Bidding Farewell to 1630 Jefferson Hills.

It is with a heavy heart and a tear in my eye that I must leave you, my home for the past two years.  Oh, the times we’ve shared.  So many memories and things to be missed.

Oh, Mr. Handicapped-Sexual-Assault guy, how I will miss watching you angrily block the cars of those who steal ‘your’ space.  Though my bosom remains hidden from your view, I will think of you fondly each time I go to Uno’s.

To the old, skeevy Hispanic man who has seemed to live on each floor of the building, and can always be found roaming the halls at a slow pace, usually following his naked and screaming 5-year-old grandson around.  How I’ll miss the dings on my car door from you parking your van obscenely close.

I will never forget batting-glove-boy, without whom my summer days would be spent aimlessly searching for a people-watching pastime.  I admire your readiness to jump into any pickup baseball game you happen upon.

And Captain, oh Captain.  You never seemed to take my verbal assaults to heart, nor comprehend my utter disliking of you – instead showcasing your tenacity at all hours of the day or night.  Who will go on drug-induced, stalker tirades and get in the faces of my much larger male friends? Who will lurk around the corner to remind me that he’ll “be waiting for me”?

To my Latin neighbors, who seem to thrive on hours-long group screamingsessions, lasting well into the wee hours of morning – I will miss my attempts to combat your reggaeton with my own obnoxiously loud Olivia Newton John.

And to Son of Sketch, a human being who once evoked tremendous feelings of nausea and utter sketchiness.  Who would have known that even YOU would have found the Captain to be too weird? I will never forget your kind attempts to come between the forced fire-alarm conversations I often found myself in the midst of with the Captain.  You were weird, but you were nice.  You stank like a year-old over-flowing ash tray, but in an odd way, you looked out for me.

But of all the things I know I’ll miss, the scenery shall rank at the top of the list.  For no longer will I have the luxury of bearing witness to scores of meth deals in the parking lot, or guessing which kind of day the heroin addict on the first floor is having.

Jefferson Hills, you will be missed.

Like the tumor they took out of my neck last year. Yeah….kind of like that.

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Bidding Farewell to 1630 Jefferson Hills.

runaround

So I had this dream

where I ran around inside your mind

and you were there

with me

showing me the sights

and spinning yarns

of your happier, shinier

times

and we laughed

uncontrollably at

that time when

you liked her so

much it made

you sick

in front of

everyone

and I ran off

into your darker

corners

and though you couldn’t

find me

you didn’t look

instead, you sat

in the

middle

of your brain

secretly hoping

I’d be back.

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runaround

Tweet-A-Prize = Happy Free Horror Funtime!

It’s Halloween weekend, so what better time to bring you all a cool horror-related website where you can win tons of awesome prizes EVERY DAY?!?

Check out tweet-a-prize for the latest contests:  Tell Tweet-A-Prize what your afraid of and you can win all sorts of sweet DVD boxed sets!

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Tweet-A-Prize = Happy Free Horror Funtime!

Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema: Children of the Living Dead (2001)

It’s one thing to make an unofficial remake of a horror film.  A tribute, if you will.  The unofficial 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead clearly demonstrated the innocent fun to be found in such remake spirit – free to include nuances and slight differences without criticism due to its ‘unofficial’ nature.

It’s when folks start to toe the line between campy tribute and flat-out cinematic disaster that my Sketch Cinema spidey-senses start a’ tingling.  Never one to resist pure horror catastrophe, I treated myself to a late-night, mid-week screening of one of the most puzzling and saddening straight-to-video films of all time.  In honor of Halloween, my sketch-loving friends, I bring you Tor A. Ramsey’s Children of the Living Dead.

Don’t let the title confuse you, however.  At no point, whatsoever, during the duration of this film were any children spawned from zombies.

That’s right. None.  Not even any zombie coitus, making-out, or heavy petting.

But there were, after all, zombies.  So we shall continue.

COTLD attempts to pick up where the bastardized version of Night of ends…cavalcades of red-necked, pickup-truck-driving, saw-off-shotgun-totin locals roaming bland-looking fields, knocking off massive amounts of the undead, one by one.  The zom-tastrophe appears to be well in control thanks to our film’s hero, ex-cop-turned-survivalist Hughes (theatrically portrayed by Tom Savini), who clearly needed an outlet for his anti-undead-acrobatic skills.

