“Backyard,” I bark. “Backyard, backyard.” The gate bangs against the post again and again. I scratch at the door.
“Banjo!” she says from the couch room. I bark again.
“I’m coming,” she says. “Calm down.” She is still in sad-face and I am supposed to be on the couch with her. I want to be on the couch with her. I know she needs me. I chuff when I see her and bow with my front legs. I am hers and she is mine.
“You have to go pee-pee again?” she asks, rubbing my head.
“Out, out,” I whine. I wag my tail, love love love swishing back and forth.
“Stay close,” she tells me. “I couldn’t bear anything happening to you too.”
I run out into the yard and patrol the edge of the fence, head down sniffing sniffing sniffing. There is nothing new. I come to the unlatched gate and I open it with a paw. The scent is coming to me from across the fields. I run toward it, smelling constantly: Grass. Dirt. A chipmunk rotting away. Running, my paws digging into the soft earth. The scent. The scent is there. I have the scent. I know it like my own. I run harder.
Gasoline. Cows. Cut grass. But I ignore them all for the scent. It is clear and bright, rich and complex. Love. It smells like love. The wind shifts a bit and a new scent mingles with it. A human. A man. Food. He has food. I stop and smell his food. I lap up some of his food. He says something. Not angry. He touches my head. I sniff him all over. The scent I want is there, under his scent. I am trying to pry the scents apart when the familiar car sound comes up behind me.
It is her. I love her. I ran to her, wiggling all over. I barked “Hello” and “Hello” and “There is something here” and “There is something here.” She puts me in the car. She is angry with me. I can always tell. I watch her talk to the man. I whine. I growl. I bark.
She opens the door and I catch the mingled scents again. I spin in the backseat in frustration.
“I told you not to run off,” she says. She is shaking and crying. I lick the hot tears from her face. She laughs. The first laugh in a long time.
“At least you made a new friend,” she says. As she drives away, I stare at the man and growl softly.
One Month
“Hey, there Banjo,” the man says, coming out of the barn. I had only snuffled part of his yard. I bristle. His clothes smell of smoke and detergent and fresh earth and coffee and cooked meat and dust and grease.
“Got out, again, did you?” he asks. There is something wrong with him. Underneath all the human scents there is something metallic and sharp. Something like burning. I let him pet me and lick his hand. He tastes wrong. Makes my tongue hurt. He laughs and kneels down. Same taste on his arm and face. Wrong-taste.
Crunch of gravel. She has found me again. Why can’t she understand?
“I am so sorry,” she says as she gets out.
“Oh, it’s no problem. We’re just becoming friends,” he says. I sneeze because they are talking about me.
“C’mon, Banjo!’ she said. She pulls on my collar. I want another sniff of him. I want another taste. She wrestles me into the car
“I am so sorry to hear of your troubles,” he says to her.
She freezes. Fear smell flows out of her.
“Th-th-ank you for that,” she says. She closes the car door and walks toward him. The window is barely open. I howl for her to get away from him.
“Shush,” she commands. They talk. I keep my nose in the sliver of open window, trying to catch the wrong scent again. Grass and grease again, chickens and far-off sheep.
She gets in the car. “I don’t know what I am going to do about you,” she says. I chuff and she smiles so I chuff again.
The wind shifts as she drives away and a whole new scent floods my nose. It is new and old at the same time. I howl for her to go back to the farm. I need more. I howl and I howl.
One Year
New gate. New lock. I press my nose to a knothole in the fence to see if I can catch the scent. I dig under the fence all summer. The ground is hard. She fills in my hole twice. After a good long rain, I find I can get under the fence. I run as fast as I could. I will avoid him this time. I will find the scent. Almost there. I will find–BALL! HE THREW A BALL! BALL! BALL! BALL!
I collapse on his porch panting. So much ball time. She is already there to pick me up. I have failed.
“It’s been a year now,” he says.
“A year,” she says. Sad face. I whine.
“Sore subject,” he grunts. He turns the ball over and over in his hand.
“There’s still…” she begins as he threw the ball.
BALL!
Five Years
Behind the barn. It is behind the barn. He finds me digging and kicks me. I growl at him. When she touches the sore spot when we are on the couch, I yelp and she kisses me.
Ten Years
I have never forgotten. I cannot get out of the yard. I have never forgotten. I stare at his farm. I smell the wind.
“You want to go see your friend?” she asks. I look up at her. She glows. My tail thumps on the floor.
“Who wants to go for a ride?” she asks. My tail thumps harder. Sometimes that thing has a mind of its own. “Does Banjo want to go for a ride?”
Go. Ride. I get up off my bed slowly and walk to wear the leash hangs.
“Good boy, you are such a good boy,” she says.
I do not know where we are going until she is almost at the farm. It has not changed. She lets me out. It hurts to get to the ground. The gravel hurts my feet. I start sniffing things.
“Hi!” she says. He is sitting on the porch. I can barely see him. But I know his sour smell.
They talk. I let him pet me. They talk. I whine.
“You need to go potty?” she asks. “Go potty,” she says, “Go on.”
