Along Came A Spider And Sat Down Beside Her

As you'll no doubt have gathered from my Winchester Mansion post not so long ago, I do rather enjoy stories that entail a mysterious old house. So while I was skipping about the internet looking for pictures of Tura Satana for my last post, I happened upon a link that led me to the story of the Spider Pool, a strange and elusive site secreted in the hills of Los Angeles that was also the setting for thousands of cheesecake and nudey camera club photos in the fifties. And I thought to myself, "Why yes indeed Mr. Internet, I'll be having some of that."

In 1920s Hollywood, John McDermott, an actor-turned-director of silent films, had seen his fair share of beautifully designed movie sets being used for an hour or two and then unceremoniously consigned to the scrap heap. Balls to that, thought he, and he proceeded to build himself a crazy-ass house in the Hollywood hills constructed of the various pieces of sets he collected. The result was an amazing, rambling house that was Algerian looking one minute, Navajo next and Egyptian too just for the craic, along with dozens of other styles. There were three canons mounted on a parapet, tombstones from the set of The Hunchback of Notre Dame built into a wall, a tunnel staircase that spiralled up to a mirrored bedroom that had a fireplace under the bed and most importantly, a gorgeous swimming pool area that featured a huge mosaic of a spider with a hornet embedded in the tiled web.

The dwelling became known locally as The House That Jack Built and gained notoriety for the wild parties thrown by McDermott. A Hollywood columnist wrote an account of her visit to the house for one of its legendary shindigs, in which she describes underground passages, trap doors, duck ponds and pieces of elk meat being roasted on a spit. Stories abound of party shenanigans such as dollybirds dressed as harem girls shimmying out of said trap doors to the sound of John beating a drum and also of the host surveying the beautiful pool from a throne atop the infamous spider mosaic, as apparently it was his wont to furnish lady guests with swimsuits that dissolved when they hit the water, the absolute HOUND.

So, it's that pool area that all of this is leading to. A few years ago, a group of people online were trading vintage pin-up and cheesecake photos and became fascinated by this one recurring location, the Spider Pool.





It was a hugely popular backdrop for girlie photography, the tiled spider wall had countless hotties in varying states of undress pout and pose on it and near it. Including my heroine du jour, Tura.


Anyhoodle, the various fans of this mysterious locale did their damnedest to work out where it was. As it happens, a relative newcomer to their cause, whose post was the first article I read about it, set off on a mission into the hills and only went and FOUND the bloody thing. After McDermott's death, the house passed through a few owners, barely survived a fire and eventually fell into disrepair at the hands of vandals and squatters, before ultimately being condemned and bulldozed to the ground. All that remains of the once wondrous home is the chipped and weathered spider wall, which still must have been overwhelmingly exciting to uncover.



It's a shame that there don't appear to be any pictures of the house itself from its debaucherous heyday, but I do love that somewhere hidden away in the hills of L.A. lies this weird memento and one time playground of showbiz stars and cheeky pin-up models. There's a hugely detailed timeline of the house here, put together by a member of the discussion group, and this is the post by the intrepid Jacy Young who rediscovered the amazing Spider Pool and took the present day photos above. Colour me obsessed.

Pussycat Dolls

Last Friday, the Bear and I had quite a busy evening for ourselves. After getting work out of the way, we giggled our way through Spamalot from circle seats in the Grand Canal Theatre with a bottle of rum-spiked ginger beer, like some kind of degenerate Enid Blyton characters. When the show had finished, off we skittered to The Sugar Club for a Midnight Movies screening of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! starring the sadly late, tremendously great Tura Satana. I've previously oohed and aahed over her unbeliveably kickass life on this here blog, but this was my first time actually seeing the film. And boy, is it a riot.


First off, the Midnight Movies crew put on a fantastic screening. A girl goes from table to table beforehand selling cola bottle sweets and bags of popcorn from the Savoy with a tray not unlike my beloved cigarette girls. A Skype Q&A with Lori Williams, who stars as blonde firecracker Billie preceeded the film, which was then brilliantly introduced with trailers for Blacula and Barbarella and even the classic "it's too orangey for crows..." Kia Ora ad.

