 Woman accidentally kills boyfriend in encyclopedia stunt gone wrong. 
A Minnesota woman has been charged with second degree manslaughter this week after fatally shooting her boyfriend in the chest with a 50-calibre Desert Eagle handgun. Monalisa Perez and Pedro Ruiz wanted to be YouTube stars, and in a bid to increase viewership of their channel about being teen parents had conceived a stunt where Ruiz would stop a bullet with an encyclopedia held to his chest. Perez had posted on social media earlier in the day that it was her boyfriend's idea, but of course there's nothing in the posting to suggest she had doubts the crazy idea would work. Firing from a foot away, Perez ventilated her boyfriend as their three-year-old child and thirty neighbors watched.
 The couple should have read the encyclopedia instead of shooting it. If they had turned to the entry marked “handguns,” they'd have learned that a 50-calibre Desert Eagle is about as powerful as a sidearm gets, and its round will go through a refrigerator. Turn past the handgun part and there's an entry on “hearts,” which explains that because it's one of the body's primary organs and people generally can't live without an intact one, any stunt that puts it at risk is idiotic by definition. And beyond that section there's the entry “hubris,” which would be defined as excessive self confidence, often leading to one looking like an ignoramus. In this instance a dead one. Yes, we know it's not really a joking matter. But we aren't joking—there's real value in reading, and we highly recommend it.
 Sharp curves and unexpected twists in road next 1,000 miles. 
Every once in a while we come across a pleasant surprise of a film and Road Games is an example of that perfect nexus where no expectations meet good filmmaking to greatly improve our day. Starring Stacy Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis, Road Games is about an American hitchhiker making her way across the Australian outback the same time a depraved serial killer is loose on the road. She's picked up by truck driver Keach and the two of them come to believe they're following the same route across the country as the murderer. Keach and Curtis are great in this. Even though Curtis's attraction to a porno mustached forty-something can only be explained as a case of outback fever, the May/December storyline is deftly handled and reasonably believable, and the entire movie is given extra dimensionality by vast Australian vistas and witty dialogue. We highly recommend this one. It seems to have been mismarketed as a horror movie back in its day, but really it's just a thriller. Straightforward, well made, and starring two appealing performers, Road Games premiered in Australia today in 1981. You see the Aussie poster above, while the U.S. promo, along with some production photos, is below.
         
 You bet I want to eat hot cherry pie, Mrs. Baker! Who doesn't? I didn't even know you could cook. 
Above, a cover for She Liked Them Young by Rick Nathan, who was also author of Six for Love. This is a crossover sleaze entry, touching on lifeguards, suburbia, and older women with teenaged boys all at once. It's from 1965 for Softcover Library with uncredited art.
 Whatever the language, the meaning is clear. 
Despite her exotic name, Azizi Johari is American, born in New York City and raised in Seattle. Her movie career consisted of bit parts, with her most noted appearances coming in the 1976 John Cassavetes film The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and the 1981 blaxploitation b-movie Body and Soul, which was a remake of the 1947 film noir classic. She originally gained recognition as a Playboy model, appearing as the magazine's Playmate of the Month in June 1975, but the above photo was used on the front of Players magazine in 1978. Oh, and on the subject of her name, “Azizi” is Arabic and means “precious,” while Johari is a Kiswahili word that means "jewel.” She's well named.
 Don't look at me that way. If I'm going to have her shoes I might as well have her wallet too.  
The Scarlet Slippers is a mystery starring Fox's recurring characters Johnny and Suzy Marshall. These two are downmarket Nick and Nora Charles copies, complete with a dog sidekick, which just goes to show that every good idea is borrowed by another writer eventually. The two are hired by L.A. lawyers to help in a trial, with the goal of proving their client's innocence. Fox was in reality a Dutch writer named Johannes Knipscheer, a name we plugged into the trusty translator to learn it means—ready for this?—“cut shave.” Appropriate—Suzy has an extra close shave herself when she falls into the clutches of a murderer. Don't worry, though. She survives to play the ditz in subsequent outings. Male authors, right? Give 'em a typewriter and they'll concoct a woman who's part candyfloss every time. 1952 copyright on this, with James Meese art on the front and a cool graphic on the rear.
 Eww! No way! If you want them shaved do it yourself! 
Non chiamate la polizia would translate as Don't Call the Police, a title chosen because that's exactly what doesn't happen. A Chicago businessman gets out of the shower to find his mistress dead, and he doesn't call the cops, instead relying on a private investigator named—wait for it—Barr Breed. That's one of the better names. This was published by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore for its Biblioteca Economica collection, and it's from 1955 and was written by Bill S. Ballinger, aka Frederic Freyer, aka B.X. Sanborn, aka Barr Breed. Actually, strike that last one. We just wanted to say it again. The book originally appeared in 1948 in the U.S., where it had another precisely descriptive title—The Corpse in the Bed. The art for Signet by Mitchell Hooks was excellent, and you see that below. We'll have more from Hooks later.
 Of course I know it isn't raining in here. But I can't take a chance on anything ruining this hair-do. 
This is an unusually cool shot, we think. In addition to its compositional elements, the pattern on the dress and umbrella are the same. Fashionistas take note—that's how it's done. The star of the photo is U.S. actress Pamela Tiffin, née Pamela Wonso, who was noticed for her beauty—a producer spotted her having lunch in the Paramount Pictures studio commissary—but became an award nominated performer. We've featured her before, and you can see those images here. 1966 on this one.