Unfortunately for Hughes (and even more unfortunate for his partner, Sheriff Randolph, who is pretty much a useless, pompous donkey), his ninja-like prowess is nothing for our leader of the undead pack, one Abbott Hayes.  Hayes was a local feller with a penchant for raping and torturing women who, after being murdered in prison, disappeared from the morgue (we suppose so, anyway – my neck still hurts from the whiplash-y time-jumping way in which the movie refuses to tell us an actual story) only to return as a dapper, well-dressed zombie (sporting clean-as-whistle wing tips).  Hughes’ acrobatics are ineffective on Hayes, who merely reaches in, Mola Ram-style, and rips Hughes’ beating heart out of his chest.  After his body is thrown down the barn door, Hughes has enough time to explain to Sheriff Rudolph what has transpired, even asking him to shoot him.

Fourteen years later, after a mysterious car wreck that claimed the lives of four local teens, it seems our pal Abbott Hayes is still roaming the area of his former home, and this time, he’s lonely.  He happens upon the caskets of our young victims, and loving nibbles each to bring them into his zombified world.

Oh, and throughout this whole debacle, some rich dude decides he’s going to send his son out there to build a car dealership, directly on top of Hayes’ family graveyard.  Well, not actually on top – they dug up the caskets and dumped them all into a huge pit rather than relocating them to another cemetery.  Because that’s a good idea.

Hilary ensues, as one could naturally imagine, as our half-hearted cast of characters run around between the cemetery, the motel, and the diner, muttering to themselves and forgetting to clue the rest of us in on key elements of plotline.  The movie strays from conventional zombie wisdom, however, in key ways:

• Sneaky Little Bastards. Although we, the viewers, can clearly hear Abbott and his zombie friends wheezing and moaning and generally not being so stealth, it appears not only quite possible, but also quite commonplace, for a zombie to successfully sneak up on a living human, completely unsuspected, and eat them.
• The Failure of Inference. We don’t know why Abbott Hayes became a zombie.  We don’t know why or how he disappeared from the morgue.  Hell, we don’t even really know who the hell he even is save for the tiny bits of info we’re spoon fed throughout the duration of the film.  So who cares?
• Pediophobia. Apparently, according to Children of the Living Dead, zombies aren’t attracted to children.  Who’da thunk?
• Zombies are Smooth . Unlike their stiff and uptight ancestors, our zombies move fluidly, albeit slowly, and much like John Cleese in his trademark Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.

One might simply conclude that, despite the obvious failures of the film, a zombie movie, no matter how horrible, is still an enjoyable experience.  I implore you to toss that silly notion aside, as COTLD refuses to even show on camera any actual zombie killings, instead cutting away to attempted ‘artistic’ camera angles and leaving the viewer to deduce what occurred.

Art-nouveau, zombie-style? I think not.

And now, on this day before Halloween, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week:

Matthew Micheals: “Of all the places in all the world my dad could have picked to build his dealership, he picked the one right down the street from Walking Dead Central.”

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Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema: Children of the Living Dead (2001)

Mix Tape Memories

I’ve got to stop and thank my good friend Paul (again; I’m always thanking him) for this little inspiration today.   Paul would then go on to thank this lovely lady: http://twitter.com/WonderAli/status/5186555202 for putting this thought into our collective minds.

Paul and I, specifically, used to trade mix tapes on a regular basis throughout our high school days, having lived about 100 miles away from each other and said days being well before those of social networking.  I’d also, like many, create a mix here and there for particular males who happened to catch my fancy, hiding little subtle (and not-so-subtle) messages within the carefully selected songs.

So here, for you, on a bleak-looking Tuesday, I present to you my mid-afternoon mix tape track listing for today.  What’s yours?

1. Shimmer – Dear Leader
2. Amsterdam – Guster
3. Gepetto – Belly
4. Between the Moon and the Ocean -  Bon Savants
5. Make More Room for Us – Taxpayer
6. High Fidelity – Elvis Costello
7. Huddle Formation – the Go! Team
8. Show Me Mary – The Catherine Wheel
9. High – Feeder
10. Drug Girls – Velocity Girl

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Mix Tape Memories

Every second (very teenytiny NM blurb)

“I’m gonna watch you,” he said, following me into the bathroom.

“You’re gonna watch me brush my teeth?” I asked, smiling, and slightly nervous. “Why?” He sat down on the covered toilet seat, folded his arms on the side of the vanity and rested his head on his forearm.

