On the Job on YouTube

Thanks to Daniel P. Smith and his video editor pal Joey Bicicchi I have seen my first trailer ever for a book, and it happens to be for one of our books: Smith's On the Job: Behind the Stars of the Chicago Police Department. See it here, then let us know what you think.

Hostbusters

Authors Ted Okuda (left) and Mark Yurkiw of our upcoming Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie (May/June 2007) in host-busting mode (photo by Adam Yurkiw). Our cover designer Timothy Kocher has done such a fantastic job, we couldn't wait to show it off, though it's still being tweaked. Read the back cover:


Creature Features

During my generally misspent youth, I devoted an inordinate amount of time watching the most preposterous movies ever made. I use the word preposterous advisedly, because that’s the precise term to describe films involving giant scorpions, teenage werewolves, little green Martians, big alien brains, fire-breathing space turtles, 50-foot women, puppet people, humongous leeches, killer shrews, and grasshoppers as big as the Shedd Aquarium. Not that I have any regrets.

—Co-author Ted Okuda

Although the motion picture industry initially disparaged and feared television, by the late 1950s, studios saw the medium as a convenient dumping ground for thousands of films that had long been gathering dust in their vaults. As these films found their way to local TV stations, enterprising distributors grouped the titles by genre so programmers could showcase them accordingly. It was in this spirit that Chicago’s tradition of TV horror movie shows was born.

TV viewers couldn’t get enough of the old monster movies—everything from glossy Frankenstein and Dracula epics to low-budget cheapies featuring giant grasshoppers and teenage werewolves. Here in Chicago, these films were broadcast on such horror movie shows as Shock Theatre, Thrillerama, Creature Features, and Screaming Yellow Theater.

Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie is the first comprehensive look at Chicago’s horror movie programs, from their inception in 1957 to the present. Through career profiles of the Horror Hosts who provided comedic interludes between commercial breaks, discover which creepy presenter was one of the 12 reporters to travel around the country with the Beatles during their 1965–66 U.S. tour, and learn about the politics behind Channel 32’s sudden (and outrageous) switch from Svengoolie to the Ghoul. Also included are broadcast histories of such “hostless” programs as Creature Features, Thrillerama, The Big Show, The Early Show, The Science Fiction Theater, and Monster Rally, along with a guide to 100 fright films broadcast on Chicago television and a look at the “Shock!” horror library that started a TV craze.

Filled with rare photographs and never-before-published data, Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows celebrates a grand tradition in local television.

The Newest Recruit

Hello, LCP community! I just got my login to the blog and wanted to introduce myself. (I’m Diana Solomon.) If you haven’t met me yet, chances are you will sometime this year—I’m the newest LCP employee, not to be confused with the Diana who worked here in December and January. I am a fourth-generation Chicagoan and am an expert on finding authentic bagels in Chicagoland. (On that note, did you know that the original bagel is probably from Krakow, contrary to the widely accepted myth that it hails from Vienna? A 1610 reference states that bagels should be given to pregnant women, according to http://www.nyc24.org/2002/issue01/story02/page03.asp.) If you think there’s sufficient demand for a Chicago guidebook to bagels, please let Sharon know so we can begin production. :-)

LakeClaremontPressSpace

We now have a Lake Claremont Press MySpace page, so drop by to say hello and join our online community. A few of our authors are on MySpace along with several of our customers. It's free and easy and interesting. If you have photos from past Lake Claremont Press events, e-mail them to lcp@lakeclaremont.com so that we can post them online.

Pull up a stool

If you've never had the opportunity to drink one with Rick Kogan in the Billy Goat Tavern, start off by reading A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, a Curse, and the American Dream and then follow it up with one of the two following conversations with the man himself:

Download the third and fourth episodes of Outside the Loop Radio to your computer or MP3 player and listen to Rick tell some of his favorite stories and talk about all things local while hanging at the Goat with Mike Stephen and Andy Hermann. Rated R for language, kids.
(If you haven't listened to Mike Stephen and Andy Hermann's Chi-centric Outside the Loop Radio, you can now catch it on WLUW 88.7 FM Friday nights at 6:00 p.m.)

On Monday, April 9, Rick will join the Gapers Block Book Club at The Book Cellar (4736 N. Lincoln Ave.) at 7:30 p.m. for a discussion of his book A Chicago Tavern, the club's April book selection. No worries, The Book Cellar serves wine to those 21 years of age and older.

Second only to Wise Guy's Corner.

Shoveling Winter Away

Luxuriating in today's beautiful weather, the snow-heaped and ice-sheathed sidewalks that plagued our walking not too long ago seem a pleasant, not-too-irritating memory. But for future reference, a long-time LCP supporter C.J. Martello has written an editorial for the local Inside newspaper on shoveling walkways and clarifies a few items on that old excuse that shoveling your walks only opens the way for lawsuits...