Monday, January 24, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The Little Cold Thought
She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one’s childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.
~ Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Død Kalm
Watching X-Files on Netflix Instant. This is beautiful.
Supplies are exhausted, no food or liquid consumed for over 24 hours. The outer hull most probably flooded, though for now the inner hull is supporting the ship's mass. Among Halverson's belongings, I found a children's book of Norse legends. From what I can tell, the pictures show the end of the world - not in a sudden firestorm of damnation as the Bible teaches us, but in a slow covering blanket of snow. First the moon and the stars will be lost in a dense white fog, then the rivers and the lakes and the sea will freeze over. And finally a wolf named Skoll will open his jaws and eat the sun, sending the world into an everlasting night. I think I hear the wolf at the door.
Reminds me of 30 Days of Night which would've been utterly forgettable if not for the breath-taking snowy Alaskan scenery. Polar night sounds like bliss.
Breakdown
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "Breakdown", starring Joseph Cotten.
I fell in love with Cotten the very first time I saw Shadow of a Doubt. I daydreamed about being a much cooler niece than that silly girl. I don't know what it is about this man; he's a great combination of class and gruff. Anyway, this episode of Presents is delightfully morbid. Three parts available on youtube or in its entirety on Hulu.
And Hitchcock is sooooo adorable.
I fell in love with Cotten the very first time I saw Shadow of a Doubt. I daydreamed about being a much cooler niece than that silly girl. I don't know what it is about this man; he's a great combination of class and gruff. Anyway, this episode of Presents is delightfully morbid. Three parts available on youtube or in its entirety on Hulu.
And Hitchcock is sooooo adorable.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
The Great Coney Island Spectacularium
Oh dear god, this is pure cotton candy cupcakes!!!
The Most Awesome Joanna Ebenstein of Morbid Anatomy Awesomeness is doing the most awesome anything ever:
Read all about it HERE
The Most Awesome Joanna Ebenstein of Morbid Anatomy Awesomeness is doing the most awesome anything ever:
"The Great Coney Island Spectacularium"--my upcoming project as artist-in-residence at the Coney Island Museum--will be a response, commemoration, celebration, and evocative re-staging of fin de siècle Coney Island as the pinnacle of this bizarre world of pre-cinematic immersive spectacular amusement. It will feature a specially constructed immersive cosmorama, a dime-museum inspired installation, and a number of other spectacular surprises.
Read all about it HERE
Cropsey
"...Almost too many spaces to go to, to be isolated, to do whatever you want. So if you have a bad idea in your head you can do it there."
I've been greedily wolfing down a bunch of "instant play" movies on Netflix and came across this fantastic documentary. Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio revisit a local urban legend on home turf Staten Island.
From wiki:
The film and its title uses the urban legend of "Cropsey", akin to the various incarnations of the Boogeyman, as an introduction to what eventually leads the film to its intended subject: Andre Rand, a convicted murderer of Staten Island, New York.
As Tribeca Film Festival (Cropsey premiered there in 2009) programmer David Kwok stated: “The eeriness of the mystery pulsates through the film as they journey into the underbelly… As more information and clues unravel, Zeman and Brancaccio become more immersed in shocking surprises and revelations. The reality they uncover in this uniquely hair-raising documentary is more terrifying than any urban legend.”
Lots of magnificently eerie imagery in this one: abandoned hospitals/schools, underground tunnelworks, the twisted, surreally ugly-beautiful faces of madmen and children, empty but distinctly inhabited forests. Really interesting story (including disturbing related side bit from none other than Geraldo Rivera on '70s era Willowbrook School scandal), nice pace, thought-provoking commentary. Well worth a look-see.
"The power of an urban legend is that it doesn't claim to be the truth but rather it says the truth is a range of possibilities and it's the audience who must decide. So pick one."
Lori Nix's Tiny TEs
Lori Nix is a world-builder. "The City" is a masterpiece of post-apocalyptic vision, "public spaces devoted to history and science lie deteriorating and neglected while nature slowly takes them back."
But wait! There's more!
See more still photos HERE.
But wait! There's more!
The twist is that Nix's photos aren't Photoshop manipulations -- they're real images of tiny, painstakingly detailed dioramas that Nix has designed just for these photographs. She built the 3-D scenes in her living room on nights and weekends with the help of an assistant, with each one taking anywhere from two to fifteen months to complete. Nix then shot the dioramas on normal 8x10 film, making her minuscule creations -- about 20 x 24 x 72 inches small -- appear nearly indistinguishable from full-size scenes.
See more still photos HERE.
New Year News
Dear Medoc,
I celebrated the new year by having my third molar yanked out. It was that or a root canal/crown. Getting the tooth pulled was roughly $1,700 cheaper so no more tooth. Bye tooth. If I hadn't just endured the most eye-crossing pain I might've remember to ask Doc if I could keep you. But I didn't. I was concentrating on remembering to breathe.
The numbing needles don't look so bad but they hurt. A lot. Then about 60 seconds later Doc shoves some kind of wedge in my mouth, takes a hold of my jaw and starts to wrench the tooth out. I was unprepared for how violent this was. Lots of pressure. I mean, I should've known because he was taking a tooth out of my jawbone but still. Wow. I haven't had to ball my hands into fists and squeeze my eyes shut for a long time. It was loud too. But over quickly.
Now I sit here on my first day off from work in... too long to remember... with a gaping hole in my head. Trying not to gag on all of the blood I keep swallowing, feeling a little like someone whacked my skull with a sledgehammer and dreading the moment when the numb wears off. Thought I'd take the opportunity to add some blawgles.
In lieu of the actual tooth, I'll get accomplice to snap a photo of the bloody maw and post it for posterity.
You're welcome.
