I didnt know that about you!/Share outside of Monsters!

[Wicked Lester]

Best wishes to all of you who are caring for family members with MS.  I don't have any personal experience with MS, but we cared for my mother-in-law through Altzheimer's and I know it's very difficult to look after family with chronic illness.  You are all in my thoughts.

I also send best wishes to any of our members taking care of chronically ill family members and hope you find the strength in whatever your belief/faith may be to deal with it.

My mom passed on Oct 10 2004. She was living in a BIG house in the burbs about 20 miles from me and the wife. My dad passed on in 83'.We talked her into moving into a nice apt. literally 3 mins from me so if she needed anything I was just a phone call away. She had arterial sclerosis ,severe arthritis a leaky valve in her heart and had a few minor strokes. We did the Hospice thing which was a blessing.
She passed away with 3 of her 6 kids by her side. I was the last earthly thing she saw before she passed.

Mike

[BigShadow]

Outside of monsters.......I do a lot of different things.  Let's see.  I work out, am a personal trainer, police officer, I study history, am going to school for secondary education, collect comics, listen to old time radio, watch old movies and serials, play paintball, Dungeons and Dragons, and video games.  I'd like to start writing as well, maybe horror or fantasy.  I'm also a conspiracy theorist, Constitutionalist, and truth seeker.  In the summer I love to hike, camp, and kayak. 

[Street Worm]

Outside of Monsters - I collects books by Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein & H.P. Lovecraft, music by Frank Zappa, Weather Report (Joe Zawinul &
Wayne Shorter) & Tom Waits - there's lots of others, but these are guys I'm a completest with.

I love Post War California & Googie architecture & '50s/'60s Roadside America. '50s Sci Fi movies & Film Noir. Lowbrow art (especially Robert
Williams, Todd Schorr & Xno) as well as art by Mati Klarwein. I love cartoons, comic books & highways...

Roofed houses for over 30 years (retired now), have the grooviest wife on the planet, raised up three boys (& now have two grand kids),
an old cat (the last one left of three brothers)  , and a big, goofy dog.

[Zackuth]

I've held a variety of jobs, an elecrtician in the Navy, worked at an electrical supply warehouse, as a government contractor in supply for 14 years, installed home security systems for a few months when I first moved to Arkansas, then worked in a control room for a tire manufacturer plant, and now I repair copiers. 

The only sport I watch is football.

Every other Sunday, I give the sermon at the church I attend.  I get to choose the subject and write the sermon.  I haven't been asked to stop in over 7 months, so I guess the people like them.

[sal460885]

Outside of the love of horror.... I run and workout every morning been a Deputy Sheriff for 18 years and married with two boys. I also collect old Stickley furniture and ride my old Triumph when I can. My favorite author is James Ellroy and a big Nick Cave fan.

[Anton Phibes]

I fish when the mood hits me. I dont own any poles, or boats or such. But whenever I am around folks who do---I fish. I was married for 17 years before my father in law discovered this about me. We had a family get together around the 4th of July. The kids were all fishing with bobbers. No one got a bite.

I asked my kid if he wanted to catch the first fish. We took the bobber off, put sinkers on, put a nightcrawler on the hook...and dipped him in vanilla extract. Then pitched him in.  Kaboom.  10 lb. catfish less than 5 minutes from cast to reel in. So, yeah---I fish.

[Count_Zirock]

I'm an ordained minister in two different churches: the Church of Gospel Ministry in Chula Vista, CA, and the First Church of Atheism in Langhorne, PA. In 1984, I almost had to baptize my own godson, when the minister was delayed in a 3 hour traffic jam.

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[Hepcat]

But how can you be a minister in both the Church of Gospel Ministry and the First Church of Atheism? Are the beliefs of the two denominations not in stark opposition?

[jimm]

I have a few things I enjoy besides Scifi and Monster movies and collecting. Enjoy tinkering with 60s American iron, my Fords, along with friends Fords, GMs and Mopars. I collect vintage car model kits, boxes, built-ups, and junk! Love all sports, but  baseball has always been my game, huge fan and collector of anything San Francisco Giants. Spending time with family and friends and enjoying good food and a good ale.

