga, a trend that dates back to an Oregon farm in 2016.” — Madcap Milwaukee Calendar: Buffy Prom is Ready to Slay, Shepherd Express, May 8.
GOTHABILLIES: “These sour goths don’t like looking out their window to see their moonlit lawn filled with cybergoths, dark wavers, deathrockers, gothabillies, and other new-fangled creatures of the night.”–I’m on a goth boat: All aboard Milwaukee’s Goth Barge, Milwaukee Record, June 4. Please Clap Dept.: This article was included on the “25 favorite Milwaukee Record stories of 2024 list.”
TERRAZZO: “Waitstaff zipped across the hall’s terrazzo floor, delivering plates of fried cod and perch to the maze of tables, each decorated with a centerpiece vase featuring minature American and Serbian flags and colored carnations nestled amongst the condiments.”– Generations of Politicians Have Passed Through Serb Hall, Milwaukee Magazine, July 2024
CLACK: “With both parties satisfied with the deal, Dul sits at his Olympia SG-1 typewriter, and with a clack clack clack he types the customer a receipt, turning a crank to pull it free from the platen (the roller that holds the paper).”– Gen Z is into typewriters, Chicago Reader, Sept. 19
CLOWNADO: “The success of those movies led to a score of low budget entries like Killer Clowns: Unleashed (2016), Crispy’s Curse (2017), Clowntergeist (2017), Clown Motel: Spirits Arise (2018), and a film title that perhaps sums up the Trump administration in a single word: Clownado (2019).”– Political Monsters: How Presidents Influence Horror Movies, zine/e-book, October 2024
BLOWHOLE: “The band’s logo, a mohawked humpback whale in a leather jacket (with an enormous safety pin piercing the noble animal’s blowhole) breaching the water while defiantly raising a flipper, was a common sight on the streets, plastered everywhere on flyers and stickers slapped on dumpsters and electrical boxes.”– The Terrible Curse of the Humpbacks, Riverwest Radio Ghost Walk booklet, October 2024. Please Clap Dept.: Illustrator Ashley Altadonna captured what I thought this logo might look like exactly:
SCHTICK: “I sell a drink, put the money in the register; at the end of the night, I count the money – immediate gratification,” Guenther says. “I make a new customer, I tell a joke, people laugh, and that’s my schtick.”– A Short Guide to Milwaukee’s Dive Bars, Milwaukee Magazine, October 2024
HODAG-GREEN: “Then, in 2018, he went all in, giving the exterior of the shop a Hodag-green coat of paint and rebranding as The Hodag Store.”– Do You Know the Legend of the Rhinelander Hodag? Milwaukee Magazine, October 2024
KRAMPUSSCHLAP: “Krampuschlap,” a game where people slap each other as hard as they can, is revealed to be “the favorite game of Krampusnacht” in the action comedy Red One. At Milwaukee Krampusnacht, we partnered with Best Place on a “Krampusschlap” drink special (cider and Fireball) and set up a photo opp so people could pretend they were being slapped by a Krampus hand. —Milwaukee Krampusnacht website and social media promotions
TWW: 4 More Years…of Vampires or Killer Clowns?
Political Monsters Week Continues
To conclude my posts about the Political Monsters project, I want to do some monster-casting to the future. During election years, we’re bombarded by both campaigns via emails, texts, junk mail, billboards, TV and internet ads– everywhere we look.
My zine/e-book Political Monsters talks about how we get more zombie movies during Republican administrations and more vampire movies during Democratic ones– the exception being Trump, who launched a rise in killer clown themed movies. In this last year or so we’ve seen lots of vampire movies, particularly Dracula inspired ones– The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, Nosferatu. But with Trump on the periphery, there’s also been a bump in killer clown movies– Joker 2, Terrifier 3. I think if Trump is elected, the chaotic candidate will bring in another wave of evil clown movies.
But what about Kamala Harris? She would be unique in becoming the first woman president. But she’s deeply associated with the Democratic Party as Biden’s VP, unlike Trump’s unhinged splinter MAGA Party. I think Harris would continue the trend of vampire movies as seen during Biden’s term. If anything, there’s be more lady vampire movies along the lines of what we saw in this year’s film Abigail (loosely inspired by the horrror classic Dracula’s Daughter).
As I note in the Political Monsters zine, the fate of the world will hinge on the election in a couple weeks on November 5. Significantly less frightening, it may determine the amount of vampires vs evil clowns we see on the silver screen.
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You can get a copy of Political Monsters…
In person: Saturday, Oct. 19: Milwaukee Paranormal Conference, I’ll be on the vendor floor 10am-5pm at the Irish Cultural & Heritage Center. Register for a free ticket here: milwaukeeparacon.com
Sunday, Oct. 20: Political Monsters Party at Lion’s Tooth, 3-5pm. Admission is free. I’ll talk briefly about the project, we’ll do a round of horror trivia, and if you dress like a zombie, vampire, or killer clown, you get a free copy of the Political Monsters zine!
You can also buy copies at Lion’s Tooth here in Milwaukee and Quimby’s in Chicago. You can order a print copy via the QWERTYFEST MKE Etsy page: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1778576030/political-monsters-how-presidents
And an e-book version is available through Kindle/KU: https://www.amazon.com/Political-Monsters-Presidents-Influence-Horror-ebook/dp/B0DFJ7DZKQ/ref=sr_1_1
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