The Lineup

I went shopping and of course along with a few necessities I picked up a bunch of bad horror movies. I just can't resist the allure of crap. Adding those, I've got quite a few that I haven't watched yet, here's the list:

Carnival of Blood
Curse of the Headless Horseman
Ghoulies IV
The Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
The Nurse
Prom Night (The original!)
Skeleton Man
13 Ghosts (The original William Castle one)
Torture Garden
Vampire Wars: The Battle for the Universe

I smell a marathon! Can I hold out through 10 whole movies or will my brain melt and ooze out my ears? Or will it just kill me outright? Find out next post!

Sorry!

I know I haven't posted for awhile. I apologize. All I've wanted to do lately is listen to music and forget the world exists as much as possible. It's not like things are worse than they usually are, I think I'm just lonely and am using music to pretend I have some kind of real companionship. It just sucks not having family or real friends around during Christmas and New Years ya know? If any of my friends back home are reading this I really miss you guys. Two years in a row hardly seeing any of you sucks beyond words.
Sigh, sad sack complaining over. To quote the great band Mindless Self Indulgence, "Boo fuckin hoo you're not the only one whose life's a piece of shit
And yet miraculously somehow we all seem to deal with it."
Anyways, I thought this would be cool to start doing:

Album currently playing: Relative Minors by Qristina and Quinn Bachand. (Awesome Celtic music by a brother and sister way too young to be so good at writing and playing music!)

Last movie watched: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Blech. Stupid stupid movie. Starts off ridiculous and just gets more and more unbelievable until the over the top stupid bloated CGI rendered climax. I mean seriously, its supposed to be an Indiana Jones movie, who sat down and wrote spaceships and interdemensional portals in and why? And don't get me started on the already infamous "fridge" part. I guess having him hide in, I don't know, a BOMB SHELTER was too out there an idea. Lucas has now officially lost his freaking mind but at least he's running out of franchises to ruin.

Currently reading: Just After Sunset by Stephen King. Got this one for Christmas and have only read a few stories in it, but so far it's pretty good. I like it much better than his last book of short stories Everythings Eventual.

Oh and I promised some Jan Svankmajer awhile back so I'll finish with that. Enjoy! And comment a bit will ya! It makes me feel like I'm actually reaching people.

tma/svetlo/tma (Darkness/Light/Darkness)

Three Cords and the Truth

I wish that I could go back and see
What rock and roll used to be
When Zeppelin ruled
And Sabbath chugged
The booze, the girls,
Music, and drugs
When they were gods
Upon the stage
Before the ravages of age
Before Ozzy was a joke
Before his brain went up in smoke
Before Jimmy played with Puff
When it was just rock,
You know, the good stuff
You can keep your emo
Your gansta rap
And teenage scream-o
I'll keep my Beatles
My Doors
And my Who
And Elvis with his shoes of blue
Up till Cobain
Blew out his brains
And it went down the drain
We killed rock and roll
We're all to blame
Ain't it a shame
Ain't it a shame

Childhood

When I was a kid I would lay in bed waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark. We lived out in the country so there wasn't any streetlights or illumination, other than the nights when the moon was out. It was also very quiet. In the silence I would imagine I could hear things moving around in the dark, shuffling around on the carpet and talking in quiet whispers, barley audible. Then when my eyes did adjust I thought I could see them, that I could make out shapes moving in the darkness. I don't know how I ever fell asleep at night.
We lived in an old schoolhouse that was always being fixed up. It wasn't too creepy but there was an old cabin near it, full of junk, that used to scare me for some reason. According to my dad there was an old woman in town who was born and raised in the old cabin as well as several living and dead people that had attended classes in the one room schoolhouse we lived in. This made me feel very strange.
I don't remember seeing any ghosts (how many people died in school in those days?) but I used to think I could see things in the corners of my eyes, mostly going up and down the stairs.
It sounds like I'm making this up, but I'm not. I lived in that old school house till my folks split up when I was about eight. Then I mostly lived in town in an apartment and then a succession of crappy rented houses. My dad still owns the house and land but currently lives in a city pretty far away.

