Coda.
Yes.
I'm furious about the recycling bin thing. Maybe this second, useless post will help diffuse my frustration.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, simply look below and read it in the context of somebody who is just AMAZED at the obnoxiousness of some people.
PS: I do not hope that people who tip over recycling bins will go to hell; I'm sure their crappy behaviour will catch up to them eventually, if it hasn't already. People who break saplings, however, certainly DO deserve hell, and I hope they get it. In spades.
Friday, January 11, 2008
An Open Letter To People Who Tip Over Recycling Bins
A few months ago the Ontario Powers That Be declared that empty bottles of alcohol were redeemable for a deposit. Whereas before you just recycled them and got no money back, now you could take them to the liquor or beer store and get a paltry sum in return.
I don't have a car so I don't bring my empty liquor bottles back to the store. Sure, I'd like to reclaim my deposit, but not at the expense of carting my bottles all the way uptown. Nope, I still recycle them, and many other people do as well.
So a cottage industry has sprung up: people -- generally homeless, as far as I've seen -- wander through residential areas and take recyclable liquor bottles out of people's bins. That's fine, I'd LOVE for somebody to get my bottles...but there's a catch:
THEY OVERTURN YOUR RECYCLING BINS AND DUMP YOUR STUFF ALL OVER THE GROUND.
The first time this happened to me, I started hiding my liquor bottles under all my pop cans, so they wouldn't be attracted to my bin. But then I'd see some scruffy guy come along and search through the bin, wasting a lot of time to determine whether or not I'd actually hidden anything underneath. And I felt bad for him. I thought, he could make a lot more money if I'd just put my bottles in an obvious place.
This week, my bleeding heart got the better of me. I put all of my Christmas liquor bottles into one half of the bin, and then put all my cans in the other half, and even SEPARATED the two sections with recyclable cardboard. I figured that this would help the hard-up people to quickly find what they're looking for, without needing to search through or -- as some of them do -- dump everything out and not put it back in.
So tonight I come home and discover that my carefully laid-out bin has been dumped upside down, my cans scattered up and down the street, and my liquor bottles claimed. I had to walk up and down the street in the rain, collecting cans and cardboard and putting them back in the bin, because some jerk decided -- out of obnoxiousness, I'm sure -- to dump the bin out onto the street. And take away 75 cents worth of bottles.
I will not reward people for doing this. Some of them are sweet and are willing to root through the bin to find what they're looking for, but a significant number of people are not. So I'm going to start throwing my empties in the garbage: end of story.
Bad for the planet? Yes. Vindictive? Only partially. If they stop finding bottles in my bin they will stop turning the bin upside down -- it hasn't been dumped since the last time I hid my bottles -- and I don't want to reward people for being a nuisance. Sure I want them to have that money, but not if they're going to be jerks in the process.
How frustrating is it to be punished for being NICE? Very much, yes indeed. There is simply no excuse for throwing garbage around on a person's lawn.
I don't have a car so I don't bring my empty liquor bottles back to the store. Sure, I'd like to reclaim my deposit, but not at the expense of carting my bottles all the way uptown. Nope, I still recycle them, and many other people do as well.
So a cottage industry has sprung up: people -- generally homeless, as far as I've seen -- wander through residential areas and take recyclable liquor bottles out of people's bins. That's fine, I'd LOVE for somebody to get my bottles...but there's a catch:
THEY OVERTURN YOUR RECYCLING BINS AND DUMP YOUR STUFF ALL OVER THE GROUND.
The first time this happened to me, I started hiding my liquor bottles under all my pop cans, so they wouldn't be attracted to my bin. But then I'd see some scruffy guy come along and search through the bin, wasting a lot of time to determine whether or not I'd actually hidden anything underneath. And I felt bad for him. I thought, he could make a lot more money if I'd just put my bottles in an obvious place.
This week, my bleeding heart got the better of me. I put all of my Christmas liquor bottles into one half of the bin, and then put all my cans in the other half, and even SEPARATED the two sections with recyclable cardboard. I figured that this would help the hard-up people to quickly find what they're looking for, without needing to search through or -- as some of them do -- dump everything out and not put it back in.