[Hepcat]

In addition to monster and other collectibles, I'm also heavily into music and sound equipment. Here's the story of how I got into buying records: 


It was August of 1967 and I was fifteen years old. I had my first summer job - on a tobacco farm near Delhi in southern Ontario. This meant of course that for the first time in my life I'd have a real wad of disposable income - and my plan was to get some of those records to which I had been grooving on the radio. Some of the tunes that stood out in my mind from 1966-67 were:

Paperback Writer - Beatles
Eleanor Rigby - Beatles
Strawberry Fields Forever - Beatles
Penny Lane - Beatles
Paint It Black - Rolling Stones
Mother's Little Helper - Rolling Stones
Have You Seen Your Mother Baby, Standing in the Shadow? - Rolling Stones
A Well Respected Man - Kinks
Sunny Afternoon - Kinks
Wild Thing - Troggs
I Can't Control Myself - Troggs
California Dreamin' - Mamas and the Papas
Monday, Monday - Mamas and Papas
Sound of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel
Hazy Shade of Winter - Simon and Garfunkel
It's My Life - Animals
I Fought the Law - Bobby Fuller Four
Red Rubber Ball - Cyrkle
Over and Over - Dave Clark Five
I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night - Electric Prunes
Come on Down to My Boat Baby - Every Mother's Son
Let's Live for Today - Grassroots
Lies - Knickerbockers
Time Won't Let Me - Outsiders
96 Tears - ? & the Mysterians
Pied Piper - Crispian St. Peters
These Boots Are Made for Walking - Nancy Sinatra
Secret Agent Man - Johnny Rivers
Hanky Panky - Tommy James & the Shondells
Happy Jack - Who

I was also quite familiar with the music from earlier in the decade since the radio station to which I had been listening was CHLO in St. Thomas which devoted weekends to a Souvenir Safari wherein every second selection was an oldie.

Having fulfilled our quota relatively early one Saturday afternoon, some of the older fellows (very cool twenty year olds from Montreal!) were given permission to take the farmer's car into the big town, that being Simcoe, and the even bigger metropolis of Brantford! At the 100 plus mile per hour speed at which they drove the car (no, no seat belts), it didn't take us very long to get to those places.

Of course we stopped at a record shop. The new exotic Beatles' album, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", was on prominent display and I decided to make it my first purchase when I got back home in September.



The other album that I remember catching my eye was "Flowers". The cover picture featured a more decadent and vaguely threatening looking group of young fellows. "Are these the Rolling Stones?" I wondered. I hadn't yet seen the Stones on TV but my guess was of course correct.



The new psychedelic sounding Rolling Stones single "We Love You" was just hitting the airwaves when I returned home just before Labour Day. I listened raptly and marveled at the sound I was hearing.

I went through with my plans and made "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" my first record purchase. I quickly followed up this purchase by acquiring the Beatles' first three Canadian albums in order, "Beatlemania", "Twist and Shout" and "Long Tall Sally".

I then stepped outside the box in October and bought "Big Hits - High Tide and Green Grass" by the Rolling Stones. I was floored! I found the Stones' record far edgier than the comparatively tame Beatles' albums. Then of course there was the innovative for the time booklet of their pictures included within the double sleeve.



I wasn't entirely sure which Stone was which at the time but the brooding, mysterious Stones appealed to me in a way the Beatles did not. I went out and added "Flowers" to my swiftly growing record collection within a couple of weeks. Here are the Stones performing a track from "Flowers" on the Ed Sullivan Show:

Lady Jane - Rolling Stones

I think the "Best of the Animals" may have been the first non-Beatle or Stone album I bought. "We Gotta Get out of This Place" had been a popular chant at the boarding school I had attended in Kennebunkport, Maine for grade nine although my favourite Animals' tune at the time was "It's My Life". The "Kinks' Greatest Hits" may have been the next.

I took to reading the record/music review sections of "Time" magazine to which we had a subscription and "Stereo Review" which I could find at the library to get an idea for new, cutting edge bands that weren't necessarily being played on top forty radio.

My musical horizons had already been expanded earlier in 1967 when the Doors released their signature hit, "Light My Fire". When I heard the dark melodic strains on the kitchen radio for the first time I was fascinated. I loved it! It was like nothing I'd heard on the radio to that time. I knew that the boundaries encompassing rock had just been dramatically expanded and that rock had left its period of youthful innocence behind.

