Recent horror gems can be found among the garbage

I am a fan of horror and suspense films. Working part-time at the world's largest family-owned video rental chain for the past two years, I've seen a lot of horror titles come through those doors. Let me tell you, the digital age has been both good and bad for the indie film industry. It's truly a double-edged sword, and especially in the case of horror it's mostly the dull edge we get to see.

Digital filmmaking is great in that it puts usable creative tools into the hands of whoever wants them for a very negligible price tag compared to the expense of a major studio's equipment. So many people are shooting on digital now that an indie film can easily look quite professional if they manage to get lighting, sound, and the performances themselves right. This has really opened the door for independent filmmakers in the last 10 to 15 years. In my mind this new age of low budget horror treasures was initiated by The Blair Witch Project.

Say what you want about BWP and I'll honestly tell you it scared the bejeezus out of me. For the minuscule budget, bare-bones script and lack of recognizable cast, it was a masterpiece. But this is not a column about that film in particular. What I'm concerned with here are the handful of horror films from the last couple of years that have genuinely shaken me at least to some degree.

These are the films I recommend to people at the video store when they ask me for a good, recent scary movie. this list is not about mindless slasher horror, bad acting and writing, gross-out flicks like Human Centipede 3 or torture porn garbage like Green Inferno.


As Above So Below - Mockumentary horror movie about a film crew investigating secrets in the catacombs of Paris. Shit turns scary. Shit turns bloody. Shit turns upside down. Crazy film. Somewhat unnerving. Should appeal to both the bloodbath lovers and the suspense fiends.

It Follows - Simple, effective horror film that has a real '80s retro feel. Girl gets a supernatural curse passed on to her by losing her virginity to someone she doesn't know very well. Someone is chasing her. Following her. Slowly and methodically. Who, you ask? Hard telling. It's an entity that hops from person to person, kind of like in that Denzel movie, Fallen. What'll it do when it catches her? Let's hope we don't find out... The soundtrack on this one, by synthwave master Disasterpeace, is nothing short of amazing. Creepy AF.

The Visit - Once throwing a seemingly endless run of gutterball after gutterball, M. Night Shyamalan finally picks up the spare with The Visit! This movie creeped the living shit out of me several times. A couple of kids go to meet their long-estranged grandparents for the first time after their mother finally makes amends with them online for a fight that happened before the kids were even born. Much effed-up Shyamalaniness ensues.

Creep - First impression: "Oh no, not another low budget, first-person shot, crap horror movie with a $20 budget..." WRONG. Definitely worth a watch. A guy goes answers a classified ad to he;p someone shoot a film. It turns out that the subject of the film is chronicling the life of a terminal cancer patient (the guy who placed the ad) so that his unborn son can get to know him - you know, like that Michael Keaton movie My Life. Then it gets creepy to say the least. Very creepy. Only two people are on-screen throughout the whole film, but their performances are very convincing and the threat is real, present and palpable. My heart was in my throat a couple of times.

The Boy - Yet another person answers an ad, this time it's an American woman (Lauren Cohan of Walking Dead fame) traveling to the UK to play nanny for a British boy. When she gets to the remote estate, she finds that the elderly parents actually want her to nanny a four-foot, poseable porcelain doll as though it's alive. They seem convinced that it's not actually even a doll, but that it is in fact their human son, Brahms. It's silly, right? But they're paying her major bankroll, so she stays. Then it turns from silly to creepy. Then it gets downright supernatural, and finally, dangerous. I really liked this one more than I expected to. I was totally along for the ride, and I experienced every revelation along with the main characters. It's not the most original, I'll admit; I've seen a lot of the plot devices done better elsewhere, but they were recycled efficiently.

The Witch - I'll start by saying this one is NOT for everyone. And I'll give that caveat when it starts renting on May 17. It's not a "smack-you-over-the-head-with-scariness" horror movie. It's a subtle, slow creeper that builds methodically toward a horrible crescendo. It's a period film set in the mid-1600's New England, and as such, so is the language. If thou art not ready for language that speaketh as though it hails from a far distant time, thou ought not partake in this drama. A family makes their home on the edge of a forest after being ejected from town after the father committed a crime. The kids come to believe a witch lives deep in the forest. Shit starts happening that backs up that theory, not the least of which is the unexplained sudden disappearance of the baby from under his eldest sister's nose during a game of peek-a-boo. Psychological and supernatural tensions rise as the family deals with their predicament, and as the shite hitteth the fan, I squirm and want it to be over. Without spoilers, I love the final scene of this movie. I can't wait to give this film another viewing next week. Another killer soundtrack too. This one is minimal with frequently dissonant, sometimes screeching strings that brings to mind portions of Kronos Quartet's fantastically jarring Black Angels album. Add to that an occasional layer of Damien-worthy choir vocals and some extremely agitated chanting, and you have Mark Korven's deliciously creepy complement to this cinematic creepfest.