So stems my fascination with decaying old houses. Also cemeteries, like how cool would it be to stumble onto an over-grown graveyard in the middle of a woods? Maybe not cool for you but I think it would be pretty sweet. I'm not a goth type person either. I don't really want to be dead or any of that crap, but I've always been fascinated with the darker side of things. I used to read books of scary stories all the time, you could check out some pretty nasty ones (for kids!) from the library. I remember one that had a woman on the cover holding her head in her hands, blood seeping out of her neck stump. I never knew why I kept reading them, some of them scared me so bad I couldn't sleep, but they were my favorite books. Do you remember Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark? The stories were pretty lame but the drawings still creep me out.

Yes, this is an actual picture from a book for kids!

Basically all I really wanted to do was give a shout out to one of my favorite sites and I kinda got off track, please go to Grave Addiction. There's so many cool pictures and stories on this site, I've spent hours going through them. Thats all I really wanted to say. I'll post some more poetry tomorrow, I've been neglecting those.
Peace and love,
Kurdt.

More on EC

So I just watched a short documentary on EC comics called Tales from the Crypt: From Comic Books to Television that aired on AMC in 2005. I am now officially in love with comics that I have never read a page of! There's also a butt-load of extra features I'm going to get to tomorrow. I'm also going to have to do research and see what the best and easiest to get reprints are, all the documentary talked about was the black and white full volume sets that came out in the 70s, I'm guessing those probably don't come cheap.
Anyways, It's late but I just though I'd update since this blog has pretty much just turned out to be about my growing obsession with a series of over 50 year old comic books. Heres some cover pictures that I pulled off of Wikipedia:

This one is pretty famous. When William Gaines was testifying to the senate they asked him why the cover wasn't in bad taste. Gaines replied it would only be in bad taste if the gore from the womans neck was shown!


I love this one.


This one is from one of EC's imitators, Key Comics. According to the documentary they would usually go overboard with the violence and miss the point of the stories, but I like this cover.


Alright one more. EC also did a line of fantasy and Sci-fi comics even though they weren't as successful, they're still pretty memorable.


More tomorrow, I need sleep!

Tales from the Crypt Season 2 Review (Part 1)

Lets review from where we last left off boys and ghouls: Season one had all of six episodes and while still pretty good, was a bit clunky, a few dud episodes and one real classic. How does season 2 stack up? Well, lets take a look shall we?

Once again the intro is cut off from the episodes(grrr!)and plays when you first put the disc in. After the intro you get The Cryptkeeper hosting the main menu screen, or rather a redone keeper, who looks a bit on the cheap side. His jokes are also more putrid than usual, but it's still kinda cool. They had something like this on the season 1 disc, but it was a menu option and they didn't even show his face! Go to the episode select screen to hear even more terrible puns. No extras yet though. The last set had a whole extra discs worth, which was really just a half hour documentary about EC comics and picture stills. I opted out of the bonus disc to get the longer version of the documentary, released on its own, which I will probably review later. It might take me awhile, apparently with all the extras it's almost seven hours!

Okay, on to the rotted meat in this maggoty review sandwich. Season 2 has a whopping 18 episodes, the longest of the 7 seasons and 12 more than season one! Disc one has the first 6 episodes.

Episode 1: Dead Right
The first thing that makes this season so much better than the first, is the star power. Right off the bat we have an episode with Demi Moore and Jeffrey Tambor! Demi plays a secretary who goes to a psychic at the instance of a friend, who tells her that she will marry a large man who will die and leave her a large sum of money, but first she will get fired from her job. The losing her job thing comes true and she ends up working at a strip club where she meets Tambor in a nasty fat suit. She can't stand to even be near him (she actually throws up the first time they kiss!) but the psychic insists that he is the one who will die and leave her a large sum of money. She's right of course but not in the way Demi thinks...
Pretty good episode to open with. Tambor is awesome as always, but even with the fat suit I kept expecting him to say "Hey Now, it's Hank Kingsley! Help me Larry I married the girl from Striptease!" Some nice gore and a good twist, but it gets better from here. Oh and a bit of a gripe, this is supposed to be set in the 1950s, but Demi works in a sleazy strip joint! Were those even legal back then?

