And then there was silence

The move was smooth, the injuries were minor and aside from the neighbors' loud pipes, it's already very peaceful living by myself. Much thanks to Andy, Scarecrow, Barry, Jack and Bart for the helping hands. All the essentials are now in, so now I just have to tote over a few thousand more CDs and a few hundred videotapes. I spent most of yesterday setting up the living room. Now I'm set up to accomodate guests unless they want to watch television.

Guess I've been in a vampire animal mood lately. I already read a whole book at my bachelor digs - it was my childhood favorite "Bunnicula". And what was the first low-rent horror movie watched in the new pad? That honor goes to "Zoltan: Hound of Dracula". Jack and I recently split one of Anchor Bay's "Fright Pack" box sets, and it worked out perfectly. We each got one movie we really wanted (him - "Slugs," me - "The Cat O'Nine Tails"), one movie the other owned (he already had Mattei's "Rats: Night of Terror," I already had Fulci's "The Black Cat") and one movie we each wanted but wouldn't have went out and bought on its own (Jack loves "Alien" rip-offs so he snagged "Parasite," I had long been amused by the video box for "Zoltan" under its alternate title, "Dracula's Dog").

Zoltan is indeed a vampire dog. He actually bites other dogs and turns them into vampires, complete with insert effects shots of the teeth going into his canine victims' necks. These effects were done by the young Stan Winston, and they're pretty good if you consider how ludicrous the idea is. I suppose the only "name" in this is José Ferrer, who like Christopher Plummer is still considered a legit actor although he's been in tons of Z-grade crap. For horror buffs, there's Michael Pataki, star of the well-regarded "Grave of the Vampire" (which I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I've never seen), and Reggie Nalder, whose claim to fame was that he was ugly in the '70s. Oh, and "Zoltan" was the genre debut of Albert Band, who with his son Charles went on to found Empire Pictures, which begat direct-to-video powerhouse Full Moon Pictures and all its various subdivisions. Still, unless any of those people really thrill you, you shouldn't bother to seek this boring-ass movie out. Maybe the other killer canine movie that came out in 1978 ("Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell") is better. Can anyone verify?

Those Anchor Bay boxes are cheap and awesome. I highly recommend the "Walking Dead" set; three of those movies are totally awesome, two are pretty good, and "Nightmare City" is the hilarious kind of bad. Further proof that Anchor Bay rules (although I wish they'd hurry up with that damned "Cemetary Man" DVD - my only copy of my favorite movie of the '90s is a bootleg of the European laserdisc). Anyway, the first item on my Christmas list is from one of their competitors: this motherfucker.

Ah, such bougeois pleasures! Enjoy a taste of this high life with one of my current favorites, Between the Buried and Me's "Selkies: The Endless Obsession" (click "save target as" - you can't get the file otherwise, and believe me, it's worth it).

Holiday hijacking - with all the fixins

Eat your Christing birdflesh already, those few of you who will bother this year. Just do something to pretend you care about today's holiday, all the while drooling about the next one. I can't think of another holiday that gets robbed like Thanksgiving does. Goad told me a terrible story about having to take down Halloween decorations at work on Halloween - to put up Christmas stuff. Yes, Christmas now moves into stores in October, although Halloween at least gets the beginning of October or so to bask in its holiday glory. But Thanksgiving? Eff you, pilgrims!

Aside from Mom's stuffing, over the last couple of years my favorite Thanksgiving tradition has been X-Entertainment's review of an old Macy's Parade TV broadcast. This year's, from 1989, is just as great, but proves my point - sure, there's a giant animatronic turkey there, but who shows up for the grand finale? Hey, it's Santa! Can you imagine the nerve of that Arctic asshole, waltzing in late to someone else's parade and then stealing the show? And it's not even noon! Do leprechauns show up and dance on romantic couples' tables on Valentine's Day? If they did, they'd get kicked out, or at least be met with funny stares. But Santa gets away with his holiday hijacking, actually gets cheers for doing it. I think it's because Thanksgiving is an American holiday. (Well, the Canadians celebrate it too, but up there it comes before Halloween, probably so Christmas won't interfere. Canada rules.) Santa obviously hates America, and therefore he hates freedom and loves terror. I say we boycott him instead of France, where at least you can get absinthe.

