happy halloween!

i did nothing spooktacular to celebrate this most high of holidays.  2020 is a big bust.  we got no trick 'r treaters, as i suspected.  our whole street was dark.  was feeling a bit blue, but anna reminded me of all we have to be grateful for.  which helped raise my spirits.  &, there were some houses, scattered about, that set up scary decor in their front yards, dressed in elaborate costumes, & set up tables to provide treats to socially distanced youngsters that did venture out.  those few trick 'r treaters all wore masks too.  not halloween masks, you see, but masks appropriate for protection in the pandemic.

seeing those haunted houses, & children, was definitely a medicine for my melancholy.  but i still felt like the day was a still drop.  the weather is still very warm.  i wore t-shirt & shorts all day.  the light is changing to the softer autumn gold & rust.  nick found a map to the corn maze in 2017 located in dixon, a pumpkin patch we've visited every year since nick was knee high to, well, my knee.  

we didn't do the corn maze this year.  or any haunted houses.  most places were just not open this year.  but i recall a few years ago this one time when i visited a haunted attraction with my friend, p.  there were about five mazes, among other attractions, at this haunted house.  but this one, i think it was called, THE CHAMBER OF DARKNESS.  you entered into total blackness while there are whispers surrounding you.  

total blackness.  not one bit of light.  of course, p. & i are middle aged men, each happily married, with a measure of stability in our lives, but after the first couple of steps we held hands.  we made friends with another couple, a man & woman, in line so all four of us entered together.  but after twenty or so paces we got separated from them.  soon it was just p. & i navigating a maze without the benefits of our eyes.  

there was one turn, one little curve of wall, when i felt p. let go of my hand.  i heard his voice, rich...rich...you there?!  yeah, man, i yelled.  i am right here!!!  p.'s voice got fainter & fainter until it disappeared with the rest of the whispers that were part of the maze.  

after about 20 minutes i emerged in to light.  i made it out of blackness.  i was back in the land of the living.  scare actors in their costumes.  ambient horror movie noises on the PA.  people laughing after getting a fright.  but where was p.?  i waited at the exit of the maze for about 10 minutes.  then, i wandered thru the lobby of the haunted house.  i asked around.  no one saw my friend.  a few scare actors broke character & said, yeah, i saw you enter the haunted house, but i thought you were alone.  didn't see you with anyone.  

p. & i drove separate cars to the haunted attraction.  after about half an hour i decided to go home.  this was before i got a phone.  i couldn't text p.  i figured he was a grown man & could manage his own affairs.  we'll swap notes about this evening tomorrow.  i drove home.  

to this day, people humor me when i tell them about p.  you are not supposed to have an imaginary friend when you are in your late 40s.  i swear he was a real guy.  i remember years of friendship.  but i don't insist upon my memories to my family & friends.  they'll give me that, i gotta lock away the knives kinda look.

its been a few years since that night.  i am an even older man who loves halloween.  & i can still hear his voice.  when i am alone.  when i am about to fall asleep.  or when i day dream.  

rich...rich...you there?!

boo

today is halloween

midnight, the night when the veil between the living & the dead is the thinnest.  that is why we wear costumes, both to celebrate our dead, & to confuse them.  the living are the dead & vice versa.  this is a tense halloween right before a very consequential national election.  plus a full moon on halloween night, & for us living in the u.s. we turn back our clocks an hour.  as the poet said, my life is made of the world/i will do what i can.  so, let us celebrate, & declare, we are the dead.  here is the italian prog rock band, goblin, with i think one of the scariest songs ever.  stay healthy.  stay safe.  stay spooky, boils & ghouls.  

boo

everyday is halloween

creature features with bob wilkins

i've written many times about my formative education & love of cheesy movies & scary horror films by watching bob wilkins when i was a wee lad.  wilkins began his career as a TV horror host here in my beloved city but later stretched out his audience by hosting creature features in the bay area.  wilkins was an unusual TV horror host.  most media markets developed their own horror hosts.  each created a gimmick by dressing in crazy costumes & speaking in a bela lugosi style accent.  not so for bob wilkins.  he was pretty square.  his only prop was a large stogie.  indeed, when i was real little i thought wilkins was woody allen & vice versa.  you can see a resemblance.  also, wilkins possessed a dry wit.  he would encourage his audience to find something better to watch even reading from tv guide during a broadcast of creature features.  what a delight to find that a youtubue channel, garfield lane productions, has lovingly edited pieces from both wilkins' sacramento & san francisco shows, including celebrity interviews, vintage TV commercials, & a full-length movie.  like you were watching bob wilkins on a 1970s saturday night.  

