I was picking through my friend's copy of Rue Morgue...

And they were doing a year-end review of 2009. They said Halloween II "wounded their retinas". I've got a problem with this for two reasons.

First, I admire the Halloween re-dos by Zombie. I really do. For me they go back to the early movies of Wes Craven or even what reviewer Dejan Ognjanovic says in one of my coffee table books about Dario Argento's Suspiria - "The plot is clearly derived from fairy tales ... no hunters come to the rescue: the hero(ine) is left to his/her own wits."

As is the case with the movies of the two directors I mentioned, there's no knight in shining armor to come and save the damsel in distress. More often than not the protagonist has to stoop to the low moral level of the villain and perform the unthinkable in order to survive. For some odd reason the poolside hummer scene (OUCH OUCH OUCH) in the original "Last House on the Left" comes to mind here but I digress...

The hero(ine) usually doesn't come out of this in one piece with mind and body fully intact, which most viewers (especially in the case of the revamped BD release of Halloween II, with extended ending) don't want. But the important thing to realize is that just like any other filmmaker or artist, Zombie is a storyteller. Plain and simple. All you've got to do is enjoy the ride regardless of where the destination lies.

Remember how HUGE a hit The Dark Knight was? And does anyone remember what Scarecrow told the mobsters that were pissed his drugs were messing up the customers?

"I told you my compound would take you places," Scarecrow lectures. "I never said they'd be places you wanted to go."

So why can't Rue Morgue (not that I have a problem with the publication) and others stop bitching, just fasten their-seat belts, and hit the fucking gas pedal?

And secondly, is Rue Morgue implying that Scout Taylor-Compton has wounded their retinas as well? Because judging by the link provided I certainly don't think that's the case. Just WOW.

And that's my end of the lecture.

Making a good idea a million times better.

I was out the other night with Lanky when I noticed this toy at a checkout counter.

It's a little plastic gun that shoots little plastic kitties in the air. I pointed out to Landon in the checkout line that the toy would be a MILLION times better with the following alterations.

1.) If it had "ANIMAL CONTROL ENFORCEMENT" emblazioned on the side,

2.) If it came with about 80-90 of the little plastic cats,

3.) And if it contained a crazy cat lady, much like the ones you read about on the news frequently or see on Hoarders or better yet on 20/20.

The other people looked at me in the line like I was the crazy one but it's only my intention to make a work of art that imitates life! I told Landon out loud, right there in Borders, "I don't care if other people can hear me out in public. I've got brilliant ideas and I'm gonna share them with the world."

Yes readers, I am the smartest man alive.

So the Saints won the Super Bowl? Hmm. Don't really care. Moving on. I don't waste my time with football.

At least I've had the last two nights off, after working overtime on Saturday morning. Everyone just had to call off. But otherwise I made to work and back okay.

Should I not make it to work tonight...

It's been a pleasure posting here. Gotta go in tonight even though the snow is coming down like a freaking anvil.

There's a medical term for this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TPJ1uqF05w
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Self-described_wolf_woman_severed_lost_dogs_head.html
It's called clinical lycanthropy, when a person is under the delusion that they are a werewolf or are some other form of a shapeshifter. We learned about it in the first day of Psych 101, just for shits and giggles. Some friendly advice for the people of San Antonio, TX - hide your pets and maybe your small children too.

Jesus jumped-up Christ! If I had a kid this screwed up and he/she said they wanted to run away, they'd certainly have my blessing. Wolfie Blackheart does get an honorable mention for being hot, though. Schizoid delusions aside she can sink her teeth into me any time.

Just Tweeted this BUT...

I talked to Lynda about sponsoring "Horror of Dracula" this October at the Lincoln. She says she's looking into it. I've quite frankly had enough of the "Twilight" bullshit. People around here need to see some real vampires in action. I'm sick of vampires that are daywalkers (I call them "GAYwalkers") with sparkling skin who want to marry their high school sweethearts.

I want to see Peter Cushing slamming stakes through the hearts of the foul beasts of the night, right on the big screen. I want Massillon to be captivated as Christopher Lee gazes down and chomps on any poor dumbass/unsuspecting female he encounters. I've pretty much made this decision and I'm sticking to it.

The people in Massillon and the surrounding area don't just need great Hammer horror. They deserve it.

A Quick History Lesson, with Props

I remember a little back when I told about my grandmother's passing, and I reminisced about the story she used to LOVE to tell me as a child before Alzheimer's claimed her mind and spirit. Every Monday when SHE was a child, she used to tell me, Grandma and her sister used to wait for the "ice man" to come and load up the ice chest with big blocks of ice. She would tell me how nice the man was to her and the family in Mitchell, Indiana every week, and how it was so good to see him.

You see, readers, before we had the fancy electric-powered refrigerators that we've got today, we had ice boxes or ice chests that were cooled, literally, by gigantic blocks of ice. These were usually placed at the top of the box, which cooled the air and whatever perishables you had inside. Then as the ice melted, most ice boxes had some sort of a catchment system that would capture the melted water and run it off to either a catch pan which would be dumped or through some sort of a pipe where it could be pumped out with a primitive siphon.

Every week, a delivery man would be sent to your home to replace the blocks of ice (depending on the unit you had they were usually 25-30 pound blocks). And usually you had some sort of a coupon or a form to fill out when the ice man made his delivery.

Well today I came across some coupons like this.

Much like you see at today's dry cleaners, you didn't get ice unless you had an ice ticket! I'm going to show these to my 92-year-old great-grandma. She'll know exactly what these are.

For the record...

I hate getting my blood drawn. The needle doesn't bother me, but I'm one of the unfortunate few that can feel my blood pumping into the vial. For me it's pretty much stomach-churning and I had to go through that this morning. It was part of my provided insurance at work - they do a Q&A, draw your blood, and I also got the H1N1 vaccine as an added bonus. Basically I know now what I did already - that I'm a healthy 25-year-old not yet ready to drop over.

The State of the Union was all the rage at work last night but based on my post below you can all guess I didn't watch it.
I have bigger fish to fry, such as work, doing (or trying to) a DL of Siren: Blood Curse, yet ANOTHER book from Backlist Books (you gotta support your local small businesses, people!), and being off tonight from work. My ass slept in until early this evening. I now have a movie in my PS3 while I'm still waiting for Siren: Blood Curse to finish up here.

"Politicians just keep coming at you in waves until you're subsumed by the undertow of their doubletalk and the riptide of their malign intent, to drown an ignoble death in a muddy sinkhole of lies."

-Kim Newman,
Apocalypse Movies: End of the World Cinema