La WANDA!

For those of you who have been following my blog with a bated-breath, edge-of-your-seat attitude, and have been dissecting each and every entry with a fine tooth comb so as to extract each and every smidgen of goodness - you may remember me mentioning this lady a few posts back!!!!!

I just ran across this album cover on Retrospace and - although it looks like I was wrong in my initial guess that La Wanda (or Lawanda - they spell it both ways in the Party Tapes ad) may have been Aunt Esther from Sanford and Son - I am thrilled to see that she had albums out and was considered (by someone, at least) to the the Queen of Comedy!  By the way, I fully realize the extent of my run-on sentences - deal with it!

I would love to get my hands on some of these old albums.  I was just listening to some old children's albums that my sister and I found in our mom's basement a while back.   They sound so cool with all the poppin and the crackin and whatnot.  Not to mention all the creepy singing voices!  Here's a Bozo the Clown Album cover to give you a bit o' the creeps.

One of my favorite images that I found was on the back of a "Bozo Approved" children's album.  They have images of other approved albums and one is this weird-ass record by Jerry Lewis.

I mean seriously, what the fuck is that all about?!?!?!?!  I want this album so bad.  I want to hold it and listen to it and stare at that super bizarre picture of Jerry Lewis in a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit looking like he's giving a blow job to a sugar dispenser.  I WANT IT!  Where is it?  Does anybody own this?  I just thank the stars above that I have this little yellow copy.  

A Cucumber, a Pepper...and Thee.

This is one of the Japanese cuc specimens in my garden right now.  I just put another one of these babies in a salad.  Quite tender, I must say.  They are supposed to get over a foot long - so this one would be considered immature, or stubby.

This here's some sort of long, sweet pepper that will eventually be like 8 inches long and red.  I can't remember the name but I think it's something like Marconi or something.  This guy is only like 3 or 4 inches long right now.

So, I guess the little yellow goose is "Thee."  Actually I attempted to capture some teeny "Mexi Bell" peppers that are just starting to form.  The gooses beak is pointing right at one.  They are apparently a spicy version of a bell pepper.  I'll let you know.

I wish I had more to share.  I took a gigantic load of goods to the goodwill today.  Yay!

And here's a little musical interlude....



I heard this song, along with the rest of this bands album, over and over and over (times 1 thousand million) when I was working on a hop farm up in Washington one summer.  We had the night shift (6pm to 6am) and the guys I worked with attached a speaker to the wall of the hop picking machine and all I could hear was the percussion when the machine was running - but I got the full, fully addictive musicalness of it all when the machine broke down - which was usually once a night.  It's a dance number - with it's own dance.

There's not much of a video - but the album cover is somewhat pleasing to the eye.

Ok - I'm off for some evening TV viewing and the continuation of my reading of Ghost Story.  Gregory is sooooooo freaky!

The Wine of the Times

I got around to bottling the plum/gooseberry wine yesterday and it looks incredible!  I'm not exaggerating or falling prey to my excessive use of exclamation points here - seriously it looks sooo cool.  It's this really beautiful, crystal clear, pinky orangy color and i totally love it!  It looks like wine.  It tastes like wine.  It IS wine!  I wound up with 21 bottles of this beautiful stuff.  It's my very first batch and it's still kinda hard for me to believe that I pulled it off.

I am gonna keep a close eye on the blackberry wine cause I really can't wait to rack that one now.  It's a bit harder to tell with that one though cause it's really dark red wine and it's hard to tell if it has completely clarified.  I know a trick though.  It you hold a flame on the opposite side of the bottle and look through there will be no halo around the flame if it is totally clarified.  So I'm gonna give that a try today.

I've made a few other things recently that I have been meaning to mention.

I thought all these pink bottled things looked cool together.  The one on the left is rhubarb syrup I made for mixing into drinks (it is going to very good use today as the sweet/tart part of  some rhubarb old fashioneds).  The bottle in the middle holds my first batch of berry juice kefir.  I have been planning on doing a post on the kefir for a while now - so you'll just have to wait for it if you don't know what kefir is.  And the one on the right is my wine.

