Whether tits the season to be bouncy or tits beginning to look a lot like Christmas, either way and all the same -- Merry Titsmas!

Today marks the 40th anniversary of NEON NIGHTS (1981) opening in XXX theaters. This is one phantasmagorical & psychologically offbeat odyssey of bacchanalian-ish mind-fuckery (imagine a psychedelic ALICE IN WONDERLAND with a hedonistic hardcore take). NN involves a lonely ignored teen who fantasizes about her divorced negligent Mom's sleazy boyfriend. When he hits on her, she runs away ashamed to New York to join her sister and once there she indulges in a series of kinkiness that includes telekinesis & levitation(!) via a magician and his assistant. Afterwards she meets a couple who not only pay homage to the shower scene in PSYCHO but are further tied to drugs & white slavery(!) through another couple who live in a cabin in the woods. Oh, and there's also a spot of tennis. With all the separate surreal mixture of storylines, NN changes directions from hotblooded voyeurism to mysterious disorientation in the vein of some nightmarish fairytale that delivers one of the strangest xxx eyecandy offerings on celluloid.

This month marks the 45th anniversary of the publication debut of CHIC magazine (1976). Not to be confused with the same-named women's glamour/lifestyle magazine "CHIC" (launched 2012) in the vein of COSMPOLITAN, ELLE, ALLURE, HARPER'S BAZAAR, MARIE CLAIRE or VOGUE. CHIC's early issues were oversized until 1978, and the final print issue was Dec 2001.


NOVEMBER 1976 ON THE WORLD STAGE Jimmy Carter has been confirmed as the next President of the United States after a closely-fought contest which gave him 51% of the popular vote. His rival, outgoing President Gerald Ford, conceded victory at a news conference in the White House press room at midday. It is the first time since Herbert Hoover in 1932, that a sitting President has been dismissed from office. Carter is also the first candidate from the Deep South to win since the American Civil War Ford had lost his voice through campaigning and had to ask his wife Betty to read a telegramme of congratulation. It has been a nailbiting finish to what has generally been regarded as a rather dull campaign. Carter claimed victory for the Democrats shortly after dawn in Atlanta but a Republican demand for the impounding of the New York State voting machines seemed to place the result in question. Any doubt was finally lifted when New York returned a substantial majority Carter, and Ford made his concession speech. The final election results show Carter won 51% of the popular vote, three points ahead of Ford. He gained 297 of the vital electoral college votes after narrowly winning Ohio against Ford's 241. Despite the closeness of the race, the country is overwhelmingly under Democratic control. In the Senate, the Democrats hold of a lead of 61-38 amd also hold the House of Representatives by 290-145. Record turnouts were reported in many areas as Americans flocked to the polls, keen for a change in government. Interviews conducted with people leaving polling stations suggested Carter had attracted a big following among Roman Catholics inspite of the assumption his strong Baptist beliefs would alienate the Catholics. He also appeared to have strong support among blacks & young people. As a politician who emerged from the relative obscurity of a peanut farm in his native Georgia, where he was former Governor, to run for the presidency, he appealed to voters with his slogan "Trust me". Commentators say Ford and the Republicans were still suffering from the damage caused by the Watergate scandal and the President's decision only two months later to pardon Richard Nixon who although technically not impeached was forced to resign from office. Early results saw Carter take the lead, winning the key industrial state of Pennsylvania and all the southern & border states. President Ford took states in the East & Midwest but even his home state of Michigan looked a bit doubtful after Democratic Senate candidate Ronald Riegle won his seat despite a personal scandal (allegedly involving impropriety over an income tax refund cheque, and an affair with an unpaid worker, both of which led a Detroit newspaper to call him one of the worst Congressmen in Washington).

Fantastic hyper-tech death featuring mostly re-recorded songs from their Human Waste EP and Reincremation demo. With Singer Frank's throat-scraping vocals accompanied with irritable growl syndrome and the music's fierce seamless integration of sonic extremity & blistering speed, EOTF is a crushing cohesive benchmark of brutal & vicious virtuosity which was a true originator that still boggles the brain upon listenings. It gave rise ('Breeding the Spawn' some might say) to a multitude of devout followers and quite nearly peerless, stands as a great contender for one of the best metal debuts of all time. Happy 30th Anniversary.