Don't Breathe - Not a supernatural horror picture, but rather a more plausible-in-real-life sort of storyline. Normally I have a hard time relating to film characters when they've displayed criminal behavior. In this case, we have a small group of young adults who decide to rob an old, blind hermit whom it's rumored has a large sum of cash in his house. Turns out this dude is a former marine and he's kinda like an old, pissed off Daredevil. He locks everyone in, secures the house, shuts out the lights, and chases these would-be criminals around the house, hunting them down one by one. It's hard not to be on the side of the millennial loser wannabe crooks by the time they become the victims. This is one nail-biter of a film that I've recommended countless times lately.

So anyway, there's a handful of recent thrillers that I'd recommend checking out. They're sparse treasures among the glut of common, low-budget dreck that litters the video store wall. Have fun with them! I'll have more recommendations for you another time.

Shark Island returns...Kind of

I just discovered a true gem on Apple Music.

Back in 1989 I acquired a cassette copy of what will always be one of my favorite soundtrack albums, that of the soundtrack for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Through it I was introduced to several new bands, the first of which was, of course, Big Pig, with their opening track "I Can't Break Away," which led me in turn to buy their album, Bonk, which subsequently stunned and impressed me with such great, heavily percussive, alternative(? I'm not sure there's a genre to describe Big Pig) tunes as "Big Hotel," "Hungry Town," "Devil's Song" and so many more.

That, in turn, led me to re-purchase that particular album on CD when the tape wore out. I also bought the followup CD years later. Not as good, but still managed a few good tracks. Great band. Sorry to know that they are not only defunct, but I can't really find anything substantial any one of them has gone on to do in the music industry.

But this entry is not about Big Pig.

This soundtrack also introduced me to Extreme. "Play with Me" was a blisteringly fast, melodic rock song that really blew me away. Their debut and sophomore albums were amazing and among my favorites of the era, and unlike Big Pig, they quickly found relative commercial success, but lost me along with that. Don't even get me started on Gary Cherone in Van Halen.

This post isn't about them either.

Tora Tora and Nelson both made solid appearances on the soundtrack as well (though the latter appeared as "Power Tool" due to a contract arrangement prior to their debut album release), as did a couple other even lesser-knowns. But it ain't about them either.

This is about Shark Island, one of the most underrated melodic hard rock bands of the late '80s. This group, along with Babylon A.D., has one of those non-success stories that kind of sickens me, because they were really good yet practically ignored, and I place the blame squarely on their labels. Both bands had incredible debut albums boasting a solid selection of songs with no filler, but suffered horribly from a lack of promotion and airplay.

Law of the Order was Shark Island's major label debut album, releasing the same year as the Bill & Ted soundtrack, as did Extreme's eponymous debut, and Tora Tora's Sneak Attack. It was a fantastic set of music, start to finish. Great riffs & catchy melodies abound, and Richard Black's vocals were spot-on throughout. This album should have been a huge success. It's a crying shame that Epic just let such genius material sit and rot.

FFWD>> to 2007, and I'm still listening to the album with some regularity. In August that year Shark Island released a new album. They'd apparently gotten most of the original band together to bring to fruition a bunch of old material and demos they'd had sitting around in the vault. This was exciting news. Unfortunately, the prospect was far more exciting than the final project.

Gathering of the Faithful is a great album title, and it makes a fan of the band think, "Wow, this is an album dedicated to me, one of the faithful who recognized the genius of the first album and waited faithfully for 18 years for an amazing followup. I'm finally gonna get my reward." Sadly, what you get when you play the album, no matter whether you're a fan or not, is a bunch of castoff material that shouldn't have made it to an actual album release. There's a reason they didn't record this stuff 15 years earlier. It kind of sucks. And, insult to injury, the production value sucks too. The band sounds like they haven't played together for almost two decades. Major disappointment.

Today I discovered on Apple Music that there's other Shark Island material out there as well. In 2004 an independent French label had the good sense to re-release Law of the Order in 2-disc format, adding a disc of live material recorded at the Whisky A Go Go in July 1989, five months after the release of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, when these guys were raring for takeoff after having slogged along and slowly built up a pretty decent following after 10 years on the L.A. rock scene.

Shark Island: Alive at the Whiskey - July 14, 1989 Bastille Day on iTunes

That disc is now available online. Though you'll shell out $60 or more for a secondhand mint-condition LP, you can now own a digital copy through iTunes for a mere 8 bucks. It's worth every penny. Even though most of the tracks are just live versions of the same material on Law of the Order, they are done with such energy and passion that each selection is given new life. If you happen to be a fan of this band looking for additional listening, I would recommend the live versions of the stuff you already know on Alive at the Whiskey long before I'd recommend the sloppy-seconds original material you'll find on Gathering of the Faithful.

There is kind of a heartbreaking moment buried in the glee I was feeling in enjoying this fantastic resurrected material. As the band finishes the final notes of "Get Some Strange" and they soak in the applause and cheers, singer Richard Black slips out of the rock star persona for a second and you get the sense that he suddenly truly noticed the crowd reaction and the fact that he was on this great stage with his band, getting major exposure on a really successful film soundtrack, and things were beginning to finally happen, that all their work was finally paying off. He shouts to the crowd, "Unbelievable!" Followed up with, seemingly more to himself, "My dreams have come true."

