Saturday, October 31, 2015

today is halloween!

anna and nick are carving the season's jack o'lantern.  the weather is gorgeous.  all manner of boils, ghouls and goblins are preparing for an evening of trick&treats.

whatever your plans are for tonight may the night find you in frightening delight. 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

below is a halloween song by ten thirty one titled 'the ghost in you'. a lovely paean to the season of fright.



boo 

Friday, October 30, 2015

all hallow's eve eve

a lovely night, and the end of a good much too brief week off work.  currently watching george a. romero's groundbreaking, brilliant night of the living dead [1968].  romero hits a note i think most apocalyptic movies miss, the media.  if some strange shit starts happening what would we do.  we would turn on our TVs, radios, and devices to connect to the 'net.  romero laces his zombie film with a lot of news reports.  the characters are getting their information from TV news.  that is authentic.  i think we would turn on our devices for information.  the panic would increase thru mediation.  first hand accounts and footage of the destruction would be broadcast on TV and we would watch with our mouths agape as we tried to register the surreality of the events.  we would describe those events as being just like a movie.  romero knew this part of our culture and wove them into his story.  i would love to see a zombie movie, an apocalyptic film, told by the screens of our contemporary media.  watching the collapse of society via your smart phone and/or TV amps the scary factor.  romero knew this and put a lot of TV news, and his characters watching TV news, in his masterpiece.

everyday is halloween

                       nick meets the zombie


                      nick versus the zomie

                       another night, another haunt

boo



Thursday, October 29, 2015

dailies

q: so tell me brother what is the fuel that drives the engines

a: gratitude, motherfucker

everyday is halloween

October - November

Indian-summer-sun
With crimson feathers whips away the mists;
Dives through the filter of trellises 
And gilds the silver on the blotched arbor-seats.

Now gold and purple scintillate
On trees that seem dancing
In delirium;
Then the moon
In a mad orange-flare
Floods the grape-hung night.

--hart crane

boo

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

stray thots on the walking dead [season 6]

highly visceral if lacking in depth the characters all know their roles, rick the asshole survivor, carol the closeted bad-ass, deanna the leader who doesn't know shit, daryl the good man and loyal warrior et al.

 * * *

still yet there is a magic to the madness for the action is at the first intensity and the actors who play our beloved characters are very good at what they do.

* * *

the narrative arc is leading to -- i think -- the fateful meeting between negan and his saviours.  negan is the worst of the best bad-guy villians in this universe, even worse than the governor.

* * *

the scripts are still rather weak to character motivations and development but the writers are geniuses at creating dread and fear.

* * *

do i have a favorite character?  no, but i admire carol and -- believe it or not -- maggie.

* * *

beware of spoilers here.

what happened to glenn?  is he dead?  is he alive?  i trawled the 'net today and found speculation to support both.  it was a ballsy move by the producers of this show.  for last week's episode, 'thank you', was a punch in the gut.  i watched the penultimate scene when nicholas blows his brains out and knocks glenn off the garbage dumpster several time now and i do not know if glenn is alive or dead.  brilliant TV making, i say.

* * *

i'm not sure i like the nihilistic design of the walking dead universe.  i am convinced we survive as a species because we are -- by and large -- not assholes.  in this world you have to be an a-hole to live.

* * *

i really admire the actor who plays deanna, tovah feldshuh.  she can express more with her face than nearly every other actor can express using pages of script.

