A shot of the living room in the Marilyn Monroe-themed house in Dublin currently up for sale.
 
If your dream has ever been to move to Ireland and live in a house that was once owned by Marilyn Monroe’s number one fan, then you may finally get to live out that very strange and oddly specific fantasy. Nearly every wall of the 1,200 square foot, three-bedroom, one bathroom house at 44 Harelawn Drive in Clondalkin, Dublin is covered in images of Marilyn and has been painted in blinding pop-art style colors.

To say that the home is tasteless would be an understatement—just looking at the photos included in the listing nearly gave me a seizure. And everywhere I look, I see Marilyn’s famous mug looking right back at me. According to the listing, the decor inside this little slice of heaven is described as “quirky.” But since the home is located so close to the pleasant-sounding Liffey Valley Shopping Centre, I’m sure someone will express interest in making this their new digs. But will they keep this zany decor? And while it may seem like a deal to some people, the current asking price is around $230,000 USD (or €185,000). I’ve posted images of the Marilyn Monroe house of horrors below.
 

The plain, rather normal looking exterior of the Marilyn Monroe house.
 

This room is purple. Very, very purple.
 

The stairway leading to the second floor of the Marilyn house.
 
More Marilyn after the jump…

Circus banners for ‘Spidora’ and ‘Olga the Headless Girl.’
 
Originally conceived in the late 1800s by London-based vaudeville illusionist Henry Roltair and hugely popular at Coney Island in the late 1930s, “Spidora” was a disturbing illusion featuring the head of an actual woman with the body of a giant spider. When it comes to the equally disturbing “Headless Girl” sideshow attraction, we have a man from Hamburg, Germany purporting to be a physician called “Doctor Heineman” (aka Egon Heineman) to thank for “Olga the Headless Girl” which he debuted at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 to a crowd of stunned onlookers. But which macabre human/animal hybrid was the bigger faux freak? Before I let you the reader decide, let’s dive into a little history lesson on both bizarro illusions before we slug this one out.

According to details in Joe Nickell’s 2005 book, Secrets of the Sideshow, he saw an early iteration of Spidora at Coney Island when he was a kid. The Spidora illusion was wickedly popular and Nickell recalls the words of the carnival barker prepping the crowd for what they were about to see: 

Step right up folks and meet “Spidora,” the Spider-Girl! Born with the head and face of a beautiful girl and the body of an ugly spider, she survives in total misery, for no man could ever love her.

The barker would also note that Spidora who made her living as a sideshow attraction and, just like a real spider, ate flies and other insects. There were several adaptations of Spidora, some more believable than others. At worst you saw a woman with her head protruding out of a box with a spider body crudely attached to her. At best you would be treated to an expertly crafted spider web made of white twine and spider body and legs made of fake fur. The legs would also include tubing so that the girl playing Spidora could make the legs appear to move on their own. Spidora’s actual body would be concealed behind a wall in a box in which her spider web, spider body, and head were macabrely displayed for curious onlookers to ponder before moving on to the next attraction. Spidora inspired many other human/animal hybrids such as the “human butterfly,” and “snake girl” illusions—and as I’m sure many of our readers will recall a character from Tod Browning’s 1927 film The Show “Arachnida - the Human-Spider,” played by the gorgeous Edna Tichenor.

The “Headless Girl” routine was a rather terrifyingly realistic looking illusion, especially given the time period in which it came to be. When Olga was displayed in a store window in London, shocked onlookers recoiled at the headless torso of a woman with tubes running from her throat to a contraption that supposedly controlled her food intake. As with Spidora, Olga would also be copied by other illusionists who called her “Tina” and the classier sounding “Mademoiselle Yvette” who all claimed that the woman—despite not having a head—was being kept alive by the feeding tubes and unexplainable technology. As you will see in the photos, the headless girl act is optically baffling. To help bolster the authenticity of the headless girl, many of the attractions would include backstory as to how the poor thing lost her head—such as a shark attack or an unfortunate showgirl who parted ways with her head thanks to a truck.

According to one of my favorite spots on the Internet, Sideshow World, the headless girl illusion continued to appear around the U.S. and the world through the 1980s and a version even made an appearance at Ozzfest in 2002. And as I’m a huge fan of all things Ozzy, it is that last bit that has me giving the edge when it comes to creepiness to Olga, and her many headless counterparts/knock-offs. I’ve included photos of both strange illusions below as well as a vintage footage of a headless girl illusion being performed at Coney Island. Stay sinister my friends.

More after the jump…

 
Lee Godie (1908-1994) was an outsider artist who spent three decades living rough on the streets of Chicago—with the occasional respite in a flophouse when she had cash.

