Scaring the Child Within: My Thoughts on the Halloween Season and the Horror Genre of Film.

For those of you who do not know, I am a very big fan of Halloween and horror in general.  This comes as a shock even to me since when I was younger I avoided such things like they were the plague.  My father loved to scare people, especially me and my older brother.  As a child I hated being scared, and I went to great lengths to ensure that no such thing would happen to me.  I used to dread the month of October, as it was the month of Halloween, so any time you turned on your television you would be subjected to a myriad of spooks and specters making their way from the screen to your dreams.  Needless to say I lost a lot of sleep as a child.  Or actually, looking back now, I gained a lot of sleep.  You see, like I said my father was really into scaring us, so he really enjoyed watching and experiencing scary things.  Any time he would come home from the video store with a scary movie in hand, I knew that I had to do anything I could not to watch it.  The movie would start, I’d be snuggled up on the couch, and I would close my eyes, forcing myself to fall asleep.  I would sleep through the whole movie and wake up with the joy of knowing that I would have no trouble sleeping later on.

As I got older a peculiar thing happened to me:  I started to love being scared.  It got to a point where I would seek it out, spending many nights driving to far off ghost towns with my friends in the hopes of seeing something we couldn’t explain.  And as this obsession grew I started to get back into the Halloween spirit.  Now I’m twenty five years old, and I’ve been able to successfully stretch the holiday to encompass the whole year, so I’m never without my scares and childhood memories.  I love looking through pictures of creepy cemeteries, laboratories perched on cliff sides with lightning dressing above.  I love to walk through old buildings now disguised as haunted houses with masked employees jumping out and scaring me.  I get a feeling of childish wonder when I drive down the road and see old condemned houses forgotten by time, resting on dead grass that whistles in the wind.  The rest of what I feel when the season is near is impossible for me to explain.  Looking at everything now, all I can say without a single shred of doubt is that I absolutely love the Halloween season.  So I’m going to discuss what horror means to me, and I’m going to do it by going down the list of major milestones in scary entertainment.  Maybe this will be something that gets you in the Halloween spirit as well.

We start in the early 1900’s.  Silent films and early talkies give us a brief glimpse into what goes bump in the night with films such as Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and of course, the Universal Golden Age films: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and The Wolf Man among many others.  As a young boy I never saw any of these movies.  Not because I was afraid of them, but just because back then I didn’t have easy access to them.  Now I can jump on any number of websites, order these films on DVD, and pick them up in my mailbox a couple days later.  Once I got back into being scared, I sought these films out. To my surprise they have stood the test of time.  Frankenstein has even acquired a spot on my top ten favorite movies list.  In my opinion these are still some of the best horror movies we’ve seen in the history of celluloid. 

Now for me, what stands out the most in horror is atmosphere.  In a lot of the scariest movies I’ve seen it’s what you don’t see that scares you the most.  Add in some truly creepy scenery and you’ve got a hit.  When I watch The Wolf Man it’s not the werewolf itself that gives me the creeps, it’s the foggy cobblestone streets, and haunting night skies with a full moon hanging ominously from its cloudy grasp.  And for anyone who is a film buff and says, “Well there is no shot of the full moon in The Wolf Man.” Yeah, I know there isn’t.  But there is more than one wolf man film and the others show plenty of full moon for me to include it in this paragraph.  So in my opinion the old horror movies are the best.  Not because they are the scariest, or the most well produced, or even the most realistic.  But purely because they stand alone in creating a world that provides a truly creepy and foreboding environment filled with incredibly complex, and at times, terrifying characters.

Note: After these films made their marks another era of horror arose.  During the atomic age of movies, all the monsters were either alien invaders, or lab experiments gone wrong.  I don’t really consider these movies to be horror and see them as more science fiction, so I’m not going to include them here.

Now as these movies became more famous they started making sequels.  When they were done with sequels they started making mash ups, which gave birth to the Monster Mash.  Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man were all huge hits so Universal decided to take them and throw them in movies together.  I haven’t seen any of these movies yet, as my love for the oldies is young, but they are most certainly on my list of things to see.  Towards the end of this run the old monsters started fading away.  That is until a British company called Hammer decided to try their hand at showing us what’s truly horrifying. 