The opening scene shows our three pussycats go-go dancing up a storm, while a gravelly voiceover informs us that sexy sex is the most dangerous form that violence lurks beneath, or something to that effect. I can't remember exactly. (To be fair, cocktails were but a fiver in The Sugar Club at this stage.) It's a sleazy, turbo charged, grindhouse film with fast cars, impossibly sexy girls, camp, ridiculous dialogue and outrageously unnecessary violence. The dancers tear off into the desert, racing their cars, taking impromptu swims in a lake, catfighting for, like, no reason and ultimately karate-chopping a man to death for even less reason.



The leader of this demented girl gang is the ferocious Varla, played by Tura Satana, a somewhat psychotic, switchblade wielding Amazon of a woman. Mean, domineering and awesome.


Gas Station Attendant (while staring at Varla's astounding rack): Now that's what I believe in, seeing America first!
Varla: Well, you won't find it down there, Columbus!

Rosie, played by Haji, is the gorgeous Italian bird with kind of a thing for crazy Varla. Her accent is a constant source of hilarity throughout the film, as she speaks like Super Mario's long lost hot sister. i.e. I'm-a gonna spin-a-dry you out!


Rosie (having been offered a soft drink): We don't like anything soft. Everything we do is hard.

(Heh. In your endo.)

Lori Williams, as smokin' hot bubbly blonde Billie completes the trio of kitties. Cute, fun-loving and out for the craic, she has a bit more of a conscience than the other girls, but enjoys racing and boozing just as much as they do.


Billie: I'm of legal age for whiskey, voting and loving. Now the next election is two years away, and my love life ain't getting much better, so how about some of that one-hundred-percent!


It's trashy, silly and hugely great fun altogether. It's referred to as an exploitation film, and while it has no problem making the absolute most of the gravity-defying knockers and long legs of its stars, you'd be hard pressed to find a female character as unapologetically strong-willed, powerful and domineering as Varla. Officially great craic.

Tick Tock Toe

The footpaths round our way have taken on the appearance of a spraypainted game of noughts and crosses of late. I say noughts and crosses only because I can't find a satisfactory way of either punctuating or spelling exs and ohs/x's and o's/xes and os. (See? None of them look right.) I'm presuming it's all part of the "sealing up every little thing in the ground that could possibly be opened" process in anticipation of Herself and the visit that's going to make getting anywhere eleven times more difficult for everyone next week. The Bear wisely suggested that they're nervously checking out all the sewers as a preventative measure against Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Over on the Southside, the area around Grafton and Nassau Street seems to be playing host to some manner of footpath Cluedo.


Twitchy Gardaí have been hovering two by two around the Holy Mary blue gates of the Garden of Remembrance for the last two weeks, with the place eventually being closed altogether "until further notice". She's swinging by my place of work on Wednesday, so I'm rather interested to see how much of the paranoid security measures I'll encounter when in her general vicinity. Personally I'm looking forward to it all being over with and her safely ensconced back in her fancy palace so everyone can chill the fuck out.

Smoke and Mirrors

For someone who hates cigarettes as much as I do, I have something of an odd fascination with the cigarette girls that could be found in American nightclubs and cafes of the 1940s and 50s. Their outfits were cheeky and cute, rocking fishnets or seamed stockings and pill box hats, with a great big tray of sweets, novelty items and emphysema slung around their pretty necks.





Cigarette girls popped up all over the place in the 40s and 50s, celebrity hotspots, comic books, cartoons and pin-up art to name but a few pop culture appearances.

Ciro's was a famous nightclub and moviestar hangout in Hollywood from the forties through to the sixties, where little hotties like this could be found flogging tobacco.

An issue of the 1940s aviation-themed comic book Link Thorne featured this deadly sci-fi looking cigarette girl.

Foxy cigarette girl pin-ups by Enoch Bolles and Al Moore. Mega gorgeousness.

Hollywood starlets like Jayne Mansfield and Elizabeth Taylor were snapped posing as cigarette girls in nightclubs in the fifties at charity events, Audrey Hepburn had a bit part as a cigarette girl in 1951's Laughter in Paradise and even Betty Boop jiggled into the still-excellent Who Framed Roger Rabbit? brandishing a tray of cigars and Camels.

Josie Maran as a rather alluring Egyptian style cigarette girl in The Aviator and Audrey as her minor character in 1951.

I'm so in love with the look and reckon it would make for a rather terrific fancy dress costume, although I'd almost certainly get fed up of lugging the tray around. But it would look deadly altogether, which would be some consolation I suppose.

