Brand X

Like cans of soda on the grocery shelves, the giant monsters of Japan are colorful, overwhelmingly numerous, and (despite being largely interchangeable) dominated by two forces. On one side stands Godzilla, the Kaiju world's Coca-Cola. Ubiquitous and influential, Godzilla was the one that really got the ball rolling. On the other side stands Gamera, the Pepsi-esqe rival that quickly evolved from mere imitator into an enduring pop-culture presence in its own right. In between the two are scores and scores of lesser known creatures, equally adept at smashing skyscrapers and crunching tanks beneath their giant feet, but unable to reach the fame that the aforementioned reptiles have achieved. These are the Shastas and the RC Colas and the Faygos; basically as fun but often overlooked.

With that said, meet the newest Monster of the Month: Guilala, the X from Outer Space.

First appearing in the 1968 film Uchū Daikaijū Girara (which translates to "Big Space Monster Guilala") the X from Outer Space was originally a spore that attached itself to the underside of a rocket vessel returning to Earth. The spore promptly grows into a monster and heads off to Tokyo in order to swat at some jets and smash buildings. As you probably guessed, Guilala is eventually defeated but not before causing millions of dollars in property damage.

We at the Hyper Kitchen could not help but fall in love Guilala thanks to its bizarre design. Its head, resembling a UFO with a chicken beak, sports two marshmallow-topped antennae and red compound eyes. Its reptilian tail terminates in a big red lobster claw that is sadly never used in the movie.

Released by Shochiku Co. Ltd., a film studio hoping to create a monster to compete the big names, Uchū Daikaijū Girara was only a modest success and never launched the endless sequels and spin-offs that Godzilla did. However, Guilala was did have something of a rebirth more than forty years down the road. The beast first appeared in a series of American TV ads (although never fully identified) and its renewed popularity led to a new film called Girara no Gyakushū: Tōya-ko Samitto Kiki Ippatsu, in which it attacks the 2008 G8 summit. The reviews were decidedly mixed, but there is a rumored sequel in the works that would pit the X from Outer Space against the Gappa the Triphibian.  We urge you to review your giant monster spending habits, and perhaps consider Guilala for your next city-crushing flick.

Guilala deserves your dollars.


Would you like to know more?
-You can buy a VHS copy on the Internet!

The Asteron Transmission

If you're like me, than you love stories of strange broadcasts. You also think that rayon is the ideal summer fabric and speaking to people on the phone "creeps you out," but that's irrelevant. This particular account of signal hijacking comes the UK.

On Saturday, November 26th, 1977, at 5:10 PM, Southhampton viewers of the early evening news were alarmed to find that the audio that ought to have accompanied the broadcast had been replaced by an entirely different transmission:

"This is the voice of Asteron. I am an authorized representative of the Intergalactic Mission and I have a message for Earth. We are beginning to enter a period of Aquarius and there are many corrections which have to be made by Earth people. All your Weapons of Evil must be destroyed. You only have a short time to learn to live together in peace. You must live together in peace or leave the galaxy."

The local station, Southern Television, was inundated with calls about the incident and police had to be dispatched to calm at least one panicked television viewer. The exact method through which the signal was interrupted remains unknown to this day, although the design of the UHF station's transmitters made it particularly vulnerable to hijacking and the act would have been a straightforward task for anyone with enough technical know-how.

The event was publicly acknowledged by the Independent Broadcasting Authority the next day and the novelty of the story ensured its wide dissemination across the news organizations of the world. Several tabloids, whether through sloppy reporting or a deliberate attempt to sensationalize the story, elaborated upon the transcript with various b-movie threats of annihilation from the stars.

Despite the sheer implausibility of an alien trying to convey a message to the people of Earth via a UHF television station based in Hannington, England, many people decided that the transmission was truly of extraterrestrial origin. The event probably would have faded into obscurity if not for these dedicated delusionals, who continue to discus the implications of Asteron's message on various internet message forums. Meanwhile, the "period of Aquarius" has never felt more distant.

Would you like to know more?
-Read this article from the Rome News-Tribune
-Read this article form the Ellensburg Daily Record

A Reminder

According to Harold Camping, Christian radio host, the rapture will occur on Saturday, May 21st, 2011. Whether the End Times will happen in the morning, afternoon, or evening has not yet been specified, but it would seem a sensible idea to have a Rapture Preparedness Kit containing first aid, bottled water, and a flashlight. Also, make sure to stock up on canned food, as Camping asserts that god will destroy the entire universe once October roles around. The rapture has previously been scheduled to fall in 1988, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1999, and 2005. Apparently budgetary reasons have consistently lead to its postponement.