boo

everyday is halloween

hallefuckinglujah!  i saw this ditty on its initial broadcast back in the ancient days of 1976.  i remember the band KISS & how scary & rocking they were.  for those of us of a certain age will recognize many of paul lynde's guests.  hell, we might even remember who paul lynde is!  i kid!  i kid!  of course, spacetime is relative to each conscious viewer but the 20th C is quickly receding from our collective memory banks.  i wrote, & posted here, a very short poem about coworkers not knowing who the great pop band the go go's were.  what i think of as recent history is for someone younger the distant, or unremembered, past.  & yet, the internet can't let shit go.  hence, we can disinter this old halloween special hosted by comedian/actor paul lynde broadcast when TV had only three or four channels.  if you wanted to watch something you better be around for its broadcast.  otherwise, TOUGH!  you missed it, sometimes, it would seem, forever.  fair enough, that this particular halloween special is a tough slog to get thru the whole hour.  TV has changed irrevocably in our young century.  & yet, but for, still, those of you with halloween in your heart might get a kick out of this show.  as much as we have changed this show proves we have also stayed the same human being.  oh for fucking sake, bring it on!

boo

terror, for real

the marvelous poet & human being eileen tabios published a brief essay about fleeing the glass fire in napa valley.  eileen, her husband tom, & their dogs & cats, live in st helena, an area, napa county, that suffered a massive wildfire a few years earlier.  anna, nick & i daytripped thru this area at the start of the pandemic, to get out of the house for a few hours, by car, & drove thru the scorched hillsides of those earlier fires.  evidence that massive wildfires are more common due to a disrupted climate.  eileen writes about fleeing their home in the middle of the night as a wall of flame approaches with the speed of a jet plane.  

eileen tabios writes about the terror but, as always, her subject is love.  the love of her husband.  the love of her pets.  the love of her community.  the love of the simplicity of being alive, right now.  & she writes about the love that poetry provides, a life giving force.  there are more than a few sentences in her essay that grip my heart with joy & wonder.  i do not exaggerate.  

please read eileen tabios' a letter from napa valley, where love burns hotter than fire.

everyday is halloween

alien [1979] was released in june of 1979, a summer film.  yet, like many a great horror movie this flick is perfect viewing for the scary season.  i don't remember when this teaser trailer was released.  i grew up at the movies.  i remember this particular trailer.  nothing about the plot of the movie is revealed.  rather we see the camera pan over a rocky surface leading to a leathery egg that cracks open revealing a ray of light with the tag line, font size smaller in relation to the dimension of the frame, in space no one can hear you scream.  the soundtrack is brilliant, rolling whistling like a ship's alarm, rising in pitch to match the crack of the egg.  i was both weirded out & extremely excited by this teaser trailer.  & i, with my family, made sure we saw this pic on its first release.  which was a viewing experience that cannot be replicated.  seeing it for the very first time in 1979 was like being shot into low earth orbit.  it all started with this teaser trailer that i think is a masterpiece of dread, fear & excitement.  proof that sometimes seeing less in a trailer is scarier than a well made jump scare.

boo

everyday is halloween

shadows

last night was the first chilly night of the scary season.  i like the windows open to the clement air.  i am also a self confessed night owl.  because i am the last one in my house to bed it is my duty to make sure the doors & windows of the house are locked & sealed.  & the cars outside locked too.  the days are shortening.  night arrives sooner each evening enveloping my little patch of the universe in umbra.  & we keep the house darker too.  cozier.  the house lights are dimmed.  the nighttime world is a universe onto itself.  often, i see critters, like opossums & raccoons, march out into the darkness & do what it is they do.  

the darkness is its own sound.  i can hear the oceanic tides of the nearby freeway.  a car door opens.  footfalls on the sidewalk.  the mewing of a cat or the bark of a dog.  not much else.  i am up till two or three in the morning.  i watch videos & movies, read, write.  then i get sleepy.  i shut down my laptop.  check my phone for messages.  i close & lock the windows.  make sure the vehicles parked outside are locked too.  check the doors as well.  