Episode 2: The Switch
So the Cryptkeeper is doing his usual shtick, this time while lifting weights made of bones and...holy shit is that Arnold Schwarzenegger wearing a Tales from the Crypt t-shirt? Yes it is! On top of that Arnie actually directed this episode! Is this some kind of weird alternate universe I've just stumbled into? Well, no, I checked and Kate Hudson isn't my wife and I'm not living on a tropical island with monkey butlers for servants. Damn. Moving on...
This episode stars William Hickey as a rich old man trying to woo a much younger lady, who of course won't even go to first base with him because, well, he's a grody old man. Hickey is sad but has an idea: he will somehow turn himself into a much younger man to get the girl. So he goes to plastic surgeon who tells him he can't do freakin' miracles but sends him to a mad scientist played with campy glee by Roy Brocksmith. Brocksmith says he can turn him young again but it ends up costing Hickey his whole fortune. Now he can get the girl right? Right?!! What do you think? This episode is pretty good, although there's no gore and the ending kind of sucks. Hickey is one of my favorite character actors, and there's also Ian Abercrombie as his butler, who played Elaine's fussy boss Mr. Pitt on Seinfeld. ("I just want a decent pair of socks!") Of course since its directed by Arnie for some reason, there's lots of shots of buff shirtless guys lifting weights, if thats your thing.

Episode 3: Cutting Cards
Has anyone seen the movie Near Dark? Well you should, it rules. Stop reading this and go watch it now! Lance Henriksen, Jesse Hooker in the afore mentioned kick ass vampire movie and the dad in Pumpkinhead, stars as a gambler out to get a rival to take a hike out of his town. They decide to play a game of chance with dice to decide who goes but that doesn't work so they play Russian Roulette! What do they decide to do when that fails? Ever heard of chop poker? Neither have I but it looks quite painful.
Man, what a gory episode! Lots of squick, Henriksen and his crazy eyes, and a funny ending make this a winner.

Episode 4: 'Til Death
So theres this rich smuck who lives by a swamp in the deep south. Why does he live by a swamp in the deep south? Because thats where he bought some land to build his future money making hotel thats why. Too bad its going to cost him millions to build because, say it with me Python fans, He lives in a bloody swamp! But theres a snooty rich girl he could con some money out of if he can get her to marry him. Maybe the voodoo priestess he spurned years ago could help him? Maybe asking for help from a voodoo priestess who's heart you broke is a bad idea, a very bad idea it turns out.
I don't know why but I really liked this one. Maybe it was the un-PC voodoo rituals, the horny rotting female zombie, or maybe just the pun "I'm burning with desire for you" (spouted by said rotting female zombie, now on fire) but this episode is another part of the awesomeness that makes up season 2.

Episode 5: Three's a Crowd
Most of the episodes so far have been good campy fun, made of awesomeness and win as they say on the Internets, but not particularity creepy. This is the first episode thats truly eerie and unsettling. Gavan O'Herlihy is excellent as a sad sack who suspects his hot wife is cheating on him with his best friend, who happens to be incredibly rich. His friend is actually very generous and invites them out to his cabins in the country for their honeymoon, but O'Herlihy is nothing but suspicious from the start, on top of being an alcoholic as it turns out. I won't spoil anymore.
This episode is a bit of a slow burn but very unsettling and almost dream like in places. Plus O'Herlihy is excellent, he really should be in more movies. The best part of the episode is the ending, wonderfully warped! I almost didn't want this one to end and the Cryptkeeper's outro kind of ruined the atmosphere with his silly puns.
This is the best one yet, hopefully the episodes on the next disc will be as good...wait theres one more to watch.

Episode 6: The Thing from the Grave
This is kind of a generic episode, you can tell from the title. The Cryptkeeper even says as much in the opening! However, it does have Teri Hatcher in her underwear tied to a bed, so at least theres that.
Hatcher plays a hot model who's dating her abusive jerk manager. A photographer falls for her and gives her the key to his apartment. When shes had enough of jerko she runs to him and they do the dirty deed. Too bad her manager is watching, too bad for photo boy who ends up six feet under with several bullet holes punched in him. You pretty much know whats going to happen right away and despite a cool looking zombie, this one falls kind of flat, especially after the awesomeness of the last episode. Teri Hatcher is hot though and in her underwear most of the time. Meh.

This is the season that's made a true fan out of me again, I can't wait to see more. How are these reviews going? Want me to stop and go back to just writing crappy poems? Anyone? Your input is much appreciated. Till the second part of Season 2 comes in, tah.