This month marks the 95th anniversary of the publication debut of SEX magazine (1926) with its last issue being Jul 1928. Into the frivolous Jazz Age, post-WWI America saw art deco in vogue, and private intimacy enter the public discussion. Both style & topic combined in SEX, one of the earliest saucy men's mags presented as near-coffee table material with sculpturesque nudes posed tastefully beside progressive articles about marriage & divorce, philosophy, contraception, heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, flappers, and the intelligence of chorus girls. Visually alone, similar & spicier publications were quite prolific in Paris and Berlin, but what was steeped in the boom time of the Roaring 20's also had a very sinister surface. One woman alleged to be involved with the publication was Margaret Sanger who headed a birth control organization and whose connection however may have had less to do with proto/semi/quasi-feminist promotion of women's health, and instead more so with the then-popular (and now widely regarded as odious) eugenics* movement which controversially theorizes the emphasis of largely Anglo-Saxon white superiority over minority racial ethnicity. The models were said to be chosen of only the 'purest' females representing the ideal form, and Sanger's hubris supposedly extended to her being pro-male masturbation in the belief that it was a deterrent to inferior breeding(!) *[American & European proponents of eugenics used this as a backing for forced sterilization. Nazi Germany in particular followed with its nightmarish march culminating in terror & horror -- first in the killing of the mentally & physically challenged in its Aktion T4 Program of involuntary euthanasia, and then with the regime's extreme anti-semitism whose architects proposed the Final Solution that led directly to extermination in the Holocaust].


SEPTEMBER 1926 ON THE WORLD STAGE Latest reports reveal that the real name of the bomb thrower at Italian leader Benito Mussolini is Gino Lucetti (26), who was born in Tuscany and had been living at Marseilles for the past few years. Although in the initial stages, investigations indicate that it was not the isolated deed of a maniac or an anarchist, but an elaborately hatched plot by political expatriated Italians. Lucetti has been taken to the city prison and subjected to lengthy cross-examination. He is reported to have admitted cynically that he left France with the avowed intention of assassinating Signor Mussolini. Asked why he was carrying a revolver, he replied: "you wouldn't expect me to present Mussolini with a bunch of flowers." The police now believe that Lucetti had been hiding in Rome for weeks, awaiting a favorable opportunity. Other arrests have been made with more expected but the identity of the prisoners is not disclosed. A young girl informed the police that she saw 5 men in a motor car waiting near the scene of the outrage. Lucetti threw his bomb at the Duce's passing car which smashed against the windscreen. It failed to detonate, bounced unto the running board and only exploded when it was some metres away on the pavement. In the confusion, he ran away but was caught by bodyguards in a doorway who kicked & punched him. Upon his capture, he was in possession of a second bomb, a pistol with poisoned bullets, and a dagger. The British United Press representative had an exclusive interview with Mussolini just as he came from the balcony where he spoke to cheering crowds. He said, "Tell the world how I feel. My first thought when I knew it was a bomb was to catch it. It was a good-sized affair. I've been through the trenches, and in air raids & aeroplane accidents. These attempts are nothing to worry about." While speaking to the BUP interviewer, Mussolini was still being cheered by the outside crowd but continued to speak in calm tones, merely nodding his head when a particularly loud cheer was raised. Following the attempt on his life, Mussolini kept an engagement to bid farewell to the retiring commercial secretary of the British Embassy who had not heard of the outrage. Mussolini did not refer to it until the crowd's loud roaring was overheard. Then the Italian Prime Minister explained & declared, "These attempts are useless; it had been predicted that I shall not die a violent death. I believe in prophecy and am convinced that I shall die naturally. Therefore it would be a waste of an assassin's time to make an attempt." The French Charge d'Affaires in Rome, protesting against an article appearing in "Giornale d'Italia" has expressed hope that the Italian Government would not allow Italian opinion to be misled, because the criminal was an Italian although he came from France. Monsieur Aristide Briand (French Minister for Foreign Affairs) has sent a message of congratulation to Mussolini on his escape from injury. "Le Temps" commenting on Mussolini's declaration against guilty tolerances over the frontiers, points out that France cannot take action against foreigners living in France simply because they disapprove of their home Government's policy. The paper recalls that when an Italian anarchist assassinated President Sadi Carnot in Lyon in June 1894, nobody dreamed of making the Government or the people of Italy reponsible.

