The many Molly Ringwalds of John Hughes' Shermer, Illinois

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

"When I first started making movies," John Hughes once told Premiere Magazine, "I thought I would just invent a town where everything happened. Everybody, in all my movies, is from Shermer, Illinois. Del Griffith from Planes, Trains & Automobiles lives two doors down from Samantha Baker. Ferris Bueller knew Samantha Baker from Sixteen Candles. For 15 years I've written my Shermer stories in prose, collecting its history."

Hughes' Shermer is a Chicago suburb with a very strange history indeed. Circa 1985, Sixteen Candles' Sam Baker, The Breakfast Club's Claire Standish and Pretty in Pink's Andie Walsh were all students at Shermer High School. In other words, three Molly Ringwalds were attending the school at the same time. It would seem like three unrelated but identical pouty redheads would attract a lot of attention... But perhaps the students and faculty were distracted by all of the Anthony Michael Halls running around. There was Sixteen Candles' King of the Geeks, The Breakfast Club's Brian Johnson, Rusty Griswold from National Lampoon's Vacation and Gary Wallace from Weird Science.

Actually, so much weird stuff happened at Shermer High School that it's possible nobody ever even noticed all of the Molly and Anthony Michael clones. After all, at the end of Weird Science Gary and Wyatt's magical cyber-girlfriend Lisa gets a job at the school as the new gym teacher. Given Lisa's mischievous nature and god-like powers, it seems inevitable that eventually she'd have a run-in with Mr. Vernon - the sneery teacher from The Breakfast Club - and she'd turn him into a big, gross toad monster. One shudders to imagine how she would discipline Emilio Estevez for taping that one kid's buns together.

If all of Hughes' movies took place in the same town, that raises many troubling questions. If John Candy's Del Griffith really lived two doors down from Sam Baker, did he ever encounter Uncle Buck? Or that other John Candy who managed the neighborhood Target store in Career Opportunities? Did Buck's nephew Miles (Macaulay Culkin) attend elementary school with Kevin, the Macaulay Culkin who was always getting left Home Alone? Did the John Kapelos who was the janitor in The Breakfast Club ever cross paths with the Kapelos who was marrying Sam's sister in Sixteen Candles, or the Kapelos who owned a blues bar in Weird Science? Why were the citizens of Shermer blessed with but one John Cusack, one Annie Potts, one Kelly LeBrock... But cursed with two Jim Belushis?

As the '90s wore on, Hughes gradually became less productive and more reclusive. The last time Shermer was seen onscreen was in Reach the Rock, a little-seen 1998 indie picture that Hughes wrote but did not direct. Hughes originally began the script as a sort of sequel to The Breakfast Club, imagining what would have happened to Bender if he'd stayed in Shermer with Claire and grown into a frustrated, aimless adult. While none of Hughes' old characters or actors appear in the final film, we do get a glimpse of Shermer a decade on from its glory days, and it's become a sad, run-down place. Ferris sure isn't leading any parades through this town.

Hughes is now gone, and we'll probably never get the chance to visit Shermer again. But strangely enough, Hughes' son James Hughes has made some efforts to establish his own fictional Chicago suburb. He wrote the script for the 2001 film New Port South, following a group of rebellious students at New Port South High School in the town of New Port. That's his only credit on the IMDB so far, but give him time. Perhaps one day New Port will be a thriving city, with stories interacting in unlikely ways and the same faces showing up over and over again. If John Bender can go to the same high school as Ferris Beuller, anything is possible.



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DAVID TENCH TONIGHT

Monday, April 25, 2011

David Tench was an Australian talk show host who was created using motion capture technology. His show David Tench Tonight, featuring real-time interviews with various celebrities, had a brief run on Australia's Channel Ten in 2006. (The name "Tench" was actually a combination of "Channel" and "Ten".)

He was not the first "virtual" host - I believe that honor goes to the great Max Headroom. But he was arguably the creepiest, with a giant Mardi Gras head and tiny baby arms. Here's the Tenchbot in action:

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NAOMI WILDMAN GONE WILD!

Thursday, April 21, 2011


My fellow fans of Star Trek: Voyager, we have endured a lot of suffering.