When you read about Godie there’s always the sentence that states she “spent almost 30-years homeless” or “lived on the streets for nearly thirty years.” The “nearly” and “almost” make it sound cosy—make it all sound like an heroic failure—as if she didn’t quite succeed in living rough for the full thirty years—as in the way we say—she nearly came first in the race or she almost won the lottery. One night sleeping rough on the streets is hell enough for anyone—especially in those cold Chicago winters where the temperature can drop to -30 in the windchill and the radio broadcasts give advice on breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose to prevent nosebleeds.

Somehow Godie managed to live and work while she was homeless between the 1960s and 1990s. She made drawings and paintings with whatever materials she had to hand. She then sold them to commuters on their way to work—but only if she liked the look of you. If she didn’t—then Godie rolled up her portfolio of pictures, put them under her arm, bid you “Good day” and moved on to the next potential buyer. That’s an enviable, if bloody-minded determination.

For Godie chose to live on the streets. She had money—enough to keep her dry, warm and snug. But she preferred living rough. Why? No one seems to be quite sure. At night, in sub-zero temperatures Godie slept on “a concrete bench…clutching her large black portfolio” of artworks. How Godie ended up homeless is open to conjecture. What is known she was married twice and had four children. After the deaths of two of her children, Godie began her life living on the streets in the 1960s.
 

 
The drawings and paintings were usually done while sitting on a park bench or on the steps of the Arts Institute. But perhaps her biggest and best known artworks was a series of selfies she made using a photo-booth as her studio.

For these self-portraits Godie dressed-up in her thrift store clothes and posed with props bought from Woolworth’s with the money she made selling her paintings. A Godie painting that was sold for $30 bucks back in the 1980s can fetch over $15,000 today. Godie’s photographs show her playing different roles—the child, the muse, the rich sophisticate like those 1920s Daisy Buchanan flappers she seemed so enamored by in her paintings.

When a newspaper story about Godie—the eccentric homeless artist—appeared in 1988—her daughter Bonnie Blank made contact. One day she was seen sitting beside her mother drawing pictures. On one occasion even sleeping rough with her. Eventually the daughter introduced herself to her long lost mother. Not long after this, Godie was admitted to hospital suffering from dementia. On her release, she went to stay with Bonnie where she remained until her death in 1994.
 

 

 
More of the Lee Godie’s photobooth art, after the jump…

A 27-year-old David Duke (the then Grand Dragon of the KKK) helping to keep the Mexican border safe, 1977.
 
On October 27th, 1977, David Duke the then 27-year-old Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan held a press conference to announce that the members of the KKK would start independently patrolling the Mexican border in Southern California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona. Duke dubbed his plan the “Klan Border Watch.”

According to Duke, Klan members would be disbursed throughout the 2000 mile border with 230 assigned to monitor and detain illegal aliens attempting to cross the Mexico/California border, 150 in Texas, 75 in New Mexico and a scant few in Arizona. During the first night of the KKK’s unofficial duties as border watch dogs actual Border Patrol agents said they didn’t see a single white hood. According to others there were apparently at least ten Klan members and six vehicles with cheap signs taped to the doors that read “Klan Border Watch” (classy!) sighted along the California/Mexico border. Much like you-know-who (whose father might have been a Klan sympathizer in his youth), Duke made statements to the media saying that he had the “full support of the American people” when it came to the Klan’s efforts to block Mexican immigrants from entering the country illegally and “taking jobs away” from American citizens.

The U.S. Border Patrol refused to work with the Klan, and their independent actions were denounced by government officials and minority activists. The rejection of the Klan’s plans to patrol the border led to a large coalition of anti-Klan activists protesting the Klan’s unwanted help along the border in San Diego. The U.S. Ambassador to Mexico at the time, Patrick Lucey, also released a strong statement condemning the Klan’s actions saying that in “no way would the Klan be allowed to patrol the border.”
 

 
Despite all the push back and assurance from government officials and the Border Patrol itself, Duke continued to spin yarns about how he had met with members of the Justice Department as well as other federal agencies insinuating that he had somehow received authorization for the klansmen to add “border patrol agent” to their resumes along with cross burning and you know, good old-fashioned lynching. Of course all of this was just a way for the attention-hungry Duke to shine a spotlight on himself and the Klan in an effort to somehow convince the general public that the KKK was trying to protect them from job-stealing illegal immigrants. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

If you perhaps think that over the decades the Klan has changed their perspective on how to secure our borders, you’d be correct. In 2014 during an television interview two KKK members in North Carolina dressed in their best white sheets and hoods advocated for shooting Mexican children (or “popping” them off) as they attempted to cross the border then leaving their corpses behind to rot in order to reinforce how “serious” they were about “immigration.”