So tonight I come home and discover that my carefully laid-out bin has been dumped upside down, my cans scattered up and down the street, and my liquor bottles claimed. I had to walk up and down the street in the rain, collecting cans and cardboard and putting them back in the bin, because some jerk decided -- out of obnoxiousness, I'm sure -- to dump the bin out onto the street. And take away 75 cents worth of bottles.
I will not reward people for doing this. Some of them are sweet and are willing to root through the bin to find what they're looking for, but a significant number of people are not. So I'm going to start throwing my empties in the garbage: end of story.
Bad for the planet? Yes. Vindictive? Only partially. If they stop finding bottles in my bin they will stop turning the bin upside down -- it hasn't been dumped since the last time I hid my bottles -- and I don't want to reward people for being a nuisance. Sure I want them to have that money, but not if they're going to be jerks in the process.
How frustrating is it to be punished for being NICE? Very much, yes indeed. There is simply no excuse for throwing garbage around on a person's lawn.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Broadcast Signal Intrustion Revisited
Exactly one year ago I posted about the mysterious "Max Headroom Pirating Incident" that happened in 1987.
Amazingly, some deft folks at Hack247 have managed to remove some of the clip's audio distortion, revealing some new details (and suggesting that the culprit was a disgruntled -- and very weird -- WGN employee).
For the cleaned-up clip and the new interpretation, check out their site. Not exactly work friendly.
Amazingly, some deft folks at Hack247 have managed to remove some of the clip's audio distortion, revealing some new details (and suggesting that the culprit was a disgruntled -- and very weird -- WGN employee).
For the cleaned-up clip and the new interpretation, check out their site. Not exactly work friendly.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
A Whole Bunch of Films That I've Watched Recently
Sometimes I get an urge to just throw myself into movies. In particular, after compiling my "top ten horror films," I was sad to realize that my period of really studying and enjoying movies ended around 1989. I have digested a huge number of movies since then, but I haven't actually SAVOURED them.
Part of this is because I worked at a video store during the '90s. Rentals were free for me, and my obsessive nature lead me to work alphabetically through the various sections of the store. I wasn't picking a movie because I WANTED to see it, I was picking it because it was the next one on the shelf, regardless of quality or desire. Gradually my senses dulled.
How do I find new movies to love? I don't think that's very likely; I no longer have the free time that I had when I was younger, when I could just sit around and watch my favourite films over and over again. Plus I feel guilty and unproductive when I do that sort of thing.
But I HAVE decided to watch some films I've always wanted to see, and re-watch movies I saw a few years ago that I really liked, and also to gorge myself on a whole bunch of new horror movies (because I'm on a bit of a kick right now).
So here's a taste of what I've been watching. You may wonder why a lot of these movies start with the letter "A." Yup, I'm doing the alphabetical thing again...but I'm actually skipping the movies that look crappy, which I think is a step up from my old technique.
Alone in the Dark
Oh wow, a uniformly AWFUL film. Rarely do you have the opportunity to sit through a movie where EVERYTHING is bad...so bad that it could only have been planned that way.
The stinky badness was painful to watch, but you might enjoy Tara Reid playing a serious, brainy scientist. She's obviously a very stupid person in real life and she can't hide her inability to enunciate her words. Plus they gave her outrageous hoochie-girl make-up -- candy-pink blush and lipgloss...and then put ugly glasses on her as if to say, "see, she's smart!" No, she isn't.
During the special features the director brags that they shot more than 20,000 bullets during a single scene. If you judge movies on that basis alone, I guess you should see this. But on every critical measurement known to humankind, "Alone in the Dark" failed.
An American Haunting
I love a good lead-up and an unconventional structure, but there is such a thing as TOO MUCH suspense. What started off as a creepy Poltergeist tale quickly degenerated into "then the next night, THIS happened, and the following night, THIS happened, and then the next night..."
A stylish film, well-acted, with some striking images. Also a surprisingly up-front message about child sexual abuse. But jeez, it just went on and on.
I like Donald Sutherland in his pilgrim outfit. Sissy Spacek less so.
American Psycho
Really fabulous, actually, and not a horror movie; it's a tense satire and very funny.
I read the book when it came out and I'm surprised that the filmmakers preserved the spirit of the story -- a socially-created empty shell of a human moves through a world of equally empty human creatures -- while shying away from the gruesome stuff. I kept waiting for the nailgun to appear and I'm glad they chose to (mostly) omit it.