This month also marks the 65th anniversary of the publication debut of GENT magazine (1956). Shortly after the magazine's production, it was soon prosecuted for obscenity by the US Postal Service but was found not indecent at that time. A 2nd prosecution happened in New York State reaching the Court of Appeals who determined since it was not hardcore porn, the ruling again said the finding was not indecent. And still a 3rd prosecution took place in Arkansas where this time a jury delivered a conviction. The US Supreme Court reviewed the case and overturned the decision, saying that because the subject matter is not sold to minors or forced upon unwilling audiences, the magazine was constitutionally protected. This final pronouncement is now widely seen as a de facto ending of American censorship of written material. In later years, GENT was disparaged as a "working-class PLAYBOY-wannabe" and the final print issue was May 2011.


SEPTEMBER 1956 ON THE WORLD STAGE Delegates of Nicaragua’s Nationalist Liberal Party convened in the steamy town of León to pick portly & genial President Anastasio Somoza, who has been the country's unchallenged boss for 22yrs, to be their candidate in next year’s election. After the flattered & proud, “Tacho” Somoza celebrated by mingling with the shortsleeved crowd in the local Somoza-founded Workers’ Social Club, one of the attendees pulled a snub-nosed Smith and Wesson .38 revolver and opened fire on the strongman. Before he got off his 5th shot, the gununman, a 27yr named Rigoberto López Pérez, was immediately riddled by a deadly fusillade from presidential bodyguards. But he had already hit Tacho 4 times. US Ambassador Thomas Whelan, a poker-playing personal friend of Somoza, was at his side and was told by the dying man, "I'm a goner. They got me this time, Tommy." Whelan urgently notified Washington of the news and the White House moved fast, sending a radio flash to the Panama Canal Zone to awaken American doctors, ordering them to fly to Nicaragua. At first light, a helicopter took off to whisk the wounded President back to Managua the capital, and then President Eisenhower who met Somoza at last July’s Conference of Presidents in Panama, sent off another plane from Washington carrying Major General Leonard D. Heaton, commanding officer at Walter Reed Hospital and chief surgeon at Ike’s recent ileitis (inflammation of a part of the small intestine) operation. One of the bullets hit Somoza in the right forearm and broke it while 2 other bullets lodged painfully in his right shoulder & right thigh. The 4th bullet was the most serious having entered through the upper right thigh and stopped at the base of the spine. The doctor’s recommendation was an operation at the Canal Zone’s famed Gorgas Hospital. A blue ambulance crept through the lonely, moonlit streets of Managua to take Somoza, his wife and the task force of doctors back to Panama. Once at Gorgas, the surgery commenced lasting 4hrs and 20 min. Still in the hospital, Somoza died 9 days later. The assassin López Pérez was a slight, short, pencil-mustachioed Nicaraguan who was a poet, composed romantic music and had worked until lately as a salesman of phonograph records in neighboring El Salvador. Some witnesses claimed they counted 35 bullet holes in his body. López Pérez could never reveal his motive but as an occasional contributor to local newspapers, he had left at least one clue that hinted at an obsession for martyrdom in a piece of literary criticism he had written 10 days before the slaying. In it, he said: "Immortality is the aim of life and of glorious death." His acquaintances said that he grumbled incessantly against Somoza. His act was patently suicidal, and his reason may well have been an itch for self-glorification just as much as suspected revolutionary principles to strike at tyranny. When the US Marines ended their occupation of Nicaragua and left in Jan 1933, the 37yr old Somoza became Head of the Army (Guardia Nacional). In Jun 1936, he led a miltary coup against President Juan Bautista Sacasa (the uncle of Somoza's wife). Somoza once said, "I'll give this country peace if I have to shoot every other man in Nicaragua to get it." His totalitarian regime arrested & jailed thousands while his private army, shot scores of dissidents. Alongside repression & inequality, there was peace. Somoza himself amassed an enormous personal fortune and is believed to have had owning interests in over 400 separate properties, from farmland and textiles, to sugar and coffee. At the expense of personal enrichment, the country remained poor & undeveloped. The Nicaraguan Cabinet declared a state of siege, but no sign of an uprising appeared to make the shooting seem like part of a large plot. Instead, Somoza’s elder son Luis (President of Congress) smoothly took on his father’s powers and the replacement had the complete support of his West Point-educated brother, Anastasio Somoza Jr., Chief of the Army.