And now, an A-Z of things for which I am thankful in 2005:

Amorphis bringing back the death metal vocals
Bart coming back to town for the holidays
Condominium living
Director's cut of "Land of the Dead"
Excellent friends
Fishing off the company pier... and oaths sworn never to do so again
Grandma, celebrating her 84th Thanksgiving with us today
Having a blast north of the border
Iraq: mission accomplished!
Jansen, Floor - the hottest lady in metal
Kissing women to whom I am not related
L. Meredith and Andrew coming back to town for the holidays
Mom's turkey stuffing - lots of celery, no fruit, delicious
Not having to drive to Elmhurst every day
Ostentatious adjectives
Parents who love and support me no matter how bitchy I get
Quiet time
Rowling, J.K., and her excellent little wizard saga
Swinging in the park on a warm summer night
Two Tossers shows in one week
Unrequited love, which, as Woody Allen tells us, is the only kind that lasts
Vermithrax Pejorative, my temperamental car
Waking up next to a gorgeous woman
Xasthur's beautiful, droning, desolate black metal
You, an obviously intelligent and lovely reader
Zombie movies coming out left and right

Closing statements

Closed on the condo Friday, took possession yesterday, moving next Saturday. After wanting it for about eight or nine years now, it feels weird that I'm going to be living on my own. People keep asking, "Aren't you excited?" in excited voices, telling me how happy I'm going to be. They seem let down when I say it's not all that exciting, and that housing is not among the major factors in determining my own happiness.

Oh, boy! I can be "my own boss"! I can come and go "as I please"! I can invite friends over and engage in a more grown-up style of "dating"! To be honest, aside from Dad monopolizing the TV and Mom and Dad's well-meaning but hovering presence keeping friends at bay, living in my parents' home since finishing college so many years ago really hasn't been all that detrimental to my lifestyle. I already enter and exit on my own schedule. I take care of my clothes and bills and all that jazz. Even though the P's try to make me eat with them all the time, I do my best to feed myself. And honestly, it's my own damned fault I remained dateless for so long, and I don't consider any woman so superficial that she wouldn't go out with me simply because I lived with my mama as worthy of my time.

But nope, I'm really not excited. For most of my life, I've thought of self-improvement-type behavior as narcissistic and vain, and even though I've come to understand that's (sometimes) not the case, I still find it hard to get worked up over my own Major Life Events. Due to matters completely unrelated to my living arrangements, believe it or not, this past week I've been feeling rather surly and miserable. Of course, trying to relate that to a well-wishing acquaintance is fairly rude, not to mention none of their damned business. My final word is that this move is at best more of a relief than anything, especially now that the cash wrangling is pretty much done with. Numbers make my head hurt. I'm a word guy.

Saw several good new and old zombie pictures recently: the Argentinian cheapie "Plaga Zombie", the Australian sci-fi crossover "Undead" and - after many years of waiting - Mark Pirro's hilarious "Nudist Colony of the Dead". But the wackiest horror movie I've seen in a while is a direct-to-video exclusive from 1987 entitled "Epitaph". It's S-L-O-W, horrifically acted and boring to look at, but it's weird enough to mention. First of all, the actress starring as maniac matriarch Martha is named, no shit, Delores Nascar. She has a frightening hairdo and spends the film vamping and boozing around like a community players' version of the aged Liz Taylor. She's actually more of a homicidal "Mommie Dearest"; her family has to keep moving because she comes on to men and then kills them when they turn her down, claiming they were trying to rape her. Life with this psycho is obviously difficult... maybe that's why her high school-aged daughter looks at least 22. (Thanks to the IMDB, now I know that the girl who played the daughter grew up in Chicago, won a Gilette-sponsored "hot legs" contest as recently as 2003 and was the first Serbian to pilot a Mig-25 to 85,000 feet.) Martha saves her most unusual violence for a therapist with a terrifying overbite who poses as a neighbor... she puts a rat down the lady's panties, then places the varmint in a metal bucket and ties it over her victim's tummy, heating the pail and forcing the rat to eat its way through the shrink's torso. Totally out of character, and totally awesome. With the chops of a great B-actress, Delores Nascar deserved better than to have a sporting association dedicated to people who drive around in a circle real fast named after her.