Beautifool prise winning poemmm

The farmers wife was away for the week:
Who's my bitch? said the farmer
Not I says the little piggy
I've got my own problems to take care of
So fuck off and let me be
Who's my bitch? said the farmer
Not I says the cow
But my tits could use a tug
Go ask the dog
Who's my bitch? said the farmer
Not I said the dog
I've got worms and my ass itches
I've got to go eat grass and puke all over your floor
Go ask the cat
Who's my bitch? said the farmer
Not I said the cat
I'm not big enough for you to take
Go ask the pig
Who's my bitch? said the farmer
Not I said the pig
The cats a fucking liar
You're all fucking liars!
Please let me be!
Then the farmer raped the pig

The moral of the story: Sometimes the farmer rapes you even if you're a dirty pig.

Depresso Christmas Song

So yeah, I tried to write the most depressing Christmas song ever and here it is. Nothing like my real life of course, so don't take it literally, please!

I've got my plastic tree
I nailed it to the wall
I wanted to talk to you
But you wouldn't return my calls
This house is cold
And I'm alone
Thought that maybe you could help
Merry Christmas to myself

I'll sing songs
Cause the quiet makes me sad
I'll drink more
Till I don't feel so bad
I pushed everyone away
So tonights the night I pay
I need help
Merry Christmas to myself

No presents for me
Underneath my tree
I don't care for anyone
And no one cares for me
That doesn't mean that
I don't feel bad
This is the worst year that I've ever had
And I'll drink till I pass out
Merry Christmas to myself

And I knew it all along
That you weren't coming home
The day that you stormed out
And left me here alone
So I'll stand beneath the mistletoe
And drink till I pass out
Merry Christmas to myself
Merry Christmas to myself

Obligatory Christmas Post

First of all, watch the little cartoon here: http://www.oohbitey.com/main.html
I was going to write a poem about a drunk Santa but Mr. Phillips has done a much better job than I could ever do.

Oh well, maybe I'll think of a good warped Christmas poem tomorrow. I'll go and listen to Fairy Tale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl again for inspiration. If you haven't heard this song yet then something is missing from your life. Namely, a song about two drunks insulting and throwing curses at each other on Christmas Eve. Here it is. Best. Christmas. Song. Ever.

Merry Freakin' Christmas!

Tales from the Crypt Season One Review

I've never sat down and watched a whole TV series from beginning to end before so I decided if I was going to do something like that I would watch a show I loved as a kid but never got to watch a whole lot of. That way I would be partially ensconced in nostalgia but not drowning in it. I also thought it'd be cool to review each season on this blog as I watched them (netflix permitting). So I picked Tales From the Crypt, which I caught in edited form on Sci-fi from time to time but never in all it's uncensored glory on HBO.
Before I start going through season one I thought I'd give you the lowdown on the history behind the show.
It all started back in the 1950s. William Gaines comic book company, EC Comics, sales were in the toilet. He noticed that some other companies were doing quite well selling horror and mystery type stories so thats what he started selling, under titles like Tales From the Crypt, Vault of Horror, Shock Suspense Stories, etc. He also switched his companies name from Educational Comics to Entertaining Comics, as he ultimately abandoned the edutainment format that almost bankrupted his company. There were a lot of companies doing horror comics at the time, but what made EC so great and why it sold so well was the quality of both the writing and the memorably grisly art work. In fact it was so over the top (for the 1950s anyways) that the government accused Gaines of corrupting the nation's youth and attempted to shut him down by putting a code in place to make comics safe for young minds. (and super dull). Unfortunately it worked, no store would distribute any comic books with out the seal of the comics authority code on it's cover and Gaines again found him self on the verge of bankruptcy. Something good did come out of it though, Mad Magazine! Gaines found that if he printed his comics in the magazine format he could buck the censors and print whatever the Hell he wanted, which turned out to be the best satirical magazine ever made. It's still in print, but now it's in color and it sucks after being bought out by Time Warner. Boo on the man!
But anyway, EC's horror comics were around for only a short time but they had a huge influence on the world of horror, namely writers like Stephen King and directors like George Romero. King and Romero loved them so much that they did a tribute movie called Creepshow (and Creepshow II, but the less said about that one the better).
There were also a couple of movies made in the 1970s by Amicus studios in Britain, that used actual stories from Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror called (big shocker) Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. They're pretty entertaining in their own right but I'm not reviewing them, I'm reviewing the first season of Tales from the Crypt, which premiered on HBO way back in 1989. It was almost immediately one of HBO's most poplar shows and ran for seven seasons. So EC was again free to warp the minds of young children who happened to catch the show when their parents weren't around.
So how is the first season? Well, to tell you the truth, not as great as I remembered it. It's still very entertaining but the first season of any show is a little creaky. I've read that the second season is a massive improvement, but we'll have to see. Also, there's only six episodes this time, which isn't a bad thing really, it leaves you wanting to watch more and you can watch all of them in one sitting. Later seasons would have at least 12 episodes or more, I'll review them disc by disc. (All episodes except for the very last one in season seven are based on stories from EC by the way, just thought you'd want to know).
On another side note, one thing thats weird about the DVD is that the intro for the show only plays when you first put in the disc and as an option on the main menu. I understand that some people won't want to watch the same thing over and over on every episode, but isn't that what the skip button on the remote is for? I love the intro because it sets up the show so well and it feels weird to just go right from one episode to another. They left the end credits on for Pete's sake!