They talk. I hear my name a few times but I do not turn back. I get to the edge of the barn and I pause to look back at them but they are not looking at me.
The ground behind the barn is soft and wet, but the digging still hurts. But this was the place I smelled her last. This was where he kicked me. I keep digging. She isn’t deep.
I can hear them talking as I get closer to the porch. I want to bark. I want to howl. I want to growl.
“It’s been so long,” she says. “She would have started her senior year this August.”
“Has it really been that long?” he asks. Through my good eye, I see him show his teeth.
Up the porch steps, each one hurting. I cannot hear their words any longer. My blood is roaring in my ears. I bump my head into her leg and the blood noise stops.
“What did you find, boy?” she asks.
She screams when I drop the small skull of her daughter at her feet.
So, you all have probably figured out by now that TPTB are all real-life friends. We don’t make any secret of that fact; after all, it’s why this site exists.
As such, we spend most of the day (and evening) popping into and out of a Super Secret Chat Room. Well, last Friday morning, I posted a link in chat, and damn, Skippy, if all hell didn’t break loose.
It didn’t quite get to the level of slapping each other with gloves and choosing seconds, but it was just short of that.
Welcome, Ghouls and Ghosts! It’s almost Halloween, and, considering we take this stuff into the witching hour (and beyond), I figured I play around a bit with that theme. As you may recall, I mentioned that I will (would?) be attending a costume party tonight. As a bona fide glibertarian, I typically eschew social outings like this, especially when most of the attendees are strangers. However, to tell a family secret, I’ve been curating a Jedi/Sith/whatever get-up for a couple of years now. And, since I’m no LARPer, this is probably the best place to introduce the world to my lame-ass attempt at make-believe. With that, I’m now going to attempt to refocus your attention on some-WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!? (made you look!)
My usual even starts with a rather appropriate tale.
The horror….The horror… Serious, if you are prone to sympathy pains, you may want to skip this. Then again, if you have been here for any length of time, this is simply the visual representation of many a link on this site.
So, in the interest of not bogging anyone down with too-long videos, check out this rather fascinating collector of internet oddities. YMMV with the various videos, but, I typically enjoy his postings. Hint: try the video for “Channel 58”. It’s about 30 minutes, but kinda creepy-fun.
Thanks, Metroplex! Trying to keep in mind that 11 people (out of 12) said this was the correct way to proceed. I tend to believe the saying that juries are made up of people too stupid to get out of jury duty. And, Dallas County is chocked full of people fitting that bill. And, thanks to them, this child is gonna be wearing a permanent costume. Trick or treat, kid.
Any of you have Halloween stories you want to share with the rest of us? If it helps, I can get a campfire going. The only stories I can recall are the year I stayed home to protect our dog. Now, this was the mid 80’s, and there was lots of talk going around about the possibility of cults kidnapping pets for animal sacrifices. The only really shocking thing about it was that my mom was OK with me missing church to stay home with my dad’s 12 gauge to protect said dog. Nothing happened. Also, I may, or, may not, have pulled a Trudeau at some point in my teens. That’s right; Diggy may have almost bankrupted the Great White North, while smothering it with wokeism. Or, maybe Diggy didn’t…
“Cara Mia!!” The three-legged stool (eww) of Horror, Romance, and Humor is difficult to build. That said, this is a fun attempt at the concept. Look—it was either that, or, this attempt, and you lot always gripe about “Too early!!1!eleven”
I think that wraps up the month rather well…alright—mediocrely. It’ll be November soon, so I guess I have to dig up tales of turkeys, family feuds, and colonial oppression. See ya soon, Pilgrim.
It’s October, which means you’ve all been reading the copy of The Collected Works of SugarFree we sent C/O your direct supervisor, right? I hope it didn’t get lost in the mail. Binding books in the skin of genuine Subaru drivers is both time consuming and expensive.
jesse.in.mb
Suzanne Crowder Han: Korean Folk & Fairy Tales. I brought this home with me from Daegu and read it at the time, but had forgotten just how odd some of the folk tales could be (especially when filtered through cultural and linguistic translation. The main thing is if you ever get a chance to trick a dokkaebi (도깨비) out of xer bangmangi (방망이), you should definitely do it and then explain to your shithead older brother who had disinherited you after your father died how you went about it so that he can get his comeuppance when he acts out of greed rather than innocence.
S. Blyth Stirling: Naked Scotland: An American Insider Bares All. I’d be lying if I said that cover had nothing to do with me picking the book. I was mostly looking for a primer on cultural mishaps beyond calling slacks “pants” or discussing the inexplicably-popular-again “fanny packs.” The book is breezy and fun and sits comfortably in the American Abroad and Travelogue genres.
SP
I’ve been reading thrilling textbooks on subjects as fun as medical law and ethics. Or trying to get time to read them, anyway.
However, I’ve been taking small bites of some cookbooks and ways-of-eating books. You’ll notice a theme.
If there is any interest, I’ll write a post about the MIND diet.