As mentioned, I've been in a real crusty mood lately. Luckily, I've had the entire Skitsystem catalogue to match it, since the Swedish anarcho-crustcore favorites recently posted their entire discography for free download on their site. (That's what I call putting your money where your politics are - how come stadium rock stars never give out their catalog for free?) Have a listen if you like dirty punk with actual balls, dirty thrash metal without the pretense of impressive musicianship or dirty hardcore without the suburban jock attitude. Here you will find a triplet of recent CD reviews, including Glue, Children of Bodom and Canasta.

Oh, and sorry about that last post. I'm such a whiny weiner.

Y'all're just not that into me

Well, shit, stranger! Where the hell have you been? With a few notable exceptions, not calling or writing to me or commenting on this corny blog, is where. Well, nuts to ya's negligent types. I'll still write and pretend you give a shit, which I'm apparently very good at...

Lately, I've been hanging with my cousin Yorik and my uncle Dennis, both visiting from Seattle; that's been cool. I threw away a ton of old cassettes, stuff I nor you would ever listen to. Some old Polish pop music, unlistenable demos I was handed at shows, useless promo samplers, tapes worn out from too many listens, albums I'd replaced on CD, a melted original copy of Pestilence's "Consuming Impulse", shit like that. Oh, and I need to share something with "the whole world" before I take it off my wall and throw it away forever. It's an actual item that was featured in a Johnson Smith catalog, circa 1996-7(?):
I'm still kicking myself for not ordering that. That monkey's shirt is off tha heazy. He knows he looks like a total asshole, but he doesn't care. And with every loud noise, he jitters and blares Los Del Rio's festive classic, a favorite wedding party annoyance to this very day, through a tiny, tinny, treble-heavy speaker. I never got into those singing fish or even the dancing Coke cans, but this thing obviously transcended every animatronic novelty trend. Or so I like to tell myself as I "get down" by my lonesome here.

I went downtown Saturday morning to see a top-secret early screening of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". Of course it was awesome, although with the movies staying around the same length but the books they're adapted from getting longer, it does leave quite a bit of the story out. To be fair, I only have a few minor gripes, all the essential stuff is really there. For the most part I think the cuts were judicious here. However, there's just no way they're going to be able to cram all of "Order of the Phoenix" into 2 hours. It's totally the best Potter book so far, and it's almost 900 damn pages long. Anyway, I feel compelled to issue a S-P-O-I-L-E-R A-L-E-R-T for anyone who doesn't want details, because here they come. Y'all'll want to skip the next paragraph.

Yep, they cut a lot of stuff out, more than in any of the other movies. In the case of Winky's complete absence and the very suitable plot workaround, it's totally welcome. (Those house-elves can suck it. Sorry Hermoine, but fuck S.P.E.W., too. Not even a factor in this movie, and that's fine.) The beginning is much quicker - they've streamlined all the World Quidditch Cup shenanigans to the bare essentials, although the movie does reveal one pivotal character much earlier than necessary. The principles are all fine, and the casting of the new characters is generally pretty good. As Alastor Moody, Brendan Gleeson's got the right tone, and his magical eye looks a lot less goofy than it does in the ads. Why there's not a chunk missing from his nose, I don't know. The folks they got for Bartemius Crouch, Cho Chang, Cedric Diggory and Viktor Krum are perfect, but Fleur Delacour comes off as fairly inept and hapless - she's not even part Veela, as there are no Veela in the movie at all. Miranda Richardson, a great choice for Rita Skeeter, gets the shaft, too, as Rita doesn't cause nearly as much trouble as she should. Finally, Ralph Fiennes is a pretty good Voldemort, even without the red eyes. Toward the end, the plot feels kind of rushed. The third task comes very suddenly, and I find it hard to believe that the climax is sufficiently explained so that anyone who didn't read the book will come out knowing exactly what happened. But like I said, everything that needs to be there is there, and it still looks all murky and shadowy like "Prisoner of Azkaban" did, which can only be good for the storytelling. I liked it just fine.

Goddammit, whaddya want? You know I'm a nerd. Left to my own devices, it was only a matter of time before I got serious Pottermania, wasn't it? A hearty thanks to Meredith for getting me started. Just for her: Ween playing "Polka Dot Tail" in Denver, '00.

