Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Gregorian Pants






Challenge accepted...sort of.

You see, I cannot possibly be married in the morning, therefore I have written an article on actors and fictional characters named Greg/Gregor/Gregory which includes Mr. Peck but isn't specifically about him. In doing so, I hope to postpone our nuptials for at least another week and simultaneously assert my equality in this relationship. I write what I want, it's my hot blog, baby.


Greg Stillson - The Dead Zone
"I can't believe I'm not in Saigon."
David Cronenberg saw the future of horror and realized it was Donald Trump. In this biopic, Trump - here known as Greg Stillson and here played by Martin Sheen (presumably because son Charlie Sheen was still honing his scumbaggery at age seventeen) - begins his savage ascent up the Republican ladder in a psychopathic bid to build a gigantic, solid gold penis-shaped shrine to his own ego and spend eternity jerking it off all over America. Determined to stop him is Christopher Walken and a rifle, which despite my liberal stance I am 100% in support of. I also have no objections to anyone owning a handgun...especially if they're Republican. Please, go ahead and buy one. Do it. Do it now. You know you wanna. Suck on that tiny little barrel, baby.


Gregory Anton - Gaslight
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which a victim is manipulated into doubting their own memory, perception and sanity. The term comes from this film, starring Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton, a sociopathic bastard whose cocky eyebrow and permanently flared nostrils suggest that he has had an onion surgically implanted in his upper lip. Gregory has married fragile Ingrid Bergman and immediately begins a sadistic campaign of psychological abuse, planting a doubt here and a suspicion there, driving the already insecure girl into a full blown mental breakdown, all in an insidious effort to steal her Auntie's jewels out from under her very nose.

Gregory Bate - Ghost Story
Who the hell is this guy? Well, that depends on whether you're watching the film or reading the book. In the film, Greg seems to be little more than a squatter escaped from an asylum, doing the bidding of the undead Alma/Eva who has promised him immortality in exchange for his services. In the book...well, it's been twenty years or so since I last read the book, but IIRC Greg is already immortal and has some sort of super powers to boot. He's kinda like a Renfield, both paving the way for and protecting his Master, who in this case is a soggy bitch who was a slutty shrew in life and a total spiteful cunt in death. Either way, he doesn't come to a good end. Pretty sure he gets killed in both the film and the book, but you'll have to double check me on that.

Gregor Clegane - Game Of Thrones
See that guy to the left, the one who looks like a bulldozer carved out of ham? Yeah, that's Sir Gregor of House Clegane, grill master of his little brother Sandor's face, slaughterer of the kid sister, champion piss-taker of Queen Cersei, smasher of skulls, spiller of guts, aka The Mountain. Because he's big, get it? REALLY big. Huge, in fact. Big, bulging oily skinbag full of muscles. So far, it's been established that Gregor is a killing machine. And when he's not killing, he's raping. And when he's not raping, he's looking for something to kill. Or rape to death. He's also been returned from the dead, Frankenstein style, for the sole purpose of fighting Cersei's battles for her. But now that Cersei has killed everyone, all that's left for Gregor to do is get killed by his brother Sandor. It is known.

And now, finally...
My three personal favorite roles by Gregory Peck.

Spellbound
Amnesiac nutso Gregory falls madly in love with Ingrid Bergman, key word being "madly" here. And why is Ingrid such a whackjob magnet? Anyway, he thinks he's the head of a mental clinic named Anthony, but he's actually some guy named John who may have murdered someone on a ski slope, but he can't really remember for sure because Amnesia. So Ingrid turns super Swedish sleuth and unravels the symbolic Dali paintings of Greg's dreams, untangles the mystery surrounding the murder of Greg's predecessor and cures Greg of any and all childhood traumas, amnesia and/or psychotic tendencies forever and ever. Amen.

Moby Dick
This is my favorite Gregory Peck film ever, and my favorite film version of Moby Dick. Years before Quint went all whackjabby after a great white shark in 70s Speilberg land, Gregory Peck was Captain Ahab, he of the wooden leg and the lightening scarred face and the fierce grudge-on for a behemoth white whale called Moby Dick. You see, Moby is the whale who snapped Ahab's drumstick off and used it for a toothpick one fine day, and Ahab has made it his life's purpose to hunt the white whale down and kill him for the insult, and he really doesn't give a shit if it kills him and every single man aboard his ship. From hells heart, he stabs that fucker.