Tulip
I am re-reading all of Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles series. China Bayles is a former Houston criminal defense attorney who leaves the rat race behind to run an herb shop in the fictional Texas hill country town of Pecan Springs. Like many fictional towns, Pecan Springs has a crazy high murder rate and China helps to solve them. If you like cozy mystery series, this one is great. There are over 20 books in the series, the characters actually evolve over time, and Albert includes recipes and further reading in every book. So far, every recipe I have tried from the series has been great.
OMWC
I’ve barely had time to wind my wristwatch. Wait, do people still wind wristwatches? Let me tell you about the onion on my belt…
But at least I can get a few minutes in while relaxing in the smallest room of the house. And what’s in there includes Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson’s Farthest Star, a rather pedestrian SF novel with some crafty writing but nothing particularly novel (cough, cough) to say. Painful for me to write this since I am a huge fan of Pohl. The genre is often termed “Big Dumb Object” and I think that’s fitting. This book is perfect for the application.
The other book gracing the bathroom is the oft-thumbed Valve Amplifiers, 4th Edition. Geeks only, please, but if you are consumed with electronic anacrophilia as I am, this will delight.
SugarFree
Lovecraft, all Lovecraft. I reread it all every couple of years. Going back to him after spending the summer reading the antecedents to his fictional universe and the descendants that followed it, going back to the man himself is very comforting.
Fun Fact: On a word count basis, all the fiction Lovecraft ever produced is still less to read than Stephen King’s It.
Mad Scientist
How To Restore British Sports Cars by Jay Lamm. This isn’t really a “how to” book so much as it is generalized advice applicable to many vehicles. Not necessarily British. Not even necessarily cars.
mexican sharpshooter
This month I picked up a classic with a twist.Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds. I was given the option of reading it in high school but I instead picked a different book to report on. I want to say it was War of the Worlds but I don’t recall. What I do recall is my English teacher simply citing the phrase “undead” to describe the book. As much as I enjoyed his class I am happy to say he was wrong. I am rather enjoying it, though it is taking longer than I anticipated. The entire book is annotated by a number of experts in the field of chemistry, physics, sociology, and ethics. The book itself is nothing like how it was portrayed in Hollywood, especially given how intelligent the monster is throughout the book and draws many questions all too often posed in science fiction, such as, “What is the whole human thing anyways?”
It’s that time of year to settle in and throw in a horror film. So, which ones should you watch? You could stick with Jaws, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Saw, Hellraiser (did you know they made 10 of them), Child’s Play, Scream, Halloween, or your favorite long running franchise. Instead, I’m here with 7 of my favorite lesser known horror films, with some honorable mentions for some comedy horror films.
Yes, three honorable mentions. My article, my rules.
All three of these are comedy/horror films with different target audiences. Zombeavers targets the classic horror movie fans, using the standard tropes of the tales, but turning them around. It’s about a toxic waste spill that turns a dam of beavers into bloodthirsty killers. Anyone bitten by them will eventually get sick and turn into one as well. Do not expect high brow cinema going into this. The ending may very well kill Swiss, as they show another toxic waste spill, this time getting into a beehive (go ahead, so what the name of that one should be).
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil targets the more casual horror fan. Ever hear about killer rednecks and their murder cabins in the woods? Then you know what you need to going into this movie. In this case, the two rednecks are just trying to get to their newly purchased vacation cabin and get it fixed up. After a terrible attempt at flirting, some local college kids get creeped out and scared by them. Misunderstandings happen, college kids keep dying, and there’s even a woodchipper scene.
My Name is Bruce targets the fans of the one (and only) Bruce Campbell. In a small city, some kids fooling around in a graveyard unleash an ancient Chinese demon. One of them is the worst kind of fanboy, thinking that Bruce is exactly like Ash from the Evil Dead movies and goes to recruit him to help. If you don’t know who Bruce Campbell is, and have never seen the Evil Dead movies, go watch them instead.
Alright, into the serious ones. Fair warning, this is a Spanish horror film done by Guillermo del Toro, so expect subtitles. This is set at an orphanage during the last year of the Spanish Civil War. There’s great visuals, a creepy ghost, and the question of how can a child keep their innocence in the face of a terrible war. It’s thematically similar to Pan’s Labyrinth, but didn’t get the widespread acclaim. If you haven’t seen Pan’s Labyrinth, then see that one as well.
This one you may have heard of, it’s a bit old at this point, but I’m still a fan. It’s a relatively low budget film that hides it pretty well. A group of people wake up, all in different rooms, all wearing the same clothes, and not remembering how they got there. The room is a cube, with a door in each side (top and bottom as well). As they move through the rooms, they learn that some are trapped, and work to try to figure out the pattern, and what the hell is going on. This movie did spawn a sequel and a prequel which don’t quite match the same WTF quotient as the original (in my opinion at least).
This one uses two familiar premises: opening in media res, and a bunch of travelers getting stranded in a hotel (including a prisoner). People get assigned rooms, and try to settle in for the night. Someone (or something) has other plans. People start dying, and room keys are left by their bodies that don’t match the rooms the people were in. Then the bodies start disappearing. The two premises then get introduced to each other in a fairly novel way.
