GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #555: HALLOWEEN HUMBUG

 

*sigh* I'm a terrible horror author. Yeah, yeah, I know. But here it is. I've talked about this before, but I don't remember if I was this clear about it. So here it goes.

I don't give a flying fuck about Halloween.

It used to be my favorite holiday. I went trick or treating long after I should have stopped. Even though I still dress up for Halloween parties and work (if it's on a weekday), my heart's not really in it. I'd carve pumpkins and put up decorations, the whole nine yards. But not anymore. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually like Christmas more. It's the only holiday I care about anymore. I know it's full of shit and lies, but I like the giving gifts part. Too bad my surviving family is scattered to the winds and I'm not likely to do the Christmas stuff again.

Getting back to Halloween, I don't get excited to watch horror movies during October, either. I watched horror movies every single day of my life. I went through the entire horror sections of every local video rental store around the time I was in college. But now I just don't care. I keep thinking I should check out newer flicks, but I never do. The interest just isn't strong in me. I'm kinda interested in the new Hellraiser, but I don't know if I'll ever get around to it. I couldn't possibly care less about the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. New Leprechaun? Not for me. And I've never cared about Michael Myers. I respect the original Halloween's place in the genre, but I thought it was a bore when I first saw it. I've only ever enjoyed two Halloween movies. Season of the Witch (of course) and Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 because it was just so bizarre and different from what I came to expect of those silly movies.

(There are only two slashers I care about anymore. Freddy, obviously, but I've made my peace with the fact that Robert Englund is never going to do another one of those. That's fine. And Chucky. Holy shit, that show is awesome. Chucky keeps getting better and crazier the older he gets.)

I still dig horror books. I doubt I'll ever stop reading those. But it might be a long time before I get into horror movies again.

So what did I do for Halloween this year? Not much. I dressed up for work as Billy Butcher from The Boys, but that's about it.

Well . . . maybe I did something else. You might recall that my usual Halloween ritual involves watching Night on Bald Mountain from Fantasia. Did you know that Bela Lugosi posed for the cartoonists for that short? Pretty interesting. Anyway, if you want to take a look, check it out here.

Oh yeah! I also like this one.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #441: THINGS I'VE FALLEN OUT OF LOVE WITH

 OK, so here's that tangent from the book sale GF on Monday that I cut. I was talking about falling out of love with Halloween, and it had me thinking about other stuff I'd fallen out of love with. Here's the thing: when you're young you have all these things you feel passionate about. If you're as old as me, we didn't have the phrase about dying on a hill, but you have lots of hills you would die on when you're just a kid. The older you get, the less you care about things. Looking back, I had a lot of hills I'd die on. Hell, even as recent as a few years ago, I would have died on the hills that Constantine, Jonah Hex and Drive Angry were shitty movies, and I can't see why people would like them. I relaxed on Constantine fairly early because not many people read Hellblazer as religiously as I did. Today I don't give a fuck about the other two. These are stupid hills to die on, anyway.

Here's a tangent within a tangent. Here's how I got over things that I felt had betrayed its source material. I think it was Chuck Palahniuk who mentioned it first, but I started viewing adaptations of stuff I liked as an alternate universe version of it. While the comic book, Preacher, is my favorite in history, I was iffy about the TV show, Preacher, at first. It deviated pretty quickly from the books, but that was OK. I prefer the books, but the TV show is a Preacher. Not the Preacher, but a Preacher, and that was fine. I got to enjoy the show on its own merits instead of comparing it to something else. Once I took that perspective on all things, I found I didn't feel all that betrayed anymore. I stopped giving a shit about it.

Back to the main subject. Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. I was pretty obsessive about it. And I wanted to dedicate my costumes to as much realism as I could. The prime example of this is when I was in high school and decided to go as George Stark. Complete with a straight razor. A *real* straight razor. I had no intention of harming anyone, but I felt dedication to a costume was important at the time. Thinking back, I realize how utterly insane that was and how much trouble I could have gotten into. But that's how big I was into Halloween. I also had a yearly ritual of watching the Night on Bald Mountain segment of Fantasia at the end of the night. I didn't do it this year. Or last year. I think I skipped it the year before, too.

I don't know what it is. I just stopped caring. And I still have no idea how Christmas unseated Halloween's rule over me. But that happened.

I also fell out of love with gaming. (The RPG ones with dice and character sheets, not video games.) I mostly played White Wolf games, but I loved Call of Cthulhu and a few others. For a brief time I thought The Expanse roleplaying game might bring me back into the fold, but it didn't. I used to game every Sunday night with friends, and I haven't done it in ages. I just don't care to do it anymore. Still unclear as to how that happened. But that happened.

I *do* know how I fell out of love with comics conventions. When I first started going to them, they were still about comic books. Now they're multimedia events with the comics shoved off into some corner. The moment I saw well known writers and artists in Artists Alley instead of at their publishers' booths (remember when publishers had booths?), I knew that I was no longer interested. It lost its appeal. Sometimes I think about going to a show just to hang out with my comics friends, but hell. It would probably be better to see them at an off-site after party. It would definitely be cheaper.

Along the way I also fell out of love with horror cons, and I know how that happened, too: I ran out of money. Then the plague happened, and that just cemented me not being able to go. But it also made me start missing horror cons. I think I might be falling back in love with them. I want to go back to horror cons in 2022 if we can just get this fucking plague to go away.

Speaking of horror, and I'm shocked to be saying this, but I feel my love of horror movies slipping away. Not reading horror books. That love is still strong and passionate as ever. And certainly not writing horror. That still brings me a lot of joy. But horror movies? I don't know. I watch a few of the newer flicks, and some of them are OK, but most of them just lose me. For example, I started watching Fried Barry, which should have been right up my alley. Something just wasn't connecting for me, though. I haven't finished it. And my thoughts on Prisoners of the Ghostland will have to wait for another day, because I have a few things . . . to not go off on a tangent on. On? Have I said on enough? Did I need another one?

I'll talk about that in another GF. Right now, I'm just going to sit here and hope that I'm not really falling out of love with horror movies. That would suck.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #102: PRIZES AT PARTIES

Tomorrow night, I'm going to a party. I'm not entirely sure if they would want me to specifically name their party, so I won't. Twitter people probably won't know, but Facebook people will have an 80% certainty rate. So I'll keep my mouth shut for now, unless they give me permission later.


However, they throw the best parties ever. When I was younger and living a block away from Jay, who was interviewed for issue 2 of TABARD INN, things were different. He threw the best parties (made better by the fact that I could walk home after, instead of driving). Now, as an adult past the age of 30, someone else throws better parties. This husband/wife team also tends to have prizes for various things.


The last party at their place? I won a Tuggie. You probably don't know what that is. Here is a picture of me wearing one of them (if you can see past my awful gut):

It's not as warm as the advertising on the box says, but it looks pretty cool.


I will never win something as awesome as this at any party, even one of theirs. But there are prizes for this Halloween party tomorrow. I don't expect to win one, although it would be cool. However, I think getting drunk and passing out at their party will be reward enough.


If you're attending this party, I'll see you there. And I'll try to keep my pants on, but I don't make any promises. Goodnight, lovelies.