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Hey Guys,

A long time ago as a kid we used to go weekly to my grandparent's farm on the outskirts of Amish country. There wasn't much to do inside; the majority of the afternoon adventures came from outside work or wandering outdoors or in the barns, chicken coops, sheds or fields along with the other cousins. In fact, over the years, we wound up knowing every inch of the place. 

Anyway, of the myriad of locations, there was an inherent creepiness to the "egg cellar" which was a moist dungeon of a place underneath the farmhouse accessed only from the outside and down a steep set of stone steps. It was perpetually cool like a Spring house, always had a few inches of water in it from flooding, and had to be traversed by walking on boards that sat on cinder blocks. This was where my grandfather would check and crate eggs and temporarily store them for a day or two before being sold. It was lit by a single low watt bulb dangling unceremoniously from the cord. Real "Silence of the Lambs" stuff…. But what made it a true fright fest to us little kids was this gem of a cast iron bottle opener mounted on the side wall all by itself for no apparent reason:

Lord knows where this thing came from, or what the company who made it was trying to accomplish…. but it certainly made a scary place all the scarier.  No weeked trip to The Farm was complete without at least a brief excursion to see him….and the four-eyed image would stay in my mind at nights. 

When my grandparents passed away, and the farm was eventually sold and the farmhouse razed, I managed to extract this ugly little thing beforehand, and it lives in my house today.

Bigwig

  I recently introduced this site to my parents.  Ma Bigwig found it particularly fascinating, and both enjoyed and remembered a great many of the subjects in my posts over the past decade. She brought up one that I hadn't thought about for dozens of years, that I only vaguely remembered since I was no older than four or so, but Ma insisted it should be included on my trauma highlight reel. I researched based on what she remembered, and we watched it on the youtube, and yeah, I get it.

Gumby – The Small Planets.  Art Clokey must have read Le Petit Prince and decided there was plenty of room for a quick moralistic Gumby adventure in the same vein.  With little to no buildup, Gumby announces he's fed up living like a slave, controlled by his parents, and sets out to find his own planet to live in peace. He's made his choice and is already happy about it.  A reluctant Pokey is along for the ride, as they hop in a book, and a spaceship therein.

They visit three small worlds in their whirlwind odyssey, each inhabited by a child who (presumably) also got fed up and ran away from home. These kids demonstrate poor behavior, and Gumby decides his situation wasn't so bad after all.

The first planet is the lair of Train Boy, a Davey and Goliath leftover puppet, who kicks them off rather than share his world and glorious train sets and fires a missile at them.

Second, we have a girl who delights in frightening our duo with a giant dinosaur mask, but then wonders upon their hasty egress why she has no playmates. (also a Davey and Goliath looking castaway)

And third, the clincher…they find a very intense Claymation boy unlike the previous two playing a piano. Pokey sneezes, which sets the kid off, pulling his hair and screaming that his "Beautiful Arpeggio" was ruined. If that wasn't bad enough, he morphs into a lycanthropic demon hybrid to further hammer the point home that they are not welcome.

Mom says I hid under the kitchen table after watching this one. ( AKA – young Bigwig's Fortress of Solitude)

So there you have it, kids, if you ever think you have it bad at home, take a look at what else is out there waiting for you….the selfish;  those who find delight in your fear, and bonafide psychotic monster children just waiting to tear your arms off for sneezing.

All the best,

Bigwig

Hi guys.

This one will come at you from a different direction.

William Kulerek's Despair.

We had Time-Life Science books in our bookcase growing up, which were a layman's overview of a variety of topics; not quite an encyclopedic. They were broken down simple enough for a nine year old to at least look at, and we poured over them, since they were rife with illustrations. One such volume was called "The Mind". In the middle of the book was a section on Art used as therapy in diagnosing mental disorders.

I wanted to be an artist.

There were a few paintings by schizophrenics, and a few by Van Gogh…but the most riveting was a two-page spread by William Kulerek entitled "The Maze". This was before the internet, and I had no idea that Kulerek was an accomplished painter; rather I thought he was merely an incredibly good, incredibly ill patient. The painting was a cross-section of his skull laying in a field, with many painful, harrowing, surreal illustrated memories compartmentalized within. The caption by the photo went to say that the artist painted "The Maze" while in a mental hospital as means of therapy.