Sam Raimi did this one. If you don’t know who Sam Raimi is, I’ll direct you up towards My Name is Bruce up above. Raimi was making cult films before he hit the big time with the first Spider Man trilogy. (fun fact: the same Delta 88 has been in almost all of his films). Drag Me To Hell was his return to horror after the Spider Man trilogy, and he revels in it. A loan officer at the bank is forced to tell a gypsy that the bank can’t extended their mortgage again. The gypsy curses the poor bank worker, and things start taking a turn to the dark. As they learn more about it, the curse is set to have the loan officer dragged to hell after three days. Lots of blood and gore in this one, don’t watch it if you’re squeamish.
This is probably the best representation of Lovecraft put to cinema. It’s about an insurance investigator who needs to find out what’s going on with a missing author. The author is due to submit a new book to the publisher, who took out a multi-million dollar policy against him disappearing. The insurance investigator believes it’s all a publicity stunt, and parts of it started out that way, until something from outside found a way to use the author to get into this world. Then it becomes a reality bending story wrapping around in on itself, and managing to swallow its own tail at the end.
This is one you are the most likely to have heard of, it made a big splash when it came to Netflix. This tells the tale of a widowed mother raising a six year old by herself. The kid in this movie is a piece of shit as only a six year old can be. One day, he comes into his mom’s room and asks mom to read him a storybook he found called Mister Babadook. Mister Babadook tells the story of a monster (can you guess his name?) that torments people who learn of his existence. Strange things start happening in the house, mom blames the kid, the kid blames the Babadook. From this point, things begin to escalate.
Time for my favorite cult horror film, one that’s perfect for Halloween. Trick ‘r Treat is an anthology film telling several interwoven tales that take place in a small town (in Ohio, which seems to be a hotspot for horror movie franchises), with a little boy (known as Sam) witnessing most of the events. Most of the stories deal with the rules and traditions of Halloween, with those violating them getting punished in some manner. There’s ghost stories, the reason for the jack-o-lanterns, poisoned candy, the proper time to take down the decorations, and what happens to those who don’t give out candy at all? There’s been rumors of a sequel to this move for over a decade, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
So there’s some of my.favorite horror films to watch. If I left out your favorite cult film, I may not have seen it (or I may not have considered it cult enough to write it up). I’ve tried to stay with films that you can easily find to rent, purchase, or stream (otherwise Cemetery Man would be in this list). I also tried to stay away from the usual slasher films (Urban Legends would fit here), or ones that go too far into sci-fi (Event Horizon would go here). Go ahead and tell me how wrong I was in the comments.
The summer of 1984, at a sleep-away camp in the Tennessee mountains, the counselors–earnest, well-scrubbed Christian kids–would tell us ghost stories around the campfire. If I had been older, I would have recognized most of them as fairly standard urban legend stories: the hook-hand, the spider eggs, the vanishing hitchhiker. When I was younger, I had heard almost the same stories at sleep-over camping trips run by the YMCA, so they didn’t bother me all too much.
But on nights when the counselors left our 16-kid cabins to drink or fuck or sneak off to the McDonald’s in the little town nearby, one of the kids that had been at the camp before told us The Story, an oral tradition that had been passed down kid-to-kid for who knows how many years. A horror story that carried a lesson in socialization and proper behavior. Here’s how I remember it…
There was a boy a few years back who had nightmares. His name was Timmy. He would thrash around in his upper bunk bed and call out. He kept all the other kids awake and they would be exhausted the next day, not having any fun, doing poorly at the archery range or falling asleep by the pool.
At first light, Timmy would jump down from his bunk and race to the bathroom facility, someways down the mountain that had been dotted with camper cabins. His bunk-mates understood that this meant Timmy was too afraid of the dark to go to the bathrooms at night. But this lead to Timmy finally having a nightmare so bad that he peed the bed, the urine soaking not only his mattress but also dripping down on the kid below him. Everyone was disgusted when they found out what had happened and so when the cabin counselor took Timmy down to the bathroom to get him cleaned up, a plan was hatched.
The next night the counselor was gone–like that very night we were hearing this story–all the boys in the cabin woke Timmy from his usual nightmare, rolled him in his bedsheets and carried him out into the woods, never saying a word. The carried him far from the cabins and the lights around camp and tied him up in a tree. Not to a tree, up in a tree, dangling a few feet off the ground and gagged him. Timmy begged and squirmed and screamed into his gag, but the other boys left him there, not telling him if they planned to return. They went back to the cabin and all fell asleep.
Timmy couldn’t get loose and he couldn’t cry for help. There was no hope anyone from the camp would find him by accident. He hanged there limp and defeated.
And then something licked his foot.
He looked down. As quiet as ghosts, a pack of wolves had surrounded the tree he was suspended in. Another lick of his foot. It almost tickled. Timmy screamed. The closest wolf finally bit his foot and tore away a few of his toes. He could feel the other wolves lapping at the blood. This drove the wolves in a frenzy, more of them biting his feet, worrying off their own pieces of Timmy, tugging as they pulled his flesh away. Timmy screamed until he had no voice left.
The wolves continued eating Timmy, bracing against the tree to eat further and further up his legs. Finally jumping to bite into Timmy’s knees, dangling there until their body weight tore off another chunk of the boy. They ate Timmy down to just stumps.