 Uncensored turns its unique journalistic eye toward Anita Ekberg. 
There's nothing quite like tabloid writing, a fact once again amply demonstrated by Uncensored. This issue is from June 1963, and check out this short paragraph from its feature on Anita Ekberg: “This is the Uncensored story of how Prince Philip bagged a rare and exotic Scandinavian pouter pigeon. Though its native habitat is Sweden, this double-breasted dove prefers the warmer climate of Italy. It also migrates as far from home as London and Hollywood.”
Double-breasted dove? They don't write like that anymore, and a good thing too. It's sexist, of course, but the tabs were generally belittling of both females and males—though in different ways. Women were derided  for dating around, such as when Uncensored refers to Ekberg as “Sexberg,” whereas men were usually disparaged for not being manly enough. That typically involved either being rebuffed by women, not scoring with enough women, or sexually preferring men. You see this in the story on Marcello Mastroianni, who's called “lazy” for passing on Brigitte Bardot. And you see it in the story on the United Nations, which is referred to as the “U.N. pansy patch.”
From the perspective of 2017, the heteronormative insecurity is pretty obvious. Men are to be prowling wolves, and any failure to live up to the ideal prompts insults; women are to be readily available for action, but not to other men. The story on Ekberg treads the line of admiring her beauty, but being suspicious about the freeness of her affections. There's a photo of her dancing with a black G.I. in Rome, and while the caption is neutral, in the context of the story the meaning of the shot is clear: “Ekberg will even dance with a black man!”
We love the photo. Ekberg looks a bit baffled, as if the soldier is telling her, “We'd be in mortal danger for doing this in most of the United States, you know,” and Ekberg is saying, “What the hell are you talking about?” The photo also shows how tall Ekberg was, almost 5' 7”, probably 5' 10” in heels, which is towering for an actress who needed to star alongside all those mid-sized leading men. We think this is the first time this image has appeared online.
Other elements worth noting in this issue include French actress and Pulp Intl. femme fatale Dominque Boschero as a mermaid, Marlene Dietrich looking dapper in a tux, Jayne Mansfield and one of her famed toy poodles, and burlesque queen Blaze Starr sudsy in a bathtub. There are plenty of other great shots too, and you can see them all below in nearly forty scans. Uncensored will return.                                   
 Yurika! She has it. 
This pretty poster was made to promote the film Himegoto, known in English as Secret Affair, which was directed by Takeo Takagi and stars Mika Yuki in the role of a geisha named Yurika who decides to make extra money by selling scandalous details of prominent people's private lives to a tabloid. It had us at geisha. This turned out to be far more obscure than we guessed considering the poster pops up often around the web. Not only didn't we find it, but we found no reviews of it anywhere. However, we wanted to share the promo art because the film opened in Japan today in 1967. We'll keep looking for a copy.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1937—Amelia Earhart Disappears
Amelia Earhart fails to arrive at Howland Island during her around the world flight, prompting a search for her and navigator Fred Noonan in the South Pacific Ocean. No wreckage and no bodies are ever found. 1964—Civil Rights Bill Becomes Law
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Bill into law, which makes the exclusion of African-Americans from elections, schools, unions, restaurants, hotels, bars, cinemas and other public institutions and facilities illegal. A side effect of the Bill is the immediate reversal of American political allegiance, as most southern voters abandon the Democratic Party for the Republican Party. 1997—Jimmy Stewart Dies
Beloved actor Jimmy Stewart, who starred in such films as Rear Window and Vertigo, dies at age eighty-nine at his home in Beverly Hills, California of a blood clot in his lung. 1941—NBC Airs First Official TV Commercial
NBC broadcasts the first TV commercial to be sanctioned by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC began licensing commercial television stations in May 1941, granting the first license to NBC. During a Dodgers-Phillies game broadcast July 1, NBC ran its first commercial, from Bulova, who paid $9 to advertise its watches. 1963—Kim Philby Named as Spy
The British Government admits that former high-ranking intelligence diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent. Philby was a member of the spy ring now known as the Cambridge Five, along with Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing classified information to the Soviet Union. He defected to Russia, was feted as a hero and even given his commemorative stamp, before dying in 1988 at the age of seventy-six.
1997—Robert Mitchum Dies
American actor Robert Mitchum dies in his home in Santa Barbara, California. He had starred in films such as Out of the Past, Blood on the Moon, and Night of the Hunter, was called "the soul of film noir," and had a reputation for coolness that would go unmatched until Frank Sinatra arrived on the scene. 1908—Tunguska Explosion Occurs
Near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia, a large meteoroid or comet explodes at five to ten kilometers above the Earth's surface with a force of about twenty megatons of TNT. The explosion is a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic blast, knocks over an estimated 80 million trees and generates a shock wave estimated to have been 5.0 on the Richter scale. 1971—Soviet Cosmonauts Perish
Soviet cosmonauts Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski and Viktor Patsayev, who served as the first crew of the world's first space station Salyut 1, die when their spacecraft Soyuz 11 depressurizes during preparations for re-entry. They are the only humans to die in space (as opposed to the upper atmosphere).
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