And now for the entertainment.

...is your party poopin?

This is by far one of the best vintage ads I have seen in my LIFE!  Potty mouthed 8-track or cassette tapes designed to get your party jumpin' with the comedy stylings of none other than:

Bea Bea Benson
Pearl Williams
Belle Barth
Buzzy Greene
Laroy Daniels
Mantan Mooreland, Roosavelt Myles and Janet Taylor
Lawanda

Never heard of any of them?  I'm sure none of the Penthouse readers back in 1973 had either!  But man-o-man if I could only get my hands on these today!   Especially that Buzzy Greene tape.  How could that not be good?  And if I'm not mistaken Lawanda may be none other than Aunt Esther of Sanford and Son fame.  Who knows?

Brother Eat More & Sister Full Bosom
"A set of swinging sermons, rapid fire jokes, jive and sexy sinful sermons from far out Sunday school."

Too Much!

Oh yeah - I forgot about her.

Penthouse March 1973. Yowza!

The Vomit Has Clarified!!!

For those of you who have been following my crafty exploits since the very early days of long ago (Craftypants Carol's Fancy Crafty World est circa summer 2009), then you most likely remember the vomitous sludge that I had fermenting in a 5 gallon carboy and was trying to pass off as plum wine.

Well all I can say now is ha HA! After a full year of completely ignoring the wine as it sat in the deep dark root cellar of a basement, and some clarifying agent from my local wine dude, and a couple more rackings, and about a month more of ignoring - here it is in all it's crystal clear splendor! Oh, and, if you are a diehard Craftypants Carol follower you may be asking "What about the gooseberry wine, Craftypants Carol?" And to you I would say "It's in there too!" About a month ago when I added the clarifying agent to the plum wine I decided to just throw the gooseberry in with it cause the plum was still really really dry and the gooseberry was actually very sweet. And viola - a very nice slightly tart but a little sweet pink wine! Damn I'm good! I'm gonna let it sit another week or so cause there was a teeny bit of lees hanging around on the rims that are molded into the plastic dealie (don't worry if you don't understand what I'm saying - it's not really that important or interesting) and when I do it's all going straight into bottles, baby! Straight into freaking bottles!

Now, if you are not only a diehard CPC follower, but also a crazed lunatic in need of special care, you may also remember that I had a batch of blackberry wine a brewin'. That's doing really well too. I didn't use a clarifying agent - I'm just waiting that one out - cause you have to dissolve the stuff in 2 cups of water and I really don't feel like watering down my wine. I know people do it - and it's supposed to be ok and all that - I just think it may clarify on it's own. Hopefully. It's hard to tell in this photo but it's actually pretty close to being done too.

So here's my garden - it's growing like crazy right about now.

I did all the work in the garden proper - within the green plastic netting that keeps my crazed chickens out - not to mention the deer that people are always lamenting in these parts. But none of it - NONE - would be possible without...

No, not Little Mo - the man behind Little Mo and behind the getting-water-to-the-garden project. He single handedly hooked up a system that siphons the pond water like 100 feet over to where my garden is and it is AMAZING!!!! I've told him how much I appreciate it but I don't think he quite gets the magnitude of it all. No water no garden. Period. Water=Garden. No water=a whole lotta nothing. I have water therefor I have garden. And not only that but I think the pond water is what is making my garden go crazy. Instant fertilizer.

I've got a lot of Black Heirloom tomato plants that I started by seed that have this really weird flower - it looks almost like tomato leaves coming out of the center of the flower. I haven't looked it up yet and I don't remember what they looked like when I had them before cause that was like 5 years ago.

Ok - that's about it for now - I was gonna post photos of how my soap turned out but the one photo I have is all blown out - so I'll try that again. What else - oh I made a gooseberry crisp the other day with some those fabulous berries in that photo from the other day. My neighbor (who is also named Carol) has a bunch of bushes and lets me pick them every year. I love those things! I want a whole hedgerow of them someday.