“I don’t have that much time with you,” he explained. “I want to be with you for every second of it.”

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Every second (very teenytiny NM blurb)

On Choosing Your Battles.

So I logged onto Facebook the other day to find something which I hadn’t seen in ages…my old friend the live news feed.  Well, that’s cool, I said unto myself, and, smiling for a brief moment, I went about my day much in the same fashion as I had prior to this revelation.

There are others, however, who not only do not share my fondness of the streaming minute-by-minute updates from my book of Faces, but who are so opposed to this minor change that they’ve banded together to form group upon group of like-minded protesters, each with the collective threat of boycotting Facebook if the “old Facebook” isn’t restored.

Really? I mean….really?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m more than slightly addicted to my Facebook account.  Often times distracted by flashy, bright objects and loud noises, Facebook seems to perfectly suit my insatiable need for constant mental stimulation.  I stand, proudly, on my virtual pedestal at times, pointing invisible fingers and imposing my opinions on my masses.  I whine publicly, I ponder publicly, I observe and report publicly.

But I could give two loaded craps about ‘the way things were’.

The live news feed, as a gentle reminder to my restless and irate fellow Facebookers, isn’t something all that new.  It was a core feature of a conveniently long-forgotten ‘old’ Facebook – one which, when removed, prompted a similar upheaval and collective moan and groan from its users.  Now, it’s been given back to us – but to some, it’s just more (gasp) change to fear.

And just why do we spend our energy fearing this particular change, let alone taking up our valuable time complaining about tiny little functionality changes that, in the grand circle of life, have absolutely no impact on the fruitfulness of our lives?

It’s obvious folks have a lot of negative energy to work off.  If you’re one of those who benefits from unleashing that angst upon a global social networking application, then more power to you.  I, for one, have not the time, energy nor attention span, and am happily moving on.

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On Choosing Your Battles.

All’s Fair (NM Excerpt)

“It’s just not fair to you,” he said, holding my face in his hands.  It was easy for me to forget that Seth was substantially uninformed of most of the goings-on in my life.

“Fairness,” I muttered, holding back the urge to laugh, “isn’t something that’s factored into most scenarios for me lately. It’s nothing I’m not used to.”  He kissed me softly, before jumping up nervously to leave.

I followed him reluctantly into the kitchen as he slid his shoes on, slowly.  He always removed his shoes when he stopped by, in instinctual consideration of my off-white carpeting.  It was one of the tiny little details that made him stand out to me.

“What do you expect of me?” he asked, looking up at me with a slight look of desperation in his eyes.

“I don’t,” I stated, without hesitation.  “I don’t think it’s really my place to have any expectations of you.”

I wasn’t putting on a façade, or trying to tell him something he wanted (or needed) to hear.  It was simply the truth – this unexpected emotional rumble inside me had caught me off-guard as well, and my instinct told me to simply sit on it.  By making no demands of him, a part of me felt more assured that the situation was still within my control.  There was still an innocence to it, and, for the most part, a tremendous amount of self-control on both our parts.  It was still relatively safe.

I never thought of where he went after he left me.  There was no point in it – it would surely drive me to an uncontrollably frustrating state that would leave me jealous and hopelessly wanting.  I was happy to exist in a sort-of fantasy state, where the thought of being with him was still a dream and not a reality.  It was…enough.

He turned for the door, and paused for a moment before turning back to me for one last embrace.  I stood, on my toes, with my face buried in his chest, already desperately wanting the next time, before letting him kiss me goodbye.

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All’s Fair (NM Excerpt)

secrets. (NM Excerpt)

Mark asked if I was involved with someone, given that the last time we had spoken to each other, the circumstances had seemed much more…mutual. Although I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, I did so with surprising honesty.

“Sort of,” I admitted. “I’m not really sure what’s going on.  It’s confusing.”

I didn’t know how to explain to him that, from the outside perspective, I couldn’t actually claim to be seeing anyone.  The weeks leading up to the confrontation were unsettling ones – at least, emotionally – and even I wasn’t sure where I stood in my own romantic front.  I had been treading carefully, afraid to do or say the slightest wrong thing that might make waves or upset the status quo, but I couldn’t tell if that was aiding or exacerbating the situation.

