ONE BAD SUMMER: Whatever it is, whatever it was

"The Crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change."

- E.B. White

"You got the peaches, I got the cream.

Sweet to taste, saccharine."

- Def Leppard

Was it really that bad? We didn't court misfortune, but we could smell it on the more humid days. The trick is to not let it consume you; just pack an umbrella and some acetaminophen and go about your leisure. And that proved to be adequate; whenever the pain set in, it wasn't anything a little sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll couldn't clear up in a day. 

A handful of the grim horrors that haunted our apprehension predictably came to fruition in the chosen form and we absorbed them like The Blob and kept watching the shows and eating the snacks. And in the end, the shit you take is equal to the shit you make, and we stayed on track with chronicling all the crimes and carnality that were fit to print; we stayed true to the Starter Pack and not surprisingly we found a lot more to occupy our hearts and minds - for better or worse. 

And that's what I've got here: The Good, The Bad, and The Summer; the ins and outs of the highs and lows; the cherries and the pits, categorized in a (hopefully) comprehensible way to give you a better sense of The Beast that both gaveth and tooketh away. 

Let's start this thing off on the wrong foot...

Obi-Wan Kenobi

(That's bad...)

What a silly waste of resources. That's the thing with STAR WARS: it has endless potential and a bottomless budget, and I saw none of that on the screen. The story they came up with was an excellent foundation, they just forgot to build anything upon it. We're going to end up with a finite amount of James Earl Jones as Vader, so this kinda material deserves more finesse. (And more Vader.)

Stranger Things 4

(That's good!)

Eddie Munson. Kate Bush. Vecna. Who could've predicted these as buzzwords of the Summer of '22? See, this is what it looks like when production value is firmly rooted in compelling storytelling and there's a vivid distinction in the contrast between "fan service" and loyalty rewards. Considerably less lazy & predictable than all previous seasons, it's become an Altman-esque mosaic - structurally and thematically - of all the nostalgia it draws from, as well as its own nostalgia it has created. 

Thunder only happens when it's raining

(That's bad...)

This was a Summer Of No Rain. A literal "drought disaster." Typically I want as many sunny days as possible throughout the season, but the plant life and the ecosystem as a whole isn't really beach-body material this year - actually it's continually on fire. On a smaller scale, we haven't had a single decent thunderstorm, and I need a handful of storms to keep the fear of wind and electrocution alive in me.

The heat! My God, the heat!

(That's good!)

2022 is on its way to rank as one of the 10 hottest years on record. And as long as that's not part of a continuing trend of some pending cataclysmic doom, I feel no guilt in having enjoyed the shit out of it. I am physically, emotionally, sexually, creatively, and spiritually at my best around the 100°F mark - my zen zone is so impenetrable that I've become entirely unaffected by the wimpy whines of those who sweat when the heat is on.

Jurassic Park, Super Nintendo

(That's bad...)

My son got some video games for his 4th birthday in June - ones that were both compatible to his interests and our gaming system. Pertinent to his love of the '93 film, this was an obvious choice, and not surprisingly, it didn't immediately have the tone or excitement of the movie. I'm not really a game critic so I'm not inclined to put in the effort - we played it a coupla times and maybe it picks up at some point, but it's pretty crude for its time and subject matter. 

Animaniacs, Super Nintendo

(That's good!)

Now here's a Spielberg production we can get behind! Firstly it looks exactly like the goddamn cartoon which really helps to make the connection, but the gameplay is smooth, fast-paced, easy to understand - perfect for a child. Also like the show, it manages to slip in dozens of blatant pop culture references that fall outside the boundaries of Warner Bros. (and sister).

Bye-bye Beakman

(That's bad...)

Last Summer I discovered Beakman's World was on Tubi, so I stocked up on the Golden Grahams and consumed this entire vibe every Saturday morning for the entire season. This year I blindly bought a Family Size 18.9 oz. box of the cereal in anticipation of recreating this intermittently ongoing tradition - only to discover, predictably, that the streaming service had "dropped" the show. I've been chasing this program for decades - a channel will pick it up for a minute and then one week there'll be something else in its time slot. My assessment is that these media corporations don't want kids learning about Science; apparently Magilla Gorilla is as comfortable as they get with the evolutionary chain.

