ONLINE CATALOG

if you have a big bag (or box)(or small bag) of GI JOEs, where the legs all fell off because the rubber band broke, please consider donating them to HBML so we can make cool “candy crust” tribal necklaces out of them. we have some (pictured), need more. come on, what are you doing with them? also will trade broken (yours) for non-broken (ours) (4 to 1) while supplies last.

Herbert Edgar Wyndham was born in Manchester, England. While a student at Oxford in the 1930s, took an interest in the work of heretical biologist Nathaniel Essex, and began experimenting with genetic manipulation, building a machine (that he called the genetic accelerator) with which he attempted to “evolve” the rats in his mother’s London basement. While attending a genetics conference in Geneva, Wyndham was approached by a mysterious man (in truth, the outcast Inhuman geneticist Phaeder) who handed to him papers containing blueprints for cracking the genetic code. With this information to bolster his experiments, Wyndham successfully developed a serum he dubbed “Isotope A.”

Although expelled from the university for his single-mindedness, he finally succeeded in evolving his pet Dalmatian, Dempsey, into a humanoid life form with the intelligence of a chimpanzee. Dempsey, unfortunately, was shot by poachers, and Wyndham realized that such creatures as he would create would have no place in the human world. In partnership with scientist Jonathan Drew (father of Jessica Drew), Wyndham moved his experiments to the seclusion of Wundagore Mountain in the small Balkan nation of Transia. Discovery of uranium on the land (inherited by Drew’s wife) provided vast funding, and they bought more land from local baron Gregor Russoff.

Assembling a “citadel of science” designed by German scientist Horace Grayson (father of the future Marvel Boy) and built by Moloid slaves supplied by Phaeder, the pair continued their experiment until Drew’s daughter fell ill from uranium poisoning, and was placed into suspended animation to save her life. Subsequently, Drew’s wife was attacked and killed by a werewolf (Russoff himself, victim of a family curse), and Drew left Wundagore; Wyndham, on the other hand, developed a suit of protective silver armor for himself and continued his work. Now joined in his work by research assistant Miles Warren (future supervillain the Jackal), Wyndham was able to make more and more radical breakthroughs, including the genetic acceleration of some local animals into the half-human, half-animal beings that he dubbed his “New Men”.

When Jonathan Drew returned to Wundagore, possessed by the ghost of the 6th century magician Magnus, he warned that the citadel had been constructed upon the place where the malevolent Elder God Chthon had been banished. He began to train the New Men in the ways of combat and chivalry of his time, until they eventually came to refer to themselves as the “Knights of Wundagore,” and to Wyndham as the “Lord High Evolutionary”. In 1958, Magnus’ fears came to pass when Baron Russoff attempted to use the ancient magical tome known as the Darkhold to cure himself of his lycanthropy, inadvertently freeing Chthon from imprisonment. The Knights held him off and Magnus was able to re-bind the demon; however, on this same night, a pregnant woman named Magda sought refuge at the citadel and gave birth to twin children there. Although she fled after childbirth, the moment of Chthon’s defeat coincided with the birth of the children, and the baby girl was touched with the demon’s magic. Wyndham attempted to find foster parents for the children, but when met with failure, they were placed in stasis for decades until suitable candidates were found. Raised by Gypsies Django and Marya Maximoff, the twins grew up to be the superheroes Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, the latter wielding chaos magic as a result of Chthon’s influence.

high evolutionary.

there was a scam going for a while where somebody person rolls up to you with a camera or laptop computer wrapped up in some sort of nice-looking packaging, offering to sell it to you for super cheap on the condition that you can’t open the packaging first (which, as everyone knows, would lower the resale value). you’re led to believe that it is stolen off a truck or something, but in any event, a web is spun, money exchanges and you unwrap… a piece of painted wood.

it sucks but the few pictures i saw of the scam were pretty good. i mean as “folk art” it was pretty nice. so we had these fake laptops made. see the keyboard, and the touchpad, and the screen? our technicians did a really good job with this.

mike benedetti uses one of these on the snow ghost show.

cute dude union local 878
filmed in front of the hair police record, which is looooong gone.

this isn’t a picture, it’s an extremely slow movie.