Hammer was a small company that made movies overseas.  They were a relative success and eventually made the leap to horror with a film called ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’.  The result was an explosion of interest and legacy.  The two most popular of their series were Frankenstein and Dracula.  In Frankenstein, the doctor is played by Peter Cushing, one of the great horror actors of all time and one of my personal favorites.  They made quite a few of these films, and in them Dr. Frankenstein is the focus while he creates a new monster in every film.  Peter Cushing plays him as a malevolent, sadistic, and truly mad scientist willing to do whatever it takes to make sure his creations see the light of day. 

The Dracula series stars Christopher Lee as the Count and these movies are what made him the second best Dracula ever, following Bela Lugosi, of course.  Hammer made other horror movies as well, some being more Universal remakes like the Mummy, and others being completely original films.  What made Hammer stand alone was the return to form in the atmosphere department, and of course, the acting talents of Cushing and Lee.  These movies went back to the cobblestone streets of London, with the fog and the dim street lights casting shadows on the world.  But these films were also shot in color, and because of the time they were made the color was vibrant, and they added great gore, sex appeal, and lots of bright red blood.  It was a fresh take on an old classic and they did it splendidly.

Bonus Note: Hammer has recently come back (from the dead, so to speak) and started to make horror movies again.  The first that I saw is a vampire film based on a best selling novel called Let Me In.  Coincidentally it is my number one favorite vampire movie of all time.  I have also recently seen a trailer for a movie called The Woman in Black, and I must say it looks absolutely incredible.  After seeing the old school look the movie had I decided to do a little research on it.  I was delighted to see that it is another Hammer movie.  Needless to say, I will be seeing it in theaters opening day.

The Hammer era horror films are my favorite to date.  The gothic look of everything brings me back to seeing the dark silhouettes of far off castles on Halloween cards and treats that filled my backpack on October evenings.  Once again, Peter Cushing is astounding as Victor Frankenstein and he plays an equally impressive Van Helsing in the Dracula series.  What I would love to see today would be another remake of a classic such as Frankenstein but set in Victorian England like the classics.  The difference would be the production value and acting talents of today.  I think it could prove to be most effective. 

So now let’s jump ahead a decade or so, as director Tobe Hooper changes the face of horror with the groundbreaking film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  This started a change in the dynamic of the scary movie.  It moved the setting to contemporary America, the characters became road tripping teenagers, and the villain became anything but supernatural.  Instead he was a misunderstood, cannibalistic, chainsaw wielding madman who wasn’t immune to bullets, sunlight, or anything else.  Well to be fair, TCM is really the only one where the killer was flesh and blood.  Most of the movies to follow it had villains who appeared human but ended up being something else entirely.

Soon after John Carpenter made his record breaking independent film Halloween, about a knife wielding psychopath preying on unsuspecting babysitters in a small town on Halloween night.  This movie would also lump into the category of not scaring me since the antagonist is a human being, but the magic comes at the end when the movie shows that this killer is anything but human.  Unfortunately they had to screw it all up with about 5 terrible sequels, 2 kind of good ones, and 2 HORRIBLE remakes.  Coincidentally Halloween is my favorite horror movie of all time, due to the atmosphere, lack of gore, and sheer focus on scaring the viewer.

Bonus Note:  Singer/Songwriter Rob Zombie (whom I love) decided to remake Halloween in 2007.  To this day his remake takes my number one spot on the ‘Worst Movies of All Time’ list.  But that’s a story for a whole other review.

An antagonist like Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw could be killed by any conventional means that could be found by his would be victims.  For me that took a lot of the fear out of it.  If it’s just a man chasing me, I can defend myself.  I might survive.  If it’s a supernatural entity like a ghost, or poltergeist, I have virtually no chance of living, and that is much scarier to me.  I will say that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great movie, and certainly deserves a spot in the history of horror, but it took us in a new direction that I liked, and at the same time hated. 

So anyway, these movies saw a new kind of horror born for our viewing pleasure.  The Slasher Genre.  Now many of these movies still stuck to the supernatural elements that made earlier movies scary, but they also brought with them an overabundance of gore, sex, and campy comic relief.  I remember being a kid and being absolutely terrified of these movies.  I’ve gone back and watched some of them now that I’m older, and they aren’t just NOT scary, they are complete mockeries of film, and make me laugh more than make me frightened.  In my opinion this is the time that tainted horror movies the most, and has lasted even to this day.  Of course these decades weren’t without their honorable mentions such as the above Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween.  We also saw milestones like The Exorcist, Jaws, The Omen, and Poltergeist to name a few, but we never really went back to the foundation that horror movies were built on.