i do these things out of habit.  i am on autopilot.  our cats know my routines too.  & ignore me.  sometimes i am in a hypnogogic state.  between wakefulness & dreaming.  last night was the first chilly night of the season.  i was near shivering as i closed the windows.  i noticed shadows outside the windows.  there are always shadows outside.  i noticed mine too as it dutifully followed me from room to room.  my shadow seemed unusually longer too.  i chalked that perception to my sleepiness & that it seemed darker outside.  no moon to help light the streets?  i don't know.  i was too tired to check the app on my phone that gives me astronomical data.  i was too tired even to go the old fashioned route & simply walk outside on my porch to look up at the sky. 

i went to the bathroom without turning on the light.  i stepped up to the toilet & looked out the window that is located right above the commode.  i watched the trees of our neighbors.  the trees looked like darker cut-outs of the night.  everything was in shadow.  as i was pissing i noticed something odd.  the shadows appeared to rapidly shift back into their familiar positions.  like school children falling into line after recess.  & just when i looked back down to the toilet all the shadows in the bathroom seemed to swirl suddenly back into their familiar places too.  

did i see that?  did i simply imagine the shadows moving into their patterns?  i was deeply sleepy.  i did an internal shrug, shut the bathroom window, flushed the toilet & returned to my routine of cutting out the lights in each room.  back room.  kitchen.  front room.  etc etc.  but when i got to the front room to turn out the light i looked to my left.  my shadow was not where it should be related to the angle of the light.  my shadow was just not there.   

still, i got the fobs for our vehicles to make sure they were locked.  when i looked outside at our cars the shadows swirled like an old-fashioned dream sequence in a 1960s TV show when the scene swirls to indicate the transitions between dream & reality.  i rubbed my eyes.  again, the shadows all seemed to be running back to their original positions.  & my shadow?  it was still not beside me.  but outside in that massing swirl something made a b-line from across the street toward my front yard then to my porch then thru the front room wall & then back to its original position in the shape of me.  it was there before i turned out the light, & my shadow moved when i moved toward the bedroom. 

boo    

 the poet diane di prima died today [1934 - 2020].  i don't know how to phrase myself.  i just learned about her death via twitter.  she mattered a great deal to me.  i was thrilled when she graciously gave us several of pieces for our two volume massive anthology about climate change i coedited with john bloomberg-rissman & t.c. marshall, the end of the world project volume 1 & volume 2.  di prima was a powerhouse poet.  our world is worst off without her being in it.  in fact, it fucking sucks.

rest in peace & power, diane di prima.   

everyday is halloween

by the time i hit the ripe old age of 16 i knew writing/reading would become my life.  i was a terrible student.  i still am.  the older i get the more ignorant i know i've become.  i really didn't start reading until 16.  yes, i was an awful student, but i've always been an advanced reader.  but when at the age of 16 i started reading every book i could get my hands on is when i began my life in language.  

no surprise when i discovered horror fiction as i've long long been, since a wee lad, a great fan of my beloved genre of horror.  i would go to local bookstores & scour the horror section.  you heard that right.  bookstores used to have a dedicated aisle or two of horror fiction.  i went to school there.  & i started writing my own kind of weird fiction.

but it was around 18 or so that my attentions gravitated toward poetry.  i stopped reading religiously writers like clive barker, dennis etchison [a grand writer who lived in the nearby city of stockton], ray bradbury, etc etc.  i did read horror fiction but fiction was soon supplanted by rimbaud & dylan thomas.  i never stopped watching horror movies cheesy & not.  

but around the late '80s i discovered a horror writer that i've come to love, steve rasnic tem, whose short stories were like ambient prose poems.  indeed, the bio notes of the anthologies where i read his work stated that he began as a poet.  & so, i've lost & given away many of my copies of books of horror but i've kept two anthologies from the late 1980s because they both have stories by tem.  

of course, i would lose track of tem's bibliography over the years.  but this halloween i have rediscovered tem & am delighted that he is not a'feared of technology.  he has a youtube channel.  he tweets.  he's published in online journals, & e-books.  a thing horror writers & poets have in common: small presses.  many horror writers publish in small presses & many have moved online.  just like poets.  