After the wolves were done, they wandered away into the woods. Timmy was quite insane from pain and shock at this point. But all the terrible tugging of the starving wolves had loosened the ropes and he finally fell into the mud his blood had made at the base.
Using his hands and arms, Timmy dragged himself into the woods, vowing revenge. He would go back and kill the boys who had done this.
The boys from the cabin returned the next morning and found blood and chewed bone at the base of the tree. They assumed that Timmy had been entirely eaten and realized they would be in huge trouble if it was discovered what they did. They climbed the tree and took down what was left of the ropes, they threw the chewed bones in different directions and piled leaves and loam over the blood at the base of the tree. They made a pact never to talk about this to anyone else as long as they lived. And then they went to the cafeteria to eat breakfast.
When it was discovered that Timmy was missing, the summer camp organized a search for him, assuming this troubled little boy had run away. When they found nothing, they called in the state police. The state police interviewed the counselor, who lied and said he had been in the cabin all night; when they interviewed Timmy’s cabin-mates, none of them confessed to what they had done. When the state police finally left empty-handed, the panic and unrest in the camp died down. Buy this time, summer was almost over. The boys who left Timmy to the wolves were about to go home to various states.
On the last night of camp, Timmy got his revenge. He dragged himself into his old cabin, his half-healed leg stumps leaving tracks of mud on the floor as he smothered the boys one-by-one, quietly to not wake the others. But just the boys on the bottom bunks. He couldn’t reach the ones on the top bunks. They were safe.
The next morning, the surviving kids woke to find the muddy drag tracks on the floor. Their screams woke the counselor and he freaked out at finding all the boys in the bottom bunks dead. The survivors of the massacre instinctively knew this was the work of Timmy.
They warned the other kids at camp that Timmy was still out there and he could get you if you slept in the bottom bunks.
What a fantastically gruesome story, right? 36 years later I still think about, maybe more than I should. I know that the boy in my cabin, in his upper bunk, didn’t tell it just like I did. I’m sure I’ve added details and embellishments to where the story is just as much as his at this point. But I know it was about a boy left in the woods who had his legs eaten off by wolves, and the revenge he extracted.
So many plot holes, but, then, this was a child’s story told to children. Terrified in our bottom bunks, we didn’t think about the distinct lack of wolves in 1980s Tennessee, or effects of traumatic limb amputation and blood loss on a 12-year-old, or the camp somehow covering it all up and not being sued out of existence.
Do any of you have one of these? Or local urban legends? Please share in the comments.
This year, plenty more ideas came to mind at Glib HQ for libertarian costumes. Because if you can’t go around town without insulting somebody, you may as well insult everybody.
This is my review of Leinenkugel’s Harvest Patch Shandy.
We’ll put these in no particular order…
10. Undead David Koch.
For this one, a Dracula costume will probably work. It’ll probably be expensive buying everyone off in the neighborhood.
9. The Hat & The Hair
This is a good couples costume idea, but if you’re going to do it, take it to the next level. A modified Lidsville costume should prove useful in creeping everyone out. A standard Cousin It will suffice for the hair, and should prove confusing to everyone under 25.
8A. Hong Kong Protestor
8B. Slutty Hong Kong Protestor
Party like its 1989…
7. Steve Bannon
Trump’s former campaign chairman, or a homeless man? I don’t know, does it really matter if you can tell the difference?
6. Log Cabin Republican
Because one of you needs an excuse to walk around shirtless in a pair of jorts.
5. Hillary Clinton
Okay, this might just be a Chulthu mask and a Mu-mu but be honest, have you ever seen Chulthu and Hillary in the same room? I contend this is not a coincidence!
4. John Bolton’s mustache
Find one of these old man disguises and run around convincing everyone of all the countries we need to bomb.
3. The tooth fairy
Because why not?
2. Justin Trudeau
Is it donning brown-face if you are simply portraying the infamous, serial brown-face Justin Trudeau? If that isn’t meta enough, if one accuses you of being racist, inform them you are 1/1024th Indian—as in not Native American!
1. Slutty Greta
Did you know the age of consent in Sweden is 15? We were going to go with Pope Greta the Rheeeeeeeee, but decided if you have the hips and the blank face to pull this one off…
Leinenkugel for whatever reason thinks it can pull off this whole “Shandy” thing. It most certainly does not pull off a “pumpkin shandy” in any sense. It smells like vanilla, and is far too sweet to be called beer. It does not give me any reason to change my opinion of their shandy line, which remains: whoever thought of this deserves to be shot. Leinenkugel’s Harvest Shandy: 1.9/5
Hello Glibs, it’s been awhile, but your old Master of Scaremonies the Cryptkeeper is here to provide my annual superfuntimestory of the bestest holiday on my calendar outside of Halloween – Texas Frightmare Weekend! This article is *at least* five times as long as it needs to be, because I know you’re reading this at work and I’m trying to give you an excuse to not get back to that for an extra 10 minutes. You’re welcome. Do keep reading, though – there’s lots of cursing, lame jokes, celebrity stories, and a 40k reference for my fellow hyper-nerds. Plus I had fun last year with our game of, “There are so many links, I wonder which one of them randomly goes to a weird porn site?” that I decided to play again this year. Happy hunting!