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971)
Zohra Lampert, Mariclare Costello, Kevin O'Connor, Barton Heyman, Gretchen Corbett, Alan Manson
Directed by John Hancock
Released August 27, 1971 (Happy 40th Anniversary)
Beginning in a voiceover to a long flashback, Jessica has just been released from a 6-month stint in an asylum after a nervous breakdown. She and her husband, Duncan (a Symphony cellist), along with family friend, Woody, bail on New York's crazy rat-race-pace to help in her post-recovery. Taking off in Woody's hearse, the trio take up residence in a stuffy, ramshackle, old Connecticut farmhouse where they plan on starting an apple-growing business. (Could it get any more bohemian?) They meet carefree hippie Emily (who at times looks like a cross between Holly Hunter and Reba McEntire), a Manson-Family-looking squatter who was staying there while it was unoccupied. Woody has an instant woody for her [and that riff on his name is indeed appropriate as his character is pretty wooden as well]. Emily quickly becomes their guest and from her extended stay, she just as quickly makes an impression on both men (as she has on all the elderly men in town, who have bandages covering scars) and manages to convince everyone to take part in a séance. Speaking of the town, the elderly locals are suspicious, unfriendly and downright rude as they don't take kindly to the newcomers. From the get-go they aren't right and their coldness could be taken as a small commentary on the close of the 1960's and 'post-free-love' society, but isn't delved into deeper. Seeing as Jessica is fascinated by death and has a penchant for tracing cemetery headstones, she spots a mysterious blonde girl staring at her from a distance. This unknown female (who may or may not be trying to reach out to her) will fuel her paranoia to come but in the meanwhile, she grows uneasy with Duncan's attractiveness to Emily. Needing money, the trio look for items around the house to sell and in the attic, Jessica tries on some Victorian clothing and finds an old picture frame of the family who used to live there, the Bishops.

An antique store owner named Sam (also a New York native escaping the urban sprawl/hustle n' bustle of the big city) tells her that the woman in the photo, Abigail Bishop, drowned in the lake in 1880 just before her marriage was to take place. Her body was never found and supposedly she continues to roam the nearby area. Jessica is mesmerized by the story and having swam in the lake, is convinced that something grabbed her leg in the water but both men dismiss her fears. Could the legend be true? While Emily (who always seems to be sporting a forced smile and incidentally looks exactly like Abigail) continues to entertain with her stories and guitar playing, Jessica follows the blonde girl to a cliff where Sam's bloody body is found below near a stream. When Jessica brings Duncan back to the site, the body is gone but hubby and wife see blondie atop the cliff. After a chase, they attempt to question her but blondie doesn't speak a word. Then Jessica's pet mole (actually played by a mouse) which she found in their apple orchard also turns up dead, all carved up in a glass jar. Duncan, worried about his wife's mental health, suggests returning to New York to continue her treatment but he is spurned. When the Bishop portrait is found back in the attic, Jessica feels the upending of tranquility and trust, and herself alienated from the household, now believes she's hearing Abigail's ghostly voice in her head and that nefarious figures are coming for her. With Emily having seduced Duncan and made sexual overtures towards her, Jessica's own unbalanced psychosexual state, and jealousy teeters over the edge. Is Jessica relapsing and sliding into insanity? After agreeing to go swimming with Emily, is she really seeing the returning dead, vampires, spirits, and other supernatural possessed beings?

