Stitching together the various parts

My monster alerts carried me to this amusing YouTube creation. Take a few body parts from one Democratic presidential candidate and a few from the other, and you get --- is it a monster or a dream vision come true? Take a look.

Swing, batter

Ooooh, I like this one.

One of my hobby-horses involves finding new analogies that connect the monster to new realms -- and I like this one.

Roger Clemens, alias Dr. Clemenstein, who started out a man and made himself a monster, an all-star monster at that, by taking performance-enhancing steroids.

That's the terminology chosen by commentator Robert Lipsyte on CommonDreams.org.

"The drugs went in and the soul came out. . . . We'll see him go down," writes Lipsyte melodramatically.

All we need is a burning windmill.

Winter's monster may rebound

In among mentions of the motorcycle rallies where he plays live these days comes news that Edgar Winter is writing a musical based on his history-making rock classic, "Frankenstein."

"Part of what I've tried to do throughout my career is broaden musical horizons and play a really wide variety of music," a Washington, PA, reporter quotes him as saying. "I'm primarily thought of as a rocker, but I really do love jazz and classical." The occasion for the article is a live performance this weekend by Winter at—don't you love it?—the Pepsi Cola Roadhouse in Burgettstown, PA.

Move over, Mel Brooks. Here comes someone who has had his finger on the pulse of the monster for as long as you have.

Election allusions

It's bound to happen. You can't have an election in the United States without someone finding some way—or many people finding many ways—to bring the monster into the conversation.

Today it's Mike Garibaldi-Frick, commenting on the flak Hillary is taking for being a woman with a strong presence. "If the mob is flocking to Obama while launching vicious attacks on the Clinton Frankenstein monster with 'crazy eyes,'" he wrote, "I'll feel compassion to help Frankenstein."

Mary Shelley is settling down a little more comfortably in her grave. If she were alive, who would she be campaigning for?

3D experience from My Boss

My Boss? National Geographic Society.

Monster? Well, not really -- but monstrously entertaining.

Yin or yang?

"I've always considered Frankenstein's creation more a creature than a monster," Christopher Lee is quoted as saying today in an article with a few other juicy tidbits about the place of the monster in his acting career.

Too bad the makeup crew of his Hammer portrayals didn't agree. Remember those pustules? Yuck.

What about you? Creature or monster? Let us know.

Pan's monster

Recent rumor has it that Guillermo del Toro, creator of the magical Pan's Labyrinth -- influenced tremendously, he admitted at its opening, by Mary Shelley and the making of her monster -- is just waiting for the writers' strike to end in order to get going on his new vision: a new version of Frankenstein.

The more monsters the merrier -- and I believe del Toro's would be merry indeed.