Gore is not scary.  Gore is gross at best, and especially now that gore is being created by CG (computer graphics) rather than physical on screen makeup effects, gore is looking more and more fake.  Another thought of mine is that comic relief in horror movies is stupid.  A little bit of it can be organic and realistic but most of these movies take the hilarity too far and cross the boundaries into being just plain dumb.  Some of these films even base the whole story around humor.  If people say horror is dead I believe the movies that use these techniques are the killer.

Bonus Note: If you want to see an amazing comparison of CG versus physical effects, watch the werewolf transformation scene in 2009’s The Wolf Man (which is good in its own right) and then watch the werewolf transformation scene in An American Werewolf In London.

So where are we now?  Well now we seem to be living in the world of the Hollywood remake.  It seems that almost one hundred years of horror movies have sapped our creative minds and now all Hollywood can spit out are remakes of old “good” horror movies.  First of all a lot of these movies weren’t good in the first place, and the ones that were good have been remade into some of the worst movies to ever pierce my retinas.  (See the aforementioned Halloween remake.) 

When I look back at the last decade of horror I can seriously count the good ones on two hands.  It’s almost like Hollywood has forgotten what makes us scared, and instead focuses on what scares them:  not making money.  Every other day I get on the internet and check out the latest news in the horror biz and read, with utter disappointment, that we’re either going to see another remake that’s probably going to fall flat, or Rob Zombie is taking another interesting idea and crapping all over it.  I’m sure this makes me sound personally upset about this ordeal but, in my defense, horror is a genre that I hold very dear, and unfortunately since I’m not in the business of making movies (yet?) I have to rely on other filmmakers to give me what I want and that is a seldom occurrence. 

Bring back the subtlety.  The thing that made the classics great is that they didn’t rely on state of the art flashy special effects because they had strong stories, and powerful actors to bring it to life.  Sure they still had some FX here and there but not nearly as much, and as in your face as the movies today.  In some movies, even the blood is CG.  Why do you have CG blood?  Is it too taxing to make fake blood now?  And why does everything have to be rooted in the present?  I just read a story about how they want to remake ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ but it’s going to be set in contemporary New York.  Why?  What’s wrong with the old school cobblestone streets of London?  I think that is one of the best settings for horror movies, and for some reason modern filmmakers refuse to go back there.  (The 2009 Wolf Man remake is an exception.  Not a great movie by any means but a great journey back to classic atmosphere.)  With all the remakes we get, people once again are saying horror is dead.  Well I wouldn’t go that far.  What I would say is that originality is dead.

So in conclusion I will come around again and state that horror is universal.  Everyone in their life time has been afraid, and these films prey upon that scared inner child in all of us.  But if these stories bring out that childish fear in us, doesn’t it then bring out the child in us altogether?  Isn’t it good to feel like a kid again?  Well, for me it’s wonderful and one of the strongest points I can make for the genre.  But of course I would love for anyone reading this to think for themselves.  With October rapidly approaching maybe set aside some time to sit down in the dark and watch some scary movies.  Maybe offer to take a loved one trick or treating or even dress up yourself and go to a costume party.  Whatever your preference may be don’t let this Halloween pass by without making the most of it and enjoy a few good scares.  It might surprise you just how much you like it.

The following is a list of notable horror movies I recommend to add some fright to any Halloween night. 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Nosferatu (1922)

Dracula (1931)

Frankenstein (1931)

The Mummy (1932)

Freaks (1932)

The Old Dark House (1932)

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

The Phantom Creeps (1939)

Hammer Films (1950’s to 1970’s)

-The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

-Horror of Dracula (1958)

Psycho (1960)

The Haunting (1963)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

The Exorcist (1971)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

The Omen (1976)

Halloween (1978)

The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Shining (1980)

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

The Entity (1981)

Ghost Story (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Creepshow (1982)

Poltergeist (1982)

Fright Night (1982)

Children of the Corn (1984)

Silver Bullet (1985)

Monster Squad (1987)

The Lost Boys (1987)

The Blob (1988)

Lady in White (1988)

Flatliners (1990)

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Event Horizon (1997)

John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998)

The Blair Witch Project(1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

What Lies Beneath (2000)

The Ring (2002)

28 Days Later (2002)

Trick ‘r Treat (2007)

The Orphanage (2007)

Paranormal Activity (2007)

Let Me In (2010)

Insidious (2011)

Happy Halloween!