My only complaint is that Christian Bale comes across as too goofy-manic in certain scenes. And I suppose it's inevitable that an extra layer of "'80s retro" veneer was added; it would be difficult to contextualize the film's events without playing up the music and the hairstyles of the time, being as the characters are so immersed in their vacuous culture.
The most amusing and understated theme in the book was the way that identities were constantly confused, because everybody wanted to look and act alike and nobody really CARED about anybody else. This wasn't so explicit in the movie, which might lead viewers to a certain hypothesis about "what actually happened." The book, however, was more ambiguous.
The Holy Mountain
I finally crumpled and bought the Alejandro Jodorowsky box set.
This particular film continues to amaze me, especially in its remastered form. I still can't believe they built those sets, filmed those scenes, and tortured those animals. It is uniformly beautiful and awe-inspiring, and even has a somewhat significant plot (albeit cloyingly shaman-zen-enlightenment-ish). The extremely funny middle portion helps you get through it all.
Where else will you see an elderly man, naked, squirting milk from the leopard-heads attached to his nipples? Nowhere. "The Holy Mountain" is unlike anything else. It's a freakshow, yes, but a SINCERE freakshow.
Pulse
Lame-brained, poorly-acted, go-nowhere story that really, really wants to be "The Ring." I haven't seen the Japanese original and now I don't want to. After seeing a bunch of people become disfigured in somewhat gruesome ways, it's amusing to have a late-appearing crap actor scream to us what's really going on: "They TAKE YOUR LIFE FORCE! YAAARGH! They take away everything that makes you YOU! You end up walkin' around...LIKE A ZOMBIE! YOU STOP CARING ABOUT STUFF! OH, the agony, the terror!"
Sort of like being told that the Alien gives you a bad case of indigestion, then expecting you to feel pathos and fear. Especially when all the characters seem like zombies from the very beginning.
A sign of everything that is bad about Hollywood.
Silent Hill
It's a testament to the film that I didn't realize it was based on a videogame, though I suspected something was up when she had to memorize a map and solve a light/dark puzzle near the end.
Incredible, INCREDIBLE nightmare visuals thanks to the choreographed grace of the monsters (note to directors: put more dancers in prosthetics!) One of the best soundtracks I've heard in a long time. The acting wasn't up to snuff but there were a few bright spots, and everybody seemed totally into the project.
I have to admit, though, that I'm getting awfully sick of desaturated visuals. Turn up the chroma, people! I know that a grey/blue colour scheme communicates death and despair, but it's SO overdone now. Can't we move on to a different digital effect?
Part of this is because I worked at a video store during the '90s. Rentals were free for me, and my obsessive nature lead me to work alphabetically through the various sections of the store. I wasn't picking a movie because I WANTED to see it, I was picking it because it was the next one on the shelf, regardless of quality or desire. Gradually my senses dulled.
How do I find new movies to love? I don't think that's very likely; I no longer have the free time that I had when I was younger, when I could just sit around and watch my favourite films over and over again. Plus I feel guilty and unproductive when I do that sort of thing.
But I HAVE decided to watch some films I've always wanted to see, and re-watch movies I saw a few years ago that I really liked, and also to gorge myself on a whole bunch of new horror movies (because I'm on a bit of a kick right now).
So here's a taste of what I've been watching. You may wonder why a lot of these movies start with the letter "A." Yup, I'm doing the alphabetical thing again...but I'm actually skipping the movies that look crappy, which I think is a step up from my old technique.
Alone in the Dark
Oh wow, a uniformly AWFUL film. Rarely do you have the opportunity to sit through a movie where EVERYTHING is bad...so bad that it could only have been planned that way.
The stinky badness was painful to watch, but you might enjoy Tara Reid playing a serious, brainy scientist. She's obviously a very stupid person in real life and she can't hide her inability to enunciate her words. Plus they gave her outrageous hoochie-girl make-up -- candy-pink blush and lipgloss...and then put ugly glasses on her as if to say, "see, she's smart!" No, she isn't.
During the special features the director brags that they shot more than 20,000 bullets during a single scene. If you judge movies on that basis alone, I guess you should see this. But on every critical measurement known to humankind, "Alone in the Dark" failed.
