Saturday, January 24, 2009

You like us, you really like us!

The great Richard Harland Smith from TCM's Movie Morlocks blog has honored the Temple of Schlock with a Premio Dardo Award, which acknowledges "excellence in blogging" and is "offered in recognition of cultural, ethical, literary and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing." Hot damn! Thanks, Richard! We even have a nice space reserved for it on the mantel in the Temple library, between our "Hall of Shame" award from Factsheet Five and the "Zine of the Year" nomination we got from Fanex years ago. And we even read the fine print this time, just to make sure that in accepting this thing we wouldn't have to buy a timeshare in Utica or sit through THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF BENJAMIN BUNNY IN THE NIGHT or whatever it's called -- although we do have a couple of rules we have to adhere to:

1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.

2) Pass the award to another 5 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award."

So without further ado, Temple of Schlock proudly passes the Premio Dardo Award on to the following 4 blogs "as a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web," to quote Signor Dardo himself.

BADAZZ MOFO -- I've always enjoyed David Walker's sense of humor, from the very first issue of his blaxploitation-oriented BadAzz MoFo magazine to his DVD reviews at DVDTalk.com, but in the past year or so I've grown to love the heartfelt, incisive writing that appears on his blog, including the posts from Christmas '07 that chronicle his short, painful gig with the U.S. Postal Service.

FULLUNDIE -- We like all types of music here in the Temple but most of the time it's classic R&B/funk/disco pumping through the speakers, with a special emphasis on anything from Detroit. The best place to find rare, long out-of-print Motown lp's -- at least until legitimate copies become available on CD or through digital download -- is this cool blog, which has filled in a hell of a lot of cracks in our collection. From the Marvelettes' In Full Bloom and Jermaine Jackson's Let's Get Serious to Junior Walker's Blow the House Down and Norman Whitfield's slammin' Rare Earth album Midnight Lady, there's no longer a need to fight our way through the crowds at the annual WFMU Record Fair!

THE GROOVY AGE OF HORROR -- What started in January of 2005 as a fascinating examination of -- well, I'll quote the site directly -- "'60s-'70s horror in paperbacks, fumetti, Groschenromane, comics, and movies, this blog is now devoted to all that and more!" Groovy indeed.

BOOKSTEVE'S LIBRARY -- This blast of pop culture fun has been around since August 2005, and to be honest, it's another blog (like The Groovy Age of Horror) that we had our eyes on when we decided to move the Temple online. Lots of great stuff here, from old toys and comic book splash pages to the "Movies That Fell Through the Cracks" series and pulp paperbacks.

2 comments:

Tim Mayer said...

Awesome.
How did you get a "Hall of Shame" award from Factsheet Five?
I'm surprised anyone still remembers that Zine...

Temple of Schlock said...

When Paul stepped down as co-editor, he neglected to turn over all of the files to me, so a few of the newest subscribers never received the issues they paid for.

"Factsheet Five" founder Mike Gunderloy later donated boxes and boxes and boxes of 'zines to the New York State Library in Albany.