does tem still write poetry?  i sure hope so.  he does write about my favorite holiday.  you can read an essay he published last year about the high holiday by clicking here.  

i've long given up writing fiction as a bad job.  but the thought of writing horror poetry does fill my boots with the good kind of terror.  horror haiku?  oooooooo!  there is sci fi poetry.  there is science poetry.  why not monster poetry too?

hmmm...

boo

everyday is halloween

stupid decisions made by characters in horror movies i love me the horror movies. i watch & think about them all the time. but let's get down to brass tacks. most characters in horror movies make very obviously stupid decisions in said films.  if they didn't, there would be very few scary flicks to watch. spoiler alert! this video has a lot of spoilers. also, mr. nightmare, is one of my favorite horror channels on youtube.  seriously, this dude creates some very scary content.  

boo

everyday is halloween

 

boo

everyday is halloween

beware the haunted kitty!

boo

everyday is halloween

this video is a pair of commercials for blockbuster video & the film toy story [1995] for the scary season.  it was less than a decade ago that blockbuster video was the number one movie rental retailer, & scarier, that a few years before that VHS was the dominant mode of home movie watching!  alors!  VHS!  what quaint technology, right.  but then again, time means little to me now.  i mean, anna & i were talking about this very thing tonight.  we are at that age [scarier even still, tonight i saw a commercial for a service, like life insurance, for old folks that began with my birth year!] where what we remember could've happened 20 years ago & feels like yesterday etc etc.  still, this halloween video is an interesting document of another world & another age.  & yet, somehow, it remains contemporary, at least for me.  that might be the scariest of them all!

boo

everyday is halloween

spook show trailers!  how i love 'em!  they promise you everything, scares, laughter, crazy monsters.  spook shows are long, long a thing of the past.  & yet, we can guess how cheesy these live shows were by the strength of these adverts.  dig it.  these ancient reels are a scream!

boo

everyday is halloween

house by the cemetery [1981] 

another halloween, another lucio fulci movie.  i don't mean it like that.  when i count the number of dvds i own compared to the number of directors of movies of said dvds fulci is one of the most collected of my cherished discs.  i didn't mean to.  there are many directors near & dear to my heart.  but fulci is something else altogether.

fulci's films are an acquired taste.  i am not talking about the boundaries of good vs bad.  i mean, art is subjective, right?  only so, the cinema of lucio fulci, when the filmmaker hits all the keys, his movies transform into a surreal nightmare world void of logic.  

like this movie under discussion.  the boyle family, scholastic researcher norman, housewife/mother lucy, & their young son bob, move from their nyc flat to the spacious wilds of the outer reaches of boston.  norman has taken up the research of a colleague who dismembered his mistress then hanged himself while he researched a turn of the 20th C 'mad doctor' freudstein.  

the boyles had the temerity to move in to the freudstein house too.  they didn't know that when they rented the property.  they were kind of tricked into the house by the real estate agent who wanted to unload the unsavory house.  but what happens next is grue galor.  

fulci delivers the gore by the bucket.  fx maestro gianetto de rossi keeps things wet, icky & red.  you'll want to shower after watching this pic.  

but what fulci, his director of photography, his editor, & his composer make is a symphony of fear.  the dread is palpable.  the landscape is sear, the palette is grisaille & the house is beautifully dusty & decrepit.  the trees are void of leaves & the outdoors are washed out creating a landscape of doom & dread.  also, fulci fucks with our notion of time.  a little girl, mae, the daughter of dr freudstein, befriends small bob.  she obliquely warns bob of the dangers he & his family face as they move into her old house.  mae is both corporeal & incorporeal.  she is present day & in the late 19th C.  

