I had meant to spend a lot more time writing this weekend, honest. I had been hoping to carve out a couple of days where I just dig deep into a subject or two and create something at least halfway worthwhile for the Pylon. But, you know how it goes... the Halloween spirit is in the air, Jen suggested that we go see Red (or is it actually RED? It is meant to be an acronym.) after she got off work, and I immediately thought, "I could also go see a horror movie before she gets off work!"
Which is what I did yesterday, and the rest of my weekend plans went to hell. Today I have had no drive to finish my Halloween decorating, carve the pumpkin that has been sitting on my table for over a week, do the dishes, knock out a couple of short pieces for work (we are wrapping up our latest soccer magazine, for which I am the associate editor and main writer), clean up a bit around the apartment... and write. I barely have enough resolve this day to pen these scant few paragraphs.
I let the pressure of what I planned to have done by this evening get to me, I get despondent, and I just melted into the couch today and watched movie after movie (four and one-half to be exact). This in itself is ultimately not a bad thing, as I will likely end up writing about many of the films that I have watched today. Rather, I will intend to write about many of these films. This is the problem: my intentions versus my end results. The ratio of post ideas to finished product had actually stayed quite steady through the first three years I wrote on the Pylon. I was a firebrand, and I could not stop myself from writing if I tried. With the reversal of the past two, almost three, years, that ratio has dwindled to near nothingness.
As the Posies sing, "There HAS to be an upside," and there is in this case. My day out set up at least three posts for the coming week. The horror film in which I chose to indulge was Wes Craven's return to horror directing, My Soul to Take, and I had no choice but to see it in 3-D. I also had no choice as it was the only horror film showing at the theatres in Downtown Disney, where I was to meet Jen for Red (RED), so if I wanted to see a horror film on this day out, this was going to be it. Everything about going to this film ending up pissing me off to the extreme, so the only happy result is that I will get to vent on it later this week.
Before the films, though, I visited the Compass Books shop next to the theatres with the intent to grab a couple of horror-related books and toys, and maybe some comic collections if I felt like it. No go on the comics (don't you bring your "graphic novel" talk around here, whiners) -- there was nothing that really grabbed me, but I did pick up a couple of interesting volumes, upon which I will likely expound once I have read through them.
The book that caught my eye yesterday wasn't in the shop when I last visited a few weeks back: Night of the Living Dead: Behind the Scenes of the Most Terrifying Zombie Movie Ever by Joe Kane aka The Phantom of the Movies. (Ugh...) I have another book by Kane, The Phantom's Ultimate Video Guide (released in 1989), which for me was neither Ultimate nor much of a Guide, and has been largely used through the years to merely prop up whatever books are on the shelf to the left and right of it. (To be fair, I probably should revisit his Guide, but it truly has held little influence over me since I first bought it.) His Dead book comes with the complete original screenplay by John Russo, and since every party involved with the first great modern zombie flick has bickered over the years about rights and the various myths surrounding the production, I am going to wait until I have read the damned thing until I try and surmise just what Russo's involvement entails.
The other book I grabbed, which did catch my eye on that previous visit, is a sharp, gruesome-looking, glossy product called Horror Movie Freak by Don Sumner. I have already begun perusing this photo-loaded volume, and while I don't wish to spoil that which I am going to write about soon, but I am surprised by how much this book is hacking me off so far. Yeah, for horror fans, who are naturally inclined to emulate the tendencies of ravens, it's bright and shiny and makes you want to grab it in your beak and fly home to devour it. And Sumner does go to great lengths to try to qualm the immediate fears of horror freaks (his term, used endlessly throughout the book) who might be missing some of their favorites from his lists and categories. The problem is their logic for not including certain things and excluding others backtracks on itself time and again. It's nicely put together, though, and real purty for a book chock full of gore. Probably blows up real good, too...
As I said, more on all of this later in the week and beyond as we move closer to Halloween. For now, I am going to back to sulking and fretting in the dark...
Which is what I did yesterday, and the rest of my weekend plans went to hell. Today I have had no drive to finish my Halloween decorating, carve the pumpkin that has been sitting on my table for over a week, do the dishes, knock out a couple of short pieces for work (we are wrapping up our latest soccer magazine, for which I am the associate editor and main writer), clean up a bit around the apartment... and write. I barely have enough resolve this day to pen these scant few paragraphs.
I let the pressure of what I planned to have done by this evening get to me, I get despondent, and I just melted into the couch today and watched movie after movie (four and one-half to be exact). This in itself is ultimately not a bad thing, as I will likely end up writing about many of the films that I have watched today. Rather, I will intend to write about many of these films. This is the problem: my intentions versus my end results. The ratio of post ideas to finished product had actually stayed quite steady through the first three years I wrote on the Pylon. I was a firebrand, and I could not stop myself from writing if I tried. With the reversal of the past two, almost three, years, that ratio has dwindled to near nothingness.
As the Posies sing, "There HAS to be an upside," and there is in this case. My day out set up at least three posts for the coming week. The horror film in which I chose to indulge was Wes Craven's return to horror directing, My Soul to Take, and I had no choice but to see it in 3-D. I also had no choice as it was the only horror film showing at the theatres in Downtown Disney, where I was to meet Jen for Red (RED), so if I wanted to see a horror film on this day out, this was going to be it. Everything about going to this film ending up pissing me off to the extreme, so the only happy result is that I will get to vent on it later this week.Before the films, though, I visited the Compass Books shop next to the theatres with the intent to grab a couple of horror-related books and toys, and maybe some comic collections if I felt like it. No go on the comics (don't you bring your "graphic novel" talk around here, whiners) -- there was nothing that really grabbed me, but I did pick up a couple of interesting volumes, upon which I will likely expound once I have read through them.
The book that caught my eye yesterday wasn't in the shop when I last visited a few weeks back: Night of the Living Dead: Behind the Scenes of the Most Terrifying Zombie Movie Ever by Joe Kane aka The Phantom of the Movies. (Ugh...) I have another book by Kane, The Phantom's Ultimate Video Guide (released in 1989), which for me was neither Ultimate nor much of a Guide, and has been largely used through the years to merely prop up whatever books are on the shelf to the left and right of it. (To be fair, I probably should revisit his Guide, but it truly has held little influence over me since I first bought it.) His Dead book comes with the complete original screenplay by John Russo, and since every party involved with the first great modern zombie flick has bickered over the years about rights and the various myths surrounding the production, I am going to wait until I have read the damned thing until I try and surmise just what Russo's involvement entails.
The other book I grabbed, which did catch my eye on that previous visit, is a sharp, gruesome-looking, glossy product called Horror Movie Freak by Don Sumner. I have already begun perusing this photo-loaded volume, and while I don't wish to spoil that which I am going to write about soon, but I am surprised by how much this book is hacking me off so far. Yeah, for horror fans, who are naturally inclined to emulate the tendencies of ravens, it's bright and shiny and makes you want to grab it in your beak and fly home to devour it. And Sumner does go to great lengths to try to qualm the immediate fears of horror freaks (his term, used endlessly throughout the book) who might be missing some of their favorites from his lists and categories. The problem is their logic for not including certain things and excluding others backtracks on itself time and again. It's nicely put together, though, and real purty for a book chock full of gore. Probably blows up real good, too...
As I said, more on all of this later in the week and beyond as we move closer to Halloween. For now, I am going to back to sulking and fretting in the dark...
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