* * *

this might be the best season of the show thus far.




everyday is halloween

movies that scared the pee out of me: the blair witch project [1999]

much has been made, and derided, about the blair witch project that we lose sight of its extremely effective form of advertising.  the 'net was a fairly young thing at the turn of the millennium.  social media didn't exist yet.  so when the filmmakers created a website -- still up and running here -- and the mythology of the blair witch to correspond with the story of three missing film students whose equipment is recovered under mysterious circumstances they did something special.  the filmmakers use the web to amp the scare factor for a low budget horror movie.

i'm not even talking about the whole found-footage style of filmmaking that has been hugely influential on 21st century horror movies.  i mean the story of the blair witch and how that story was introduced to the public, how that story invested viewers of the film to the plight of the film students, so it was hard to tell if the pic was a documentary or fiction.

easy to lose sight of such power of the early 'net.  going viral is every youtubers dream today.  but a generation ago -- that is scary realizing the blair witch project is nearly a generation old -- the backstory  of the witch and the missing students shot like a rocket.

i think the movie is still very well done.  the film is raw energy and suggestion.  a couple of images have become iconic.  i recall in 1999 - 2000 when a local car dealership used black&white found footage like material in their commercials.  remember back then that technique was like a shot of adrenaline in a rather moribund entertainment environment.

so yes, the movie scared me but its mythos evidenced via the 'net was even scarier.  brilliant marketing ploys coupled with a collective imagination who wishes for the remarkable and the macabre.  and for a while it was more than remarkable.  it was, to quote a tag line from a critic at the time, scary as hell.


boo   
 

been a long slow lovely day
first day without any chores
spoke with john b-r on the phone for an hr
he and jerome rothenberg are reading from
their anthology barbaric vast & wild [poems for the millenium vol. 5]
at city lights bookstore next thursday nov. 5
john and i firmed up plans to meet for lunch on thursday before the reading 

then i caught up on emails

then i read poems via the ether while the 3rd republican debate played in the background 

sometimes i covered my ears to concentrate on the poems
that is not a criticism of the debate only that sometimes i have to do that
cover my ears to block out noise
when i want to concentrate
i could've turned off the TV but no i'm interested
easy to hear all the politicians on both sides of the spectrum and say
same old same old
but no
i get the feeling that the world they argue for is no longer present the world has changed
is changing and the older models can neither describe or structure these changes
yet we don't know how to structure our thinking about this new world of ours

i sure as hell don't know

i'm reminded of this short verse by venezuelan poet rafael cadenas
translated by the wonderful poet guillermo parra

Poets don't convince.
Nor do they conquer.
Their role is another, far from power: to be a contrast.

perhaps a sharp contrast or a subtle one
being in poetry gives me humility
the world is vaster and more complex than i could possibly know

being in poetry gives me hope that the human condition
bruised and blasted
is a force without using force
an illumination

everyday is halloween

before poetry, before fire, before the invention of the wheel, i was a hardcore horror fiction nerd.  i started writing as a teen in slavish imitation of stephen king, peter straub et al.  i wanted to be the clive barker of california.  a little later came poetry via reading the poetic prose of ray bradbury.  it was only a little leap from bradbury to dylan thomas and arthur rimbaud.  how?  i wanted to see how poetry worked.  i wanted to become poetry so i started reading the shit out of it.  i haven't stopped since.

but there was still horror fiction.  i loved it.  i still do.  and i loved the garish cover art of horror paperbacks.  i would get a frisson stepping into the horror fiction aisle at local bookstores.  most of the stores are gone, as is for the most part a separate section dedicated to horror novels.  the gaudier the art the better.  sometimes the art was better than what was between the covers.  sometimes the art didn't give enough credence to the contents of its book and i'd be blown away by the words.

i discovered this blog dedicated in its love of printed horror fiction, too much horror fiction.  the name of blog is modest because in my view there cannot be too much horror fiction.

boo

Monday, October 26, 2015

everyday is halloween

oh my!  spooky music.  bring it on!  okay, some horror movie themes played outside of their respective films sound rather generic and often not spooky at all.  not so for john carpernter's halloween theme.  carpenter is not only a brilliant filmmaker but he is also a gifted film composer.  hence this minimalist theme comprising of piano and synth that is so distinctive of the scary season that heard beyond its component film will scare the yell out of you.  no soundtrack for the scary season is complete without this theme.  listen, shudder, and die of fright!



boo

everyday is halloween

i am taking the week off work because this is une saison en enfer.  the high holiday.  besides everyone now and again needs empty time to chill, and bask in doing nothing.