Okay, enough, first episode:
The Man Who Was Death
An executioner is put out of work when the death penalty is abolished in his state. Since you can't put a good man down he decides to carry on his work by zapping people who he thinks the justice system let off too easily. Of course you can see the ending coming a mile away, but it's not bad for a first episode. The first thing I noticed though is that The Crypt Keeper host that opens and closes each show isn't as animated as I remembered him and he doesn't spout as many horrible puns. Again, apparently this is corrected by season two, we'll see. One thing that did really catch me off guard about this one was the female nudity. There's a scene where the executioner goes into a strip club to off a not so nice exotic dancer in a metal cage, and holy cow! Being aired on a pay channel like HBO has it's benefits I guess.

Episode 2:
And All Through the House
Now this is what I'm talking about! The most memorable episode of season one has a woman who murders her husband on Christmas Eve stalked by a psycho in a Santa suit, and she can't call the police because her dead husband is lying in the front yard with a hole in his head. Good twisted fun, especially the ending which I won't give away. This story was actually adapted first for the Amicus Tales movie in the 70s, but it's done much better here. Yes, thats right, EC Comics actually started the whole psycho Santa thing, how cool is that?

Episode 3:
Dig That Cat... He's Real Gone
I love this one. The dark, almost campy, humor that would endear the show to fans is in full force here. A bum is given a large sum of money by a scientist who's studying longevity in the human body. He injects some juice from a cat into the guy and then shoots him in the head. Surprise! The guy can't die, his body heals up and he's back to normal again. To fund further experiments the scientist puts him in a carnival side show were white trash gawkers pay large sums of money to watch him die and come back to life, and later get to kill him themselves. It all goes so well, even after he offs the professor in a car crash so he can have the money all to himself. But there's something about that cat that's just on the tip of his mind...
My favorite part is where people are paying large sums of money to shoot the guy with a cross bow and a father berates his fat son for missing. (But I don't wanna kill him dad!)

Episode 4:
Only Sin Deep
The first real clunker of the series, this episode stars Lea Thompson, best known for her Oscar winning role in Howard the Duck (Ha Ha). Lea is a hooker (a very good looking hooker, which don't exist in real life, don't screenwriters watch COPS?) This hooker wants to get into this rich guys life (and his pants) so she shoots a pimp, steals his jewelry and goes to hawk it at a pawn shop. Too bad the owner recognizes the merchandise as Hot (read: probably stolen) and won't touch it. But he does have something even more valuable to buy from her, namely her good looks which he needs to revive his long dead wife. He's into voodoo you see...Okay thats enough, you can see where this is going and there's not even a good twist at the end. Everything good about the episode is pretty much ruined by Lea way overacting her tough girl bit and her terribly fake Brooklyn accent. Pooah! (That was me spitting). Lets move on shall we?

Episode 5:
Lover Come Hack to Me
This one's a little better, but mostly because it stars Amanda Plummer. You may remember Amanda from the opening of Pulp Fiction ("any of you fucking pigs move"... and so on). She's quite good in a simple story about a girl who marries a mimbo who just wants her for her money and ends up with him on their honeymoon night trapped in a creepy old house. A little too much man-butt for my taste in this one but it's worth it to see Amanda wielding an ax,completely covered in blood. She just makes such a good psycho ya know?