& there are moments of chilling terror.  like when norman finds his late colleague's freudstein research & plays a dusty cassette tape.  the voice on that tape, & the camera winding its way thru the freudstein's basement, as norman listens to the voice is fucking creepy.  

another thing about fulci, he was not afraid of the bad end for his characters.  not always does a film require a happy ending, or a final girl to survive & kick the monster's ass.  this is one bleak movie.  one that messes with our perceptions & expectations.  you want linear narrative?  go elsewhere.  you want logic?  forget about it because you are trapped in a bad dream.  

i can't ask for more in a halloween kind of movie.

boo

everyday is halloween

this is a sweet, brief film of a lonely little girl on halloween who befriends the unlikeliest of fellows.  it's no secret!  watch.  be charmed.  dig the cool tunes.  & delight in the autumnal vibes.  

boo

everyday is halloween

the pumpkin patch

 

boo

everyday is halloween

kung fu zombie [1981] 

i love zombie movies.  i love kung fu films.  a movie that combines said things should make me happy.  i am not.  i am sad.  for this movie should deliver the gory goods of the morti viventi swinging punches & throwing kicks. i mean it's right there in the damn title!  & yet, no.  

this flick stars billy chong as the earnest son of an aging bad-ass ex cop who trains his offspring for the fight of his life.  that fight comes in the form of an undead serial killer looking for revenge against the old man who put him in the clink.

by which is complicated by a bank robber who is also caught & put behind bars by the old lawman & also wants revenge.  the bank robber enlists the help of a taoist priest to conjure up a few zombies to help eliminate the old man's son.

that plan backfires.  the bank robber is killed by his own trap & spends the remainder of the movie looking for a new body to inhabit to wreak his revenge.  he finds the body in the form of the older ex-police officer father who dies, i think, of a heart attack.  

soon the son, played by chong, must fight the undead serial killer vampire, & the undead body of his old man.  

but what is galling is the cheap editing.  the undead move with lightning speed.  the filmmakers speed up the film to get that effect.  instead we are treated to a choppy mis en scene. 

is there zombie styled gore?  a bit.  here & there.  this film is confusing.  mostly the characters are stock played for laughs.  the darkness of the script was lost by the filmmakers in their desire to make things zany.  so the taoist priest is hammed up to the detriment of creating a dark wizard capable of delivering his black magic to the highest paid bidder.  

even the ending is a let down.  i mean this movie just stops.  the taoist priest comes round to making things right by helping to rid chong of his evil creations.  but when the priest drunkenly parades down the street after all the action is done, & he looks over his shoulder, to see - dare i say it? - a clutch of zombies rushing toward him the movie just goes fuck it!  & goes kaput.  the end.

kinda hard to recommend, but i do so not because i gave away the ending here in this review.  the movie is easy to find both on disc & on digital.  i do recommend this movie because of the audacity of its being.  because this film says what the fuck.  comedy, kung fu, horror, take your pick for this movie tries to be all of them.  & if you love trash cinema, like me, you might get a kick in the head by a pic that did what it could to kick & punch & bump in the night.

boo 

everyday is halloween

snl not-ready-for-primetime player john belushi was a fan of hardcore punk. he pulled some strings to get one of his favorite punk bands, fear, to perform on snl on halloween 1981. fear pulled in some punk friends, among them was ian mackaye, of the great d.c. band minor threat, & later a member of fugazi, to be part of their audience to stage dive & slam dance. you can see that fear behaved as their obnoxious selves & snl cut to commercial on their third song, 'let's have a war.' seeing unadulterated, undilated hardcore punk rock on national tv sure as hell scared the fuck out of the audience. perfect for halloween. i think even snl host, donald pleasance [who starred in one of the scariest fucking movies of the latter half of the 20th century, halloween (1978)] seemed nervous as fuck in his introduction of fear. the band delivered as promised on their name.

boo

on growing old

talking to 2 younger co-workers i mention the go go's

[dead silence]

who?

everyday is halloween

this darkwave trio, kaelan mikla, hails from reykjavik, icealand & plays a gorgeously rich, thick synth based goth music who would make 1980s goth & darkwave bands like bauhaus, the cure, joy division, sisters of mercy etc etc happy & proud. this is a 3:00 am sound when all boils & ghouls are at their most mad mystic. kaelan mikla's music is goodly scary & great for your halloween playlist. tune in, turn on & drop dead!

boo

i'm california dreaming & i live in california!

the last of the yooper poets

my brother from another mother jonathan hayes has unleashed a new electronic book from his windowpane press. an interview i conducted with 'the last of the yooper poets.'

the octogenarian poet t. kilgore splake makes his home in the upper peninsula of michigan.  his is a poetry of lean words, midnight metaphysics & long winters.  splake is a small press poet par excellence who needs to be better known in the world of poetry.

what i mean to say in no small words that splake is a kick ass poet.