An American Haunting
I love a good lead-up and an unconventional structure, but there is such a thing as TOO MUCH suspense. What started off as a creepy Poltergeist tale quickly degenerated into "then the next night, THIS happened, and the following night, THIS happened, and then the next night..."
A stylish film, well-acted, with some striking images. Also a surprisingly up-front message about child sexual abuse. But jeez, it just went on and on.
I like Donald Sutherland in his pilgrim outfit. Sissy Spacek less so.
American Psycho
Really fabulous, actually, and not a horror movie; it's a tense satire and very funny.
I read the book when it came out and I'm surprised that the filmmakers preserved the spirit of the story -- a socially-created empty shell of a human moves through a world of equally empty human creatures -- while shying away from the gruesome stuff. I kept waiting for the nailgun to appear and I'm glad they chose to (mostly) omit it.
My only complaint is that Christian Bale comes across as too goofy-manic in certain scenes. And I suppose it's inevitable that an extra layer of "'80s retro" veneer was added; it would be difficult to contextualize the film's events without playing up the music and the hairstyles of the time, being as the characters are so immersed in their vacuous culture.
The most amusing and understated theme in the book was the way that identities were constantly confused, because everybody wanted to look and act alike and nobody really CARED about anybody else. This wasn't so explicit in the movie, which might lead viewers to a certain hypothesis about "what actually happened." The book, however, was more ambiguous.
The Holy Mountain
I finally crumpled and bought the Alejandro Jodorowsky box set.
This particular film continues to amaze me, especially in its remastered form. I still can't believe they built those sets, filmed those scenes, and tortured those animals. It is uniformly beautiful and awe-inspiring, and even has a somewhat significant plot (albeit cloyingly shaman-zen-enlightenment-ish). The extremely funny middle portion helps you get through it all.
Where else will you see an elderly man, naked, squirting milk from the leopard-heads attached to his nipples? Nowhere. "The Holy Mountain" is unlike anything else. It's a freakshow, yes, but a SINCERE freakshow.
Pulse
Lame-brained, poorly-acted, go-nowhere story that really, really wants to be "The Ring." I haven't seen the Japanese original and now I don't want to. After seeing a bunch of people become disfigured in somewhat gruesome ways, it's amusing to have a late-appearing crap actor scream to us what's really going on: "They TAKE YOUR LIFE FORCE! YAAARGH! They take away everything that makes you YOU! You end up walkin' around...LIKE A ZOMBIE! YOU STOP CARING ABOUT STUFF! OH, the agony, the terror!"
Sort of like being told that the Alien gives you a bad case of indigestion, then expecting you to feel pathos and fear. Especially when all the characters seem like zombies from the very beginning.
A sign of everything that is bad about Hollywood.
Silent Hill
It's a testament to the film that I didn't realize it was based on a videogame, though I suspected something was up when she had to memorize a map and solve a light/dark puzzle near the end.
Incredible, INCREDIBLE nightmare visuals thanks to the choreographed grace of the monsters (note to directors: put more dancers in prosthetics!) One of the best soundtracks I've heard in a long time. The acting wasn't up to snuff but there were a few bright spots, and everybody seemed totally into the project.
I have to admit, though, that I'm getting awfully sick of desaturated visuals. Turn up the chroma, people! I know that a grey/blue colour scheme communicates death and despair, but it's SO overdone now. Can't we move on to a different digital effect?
Monday, January 07, 2008
Dr. Seuss and the Filmmaker's Flit
During the late '20s jungle documentaries were EXTREMELY popular. Everybody seemed to be making films about stoic Caucasian explorers and their quirky African guides, seeking the next big waterfall or hunting wild game. Many viewers suspected that the films were less than truthful, and they were right to be sceptical.
Here (July 28, 1928), Dr. Seuss shows us how they got so close to those deadly wild animals: apparently they killed them with bug spray first. The mystery is solved?
PS: I've mentioned the horrific black caricatures in the past...well, here's another one, this time from our beloved children's book author.
Friday, January 04, 2008
Pie in the Pundit
I am fascinated by the slow accumulation of hits, comments, links, and subscriptions that my videos are pulling in. I wonder what I am doing that is "intriguing," what people EXPECT me to be doing, and what I might do to actually turn them off.
When I noticed that some of my subscribers were interested in pieing -- no doubt in a fetishy way -- I got even more curious: what do they like about pieing, and what makes a good "pieing video" for them?