Episode 6:
Collection Completed
The season ends on a high note with this episode. It's about a man who retires after like 40 years of work and finds that his wife, who he never paid much attention to, isn't all there up-stairs. But her large collection of animals and subsequent treatment of him as just another pet, start to drive him insane too. He eventually finds a hobby to keep him occupied. Too bad it's not something his wife is going to approve of especially after her furry best friends start disappearing....
I love seeing old people in horror movies. I just get tired of watching annoying young teens getting cut up sometimes, why aren't there more seniors running around with axes or kitchen knives anymore? Why should the young people have all the fun? The actors in this one are really good, and actually feel like the nice old couple down the street who bicker a lot. I especially love the nosy clueless neighbor who has nothing to do but give the guy model airplanes that he never builds. The look on his face at the end is priceless too. But anyway, it really leaves you wanting to watch more and it was no wonder that the show was such a massive hit almost right off the bat.

All in all, not a bad start for the show. A few clunkers and some slow moments, but if you're into horror anthologies, then you could do much worse than to pick this show up. I'd start off with Creepshow and the Amicus anthologies myself, but whatever. If you've read this far, thanks a bunch. I'll try to keep future reviews a bit shorter. Stay tuned for the first part of season two! Er, whenever Netflix feels like sending it over. Any time now...

Old Poem #2

I recently re-discovered this one folded up on a small piece of notebook paper tucked away in a drawer. To the best of my recollection I wrote it about two years ago, which would make it the oldest poem I still have that isn't from high school. And no, I am most assuredly not going to show those. Ick, so embarrassing.
Anyways, it's called The Ballad of Bullet Head Boy. For better or worse, here it is.

Mary Lou wanted to fly
Whattya know
I guess she died
Went down to Hell
Where all the bad people fry
Oh...and the demons cry:

Bullet Head Boy use your head
Do it now before she's dead
One more time she's in her prime
Use your bullet head one last time

Bullet Head boy wanted Mary Lou
Whattya know
I guess he's screwed
Went to the churchyard for somethin' to do
Dug up her body from six feet deep
Lay down beside her and went to sleep
Oh...and the demons scream:

Bullet Head Boy use your head
You can't do it now
She's stone cold dead
Like vinegar wine
It's past your time
And your bullet head is past it's prime
Oh...and the demon's cry:

Can't you see, it's all a dream
She's coming apart at the seams...

Random Thoughts

Lennon sings on The Beatles song Yer Blues which is about the singer being lonely and wanting to die, in fact wanting to die all the time. The problem is that it's not a very depressing song, in fact it's quite upbeat. The Beatles have quite a few songs with really depressing lyrics but they're all saddled with poppy upbeat melodies. I have a suspicion that this is mostly Lennon's doing. McCartney might have written Yesterday and Eleanor Rigby but he mostly stuck to upbeat mostly vaudeville type songs like Honey Pie and When I'm 64. He didn't have the cynical almost cruel sense of humor that Lennon had. And here's another thing, by the time Yer Blues came out on The White Album Lennon was a millionaire and could probably have had any girl in the world he wanted. What was he doing singing about loneliness? And why did he pick Yoko Ono of all people to marry and obsess over?
And why didn't the castaway's on Gilligan's island just patch up the hole in their stupid boat and go home? And why didn't any of the people who visited their island tell the outside world about them and send help? And how did they keep the same clothes on for all those years with ever getting them ripped or torn? Gilligan's Island is stupid.
Why do I like Gilligan's island so much? Two words: Mary Ann.

Gilligan is so gay. Both Ginger and Mary Ann both go after him all the time and he hangs around with The Skipper who calls him his Little Buddy!
Brain dump over.
End of Line.

I Didn't Wanna Hurt You Baby...

I'm bored so I thought I'd post again tonight. I talked a bit last week about Exposure and how I thought it was the greatest show ever made. I thought I'd give you another example of why I loved it so much. It's because they showed videos like this:

Vast-Pretty When You Cry


Have you ever seen anything like that on TV ever? That's the freakiest music video I've ever seen, and I saw it on cable TV! Sci-fi didn't know what to do with the show so they juggled it around different time slots so you never knew when it was on. Sometimes it'd be on in the afternoon and sometimes it'd be on at night. I remember having to turn it off once and watch it on the TV downstairs when they showed an edited version of the original Tripping the Rift short, which was still quite dirty. My mom was folding clothes and was oblivious to the horny purple alien beating the crap out of his gay robot crew mate on TV and I bolted before she got wise. Good times, good times.
Oh and I promised some Jan Svankmeyer too. Well, you'll just have to wait for those. Don't want to waste all the good videos in one post and there's a bunch of good ones I could post up.
As Tigger used to say before Pooh got tired of his antics and stuck a pole up his butt, TTFN (ta ta for now!)