I celebrated the new year by having my third molar yanked out. It was that or a root canal/crown. Getting the tooth pulled was roughly $1,700 cheaper so no more tooth. Bye tooth. If I hadn't just endured the most eye-crossing pain I might've remember to ask Doc if I could keep you. But I didn't. I was concentrating on remembering to breathe.
The numbing needles don't look so bad but they hurt. A lot. Then about 60 seconds later Doc shoves some kind of wedge in my mouth, takes a hold of my jaw and starts to wrench the tooth out. I was unprepared for how violent this was. Lots of pressure. I mean, I should've known because he was taking a tooth out of my jawbone but still. Wow. I haven't had to ball my hands into fists and squeeze my eyes shut for a long time. It was loud too. But over quickly.
Now I sit here on my first day off from work in... too long to remember... with a gaping hole in my head. Trying not to gag on all of the blood I keep swallowing, feeling a little like someone whacked my skull with a sledgehammer and dreading the moment when the numb wears off. Thought I'd take the opportunity to add some blawgles.
In lieu of the actual tooth, I'll get accomplice to snap a photo of the bloody maw and post it for posterity.
You're welcome.
Penny Dreadful Delight
Via the livejournal of Cleolinda, you can read an abridged version of vampire lit's epic classic, Varney the Vampire; or The Feast of Blood.
According to wiki, "a mid-Victorian era serialized gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer (alternatively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest)... the original edition ran to 868 double columned pages divided into 220 chapters. Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words. It introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences to this day."
I'm not really for or against vampire lit (no, I haven't read Twilight) but I've always wanted to tuck this one under my belt because of its historic relevance. However, it doesn't take long to see what tedious, laborious, headache-inducing reading this one would be. So I was happy when I saw that someone had "read it so I wouldn't have to". And jesus-in-a-cupcake, this Reader's Digest version is freaking hysterical!!!
This is from the book:
This is Cleolinda's commentary:
This is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. I'm always in awe of people who can write good comedy, I mean things that can make me bark out loud with laughter. My sister can do this. Allie at Hyperbole and a Half can too. And now this one. The "I can't catch my breath, tears rolling down my face" kind of guffaws. Highly recommended!
It's not often that I can read a block of text like that and be hungry for more. Eyestrain be damned, I loved every bit of this!
According to wiki, "a mid-Victorian era serialized gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer (alternatively attributed to Thomas Preskett Prest)... the original edition ran to 868 double columned pages divided into 220 chapters. Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words. It introduced many of the tropes present in vampire fiction recognizable to modern audiences to this day."
I'm not really for or against vampire lit (no, I haven't read Twilight) but I've always wanted to tuck this one under my belt because of its historic relevance. However, it doesn't take long to see what tedious, laborious, headache-inducing reading this one would be. So I was happy when I saw that someone had "read it so I wouldn't have to". And jesus-in-a-cupcake, this Reader's Digest version is freaking hysterical!!!
This is from the book:
The solemn tones of an old cathedral clock have announced midnight -- the air is thick and heavy -- a strange, death like stillness pervades all nature. Like the ominous calm which precedes some more than usually terrific outbreak of the elements, they seem to have paused even in their ordinary fluctuations, to gather a terrific strength for the great effort. A faint peal of thunder now comes from far off.
This is Cleolinda's commentary:
Varney the Vampire (Vampire? Vampyre? MAKE UP YOUR MIND) actually has a lot of legitimately effective gothic atmosphere. In fact, this chapter has more than 900 words of it before we get to anything close to vampiring.
The lightning! The thunder! Ominous calm! The buildings scatter like toy houses! O THE STORMY STORMINESS OF THE STORM. And then the hail starts up, at which point I started laughing, because... hail. Sexy, sexy, stormy hail. Oh the hailiness of the hail, the stormy sexy chunks of ice hailing on your head, yea, unto a mild concussion. In conclusion: hail.
This is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time. I'm always in awe of people who can write good comedy, I mean things that can make me bark out loud with laughter. My sister can do this. Allie at Hyperbole and a Half can too. And now this one. The "I can't catch my breath, tears rolling down my face" kind of guffaws. Highly recommended!
And now we proceed to one of the key features of Rymer/Prest's writing, which is: real time dialogue, for idiots, by idiots. Did you hear a scream? I don't know, did you? I'm pretty sure I did or I wouldn't be asking? Yes, I think I heard a scream! Do you know where you heard the scream? It was so sudden that I cannot say! You guys, I think it came from FLORA'S ROOM! FLORA'S ROOM? YOU MEAN THE ROOM OF OUR SISTER? WHY YES I DO THINK SO! GET UP! I AM UP! DID YOU HEAR IT TOO? I SAY OLD CHAP I DO BELIEVE I DID! I am not even kidding. It's still going, in fact. DO YOU HEAR THE SCREAMS? THE SCREAMS, THEY SCREAM AGAIN! WHY YES I DO! CAN YOU DOUBT THEY ARE FLORA'S NOW? WHY I DO NOT BELIEVE I CAN! WE MUST SEARCH THE HOUSE! WHY, DO YOU NOT KNOW WHERE YOUR SISTER'S ROOM IS? WELL I'M JUST SAYING THAT MAYBE WE NEED TO BE THOROUGH ABOUT THIS! BUT I THOUGHT WE AGREED IT'S FLORA (WHO IS YOUR SISTER) WHO IS SCREAMING? So finally we get to Flora's room, but it is locked!! I will spare you the next umpteen pages of three grown men trying to conquer this one door, except to say that Marchdale runs off and gets his crowbar (what, you don't keep a crowbar in your room?), and we start to make progress. Kind of.
It's not often that I can read a block of text like that and be hungry for more. Eyestrain be damned, I loved every bit of this!
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