Or are these haunted manifestations all a product of a still mad and fractured mind? Can she keep all the voices in her head at bay? As she frets internally about appearing crazy, she externally pretends to keep herself in check, but will the emotional see-saw from the difficulty of deciphering between the unreal prove too much? With a low-key and dream-ish slowburn start, many early reviews criticized the movie for a narrative that was heavy on misdirection, and for unsettling disorientation -- particularly the climax with Emily biting Woody, Duncan's absence, Sam's reappearance, hubby and wife back home in their bedroom, Duncan's cut neck, knife-carrying Emily with her male mob of geriatric groupies, the discovery of mute blondie (gotta love the diy casket), the discovery of Woody, trying to board a ferry, and the film's final act after paddling in a rowboat into the middle of the lake... This end sequence of doom was a whirlwind of events that ponders whether or not a conspiracy took place, but the shifting mood of the picture as a whole is on Jessica's struggling interplay between somber and sinister. What initially looks peaceful and appealing, switches into a foreboding atmosphere that builds its apprehension amidst the foggy/hazy New Englandy cinematography of calm, country landscape and rural subtle scenery. Overall, LETS SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (try to a imagine a Woodstock generation gap in a CARNIVAL OF SOULS setting) is a subdued, eerie horror offering that plays far more on whispered warnings and slipping fragility than the heavy sensationalism of what would become guttural fare in scary 70's films. Even with its conclusion and unanswered questions, through all the creep factor, we are never sure of what is real or unreliable.

This month marks the 80th anniversay of the publication debut of SWANK magazine (1941). SWANK started as a men’s lifestyle and pin-up magazine in the style of Esquire. A 2nd more literary series appeared in 1945, and the 3rd (cheesecake moving into eventual hardcore) began in 1955. The mid 1950's relaunch was by Martin Goodman, the founder of Marvel Comics, who oversaw the running of spicy adventure stories and suspense fiction by the likes of Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Norman Mailer and Arthur C. Clarke. Humorist Bruce Jay Friedman -– father of Josh Alan Friedman, bard of 1970s Times Square -– was an editor by decade's end.


AUGUST 1941 ON THE WORLD STAGE Charles Lindbergh spoke tonight in Oklahoma City saying neither America nor Germany could successfully attack the other across the Atlantic Ocean unless international collapse preceded invasion. His speech was similar to one he gave earlier this month in Cleveland where he declared it would be disastrous for America and Europe to take part in "the present war" with the issue being ever greater than that of war & peace. His conclusion suggested whether the United States would still have a representative government, if its people would still be free, and if the fundamental right of the nation to decide its policies would exist. In his address tonight prepared for an America First Committee rally, the famous aviator said, "It seems clear to me that the quickest way for Germany to lose a war would be to attack America, and the quickest way for America to lose a war would be to attack Germany." Lindbergh's speech along with that of Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D-Mont) was delivered at Sandlot Park, usually the site of semi-pro baseball games. The park was obtained by the AFC after the city council denied use to Lindbergh of the municipal auditorium. He did not refer to the council's action, instead confining them to his topic "Air Power" where he referred to the comparability of air & sea power, commenting that "Aviation has developed as much in a generation as shipping developed over a period of centuries. Germany has used aviation to change the entire technique of warfare, both on land and on the sea. England is using aviation to strike back at a continent she is unable to invade." Lindbergh then bluntly accused the coalitionists who favor entering the war alongside Britian of surreptitiously plotting to create "incidents & situations that would plunge the United States into war under the guise of defending America." He said, "The American interventionists are using aviation to support their claim that the Atlantic Ocean has dwindled to the size of the English Channel. The administration is using aviation to justify the occupation of Iceland, to prepare for the way for an occupation of Africa, and to add to the general hysteria of war. If the British Navy with its bases strung out from Alexandria in Egypt to the Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands off Scotland -- if the Navy with Gibraltar and Malta to assist it cannot remain within bombing range of the European coast, then how can any navy or combination of navies cross the ocean, and without a single base in this hemisphere, land an expeditionary force on American shores..." In summing up, Lindbergh made an unsettling comment when he alarmingly stated, "we should consider the possibility that England may turn against this country before the war ends, as she has turned against Poland, France and Finland."

R.I.P. Joe Michael 'Dusty' Hill. 1949-2021.

R.I.P. Mike Howe. 1965-2021.