To begin with, this shit has gotten completely out of hand. They sold out of Saturday single day tickets (est. attendance this year of 35,000), and the fucking hotel rooms sold out at the main venue within two hours of going on sale. We were able to snag a room at the last second because they caught some dude reserving 20 rooms and trying to re-lease them out at a markup. Thankfully the dumbass advertised them on the Facebook meetup page for the event, so the organizer cancelled his block reservation & they opened the rooms back up. My wife received an automatic update and we jumped on one. True story: we got the last one, and it wound up being a handicapped room. It was YUUUGE. Like twice the size of a regular room. What’s a fucking cripple need with all that space? Don’t they need less space? It’s not like they’re prancing about or have friends that they can invite up or anything else requiring room. Even the shower was much larger. Don’t just take my word for it, here’s a photo. It’s so big you don’t even get the edge of the bed in frame.
Crip room
Now most, if not all of you, are probably mentally saying to me, “Gojira, we know that Texas Frightmare Weekend is always held on the first weekend of May. So why come this year, Dallas Fan Expo, the larger (50k+ attendance) pop culture, sci-fi, and comic book convention that used to be called Dallas Comic Con, moved its date to directly compete? Aren’t they targeting the same people?” Well astute reader, indeed that was the plan – of the FanExpo organizer. Here’s a little inside baseball for you, as was related to me by a buddy of mine involved in the whole sordid affair: FanExpo wanted to be the only game in town & approached the Texas Frightmare organizer, Loyd Cryer, about buying him out. He told them to fuck off and die in a fire (paraphrasing mine -ed). In what is possibly an act of pure spite, which is just my conjecture and in no way libelous, FanExpo moved their event to the same weekend. I think their big-shot corporate overlords thought that the nerdy public is one undifferentiated mass, and that being the larger event with more headline guests, they would draw interest and put a little bit of a beat-down on ol’ Texas Frightmare.
Turns out the Venn Diagram of people who are comic book and pop culture nerds, and people who are hardcore horror fans, does have overlap, but not nearly to the degree that the FanExpo jerks had hoped. I do fear, though, that this blatant act of separatism has resulted in some unfortunate battlelines being drawn and our two populations being given reason to resent and distrust one another. Thanks alot, FanExpo! If I ever see Jonathan Frakes on the street, I’ll fuckin’ kill him and leave a human turd on his forehead and a little note written on a cocktail napkin that says, “Defend Horror” written in his blood and pinned to his body with a little plastic sword along with some photos of those abused dogs from the SPCA commercials.
Interestingly, the above paragraph wasn’t just one long setup to a largely unfunny joke about murdering Will Riker. There really is a distinct difference between the two groups, and if you swing both ways, as I do [insert “Oh My!” George Takei gif], you notice it when surrounded entirely by one group or the other. By and large the horror crowd, where I spend more time, is more…enthusiastic…about ordering their lifestyle around their interests. They don’t just dye their hair, they have a shit-load of tats and piercings, dress somewhat raggedly, curse a lot more, drink a lot more, and are generally more “blue collar” types. They also skew distinctly more conservative. There are a lot more pro-2A shirts, and shirts making fun of liberals, at horror events, than shirts or patches with leftist slogans. Hell, I saw a couple of Confederate flag patches on vests this weekend, and nobody gave them a second glance. For all you aspies rushing to the comments to correct me that it’s actually the battle flag of Northern Virginia or whatever the hell, save yourselves the spittle-flecked outrage. When I say, “Confederate flag”, you damn well know what I’m talking about, so just simmer down and roll with it. If you promise not to be a ludicrous pendant, I’ll not purposefully replace the word “magazine” with “clip” in any future firearms articles I may write.
The thing is, I’m not sure why this is. This is a group of people who are obviously comfortable with, shall we say, non-traditional mores in terms of public behavior, modes of dress, etc., and yet they actually skew conservative. The sci-fi/comic crowd is overwhelmingly leftist, but they also are overwhelmingly just fat guys able to take off their blue TOS shirts at the end of the day and blend back into “regular” society. I can’t help but wonder why this is. I’m sure Ken Shultz has a theory that he’d like to expound on (just ribbing you in good nature, Ken). Joe Bob Briggs mentioned it during his panel, as well, so it’s not just me making shit up…this time.
So not as many photos this year, for which I apologize. If you haven’t read my past entrieson this event, be warned: this is literally the only time of the year I take photos, so I cannot be assed to get good at it because I just don’t care. Anyway, even five years ago, when you purchased an autograph from a guest, it came with a selfie. Now every one of these greedy fucks charges an extra $10, except for a few who are cool.
Bruce Abbot is cool. He does not charge extra.
I will note that they didn’t have glowsticks available at the after party again this year. I think our little art project that I showed you all photos of in the 2017 entry put the kibosh on that for everybody. At least I hope that’s why there weren’t any. I’d love to believe that my one merry band of assholes managed to ruin something for tens of thousands of people. It’d put me right up there with John Dillinger.