Electromagic Youth For All

While studying my face in the mirror this morning (as I often do while brushing my teeth), something caught my eye. I paused to wipe the rabies-esqe toothpaste foam from my mouth, went in for a closer look and, much to my horror, noticed a few gray hairs. It appears that my extreme, fast-paced lifestyle of reckless street-racing, base-jumping, and freestyle parkour (sometimes all at once) had finally caught up with me and my body is beginning to show the inevitable signs of aging. Through the quick application of a black Sharpie, the gray hairs were concealed from view and my youthful good-looks returned.

Many people, however, would never be satisfied with my permanent-marker method and instead rely on more esoteric attempts to thwart the inevitable effects of time. Take, for example, the Integratron: the new age cure for old age.


Built near the aptly named Giant Rock boulder in Landers, California, the Integratron is a dome constructed from plywood and fiberglass. Its resemblance to a UFO is probably no coincidence as its designer, George Van Tassel, claimed to have been given instructions by creatures from the planet Venus. Van Tassel devoted his life to working on the Integratron. He funded the project through annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Conventions, in which UFO enthusiasts from all over the United States came to share their stories of encounters with otherworldly intelligences. One such visitor was two-time presidential candidate Gabriel Green, who wrote about the convention in his book Let's Face the Facts About Flying Saucers.

The Integraton was intended to be a "high-voltage electrostatic generator" that would "recharge" one's cells and rejuvenate the mind and body. Van Tassel was convinced that the unique dome shape of the Integratron would draw upon naturally occurring electromagnetic phenomena that he believed to exist near Giant Rock.  The Integratron served as the base of operations for his "Ashtar Command" new age concepts until his death in 1978. Apparently the Integratron's rejuvenating effects were never enjoyed by its creator.

Afterward, the building was briefly considered for renovation into a disco, but fortunately the idea never materialized. Currently the Integratron is operated by a group that rents it out for restorative "sound baths", metaphysical gatherings, art installations, and musical events.

Would you like to know more?
-Visit to Integratron's official website.

Maniac Ape Strikes Again

Listen Shoughnessy, there's a gorilla on the loose and he may be our murderer!

It's in the air, for you and me.

Fallout is forever.



I'm Not Afraid of Flying Saucers

According to the most recent radio reports, it appears that Vermont is in for the final snowstorm of the season and it's going to be a big one. The chefs of the Hyper Kitchen are understandably concerned that they will be snowed-in, and that uncontrollable madness and potential axe-murders will be the result of this isolation from civilized society. As such, we thought it prudent to get the Monster of the Month segment done as quickly as possible before the inevitable slide into barbarism occurs.

If asked to draw an alien, it's a safe bet that you would produce an illustration of some macrocephalic, bug-eyed dwarf with gray-green skin and a smug expression. This image has become the archetype of extraterrestrials after being popularized by the X-Files, the Weekly World News, and various sci-fi flicks. These so-called "Grays" were based on descriptions of the otherworldly entities supposedly witnessed in actual alien abduction cases. In fact, the majority of these accounts include variations on the Little Gray Man. However, that isn't to say there aren't some exceptions and now and again a spectacular oddball will come along. The Flatwoods Monster springs immediately to mind, as do today's Monster of the Month: the Pascagoula Abductors.

On the night of October 11th, 1973 shipyard workers Calvin Parker and Charlie Hickson were fishing on the Pascagoula River when a UFO descended from the skies and deposited three truly unnatural humanoids. Standing at around five feet tall, they were described as having pale gray skin that was wrinkled like a rhino's hide. Their hands were fleshy "mittens" or "claws," and their stumpy legs remained motionless as they hovered through the air. Their faces consisted of little else than dour, slit-like mouths and several carrot-like shapes erupted from each side of the head. Moving in a clumsy, robotic fashion, these three strangers from beyond proceeded to levitate Parker and Hickson into their spaceship, whereupon the terrified humans were monitored by a baseball-shaped camera.