Z Day

Here's the thing. I'm one of those people who quite often find themselves considering what the hell I would do when the inevitable zombie apocalypse kicks off. When the Bear and I had finished emptying out bags from Tesco after a particularly big food shopping trip, I surveyed our well stocked shelves of canned goods and fridge and thought to myself "We are so sorted if there's a zombie outbreak in the next few days." I even considered how we could concoct some manner of zip line to cross the street below our top floor apartment, over to Spar in case we ran out of milk or Jaffa Cakes.

Every so often I have dreams about zombies and most recently I had the best one yet. In it, the Bear and myself were holed up in a flat above a shop overlooking a street riddled with shuffling zombies, but we were accompanied by none other than the Mythbusters. Who better to improvise ways of blowing the shit out of the undead than those people? (Except maybe MacGyver.) I'm going to need to get Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman on board with my zombie survival plan, quick smart.

Anyway, my hypothetical plans have gone into overdrive lately, as I recently tore my way through the tremendously brilliant World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (a fantastic-as-usual Christmas present from the Bear). I never realised books could be scary, but there were quite a few parts of this one that freaked me the fuck out. It very nearly ended up in the freezer on more than one occasion. I also got scared while reading it on the train, as the realisation dawned on me that a train carraige is surely one of the worst possible places to be in a case of a zombie infestation.

Yesterday, the Bear struck zombie survival gold when he unearthed the most amazing and perfect zombie proof house and sent me the link to it. People, I give you "The Safe House", located in the outskirts of Warsaw and designed by KWK Promes, the marvellous bastards. Behold!

Big fuck-off wall to keep the damned at bay? Check.


Jaw-droppingly beautiful interior in which to comfortably ride out the plague of the undead? Check.


Exterior that can be sealed up to render it an impenetrable self-contained fortress of awesomeness? Check.

Oh, did I mention that it has a retractable walkway to the top floor? WELL IT DOES.

Suck on that, zombie jerks.

Back To 1955

Oh my aching feet. Last night I, along with the Bear, T Cup, the Incredible Mulq and various others bedecked in fifties finery danced our sexy socks right off at the shoot for The Dead Flags and their ingenious Back To The Future themed video. The red and white dotty dress I wore to the Blog Awards was whipped out once again, this time with a ponytail and neck scarf to Class of '55 the bejaysus out of it.


Up until that point, I spent my long weekend pretty much offline, under the radar and armed to the teeth with scissors, glitter and paint as I was tasked with the aquatic style decoration of the venue. I found it most amusing that for someone who ticked the 'no religion' box on the census form, I spent a sizeable amount of Good Friday cutting different shapes of fish out of coloured paper. I think that between the Bear and myself, we cut out something in the region of two hundred fish, not including the bigger and be-glittered fish and seahorses that adorned the stage and pillars. It was ridiculous, but the upstairs of the Grand Social completely looked the part for the Enchantment Under The Sea dance, if I may say so myself. Here's a sneaky still from the shoot:

My banner has tidier lettering than the original, despite my initial intentions to match the movie version. When it came to painting them in though, my natural instinct to stay inside the lines took over entirely.

I'm extremely excited about seeing the final result for the video, the song itself is insanely catchy and has been rattling around my head for the last three days. Rest assured that as soon as it comes online I'll be shoving it in all of your lovely faces from every conceivable angle. In terms of the internet, anyway.

No McFlag ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley

Continuing the theme of fantastic films from the eighties, I'm sure you'll all agree that Back To The Future is one of the greatest films of all time. If not, then I'm afraid things between us just aren't going to work out. Watching all three of them in one sitting is my idea of a day damn well spent. Only recently the first film was on TV, and I had switched to it just in time for the deadly Johnnie B. Goode scene at the Enchantment Under The Sea dance, which delighted me no end, as it's one of my favourite parts. In which case, you can imagine my excitement when The Dead Flags revealed that the video for their comeback single will be a recreation of THAT VERY SCENE. Get outta town!

So, to pull off this most epic of tasks, they require people all dressed up in 1950s style finery to twist and shout for an hour or two in The Grand Social next Tuesday, 26th of April. I for one am chomping at the bit to get myself into my polka dot dress and high school ponytail for it.


The occasion calls for circle skirts, pearls, bobby socks, layers of tulle, corsages and dainty neck scarves for the ladies, and blazers, skinny ties and quiffs for the boys.

They just weren't ready for it yet, the moody bastards. But their kids are going to love it.