If only he had know how badly his record company was going to fuck him over. Such a waste.

A Coaster Compendium - UPDATE

My list now consists of 69 coasters! 

Added two from Six Flags Great America--one is new, and the other is an old one I had completely forgotten about ever having ridden. Also, I finally got to ride Justice League 3D at Six Flags St. Louis a few times.

First there's Goliath, the most badass wooden coaster ever. Rode that one at the beginning of this season. Twice. Had to wait a very long time but that coaster was the only real reason I was there. It broke down three times the first time I was in line, but come hell or high water I was riding it. 

SO worth the wait. It's really sort of a hybrid if you ask me. There is obviously some very slick steel track embedded in that wooden framework because it rides like BUTTER. Smoothest coaster I've ever ridden, steel or wood, hands down.

Speaking of "hands down," one particular feature of this coaster is that there is no kind of handhold whatsoever. There's a lap restrain and a shin restraint to keep you in. No shoulder harness, and no bar on the back of the seat in front of you. If you're one one those "hold on tight til it's over" people, you're gonna have real trouble figuring out what to do with those hands. I'd suggest put 'em up.

Goliath is the fastest wooden coaster in the world, at a blistering but completely smooth 72 mph. Additionally it set records for the tallest drop and steepest drop on a wooden coaster--180 feet beginning at an incline of 85 degrees.

And second is the no-longer-there Tidal Wave, which consisted of a lead up track and a single, enormous loop. For my age when I rode it, that thing was pretty amazing. Kinda wish it was still around, but I guess it just lost its impact when looping coasters became so commonplace. Only thing is, that damn loop was tall. I'm sure it was taller than any other loop I've been on since.

Finally, there's Justice League Battle for Metropolis 4D at Six Flags St. Louis, which replaced the Scooby Doo Ghostblasters laser target shooting boat ride.

Eventually my patience was rewarded and we have ridden this one four or fives times so far this season. It's an indoor target shooting game that incorporates 3D effects, lasers, fog, a six axis rotating coaster car on a linear track, and complex animatronics for a really immersive experience.

Here's a few pics, including my personal high score after three rides on it. I scored in the top 10% of all scores registered thus far, the ride informed me at the end!

• American Eagle (Six Flags Great America) [details]
• American Thunder / Evel Knievel (Six Flags St. Louis) [details]
• Avatar Airbender (Mall of America) [details]
• Batman: The Ride (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Batman: The Ride (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Batman: The Ride (Six Flags Great America)
• Bizarro / Medusa (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Blackbeard's Lost Treasure Train (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Blue Streak (Cedar Point)
• Boomerang / Flashback (Six Flags St. Louis) [details]
• The Boss (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Cedar Creek Mine Train (Cedar Point)
• Corkscrew (Cedar Point)
• Dahlonega Mine Train (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Dark Knight Coaster (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Dark Knight Coaster (Six Flags Great America)
• Demon (Six Flags Great America)
• Disaster Transport (Cedar Point)
• El Toro (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Fairly OddParents Fairly OddCoaster (Mall of America)
• Gemini (Cedar Point)
• Georgia Cyclone (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Georgia Scorcher (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Goliath (Six Flags Great America) **NEW**
• Great American Scream Machine (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Green Lantern (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Iron Dragon (Cedar Point)
• Iron Wolf (Six Flags Great America)
• Justice League Battle for Metropolis 4D (Six Flags St. Louis) **NEW**
• Kingda Ka (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Little Dipper (Six Flags Great America)
• Magnum XL-200 (Cedar Point)
• Mantis (Cedar Point)
• Maverick (Cedar Point)
• Mean Streak (Cedar Point)
• Millenium Force (Cedar Point)
• Mind Bender (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Mr. Freeze (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Ninja (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Ninja (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Nitro (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Opa! (Mt. Olympus Indoor Theme Park)
• Pandemonium / Tony Hawk's Big Spin (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Pepsi Orange Streak (Mall of America)
• Ragin' Cajun (Six Flags Great America)
• Raging Bull (Six Flags Great America)
• Raptor (Cedar Point)
• River King Mine Train (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Rolling Thunder (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Rolling Thunder [bobsled ride] (Six Flags Great America)
• Runaway Mine Train (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Screamin' Eagle (Six Flags St. Louis)
• Shockwave (Six Flags Great America)
• Skull Mountain (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• Space Mountain (Walt Disney World)
• Spongebob Squarepants Rock Bottom Plunge (Mall of America)
• Superman: Ultimate Flight (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• Superman: Ultimate Flight (Six Flags Great America)
• Tidal Wave (Six Flags Great America) **NEW** I'd forgotten about this one!
• Top Thrill Dragster (Cedar Point)
• Tornado (Adventureland)
• Twister (Six Flags Great Adventure)
• V2: Vertical Velocity (Six Flags Great America)
• Viper (Six Flags Great America)
• Whizzer (Six Flags Great America)
• Wicked Twister (Cedar Point)
• Wile E. Coyote Canyon Blaster (Six Flags Over Georgia)
• X-Flight (Six Flags Great America)

Wah wah wwaahhhhh...