But it wasn't until I saw their performance of "Light My Fire" on the Ed Sullivan Show on September 17th that the Doors actually became one of my very favourite bands. Jim Miorrison appeared wearing tight leather pants which must have caused appalled parents' jaws to drop across every single living room in North America. I certainly expected expressions of horrified disgust in as many as two languages from my very old school father. He must have been too shocked though, or maybe he too was hypnotized by the seductive organ riff behind Jim's throaty vocals. Much to my surprise he just sat there in silence. All I know is that I watched the performance intently in almost rapt disbelief. These fellows made the Beatles look like innocent schoolboys! They were a step above and beyond whatever else was happening in rock at the time. Here's the video:

Light My Fire - Doors

Interesting too is that Ed Sullivan had demanded that the Doors change the words of the song from "Girl we coudn't get much higher" to "Girl we coudn't get much better" as a condition of performing. You see it was actually illegal to use the word "higher" as a drug reference on American TV at the time. The Doors had agreed but when it came time to sing the line, Jim clearly enunciated the word "higher". Ed Sullivan was understandably furious and banned the Doors from any further appearances on his show. When told that the rest of the band's five scheduled appearances on the show had been cancelled, Jim reportedly said "Hey man, so what? We just did the Ed Sullivan Show!"

I just love that type of insolence. Stick it to the straights I still say! I may be a stockbroker and a "respectable" member of society these days, but I still take delight in offending those more straightlaced than myself. And woe to any bureaucrat or corporate suit who annoys me and finds himself in my company!

I bought their debut album a couple of months later - and let me tell you I was well and truly hooked on the Doors within a couple of plays. The music just drew me in.



When I played it for one of my buddies, he stayed uncharacteristically silent - but bought his own copy a few weeks later. He later confessed to me that the Doors sounded so moody and Satanic to him the first time I played the record that he never thought he'd be able to like them! He's remained every bit as much of a Doors fan as I am to this very day.

By January of 1969 I had progressed to buying albums by the Who, Yardbirds, Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin. All these I played on the Seabreeze suitcase stereo with detachable speakers that I bought in 1969 to replace the family record player. My father condemned my purchase as shamelessly profligate since the existing mono record player that we'd purchased used in 1962 still functioned!

Now of course I have hundreds of record albums and 45s as well as a steadily growing collection of CD's which I play on a very nice stereo sound system indeed. (My father would be aghast I suppose.) My musical tastes are many and varied - but, nevertheless, after all these years I'm still very much a Stones and Doors fan.

[jimm]

I love the music too Hep you have a sweet vinyl collection. Sorry to say my hearing has gone down the pooper...depressing

[Count_Zirock]

But how can you be a minister in both the Church of Gospel Ministry and the First Church of Atheism? Are the beliefs of the two denominations not in stark opposition?

Technically, but it doesn't matter to me. I'll perform whatever type of ceremony you'd like. The Church of Gospel Ministry ordination was in 1984, when I was still a Christian. The church itself is now defunct, but those ordinations never expire. After becoming an atheist roughly 20 years ago, I got the First Church of Atheism ordination last year. It's an interesting group, and their reasons for forming a "church" for something that isn't a religion are pretty compelling.


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[Hepcat]

The New York World's Fair opened its doors fifty years ago this month. The Vatican City pavilion at the fair featured my uncle's bas-relief sculpture on the outside:



After the fair, the sculpture was transported to the grounds of St. Anthony's Franciscan monastery in Kennebunkport, Maine where it still resides to the present day:



I attended St. Anthony's Lithuanian boys' boarding school on the monastery grounds for grade nine in 1965-66. The school was converted to a guest house for tourists in 1970 and still functions as such. This album contains pictures of the monastery together with its lovely grounds, as well as the chapel built in 1965-66 that features my uncle's stained glass windows and other bas-relief sculptures:

Kennebunkport Photoset

Here's a good picture of the interior of the chapel at St. Anthony's Franciscan monastery:



My uncle's works adorn sixty churches in the United States, Toronto, Australia and Europe, with the concentration in the northeastern part of the United States from Maine to the Mississippi River.

Among his other works my uncle did ten or so sculptures in aluminum. I'm the very proud owner of one of them. Here from my living room is a photo of Diana, goddess of the hunt:



A bittersweet story involving my uncle Vytautas was when my sister and I met him on my first visit to Lithuania in 1987. The Soviet state treated him as a visiting dignitary and a museum for his art was being opened in Druskininkai, a spa town  in southern Lithuania. As a result, he was provided with a chauffeur and car in which he took us to the old family homestead on what was once the Prussian border near Kudirkos Naumiestis. He found it, and lo and behold an old woman emerged from the house and it was Ona, who had been the family's servant girl between the wars! There were six sons and only one daughter so they needed Ona to help with the woman's work on the farm. Ona looked at my uncle and said "Anthony!" He said "No, I'm Vytautas but these are Anthony's two children." A touching deeply emotional moment in my life. It still saddens me that my parents never got to see independence restored to Lithuania. They never got to see their son walking freely and confidently through the streets of Vilnius and Kaunas as if he owned the place.