I decided to make a pieing video in my own way, without ever having watched any of the OTHER videos. Over the holidays I built up the idea in my head, and then at 3am on New Year's Day I decided the time was right; also I had to do it soon or the pie would go bad.
Off the top of my head I can say that it was a cold, wet, and slimy experience, and that lemon meringue doesn't stick to CoverFX E20 cream foundation. I also think it would have been more fun to have the pie THROWN at me -- in the true spirit of a vaudeville pastry-attack -- but there was nobody else around so it had to be me.
I'm most interested to find out if "pie in the face" fans HATE the video. They probably want to see gorgeous, scantily-dressed, model-perfect women getting surprised by the approaching pie, not a scruffy, post-bar drag queen, pontificating without eyelashes and wearing a very old T-shirt.
So for the next few weeks I'll be eagerly watching the comments and anticipating the "hate comments" that I have managed to totally avoid so far. Are people ready for a gentler, smarter, uglier "pie in the face" video? We'll see, but I doubt it!
When I noticed that some of my subscribers were interested in pieing -- no doubt in a fetishy way -- I got even more curious: what do they like about pieing, and what makes a good "pieing video" for them?
I decided to make a pieing video in my own way, without ever having watched any of the OTHER videos. Over the holidays I built up the idea in my head, and then at 3am on New Year's Day I decided the time was right; also I had to do it soon or the pie would go bad.
Off the top of my head I can say that it was a cold, wet, and slimy experience, and that lemon meringue doesn't stick to CoverFX E20 cream foundation. I also think it would have been more fun to have the pie THROWN at me -- in the true spirit of a vaudeville pastry-attack -- but there was nobody else around so it had to be me.
I'm most interested to find out if "pie in the face" fans HATE the video. They probably want to see gorgeous, scantily-dressed, model-perfect women getting surprised by the approaching pie, not a scruffy, post-bar drag queen, pontificating without eyelashes and wearing a very old T-shirt.
So for the next few weeks I'll be eagerly watching the comments and anticipating the "hate comments" that I have managed to totally avoid so far. Are people ready for a gentler, smarter, uglier "pie in the face" video? We'll see, but I doubt it!
Thursday, January 03, 2008
[Superlative] Scary Movie List!
By popular demand (because you know you're popular, Adrian and Scott!), I've made a list of what I consider to be the top ten horror films.
These are films that I consider to be exceptional in every way, not simply "frightening." So I'm excluding all the cheap thrills and quirky oddities (Peter Jackson, Larry Cohen, Sam Raimi). I'm also excluding any that I haven't seen in several years, or that I haven't seen enough times; these are "tried and true" movies which haven't lost their bite, which partly explains why they're all over 20 years old.
But I might just have been an impressionable child.
I should mention that I'm not a fan of slasher films (Friday the 13th), "cool visuals but no logic" films (Japanese & Italian), or movies devoid of characterization (I'm talking to you, Rob Zombie).
In no particular order:
Of them all, I somehow don't think I could handle "Slither" again...it's just TOO horrific for me, despite (or perhaps because) of the disarming humour.
These are films that I consider to be exceptional in every way, not simply "frightening." So I'm excluding all the cheap thrills and quirky oddities (Peter Jackson, Larry Cohen, Sam Raimi). I'm also excluding any that I haven't seen in several years, or that I haven't seen enough times; these are "tried and true" movies which haven't lost their bite, which partly explains why they're all over 20 years old.
But I might just have been an impressionable child.
I should mention that I'm not a fan of slasher films (Friday the 13th), "cool visuals but no logic" films (Japanese & Italian), or movies devoid of characterization (I'm talking to you, Rob Zombie).
In no particular order:
- Next of Kin: Not to be confused with a dozen other films with the same title, this is the one "unknown gem" in the list. A low-budget Australian production that excels in every way: memorable characters, over-the-top cinematography, a suspenseful first sixty minutes that explodes into total craziness by the end. I love this one; my VHS tape is on its last magnetic legs. No matter how many times I see it, the final half hour still gives me beauty-horror goosebumps..
- Return of the Living Dead: Manages to be both funny AND terrifying, a difficult line to tread. A claustrophobic film that is both a send up and an improvement on the original, with Dan O'Bannon's trademark quirkiness AND a great '80s soundtrack. Colourful, fun, gory, weird. For fans only: track down The Famous Workprint.
- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: As the supposed genesis of the "slasher film," TCM has a bad rap that it doesn't deserve. Like most of the other films in this list it is really a classy, lovingly-crafted, character-driven drama that completely loses its mind during the second half. Director Tobe Hooper may have brought us the first archetypal weapon-brandishing maniac, but he also brought us the menaced protagonist trapped in the clutches of an alien logic, with only one route of escape: running, running, running away. See the second film for sheer lost-marbles exuberance, and the fourth installment for a "new take" on the family dramatics.
- A Nightmare on Elm Street: Before an endless string of goofy sequels (and a theme song by The Fat Boys), Fred Krueger really WAS a horrific character. This is the least polished of all the movies on this list, suffering from cliche'd dialog and wooden characters, but Wes Craven broke new ground with the magical, nightmarish quality of it all...and I'm not just talking about the dream sequences, I'm also talking about Ronee Blakley's performance. And if you need more incentive to give it a reappraisal, how about these magic words: "Johnny Depp's first film."
- Videodrome: David Cronenberg at his cold, clinical, unrestrained best. This was before he discovered stuff like "human interaction" and "soft focus," giving us instead a world (aka "Toronto") where everybody is stiff, disconnected, menacing, and under-the-skin wrong. You can't trust anybody. You can't even RELATE to anybody. Debbie Harry helps. Howard Shore's analog synth soundtrack mixes perfectly with all the gloops and slops.
- Alien: Shiver. Traumatic body horror and a bunch of terrified, inarticulate, unattractive people fighting for their lives as though they REALLY MEANT IT. Veronica Cartwright seems to be literally coming unglued before our very eyes. Plus the high-tech grunge universe of Ridley Scott before everybody else started doing it, likewise the biomechanical Giger designs. This is the second time Dan O'Bannon has been involved with a movie in this list, though to be honest his original script did not show the promise that the movie finally achieved.
- Poltergeist: Take the idyllic "family" tone of Steven Spielberg and mix it with Tobe Hooper's merciless lunacy ("why can't we kill one of the kids?" you can imagine him saying), and you get a movie that is both sweet AND traumatizing. In terms of an accessible but scary movie, I think this is the best on the list. Imaginative script, horrifying visuals, and some of the best acting around, it's long overdue for a re-evaluation and a comeback.
- Dawn of the Dead: Once again we have a great combination: the visual craziness of Dario Argento and the restraining hand of George Romero. Probably the goriest on this list, but also the most pointed social satire. I like it because of its scope, it was very much an "epic horror" for its time, despite the obviously limited budget. But then, why should I talk it up? Everybody loves it already.
- The Thing (1982 Remake): The most outrageous special effects by that time, courtesy of crazy-man Rob Bottin. A premise that turns your bowels to pudding if you think about it too much. John Carpenter at his scariest, directing a tiny cast who were probably just as horrified by the visuals as the rest of us were. This movie still upsets me, which doesn't happen often. I can't handle the way Windows gets it.
- ...?
Of them all, I somehow don't think I could handle "Slither" again...it's just TOO horrific for me, despite (or perhaps because) of the disarming humour.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
The Joys of a Good Scary Story
In highschool, and during my first year of university, I subsisted on a greedy diet of horror fiction. I was at first mostly interested in novels, but for some reason I gradually became obsessed with anthologies of short stories, and I collected them rabidly: "The Year's Best Horror Stories," all those Charles L. Grant "Shadows" books, the sublime "Tales By Moonlight," the less sublime "Hot Blood" series, "Dark Voices," "Night Cry" magazine, "Night Visions," the seemingly endless collections edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg...
There was something fun and sort of chocolatey about picking up a new anthology and seeing the same names again and again; Ramsey Campbell, Alan Ryan, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Steve Rasnic Tem, Karl Edward Wagner, all jumbled together without any thought of transition or theme. I'd rate each story out of ten and add it to a computerized database, then go out and hunt for all the books I'd missed over the years. It was a project, an education, and a joy.
These books inspired a friend and I to start our own small-press horror 'zine called "Lost," which pulled in a few professional authors who probably didn't realize that the editors were two little kids with acne. I even got some of my own sub-par stories published. But more on that some other time.