Freddy's Nightmares

(That's good!)

God doesn't close a door without opening a window - to hell! I'd seen a handful of episodes through bootlegs and other shady outlets, but thanks to Tubi, the entire 2-season run is up for grabs (and for free). Lotta newcomers got bitchy because it wasn't anything like they thought it was. Based on the few I already knew, I got what I wanted and much much more; Freddy actually is the antagonist in several episodes and it's a thrill when he is, but when he isn't, the show is a moody, meandering low-budget stream of consciousness that never manages to grasp a cohesive thread within its allotted time. And that's the other thing: they're hour-long episodes, padded out with story fragments and clumsy left turns - like an actual nightmare. The tone and production is wholly similar to the likes of Tales From the Darkside and Monsters - but those are for Autumn, and Freddy's forever my summer girl. Impeccable timing.

This, our town of Halloween

(That's bad...)

It gets worse every year. You can sense the impatience once the "Back to School" sales begin on July 1st; this obnoxious, superficial fetish for colder weather and pumpkin-whatever is clearly at the root of this retail fiasco that haunts my reverie every year. Halloween's my favorite holiday too, but Summer's my favorite season, and I sit around for nine months with my hands down my pants waiting for its fruit, and you wanna piss it away because you like spider webs - well fine, accelerate the passage of time to your liking -- you'll die an early death. Is that spooky enough for you??

MONSTER MANIA 50

(That's good!)

For the rest of us three-dimensional people, we don't need your Hallmark hoopla to bask in the best part of October: Horror Movies! (And whatever merchandise they have to offer.) Per semi-usual we braved the 5-hour drive to Cherry Hill, New Jersey to attend the best Horror Convention in the Northeastern United States to get the shit and share it with you. This is our Disney Vacation - not because we're 100% that family, we're just more readily responsive to any event that offers Point Break posters, Ted Bundy t-shirts, and bootleg DVDs of Virgin High. 

The agonizing pain in which I live every day

(That's bad...)

Financial woes. Deteriorating health. Domestic conflict. Home and automotive disrepair. The darkness of the past. The uncertainty of the future. Day jobs. Night terrors. Shower thoughts. All the stuff we leave off the table that accumulates enough to make any season "Bad." It's just that it's all so much more punctuated in the Summer - it's unfair that anything should corrupt this most sacred observance. Mood killers. Cock blocks. The blanket feels that much more wet. Save this shit for the Winter months however you can. 

Dreamworld Coca-Cola

(That's good!)

Oh, what a joy. What a blessing. Just as everyone seems to be cleaning up and putting away the pool toys, this lightning crashed down upon my fuckin' head! Considerably better than the Starlight flavor from earlier this year, it appears to be a repackaging of their finger-licking Georgia Peach formula from 2018... And what a package! These bottles & cans are putting me in the mood for hand-clapping - they're like 5 inches away from the box art for Super Mario Bros. 2. I'm also just so tickled by this idea of flavors based on abstractions; not even Kool-Aid ever came up with flavor labels this cerebral, and I commend Coke for keeping it real when we needed it most. Take that, "mystery" Mountain Dews. 

- Paul

Let's Look At Some Shit : Episode 12

Monday Meditations : 8/9/21

My life with Paul and now Elvis has become a beautiful tapestry, of creating good and bad memories, all the while thrusting me forward in time to the next horror movie convention. My Mecca. If film is my religion than these are my church. Lately I've felt like there is an ominous dark cloud hanging over my head creating doom and cursing me over and over again. It doesn't let in the light and I can see monsters in the distance. The ones I've been running from my whole life. And I need a motherfucking break. T-minus 5 days until we depart on our big adventure to Goth Girl Heaven. Various wads will be blown. And for a little while, the sun will break through the storm, and I will be alright. 