I would always stare horrified at these pages, seeing these interpreted memories of a young boy being isolated, beaten, mocked, dissected….and they get worse…horrified not so much by the images themselves, but by the fact that someone felt this way. Could a child's life have been this horrible?

Somewhere down the line, after I came out of art school some 15 years later, I stumbled upon another painting called "I Spit on Life". All it took was five seconds I'm sure until I was assured that this painting, perhaps even more bleak with it's hopeless, miserable vignettes, was created by the same artist from the mental hospital in the book I saw as a kid. It turns out William Kulerek was far more a talent than I had ever known. In fact, Van Halen used part of "The Maze" as an album cover in the 80's. News to me.

The good news is that Kulerek tamed his inner demons to a point, and went on to illustrate children's books, and painted a number of religious works before his death. But none of those pictures, which I have seen, had near the lasting impression of these bleak works which had a place in my nightmares and sleepless nights throughout childhood.

Kulerek's own explanation of The Maze with a picture: (HERE).

Here's a great zoom-inable view of "I Spit on Life": (HERE)

And just like that….I find this is coming out…

What was not to love growing up in the early ‘70s, and getting to watch ULTRAMAN after school every day in second or third grade? For those unfamiliar, ULTRAMAN, along with JOHNNY SOKKO and SPACE GIANTS, was Japanese sci-fi fare, dishing out the best low-budget giant monster fights ever; fights that my friends and I would re-enact while jumping about the sofa cushions while under the spell of Captain Crunch with Crunchberries straight from the box.

ULTRAMAN had all the moves; crazy ninja poses, special effect laser beams and energy buzz saws…while the monsters, often more than one per show, were a varied rogue's gallery of just about any form or shape imaginable. I can't really elaborate on much of a plot other than ULTRAMAN was either summoned or was the transformation of a member of some wacky Japanese monster-fighting force that was constantly being sent to the scene of yet another 50 foot monster perturbed by something or other.

Simply put, in my small world, ULTRAMAN ruled!

However there was one monster introduced named Pigman that delivered the shock/nightmare of my life. (His name was really Pigmon, but all voices were over-dubbed and didn't match up, and Pigman seemed to make more sense to us kids) Pigman wasn't like the other monsters. He was meant to be a friendly monster, only about 5 feet tall. He was an ugly little thing, looked like he was a combination of a catfish and a mound of orange coral, that would be more content at the bottom of an aquarium. He had hands that flopped around without any arms to speak of, and he had a perpetually frowning face. In fact, the actor that was stuck having to wear the Pigman costume was relegated to donning this barrel, and either walking or jumping up and down. Pigman made some kind of high-pitched chattering when he got excited. He spoke Monster.

In a lot of ways Pigman was like a repulsive little monster-kid. (When choosing our mock-fight battle personas, the ultimate insult was to be dubbed "Pigman".)

The Pigman episode was short enough…they find Pigman, he helps them somehow, and a great big Godzilla monster throws rocks on him and he dies. The audience is left to feel sorry for the heroic little Pigman, as the Godzilla monster gets his in the end, by good old Ultraman. I for one was glad he was gone.

That night, I had my first Pigman nightmare….very vivid, of his ugly little self. In fact, I had a few over the next week or so. I don't know what it was that did it, but boy, I didn't want anything to do with Pigman. It's difficult to explain, but it was the death of Pigman that had me unglued in the nightmares, along with his absurd surreal look. I guess it registered somehow as the death of a child.

It became house news…my sister would taunt me with it, my mother would quell my fears, my dad would roll his eyes and drink a cup of black coffee, since I kept everyone up at night.

Thankfully, the weeks rolled on, and it became old news. I could picture Pigman's freakish countenance still, but continued on armed with the knowledge that he was in only one episode, and was thankfully gone, and I was back to watching my boy, Ultraman do what he does best.

And then, with my little posse over yet again, the unthinkable happened; the cushions were off the sofa, the monkey-fights had started, and a new ULTRAMAN episode had begun… The monster-fighting squad was summoned to a toy store of all places for a disturbance, and what did they find amidst the stuffed animals?