Ode to EC

Dead beat husband sits at home
Drinking beer all alone
Falls asleep with the TV on
Up behind him sneaks his hon
Tired old housewife lifts her ax
And gives his noggin 20 whacks
Into the backyard his body goes
Under the bushes of thorny rose
When work is done blood is gone
Down to watch TV sits hon
Doesn't hear the doorknob's creaks
Till she hears a voice that speaks
"Lovey hon, I've had a hard day
'How about a kiss', why don't ya say?"
The screams ring through the suburban air
The neighbors rush in to find her there
Sitting all alone in hubby's chair
Eyes wide open
But oh so dead
A single rose shoved through her head.

Hate Hate Hate

Unadulterated
Pure bile
Building to the breaking point
In my sleep deprived body
You make me sick
With your inconsiderateness
Your lack of tact
The very fact that you're alive
I wish you had never been born
Go jump off a cliff you wastes of sperm
And let me sleep

More

I started this blog as a way to get my creative juices flowing and actually start writing again, but I thought I'd take a break every once in awhile to show off cool stuff I've found on my cruises around the big truck known as the INTERNET. Actually, I saw this film many years ago on a Sci-fi channel show called Exposure. Not many people caught it in the short time before it was canceled but it ruled. Basically it existed to showcase sci-fi and horror short films, a simple idea but there was nothing like it on TV and I haven't seen the like of it since. They even had an episode devoted to Star Wars fan films and showed Star Wars Gantsta Rap! There's a bunch of films I remember that I will probably never be able to find again, but some I've re-discovered on Youtube, which I'll try and post up. This one is my absolute favorite.
Warning, this is a very depressing film, But it's incredibly well done and was actually nominated for an Academy Award.

Mark Osborne's More


Next week I'll post up some Jan Svankmeyer films that blew my mind as an impressionable young teenager. Man I miss Exposure, it was just too good for TV.

A bit of prosy (for Jen)

When I was a kid the scariest thing to me was our basement. Well, it really wasn't a basement. I guess you'd call it a cellar. It had a dirt floor and walls made out of real stone. It was also damp and dark and spooky as all get out. The only person who went down there for anything was my father when the hot water heater putzed out. There wasn't even a light bulb down there, you had to bring a flashlight.
One of my first memories is of standing at the top of the stairs, staring into the darkness below. I can still smell it too, that mixture of old dirt and long rotted vegetables. I would go down three or four steps and then my imagination would kick in. I could actually hear something crawling around, making very low scratching noises as it moved toward where I stood. Then I would feel it's hand around my ankle as it reached up between the stairs to pull me down. Then I would run up the stairs as fast as I could till I got to the landing. I'm surprised I never tripped or broke my ankle in my blind panics. Or fell, that would have been the worst: to fall down the stairs and land on that wet dirt. I probably would have had a heart-attack at five years old.
The only time I ever actually went down there was with my cousin Kelly. Or Kel as I used to call her. I was about six or seven and she was almost ten. It was a boring summer afternoon, our parents were at work and our Grandpa was supposed to be watching us, but he fell asleep on the couch watching re-runs of MASH. I had told her about the basement for some reason and of course she wanted to go down there. I told her I didn't want to go and she called me names till I went. Ah childhood. So we grabbed a couple flashlights from the cupboard and headed down the creaky steps, I kept so close that I almost tripped her.
I remember it looking so big to me. Actually being down there did nothing to alleviate my fears, I was so scared I was shaking. I swear I could see things moving around in the corners, or trying to crawl out of cracks in the rock walls. Or course Kel was way past the age where stuff like that is supposed to scare you and she waved her flashlight around and looked bored. We walked to the far wall where there were several boxes sitting. She opened one and took out a book.
"uck ew gross."
She dropped it after several pillbugs and a centipede crawled out.
"let's get out of here, this place is icky." She said, much to my relief.
We started to leave when her light fell on something in the opposite corner. Oddly enough it was a pile of broken machinery, handles and gears and other bits of slowly rusting metal and rotted wood. There was one piece that wasn't broken, an odd looking thing with lots of gears, big and small, and several sharp looking things on top. Kel grabbed the handle and for some reason I almost grabbed her hand to stop her. Slowly she turned the crank and the gears groaned against each other, the sharp pieces on top started to turn. As they turned they moved up and down in a slicing motion. As the rust ground out she turned the handle faster and faster, the gears cries turned from moans to a shrieks, and the blades whirled and dipped faster and faster till they were a blur. It was hypnotic and I found myself moving closer to get a better look at those blades, spinning and whirling and dipping spinning and whirling and dipping...
Suddenly Kelly screamed and gave me a push that landed me on my back. Something warm was running into my eyes as Kelly lifted me up and carried me up the stairs. When got out into the light I reached up and felt the enormous cut on my forehead and started to cry at the sight of so much blood. I had to go to the emergency room to get several stitches and was forbidden from ever going down into the cellar again. I wasn't sad. Eventually it was torn out and a real basement was put in. My Grandpa also never babysat any of us again.