The Omen
Ambassador Thorn's greatest strength is his genuine love for his wife, Kathy. Unfortunately, it's also his greatest weakness. When his wife gives birth to a stillborn son, Greg decides to spare her the sorrow and substitutes an orphan, birthed in the same hospital that same night. Double unfortunately, the kid's mother was a jackal and his father was Satan. Little Damien Thorn is a Hellion, literally! And with the assistance of a scary looking governess and a bigass dog, he starts killing everyone who might try to stop his rise to power in their world of politics. He's only 6 though, so it's up to the power of Satan to intervene most of the time, killing with iron rods, sheets of glass and packs of feral dogs. Greg mostly gets stuck with the tantrums.

Okay Greg, I wrote the article, now you set the date.

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Anarchy at the YMCA

Legendary horror movie expert and Gummy Coke Bottle pin-up Queen Annie Riordan is exclusively interviewed for the 2016 Fall edition of Hellth & Prententious Twattery by hardcore journalist Lilywyte Rusticunt. Ms. Riordan opens up and spills her diet and exercise master secrets, and shares with us her advice to staying young, fit and trim forever, even post mortem!

LR: Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak with us, Annie.

AR: Yeah, the burden of being morally superior to everyone on the face of the earth is burdenous indeed. But if I can help even one person think for one second that they could possibly surpass even me in magnificence in this lifetime...oh wait, that's not going to happen. And by the way, it's MIZZ Riordan, got that you plebeian puke?

LR: So, judging by the smell, I assume you've just returned from the gym?

AR: Yes, my personal colon caretaker recommends three spoiled bologna and rancid mayonnaise sandwiches one half hour before the workout commences. The festering meat will cleanse the colon, whilst the runny mayonnaise soothes it as it exits, providing an inner lube job which will leave your colon feeling soft as butter and velvety smooth to the touch. Plus - bonus points! -- the stench released from your pores will guarantee you privacy in the locker room and your choice of treadmills!

LR: It truly is appalling.

AR: Thank you! I also highly recommend pouring a thin layer of cod liver oil into your sneakers after every workout. It preserves the lining and conditions the soles of your feet as you workout. No more pesky callouses, just the ripe stench of an abandoned wharf in high summer.

LR: Thank you for clarifying. I assumed the fishy smell was coming from your vagina.

AR: As if I'd neglect such a critical orifice in my daily cleansing rituals.

LR: Oh, are you a member of Paltrow's Percolating Pussy remedy?

AR: Absolutely not! I sandblast mine. And in the winter, when sand is in short supply, I find that a leafblower works just as well.

LR: So do you have a strict workout regime?

AR: Oh yes. If there's one thing I can agree with The Paltrow on, it's that there is absolutely no excuse for not getting and staying in shape. Even the busiest woman can and absolutely should do it. So I quit my job and spend my entire day working out.

LR: But how do you pay your rent and buy groceries?

AR: I don't! I sleep in a dumpster. The rusty metal is an excellent exfoliant, it's like sleeping on pumice! And you wake up with a new epidermis every day. As for groceries, ugh. As if I'd be caught dead eating food.

LR: What are your dietary restrictions?

AR: I never eat shellfish, or red meat, or white meat, or eggs, or corn, or gluten, or rice, or bread, or coffee. I've also recently eliminated all sugars, alcohol, starch, flour, salt, pepper, basil, cardamom, parsley. Ugh, fruits are gross. They grow on trees right out in the open for anyone to touch! Vegetables are even worse, buried in the ground all their lives until they're yanked out like aborted babies. Water? Gross! People bathe in that! You want me to drink your bath water?

LR: So what do you eat?

AR: Foam insulation provides the illusion of fullness, while licking the bark of greenhouse cultivated birch trees adds a much needed pop of flavor. Also, not many people are aware of the amount of protein to be found in a single used tampon!

LR: Can you recommend your diet regime to everyone, or just a select few?

AR: I recommend it to everyone, and when they find fault with it, it simply reassures me of my own moral superiority. I mean, anyone can be a Vegan. It's not exclusive enough anymore. It's gotten to the point where anyone - even the unemployed! - can brag about being a Vegan. But the simple truth of the matter is that Vegans are far too plentiful to be better than everyone else now. You've got to be more obnoxiously selective and restrictive. Why stop at saving animals? Plants are living creatures too!

LR: So are you pro-life then?