Soon, maybe in an attempt to resurrect declining sales, the anthologies started going all thematic. Stories about vampires! Stories about freaks! Erotic horror, zombie horror, ecological horror! Splatterpunk! Bladderspunk! Even something called "architectural horror!"
Dennis Etchison coined the term "Metahorror" for my personal favourite stories, a new breed of fiction that was kind of like "magic realism gone bad." A bunch of the more successful authors banded together as "The Horror Writers of America," which seemed particularly mean-spirited at the time (and possibly was, a bit). I bought the books anyway, I loved the books, maybe I sort of LIVED the books.
But in university I discovered a whole new world of literature that I'd never cared about before, and I packed up all those anthologies into a bunch of cardboard boxes and put them in the basement. I decided I wanted to be HAPPY, not some loser kid who sat at home assigning ratings to mediocre stories by Whitley Strieber. And that was it. The end.
...
Until I picked up Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher" last week, and I remembered why I liked horror fiction to begin with: it's breezy, it has a near infinite number of themes and permutations, and when it's good it scares you. I still remember the stories and novels that terrified me the most, and I probably enjoyed reading them more than I ever enjoyed "Oliver Twist." And even when a book is BAD it is still at least INTERESTING, and you don't need to invest much in order to pick out the kernels of fun.
Yeah, I'd love to open those boxes and revisit the best stories, anthologies, and novels...and maybe I will. I even bought Peter Straub's "Floating Dragon" the other day, and I'm actually considering re-reading "It" or some of the better Dean R. Koontz books.
Darn it, I've spent too many years reading high-falutin' literature. I think I've earned the right to read some genre fiction now, no?
There was something fun and sort of chocolatey about picking up a new anthology and seeing the same names again and again; Ramsey Campbell, Alan Ryan, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Steve Rasnic Tem, Karl Edward Wagner, all jumbled together without any thought of transition or theme. I'd rate each story out of ten and add it to a computerized database, then go out and hunt for all the books I'd missed over the years. It was a project, an education, and a joy.
These books inspired a friend and I to start our own small-press horror 'zine called "Lost," which pulled in a few professional authors who probably didn't realize that the editors were two little kids with acne. I even got some of my own sub-par stories published. But more on that some other time.
Soon, maybe in an attempt to resurrect declining sales, the anthologies started going all thematic. Stories about vampires! Stories about freaks! Erotic horror, zombie horror, ecological horror! Splatterpunk! Bladderspunk! Even something called "architectural horror!"
Dennis Etchison coined the term "Metahorror" for my personal favourite stories, a new breed of fiction that was kind of like "magic realism gone bad." A bunch of the more successful authors banded together as "The Horror Writers of America," which seemed particularly mean-spirited at the time (and possibly was, a bit). I bought the books anyway, I loved the books, maybe I sort of LIVED the books.
But in university I discovered a whole new world of literature that I'd never cared about before, and I packed up all those anthologies into a bunch of cardboard boxes and put them in the basement. I decided I wanted to be HAPPY, not some loser kid who sat at home assigning ratings to mediocre stories by Whitley Strieber. And that was it. The end.
...
Until I picked up Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher" last week, and I remembered why I liked horror fiction to begin with: it's breezy, it has a near infinite number of themes and permutations, and when it's good it scares you. I still remember the stories and novels that terrified me the most, and I probably enjoyed reading them more than I ever enjoyed "Oliver Twist." And even when a book is BAD it is still at least INTERESTING, and you don't need to invest much in order to pick out the kernels of fun.
Yeah, I'd love to open those boxes and revisit the best stories, anthologies, and novels...and maybe I will. I even bought Peter Straub's "Floating Dragon" the other day, and I'm actually considering re-reading "It" or some of the better Dean R. Koontz books.
Darn it, I've spent too many years reading high-falutin' literature. I think I've earned the right to read some genre fiction now, no?
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Lazy, Crazy Day
Exhausted, not enough sleep. The cat wakes me up and I give her some food and by then it's too late to go back to sleep again.
So I go downstairs and lie on the couch and stare out the window. It's snowing terribly, a solid sheet of white that's falling and covering everything. I pull up the afghan and the cat comes to lie beside me. When I finally feel like getting up I don't want to because it would wake her.