   

the beauty of the interwebs is that we can create pdfs of books & distribute them gratis.  so as always, if i were a bit more technologically savvy i'd post this new pub here for you to download to your heart's & mind's content.  instead if you want to learn about this wonderful yooper poet please drop me a line at

                                  rlope67atgmaildotcom

put splake in the title of your email & i'll make sure you get a copy of my interview of t. kilgore splake [you'll learn too the origin of his name!].  

in the meantime, splake is active on the internet, you can read splake's blog by clicking here.  tell him richard sent ya!

everyday is halloween

book of shadows: blair witch 2 [2000] 

first off, i admit, this movie sucks.  it is a cash grab made by the studio, & the creators of the epochal blair witch project [1999].  i've written about my love & appreciation for that first found footage film.  that movie changed, for a while, the nature of indie cinema.  found footage movies became all the rage.  but more important is the use of the internet regarding the marketing & mythmaking of the blair witch.  

we forget how novel the internet was twenty years ago.  today, the internet is a necessity, like water & electricity.  the only time we notice them is when there is a disruption of service.  even more so is the importance & necessity of the internet, especially broadband internet, during the pandemic.  consider how fucked we would be if we couldn't work from home, order food, goods & services online.  but a little over twenty years ago you could still live your life free of the interwebs.  civilization was migrating online but many goods & services could operate & conduct business without having a website.  

that's the genius of the filmmakers of the first blair witch movie.  they knew the power of storytelling via fake documentary footage, banners, & signs.  they created a whole myth-kitty to support a movie about the disappearance of three young college filmmakers.  it worked.  when the first film was released in the summer of 1999 a great many believed in the created myth.  when you logged on to blair witch website [i'm amazed that it is still up & running] you fell into the rabbit hole of the occult &, to use the phrase of a fictive TV show used in the creation of the myth, mystic occurrences.

a year later & a new millennium the internet is still a relatively novel thing.  hard for me to think that this movie is 20 years old.  those 20 years have blinked by fast.  the principals of this flick either profit from the goings on of the first flick via selling goods & services on the internet, or have succumbed to the myth of the first film by way of its created mythos on the internet.  

what happens in this flick?  some fucked up shit.  & everything is recorded on tape.  which is key to the plot.  the movie is ably directed, photographed & edited.  the soundtrack is killer [turn of the millennium metal] & the actors are all game being fodder for an alleged witch that still makes mischief. 

i have a confession.  sometimes i prefer the inferior sequel.  all rules are out & the filmmakers can create a chaos of action.  i love love love the first film in this franchise but this sequel holds a special place in my blackened heart.  the movie is both earnest & a throw away.  commercial & anti-art.  not all sequels are made the same.  some just downright suck, of course.  but this movie.  hmmmm...call me goofy.  i can't recommend it at all.  & yet, for the serious movie masochist this pic might just be what the doctor ordered as a balm in our mad days.  

boo  

everyday is halloween

boo

rest in peace derek mahon [1941 - 2020]

the wine country fires are terrible, the gates of hell have opened up, & here the sky is thick, acrid smoke, the moon looks like a big bloody eye

everyday is halloween

this scary season is like no other we have known.  the pandemic raging still, an election that is the most consequential of my five decades on this blue speck hanging in space, racial injustices, ever widening economic disparity etc etc.  this list can treble without breaking a sweat.  & yet, still, i posted the dylan thomas 'poem in october' below because i love it & i love thomas' voice & the poem & the poet reminds me that this month of october is the best month of the year.  this scary season is changed by all that challenges us right now but yet halloween remains ripe in my heart.  i'll go on doing my usual 'everyday is halloween' countdown by posting halloween themed videos & movie reviews.  i might even repeat myself & review a film i've already written about, or publish a video that is an annual staple of mine in my love of all things halloween.  i won't publish every night.  but consider this annual tradition of mine a morale booster.  the shit is thick out there.  & getting even thicker.  the scares we face are real & terrifying as hell.  still, we must remind ourselves why we are worth the fight against all the bad out there.  pleasure can also be an ethical good.  aesthetics too.  so hang on to your hats boils & ghouls.  it's about to get - pleasurably - scary.  

boo  

Poem In October Dylan Thomas