but then doing nothing includes a few much needed chores around the house to prepare for winter.  i'm taking a break, catching up on blogs and reading emails, enjoying the fall weather.

took nick and a friend yesterday to the local park so they could play.  we established camp in front of the library, an old brick building located center of mckinley park.  there was a bible study group inside.  one of the members of the group came outside and struck up a conversation as i watched nick and pal run around.

i asked the man what his group was studying.  revelations, he said.  okay, i replied.  i asked if he believed we are in end-times.

yes, he said.

how do you know?

because it is written in the bible, he replied.  look around at all the bad stuff happening in the world.  these are signs that jesus is about to return.  when the trumpet blares across the sky the world will be engulfed in fire.  the saved will rise to heaven and the damned will be cast to hell.

gulp!

yep, he continued.  i don't know when it will happen.  only god knows that.  i believe it will happen in my lifetime.

we shook hands and exchanged names.  he went back inside.

the early evening was lovely.  warm day giving way to a cool clear night.  i looked up to the sky.  saw a couple of stars.  listened to the thick city traffic.  then called the boys so we could get home.

boo

Thursday, October 22, 2015

everyday is halloween

movies that scared the pee out of me: cannibal girls [1973]

ah memory is a fickle thing for i recall only a scene from this movie and that scene scared the pee out of me.  in fact, i crapped my pants.  i don't know who brought me to the sunrise drive-in theater to see this crazy freaking flick [i suspect it was a babysitter and her boyfriend], but i do remember that it was at the sunrise drive-in where i saw cannibal girls

but it was that scene, that one scene, that haunted my mind for decades.  i couldn't remember the name of this movie.  or who was in it.  just the tone of the flick and the scene where a hapless guy is laying on a bed and handcuffed to the brass headboard.  three women enter the room, spoon some gravy looking shit [i think it is blood] over his hairy torso [this being the 1970s the word 'manscaping' had yet to enter the lexicon, and practice] then bit into him.

when i saw that as a wee lad i curled into the fetal position and sucked my thumb for some kind of comfort.  i think the babysitter laughed her lungs out at my histrionics.  i swore, then and there, i would conquer my fears.  i also vowed never to sleep in a bed with a brass headboard.

still, fear is intransitive and sometimes recalcitrant.  you might master your fears but fear itself shall always be a part of life. 

anyway, genius of the internet i found that clip.

behold:



boo  

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

back to the future day

sure i'm a fan of the back to the future franchise but what i think is the reason there is such fascination with today, 10/21/2015, is the date's specificity.  when the second film was released [today is the date marty mcfly returns to the future] we didn't know what the 21st century would be like.  more of the same old 20th century?  what sort of technology would we have.  jet packs and flying cars?

well, predicting the future via the movies made in the present day is a cod's game.  sure it's fun to look back at older films and see if they got the future, er i mean the present, correct.  they are bound not to.  because we can only see the world thru the scrim of our present day.

yes, there are visionaries who can indeed lead us into the future.  i remember back in the early '90s i read an article where the author predicted we would soon be reading books, newspapers, and magazines via a device that will also stream audio and visual.  i'm a lover of print so i brought the article to my poetry professor and asked him what he thought of this prediction.  he said, sounds like wishful thinking.

20 plus years later the tablet and the smart phone proves that visionary was spot on.  movies are a different sort.  science fiction take science and extrapolates it into stories.  often the best sci fi shows us the world as we live in it today with our hopes, fears, nightmares and ecstasies.

i was watching the brilliant dystopian film by alphonso cuaron, children of men [2006], over the weekend.  the movie starts on the date november 16, 2027, 18 years after the last baby was born.  the world has gone to shit.  these are the final years of human kind.  the technology in this film is grubby, broken.  no smart phones or self-driving cars but the cars did have sensors to warn about collisions along with windshield displays for speed and fuel and so on.  i just saw a car commercial advertising just those things.  but this movie is about our fears today.  terrorism, mass surveillance, a hopeless sensation that the world is winding down.