Non-creepy weird poem

Out in the woods
Among the trees
I lay on my back and count the leaves
The sun is bright it filters down
Through the branches onto the ground
No one wants to steal my day
I don't have to move from where I lay
Nothing else to do today
Just sleep and dream
Till the sun slips away
But now I'm hungry and I forgot food
Boy some pancakes sure sound good
Down the trail, past the creek
Is the dwelling that I seek
Home and hearth
Hearth and home
No more today I think I'll roam

If I Were Famous

(To be sung by a cheesy folk singer with a soft guitar)
If I were famous
I'd buy us a home
On an island far away
You would come to live with me
You'd never have to roam
In our house you'd stay

Oh, I'd lock you in the basement
With chains around your feet
I'd feed you bread and water
And chunks of bloody meat
And I'd come down
Just to say hello
And that I love you so

If I were famous
I'd make you love me too
But if not
It's okay
You'll make
A tasty
Stew.

My Robot, Mary Lou and Me

Sitting alone at the Freshman's dance
In my Dad's old suit with the wrinkled pants
Trying real hard not to mess up my tie
The one with the birds that doesn't fit quite right
And I
Wonder what the Hell I'm doing here
And I
Know I don't belong
But I tell myself the reason I don't dance
Is cause the music is all wrong

I'm in love with Mary Lou
But there's nothing I can do
I'm just some kid
That goes to her school
I'm nothing to her it's true

But back home
Hidden away
There's a robot that I built one day
Tomorrow I will turn him on
And bring him to school to have some fun
I'll make him pick up her boyfriend Joel
And dunk his head in the toilet bowl
I'll let Mary smash some walls
As we laugh and run through the halls
Mary will say "I love you"
And I will say "I love you too"
As my robot tears the roof
Off the school

But now
I sit alone with my punch in hand
Watching all the cool kids dance
In my wrinkled suit
And Dad's old tie
Watching all the girls
Go by

Old Poem #1

I loved this girl once
I loved her a ton
We'd talk and laugh and all that crap
We had so much fun
The only problem (so they said)
But it was no big thing to me
Was that she was dead
And missing her head
Why can't they just let us be?

Poem #2

In the dark
In the dark
It is lonely in the dark
I am scared I am blind
I am small
There's things that move around
That slither on the ground
But I can't see anything at all

In the dark
In the dark
I am lonely in the dark
As I lay with my back to the wall
I wasn't scared of night
Till I lost the coming light
But there's worse to fear after all

In the dark
In the dark
There are things here in the dark
That slither hiss and bark
In the dark
In the dark
In the dark

I can see
I can see
The things they don't scare me
They are my friends
I pet them
I will name them one two three:
Sally is a doll with claws to climb the walls
Teddy is a bear with needles instead of hair
His teeth are metal sharp
And when he talks he barks
Serpy is a snake who doesn't talk an ounce
But I like him best, he shoots poison from his mouth

There's the light
There's the light
The door it opens bright
Bringing food is the one
Who put me here
I will show her my new friends
And then we will play again
She will stay with me then
Forever in the dark
In the dark
In the dark
In the dark

Poem #1

The wind blows cold around my head
A million thoughts: the floating dead
So soon they form
So soon they fly
My creative mind
Is starting to die
No talent have I
For stories or rhyme
Just formless ideas that fill my mind
Hurting hurting my poor brain
Driving me crazy
Making me insane
I wish I wish
I had the drive
To make these things come to life
To tell the world of doubt and pain
Love and death
Of sun and rain
To make them smile
And make them cry
Make them happy to be alive
But now all they do is quickly die:
These formless thoughts that run through my brain
That die and float off
Never to be heard again.