Grrr! Justice League is still under construction, even two trips to into the season. We will be returning to the park for July 4th and I'm very confident the ride will be open by then. Stay tuned...

On a related note, this week I'll be adding Goliath to my list of conquests. Stay tuned for more on that as well...

More coasters coming!

As Six Flags season approaches yet again, I'm gearing up with some genuine excitement because of two impending additions to my coaster conquest compendium:

Six Flags St. Louis opens, as always, on Good Friday. And, as we have done many times in the past, we will be there to secure our season passes. However, the passes will have to wait, as I want to be on the first official go-round of the new Justice League 4D dark ride once the park has opened for the season.

Justice League Battle for Metropolis 4D is billed as the first ride of its kind in North America. It's a "dark ride," similar to the Scooby Doo Ghostblasters boat ride that previously occupied the same space in the park, save for the boat part; this one rides on rails... I think. Either that, or it maybe doesn't move at all, but rather is a more "virtual" experience.

It's also similar to Scooby Doo in that the ride involves offing baddies and various other targets with laser guns attached to the conveyance. But that is where the similarities end.

Battle for Metropolis boasts the best, most high-tech animatronic characters this side of Disney World. In addition, it somehow incorporates "4D glasses." Not sure how that works exactly, but I can tell you with certainty that those glasses are going to be in the best shape of their lives on opening day. By midsummer you'll be lucky to see anything out of them. Unless maybe they're disposables? I don't know. There's an air of mystery about them as yet.

Oh, and Six Flags says this ride has 600+ shooting targets (!) compared to Scooby Doo's pitiful 115. In addition, we know that the ride incorporates five enormous screens, special effects, custom music and top-notch voice acting. JLBFM was designed by Sally Corp. (of Ghostblasters fame) and Oceaneering provides the motion-controlled ride vehicles.

I'm pretty stoked for this one. If it doesn't ride on rails, I'll still be super-excited to ride it on opening weekend, despite not being able to add it to my coaster tally. I'm confident that we'll be riding this one as a family at least two or three times Easter weekend.

The following month, we are planning a trip to Chicago, where I'll be taking in a Laibach concert. Our plan is, as long as we're there, to hit Six Flags Great America the following day (or two). This has me even more excited than I am for the concert, and I've been a Laibach fan for over 20 years, never having been to a show before, The reason this trip has me prematurely creaming my jeans is, of course, the coaster that was new for 2014 but we didn't go last year to ride it - GOLIATH!

Shattering records as the world's tallest, fastest and steepest wooden coaster, this behemoth is the one I've been waiting all my life to ride:

• An initial 85-degree, 180-foot drop
• 72 MPH top speed
• Two overbanked inversions
• 180-degree zer-G roll twist
• Inverted zero-G stall

I'm just floored when a wooden coaster goes upside down. This baby does it several times. I cannot wait to board this sucker. I'm hoping the lines will be OK since it's a year old now.

I can't tell you how much I adore the Great America park north of Chicago. It was always my day-trip vacation destination of choice when I was a youngster, and it continues to be. The only pain in my ass now that I'm the dad is all the damn tolls along the way. That's where St. Louis takes an advantage over Great America. Actually, if you want me to be honest, the ONLY way in which Great America is better than St. Louis is in the number and quality of its rides. St. Louis has Great America beat on all other counts, including food, ticket/season pass price, weather, crowding, and the fact that there are a few rides that I'd miss if I had to only go to Chicago instead.

The Boss, American Thunder, and Screaming Eagle are the unique coasters in St. Louis that I enjoy most. Along with Screaming Eagle, the park's other iconic amusement ride is its giant Ferris Wheel, Colossus. We make a point to ride it every trip. It's a great way to decompress after a long day in the sun and on your feet.

But I digress. Obviously I'm excited to be heading to Six Flags once again. I was beginning to feel like an old fart because I haven't ridden a roller coaster in a couple years, and I literally can't remember the last time I flew from the seat of a playground swing. Thank goodness spring has arrived in Central Illinois. I need to get my ass to the playground with my kids, stat. No getting old for me just yet.

Stay tuned for more after Easter. I can't wait to tell you about the Justice League ride.

March Madness, Metal-Style

Hey, Manowarriors worldwide! I've got a chance for you to stand up and be counted! Speak out for your true metal heroes and make your voice heard! Loudwire is taking the college sports sensation known in the States as "March Madness" and co-opted it for metalheads everywhere. They've created brackets for fans to vote on and find the best metal mascot ever.

The first match-up is Black Sabbath's occasionally used demon known as "Henry" vs. Manowar's ubiquitous "Manowarrior." Face it, folks, the United States is heavily biased toward Sabbath, so my overseas brothers and sisters of true metal are the only ones who are gonna be able to save our beloved Manowarrior from certain defeat at the hands of a part-time mascot whom he could rip apart with his bare hands in a true brawl.