and then there is blade runner [1982], also set in november, in 2019.  tho there are flying cars in this film filmmaker ridley scott and his designers did something brilliant.  they made the future look like the 1940s.  therefore this movie looks timeless and the technology is again just grubby enough that we don't even notice it.  this film is an investigation to a question that is as old as human kind, what makes you you, and how much time have we got to live.

but then so why do we want to know the future?  part of it is simply fun.  some of the need to know stems from fear of the unknown.  will the future be horrible, or will it be shiny hope?  we certainly are in pessimistic times.  i asked anna last night why she thinks there are no protest songs.  if young people worry about government, and after 14 years of non-stop war, and with an economy that seems to exclude them, and with the weight of a changing, volatile climate, how come the young are not creating protest music.  she answered, you protest when you have hope, and perhaps we have become a country without hope.

thus when we try to predict the future we almost always get it wrong.  but sometimes we get it right.   when we don't we can always go back and fact-check our films.  because when you want to go back to future you need to go to the movies.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

everyday is halloween: goosebumps [2015]

anna, nick and i went to the flicks to see this newest movie.  jack black plays r.l. stine, a writer of macabre children's books.  turns out the creatures in stine's books are real.  stine keeps these creatures locked inside their respective novels.  only he has the key.  stine is a hugely successful novelist, all the kids have read his books, but the writer disappeared from sight some time ago.  the reason is made manifest by lock and key.

stine has a teenage daughter, hannah.  who is home schooled, and seemingly shunted away from the rest of the world, bound as she is by the borders of her yard and home.

zach is a teenage boy new in town.  his father died a year earlier.  zach's mother just took a job as the high school vice-principal.  zach and mom move into the house next door to stine and hannah.

guess what happens next.  yep, zach accidently releases one of the monsters from stine's books, the abominable snowman.  that escape snowballs into all of stine's creatures escaping the covers of their stories.  soon the town is destroyed.

what to do?  take another guess.  i won't give it away.  because you know the movie will end well for all involved.

fans of r.l. stine's goosebumps books and TV shows should have a blast with this pic.  even stine himself makes a cameo.  i like stine, sure, but i'm a little more older than the intended audience.  besides, the movie wasn't made for me.  it was made for kids who grew up on stine's fictions.

which doesn't make it a bad movie.  for the flick is a typical hollywood bang up with lots of FX and explosions.  the creature CGI are first rate.  the werewolf is particularly nasty looking and lifelike.

what i liked about the movie is the evidence of the power of art, especially writing.  language is magic, but it is always practical.  stories are not only what we tell ourselves what we believe but stories are also what makes us who we are.  thus this film is predicated upon the power, even in its glossy hollywood bluster, of writing and reading.  the pen is proven, once again, that it is mightier than the monster.

boo


Thursday, October 15, 2015

everyday is halloween

movies that scared the pee out of me: hellraiser [1987]

i know i've written about this clive barker penned and directed flick before but let me tell you i was 20 years old, a huge fan of barker's fiction, and a regular at the sac 6 drive-in theater.  that's where i saw this movie with an old girlfriend.  she held my hand as i shuddered thru the run time of this movie.

i shit you not.  barker's vision of sado-masochism is so wholly realized, his vision of a hell in this world as shown by the monks of torn flesh, the cenobites, his message of evil found just beneath our skin freaked me out.

and yet like all great horror stories you must dig a little deeper.  for barker drills into our carnal desires and our simultaneous disgust of human sex with great precision.  but for barker sex is not shameful.  it is rueful.  in the world the novelist/filmmaker created desire is shown as bloody meat, your face thrust in it.

but that is not what freaked me so fully.  what scared the pee out of me was barker's tone.  a kind of demented saturday matinee feel of the film.  a feeling of surrealistic holiday permeates this flick.  the bedrock safety and security of home is ripped away from you.  what scared me so badly was that i didn't feel anchored in ordinary reality.  i was adrift upon the supreme grotesque.