I tried to go about my daily living, keeping to myself the tiny flutters in my stomach that would instantly follow a random hello or other tidbit of communication from him.  Don’t let it get to you, I told myself.

Mark didn’t quite understand, and I really hadn’t expected him to.  I couldn’t give him a distinct reason for reneging on my initial interest in catching up with him, and while part of me struggled with the slightly bruised look in his eye and the pain in his voice, I found myself overwhelmed with relief.

This is what we had needed, for each of us.  To let go.

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secrets. (NM Excerpt)

Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema: Hatchet (2006)

It’s good to see Kane Hodder working again.

Halloween is almost upon us, and, as is the norm with my favorite month of the year, sketchy movies are rampantly abundant wherever one turns for cinematic entertainment.  So just how does one select a candidate for SMSC when there are so many goodies to choose from?

One simply looks for clues, such as sketchy Louisiana swamplands, Patrika Darbo, Patrika Darbo having her head squeezed until it bursts, the sleazy dude from One Crazy Summer, and a Robert Englund cameo.

This week’s pre-Halloween voyage into all things cinematically sketchy takes us into the haunted swamplands of pre-Katrina New Orleans during Mardi Gras, for Adam Green’s 2006 horror-comedy Hatchet.

College student Ben is having a rough time.  His girlfriend of eight years has just dumped him, and he’s stuck roaming the drunken, wild streets of the French Quarter with his breast-obsessed buddies, which is, for some reason, the last place he wishes to be.  What shall bring Ben (and his Newbury Comics tee-shirt) some welcome distraction and entertainment?

How about a nice, cheesy tour through the haunted swamps of Louisiana?

Dragging his hormonally-driven friend Marcus along (quite reluctantly), Ben finally finds a local shop owner who is still willing to take tourists into the swamp, conveniently ignoring the warnings of others who insist that the swamp has been closed for years.   Joining the boys on their escapade are tourists Mr. & Mrs. Permatteo (the lovely Ms. Darbo and hubby), Shapiro (the wanna-be porn director), Misty and Jenna (the unsuspecting ‘actresses’), and Marybeth, a local gal whose secretive demeanor tends to add an air of mystery to her.

As we’re taken through the hilariously corny swamp tour, it soon becomes clear that tour guide Shawn is not the expert he seems to be, as he fumbles through the fabled stories of the swamps with his fake bayou accent (we soon find out that Shawn is an Asian immigrant from Detroit) and shares with his passengers thetale of Victor Crowley.  Crowley lived with his father in a secluded house in the swamp, where they lived in solitude, away from the cruel torments of local children.  You see, poor Victor Crowley was born deformed, and his father kept him hidden away in order to protect him, until one night when a group of local teenagers attempted to smoke Victor out of his house by throwing fire crackers at the wooden structure.

As Crowley, Sr. returns to find his boy screaming and desperately trying to flee the building, he grabs an ax to try to break down the front door.  Unbeknownst to daddio, little Victor’s head was up against the door, and daddy dearest ended up slashing his face with the ax accidentally.

Legend has it that Crowley’s ghost haunts the swamplands, crying out for his father in the night.  As Shawn’s rickety tour boat runs aground, the group soon suspects that the legend just might be true.

Crowley, portrayed by Kane Hodder, is a hilarious incarnation of a horror-film bad guy.  While the film makes several attempts to get the viewer to pity our villain, Crowley’s exaggerated features and decrepit makeup provides nothing more than comic relief.  Though the film’s name would imply our bad guy’s weapon of choice, I’m fairly certain I saw no hatchet during this film.  I saw shovels, tire irons, and bare-handed mutilation, mind you, but no hatchets.  Disappointing.

Relieved to find that Hatchet was labeled a horror-comedy, I didn’t feel so bad for routinely laughing my ass off during this showing of sketch.  Marcus, our hero’s buddy, provides ample laughs throughout the film, even down to his final few minutes on screen.  Crap, did I just ruin it for you? Yeah, Marcus gets off’ed.  But what shall become of our heroes, Ben and Marybeth? Will Marybeth find her missing brother and father? Will Ben shut the hell up about his ex-girlfriend? Will the porn stars find out that Shaprio is a fake?

And now, my sketchy little friends, I leave you with this week’s Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema quote of the week:

Jenna: [sarcastically, to Misty] What a genius! You do know the vibrator goes in your cooch and not your ear, right?

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Sunday Morning Sketch Cinema: Hatchet (2006)