Tombstone Tuesday!

Headstone monument from Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines.

Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday - The Cemetery Gates Pt. 2

The gates of St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Once again, like the 'Fear' and 'Lament' stones in St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery, I happened to come across this gravemarker with the name 'Skelton' that just seemed all too appropriate in a place filled with skeletons.



Stay Tombed!

-DE

Psycho Bathroom Redux: A Grim Failure . . .

Some time ago, I took it upon myself to redecorate the bathroom of our Toronto apartment with a Psycho-inspired bloody bath mat and shower curtain combo that actually ended up looking pretty good.

But when Niki and I moved from Toronto to St. Catharines only six months later, we discovered that what had looked creepy in a fun and kooky way in the modern, finished bathroom of a downtown condo didn't work as well in the partially unfinished bathroom of the 30+ year old rear extension of an 80+ year old house. It was still creepy, but in more of a "I-don't-want-to-go-back-in-there-ever-again!" kind of way. In fact, a few house-guests have simply refused to use that bathroom at all.

The actual shower curtain and bath mat are still perfectly fine. I think in the right space they could still work.

It's the color of both the walls and floor of the room that really made the space so cold and uninviting.

I suppose the severed head of KISS' Gene Simmons is what certain house-guests found most objectionable, but the rubber ducks had taken up residence in the upstairs bathroom and I needed something to distract from both the unfinished state of the vanity . . .

. . . and the column of exposed brick left over from the old chimney. This is what I hated most about this room, exposed brick is nice, but . . . in a bathroom?! To build over it would have been costly and annoying, so I just sealed up the gaps with some drywall putty and left it as it stood.

It was pretty much the same thing with the vanity. There was a fairly large gap between it and the wall, but to tear it out and start over would have been more hassle than it was worth, so again, I simply filled in the gap with some putty and smoothed the whole thing down.

The fixtures in the room were fine (for the most part). A nice chrome towel bar and a matching toilet-roll hook, but the air vent register was pretty rusty and where I had Gene hanging from was a robe hook where a hand-towel ring should be.

I was content to leave all these things as they were while Niki and I got settled into the house and comfortable with our new surroundings, but once that was taken care of I knew I would have to make some changes to this room. Changes which have now, nearly two years later, finally been finished!

More to come!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Something about the perfect sphere of polished granite resting on the top of this marker in St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery just called my attention to it. I'm not exactly sure why, though.

Maybe because it reminded me of a crystal ball, like the Palantíri of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings saga or Maerlyn's Rainbow in Stephen King's Dark Tower cycle. Or perhaps because the gravestone as a whole looks a bit like a life-sized pawn on a wizard's chessboard, like the one in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Though spelled slightly different, this gravestone in St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery instantly reminded me of the Marvel Comics character Daimon Hellstrom (aka: The Son of Satan, Hellstorm). He was first introduced in the pages of the original Ghost Rider comic back in the '70s, but is probably best remembered as a member of The Defenders and husband to teammate Patsy Walker (aka: Hellcat).


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Like the "Fear" gravestone from last month, this grave marker in St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery with the name "Lament" struck me as being eerily appropriate for the setting.


Stay tombed!

-DE

I Triple Dog-Dare You!

It's the first of December! And now that the late November hiatus is over, Thursday will now be the regular day for DE/VL Design's weekly blog. So without further ado, let's get started with something sure to get everyone into the holiday spirit!

A few weeks ago, Niki shared a bit of information with me that she had picked up from a longtime St. Catharines resident about how a few exterior scenes from the classic holiday movie A Christmas Story had been filmed outside of a school not very far from where we now live.

FUDGE! (Only I didn't say "Fudge" . . .)

How awesome is that? Pretty awesome. We looked into it and discovered that the school in question, Victoria Public School (though now no longer operating as a school, but as a women's shelter) is just around the corner from the end of our street! We grabbed the camera and set out on one of our shortest, but most fulfilling movie location adventures yet.

While the building that had doubled as Warren G. Harding Elementary School is actually located on Niagara Street, most of the playground scenes were filmed around behind the school, in an area that has now been converted into the shelter's parking area and a recent townhouse complex known as Victoria Estates.

Because of the new housing development, many of the original landmarks are now gone, but it was still easy to find the famous spot where poor Flick was triple dog-dared into sticking his tongue to the frozen flagpole by Schwartz and Ralphie.

The pole at the corner of Gibson Place and Fitzgerald St. is long gone (though sharp-eyed Niki was quick to point out the new flagpole in the backyard of the house that now stands where the infamous dare went down), but a nearby telephone pole substitutes nicely for recreating the iconic scene.