So throw together an outfit not unlike the ones worn by the Hill Valley posse above and get yo' sexy ass over to The Grand Social next Tuesday. Details on Facebook here. Be there or be square.

See Ya Later, Navigator

Last night I experienced a most glorious nostalgia buzz. The kind of nostalgia buzz that only an eighties film from your nineties childhood can create. The eighties film in question being Disney's magnificent Flight of the Navigator. I think that, along with The Goonies and Batteries Not Included were mine and my brother's most watched videos as sticky little children.

We used to call it Night of the Flavigator, under the illusion that we were being hilariously witty in doing so.

The nostalgia was almost overwhelming (although at that stage the buzz was quite possibly fueled by prosecco as well as childhood memories), as I hadn't seen it since I was about nine years old. Imagine my surprise when it transpired that the cool older girl with purple in her hair that befriends David, our confused hero was actually Sarah Jessica Parker all this time. With one hell of a 1986 head on her.

Told you so.

Anyway, all of that is completely besides the point, as what really surprised me was that I had entirely forgotten about the Puckmaren and more importantly, HOW MUCH I WANT ONE. For those of you who also need their memories jogged, I am referring to the unbelieveably cute and weird looking little alien that David meets on board MAX, the spaceship.


I realise this post will make little to no sense for anyone who hasn't actually seen Flight of the Navigator and if that is indeed the case, then get the hell off my lawn until you have. There's a chilling rumour of a remake doing the rounds, which displeases me greatly. There's something so genuinely charming about these fantasy/sci-fi kid's movies from the eighties and nineties, in that you know there were actual sets and props and freaky-looking Jim Henson-y puppets involved, whereas nowadays everything is green screened and 3D'd to within an inch of its life. Leave well enough alone, Disney jerks. But get me a Puckmaren, dammit.

The Joy Imperative

A little while ago, the ever delightful EleventyFour asked me to design the artwork for her debut EP, The Joy Imperative. It was officially released yesterday, the 11/4/11 (Eleventy Four Eleventy, obviously) and I got tremendously excited when I saw it for sale on iTunes.

I mean the design, of course, as the wonderful whimsical tracks within are obviously the superb work of Eleventy herself.

It was my first time designing for a CD case and I had so much fun doing it. It's so deadly seeing it as a real actual thing on a shelf in a shop.





I scattered references to the words of the songs on the CD throughout the collage style design, as well as the five icons on the cover and disc which represent each track. The "Around the World" ticket (Route 114, get it? Eh?) refers to a line in Small Wonders, "Put me in your pocket and we'll sail all over the world", while the loveheart sweets come from The Friend Song, the lyrics of which include indoor friends, outdoor friends, let's meet up for cocktails friends and myriad other friends which pop up represented as sweets here and there on the inside and back of the packaging.


The Joy Imperative is a terrific collection of sweet, funny songs which has been reviewed most splendidly in haiku form no less, over on Swear I'm Not Paul. As well as iTunes, it's available on Amazon and Bandcamp, where you can order physical copies as well as download it. It's also available to buy in Freebird Records (Secret Book & Record Store) and Tower Records, both on Wicklow Street, Wingnut Records in Galway and Plugd Records in Cork and 10% of the profits go to DePaul Ireland, so support your independent record shops now, ya hear?

Drawn This Way

As most of you are surely well aware by now, I'm a tad obsessed with old school pin up girl art. I've previously mentioned that I wrote a dissertation in college about the origins of the pin up girl, the coasters on our coffee table are tiles adorned with saucy thigh-flashing hotties and for my birthday last year the Bear knocked it out of the park with a Vargas girl double whammy of a vintage deck of cards and a 1972 collection of Playboy centrefolds. So when I spotted a link on Facebook, courtesy of Anne-Marie, that contained a gallery of pin up girls and the photos on which the artist based them, I got a bit excited. It's a mad kind of before and after, where the artist quite clearly selects bits and pieces of the models in the photos to put together a winking, impossibly streamlined and downright gorgeous Frankenstein cutie.









If you want to see more, and let's not kid ourselves, of course you do, the full gallery is here.

Quelque Chose #11

The Bear: Can I have a Stinger bar? Or will that ruin my dinner...

Me: Of course you can! Sure that's the beauty of being a grown up!

The Bear (returns with Stinger bar in hand): Did you just call me a grown up? How dare you.