Category Archives: Words

Equilibrium

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curse

This is pretty accurate to how I look if I’m up before noon.

Because I’m a creature being propelled through the world by science, I empathize with Frankenstein’s Monster. And even though I’m still operating with all my original parts, there are many a day when I feel stitched together from pre-putrescent parts picked from their plots (sorry for the alliteration—I’ve been reading a lot of old school Marvel) . Just a lumbering mass of limbs and tubes hurdling brutishly throughout the day. Continue reading →

“How’s it hanging, McFly?”

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Freddy Needle glove

This is pretty much how I remember every flu shot.

Needles are my spiders. Or snakes. Or coconut crabs (actually, coconut crabs are my coconut crabs). Needles are the thing in life that I don’t like. Everyone has something. So when I spent a Monday afternoon alone in the corner of a Denny’s, shooting up in front of a plate of nachos, I was really proud of myself. Continue reading →

Helpful Holiday Hints

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Tree with a skull on it.

This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to Christmas spirit.

In 2010, I started writing a “Helpful Holiday Hint” for every day in December leading up to Christmas. Other than a mild distaste for both the holidays and the type of bland advice peddled by Supermarket impulse buy magazines, I have no idea why I started, but people have enjoyed them enough that I’m still doing it now. I started by simply posting them on Facebook, but last year I took them to Twitter as well, which I think improved them significantly by limiting them to 140 characters. In any case, with the end finally in sight this year (it’s not easy to come up with a new joke every day, especially since I’ve already written 75 similar ones), here are some of my favorite hints from the past four seasons. If you want to catch them all, feel free to friend me on Facebook, follow @HelpfulHoliday on Twitter or even follow my personal Twitter account, where I tend to retweet the ones I’m proud of. Continue reading →

The Last Act of My Twenties

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Image

I spent most of my 20s at Denny’s.

I lived the majority of my 20s like it was the bonus level of one of those arcade hunting games*. I never expected to make it that far, so rather than executing any kind of plan, I just randomly shot as many turkeys as I could. Whatever I could catch was—as the name implies—a bonus. Continue reading →

13 Helpful Halloween Hints

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I don't consider it a real holiday unless a corporation has found a way to brand it.

I don’t consider it a real holiday unless a corporation has found a way to brand it.

Halloween has come a long way since it’s inception. With its origins in the ancient pagan tradition of asking your neighbors for food, it is now celebrated by children across the nation as the one night they can take candy from strangers. But whether you’re a child looking for a sugar rush or an adult celebrating a pop culture icon by dressing up as a sexy version of it, here are a few tips to keep your Halloween super spooky. Continue reading →

The Greatest Halloween Album Ever Made

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I'd dress like that every day if I didn't eat like an asshole.

I’d dress like that every day if I didn’t eat like an asshole.

Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare is the greatest Halloween album ever made. It’s the AIP Poe Picture of albums, striking the perfect balance between fear and fun with a heavy emphasis on atmosphere. It’s often referred to as a concept album, but it’s really more of a theme album, with songs based around ideas rather than a story. Certainly, there are songs that tie together both thematically and musically, but the through line is ultimately unimportant. The feeling is what counts. Continue reading →

The Sound of Halloween

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I had a shirt with this on it for years until I realized that the fact that it said "20 Years of Terror 1978-1998" let everyone know exactly how old it was.

I had a shirt with this on it for years until I realized that the fact that it said “20 Years of Terror 1978-1998” let everyone know exactly how old it was.

Yesterday, we talked about how the lack of music shaped one of my favorite films. Today, I’d like to talk about what the perfect score did for another favorite.

John Carpenter’s Halloween is a simple film. It’s the story of a boy who stabs his sister on Halloween night, then comes back 15 years later to stab some more people. He wears a mask. His doctor may be just as crazy as he his. That’s it. That’s all you need. Simple, but effective. Continue reading →

Silence, Dread and Frankenstein

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Allow me to present my qualifications.

Allow me to present my qualifications.

Any talk of whether or not Universal’s 1931 production of Frankenstein horrified audiences of the time is mostly speculation at this point—speculation surely tainted by Universal’s press department—but judging by what the censor boards did to it, someone, somewhere was fucking terrified. That somewhere was probably Kansas City, whose censor board cut the most, effectively halving the already brisk running time of 71 minutes. Continue reading →