A Dog Named Chomsky

August 9th will forever be a day that sinks into my heart like a stone.

In early May of 2011 my girlfriend and I got a new foster dog.  We have been fostering for a local pet rescue for a couple years now and love the difference we are making in the lives of so many animals.  Well our new foster dog was an adorable little 60lb muscle with four legs.  He came into our home and instantly won us over with how sweet he was.  I try not to get too attached to our fosters so that when we adopt them out it's not so hard for me to let them go.  Sometimes the dogs help out by being difficult on me so by the time they go I'm glad to see them get a good home at the same time I'm glad that they are out of my apartment.  So with our new foster nothing had changed and my defenses were up.

Over the next few months we would learn just how little our defenses could withstand from this tiny guy.  He had these adorable quirks that were instantly lovable.  When Alecia and I would get in bed he would jump in bed with us, lay down, army crawl up to our faces, and then just lay there.  When you pet him he would look into your eyes and you just knew that he loved you with everything he had.  It was a sight that made your heart melt inside your chest.  

So as time went on I began to let myself go more and more around him.  Sure there were moments where he really got under my skin and the thought of him going to a good home seemed even more desirable but feelings such as those quickly disappeared once he started kissing my face.  Over time Alecia and I took him as one of our own, and he became part of our family.  Little Chomsky completed us, and he opened us up to his heart and we let him into ours.  It was a great thing.

Unfortunately Chomsky is no longer with us.  On August 9th, 2011 he had to be put down.  Now at this point I knew I liked him, but I didn't know just how much.  I woke up that morning and while Alecia got ready for her day I sat with him, petting the top of his head and feeding him jo jos (his last meal) while he looked at me and let me know he loved me.  Alecia took him that morning, and I knew what was going to happen to him.  It wasn't until the door closed behind them that it really hit me:  I will never see this dog again.  Never again will I get to pet him, or feed him treats for being a good boy.  Never again will I get to cuddle up with him and watch him dose off in a state of pure happiness simply because he got to lay with Alecia and I.  These thoughts flooded my eyes and I began to cry.

Driving to work that morning I was crying.  Sitting at my desk at work I was crying.  Leaving work early to go home because I was such a wreck I was crying.  Sitting on my couch with Alecia cheering me up I was crying.  That seems to be all I did that day.  And now it's day two of him being gone and I still miss him.  I realize now just how much I loved him and just how much he meant to me.  He touched my soul in a way that I've never experienced before.  I'm very proud to have let him into my life and I pray to the heavens above that he knows just how much we loved him.  I'm sure he does.  

So my dear Chomsky I just want you to know that we miss you greatly and we will never forget you.  We love you with all our hearts and can't wait to see you again.  Stay playful buddy, and keep those kisses ready because when we see you we'll have a lot of catching up to do.

R.I.P. my friend.  My pet.  My dog.  Chomsky...you were best.

I Am Living Fire

It's been too long since I've posted.  I guess I just haven't had the time nor the subject matter for one.  But it's time to break the silence.

So today is one of the first days I was able to take for myself and it was nice.  My girlfriend and I played a game called Borderlands for a few hours and had a blast.  But then I stood up and went to the kitchen to get a drink and when I looked out the dining room windows I instantly got depressed.  Why?

Just like any other time I get depressed I started longing for the most random things.  For instance I've been on a diet for a couple months now and doing fairly well.  I've never in my life missed a certain way of eating or even thought such a thing could exist but today I found myself missing the things I used to eat before the diet.  Not in the sort of way that makes you want to go eat them for the taste but to make you want to eat them just for the familiar feeling of eating them again.  Hard to explain I know and extremely odd but that's just one of the things I find myself wishing I had again.