If you voted for a candidate that the “modern” version of David Duke and the KKK vividly supported and endorsed during the election, that’s your burning cross to bear. After all, you could have taken a look at who all the bigots and white nationalists were going for and in the privacy of the ballot box voted for someone else instead. But you didn’t, did you?

And sure, sure I know the president-elect eventually denounced these endorsements (after trying to lie about having no knowledge of who Duke was), however he didn’t do much of anything outside of appear straight-up annoyed at all the fuss. And he only did it under duress. He gets no points whatsoever. Perhaps Trump could have taken a queue from the GOP’s beloved St. Ronald Reagan and copied the Gipper’s response to the hate organization that endorsed him in both 1980 and again in 1984. You see, even Reagan clearly understood how vile the KKK is and even wrote a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in April of 1984 about how dangerous the Klan, and organizations like them really are. It read in part:

Those of us in public life can only resent the use of our names by those who seek political recognition for the repugnant doctrines of hate they espouse. The politics of racial hatred and religious bigotry practiced by the Klan and others have no place in this country, and are destructive of the values for which America has always stood.

Trump voters, though you can try all you want to rationalize that your vote was for “change,” your IQ test at the voting actually just confirmed that you—yes you—are in fact “okay” with racism. Which actually makes you a racist, too.

More after the jump…

 
Play this record if you’re having trouble sleeping at night. In the mid-1980’s Belgian puppeteer Michel Dejeneffe and his terrifying creation named Tatayet were an enormous sensation in Europe. The Tatayet Show was broadcast on RTBF (the public channel for the French-speaking part of Belgium) every Sunday evening and as result of their success, an entire discography of Tatayet LP’s and 45’s were released to widespread acclaim. The 1986 dance single “At the Graveyard” which received much radio airplay featured a memorable chorus that anybody could sing along to: “At the graveyard, stiff and ten feet underground. In a pine box, like potatoes, with a ton of earth on top of the pine box.”
 

 
More fun with Tatayet after the jump…

 

 
Hey America! Here’s a wild Donald Trump-inspired playlist that all the hip kids are tuning into! I did an expanded version of this on my Intoxica radio show on Luxuriamusic.com. This should keep you in “the mood” until the debate!

And here we go!
 

 
More Trump-inspired music for all you hepcats and pussycats after the jump…

REO Speedwagon back in the 80s.
 
Back when I was attempting to finish college (unsurprising spoiler alert: I dropped out) I met future long-running rock journalist Ken McIntyre and since hooking up back in Boston in the late 80s, we’ve been close pals (despite losing touch for a while when I ran away from home and landed in Seattle in the late 90s). Penning for Classic Rock Magazine and Metal Hammer for the past decade under the very metal moniker “Sleazegrinder” my heavily tattooed BFF has interviewed pretty much everyone that had a hit record in 1976. McIntyre has pretty much seen it all but nothing could have prepared him for his bizarre interaction with a woman named “Kathy” who was running a Yahoo-based REO Speedwagon Fan Club back in mid-2000s.

So brace yourselves DM readers because when it comes to levels of insanity this email exchange is beyond bat-shit crazy and truly the product of a dangerous mind.
 

The amusing cover of REO Speedwagon’s 1979 album ‘Nine Lives.’ Former REO guitarist Gary Dean Richrath is pictured front and center.
 
When McIntyre got the assignment to pull together a feature for Classic Rock on REO Speedwagon (a band responsible for various relentless earwigs back in the 1980s such as “Keep on Loving’ You” and “Take it on the Run”) he reached out to “Kathy” to see if he could get ahold of former REO guitarist (and the writer behind “Take it on the Run”) Gary Dean Richrath to get “his side” of the REO Speedwagon story. What you are about to read is a verbatim transcript of McIntyre’s email correspondence with “Kathy” that quickly spiraled out of control and devolved into a slugfest of epic proportions. So fire up your bong or grab a drink (I’m quite sure it’s noon somewhere) because you’re going to need it. Here we go!

McIntyre: Hi Kathy, I’m wondering if you can help me out…I’m a writer for Classic Rock magazine, and I am working on a feature on the band for the May issue. I’ve spoken to Bruce and Kevin, and I would love to speak to Gary to get his side of the REO story. Do you know how I can reach him? Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,

Ken McIntyre

Kathy: Hi Ken: Sorry, but Gary is a gentleman, and prefers not to respond to Cronin’s slamfests. Glad to see they’re using you to hype the new album. It’s going to need a lot of help, since their last live album, “Arch Allies” sold less than 50,000 copies—with the help of Styx.