Help me bring our Manowarrior victory! Hail and Kill! Visit this round 1 voting link and cast your vote today! Voting ends at noon on Monday 23 March GMT. Spread the word and take the metal world by STORM!

HAIL AND KILL!

A new facet to the same career

I've recently begun crafting business logos as a part of my job. I'm totally down with that. How cool will it be to be able to see a logo I design on a pen, tee shirt or truck door some day?

I've done probably three logo designs in the past seven years, but lately I pumped out two, and the sentiment seems to be that they'll be becoming an ever more common part of my job.

The first I did is for a charitable institution that will be opening its doors in Peoria, Illinois once all the balls roll into place. It is to be rehabilitation center modeled after San Francisco's Delancey Street Foundation. Its board of directors asked me to come up with a logo, and after a few drafts they settled on the idea of emulating the soon-to-be-iconic gabled roof of the building chosen to house this project.

The final logo ended up like so:

A few weeks later, I was approached to create a logo for a lawn service business. With little to no input from the owners I ended up with this:

As it turns out, there was a mis-communication; the company already had a logo, but they liked mine so well they decided to ditch the old one and move forward using the new one.

I had another incident like that last year with a company I thought I was designing a logo for, but instead I was trying to reproduce an existing one, sight-unseen. What I thought was creative input from a manager was instead recollection of what he'd seen on the gas station sign.

Navigating by the creative direction I'd been fed, I came up with what was almost exactly their very logo. However, since I thought I was doing an original creation, I had taken some more aesthetic detours along the way, and I think to this day that I designed one that's way better than what they've been using:

Jackson Express, if you're reading this, you're still always welcome to use mine instead. You know it's snazzier.

It's a busy life...sure beats the alternative

It seems like forever since I've posted anything here. I'd apologize, but I only have two regular readers, so that would be silly. It's not like there are hundreds or even dozens of people hanging on my words. Suppose I can take however much time I want between posts.

Anyway, so one of the things that's been taking my time is a newsletter I'd love to show off to you. It's quarterly, so I only spend probably a total of five to six weeks a year on this, but I'm always so very pleased with the final product. It's a much more in-depth commitment than the weekly e-newsletter I throw together every weekend and distribute through Constant Contact. This one is actually a print newsletter and I do everything for it but write. Editing, photography (or image hunting; about half of the images are shot by me, while the others are either public domain or CC-sharealike), layout, electronic conversion, etc. are all me.

Please take a look at them here. Heck, if you're agriculture-minded, go ahead and inquire about signing up. It's free.

A funny exchange on Twitter

AT&T tried to sell Beelzebub a cable & internet package this week. Laughing my ass off.

Angry Cat is the new Grumpy Cat

Meet Garfi, the Internet's newest feline of fame. His Flickr/Twitter/Facebook pages are blowing up right now because he's so much more bad-ass than Tard the Grumpy Cat ever was. Thanks to great free exposure like the above linked HuffPo piece and Chris Hardwick's Garfi-centric bit on a recent episode of his @Midnight gameshow on Comedy Central, we will no doubt be seeing a lot of Garfi in the coming months. He's a meme in the making.

So the moment I saw a Santa suit photo I thought, "Grinch. Someone has to make him the Grinch." Of course I figured that if I could think of it, someone else has undoubtedly done it already...

Guess not though. FIRST!

iPhone art for you. Merry Christmas.

I got a new iPhone 5c last week, and of course I've rushed to customize it, especially since Halloween is peeking at us from around the corner.

Since I'm a huge Mercyful Fate & King Diamond fan, I thought a themed lock screen/home screen would be perfect, so I grabbed a Melissa album cover online and doctored it up a bit to throw on there. If you like it, go ahead and grab it yourself.

Note: I changed the background from yellow to green, so it's good to go all the way through Christmas. :)

This may be a lost cause

After this long period of trying, fully lucid dreaming is still escaping me. However, I'm going to keep on plugging away because I've had some very interesting nighttime adventures in the last month or so.

I blame last night's crazy narrative on the DayQuil. Trans-dimensional closet gateways, possessed kids' toys freaking out my dog, an alternate-timeline doppelgänger of my son showing up, trying with my dad to disarm a voodoo tiki torch that will explode a man's head from an indeterminate distance...

If none of these triggered my dream self to perform a reality check, full lucidity may never occur. 

But it's still worth trying, because crap like this is showing up more and more often when I close my eyes at night. That shit's ENTERTAINING AS HELL.

A different sort of "wild ride"

When I was a boy of 12 or 13 I used to read a science/pseudoscience/new age magazine called OMNI. I picked an issue up one day at Waldenbooks (remember that chain?) and instantly fell in love with it. Of course in those days I wanted to be a parapsychologist when I grew up. That was before the now-popular term "ghost hunter" came into vogue. And obviously before I understood that ghost hunting is really nothing more than a hobby at best and a swindle at worst.