It also doesn't help that I've been under a lot of stress lately.  Life has had a firm clenched hand and repeatedly sunk it into my stomach numerous times over the past six months and I think that lately it's just been all closing in on me.  But I feel that in the next couple of months I will see significant changes in my lifestyle and my stress should start withering away at the same time.  So why is it still bothering me?

Well in these times I turn to a form of escape that can get the blood pumping and for me that is music.  More specifically heavy metal.  I think of a song by the band Otep called Ghostflowers and I hear this line.  "You want to see me burn, I am living fire."  I don't know about anyone else but for me it seems like a strengthening thing to say.  You want to see me burn but I'm already made of fire and I will stand strong like a blazing inferno and move towards my goal.  I could be completely wrong in the translation but for me it's empowering.

So with that I will end this post by saying that yeah things can get really low on occasion but that's just the back and forth of life.  If you let it get the best of you then all you're left with is the worst.

Pink Bullets

I hate to be the sad brooding type but this night lends itself to such a feeling.  I'm sitting in front of the computer by myself ready to throw up my dinner and I feel like I shouldn't be.  They don't understand that these little setbacks are like bricks being hurled into my stomach.  If I was already on the ground I would understand but no.  I gave in to a basic curiosity and since then I have been made to feel like a pile of dirt for it.  Staying scattered on the ground with my dead stick arms and legs.  For the first time in a while I feel hollow.  I don't like feeling this way and I shouldn't be made to feel this way at this current moment in time.

Time.  Why does it have to stretch on so long?  Sure there are some amazing things to see on the path but sometimes I just wish I could get to my destination.  Once again, I'm alone.  I don't feel well.  I want to feel better.  My head cracks and opens with events like these.  Small chisels that have found their way into my soft spots, and then hammer heavy words are what sink them down in.

Wow this is hard to read.  Even harder to write.  I think I'll stop now and hope for a better tomorrow.

My Top 5 Favorite Books

In the realm of the reading I haven't been a member very long.  My love of reading started at an early age but quickly became bland as I turned my sights to movies, TV shows, and video games.  Many years later as I entered into my twenties I picked the hobby back up on the recommendation of my girlfriend Alecia and I haven't been able to put the books down.  So here is a short list of the best books I've read from the start of my obsession to my newly developed love of the printed page.

5.  The Goosebumps Series.

The first book I ever read was R.L. Stein's masterpiece Attack of the Mutant in the Goosebumps series.  I was 9 years old and just finding out that I had a deep love of being afraid.  My mother brought home a short paperback book with a sandy cliff and a giant ghost hovering over a grave stone.  Above the art was a word written in what appeared to be bumpy slime that said 'Goosebumps'.  The book itself was called Ghost Beach.  I stayed up into the night reading it and it scared me half to death.  From that point on I couldn't get my hands on enough Goosebumps books to feed my appetite for them.  By the time I was thirteen I owned every one that had been released up to that point.  It got so bad I was reading a book in a three hour period and moving on to the next one.  Even now at the age of twenty four I can still open one of these books and enjoy the hell out it.  Some of my favorites are the aforementioned Ghost Beach, Attack of the Mutant, The Ghost Next Door, Ghost Camp, and The Werewolf of Fever Swamp.

4.  The Dresden Files Series

The Dresden Files books were created by master author Jim Butcher as a challenge by one of his college professors and has since become a literary giant.  My brother turned me on to the series with the first book entitled Storm Front.  The thing that makes these books stand out is the protagonist Harry Dresden a wizard for hire.  He has a dry wit and is a complete smart ass but he makes up for it by being a genuinely good man and a damn good wizard.  In these books he battles everything from other wizards, to vampires, werewolves, and even demigods.  So far I have only read the first two books, Storm Front, and Fool Moon but the series has already been imprinted on me as one of the finest out there.

3.  No Doors. No Windows.

As of late I can't seem to drive by a Borders or Barnes and Noble and not stop in to take a peak at their horror sections.  One particular day I walked into a Borders that was closing soon so everything was on sale and I found a book by an author I had never heard of and the only thing on the cover was an old house.  The title read No Doors. No Windows.  I became interested, picked it up, and turned it over.  The plot of the book struck me immediately as it sounded unique and very promising.  The author is Joe Schreiber and the front of this book exclaimed that he was the author of such stories including Star Wars:  Death Troopers and I thought to myself the author of a sci-fi book is tackling a horror story?  I was intrigued.  The book is amazing. The thing that stands out the most to me is that it is actually frightening.  I've ready many horror books that are by all means great books but none of them actually scared me.  No Doors scared me on multiple occasions and in one instance scared me so bad I had trouble walking around my apartment alone.  The story deals with torn apart families, dead and gone murderers come back from the grave, child ghosts, and a fantastic cast of characters.  To top it all off the book is incredibly written by Mr. Schreiber and is a strong force behind my own writing.