The snow keeps falling, it's amazing, beautiful. The cat snores, cuddled against my hip. I've begun sinking into a sugar-low; an imaginary man on a tricycle is circling around in my head, yelling at me, peeling back the layers of conceit and society to reveal the base reality of the brain damaged diabetic. I sink down, further and further. The cat snores. I eventually realize what is happening and I get up and eat an early lunch.
Back to the couch, searching for something to distract me from that tricycle demon, I start to read Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher." It is the perfect cure for my early morning plague. I've forgotten what it's like to read a mass-market paperback, a well-written and straight-forward story whose only purpose is to pull you in and keep you reading.
After a hundred pages I feel a burst of energy: I will do something! I take a shower and wash the curls out of my hair, and then my energy is gone and I return to the couch. The snow has stopped but the wind is intense, picking up entire banks of snow and shoving them into the air. It's like the tricycle demon has gone outside to stir up things there instead. There are two inches of snow heaped upon the power line, and I watch as one long section of snow peels off, falls down. The cat is snoring, paws out, uncomfortably warm.
After two hundred pages another section of snow is gone from the power line. I've lost track of time. I'm enjoying the book.
After three hundred pages the cat wakes from a dream, meows, turns around, and falls asleep again. Small tractors are moving up and down the street, clearing the snow. The tricycle demon is almost gone from my brain. It's a strange, lazy, crazy day. It has a suspended beauty, it's like living in a snowglobe, just me and a cat and the book that I'm reading.
So I go downstairs and lie on the couch and stare out the window. It's snowing terribly, a solid sheet of white that's falling and covering everything. I pull up the afghan and the cat comes to lie beside me. When I finally feel like getting up I don't want to because it would wake her.
The snow keeps falling, it's amazing, beautiful. The cat snores, cuddled against my hip. I've begun sinking into a sugar-low; an imaginary man on a tricycle is circling around in my head, yelling at me, peeling back the layers of conceit and society to reveal the base reality of the brain damaged diabetic. I sink down, further and further. The cat snores. I eventually realize what is happening and I get up and eat an early lunch.
Back to the couch, searching for something to distract me from that tricycle demon, I start to read Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher." It is the perfect cure for my early morning plague. I've forgotten what it's like to read a mass-market paperback, a well-written and straight-forward story whose only purpose is to pull you in and keep you reading.
After a hundred pages I feel a burst of energy: I will do something! I take a shower and wash the curls out of my hair, and then my energy is gone and I return to the couch. The snow has stopped but the wind is intense, picking up entire banks of snow and shoving them into the air. It's like the tricycle demon has gone outside to stir up things there instead. There are two inches of snow heaped upon the power line, and I watch as one long section of snow peels off, falls down. The cat is snoring, paws out, uncomfortably warm.
After two hundred pages another section of snow is gone from the power line. I've lost track of time. I'm enjoying the book.
After three hundred pages the cat wakes from a dream, meows, turns around, and falls asleep again. Small tractors are moving up and down the street, clearing the snow. The tricycle demon is almost gone from my brain. It's a strange, lazy, crazy day. It has a suspended beauty, it's like living in a snowglobe, just me and a cat and the book that I'm reading.
A Scary Movie For You: "Creep"
Oh, and Happy New Year, by the way.
I'm always on the lookout for a good scary movie. Most of the ones I choose are either bad Japanese or Spanish "style before substance" films ("somethin' weird is going on, but who knows why?"), but occasionally -- VERY occasionally -- I run across a gem.
So I give you "Creep."
Yeah, I get thrilled by movies about people exploring underground passageways. And dialog ALWAYS sounds less cheesy when the actors are British. But this is EXACTLY the sort of movie I love: realistic characters running around in real time, dealing with a totally logical menace. Plus gore and humour and beautiful cinematography. It's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" reconfigured. And I mean the original, film, the GOOD one. Creepy, creepy, creepy.
Freaked me out. Upset me. Good movie.
Bonus! Another film that may or may not be good.
"Dreamcatcher" ... So, what did this have to do with "Dreamcatchers," again? And why is Donnie Walhberg saying "Oooby-ooby-doo" at me? Oh yeah, it's a Stephen King movie. The back story sounds uncomfortably "It"-ish, but the messed-up alien story is incredibly WOW. I bought the book. I don't want to read about little kids bonding. I want to read about fungus growing on people's faces. Shiver. Memo to King.
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