AR: Oh hell no, babies are the ultimate moochers, always crying about their helplessness and expecting everyone around them to drop what they're doing and attend to their needs. I get pregnant at least once a week, as the hormones released by a fetus make my skin silky smooth and radiant. But I abort those little fuckers right away. The unused placenta in your womb has more nutrients than a box of granola bars! It also makes an excellent sandwich spread.

LR: I thought you exclusively used rancid mayonnaise?

AR: Bitch, that was five minutes ago. Try and keep up with the current trends here.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Nay Boors

Neighbor: Old English nēahgebūr, from nēah ‘nigh, near’ + gebūr ‘inhabitant, peasant, farmer’ (compare with boor).

Boor: an unrefined, ill-mannered person.
"at last the big obnoxious boor had been dealt a stunning blow for his uncouth and belligerent manner"


For all the larger-than-life terrors such as Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's monster, Romero's zombies arguably are the most frightening because they're just plain folks, albeit decomposing ones. 

"It's the neighbors, man," Romero said. "That's the scariest thing in life, the neighbors!"

So if you're not friends with me on Facebook, you're probably not aware of the fact that I have a habit of attracting really bad neighbors. One of my earliest childhood memories is of our upstairs neighbors - a tough young couple who would spend all night at the bars, come home at 2am and immediately start screaming at one another - escalated the argument to include butcher knives. The police were called, the husband was taken away in handcuffs, the wife was slapped across the face by a police officer (she had it coming, take my word for it) and the next day, hubby came home on bail and everything was kissy face honey bunny I wuv ooo makeup sex. But for weeks afterward, us kids would dare each other to go up to their door and touch the puddle of dried blood on the concrete.

I've lived next to gang bangers and drug dealers, neither of whom were at all shy about hiding their activities. For instance, I know that a speedball goes for about $1,000 because that's the price that my neighbor loudly quoted a prospective buyer on the phone one fine day. I recently uploaded footage of a mentally disturbed female three doors down loudly shrieking about the misery that is her life for everyone within a five mile radius to hear. I've lived next to enthusiastic sex-havers, douchecanoe frat boy partiers, violently abusive insult-hurling man-chimps, paranoid conspiracy theorists, church organ players, and one memorable white trash couple whose baby boy mysteriously died one night. I knew he was dead because the mother, drowning in a blue and red sea of swirling squad car lights parked in our lot, was screaming "He's dead, the baby's dead!" at 2am.

And now, meet my new neighbor. He moved in overhead a mere two months ago. He's not the worst neighbor I've ever had, but he's definitely the most sleep-deprived. Seriously, this guy...just, what the fuck is he doing? All I hear, all day long, for hours and hours and hours, is: roll, thud, smack, draaaaaag, scrape, thump, draaaaaaaag, clatter, slam, crash, boom, draaaaaaaag, boom! I've tried to figure out what the fuck he's doing up there all goddamned day, and judging by the sounds, I think he's building wine casks whilst roller skating over ball bearings, and he keeps knocking over his massive collection of bowling balls and antique juggling pins in the process. And it's not just during the day. This fucker has woken me up at 2am, dropping rebar and bricks and unexploded German mines on the floor. And I hesitate to go up there and ask him what the fuck he's doing and if he couldn't perhaps do it more quietly, because he's probably a fucking serial killer who will stuff my body into one of those wine casks and let me rot in his closet for 26 years.

"I've not always been mad, y'know, but um... I was actually driven mad by the indifference of architecture and council planners. Y'see I live in a tower block, and um, the thing about those is that there's terrible noise problems, because there's no noise insulation at all y'know, and 8 floors below you there's always some bastard who's got a Yamaha home organ, y'know. You're just about to go to sleep and you hear this doot-doot! chh-chh doot-doot! chh-chh chkdt BAH WA DAH BAH NAOW! doot-doot! chh-chh doot-doot! chh-chh! and like, the people who live upstairs from me, I can't understand what they're doing! Y'know I listen, and all I can hear is this weird noise and it goes voom voom, BLAT-NN BLAT-NN, voom voom, BLAT-NN BLAT-NN, and it sounds, right, it sounds like two elephants on a motorbike riding round and round, while a seal bangs a kipper on the table! I went upstairs to complain, and the door was answered by this elephant in a crash helmet! Standing behind him is this seal going: "WHAT IS IT NOW, RALPH?"

Billy Balowski - The Young Ones

So anyway, how best to vent my rage? Write an article about films which feature shitty neighbors, of course!

