Yvonne Craig: Happy Halloween from Batgirl!

Today's Google doodle...

honors the awesome Bob Ross!

New music releases Oct. 30, 2012: Neil Young; Cee Lo; Tracey Thorn; Macy Gray; Andrew Bird; Velvet Underground; Doris Day!

Click the links to order discounted CDs, LPs or downloads from Amazon.


Psychedelic Pill by Neil Young and Crazy Horse


Cee Lo's Magic Moment by Cee Lo Green


Holidays Rule by various artists


Tinsel and Lights by Tracey Thorn


Talking Book by Macy Gray


Hands of Glory by Andrew Bird


The Velvet Underground & Nico 45th Anniversary [Super Deluxe]


Complete Christmas Collection by Doris Day

DVD and Blu-ray new releases Oct. 30, 2012: House of Dark Shadows; Night of Dark Shadows; Rosemary's Baby; Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection; Fractured Fairy Tales Complete; My Favorite Martian season 3!

Click the links to order discounted DVDs or Blu-rays from Amazon.


House of Dark Shadows


Rosemary's Baby (The Criterion Collection)


Night of Dark Shadows


Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (Limited Edition)


Complete Fractured Fairy Tales


My Favorite Martian: Season 3

Apple gets Beatles' Apple label, but does it really belong to Rene Magritte?

According to reports this week, the Beatles' Apple Records has transferred ownership of its Granny Smith label design, which first appeared on LPs back in 1968, to the Apple computer company.

Steve Jobs was a big Beatles fan and that influenced the company's name and its logo. The Beatles' Apple and the other Apple have engaged in numerous legal scraps over the name over the years, but things seem to have settled down once the Beatles' arranged a profitable deal to distribute their music on iTunes. Now it looks like they've relaxed on the logo, too.

The Granny Smith apple, of course, has been around a heckuva lot longer than the Beatles or Steve Jobs and was created by God or the universe, depending on your theological and philosophical views. But, according to Paul McCartney, the image that first found its way onto the Apple Records label was inspired by the art of Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte:

"I had this friend called Robert Fraser, who was a gallery owner in London. We used to hang out a lot. And I told him I really loved Magritte. We were discovering Magritte in the sixties, just through magazines and things.

And we just loved his sense of humour. And when we heard that he was a very ordinary bloke who used to paint from nine to one o'clock, and with his bowler hat, it became even more intriguing.

Robert used to look around for pictures for me, because he knew I liked him. It was so cheap then, it's terrible to think how cheap they were. But anyway, we just loved him

One day he brought this painting to my house. We were out in the garden, it was a summer's day. And he didn't want to disturb us, I think we were filming or something. So he left this picture of Magritte. It was an apple - and he just left it on the dining room table and he went. It just had written across it "Au revoir", on this beautiful green apple. And I tought that was like a great thing to do. He knew I'd love it and he knew I'd want it and I'd pay him later. So it was like wow! What a great conceptual thing to do, you know.

And this big green apple, which I still have now, became the inspiration for the logo. And then we decided to cut it in half for the B-side!"

Along with the painting that directly inspired the Beatles' logo, "Le jeu de mourre," the Granny Smith appears in other Magritte paintings as well, including the famous "The Son of Man," pictured here:

Comics multi-pack memories

Remember these?

For me, the preferred way to buy comics when I was a kid growing up in the 1970s was off a spinner rack, where you could browse through titles and pick out the individual comics you wanted.

But sometimes, I'd need a comics fix, and the only thing available at a convenience or grocery story were these things: Three comics bundled in a sealed plastic bag. And you could only easily make out what the top comic was.

Sometimes, you could managed to manipulate the comics without damaging the bag and peek at the bottom two comics, but it was always a bit of a gamble.

And that was part of the fun.

Sometimes you'd end up with stuff you just didn't like (or, worse yet, already had). But sometimes you'd get exposed to new titles, writers and artists that you did like.

Though I'm not sure, and didn't have a clue or theory about it when I was a kid, I figure this was a way for the publishers to unload overstock.

Possibly, they chose the "top-featured" comic as a sort of loss leader for lesser-selling titles hidden below.

In any event, I sort of miss them, as I do the entire era when comics were everywhere and nearly every kid read them.

Share your memories, if you got 'em, in the comments below!

Pop culture roundup: Paul McCartney's missing head; live Madness; Wrightson House of Mystery art

Back in 1969, the head of Paul McCartney vanished from a giant billboard on the Sunset Strip advertisingly the newly released Abbey Road LP. Where did it go? LA Observed explores, and shares this great video:

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From Dangerous Minds, here's a great live performance by Madness in 1980:

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Golden Age Comic Book Stories presents some wonderful, and seasonably appropriate, Berni Wrightson artwork from a pair of "House of Mystery" paperbacks published in the 1970s. Never knew these existed!

Preview Paul McCartney's version of "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasing on an Open Fire)

Still in standards mode off his last album, Paul McCartney covers Mel Torme's holiday classic on a new various artists CD: Holidays Rule.

Here his version of "The Christmas Song" here.