Free the tiddies! 30yrs ago today, the controversy of female toplessness in Canada began in Guelph,ON when on a sweltering hot day, 19yr old university student Gwen Jacob took off her shirt while walking down a street. After a local Karen who witnessed her, called the police to complain that one of her young children had glimpsed the bare boobies, Gwen was picked up and charged with public indecency. While awaiting trial, in the surrounding media scrum & protests about the right of women to claim that exhibited breasts are not lewd, Gwen blasted discrimination, bias, hypocrisy & double standard claiming that at the same time of her arrest, bare-chested men were visible in a nearby sports field. With the Criminal Code citing the specific nudity as being offensive for contravening community standards and thus a violation of law, a judge found her guilty in Jan 1992 and fined her $75. After losing on appeal to the Ontario Court, she then appealed to the Ontario Court of Appeal who 5yrs later in December 1996, overturned her conviction saying being topless was not a sexual act, based for the purpose of profit, or an action that was under a definition of degrading/dehumanizing. The brief attention had seen Gwen appear on a talk show, and directly resulted in the cases of 2 other women (Saskatchewan, British Columbia) have their similar charges dropped. Although vindicated based on a less restrictive interpretation of morality, the ruling remains still murky due to the Supreme Court of Canada NOT finalizing that while there was no obscenity, being topless doesn't fall under the consideration of a constitutional right of equality. Although now legal (yet not necessarily culturally easier), the same actions by women afterward can still see charges laid & facing prosecution elsewhere in the country.
[I'm almost certain the talk show was Sally Jessy Raphael, and I def remember Gwen recounting a funny incident of how a city bus driver with passengers nearly jumped a curb and crashed into a pole because he was straining to look at her topless, and also of being annoyed & getting snippy at another female panel guest who was interruptive and condescendingly called her "dear" which set her off].

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the publication debut of MODERN MAN magazine (1951). One of the very first precursors of PLAYBOY, this adult picture magazine featured humor, cars, pop culture, softcore sex and photos of buxom models & movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, Mamie Van Doren, Jayne Mansfield, and many lookalikes. The final print issue was Dec 1976.


JULY 1951 ON THE WORLD STAGE Talks to end the Korean war will begin later in July after terms were accepted by General Matthew Ridgway, supreme commander to the United Nations in the Far East. Original proposals for the ceasefire talks were made by General Ridgway to the Communists who requested changes which have today been agreed to. In his primary message to the North Korean commander Kim Il-Sung and the Commander of the Chinese Communist forces General Peng Tuh-huai, General Ridgway stated, "since agreement on armistice terms has to precede the cessation of hostilities, delay in initiating the meeting and reaching agreement will prolong the fighting and increase tension." But at the request of the Chinese & North Koreans, the talks will be delayed by 10 to 15 days. The delay is thought to be because of difficulties in reaching Kaesong due to transport problems although there is speculation the delay is to allow a finalization of tactics. The talks are to be held in Kaesong, a city in the southwestern part of the North and so far in the armed conflict, the only city to change previous control from the South. The location is aslo no-man's land just south of the 38th Parallel which forms the joint border of separation between both countries. Liaison officers from all sides are due to arrive in Kaesong on July 5th for preliminary talks and General Ridgway has asked for "positive assurances of safe conduct for this personnel" for when the officers travel to the conference. They are expected to co-ordinate details of the truce negotiations to end the war with the hope of substantial agreements further involving the US Navy and North Korean Army, arrangements for a demarcation line, a demilitarized zone, discussions on how the truce will be supervised, and the issue of prisoners of war. Back in April, President Harry Truman fired his popular General, Douglas MacArthur, from his position as Commander of American forces which shocked the public back home and stunned the world. Both men had clashed over the war's direction, and when the General suggested using the highly devastating atomic bomb, his comments were seen as a dangerous & reckless provocation. What ensued with each was a public war of words that resulted in MacArthur being dismissed, and replaced by Ridgway. The Korean War began in June 1950 when North Korea invaded the South at several points along the 38th parallel. The North is equipped & trained by both the Soviet Union and China, while the South is supported by a United Nations coalition made up of some 20 countries with the United States providing the overwhelming assistance in fighting.