McIntyre: Jesus, Kathy. They are not “using me” for anything. It’s an objective story on the history of what, apparently, is your favorite band. Thanks for the jaundiced comments. Wish Gary had the chance to speak for himself.

Kathy: Hi Ken: How many times do you think Gary ‘s been asked these questions over the last 18 years? How many times does he have to get slammed by Kevin before he’s had enough? JESUS is right! I get tired of it myself. You’re telling me that in this interview with KC that has nothing but glowing reports about Gary, and how that offer is still open to re-join the band? When the day after his VH1 interview he threatened to sue them and demanded a re-edit? And told fans the next day that Dave Amato was in the band “forever?” Forward it to me, and I’ll run it by Gary. Until then…. good luck! LOLOLOL!

McIntyre: You obviously have some sort of bizarre agenda. And you can keep it.

Kathy: And you obviously don’t know much about the history of this band. Good luck promoting the UK tour.

McIntyre: Can I just ask, out of curiosity, why you would be so rude to a complete stranger asking for simple information? It seems odd to me.

Kathy: Sorry, but I answered your questions honestly and forthrightly. If you want to be pissed off about not scoring an interview AND throw a tantrum by trying to insult me, that’s seems counter-productive to me.

McIntyre: Kathy - I am not pissed off at all, nor am I throwing a tantrum, I am just trying to figure out why you are being hostile. I have no agenda one way or the other. How would I know whether Gary has been answering the same questions for 18 years? I am not a member of the REO fanclub. It doesn’t matter to me whether I “score an interview”, or not. I certainly get paid the same whether I talk to Gary or I don’t. I was simply trying to get both sides of the story. What is odd is that you are treating me like I am from some enemy camp. And Kathy, that is not answering my questions honestly and forthrightly. Honestly and forthrightly would have been, “Sorry, I choose not to help you with this matter.” That would have been fine. Instead, you chose to be needlessly aggressive. I would really like to know why. What have I done to you, except ask a question?

Kathy: You claim you’re not pissed off, throwing a tantrum, or a member of the fan club. Our records show you just signed up tonight. You’re batting 0-3.

McIntyre: Aye yi yi, I signed up for the Yahoo group for research. And you have no evidence of the other two. I meant ‘fan club’ in the metaphorical sense, which I’m sure you knew. That hardly counts as ‘0-3’. Prior to receiving my assignment for Classic Rock, I had not listened to, or thought about, REO Speedwagon for 20 years. I had no idea Gary left the band or who he even was a week ago. I am from Boston, which is not exactly REO territory. Whether you choose to believe that or not is your business, but it’s the truth. My pen name is “Sleazegrinder”, after all, which certainly doesn’t sound like the sort of person who would normally listen to Midwestern arena rock, does it? I have had to soak up as much info as I can about the band, and the Yahoo group was one tool for that. What I don’t get is why you wouldn’t want to cast a better light on “REO fans”. Are they all like you? I would not feel welcome at an REO show if they were.

I just wish you would act like a real person instead of whatever mawkish persona this is. If you are just trying to ward me off the Richrath trail, congratulations, you have done so. But I would still like to get to the root of your rudeness to me. Do you honestly think I have bad intentions?

Thanks,

Kathy: Gosh, Kevin forgot to tell you about Gary ? Sounds like a riveting interview!

McIntyre: Incredible. What a remarkable horror you are!

Jesus CHRIST. Now I need a drink. And somehow the well-chosen words from McIntyre’s SOL salutation “remarkable horror” barely seem to scratch the surface of this 80’s throwback trainwreck. After pouring through the “REO FANS” site it appears that “Kathy” has moved on to other things, perhaps a job with a cable TV company in which she can use her unprovoked argumentative communication skills to talk customers out of cancelling their service or an operator for a suicide hotline.

H/T: Rock journalist Ken McIntyre

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Rhubarb-stealing, foul-mouthed crazy lady screams insults at neighbor, needs her own reality TV show

Thom Yorke is EVIL! (not really).
 
My DM colleague Tara McGinley posted about the unexplainable image of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke on the cover of an Iranian sex manual called Marital and Sexual Problems in Men back in 2015. And since McGinley and I share many of the same curious interests, today I’d like to share another instance of Yorke’s visage being utilized to disseminate religious propaganda, this time by a Christian fundamentalist group called Generation for God. For some reason the group somehow wants us to believe that vices such as drug use, atheism, witchcraft and of course pornography have manifested themselves on Yorke’s mug. 