Four days until the condo closing. In a few weeks, y'all'll be able to visit. Like you're gonna!

Garbage out, garbage out

The grand clean-up continues. Among yesterday's refuse:

·A grade school math book, its interior pages meticulously hollowed out and their edges glued togther during my youth, intended as a "secret compartment" but never actually used to hide anything.
·The final disposable cigarette lighter owned by my dad's dad, long devoid of fluid and flint.
·A hideous '80s ladies' workout t-shirt scavenged from a church garage sale: short at the midriff, extra-wide at the collar, festooned on front and back with the powerful slogan "HAMMER TIME!" in a festive pink and purple splatter design, complete with swinging hammer graphic.
·A small number of codeine pills passed along by an associate some years ago, none ingested and all very much expired.
·Press bios for virtually every album released by Century Media and Nuclear Blast Records during the past five years, with some personal favorites (Blind Guardian's "A Night at the Opera", Helloween's "Rabbit Don't Come Easy", etc.) retained.
·One piece of counterfeit human feces (floats).

Hey, that Draco Malfoy is a straight-up jerk. This little waltz by One Ring Zero is pretty nice. That's all I have to say right now.

Gals, guns and guts

Awright, so I didn't update the next day. Big surprise. Among a few other activities (doing mortagey stuff, trying to figure out how and when I'm going to die, packing, chilling at a hard-to-find but friendly bar and finally lifting my karaoke hiatus with the Good Little Bad Girl and kin, carving a pumpkin and eating its seeds, enjoying the Queen of Mediocrity's much-appreciated alternate Halloween gathering, getting my fucking transmission rebuilt, etc.), I seen some good and bad pictures lately, plus the first season of "The Wire". Among the notables:

"Dead & Breakfast" - This is what a horror comedy should be. I've seen too many half-assed ones made in the last 20 or so years, but "D&B" is as goofy, bloody, surreal and memorable a flick as you could ask for. Some semi-famous faces are in this indie flick, including the immortal David Carradine and his daughter Ever, "ER"'s Erik Palladino, Diedrich Bader of "Office Space," "Bones" babe Bianca Lawson, Portia de Rossi of "Arrested Development" and, of course, Sisto (not Brak's brother, Jeremy from "May" and "Six Feet Under"). These are not proper zombies, more of a general "infestation" thing that pretty much works the same way. A musical narrator shows up a little bit into the movie; at first he's a country singer, but after he gets possessed/zombified, he starts rapping. And, saints be praised, he raps the entire storyline in hilariously truncated detail over the end credits. Plus, there's a really sweet gore shot where a chainsaw falls on the back of this dude's neck, and he just stands there jittering around while gravity works the blades through his spine, a mess of stringy grue dangling and flailing about. Marvelous!

"Ginger Snaps" - I've wanted to see this forever, and it's as good as I'd been lead to believe. Having inspired two follow-ups, a cult following and even academic discourse (click that link), this Canadian job is essentially about two close sisters who are growing up and apart. At 16, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle, later cast because of this film in "Freddy vs. Jason") is a year older than Brigitte but neither of them have begun menstruating. Then, one night while they're out walking, Ginger gets her period and is immediately attacked by a werewolf - so she gets "the curse." Soon her hormones are out of control: she's making out with boys, sprouting hair in weird places and generally being distanced from Brigitte, her best friend, because of the changes this has wrought. It's a pretty smart and resonant allegory with the right sense of humor and poignancy about the subject. I found it interesting that the sisters' arrested physical development freaks out their mother, who's your typical niggling horror flick mom except that the body issues and complexes she's stuffing down her daughters' throats causes a different sort of inadequacy than you usually get in a mother-dominated male horror character. And it's funny, too. Glad to have finally seen "Ginger Snaps," I'm going to hunt down the sequel and prequel.