i survived, thank you.  i've watched this movie with great admiration many many times over the years.  i think, after that first viewing at the sac 6 drive-ins i was even able to get to sleep that night.  i don't remember for sure.  that was a lifetime ago.

boo

  

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

quote unquote

I knew she wanted me.  I knew from our past encounters that she was attracted to me.  The sexiest lover is a willing lover.  And she like it.  Most people don't.  Oh, they like it once in a while, or at the beginning of a relationship.  But after that it becomes messy and troublesome.  Or, for some, it's like taking a shit.  Necessary to good health.  For me, it is a third of my personal holy trinity: Sex, Poetry, Travel.  We wouldn't agree on the other two, although she like traveling well enough.  But we both treated sex as a first priority.  No, not just that.  A sacred thing.

--owen hill [the chandler apartments; creative arts book company, 2002]

Monday, October 12, 2015

everyday is halloween

me,  anna and a couple of friends took off for the haunted house saturday night.  the previous saturday night we brought nick to the haunted house, but it proved to scary for nick, and so we didn't enter any of the mazes.  anna asked me if i would take her back, and also have me ask our two friends.  so i did.  our friends said yes.  we met at a local restaurant, the old spaghetti factory, of which your town probably has a version because pasta is cheap and the decor is a bit flowzy and it is large and loud enough to drown out the noises of your small children.  the old spaghetti factory is, you guessed it, a family friendly kind of place.

we got to the eatery a few minutes early.  the place is usually pretty crowded on the weekends.  this night it was jammed with teens gussied up for homecoming dinner.  fucking bananas.  our friends were already inside waiting for us with a table in the bar.  no waiting for service.

this is my third year at the western themed haunted attraction.  last year i took my friend p.  the year before i brought my father.  this year the haunt, heartstoppers, is located at an old teen dance club called the mineshaft.  perfect, right!  anyhow, anna and i used to go to the mineshaft 30 years ago.  we didn't know each other then but we were kids and there were not a lot of places for sacramento kids to go in the early to mid-80s.  anna went to dance to duran duran et al. and i went to hang with my friends and look at all the girls.  i can't dance and was too bashful to even try working up the nerve to ask a girl to dance anyway.

so but then it is thirty years later.  the place is perfect for a western-themed haunt.  four mazes.  two in the basement where the dance floor was.  one upstairs.  one outside where the old miniature golf course used to live.  call me a cornball but i love the ambiance of the place.  the decor.  a player piano with blood-spattered keys.  a blackened christmas-like tree decorated with jack o'lanterns, skeletons and skulls.  a big TV screen that broadcast an ancient western, not a horror movie, but an exploitation western with a cast of only little people.  i don't know what the fuck movie that was.

now, our friends, both women [i was the only dude in our group], were novices to public spectacles of fright.  i'm not sure if anna had ever been to a professional haunt either.  who cares!  the place was packed.  the lines were crazy long.  even with those long lines the wait felt pretty short.  besides standing line waiting to get the shit scared out of you only heightened the tension.  it was magic.

the mazes were good to pretty damn good.  the one called malice in underland used the old miniature golf course.  it was the first maze of the evening.  we got grouped with a twenty-something couple.  the couple led.  but when we got to the portion that had two rows of children dressed in white bunny suits and masks, each of the bunnies carried a weapon like a baseball bat, the girl in front stopped, looked at me, and said, you go first!

okay.  i did.  i led our group thru the gauntlet of bat-wielding crazed bunny-kids.  only to land in the red queen's lair.  she asked if we had seen alice.  she was perched on her throne surrounded by lopped-off heads.  she held one of those heads.  the red queen hurled the head at us!  it was like a sponge and drenched two of our companions with water.