Because Radiohead is about as Satanic as ABBA I found the claim that Yorkes’ face was a conduit for all things Satanic rather amusing to say the least. Generation of God sent the strange image out via their page on Twitter which depicted Yorke’s face as possessing (or perhaps “possessed of” in this case) the following eight things that Satan will use to “enslave and destroy you”:

Pornography
Atheism
Avarice (aka Greed)
Disobedience to God’s Law
Witchcraft & Tarot
Idolatry
Drugs
Unforgiveness

I’m going to go out on a big fat fake plastic tree limb here and say that I’m pretty sure many DM readers are big fans of most of the vices noted above so this “revelation” by GOG isn’t so much unflattering as it is straight up silly. And as you might imagine the response from fans of the band to the tweet were as hilarious as the original one from the goofy God groupies. So much so that I highly recommend you read through a few of them here.
 
H/T: Digital Music News

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Ask A Grown Man: Radiohead’s Thom Yorke gives advice to teenage girls, is surprisingly uncreepy

 
(Clears throat)

“In 1972 God spoke to Rev. Woody Martin and told him to lay hands on the building that is now Victory Temple Worship Center, a center of signs, wonders, and miracles following the spoken Word of God.”

So spaketh the poorly-designed website for Rev. Martin’s Bible Deliverance Ministry, located in the town of Lenoir City, Tennessee. It goes on to inform the reader that:

In his first service, God opened the blind eyes of an eight-year-old girl by the “laying on of hands.” Victory Temple is a Bible-believing Pentecostal Deliverance Church where expectations are met through Christ. Thousands have come to Jesus through anointed radio broadcast, publications, television, and miracle crusades. Precious souls have been delivered and set free by the power of God.

Rev. Woody (who also is known as “Prophet Martin” for reasons that are unclear) has another method of achieving unspecified Jesus-related goals and stuff and that is his “The Blood of Jesus Anointing Oil.”

Despite the apparently pedigreed name, “The Blood of Jesus Anointing Oil” is just regular olive oil and red food coloring. Prophet Martin admits to such in the description.

“It is regular olive oil which represents the Holy Spirit and a special coloring to make it look red thus we call it “The Blood of Jesus Anointing Oil.” There is no virtue or healing in this oil, it is a point-of-contact and an act-of-faith.”

You see, for it to work, you only have to believe! (And if it doesn’t work then obviously you are not believing HARD ENOUGH.)

“The Bible says in Mark 6:13, “And they cast out many devils, and ANOINTED with oil many that were sick, and Healed them!” Jesus’ disciples used this unusual ministry to bring healing and deliverance to the sick and oppressed. They would anoint them with a little oil that God had blessed by His Holy Spirit. The oil alone had no power, but when saturated by prayer, it became the Holy Spirit’s point of power for bringing deliverance to people.”

It’s not like he and his wife can legally be, you know, accused of cheating anyone with such an honest description, right? And if it works, then it works, right? Who am I to shit on an old couple’s hobby? Besides that, the first vial is free for the asking. (They also got “healing” DVDs, Rev. Woody’s music, ways to lose weight through the Lord, all kinds of stuff, in the online store.)

Some of the many uses for Mr. and Mrs. Woody Martin’s “The Blood of Jesus Anointing Oil” are the warding off of witchcraft, protection from the evil eye, reversing bad luck and the effects of evil hoodoos, leprachauns and so forth. But it’s also good for the removal of snakes.

You heard me right: The removal of snakes. Apparently this shit works great for that. Listen to the testimonial below and praise Jesus!
 

Above, Mrs. Woody Martin proudly reads a letter from one of their satisfied “Blood of Jesus Anointing Oil” customers! Use this oil and you, too, will stop seeing snakes!

 
The competition for the world’s biggest Kraftwerk fan just went up a notch—maybe three notches. A man in Florida posted a Flickr set depicting his own everyday life as a robotic humanoid wearing the red and black uniform that the German quartet donned for the band’s iconic 1978 album The Man-Machine.

The gentleman in the pictures appears to have changed his name to “Kraftwerk” (although the picture of his driver’s license with his new name looks suspiciously ‘Shopped to me). In the pictures he is depicted going record shopping (clutching an LP of his beloved Man-Machine, of course), as well as consuming a chicken salad croissant and a cold brew coffee and even sleeping in his bed (yes, wearing the ridiculous red shirt and black tie under the duvet).

Amazingly, he neither depicts himself using a pocket calculator, nor riding a bicycle. There are also zero traffic cones in the pictures. However, there is an automotive theme to the gallery—he is shown in the driver’s seat of his “truck” and also putting “petrol” (not gas?) in his tank as well as paying for it with a “debit card.” Surely all of that qualifies as some kind of reference to Autobahn?
 

 

 
More pics after the jump….....