And he wasn't the only one...

Spermman's been quite busy since his shampoo-shilling days.
A quick trip around Google brings us this attempt at a Spermman comic; this character that's more sperm than man; and this poor soul in Croatia...


Anyway, I have to confess that Kevis was the firm that sent that fax. Looking at their site, I notice that their shampoos are now semen-free.

When Rogaine met Viagra...

Eleven years ago, the radio station where I worked at the time received this fax.

My first reaction, of course, was "Ew!"

Sperm Shampoo? And "Spermman"? I hate to imagine what his costume would have looked like.

How were they able to acquire copious amounts of semen to manufacture the shampoo? Robbing sperm banks? Hooking guys up to milking machines?

I'm certain DC Comics wasn't happy about the wording of this fax - days later, another fax promoted Sperm Shampoo without mention of Superman.

Odder still is the claim the "testosterone zaps your hair from growing," yet smearing jizz on your head will restore the follicles?

I'll bet that this is what inspired that infamous scene in "There's Something About Mary."

M-M-Max

Remember Max Headroom?

Over 20 years ago, you could not escape him. Originating in the UK, he arrived in the US via commercials at first and then in his own short-lived ABC series. Matt Frewer portrayed the square-jawed, computer-generated antihero. Actually, the technology to make Max a true CGI character wasn't yet available, so Frewer was filmed wearing heavy makeup and prosthetic bits. Max became popular enough to be satirized (in "Doonesbury," Garry Trudeau depicted Reagan as "Ron Headrest"; a hacker called "Captain Midnight" protested the scrambling of satellite TV signals by breaking into HBO's signal wearing a Max mask).

In the series, set in the now-cliché dystopian-urban-hellhole future, Frewer portrayed Edison Carter, reporter for a TV network whose personality somehow uploaded into the city's intranet and became Carter's alter ego, Max Headroom, who appeared only on TV screens and computer monitors.
The fictional network gaged its viewership through instant ratings, constantly monitored by executives. Advertising played to viewers' shortened attention spans in the form of "blipverts" - where products flash by in a couple of seconds.
The show had fun satirizing the pervasiveness of the media and often bit the hand that fed it - at the end of the first episode, Max joked, "How can you tell when our network president is lying? His lips move."

Thinking about this show recently, I realized how prophetic it was for the most part.

Now, networks and advertisers are actually using the blipvert concept, flashing messages that can only be seen when they are recorded and played back frame by frame (e.g., GE's "One Second Theater")
Edison Carter's show involved him going live with a camera during his investigations - a concept which would be put to use years later.
In one episode a "geek" working for Carter was experimenting with incorporating CGI into live action footage. It couldn't be done in '87 but it's possible now.

Unfortunately, "Max Headroom" was canceled after a few episodes. Matt Frewer later did a sitcom called "Doctor, Doctor" and was little heard from since. A pity.

But I'm not the only one...

Continuing a theme from the previous post:

Another periodical I once read was Comics Buyer's Guide (CBG), to which I subscribed from 1984 to 1999. It was a weekly newspaper until 2004, when it morphed into a monthly, glossy magazine (or "Wizard clone").

Ads like these appeared in CBG:
(click to enlarge)



Kevin Keyes was ambitious enough to not only adapt Shakespeare to comics, but also create a new story with his characters. Keyes was working at a comic shop at the time - a frequent customer was another aspiring artist who would make it big: Erik Larsen.

---

(Right) This early work by artist/musician Barry Chern was advertised in CBG. His Munch-meets-Crumb style is intriguing, though the book was a bit pricey.

Poe lives - in Honolulu

I used to read the "Big Reel" magazine some years ago - a periodical devoted to collectors of movie memorabilia and 16/35mm film prints. Standing out among the ads were the expressions of a sad-looking man with a craggy, Walter Matthau-esque face - a poet, songwriter, dreamer.

His name was Herbert Yuen. In his mind he was Edgar Allan Poe, Indiana Jones, silent screen star John Gilbert, and "Elisha Rosanova."

Yuen fancied himself Hawaii's answer to Poe - he set up a shrine to the brooding bard of Baltimore, in his own "House of Usher."

And he shared with Big Reel readers his poems as the "Edgar Allen (sic) Poe of Hawaii":


The Hill of San Juan

Just a hill of San Juan?
No! 'Tis bristlin' with Spanish guns
An' cannons from row to row
They sparkle like a thousand guns
That I know - I am there, I know,
You can't see their weapons
Because they've no flame -
Clever, them Latin villains.


A Conundrum

I myself have no home
Nor family nor anyone
'Tis better to dwell round boirbe*
Than take up space with someone,
No wife, bairns nor pets
Yea - so easier a soul forgets
Freer to roam with no home
No belongings, no worries,
No money, my roof the sky.
Who am I?

*Fri., Mud (Yuen's footnote. Perhaps by "Fri" he meant "Fr." for French. But "boirbe" is an Irish word meaning "aggression" or "violence." The French for mud is "boue".)



The Ruin by the Sea

Who lives yon in the Cimmerian ruin --
The moldering ruin by the sea?
Where echo unearthly voices there
With the moanings across the lea
With the groanings of the wind swept tree.
The bat wots (?) - it will tell
At the stroke of the midnight bell
When all the shades come to jell
At the jar of the midnight bell.
Which then the sea imps come
Trailing along in their wet- gray shrouds--
Trailing and regaling to the beat of the surf
Beneath the high and the darksome clouds
Amid the cry of the shadow in crowds :
They are the phantoms that haunt about
Midst their happy grinning shout
To revel within and without
With their cronies the sea-imps about.
Aye! they revel among the gravel
They come far from Azrael --
Their souls bereft by the angel
As they travel among the gravel.
'Tis they who dwelt in the Cimmerian ruin --
The moldering ruin by the sea
Where echo unearthly voices there
With the groanings of the wind swept tree
With the moanings across the lea.


Excerpts from other Yuen ads:


"Just Out - A book of various music by Herbert Yuen - 'The Edward MacDowell of Today' - $10 ea. Very lovely songs."

"JOHN GILBERT IS ALIVE! Herbert Yuen is John in the new version of 'Masks of the Dead' (Entertainment only)."

"'The Garson' (Turk, waiter), starring Errol Flynn as the villain, lovely almond eyed Debra Winger, and Yuen himself as the hero. Movie script by him, $3/copy."
[never mind the fact that Flynn died some two decades before Winger made her film debut]

Somewhere, a raven looked on and smiled...

Coming soon.

I'm looking forward to seeing the film "Transamerica." Watch the trailer here.

TransGeneration.

If you don't have cable, see the first episode here. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

It's not me, but...

This Terri Noble works with FEMA, and has much to say on the Katrina disaster. My heart is out to her, and to those she helps.