We have seen our beloved show unfairly vilified and spat upon by the press, other Trekkies, and even members of the show's cast. People said that Seven of Nine was just a bimbo added to the show for ratings, but we knew she was really a complex and compelling character (who just happened to look spectacular in a silver catsuit.) Everybody was always hating on Neelix, but we adored the cheery alien warthog with a tragic past. That episode where Tom Paris' tongue fell out and he evolved into an evil salamander monster rocked, no matter what the haters said!

Everybody in the world said we were stupid for liking Voyager, but that just made our fandom stronger. We would never give up our love for Voyager... Just like Janeway and her crew fought overwhelming odd and never gave up trying to find Earth.

Well, Voyager fans, I'm afraid I've got some more bad news for you, a development so upsetting that it could cause a level-1 breach in your warp core.

I'm sure by now you've noticed the crazy-hot goth model in the picture there, doing her Lizzie Borden thing. You're probably wondering what she's doing there, in the middle of all this stuff about Voyager.

That is Naomi Wildman. Yes, it's true. The sweet little girl with the spines on her head, the one that Neelix would tuck into bed at night with tales of Treevis and Flotter... She's all grow'ed up, and she's become a Suicide Girl.

After Voyager ended, Scarlett Pomers went on to enjoy a successful acting career, including a co-starring role on the sitcom Reba. She's also done cartoon voice-overs and apparently she has her own rock band. In addition to these pursuits, she's also now doing some rather exotic modeling.

Here's what she has to say on her Model Mayhem page:

I prefer edgy, ethereal, dark, fantasy, creepy, fetish, pinup, fashion and frightening/bizarre shoots. However, I am very versatile and am always open to glamour, beauty, and more mainstream looks. I do NOT do nudes.

All of which would be perfectly fine - kind of fantastic, even - if I could just stop picturing her as an innocent 9-year-old with poky rubber things on her forehead. This is like seeing your niece in lingerie or something. And... Oh God, is that a Klingon knife she's using in that picture? I think it is. No! Not right! Very not right!

Sigh... Go ahead, Naomi, twist your Klingon blade in my heart. Today is a good day to die.


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Jim Trainor's THE BATS

Sunday, April 17, 2011


Jim Trainor is a fine artist, teacher and animator who makes charmingly ugly little short films that are surreal while also being educational while also being weirdly personal. In The Bats, he takes us deep inside a bat cave, where a chatty bat explains the ways of bat life. We learn about bat mating, bat cannibalism, the bat God, and many other bat things. These creatures of the night are easy to relate to in some ways, profoundly alien in others. Trainor doesn't sentimentalize his animal characters, he simply gives them voice and allows us to draw our own conclusions.

This short features some really appalling business involving bat poo and some NSFW bat sex, but if a bat was going to tell you about his life, I bet it'd sound a lot like this. (The DVD at left, Cartune Exprez 2008, features the work of Trainor and other contemporary experimental animators.)

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Tiny empty spooky places

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Jason Casebere is an artist who creates and photographs lovely, eerie tabletop environments of abandoned places.

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Grim grinning ghosts get all up in your business

Thursday, April 7, 2011



If you've ever visited the Haunted Mansion at any of the Disney parks, you've never forgotten the trio of ghostly hitchhikers who stow away with you at the end of the ride. Now Walt Disney World in Florida has futzed around with the ghosts and made them interactive CGI prankster poltergeists. The results are undeniably impressive technically, although the ghosts are no longer eerie and now seem kind of frantic and crass in that modern Disney way.

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The hidden messages in corporate logos

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Many of the corporate logos you see every day have secret little pictures and other messages embedded within them. For instance, have you ever noticed the little party taking place in the middle of the Tostitos logo? See, the two little black dudes enjoying chips together, there? And now that you've seen it, you can never un-see it.

Geekosystem has 11 more secret messages in logos.

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About This Blog

"Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise: the monster and the rocket." - W.H. Auden

Who is he, this one who is called "Greg Stacy"?

Greg Stacy began the MONSTERS AND ROCKETS blog in April of 2009. Prior to that, he was editor of the popular sci-fi/horror news website DARKWOLDS.COM. He has also written for LA WEEKLY, OC WEEKLY, UTNE READER and LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT. He always feels weird writing about himself in the third person.

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