Gooseberries!!!!!

More later...just had to post this cool photo!

That's right!!!!!!

My Top 10 Willy Inducing Moments!

Warning: Not for the super easily scared - you know who you are....

On one of the many horror blogs I have been skulking around lately, a fabulous idea was started and it immediately spread throughout many a horror blog in the vast horror blog community. What blog, you ask? The Horror Digest. And that great idea is the Top 10 Willy Inducing Moments. I totally love this idea and have been checking out different people's lists here and there (Kindertrauma actually has a pretty good round up if you are interested) and have finally decided to do my own. Now, I am aware that my loyal followers are not necessarily comprised of a high quotient of horror lovers - hence the warning - but I think if you give it a chance you may learn something. What that is, I do not know.

10. The old lady from This House Possessed

This lady scared the crap out of me when I was a kid watching this 1981 made for TV movie. She's creepy enough here - but in a final scene she is blown into a swimming pool that the possessed house has heated to the boiling point (?) and the shot of her face in the pool is just so damn creepy!

Try, if you can, to resist the urge to watch part 1 with the scene with Parker Stevenson singing "Sensitive You're Not!"

This, however, is part 9...

Now, I do admit that the impact of this scene would be (and was) much greater on a child - so don't feel bad if you don't get the willies from this one - it's number 10 remember....

9. Karen Black's face at the end of Burnt Offerings

Another blast from my past. I saw Burnt Offerings numerous times on TV as a youth and, after that first fateful viewing, could not bring myself to actually watch this scene until I was in my 30s. She's really got something freaky going on there! I mean look at her!

8. The chruch/home of the The Creeper in Jeepers Creepers

The whole scene where the kids come up to the church in the very beginning is just so creepy to me. It is so dark and has so much tension not only cause they think they saw a body wrapped in a sheet dumped down a pipe here (after being chased on the hwy by a souped up serial killer truck), but also cause they don't know if the freaky guy in the truck is gonna come back soon or what! It is so freaky! I could watch this scene a million times and still be afraid The Creeper was gonna come back at any moment. Here is the scene on youtube at about 5:00.

7. The ghost in A Tale of Two Sisters

I admit it - I am a total sucker for the asian ghost-girl extravaganza. I do feel that it has only worked really well in a few movies though, but when it worked, it freaking worked. Visually, I find this whole movie incredibly creepy and stunning at the same time. There are two ghost scenes that totally creep me out - the first is when the one girl is alone in her bed and she hears her door open and covers her head with her blankets and then feels them being pulled off of her from the foot of the bed. AHHH! The second is when the two girls are in bed together and the ghost crawls across the floor at the foot of the bed and then suddenly is standing on the bed. Man oh man. That's some freaky shit. I will go into this more further on down the line - but it's not what these ghosty faces look like or anything (which is where I think the American versions totally have it all wrong) it's the freaky, unnatural way they move! I can't find a still shot of the second creepy ghost scene so I'll just add in a cool shot of the kitchen in the house.

And here is that scene...the action starts at about 4.00.

6. SH SH SH SHARKKK! scene in Jaws 2

Jaws has had it's mention - and yes, it did freak the living shit out of me as a child - but the scene that ALWAYS freaks me out and has stuck with me throughout the years is the scene in Jaws 2 where they find the one teenage girl all alone in the small boat. Not only is that line pulled off in an incredibly harrowing fashion- it just gave me chills watching it again, but the thought of her out there all alone in that teeny boat, after her boyfriend is eaten right in front of her, on the silent ocean for god knows how freaking long. Damn!

This is a pretty funny clip - it's videotaped off of a TV. Luckily the scene you'll be looking for is right at the beginning of the clip. Here it is.