Incredibly, the houses directly across the intersection look exactly as they did in the background of the shots where Flick is trapped by his own tongue as the rest of the kids run back to the school after the recess bell rings.

Of course, if you want to learn more about all the shoot locations from A Christmas Story, there's really only one place to go: A Christmas Story House.

Want to see the Triple Dog-Dare in it's entirety? You can watch it on Youtube.

Happy Holidays everyone!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Sadly, this week's tombstone is fresh and comes from our own backyard.

The day after South Park aired it's "Bass to Mouth" episode last month, I happened to notice one particular squirrel on our street had a distinctive mottling to the new winter coat that was growing in. Between the striking new coat and the hilariously memorable South Park episode the night before, I instantly decided to dub this squirrel "Wikileaks." Unfortunately, I discovered Wikileaks in front of our driveway last Tuesday around 6 pm, obviously struck by a passing car. It had happened within the hour since I had just been out tossing peanuts to all the squirrels that nest in our front tree. Feeling somewhat responsible (if not for the nuts I'd thrown, Wiki might not have been anywhere near), I thought it was only right to give the poor guy a proper and respectful send-off.

R.I.P. Wikileaks and stay tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

This marker statue at Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines looks like it's ready to give the Almighty a whupping with its beating stick . . .


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

Here's a grave marker from St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery that caught my eye. What could be more terrifying than having to face Fear itself in a graveyard? I think I know what Blue Oyster Cult would tell me . . .


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Tombstone Tuesday!

A word of advice for the groundskeeper of St. Catharines' Victoria Lawn Cemetery: If you trim some of that shrubbery back, your Johnson will look much bigger.


Stay Tombed!

-DE

Space Pirates From The Land Of The Rising Sun! Horror Punks And . . . A Big Weasel?!

Captain Harlock is just one – though perhaps the best known – of the many creations of Japanese manga artist Leiji Matsumoto (Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Express 999, Queen Emeraldas, Gun Frontier, Cosmo Warrior Zero, etc.). Of course, the fact that Captain Harlock has made at least a cameo appearance in nearly all of Matsumoto’s works may explain the scope of his notoriety.

Although first created in 1953 as a minor character in Matsumoto’s Adventures of a Honey Bee, the Captain wouldn’t enjoy a title spot until Space Pirate Captain Harlock was serialized between 1977 and 1979 in the Japanese magazine Play Comic. The story was quickly adapted to a 42 episode TV series that ran from 1978 to 1979. The full-length feature prequel, Arcadia of My Youth was released in 1982 and a second series, Endless Orbit SSX soon followed. Since that time, Captain Harlock has appeared in countless other “Leijiverse” stories, on both page and screen, authorized and unauthorized.


Like many others, I might never have discovered the exploits of the crew of Harlock’s space battleship Arcadia if not for The Misfits’ 1982 LP release Walk Among Us. Along with a creature from the 1959 B-movie Angry Red Planet, the album cover features a band photo with vocalist Glenn Danzig wearing a shirt and matching gloves with Harlock's signature "Jolly Roger" skull and bones.


The iconic album eventually went on to influence the sound, lyrics and imagery of many other bands, like White Zombie, for example.


And me? What can I say? I’ve been a fan of Captain Harlock for years, and believe me, I’ve got the videos, comic books, action figures, clothing and general collector bric-a-brac to back it up!


So you can imagine my delight while recently rewatching the very first episode of Space Pirate Captain Harlock, when I came across an eerily familiar image, one practically from my own backyard!


Anyone traveling through the Niagara Region along the QEW over the last ten years will no doubt have noticed the wrecked “pirate ship” along the shore of Jordan Station, just outside of St. Catharines. While not an actual shipwreck, the story of how it came to be in its present state is still a sad one.


A replica of La Grande Hermine (“The Big Weasel”) - the ship that brought famed French explorer Jacques Cartier to the New World – the ship served as a restaurant for Montreal’s Expo ’67 and was soon after moved and put on display in a Quebec City park.


After suffering several decades of poor maintenance, La Grande Hermine was dismantled and relocated to Jordan Harbour, outside of St. Catharines, ON, with the intention of restoring and returning the ship to it’s original use as a floating restaurant.


However, funding for the restoration project fell through, and shortly after in 2002, a “suspicious fire” rendered the boat unsalvageable and the remains have stayed where they are since.



For more information on Space Pirate Captain Harlock and to watch all 42 episodes of the original series, visit Crunchyroll.

If you’d like to see what La Grande Hermine looked like inside before the fire, I’d suggest checking out Infiltration.

Detailed information on La Grande Hermine’s location can also be found at Waymarking.com.

-DE