another entry in the carnival mirror category, this fine number was made in-shop to commemorate the LA punk band the germs (”GI” stands for “germs incognito”). there’s a movie coming out about the germs, and they even “reunited”, with the actor playing darby crash (the lead singer) as the lead singer. this sucks, but the actual band still rules.

the lady in the mirror pictured here is kickball katy. hi, katy!

germs mirror- $3

the germs on wikipedia

we have a few of these now, really heavy, really chalky. do like snow ghost- put one in your freezer, then get people to look in your freezer in the hopes that they’ll ask about it, then when they ask about it, tell them you like to keep a cool head. then tell me this six times. this fellow of infinite jest is here displayed by our customer mary. hi mary!

plaster skulls - $13

my neighbor esther is a nice lady, a weird dresser with bright hair, and i don’t need to tell you that i very nearly spit when i learned that she grew up on the carnival. yes, the carnival– shilling shitty trinkets to accommodating parents of garden-variety brats (”baby cry, mommy buy”), riding the egg scrambler for free, elephant ears for breakfast, corn dogs for lunch, knowing the angles, shouting “hey rube!”, etc.. so how is it possible, with all that and funny hair and tiny zoobomber bikes, skinned knees and dumpster diving, i ask you how is it possible that she did not know the bikini kill song “carnival”? i mean, we still like her- she’s great- but this new knowledge casts everything in a weird light, right?

anyway our stalwart pal kasey henniman’s got her priorities straight and made these BK-inspired mirrors, one of which we have here, for the winner of a particularly difficultsimple carnival-style game.

“i’ll win that motley crue mirror if it fucking kills me!”

motley crue mirror- 1 life of trying

bikini kill - carnival (mp3)

zoobomb on wikipedia

our pal sylvan can crack every vertebrae in her back in a row and in one fell swoop. i don’t have to tell you that it’s one of the worst things i’ve ever heard. i half-expected to see her skeleton step gingerly out of her skin and drape the skin on a chair- what i’m trying to say is that the experience gave me palpitations. anyway homegirl made us a mess of these nice earrings that are somehow lucky. they look nice, you wear them.

lucky jewelry $7 (lucky price!)

did you guys see any of those leprechaun movies? i did. i saw all six of them, in order, over a three-week span with my friend melissa number one. i’m not about to say any given movie was better than, oh, i don’t know, hiroshima mon amour. but i definitely had a good time. some notes:

• the leprechaun’s powers change in every movie, and they change by orders of magnitude- in some he can alter reality and transmute the elements, in some he’s just really mean. at first this made me mad, then i was into it.
• leprechuan 3 (or maybe 2) has this part where the leprechaun can marry this pretty lady if she sneezes three times and no one says “god bless you”. i don’t know, this really creeped me out.
• leprechaun 4 (leprechaun in space) i liked because it seems like a generic space monster movie in which they decided to make the monster a leprechaun. but nobody in the film even knows anything about leprechauns, so it’s not ridiculous to them. there’s no explanation of what a leprechaun is doing on mars (or wherever they are). ok, i don’t remember a lot about this movie, but i do remember that he has a laser shillelagh, and no one (not even the leprechaun) says “laser shillelagh”. if you had that, why would you sleep on it so bad?
• there are two movies in the series that take place “in tha hood” (those being leprechaun 5: leprechaunz in tha hood” and “leprechaun: back 2 tha hood”). you might think that “return” is going to be a lot better, because it has coolio in it, but really, coolio only walks by in the background, he could have even not realized he was being filmed. also, “return” doesn’t have the leprechaun smoking a blunt with four-leaf clovers in it, getting trapped in a safe and saying “from the depths of hell i call thee, me zombie fly-girls”. or… maybe it does. sorry, can’t remember!

in any event, these little baskets might work to trap a leprechuan, but i can’t guarantee that. in fact, i really doubt it- as far as i can tell the faerie folk always come out on top. anyway the traps will definitely work to make you feel a little safer against impending leprechaun attacks, assuming you either 1), didn’t read this paragraph or 2), had you mind erased after doing so.

leprechaun entrapments $.50

warwick davis on imdb.com

mind eraser:

• 2 oz Vodka

• 2 oz Kahlua
• 2 oz Tonic water

in a rocks glass pour vodka, the Kahlua and then the tonic water. Serve with a straw.