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.
So here is our last installment of our AI journey exploring the idea of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad wolf being one and the same. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva. Feel free to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this exploration if you missed them.
A non sequitur I know, but I couldn’t resist. If you picked up where we left off you’ll get it.
Seriously?! Again with the cropped off head cop out…
Finally! That was a journey. And not even worth the result, in my opinion.
Anyway, here is a bonus montage I made out of a bunch of additional Red Riding Hood prompts for an article that never happened…
Prompts for Montage:
1.) What if Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf were one and the same being?
2.) Her wolf face peering out of her red cloak, fangs dripping with the blood of another victim, lost in the forest and never found.
3.) Little Red Riding Hood closes in for the kill, lunging from her red cloak, her wolf fangs dripping with blood.
4.) I am Little Red Riding Hood. I am the Big Bad Wolf. I am coming for you.
5.) Howling within, the rage sears forth from the red cloak, discarded in the deep woods. Red Riding Hood succumbs to the lycanthropy.
6.) Heaving breaths. Dripping blood. Red Riding Hood is not what she appears. She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
7.) Her red cloak masks the fangs hidden below the surface.
8.) It starts with a long sighing breath. Waiting. The wolf within stirs.
9.) Red Riding Hood trembles. She succumbs to the lycanthropy.
10.) The wolf bursts forth from within. It takes over Little Red Riding Hood’s mind, her body, her being.
11.) Red Riding Hood howls. She is ravenous with hunger for blood. The wolf within has taken over. Mind, spirit, body. She feasts on the blood of the moon.
12.) Big Bad Wolf Red Riding Hood ravenous blood moon feast
13.) Blood moon beckons. I. Little Red Big Bad Riding Hood Wolf. Freedom howling night curse.
14.) Beware. Bewolf. BeRedRidingHood. Betwixt. Beyond.
15.) I pad quietly as the forest dissolves around me. Red Riding Hood and Wolf, one and the same.
16.) Wolf within howling dark recesses of the mind, Red Riding Hood lost
17.) Red Riding Hood HOWL wolf bane true existence polymorph within-and-without.
18.) Red howl Riding Wolf dark existence brooding within
So thank you for joining us on another AI art journey. You can still catch the last AI art journey on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
Continuing our AI journey from last time exploring Little Red Riding Hood herself as the Big Bad Wolf… All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
How very… Phantom of the Opera predatory… this is definitely not what I had in mind. Maybe something more cutesy?
Ugh. Maybe not.
Wow, that seems like such a cop out, cropping off the head so you don’t have to depict it. And I don’t want to lose the Little Red Riding Hood reference completely.
So no surprise there, I knew that was too many references to work.
And we continued to devolve, join us again next week for the final installment to see how this ended… And again, if you want to catch the last AI art journey, you can find it on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
And as promised in Big Bad Poetry, we shall embark on our next AI journey, this time looking at Little Red Riding Hood. I had wanted to depict her as the Big Bad Wolf one and the same, although maybe not so big nor bad. But it just wasn’t happening quite as planned. All of these are based upon the AI generated art and prompts using NightCafe and then created as posters in Canva.
So I actually like this even better than my original vision, it is playful and even a bit serene (especially given the Sinister style). The wolf is just being a wolf. It’s quite lovely, really. But it wasn’t what I had in mind, so I revisited the idea later to see if I could get that result…
Well, that’s not quite right…
Yeah more of the same…
And as you can see this is starting to devolve quickly. Join us again next week to see how this continued to develop… And if you want to catch the last AI art journey, you can find it on Haunted MTL here. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.