i forgot to tell you about the vaginal birth canal.  see, to get to the start of the malice in underland maze we had to squeeze thru a very tight opening made of some kind of black fabric.  the haunt had used this opening before for a couple of other mazes.  i knew what to expect.  but anna and friends had no idea.  when you are in this black fabric you are tightly squeezed.  you can't see.  and it feels like it is long so a tinge of claustrophobia develops.  it feels like forever getting thru this thing.  anna called it the birth canal.

the other freaky maze was the second one in the basement called the tomb of shadows.  a maze black as pitch.  you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.  you feel your way thru it.  we saw several people back out of the maze.  they couldn't do it.  one teen had a full-blown panic attack.  he was hyperventilating as the staff and his companions ushered him outside.  you ask, was it that scary?  yes, being lost in the dark can be that scary.  last year i lost my friend, p. in that maze.  i remember hearing my name way off in the distance.  i was on the surface of the moon.  i got turned around several times.  i was lost.  panic almost set in as i realized i was all alone.

but not this year.  we held hands.  we got turned around a couple of times.  bashed into a couple of walls too.  anna pointed out that the maze had some lighting above our heads.  we followed those faint lights.  when we could.  because the lights were not always above.  and the haunt had speakers with voices whispering to you.  what did they say?  i don't know.  because i was doing my best not to panic.

then great relief when we saw light literally at the end of the tunnel.  an exit sign and some stairs leading up and out.  we had bragging rights because we made it.

then so we laughed our way to the parking lot.  we hugged our friends goodbye.  we survived.  we got into our car and drove our way back to the living, and to nick, who was staying at grandma's house while anna and i celebrated the scary season with a night of the living dead.

boo   

Saturday, October 10, 2015

everyday is halloween

movies that scared the pee out of me: prince of darkness [1987]

i'm a huge fan of filmmaker john carpenter.  he's made some killer flicks that expand the range of exploitation and horror films.  but this one, i dunno.  not carpenter's greatest effort.  it's about a group of people who get these transmissions via their dreams that the father of satan, anti-god, is about to be let loose from the basement of a church in downtown l.a.  goofy, yeah.  the transmissions take the form of what is later called 'found footage'.  these transmissions are scary.  i recall watching this flick that features shock rocker alice cooper as a homeless man on videotape way back when.  ho-hum.  then we have these bits of film where a group is broadcasting from the future, but after the world has been set fire by anti-god.  the group is expected to make sense of these messages and act before evil can be released upon the world.  see for yourself.  but before you watch this clip do yourself a favor.  put on headphones, get a beer or glass of wine, turn down the lights, and prepare for a spooky experience.

i can't embed this clip so click here to watch.

boo

Friday, October 09, 2015

from the notebooks

in our hyper-competitive world where everyone strives to be noticed, to be unique, and different, would it not be radical to insist on our ordinariness, and trust in plainness, because if everyone is seeking to be number one, to be on top, should we not then evidence an inward draw from hyperbolic intensity and proclaim our radiant simplicity

everyday is halloween

you want proof of halloween everyday?  how about this christian group who predicted the world would end in fire last wednesdayevidently this group took the calculations made by another leader, harold camping, who said the world would end in 2011.  well, add 1600 days and the end of time would be 10/7/11.

i don't know what is scarier.  the end of days by fire from an angry god or our need to predict the end of time.  we are living in interesting times, brothers and sisters.  but then again when hasn't the times been interesting.  groups of all kinds have awaited the destruction of earth since we have been organized creatures.

plus our popular landscape is saturated with stories about the apocalypse.  why?  hard to give a firm explanation.  our epoch is changing.  change is scary.  we want things to stay as they are, or were, if only by the stories we tell ourselves.

the world didn't end on wednesday.  obviously.  and when the world ends there will be no one to record it.  as the character elijah, played by robert duval in the film the road [2009], said about being the last man on earth, you wouldn't know it,  you will be it.

boo

Tuesday, October 06, 2015

everyday is halloween

movies that scared the pee out of me: the sentinel [1977]

i really don't remember seeing this flick.  only the shadows of fear, of being scared shitless, shroud my memories of this movie.  a young model moves into an apartment building that is occupied by a blind priest played by john carradine on the top floor.  turns out this building is the gateway to hell.  carradine is keeping the demons at bay.