David Patrick Kelly as Tommy Ray in the 1984 sci-fi thriller "Dreamscape"

Anyway, one of the articles I remember had a big impact on me back then was one concerning lucid dreaming. "You can learn to CONTROL your dreams?!" I was a huge fan of the Dennis Quaid (not to be confused with Randy) movie "Dreamscape" by that age; I can't recall if I'd seen "A Nightmare on Elm Street" yet at that point, but if not I would soon come to love it as well.

When I read this particular piece I was instantly infatuated with the idea of having a fantasy world bend to my whims each night, so I began incorporating the recommended exercises into my daily routine, each day warming my mind up for the idea that upon my nightly respite a new world would come alive to me and be under my control.

The technique I employed involved two components: weaving spontaneous reality checks throughout my everyday waking reality, and muttering affirmation-type statements to myself now and again. The idea is to make these routines such a part of your life that they become typical behavior and you will eventually we've them into your dream world, where the reality check will inevitably fail, allowing you to recognize you are indeed inside a dream, at which point you are in control of the direction your dream will take.

Lucid dreaming issue of OMNI magazine

I put my energy into these techniques and got great results. I became pretty good at it. Being a young teenager, of course, many of my lucid dreams turned sexual in nature pretty quickly. But I also flew and swam (neither of which I can do in reality), solved real-world problems that were bothering me and went on many crazy nocturnal adventures that would never be possible in the real world. Hell, some would have gotten me arrested in the real world. It was a virtual sandbox game of unlimited possibilities back when "The Legend of Zelda II" was the height of technology.

I'm not sure why I eventually quit the practice, but I did. Seems like a crazy thing to do when it's all going so swimmingly. Maybe I got lazy. I don't know. I did, though, somehow end up rejoining the ranks of the world's passive dreamers. And I was satisfied with it for decades. Somewhere along the line it became regular for me to not even remember dreaming most nights. That seems like such a waste to me. I know my brain's doing it. Why won't it at least remember where I was all night?

Last week I got the urge and decided to begin trying the techniques again. So far it's been four days, and though I have yet to experience lucidity, I have noticed that my dreams have become quite vivid and I am now remembering them every night.

I've dreamt of leaving my daughter at a mysterious "summer camp" at a compound of some sort, witnessing a violent train derailment, sacrificing myself running a bomb out of a hospital, participating in a high-stakes karaoke contest run by an evil megalomaniac, being a guest in a house that turns out to slowly reveal its sinister side as the servants and my wife fall under its spell (I particularly love the bizarre image of leeches beginning to grow out of the ceiling)... This is definitely a step in the right direction. Perhaps within another week or two I'll gain some measure of lucidity and the real fun can begin.

This is easily just as much fun as a rollercoaster but more convenient and hella cheaper. I'll keep you posted on my progress, and if it truly pays off I will let you know the simple steps I employed to make it happen. I'm not a greedy man; I'll share.

WTF, Manowar?

I am a lifelong fan of Manowar through good times and bad, but even I am not sure what to think of the newest release coming out next month.

First off, they've rerecorded a classic--nay, the definitive--Manowar album, Kings of Metal, giving it the same treatment as Battle Hymns. I gotta say, even though Joey DeMaio previously has gone on record as saying the band would never stoop to rerecording and rereleasing old music, that Battle Hymns reboot is a killer record. I loved the original much better than many of the early releases, but since BH MMXI released, I hardly listen to the original release at all anymore.

I understand the desire to rerecord the debut album, or any of the first five albums, for that matter; the production value on those albums was definitely lacking. Hearing the old songs performed live really brings that realization home. The band is in its best incarnation ever right now with Eric, Joey, Karl and Donnie. They blow the shit out of all previous lineups, so it only makes sense to utilize their masterful playing and studio production values to breathe new life into solid but sonically dated material.
Kings of Metal, however, is not one of the releases that particularly begs to be revamped. In my opinion, it is the first of the releases with more kickass overall production values. Later on the sound quality and oomph on the records went into even higher gear with Warriors of the World. The way I see it (or, more accurately, the way I hear it) is that there have been four eras of evolution to Manowar's sound:

1. Battle Hymns, Into Glory Ride, Hail to England
2. Sign of the Hammer, Fighting the World
3. Kings of Metal, The Triumph of Steel, Louder Than Hell
4. Warriors of the World, Gods of War, Battle Hymns MMXI, Lord of Steel

Anything in category 1 is overdue for a freshening up. One down, two to go. Category 2 could benefit from a little dusting off. Anything in category 3 or 4 is fine as-is. With the exception of Louder Than Hell, which--if you're a regular reader--you might know is one of my least favorite Manowar releases.

