We just got back from the Halloween Costume, Haunted Attraction, and Party show in Las Vegas. Eileen and I had a great time and even made the paper.

From the Las Vegas Review Journal

The four-day convention includes more than 700 exhibitors and is expected to attract about 10,000 attendees from 47 countries.

In 24 years it has grown from a small event in Chicago with about 20 vendors to today’s incarnation, a multiday costume, prop and gore extravaganza for an industry worth about $7 billion.

“Something like 20 percent of people in the U.S. will attend a haunted house,” said Joe Thaler, chairman and CEO of TransWorld Exhibits, the company that runs the Halloween show. “It can be very valuable.”

Mutilated bodies, full-length Sasquatch and Yeti suits, trampy nurse and superhero outfits are among the highlights of the Las Vegas event. There’s plenty at the show to shock even the most hardened sensibilities.

The firm Dapper Cadaver of Los Angeles showed off a line of vintage medical instruments, mutilated and vandalized corpses and a collection of faux human and animal fetuses stored in jars.

Dapper Cadaver owner-artist BJ Winslow said he’s been fascinated by macabre preservation techniques since childhood.

“Even when I was a little kid and I had a toy I was no longer interested in I would stick it in a jar, fill it with fluid and put it on a shelf,” Winslow said. “My mom still has some of them.”

Vampira, also known by her mortal name Mailia Nurmi, passed away yesterday. She was 85 or 86, reports vary.

Vampira discovered what may be the greatest schtick in the history of mankind during the 1950’s. Inspired by the look of Morticia Addams, Vampira added campy humor, double entendres, B-movies, and unbelievable cleavage. This unstoppable combo has often been imitated, never surpassed.

Her most famous performance is as a mute zombie chick who dresses like a vampire in Ed Wood’s opus “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” but what made her a star was her TV Hostessing. Unfortunately footage of her show is incredibly hard to come by, as there are no official recordings.

About a year ago I sold blood and police caution tape to the prop master for what was then called “the latest Coen brothers film”
It’s great to see they really put the blood to good use!
This is an awesome movie. Part Western, part horror, part indie.
The villain is such a bad ass.

Everything comes in seasons for me, the weekend after Thanksgiving, for instance was all about Headstones. January, it seems is Sideshow time.

My Odditorium is rapidly growing. To start with I’ve acquired 2 of the original Feejee Mermaids caught by Dr Griffin of the British Lyceum of Natural History and exhibited by PT Barnum at his fantastic American Museum. The two appear to be a mother and child, although a bit more…raw than than the mermaid ideal that say, Disney’s the Little Mermaid put forward. After viewing the specimen, a correspondent from the Charleston Courier put it: “Of one allusion… the sight of the wonder has forever robbed us — we shall never again discourse, even in poesy, of mermaid beauty, nor woo a mermaid even in our dreams — for the Feejee lady is the very incarnation of ugliness.”

These long thought mythological creatures are in no way related to humans, but are in fact a curious mammal, distantly related to bats. It’s believed that through the power of flight, these creatures reached far off islands where no other predators existed, and, like countless species of birds in similar situations, lost the power of flight, and began to adapt themselves for swimming, currently living in the intermediary realm of evolution, like seals or penguins.

See the wonderous Feejee Mermaid yourself (for no additonal charge!) Click Here

Also Added to my penny museum is a headhunters charm, a necklace made from the skull of a monkey, bartered for in far off Burma. It currently rests in a cardboard box in my closet (my honey won’t let it be hung in the living room). See the incredible enchanted monkey skull

And speaking of skulls, mankinds closest relative is also staying at my house. Bigger in body and brain, the giants of ancient europe and the inventor of both music and the funeral, I present to you the furrowed brow of Neanderthal Man

Also added, another cursed item, the very monkey’s paw whose ironic wishes vexxed WW Jacobs. Behold the monkeys paw, but beware, this link bears a curse (thats bad!)

When I die, I hope to be preserved as well as my collections, specifically, I wish to be diaphinized, like my new babies, the diaphinized rat, diaphinized snake, and diaphinized frog. Each one has been chemically treated in a way that not only makes them flamable, but turns soft tissue to clear whitish jelly and stains the bones.

That’s it for this week. Who nows what oddities I’ll add to my collection next…perhaps you.