but an image of the actor burgess meredith and the stairwell and the demons and the girl is seared into my memory.  i may even be remembering a bit from the trailer played on TV.  i don't know.  demons and the gate of hell gave me the cold sweats.  anything suggesting the devil and hell had me jumping out of my skin when i was a kid.

that image of demons and the girl and burgess meredith and the stairwell haunted my dreams.  the image followed me to my bedroom.  it was around the corners and a little beyond my field of vision.  and yet i know they were somehow present and  waiting for me.  i was haunted.  i was scared out of my wits.

perhaps that fear, vistigial, has kept me from seeking out this movie and watching it again.  i know it got middling reviews.  i don't believe in hell, or heaven.  and yet i remember my fear and how physical it was caused by images from this film.

 i know the boogeyman ain't real, okay.  and still. . .and yet. . .

boo

Sunday, October 04, 2015

everyday is halloween

another zombie movie?  hell yeah!  particularly this one.  feels like i have a line on this pic because nick and i are active in scouting.  nick is a cub scout.  he will bridge over to the boy scouts this spring.  this flick is titled scouts guide to the zombie apocalypse.  it is a horror comedy about three scouts who team up with a young woman to kick zombie ass.  looks great!


boo

Friday, October 02, 2015

everyday is halloween

horror and halloween have their own sounds.  sometimes the sounds are autumnal fitting for cooler breezes, lengthening nights, and falling leaves.  more often halloween sounds like surf and punk rock.  below is a video by the jeano roid experience.  roid is the guitarist for the nashville, tennessee based horror punk band the creeping crudsgood guitar rock with some whip-ass cool images taken from horror/exploitation films, TV horror hosts, punk rock bands like X and the cramps, and assorted stuff.  boils and ghouls i present to you 'theme from an imaginary spookshow'.



boo

Thursday, October 01, 2015

everyday is halloween

full tilt into the scary season.  alors!  i try to live in the present and take each day as a gift but man i am like a kid waiting for christmas when it comes to the ancient traditions of samhain  and here it is, fall, and halloween a few weeks away.  now if i could only get my peeps at MIT to work on a calendar that can expand the month of october and collapse the rest of the 11 months.

but no.  time neither stops nor marches along.  time moves on its own speed that is, for this old punk rocker, going faster each passing year.  still, the present now is october.  and halloween is my favorite holiday.  i shall drink hard the nectar of autumn and savor each drop.

you have seen i have already started my everyday is halloween series with a jump scare scene from a recent horror film and a anti-memoir of a sub-genre i shall call movies that scared the pee out of me detailing movies that frightened me into a near catatonic state.   i'll continue my series to halloween.

in the meantime, nick, anna and i plan on hitting the local haunted house this weekend.  very exciting for this will be nick's first time at a fright house.

last week anna, nick, me, b. and j. took our laggard selves to dixon where we walked in the corn maze at cool patch pumpkins.  i think this is our third or fourth year navigating the world record holding corn maze.  last year was bananas.  we were lost in the maze for about four hours.  we were the last to step out of the corn that night.  crazy.

this year the maze is a little smaller, about 40 plus acres.  the designers also created two routes, advanced and not so advanced.  we chose the not so advanced.  we hit the maze at dusk.  so we can do half the maze in daylight and half at night.  night is better.  a little spookier.  we were well equipped with water, energy bars and flashlights.  but we sure as hell didn't want to get stuck in the maze for half the night. 

b. is a great map reader.  he got us thru the maze in an hour and a quarter.  just the right amount of time.  it was a lovely evening.  the supermoon was set for sunday.  but this was saturday night.  the moon was huge.  the sky was cloudy and the moon peeked out to create the perfect vision of halloween delight.

then suddenly it was over and time to drive home.  that is just the way it is.  just like life.

boo