So that's reason one that I'm not sure how to face the release of Kings of Metal MMXIV: it doesn't really need to be rerecorded. There's a reason Kings of Metal endures as the band's best selling album to date--it's sheer perfection already! "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The second reason is, well, take a look at the cover, compared with the original:

Anything missing from the revamped cover on the right? That's right. Where the FUCK is the U.S. flag??? These guys are from New York City, for Chrissakes! Have they become so deeply involved in their overseas exploits that they've forgotten their roots completely? Joey DeMaio doesn't do anything without thinking it through very methodically. You know he and Ken Kelly communicated very specifically about which countries to represent on the new cover. This was a deliberate decision with some sort of very concise motivation behind it. Is it political in nature? What's going on? Why, before embarking on their longest U.S. tour leg in decades, would Manowar give the USA short shrift on the cover of the album they are promoting, especially when the U.S. flag held such a place of high esteem on the original cover? If Warriors of the World ever gets a rerelease, whose flag will our mighty warrior be holding aloft? Where is the interviewer who is gonna corner Joey and ask him head-on about this?

I just don't know how to take this cover. I think it legitimately warrants an explanation from the band, just because they took an iconic album cover that represented victory through adversity and American patriotism and, upon rerelease, completely removed that element, replacing it with symbols of other nations of the world. And truly that's the ONLY thing that changed about the cover artwork. The rest is identical. It doesn't have to be addressed with the hostile attitude I've given here. Just a simple question: "Joey, what was the thought process behind the cover choice for the new album? What inspired you to make the changes you did, and is there any significance behind the absence of the U.S. flag?" Simple.

I just gotta know. Of course I'll buy the album even not knowing the answer because Manowar is in my blood. But I might hate myself a little for it. Despite the buyer's remorse, I just have to own those damn bonus tracks. To have instrumental (read KARAOKE) tracks of "Blood of the Kings," "Hail and Kill," "Heart of Steel," Kingdom Come," "Kings of Metal" and "Wheels of Fire" is going to be amazing. I'll be taking those to the karaoke bar I work at and trying them on for size. I need no lyric sheets of course. I need only the roar of the Black Wind and an open mic.

Damn you, Manowar. I can't hate you even when you piss me off.

Dirty Peanutz has an official home!

OK, folks--if you've enjoyed my plying my twisted humor on these classic Peanuts strips, go on over to check out my new Dirty Peanutz page on Blogger. I'll be posting a new Peanutz strip there every day! If you've been following along, you'll see familiar strips for a while (with a surprise bonus strip coming up soon) and then after those have all been posted I'm moving on to ALL NEW MATERIAL!

Subscribe now to make sure you get your daily fix of beloved children's characters engaged in the most tasteless endeavors you can imagine. I will no longer be posting these creations on this page; to see more you'll have to visit me at peanuttier.blogspot.com.

Peanutz 11 & 12

PEANUTZ 11

PEANUTZ 12

I must be stopped... Or must I?

I whipped up a few more crazy Peanuts strips. Hope you like them. Click on a strip if anything in the right margin is obscuring it, and it will open in a new screen.

PEANUTZ 7

PEANUTZ 8

PEANUTZ 9









PEANUTZ 10

Crazy Peanuts strips

I recently discovered a great online archive of Peanuts comic strips. Now I'm a huge fan of Peanuts strips and have been all my life. However, while browsing the archive it struck me that sometimes it's funnier if you make up your own captions instead. So here are a few examples I came up with.

PEANUTZ 1

PEANUTZ 2

PEANUTZ 3

PEANUTZ 4

PEANUTZ 5

PEANUTZ 6

Hmmm... A new hobby in the works? It sure is fun! Stay tuned.

Never forget.

I was at home in Monmouth, Illinois, illegally downloading unfathomably low bit-rate music over a dial-up connection via Audiogalaxy, because Napster had recently been shut down. I was tying up our only phone line, and I didn't even have the TV on.

My wife was at work as a phlebotomist at a hospital in the next town, 20 miles away. Her whole lab department had been watching and listening to coverage of the aftermath of the first plane strike since it began. Once the second plane struck my wife started trying to call me. The phone was busy, of course, so she couldn't reach me. Bear in mind, cell phones were not as ubiquitous then as they are now. She and I didn't have our first mobile phones until at least the following year.

It had to have been around 8:15 a.m. CDT that my neighbor from across the street, Kelly, came knocking on the door. She said my wife had called her and asked her to come over to tell me to get off the phone line and call her immediately. Kelly asked if I was watching the TV and I said no. She briefly told me there had been a terrorist attack and two passenger planes had been purposefully crashed into the World Trade Center.

I had no idea what was about to transpire and that it would become one of those “I remember exactly where I was when that happened” moments.

I called my wife and she was very upset because her mother, at that time not yet retired from the USAF, was working on base in southern Illinois. Nobody knew what could be an upcoming potential target. I tried to reassure her that her mother was most likely very safe, that it looked like they were targeting civilians to make the greatest impact, and that her mother worked in a vault on base anyway.

After the phone call, I stayed off the line. I sat down and glued myself to CNN coverage of the goings-on. It wasn't but a few minutes before another hijacked plane struck the Pentagon. “Oh my God,” I thought, “How many are there??” and, “They are targeting military sites too.” And then I heard about the other hijacked plane, Flight 93, that passengers were able to get calls out from. All flights over the U.S. were soon grounded.