Do the Pascagoula Abductors represent the genuine face of alien life; having come from some unknowable world to float around and study us with silver spheres? According to those involved, both Parker and Hickson were genuinely hysterical and did not behave like a couple of hoaxers. After world of the abduction spread like wildfire across the Mississippi media, others came forward to saw that they had noticed some unusual activity in the sky around the vicinity of the purported abduction. Despite this, workers at two 24-hour toll-booths that were in the full view of the river never saw any UFO and security cameras at a nearby shipyard showed nothing out of the ordinary. Additionally, twenty years down the road Parker has significantly elaborated upon his original story and also claims to have had subsequent alien encounters with a tiny alien woman who apparently reads the Bible.

But don't take my word for it!

-You can read about it in a book.

Or, if you don't have fifty bucks to burn,
listen to this interview of Charlie Hickson.

The kids love gorillas.

It's complicated.

The Nowhere Pit

In 1997, the notoriously reliable Coast-to-Coast AM radio program featured an interview with a man named Mel Waters from Ellensburg, Washington. Mel announced that he had discovered a hole on his property said have been once used by rural townsfolk as a dump for broken appliances and garbage. This was no cellar hole though. No matter how much trash was thrown down into the darkness, the hole was never filled. It appeared to be a genuine abyss. Waters claimed to have lowered reel upon reel of fishing line down into the hole in hopes of measuring its depths, but gave up after exceeding fifteen miles in line length. Apart from its anomalous size, the hole had other mysterious properties. Mel related local stories about dead animals being thrown into the hole, only to return alive and well a few days later. However, these resurrected creatures behaved strangely and avoided humans. Waters always declined to describe the hole's exact location.

Mel Waters' story proved to be a popular one and he was invited back on the show on five subsequent occasions. Word of the hole spread, and Washington-area paranormal enthusiasts became quite excited. UFO followers, New Agers, and bigfoot trackers headed to Ellensburg in hopes of finding Waters' arcane hole. Several old wells were found, many of considerable depth, but nothing arcane was ever discovered.

In his later interviews, Waters mentioned that he had been threatened by soldiers dressed in yellow uniforms and that these men demand that he cease his examinations of the hole or they would frame him for crimes he did not commit. Perhaps these yellow soldiers eventually did away with the troublesome Mr. Waters for good or maybe he tripped and fell into the abyss, as he never again called in to Coast to Coast AM and later investigations revealed that no one by that name owned any land in Ellensburg. Despite this apparent disappearance, the story of the hole is sustained by a small but dedicated group of believers in the supernatural.

Would you like to know more?

-Read this article from the Seattle Times

-Read this article from the Seattle PI

260 Miles to...the Thing.

This morning, the letters of my Alpha-Bits breakfast cereal re-arranged themselves to spell out "D O O M." While I'm hardly the superstitious type, it did remind me that February had departed and it was time for another exciting Monster of the Month installment.

Between El Paso, Texas and Dragoon, Arizona, there are hundreds of billboards alongside Route I-10; advertising 24 hour gas stations, restaurants, music clubs, and tourist destinations. Among these are more than two hundred billboards, painted a distinctive yellow, that alert drivers to a particular attraction off of Exit 322. The attraction in question rests at a local gas station.

They call it...the Thing.

Referred to by various signs as the "What-is-it" or "The Mystery of the Desert," the Thing can viewed at the cost of only a single dollar (75 cents for those under eighteen). After paying at the register, visitors are lead to three shacks made of corrugated steel, connected by a path marked out with bright yellow monster footprints. The first shack contains various tableaus depicting scenes of torture. Carved wooden figures menace caged prisoners with hooks, branding irons, and lashes. Shack number two contains an odd assortment of dust-covered antiques on display, along with some peculiar folk-art and a 1937 Rolls Royce said to have been owned by Adolf Hitler.

The third shack is dominated by the final "What is it?" sign. Beneath it is a white coffin-like box with a large glass lid. Therein lies...the Thing: a shriveled, freakish figure that may or may not have once been human. Pictures can be found on the Internet, but we decided it was best to preserve the mystery of the Thing and not completely reveal its appearance.

The history of the Thing has some gaps, but it is commonly accepted that it was created in 1950 by Homer Tate, a lifelong builder of sideshow exhibits like shrunken heads, Fiji Mermaids, and alligator men. At some point, the Thing came into possession of attorney Thomas Prince, who established the exhibit in 1965. Since then,legions of tourists have been compelled to see the Thing for themselves; beckoned by hundreds of billboards.

And within its glass sarcophagus, the Thing silently waits for them.

Would you like to know more?
-Visit this Homer Tate tribute
-Read this article from Roadside America