- Babes

1. "Reelin' In the Years" by Steely Dan

2. "The Magic Voice" by Thor and the Tritonz

3. "In the Room Where You Sleep" by Dead Man's Bones Ft. The Silverlake Conservatory of Music Children's Choir

4. "All Tomorrow's Parties" by The Velvet Underground and Nico

5. "One Thing Leads to Another" by The Fixx

6. "Rocky Mountain Way" by Joe Walsh

7. "People Are Strange" by Echo and the Bunnymen

8. "On Our Own" by Bobby Brown

9. "Dream Warriors" by Dokken

10. "Love Hurts" by Nazareth

Monday Meditations : 6/7/2021

We're going to a Con in August and I feel like I can breathe again. I close my eyes and I'm there already. I can smell it. We'll spend hours dragging our son up and down aisles of horror-related shit over and over again, agonizing over purchases, until he's screaming and our feet are falling off. Then we'll retire conveniently up the elevator, to our swank hotel room, and stare out our 15th floor window. After he's asleep in his big bed, we'll surround our newly-acquired fortune, drooling, panting, sweat beading on our foreheads, as we dive into our gold for the day. As we drift off to sleep for the night to the tranquil sounds of adults play-screaming and the hoots and the hollers, we will be filled with fullness knowing that when we wake up tomorrow, there will be another whole day of this. This is the life. 

- Babes

1. "I'm Your Boogie Man" by KC & the Sunshine Band

2. "Kozmic Blues" by Janis Joplin

3. "Rock n Roll Nigger (live)" by Patti Smith & Patti Smith Group*

4. "48 Crash" by Suzi Quatro

5.  "Dancer" by Queen

6. "Your Yellow Pyjama" by Riz Ortolani, Amanda Lear

7. "Shoplifting" by The Slits

8. "Message From the Country" by The Move

9. "Let the Good Times Roll" by The Cars

10. "Honey, Honey" by ABBA

*This song is particularly best listened to live

A few words about Sid Haig

This isn't an obituary; we don't really do the 'in memoriam' thing here whenever a celebrity dies. It's hopefully not a 'bio' either. But the death of Sid Haig on September 21 actually sparked a ton of specific memories, and reminded me of a time in my life when discovering new stuff was still such a ripe possibility, and in so many instances, Sid led the expedition.

The first time I saw Sid Haig (surprisingly, or not, considering the following) was in December of '97 in Jackie Brown, and his cameo-sized scene stayed with me more than anything else in the movie. For real! And in the immediate subsequent viewings, it was the part I'd look forward to. What struck me most about this very short sequence was this guy, this actor playing the judge almost towered above the movie, who, apart from looking admittedly peculiar (or maybe in addition to), I thought, "no way is that guy a movie actor, he's clearly a real-life judge they hired for believability purposes." And that's it: in a few lines of dialogue, I believed him in the role he was playing more than any other actor in the movie. And that may've been due, in part, to how casual and understated the performance is... and how I'd soon learn that this was not a typical hallmark of his craft.

I walked into Jackie Brown as a Quentin Tarantino fan; I was 14 and largely uneducated in (but not unaware of) the Blaxploitation genre. Of course, I'm sure one of the main functions of the film was to 'introduce a whole new generation to a vast, forgotten library of exciting movies, etc.'
And it worked! It worked, Quentin, and I went & sought out every Pam Grier movie I could get my hands on (which was a struggle in the cultural wasteland of Blockbusters). Fortunately, the infamously sorry excuse for a video rental store had two - the easy two: Foxy Brown and Coffy (purchased, I'm sure, from the mom & pop place from which they took over).
This, for the time being, was enough. It was enough to keep me happy & hungry for more, and it was enough to recognize that a contemporary pairing of the two actors was a deeper cut of an homage than I'd previously been aware of; this guy was a career actor, and had clearly worked with Pam before - though I'd yet to become aware of how much of a Tracy/Hepburn powerhouse they'd been. Not until the excess of the DVD boom of the early 2000s did I get a glimpse of Black Mama, White Mama, The Big Bird Cage, The Big Doll House, and Savage Sisters - amounting to my own assertion that Sid Haig was a star in his own right: a legitimately gifted character actor who could talk a good game and swing back & forth between hero & heavy with what appeared to be no effort.