Great guests though, and great panels. We had Jeffrey Combs, who given his wonderful Star Trek roles would have been just as at home at FanExpo, but he’s also done great work in horror. I’m a huge Jeffrey Combs fanboy, so this was a special treat for me. We had Meat Loaf, who fell off the fucking stage at his panel and broke his collarbone. Looks great for his age, though, really. Jenna Jameson, on the other hand, does not. Her ass looked like a fucking tray table. I wanted to set my drink on it, then smack her hard in the face and see if the drink fell off. It doesn’t show up in google image search, oddly enough. Trust me, I wanted to add a picture. Traci Lords has aged a bit better, and Cassandra Peterson (better known as Elvira) I’d still drill like an out of control oil rig. The big guns were Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, along with Sam’s brother Ted Raimi. Robert Englund,Lance Henrickson, Tom Savini, and various other regular guests were in the house, as well as…Lee Majors! Scott Ian and Charlie Benante of Anthrax were also present, and the corpse of Tim Curry. Along with many other assorted peoples who had roles in some sequels or other.
The year started off with a screening of Re-Animator on Thursday night, with Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbot, and Barbara Crampton (who, like Elvira, is still super do-able despite being old) in attendance to do a panel. They also had Kathleen Kinmont from Bride of Re-Animator, but really who cares about her. She does reappear later in our narrative in a humorous role, so that’s something I suppose. In addition to their panel at the screening, they had a panel during the main convention.
The Re-Animator panel
The panel was great in that, rather than just tell stories, almost the whole thing focused on the craft of filmmaking, particularly low-budget film making in the 80s. Without going into great detail, they spoke about the long days on low-budget shoots (14-18 hrs per day, as principal photography had to be completed in 18 days), and about how big name actors can get away with being aloof, but working in the nooks and crannies, the only way to get a good performance is for the actors to be completely emotionally available to each other in order to create instant chemistry. They mentioned that, as they all were coming from theater backgrounds, they got together at Barbara’s apartment for a few weeks beforehand to rehearse, which is a big no-no if SAG finds out about it because it constitutes working without pay. Jeffrey mentioned that sometimes having fewer resources forces the director and editor to make tighter, better choices, because when given infinite time and money, some people go overboard and don’t know when enough is enough. He also mentioned that, back when you had to actually film on, you know, film, low-budget productions would purchase things called “ends”. These were the chopped off leftovers of film reels after standard budget films were done using the reels. They’d cut off what was left and sell it cheap. So it was a great way to accumulate film on a tight budget, but you’d only be able to do like 3 minutes on each one and it was annoying to have to work through. As for the audience questions, it’s bizarrely awkward to ask a question to a woman whose tits & bush you just saw, along with her about to get eaten out by a revenant holding its own severed head between her legs (if you haven’t seen Re-Animator, stop what you’re doing and watch it now. It’s better than any Marvel film by x1000).
The Lee Majors Q&A was a bit depressing. Due to the way television contracts were structured back then, he never saw a dime from any Steve Austin merchandise, and indeed claims to have had no idea so much of it was ever produced until he started doing conventions. He spoke about the old snobbery that shut out television stars from film productions, and told a funny anecdote about how he loved Bill Shatner when he worked with him, but that Shat had a tendency to, “die to the balcony”. He explained that it’s theater slang for wildly over-acting. He also talked about how Andre the Giant, when playing sasquatch on the show, pissed in the suit all the time, which was super gross, but was also the nicest guy in person you could ever hope to meet, which was super great.
Joe Bob Briggs did a good panel, and spoke about the state of trash cinema and its relative place in modern film production vs. where it was when he got started way back when. He and I chatted a bit about small towns in west Texas. He didn’t think I’d know a few of the places where he’d lived, but I went to college in Lubbock, and so we shared some fond memories of a shitty place that is populated entirely by people who fail out of that college. Another really nice guy. Honestly, the only person who has ever been a dick to us after all these years that we’ve been going was Billy Zane. I still think that, much like Georgia against Texas this past year, Alabama against Oklahoma in that Sugar Bowl a few years back, or Florida against Louisville a few years before that, he just didn’t want to be there and therefore that magically excuses shitty performances.
We bought a few stupid things, like a full-size xenomorph skull
So I own this now, I guess.
because I’m buddies with that vendor and he gave it to me for wholesale. There were some good costumes, but frankly the best ones were people who come every year, and I already took pictures of them and showed you all over the last couple of years. So below are some pics from this year, but not nearly as many. Karaoke on Sat. night was awful, like always, though everybody was in a good mood. Kathleen Kinmont showed up to rock out, but was wasted and happened to share an elevator with us back up to our floor. She was drunk enough that she didn’t stop singing or rocking out once off the stage – it went for the whole elevator ride. There were no infamous David Arquette episodes, however (fun fact: right before he got on stage that night, he bought me a beer at the bar. I didn’t know until later that he was supposed to have been on the wagon. Whoops). I’m also now turning it into an annual tradition to bum a smoke off of Lance Henrikson. Nice guy, but seriously, American Spirits? C’mon, Lance, I wanna see some fancy Hollywood cigarettes.