5. OK - back to Asian fright fest action. Tetsuo the Iron Man/Ringu

I am lumping these two together cause I feel like it. I could make them two separate entries but then I wouldn't have been able to sneak and extra movie in right under your nose! Ha HA! So the deal here is, as I stated earlier, the freaky deaky way these characters move. When I first saw Tetuso I almost fell off my chair in fright (that's a new one, eh?) cause the way this weird lady moves when she is, I think, turning the guy into Tetsuo is EXACTLY the way my mom moved in this horrible nightmare I had when I was younger. She sat down and lit a cigarette made all these extra, unnatural, unnecessary movements to do it and was looking at me the whole time. And the way the chick in Ringu moves is the same - only more lumbering.

Here's what I'm talkin' about...right at about 5 min.

And Ringu...get your freak on at about 4:25.

4. That damn lady (and her dolls) in Dead Silence

The whole thing, for me, was pretty damn hands-on-the-face scary. I remember when I very first saw the trailer on TV I said out loud (I don't even know if anyone was in the room) "I am never going to see that movie." Why? Magic, of course. For those of you not in the know Magic is a movie about a ventriloquist and his dummy that scared the ever loving crap out of every kid who had eyes to see and ears to hear in 1978. This movie has the overwhelming combo of super creepy dummies (there are many) AND my old nemesis - the creepy old lady face. In case you weren't sure, I did see it - alone on PPV. And yes, if freaked the crap out of me. One of the scenes that creep me out the most is a flashback of this mortician when he was a kid and his dad was the mortician - with the embalming room in the basement of the house. He goes downstairs at night to check out the woman his dad is working on and pulls her casket over and it falls down and he falls down face to face with her on the floor.

Here is the trailer - no clips available.

3. Yule Brenner walking down the hall in Westworld

The music, the clicking, the eyes, the music, the clicking, the eyes. I don't know which is worse. That is one freaky dude.

This is a pretty cool compressed version of the whole chase scene. The freakiest part is him walking (then running) down a long dark hall tunnel thing. But it's all freaky! Click here.

2. Robert Blake's face in Lost Highway

It's all pretty creepy - every inch of this guy's face in every scene that he's in. But the ultra creepy moment is when it is superimposed onto Bill Pullman's wife's face after he wakes up from a dream and it's dark in the room. This actually used to happen to me a lot as a kid. When i would be laying next to my sister in bed I couldn't look at her face in the dark cause it would always turn into this

Another freaky lady face from my past.

The Robert Blake moment is here at 7:37. There's sex so you have to sign in to watch it.

1. The Exorcist

Here's the biggie. The grand master of all scary moments. It hails from The Exorcist but is not a scene with the little girl/demon in it. Yes, she scared the pants off me, and yes I do get a fleeting glimpse of that face in the nether regions of my mind every now and again - and I still don't like it very much. The whole movie has such and overwhelming sense of doom, but the scene that really creeps me out is when the young priest take the tape of her voice back to his room with him and listens to it. What the hell is he thinking?!?! My god if I had a tape like that I'd be listening to it in broad daylight in a cafeteria full of Fame students to take a bit of the edge off. Sheesh.

It starts around 6:30 - but start anywhere you like and you'll be creeped out.

OK - there you go. Cry if you need to - or just sleep with the lights on - cause I know you will!

I'm Back!!!

I know, I know...you're checking your wall calendar or your computerized virtual calendar or your phone-what-thinks and has lots of calendar-like gadgets and "apps" and you're saying..."Craftypants Carol isn't due for another blog post for another 6 months or so! What gives?"

Well, I'll tell you what gives, mister! (or ma'am)! I, Craftypants Carol am attempting to turn over a new, much more productive, leaf. Partly cause I am feeling particularly ambitious these days, but also cause I have been startled into reality by the sheer amount of submissions that have noticed that I can post to another blog, while completely and totally neglect my own.

So I am taking back the night, as it were.

But first I may as well mention that other blog - that mistress of the night in blog form that I have been searching for all my life and that I have been sending my rambling posts to and have been reading obsessively for weeks now - Kindertrauma.