Now with some major hindsight, it was a delight that he'd now worked with the 'very prestigious Quentin Tarantino,' but it was around this time of major discoveries that I caught Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses. With little knowledge of this film or its stars, and regardless of what I thought of the movie, I immediately recognized Rob's recognition and appreciation of highly talented, underemployed actors of a bygone era - namely one Sidney Eddie Mosesian. One need only watch the pre-credit prologue to just witness in awe an auspicious collaboration of director and actor, and how Rob clearly had a unique understanding of Sid's talents, his syntax, and his sense of humor, and within just those few opening minutes, the two artists create some of the most memorable, iconic jibber-jabber of 21st century Horror Cinema.

Over time I'd catch him in Spider Baby and Galaxy of Terror and various other cult & B-movie bread & butter, but really, the place I'd see him most was in person.

Horror movie and Science Fiction Fan Conventions have been around longer than I have, but I hafta say - and I don't know if others have noticed or felt this - that House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects not only popularized the convention circuit beyond its initial tight-knit community of outcasts & shut-ins, but also changed the tone and the mechanics of: how they work/what they're about/why one would attend. And what it boils down to is that for the past 20 years - now with 3 From Hell - Rob has populated his movies with who've now become celebrity regulars at these events; I've always noted that I've seen Sid Haig in the flesh more than some of my own family members. And because of this, this has been a unique "celebrity death," because thousands of folks have met the man, shook his hand, and have photographic evidence of it.
At some point in '05 or '06 I had him sign my Black Mama, White Mama poster, on which he inscribed: "To Paul - Them's my dogs, fucker!"

Truly a gentleman and a scholar who brought joy to millions with a career playing the scum of the Earth on screen, and in his off-hours humbling himself to those who loved him for it.

- Paul

BENNETT INVENTORY : Monster Con Survival Guide

Holy shit, is that the line? Gotta wake up early tomorrow. This seven-foot-tall zombie is really slow. He's not gonna wanna talk to me, is he? Not in the mood for some kinda role-playing bullshit. I can see the Palisades Predator 2 statue from here -- I gotta ditch this zombie. God, this couple doesn't belong together. These can't be originals, they're only 8 bucks. No, I don't wanna buy your movie. BO & chili cheese dogs smell like a rotting corpse. That rotting corpse smells like latex. Big pale tits. Acne. More BO. Jason Lives. Lobby cards - set of 8. Felissa Rose.
No one likes Saw. That guy's aching to expel every bit of knowledge he has about the mythology of Michael Myers - turn & walk the other way. Take the stairs. Get in line. Cigarette? More BO. $5 each or 5 for $20. Pennywise in XL. Why would you get a DVD autographed? It's a DVD! I just got here - I can't buy this yet. "Arms fly up as tentacles leap from head." I just goosed that lady. Hey, Norman Reedus, don't talk to me please. "Horror Spectacular -- 8 Horrifying pinups!" How 'bout 1989 prismatic vending foil horror stickers?

PJ Soles. Ecto Cooler. With light-up torso. MOC. MIB. OOP. Rolled repro. 8.5x11. 11x17. #217 of 5,000. Ham & cheese. "Win me." We're trapped. Vampires belong to Twilight. She shows her tits in that. How much? Is it cheaper on eBay - I'm factoring in shipping. Toshiba DVD distorted projection of Halloween II. No thanks.

Don't hit on girls who are holding hands. How much do we have left? BO again? Is it me? No. "...starring in her father's remake of Phantom of the Opera." Fat Freddy. Fat Jason. Fat Michael. Fat Shaun. Fat Joker. Fat Ash. Hot chick. Hot chick in our room. I'm drunk. All of the Staff are menstrual. Cigarette? My fingers are all green. Can I buy these separately?
Hey, fat Ash, how'd you get a girlfriend? Amelia Kinkade wrote a book? Little tiny bottles of Heinz Ketchup & Mayonnaise. Completely posable and authentically detailed. Anal Paradise. The Place To Meet. Drunkiest. Vampires or Zombies? They're both boring. Get a picture of that! Abrasive women & their homemade leather goods. BO! Zoom in, zoom out. Out of Anal Paradise. "Series II contains another hot 100 cards." Do I own this? Do we want this? I think we need these. Toll money. Press 'Order' to purchase - Movie titles will not appear on bill.