The year ended with the Sam & Ted Raimi with Bruce Campbell panel. It was really a treat. They’ve known each other since middle school, and told great stories about each other growing up. Sam busted Bruce’s chops constantly, and they told stories about all the things they did as they went around Detroit trying to scrounge up money to make Evil Dead. Sam Raimi has an annoyingly nasally voice, FYI. Anyway the highlight of the panel was, when half the room is raising their hand to ask a question, a particular person who was picked stood up and asked them their opinion on Mac and Me, a shitty 1988 E.T. knockoff. Now keep in mind, none of the panelists had a blessed thing to do with that abomination of a movie. Nothing. It was the non-sequitur from hell. They were so confused they didn’t even know what he was asking – Ted kept thinking he was asking about “mac and cheese”. The moderator even face-palmed and said under his breath but still audibly into the mike, “You get a chance to ask these guys a question and you ask about fucking Mac and Me?” and you could hear the exasperation in his voice. I mean it was bizarre. The questioner was booed down, and after the panel ended and I was waiting outside for my wife to use the restroom, Ted, Sam, and Bruce came out through that side hallway. They were still talking about that, making fun of the guy and wondering what the fuck he was talking about. Seriously, this is like getting to go back in time and pose a question to George Washington, and all you can come up with is asking him if he likes the new Prius body style.
So that was this years (mis)adventure. I was quasi-drunk for most of it and blew $1,500 in three days, but fuck it, that’s why I fight for $15. I look forward to updating you all on the event’s 15th iteration next year, if you don’t see me in the news for bombing FanExpo beforehand.
TWO evil elevator movies from the same director? You’re fucking telling me that you made one evil elevator movie, looked yourself in the mirror and said, “You know what? Ima do it again. The world needs another killer elevator movie.”Me in front of a legit 73′ Oldsmobile Delta 88, from the film Evil Dead.Somebody dressed as the bad guy from Army of DarknessHere’s one you don’t see every convention: a guy dressed like Dr. Loomis. Though he still had that fucking Walking Dead baseball bat, so fuck him.The “battle Delta”, the Delta 88 transformed for combat at the end of Army of DarknessThis person has cleverly turned a book into a monster. My wife tells me it has something to do with Harry Potter, and is therefore un-Christian.I just thought it was funny that this guy was dressed like a fascist, his name for the karaoke was like “Lord Commander” or some shit like that, and he sang fucking Blondie.I love the difference between horror cons and other cons. Here, for example, instead of ripped dudes in tight clothes saving the world, we have family-friendly comics with titles like, “Lets All Die!”Randos in costumeSome dude dressed as the CreeperThis was a clever one. He’s dressed like Stephen King’s poor character from the movie Creepshow.Clever Nightmare on Elm Street costume. More clever than the 1,000 Freddy’s walking around the convention, at any rate.Remember when I did a series of film reviews that focused on the giallo genre? This guy gets it.The Death Note guy was here the last few years, but the chick’s demon costume was super intricate and she ended up winning the contest on Friday night I believe. The most important thing is she was hot.OK now this is what is wrong with the world. This is the side of the box of a Castle Greyskull re-issue toy. Notice that, unlike, say, the original Castle Greyskull box, the person shown enjoying it is not a 5 year old boy, but rather a 35 year old “man” with a shit-eating grin on his face and I FUCKING WANT THAT CASTLE GREYSKULL.A little kid dressed as Nosferatu. I thought it was cute.A shirt for little kids. If you don’t know what the Pork-Chop Express is, stop reading my fucking column.Another great example of horror culture – a children’s book titled, “I Like To Eat Children”. And yes, I bought it for one of my nephews.Another pretty well done costumeI thought this was clever – the guy made a medusa skull.Remember when I mentioned in one of my film reviews about Anthropophagus, the giallo film about the crazy cannibal who at the end of the movie eats his own intestines? SOMEBODY MADE A FUCKING DOLL FOR THAT MOVIE HOLY SHITWeird nazi porn. “Deported Women of the SS Special Section” and “Gestapo’s Last Orgy”.Shit, it’s better than concentration camp pornThis guy was the rarest thing of all at a convention – an original character. Sadly because it’s an original character I completely forgot it’s name and the youtube channel the people were trying to tell me to subscribe to where they upload their short films.Ash Predator. He’s the Predator, but with a ripped blue shirt, chainsaw hand, shotgun slung on his back, and a deadite-colored severed head of another predator.Scott Ian of Anthrax making sure I know I’m not supposed to be taking a picture of him.Two tattoo artists this year. The wife and I are seriously thinking of signing up for a flash next year, which is really all they do given the time constraints.Randumb decoration on a table. Only at Texas Frightmare.Look in the background – it’s advertising a movie called Velocipastor that we saw for free that Friday night about a priest who turns into a were-dinosaur and saves Chinese prostitutes. It…was…awesome.
9. The Hat & The Hair
5. Hillary Clinton
4. John Bolton’s mustache
2. Justin Trudeau