At around 9:00 am the South Tower of the World Trade Center fell, and the world and I watched in stunned, saddened silence. It was surreal, and it was the first time I ever recall being brought to tears by television news coverage. The impact of all those deaths we couldn't prevent was something that shook me to the core.

Not ten minutes later, the civilian heroes of flight 93 sacrificed their lives to prevent another tactical terrorist attack with their own plane. Rather than striking the White House or Pentagon, that plane was crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board and no one not on board. Who knows how many lives were saved by the heroic actions of those passengers…

Some 20 minutes later the North Tower collapsed. The reality and gravity of the situation once again proved too much and I broke down in tears for the innocent lives lost. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Before the collapse, I remember seeing live coverage of people leaping from the upper floors of the towers, opting for that death over the agony of burning alive. I remember the post-collapse images of ash, blood and soot-caked civilians and emergency personnel trying to do what they could to survive and help others survive. The airwaves were overrun with replays of the towers collapsing every time a new tape came in with a new angle. People scrambled for their lives like Tokyoites fleeing from a gargantuan, destructive fire-lizard as the clouds of ash and debris overtook them. I remember the helplessness and impotence the whole nation felt as we watched those events on live television. I remember newscasters losing it and getting emotional on the air. It was heart wrenching.

We watched as those building remains burned and smoldered all through the day and into the evening. We watched as bodies were pulled out from that rubble. Mostly bodies. Very few survivors. It was a day of sickening unity across the nation.

It was one true day of infamy and sorrow, the first one of its kind my generation had seen. This was our Pearl Harbor. This was our JFK assassination. This was our Jonestown. And we will never forget.

Movie review - Elysium

MILD SPOILER ALERT

Went to see the new science fiction action thriller Elysium this afternoon, and I really liked it, even more than Pacific Rim. Best sci-fi pic I've seen in a long time. Elysium was directed by Neill Blomkamp, who made a name for himself in the industry with his independent debut feature film, District 9, which was both a critical and box office success.

Elysium stars Matt Damon, whom I personally think is highly underrated as an actor. I've really enjoyed his performances lately in We Bought a Zoo, Beyond the Candelabra, and this picture. I think he brings an everyman quality to any role he plays. He makes it relatable no matter what the role. Well, maybe not so much Jason Bourne. That one's kind of a stretch to relate to.

His costar and foil in the film is Jodie Foster, whom I conversely consider to be extremely overrated as an actor. I just think she hit her high point way back in The Silence of the Lambs and has never regained that glory despite having a few hits since then. Though I did like her in Contact as well. I've never quite gotten why she gets such attention in Hollywood. I liked her as a child actor, but to me she's just kind of annoying nowadays in most films.

Part Mad Max, part Cyborg, part Holy Bible and part Johnny Mnemonic, Elysium takes place in the mid-22nd century. Earth has been raped and basically destroyed by the human race, so it has been left to the indigent "have-nots," while the richest and most powerful people in the world have pulled together the resources to construct for themselves an enormous, terraformed space station in orbit around the dying planet. This is Elysium.

Damon plays a factory worker named Max who has always dreamed of the day he is able to find a way to take himself and his childhood sweetheart and lifelong love to the beautiful manmade paradise of Elysium, where there is no crime, no poverty, no disease, and anyone who dies does so of old age alone.

Foster is ballsy Secretary of Defense Delacourt who takes no prisoners in stopping illegal immigration of unlicensed earth folks who constantly attempt to infiltrate Elysium security and stow away on the space station to make a better life for themselves.

When our hero is accidentally exposed to a massive dose of radiation in a manufacturing plant accident, he has no choice but to return to his former lucrative life of crime to pull one more, practically suicidal job to earn the money to pay for his ticket to Elysium. This is how he ends up crossing paths with dirty double government agents of Elysium, and his own plans of salvation entangle with Delacourt's deceitful political power play.

Action-packed and exciting, with Max an overtly Christlike figure by the end, I found the movie to be very enjoyable. I like seeing new interpretations of a bleak earth future. It was well crafted and well written, though there were a couple of issues I had that prevent me from calling it flawless. 

The biggest potential distraction from full enjoyment was Jodie Foster's horrendously inconsistent accent. I think it was meant to be French...ish? But it was just hit-and-miss. At times it would wax and wane crazily like the ocean tides of Bespin (if it had any liquid oceans), even during the same scene. Foster's never been known for her versatility with accents, but this was worse than Mike Myers' faux Scotsman, even pre-Shrek. Not that his Shrek characterization was particularly impressive...

All in all, a nicely done film. It's not often that a sci-fi flick comes along that I can enjoy with my wife. I think the last one we both liked and saw in the theater together was The Matrix. The first one. And that was some time ago.

Well done, Neill Blomkamp. I fell asleep during District 9, but this I liked. Hmm. Perhaps I should give District 9 another shot. I'll check Netflix this weekend. Maybe I didn't give it a fair shake. It's pretty difficult to find any negative feedback on that movie, so there must be something to it. Stay tuned on that front...