[Hepcat]

For what it's worth now at this late stage, I'm also big into comics. My first exposure to comics was in the comic section of the Saturday London Free Press in the late fifties. My family didn't have a TV yet so print media was very important to me. The Uncle Remus and his Tales of Brer Rabbit strip may have been the very first to capture my attention:



I'm still a fan of the Uncle Remus characters after all these years and I have dozens of copies of the strip in my collection today.

The first comic books I can remember reading in the spring and summer of 1959 featured Felix's Nephews Inky & Dinky. I recall my buddy and I from across the street thought that Dinky was a very cool name! They were of course rather beat up and I have no clue as to the actual issue(s) but here's one from my collection today:



The first comics I can recall buying were the Cicero's Cat 1 and 2 in the summer of 1959. I bought them at Ken's Variety on Wharncliffe Road in London, Ontario and I very clearly remember my father initially telling me to take #2 back because he thought I already had a copy!





Though I was already familiar with Superman and Batman comics from the barber shop or wherever, the first superhero comics I distinctly remember reading were the Adventures of the Fly in early 1961. I remember reading them at Lamont & Perkins drugstore a block away on Wortley Road before they chased me out, at which point I'd head for Tyler & Zettel's pharmacy a few blocks away. I believe they only stocked Archie, Dell and Classics Illustrated comics in these drug stores which is why the Fly was the first superhero to catch my attention. I'm not sure whether it was issue #11 or #12 of the Adventures of the Fly that first captured my attention:





In any event, I very clearly remember seeing these ads in Adventures of the Fly 13 heralding the introduction of Fly Girl and the Jaguar:





I also read through the Adventures of the Jaguar 1 when it first hit the newsstand:



It included this dandy ad for the mysterious Fly Girl:



A copy of Space Adventures belonging to the older brother of a buddy of mine featuring the powerful Captain Atom further whetted my appetite for the pajama brigade. The memory of these pages featuring a Nikita Khrushchev like character has never left me:





The first DC superhero comic I can specifically remember reading was Green Lantern 11 in the spring of 1962 which a buddy on a farm outside of London had. I still remember how it filled me with a sense of awe and wonder at the time.



A copy of Justice League of America 8 that I read at summer camp a couple of months later that same year clinched the deal:



When I got home from summer camp, I marched right down to Les' Variety on the corner to check out the comics on the spinner rack. The first superhero comic I bought was Justice League 14.



I eventually succeeding in trading for all but a couple of the issues of Justice League down to issue #4:



The other superhero comics I bought off the spinner rack at Les' Variety as part of that first batch included Detective 307 and Batman 150:



An Adventures of the Jaguar and a Superboy or a World's Finest were also part of that first batch which soon ended up in the trash when my older sister convinced my mother that comics would surely corrupt me. And of course she was right. They have!

But my appetite for more comics had already been whetted by DC house ads such as these (although I haven't a clue as to where I first saw them):





Within a few months I was back to buying comics again!

These comics had a lifelong influence on me, as did the bubble gum cards I also collected and model kits I was building. Despite the fact that my boyhood treasures all went by the wayside at some point in time, I never completely lost interest in these things. Throughout high school and university I always wished I still had my comics and cards.

My first job after university was in 1977 and by 1979 I was back to collecting. Big time.

I collect comics from 1945 to 1980. My concentration is Silver Age DC such as Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Atom, Hawkman, Mystery in Space, Sea Devils, Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Wonder Woman, Tales of the Unexpected, Teen Titans, Fox & the Crow etc. I'm just about solid in my main titles going back to 1962. For example, I have all the Justice Leagues going back to 1960 with the exception of issues 5, 6 and 47.

I also collect other titles such as Adventures of the Fly, Adventures of the Jaguar, Black Cat, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Space Adventures, Gorgo, Herbie, Turok, Doctor Solar, Lone Ranger, Gold Key Phantom and many Atom Age Jungle and Adventure titles including Sheena, Jumbo, Space Western and Commander Battle & the Atomic Sub. I have a few Harveys such as Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Little Dot, Little Audrey and Hot Stuff and quite a few Dell Funny Animal comics.

I also have a very good collection of the car humour mags such as Drag Cartoons, Hot Rod Cartoons and CARtoons. I also collect the Warren horror mags such as Creepy and Eerie and the Skywalds. I have a collection of several dozen Mad magazines from the late fifties and early sixties as well.

[charp13]

I just happened upon this topic, and I have really enjoyed reading about all of you.     I wish it was this easy in real life....I truly enjoy learning about my fellow humans. You Monster Kids are some really cool people.