"The Screaming Dead" - Now for something a bit more salacious. Not to be confused with "Curse of the Screaming Dead" or "Revenge of the Screaming Dead", this is an original from eiCinema, the DIY cottage that gave us the excellent "Suburban Nightmare", the whacko German import "Premutos - Lord of the Living Dead" and a mess of movie parody nudies including the utterly-insane-looking "TITanic 2000". This, like most of their fare, stars comely young scream queen Misty Mundae. The drector, Brett Piper, is well-known for indie genre stuff; his sarcastic commentary on Troma's DVD of his "A Nymphoid Barbarian In Dinosaur Hell" is utterly brilliant, although his movies are never that hot. This one starts off kind of promising, as Misty joins a bunch of models and a sadistic photographer in an old house where legendary tortures once happened. Most of the movie plays out as a mental S&M session, a slowly building series of interpersonal power struggles that makes the movie seem a lot smarter than it ultimately turns out. A cheesy ghost shows up in the fourth reel, and the terrible effects are only marginally lamer than the explanation that he appeared because the photog was videotaping Misty's anguish. It's later explained that digital code is just like runic symbols or something and can therefore affect supernatural occurences. But why was the ghost vanquished when the hilarious hero just rewound the video? Stupid, stupid, stupid. If it had stayed in the psychological mind-game arena, this might have turned out surprisingly better than the average boobs-and-blood parade. Instead, I wish I'd just watched "SpiderBabe" instead.

"Vigilante" - William Lustig's follow-up to the infamous "Maniac" - one of the few slasher movies I'll go to bat for - is nearly as unpleasant as that ugly masterpiece. Often compared to "Death Wish" or its Italian street justice knockoffs that proliferated in the '70s, it takes more of an exploitation movie approach and is thus far more in-your-face. The immortal Fred Williamson, star of quite a few Italian grimefests himself, starts off with a great reactionary speech about taking the law into your own hands, directly addressing the camera at first before you realize he's got an audience of aspiring vigilantes. With violence worthy of a gore flick, he and his gang of PBR-guzzling blue collar Lancelots dispose of criminal scum, both at street and higher levels, getting particularly vicious with the gang who fucks with Robert Forster's family. This movie was heavily edited when it first came out, and I'm sure that when it thrilled audiences during its long run in Times Square's grindhouses it didn't include the amazing shot of Forster's son's brains being blasted out of a window. As a well-made slice of morally dubious Reagan-era paranoia, "Vigilante" is one of the sleaziest American action movies I can think of, with Lustig's keen sense of building tension through taut editing. Lustig continued to explore his disenfranchisement with the law in the more cartoonish "Maniac Cop" series and the transgressive, underrated "Uncle Sam," but finally seeing this makes me realize he's been MIA for too long.

"High Tension" (aka "Haute Tension") - As could be expected, this popular French thriller was sanitized of its most gruesome moments for American theaters, so I'm glad that the DVD includes the unrated French version. The effects are by Gianetto De Rossi (any relation to Portia?), who worked on "The Beyond" and "Cannibal Apocalypse," and the gore is worthy of his vintage Italian splatter days. There's some nasty stuff in this, which is basically a retread of the '70s "dangerous redneck" trend. Director Alexandre Aja so convincingly pulled off his homage that he's been tapped for the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes," due in March. But while it certainly beats "Wrong Turn" or that stupid "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake in the low-rent suspense department, it shares a problem with "The Screaming Dead": a late-act shift of focus that's too ludicrous to swallow. I'm all for a good twist, but if it had remained the same movie it began as, it could be a better genre exercise than "The Devil's Rejects." Instead, without giving anything away, it turns out a complete cheat, and possibly anti-lesbian to boot. Until the crap ending, however, it's a well-crafted thriller, refreshingly headlined by a butch, buff "final girl." I suggest turning it off after about an hour.

I could not, however, sit through all of "Fat Albert", which I was hoping would be as appallingly stupid as the immortal "From Justin To Kelly" but turned out too similar for comfort, in all the wrong ways. Here, let's get you in the holiday spirit: listen to "Christmas" from the semi-new Ulver album. The ever-changing Norsemen stayed a sort of experimental electronic act this time, but now seem to be writing something resembling "songs." If you're like me, you'll like them all. And if you're exactly like me, this week you've also frequently enjoyed Grave's classic debut "Into the Grave", Sigh's criminally underproduced "Gallows Gallery", Dangerdoom's bangin' "The Mouse and the Mask", Arsis' addictive "A Celebration of Guilt", and the lovely Calexico/Iron & Wine collaboration EP "In the Reins".