Pigman!

I would be willing to bet my heart skipped at least two beats. Time froze. Tunnel vision set in….

Somehow back from the dead! Even more frantic and ugly than ever! The unthinkable: my nightmare headliner plowing past all forms of logic, and reappearing for an encore.

I felt sick, but watched on….and sure enough, Pigman was somehow resurrected, helps the crew again, and distracts a giant monster by hopping around, until the giant monster scratches it's head in confusion, and crushes him!

Ugly little Pigman had come back; in order to die a second time in much the same fashion, just for me. It seemed so surreal as I watched it, that it couldn't possible be a coincidence.

Needless to say, the nightmares began anew.

Dad drank a lot of black coffee that year.

I found YouTube links of both Pigman death's although they are Japanese, with Spanish subtitle. I seem to have inherited my Father's eye roll…..

— BigWig

First Death

Second Death…thankfully in the first half minute

We loved cartoons, but nothing manic like today….the old Merry Melodies, TerryToons and the like were our main staple.

These cartoons would commonly borrow themes from each other, sticking different characters in roughly the same situation.

One moralistic theme was redone again and again, with early Porky Pig, and I think Andy Panda, and even with Gumby….that of the little kid glutton.

In this theme, a pig (or panda, or green slab of clay) is shown eating far more than he should during the day, obsessing over food, and gets reprimanded by adults, to no avail. He doesn't learn.

Later they have a nightmare, where they are abducted, and force-fed in horrible ways by someone, until in the end, they are a distended, obese monstrosity. They wake up and either recognize the error in their ways, or not.

Similarly, there was a rash of cartoons which dealt with kid smoking in the same light, along with the nightmare of forced over-indulgence, but the worst thing that would happen was the kiddie victim would turn green and sick. In these food cartoons though, the objectifying of the piggy as something that can be "stuffed", rather than as a little kid (I know…pig), always had me feeling ill, and would come to haunt my dreams. They were helpless and physically being modified against their wills, to the amusement of someone else. I think the fact that someone derived pleasure from "fattening" someone up to incredible levels felt so unbelievably wrong in our minds that I couldn't shake it.

I remember one paraphrased line, where the pig is strapped in a chair and fed tons and tons of food as part of an assembly line by a mad scientist. The scientist laughs and says, "Had enough?," to which the pig, stutters, y-y-yes, sir"….and instead of it ending, he cranks the machine on high, laughs, and says something along the lines, of "We're just getting STARTED! Ha Ha HA…."

Oy.

Needless to say, neither my sister nor I were ever heavy.

We were watching SLITHER the other night, and the ridiculously bloated girl in the barn, filled with the parasites to the point where she was unrecognizable really got to me, and made me turn the clock back to this.

Another similar ill feeling came as Pink Floyd's THE WALL kids marched into the meat grinder.

Hey Aunt and Unk:

FAT ALBERT AND THE COSBY KIDS was always a main staple of Saturday mornings, with good ole' Albert becoming the moralistic voice of reason countering the bad decisions of his cronies.

"You shouldn't pick on little Ginny, just because she's deaf! Hey Hey Hey!"

But somewhere down the line, there was an episode where they just happened to wind up in a stolen car, and were given a tour of a Philadelphia prison in an attempt to be SCARED STRAIGHT by the police. I'm not kidding. I had read a post earlier this year about a gun violence FAT ALBERT episode. I would wager this came from the same "unsyndicated, no holds barred" season.

Does anyone remember how out of place and unsettling this was? Granted there was no profanity, but it was certainly not something for a 6 year old, and I doubt teenagers were the target audience of the show.

I remember my sister and I transfixed by this prison house of horrors as depicted in a trustworthy happy cartoon, listening to the cacklings and howls of the pedophiles and psychopaths.

When the psycho inmate lusts over Albert, "Mmm… give me the BIG one.." like he's some kind of plump New Year's ham, I think it sealed the deal that we were going to keep on the straight and narrow.

So I supposed it worked, Mr. COSBY; thanks for the nightmares!

All the best,

Bigwig