The Spooky Dentist, a bit of nostalgia from Jennifer Weigel
This is an actual true story of my life. It’s not a ghost story or a Bigfoot sighting or anything, but I thought you might appreciate it anyway. I am posting it in honor of my father’s memory (his birthday would be today).
For a little background: My father was a dentist until he was forced to retire due to a prolonged auto-immune disorder. He loved horror films, especially the really campy old black and white ones of the Universal Studios Monsters era, but the more obscure the better. I think his favorite may have been The Invasion of the Space Preachers, but that may have just been the flavor of the day at one time. Personally, I always liked The Beginning of the End but then again the scene at the end with the giant grasshoppers let loose all over the Chicago skyline with the shot changing every time they crawled out onto the sky just tickled me.
Anyway, I found the perfect Christmas gift for my father on clearance after Halloween: the Spooky Hollow house of the Spooky Dentist. It looked like a wide grinning skull with stairs leading up into its gaping maw. It came with a green light bulb and was meant to be a part of your Spooky Hollow Halloween porcelain lighted town to ensure that you represented all of the wondrous merchants and businesses that the world had to offer and thusly procured yet more lighted figurines for your Halloween decor setup. What can I say – it was the late 1990s or early 2000s, and this fit right in.
So I picked up the Spooky Dentist and… my father adored it. He placed it prominently in the window front and center on the enclosed porch so that all who came to the house could bask in its beauteous green glowing glory. My stepmother did not feel the same, however, and so it became the leg lamp of our family for awhile. She would turn it off, and he would go turn it on again. When the light bulb finally died, he bought a new one online at way more than one should ever have to pay for a small green light bulb, just to get it up and running again. It’s wide-grinning toothy smile greeted everyone who came and went, and so it continued on until one fateful day.
Like the leg lamp of A Christmas Story lore, the Spooky Dentist met a similar fate. It fell to its inevitable demise while my stepmother was out watering her plants. In fairness, the enclosed porch was a veritable jungle of sorts, including something a bit too closely resembling a corpse lily, but that’s a story for another day. At any rate, the Spooky Dentist was knocked from its perch and fell to the concrete below, shattering like Humpty Dumpty into too many pieces to put back together again. The porch lost some of its sparkle, bereft of the green glow that had once greeted visitors and was no more. Sure, there was still the giant Mothra butterfly kite looming at the beacon supernova of a plant grow light bulb, but honestly it just wasn’t the same.
My father passed away in 2014. I wish I could find another Spooky Dentist to place prominently somewhere in my house to greet visitors, but alas I have not been able to procure one. I admit, being banned from eBay isn’t helping, but that’s a story for another day as well. At any rate, here are some pictures I gleaned online. Maybe someday I’ll run into one somewhere, and I’ll crank up the old Frankenstein laboratory, fix it up, and maniacally laugh as I bask in its glorious green glow.
If you want to get a sense for just how well this will fit into my decor when I finally find one, you can check out some of my art collection highlights here on Haunted MTL.
-Mountains-
A serene mountain landscape yawns; monumental evergreen trees fingering a brilliant azure sky stroked with wispy clouds. The air is crisper and fresher here, wafting its piney fragrance along the meandering deer path that bends and swerves down the gradual slope…
-Reset-
-City-
A bustling urban environment beckons, its diverse, brightly-clothed denizens laughing with one another, casually parting as you stroll through their midst. Sunlight dances through the crowd, reflecting off of towering buildings, cars, and bicycles. Sounds swell together as though breathing life into all interconnected within this rich tapestry of time and space. The street is a cacophony of alluring smells, and the savory scent of kosher all-beef hot dogs…
-Vegetarian-
Fragrant cumin zing of vegetable samosas…
-European-
Perfume of freshly baked baguettes embraces you in a warm hug as you sit at a small metal café table, savoring an espresso…
-Caffeine Free-
Lavender cremosa…
-Non-Carbonated-
Limonade…
-Reset-
-Beach-
The warm sand squishes between your bare toes as the soft ocean waves lap at your feet, beckoning you to wade further into the cool water…
-No Swimming-
The woven rope hammock stretched between two perfectly-spaced palm trees sways slowly as you lounge in its cradle, sipping a Mai Tai…
-Non-Alcoholic-
Iced lemonade in a highball glass through a red plastic straw…
-Eco-Conscientious-
Paper straw, the citrusy elixir providing respite from the steamy…
-Less Hot-
Warm breezy summer…
-Spring-
Spring air, children…
-Nature-
Birds…
-Silence-
You close your eyes, hammock gently rocking you to slumber.
We here at My Universe wish to thank you again for choosing our services. We know that there are many post-cataclysmic alternative realities available, and we appreciate your business. Please enjoy your respite from the societal collapse, and remember us next time you need to unwind.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website. And if you really feel like getting away and helping clean up the beach a bit, check out this relaxing video from Dylan Clark titled Seagrass. Or maybe that wasn’t so relaxing after all… 😉
Somehow I came across an older Midnight Panther comic book, Feudal Fantasy #2 from the late 1990s to be precise, and I thought I’d reappropriate it into a new story as a collage. Anyway, this is what evolved. Honestly there wasn’t a lot of content to work with, but that isn’t surprising seeing as how that wasn’t really the point of the original… And sorry, I saved the erotic bits for another project, though even that was pretty tame in this one – just a bunch of boobies.
Images: Black and white line drawings of wide-eyed anime women and men in various states of undress, looking cute, being coyly pensive, and hack ‘n slashing.
Text reads: I like… men who are dying. We ought to just kill everyone involved. The scent of blood!! I never see his face, he always wears a mask. What a waste of time. I don’t like this. The horny bastard. What a pig!! -Slash- Sounds like it could be fun.
Images: More black and white line drawings of wide-eyed anime women and men kissing and hack ‘n slashing.
Text reads: Mercenaries of glorious Edo, if you can make the flowers that bloom along the rivers during spring drop their petals, then do so. I’m the Ferryman of the River Styx. Whssh.
OK, OK – here are some boobies since you stuck with this so long. And here’s a link to some more of my comic book collages, in case you are interested.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Black Friday.
You can’t beat the deals. So many of us. Waiting. Readying. Checking the time. Counting down the seconds. You better believe I earned my place at the start of the line. I’ve been camping out here since late Wednesday. Yeah, yeah, the holiday was yesterday. Whatever, I had my family’s full endorsement.
Because that new high-definition television beckons. The best in zoning out technology. All channel access. Cutting edge entertainment. Bleeding edge. That blade is sharp, baby. Like a razor.
But this kind of escapism is costly. A reality check says it’s not in my family’s budget. We don’t make that kind of money, and so here I am. Among all the others vying for the same prize.
Only one will get there first. Only one available. Must have TV. Must have T.V. Must. Have. T. V.
An employee approaches the door. Nobody noteworthy. A soon-to-be-casualty. No more. No less.
We rise and lurch into place. Ready…
On your mark.
Get set.
Go!
Original images generated with Nightcafe AI art generator.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website. Or if you just want more zombies, might I recommend either Elvis or the Fashionistas?
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