(And nah, we're not doing the obvious ones like Pacific Heights and The 'Burbs, because I'm obscure and indie as fuck, ya'll.)

Lords of Salem
"It's Devil's Food!"
Aawww, aren't they cute? Nice, proper, polite little middle aged ladies, popping round your apartment with a fresh pot of tea and some yummy chocolate chip scones fresh out of the oven, just checking to make sure you're okay after your latest crack smoking spree. And also, you know, to see if you'd like to go have sex with that little roast chicken demon baby Satan in the next apartment and get pregnant with the Antichrist, after which they'll tuck you in bed and make sure you get a good nights sleep.


Dead & Buried
"Tis but a scratch."
Welcome to Potter's Bluff, the nicest little seaside town you could ever hope to live in. But there's a couple of conditions. First, you have to be violently murdered by the townsfolk. And not just murdered, but bludgeoned, burned, disfigured, tortured, crushed, mutilated and obliterated. Then, once you're dead, your body will be painstakingly reconstructed and willed back to life with voodoo magic and you become a lifelong undead resident, who is expected to partake in the next ritualistic murder of the next hapless interloper.

The Stepford Wives
"So, Patty...is Frank really the champ?"
Oh honey, let us move our affluent white selves to a quaint, idyllic suburb away from the big stinky evil city, and we'll raise our angelic kids amid tea parties and church bingo and have a puppy and a white picket fence and live the American Dream! Except you'll actually be dead and replaced with a lifelike robot with bigger tits and the personality of a powerfully sedated Kardashian who becomes ridiculously obsessed with household cleaners and recipes.



The Howling
"Was that Wolfman Jack?"
So, you've just been nearly raped and strangled by a werewolf in a seedy porno shop in downtown L.A. You might need a vacation. Yeah, up North someplace. In a cabin. By the sea. Long walks through the redwood forests, group therapy sessions, a jacuzzi... oh, and that BDSM Pocahontas whose trying to fuck your husband? Yeah, she's the sister of the pervo wolfboy who tried to kill you, and all of your neighbors are pack members who spend the moonlit nights fucking 'round the campfire, slaughtering cows and plotting your indoctrination into the community. You're gonna be the Alpha Male's bitch whether you like it or not, honey.


Rosemary's Baby
"Trick Or Treat for pork rinds."
Well, hey - it is New York, and it was the 60s. You could fare a lot worse than the Satanic version of The Ropers for your next door neighbors. Well, no, actually you couldn't. Scratch that, pun intended. At first, Rosemary merely seems annoyed by her garish and tacky neighbors. Bu when they drug her pudding and lay her out semiconscious on an altar, naked, and let the Devil hump her while they watch...well, it's enough to make Rosemary not invite them to her New Years Eve party, that's for sure.

[REC]
Man, you finally find a decent apartment in downtown Barcelona and the guy in the penthouse unleashes an apocalyptic plague, turning all of the infected into rabid demons whose bite spreads the contagion from the top floor on down faster than the clap runs through a whorehouse. And the police have quarantined the building and are imprisoning the tenants inside, hoping to contain the virus by allowing it to run its course. This is one of those rare instances when eviction could be a good thing.

Harry Brown
Man, you make a career out of being a decorated war hero and you think you could get a little peace and quiet when you retire. But no. The slummy tower block that your pension allows you to rent is overrun with gangs and drug dealers and hooligans of all sorts, and you can't even take the shortcut through the underpass tunnel to get to the hospital to see your wife before she dies. So Harry does what any sane and reasonable old retired guy with emphysema would do - he buys a gun and starts killing the punks. Because he is an absolute badass.

Rear Window
Not a phallic symbol. At all.
Oh, the 1950s. When everyone was whitewashed and wholesome, sharing an apartment building courtyard with good cheer and homegrown neighborliness. Unless you're Alfred Hitchcock, master of the perverse. In that case, your neighbors are alcoholic, suicidal, sexually licentious, inner city assortment of losers at life, who have congregated here pretty much to grow old and die, having given up on life. And one of them is a puppy slaughtering madman who murders his wife right under Jimmy Stewart's nose and has the nerve to think he can get away with it.

Stir Of Echoes
There's nothing like community in the big city, neighborhoods where you grow up, spend your whole life and know everyone. All of your neighbors are family. Your home is their home. And their secrets are your problem when you foolishly decide to go poking around in them. Look, big deal, so one retarded girl got walled up in the cellar of your new apartment by your best friend/next door neighbor and her ghost is now tormenting your every waking moment. Deal with it, man. There's a game on tonight.



Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Shooting Star

I work in a retail setting, open to the public. I don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone that our overhead music is terrible. Mariah Carey, 70s disco....um, Mariah Carey. etc. Anyway, the pharmacy where I work, located at the extreme rear of the store, has its own radio and more often than not it is tuned to a classic rock/alternative station. They do tend to play the Red Hot Chili Peppers song "Under The Bridge" waaay to much, but it's still better than Mariah Carey.

Two nights ago as I stood counting pills, Bad Company's "Shooting Star" came on, and I smiled to myself quietly, lost in a memory of a friend I'd had who'd loved the song as much as I did and who often sang it aloud with me, using oversized kitchen utensils as microphones. We'd worked in the cafeteria of a local agricultural college, cooking for and serving the lunchtime students

We'd also loved to sing Del Shannon's "Runaway" in a similar manner, and had once received applause from a full table of studying students who had paused long enough to listen, enraptured, to my friend and I enthusiastically belting out the "wah-wah-wah's" in our 50s falsettos.

That memory, of course, led way to others. She'd been my best friend in the first years of the 1990s, my sister. We were inseperable. We spent countless weekends wandering up and down South Street, Philadelphia, buying carnations for the homeless, haunting the Garden of Enchantment, an incense soaked magical place that sold chunks of quartz, tarot cards and paintings by Susan Seddon Boulet. As a matter of fact, I bought one of Susie's posters for my friends, who was obsessed with white tigers. She was redecorating her bedroom at the time and it made the perfect centerpiece, hung just above her bed.

I helped her redecorate that room, pulling down shelves, slapping on paint, hanging everything back up just so. I slept in that room a lot, too - frequent slumber parties for two took place after returning from Philly, laden down with shopping bags, reeking of cheesesteaks, our wilting carnations laid carefully across the kitchen table.  Once, late one winter night, the first snowstorm of the season struck and, unable to resist, we snuck out of the house at midnight, holding hands and running through the still falling snow, stopping just long enough to make snowmen and spell out the names of our current boyfriends with our feet in the heavy white powder.

Another night, giggling at our own daring, we dressed ourselves in all black and snuck out once again, armed with a bottle of black spray paint each. You see, her boyfriend (later to become her husband) had drunkenly spray painted an obscene image on the blank, gray wall of a local underpass when he was younger and drunker. She hated seeing it every day as the bus carried her past it on her way to work and home again. So we fixed it, blacking out the pornographic image as best we could. In retrospect, we should have used gray so it would blend in with the rest of the wall. Our massive black patch stayed in place for about a month before the city painted over it again, erasing all traces of our handiwork.

And then...something happened. I'll be damned if I can remember what. Probably my fragile little ego taking a hit when my best friend decided she preferred being with her boyfriend. I honestly don't know. We had a fight, I'm pretty sure. It ended when I packed up everything I'd ever borrowed from her and left it sitting on her back stoop. I never spoke to her again. Goddamn it, what the hell did we fight about? It seemed so all important at the time. I remember being angry and devastated and feeling betrayed in that dramatic, soap opera-y way that only a 21 year old can feel. I moved on to another job, made new friends, fucked those relationships up too. I left Pennsylvania, moved to Indiana, California, then back to the East, settling in Rhode Island. I thought about her every once in a great while, but never with such clarity as I did the other night,when Bad Company's "Shooting Star" came on the radio. That song was a key in the flood gates, and I remembered everything about my friendship with her, except for the way it ended. I came home and plugged my old friend's name into the Facebook search engine, wondering where she'd gone, where life had taken her, if she was happy.

So, she's been gone for two years. I was too late.

I'm sorry, Shani. I was stupid and wrong and too young to appreciate true friendship.

And I still remember that day we started to sing "Shooting Star" and I wanted to skip to the last verse about Johnny's death. You refused. "Why do you always want to sing the sad part?" you asked me with a half smile.

I don't know, Shani. But you were right. I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to skip to the sad part, because now here it is, and I can't go back to the beginning and start over and make it right this time. I'm sorry.

Johnny's life passed him
By like a warm summer day
If you listen to the wind
You can still hear him play

Don't you know

Don't you know
That you are a shooting star, (don't you know, don't you know)
Don't you know that you are
A shooting star
And all the world will love you
Just as long, as long as you are?
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