What Lives On My Desk!

As I sit at my cluttered desk in the attic, pining away with the summer doldrums, pondering my next review, my next missive, my next revelation, and even my next fluffy piece of reading-candy, it suddenly struck me: why not highlight the many and varied things that live and breathe–metaphorically–on my desk?

There is always something interesting here, patiently waiting for my attention, or glaring back at me in accusatory silence due to the lack of it. Whether hiding under piles of DVDs, or books, or magazines, whether there for inspiration or tethering to my memories and responsibilities, my desk–anyone’s desk for that matter–is a life-equation summed to its rectangular, oblong, or boxy measurements. So let’s see what’s interesting today, shall we?

Curt Purcell and his minions over at Groovy Age of Horror have been reviewing the Doc Savage pulp-style reprintings coming from Nostalgia Ventures. Being a Doc Savage fan for many years, I’ve accumulated a few Doc objects d’art catching my fancy. The prize of my collection is Joe Devito’s Doc and Python, sold by Graphitti Designs back in the 90’s. It was Devito’s first commercial piece and it renders Doc Savage in all his superhuman glory.

The Doc Savage bust sculpted by Randy Bowen, also released through Graphitti Designs, captures the James Bama-powered Doc, again depicted in his torn shirt and stoic demeanor. I keep this bust next to my 1930’s-styled Superman tin sign, a hint of which is shown in the background. Bet you can’t guess whose red-lined cape that is on the right.

As my eyes gaze to the little family of quintessential apocalyptic metaphors I keep around my keyboard–zombies– I’m reminded of Vault of Horror’s brief note on the release of some essential DVD zombie fare recently, and TheoFantastique’s exploration of the popular apocalypse-theme recurring in horror films these days (gee, wonder why?). Not just any zombies, mind you, but these glow in the dark! You can trap them at Archie McPhee. They’ll provide many amusing hours of fun as you arrange them in various attack positions while you’re working on that next big zombie movie script.

Last, but not least, I collect heads. Whether little ones or big ones, bony ones or fleshy ones, I always like to get a’head. (I realize I’ve lost readers with that groaner, but really, I couldn’t resist.)

Here are Modoc, the brainy headed one, and Cyclops from Ray Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. I’ve got the rest of him somewhere on my desk. At least I think so.

I know I shouldn’t confess to this in mixed company, but there, I’ve said it. Just one more reason why I enjoy reading Max, the Drunken Severed Head’s blog every chance I get. He’s gone to quite the effort with his interview with David Patrick Kelly, putting all us limbed-bloggers to shame. I don’t know how Max does it. Maybe Kelly felt sorry for him, being limbless and all. How Max ever lugs around that old tape recorder of his puzzles me. No limbs, no pockets you know.