I love, love, love Kindertrauma. It is like someone looked deep into my soul and took a bunch of pictures and then had a big think-tank style meeting with charts and spread sheets and devised a blog about what they saw. The general gist is traumatic childhood moments relating to all kinds of media and whatnot - but it's so much more than that! It's witty and funny and so much fun to read cause it's all maze-like and seems to go on for ever and ever!

I seriously doubt I am doing any justice to that site by babbling about it - so what you should do is go there yourself and spend about 5 hours or so, sifting through the rubble of all the memories and comments and determine for yourself how much more of you life you want to spend wandering the halls and looking at the pictures. I, myself, plan on moving in and renting a room sometime soon. I think I might decorate that room with the props from Tourist Trap or Dolls - and just never sleep again!

Ok - now on with the rest of my life!

I made another batch of soap the other day - and I thought I'd take some photos to put a little thrill into your day. So ready? Set? Go Be Thrilled!!!!

Ok - so there are admittedly not the most thrilling photos of the year - but they're kinda interesting. This first one is of the fat melting in the pot. Ok - I just realized as I was typing this that it's pretty damn uninteresting to see a photo of fat melting. But there it is anyway. So look at it, damnit!

This next photo is an even less interesting one of the scents I used to scentify the soap. Vanilla and Sweet Orange oil. Sort of a Creamsicle style soap, if you will.

But this third photo - what a grand photo this is! I snapped a shot of the song that was playing on my iPod so that you could actually feel the general atmosphere of the room while the fat was slowly melting. My man Daler Mehndi doing what he does best - entertaining me with his Bhangra ways.

These next two photos are of my garden. I built raised beds out of cinder block and old tires and it really doesn't look half bad.

I have tons of tomatoes - around 20 plants or so, just to be on the safe side - and just about as many peppers. Lots of winter and summer squash, kale, chard, lettuce, radishes, beans, peas, corn, onions, etc, etc, etc...plus some strategically placed flowers - for beauty and whatnot.

I think I should have taken these photos at a more cloudy moment - cause the brightness sort of washes everything out a bit. Plus it all just looks so much more lush and beautiful in person. It's hard to capture that.

I love it so much! It is a haven within a haven, surrounded by a whole bunch of crappy Canadian Thistle - which sucks - but we won't go into that.

Ok - I'll leave you be, for now.

New Look, Same Low Standards...

Get a load of this baby! Me at Camp Tadmor in 1980 - which puts me at the ripe old age of 11. That's me seated on the bottom row - second to the left. Jeanette (mein schwester) is the one standing next to me in that jaunty pose. You may be wondering why I am pinching the legs of my jeans and I'll tell you a little secret. A secret that puts me in a very decidedly unfavorable light, however. In my twisted, tween, think-thin brain I had determined that if I lifted the material of my jeans that was encasing my ham-like thighs - it would somehow make them appear smaller. Did it work? Ha HA! No. It just made me look like an OCD nutcase that was ready to be shipped off to an asylum. Not to mention that hair. Holy cow what was going on there.

You may also note, as I did, that I do look a bit tall to be 11. You may have even said to yourself during that pants pinching confession - "No WAY! 11? I don't THINK so!" And you would be wrong. I was actually very tall for my age back then. Everyone thought I was gonna be one of those tall, lithe types - but no. I'm short. I remember measuring myself in 5th grade on a measuring devise that was attached to the gym wall and noting that I was 5'2" or 5'3" - something like that - and guess what. That's how tall I am now. I STOPPED GROWING! I had this particularly groovy green culotte and vest outfit that I wore a green turtlneck with (very sheik, I must admit) and this one kid would always call me the Jolly Green Giant. I have to find my grade school class photos so I can show proof, cause in one of them I am in the back row - WITH THE TALL KIDS!

Anywho... let's see what else I can dazzle you with.

MMMM, that's nizzze.