2.  Hell House

After reading No Doors. No Windows. I started looking for more books to actually scare me rather than just tell a good story.  With the internet at my disposal I did a google search for the scariest books of all time and Hell House by Richard Matheson always came at the top of the list at number one.  A week later it arrived in the mail and within three days I had it read.  Published in 1971 Hell House tells the story of four people from different walks of life with different religious views and psychic powers who willingly spend a few days in the most haunted house in the world.  What threw me off was that the book is very sexual.  If books had MPAA ratings this one would be NC-17.  Now as far as it being the scariest book of all time I'd have to really think about that but I will say that it was indeed scary as hell.  Matheson wrote this story with a delicacy of a master craftsman and after one chapter in it was difficult to put the book down.  It was eventually made into a feature film called The Legend of Hell House but I have yet to see it.  All I can say is that this book is scary, disturbing, and a great look into the world of the supernatural through the eyes of skeptics and  mediums alike.  

1.  The Dead Path

I walked into a Borders one night on a whim and found this book behind a couple others, hiding from me.  I picked it up and looked at the cover and read the title.  The Dead Path.  Something about it stuck out and I felt I had to buy it.  I turned the book over and read the synopsis of the story and then I knew I had to buy it. One morning I sat down and read the first chapter.  Not only did it completely engulf me in the story and keep me wanting to read more but it almost had me in tears.  The book is written by Stephen M. Irwin and his words bleed to the page with poets blood.  To this day it is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read and by far my favorite book of all time.  It centers around a man who's wife has recently died and shortly after her death has developed the ability to see the dead.  But he can't speak to them or communicate with them in any way.  He sees ghosts in their final moments dying on an endless loop before his very eyes.  From there the story takes him back to his childhood home where things escalate into a nightmarish welcoming back that will threaten his very life.  I won't go into anything else because to be honest I can't even do it justice by just talking about it.  It has to be read and once you read it, it will soak itself into your very being and stay with you forever.

A Few Miles Further

Let me tell you all a story.

Once upon a time I met this amazing girl. It was my freshman year of high school and if you didn't know me then, let me paint you a picture. At the age of nine my parents divorced and my mother moved into kind of a bad part of town. Me being the shy anti social boy I was I opted to always stay in the house eating Dan Dee cheese curls watching Batman the animated series. It sounded good at the time but little did I know that it would result in me plumping up and forever being the "fat kid" from sixth grade onward. Now here I was, in ninth grade, the first year of high school. It felt great except the fact that I was still ridiculed on almost a daily basis and while I kept a slightly cool exterior I was, on the inside, withering away with every insult uttered.

But I digress. So there I was and it was the last day of school before Christmas break. Two weeks of nothing but sleeping in and playing the original Halo. It was going to be bliss, and as a young apathetic high schooler, that's all I cared about. So for the last day before break the school decided to show a little movie for us so we wouldn't have to do any work. The movie was Shrek and I couldn’t care less. For me this was a time to goof off and hang with my friends. As students piled into the small viewing room, I sat next to a group of friends and made idle chit chat when all of a sudden she walked in. My God you should have seen her. Long brown curly locks, beautiful amber eyes. It was actually difficult to think straight when I saw her. All I wanted to do was talk to her, and that’s exactly what I did. After I got her attention by lightly stepping on her hand while the movie played. What do you want? I was young and stupid. But it worked.

From that point on she became a paradise to me. We started dating but, being young and stupid I chose to play Halo instead of hanging out with her. Strike one. So a couple months into the relationship we broke up. Normally I would have shrugged it off and said something like “I don’t need her!”. But unfortunately for me not having her in my life just made me realize a very important truth: For the first time in my life I was in love.

From there we remained friends throughout high school. She dated a close friend of mine which, while it hurt to see them together, it did offer me the chance to be the bigger man and let them be happy. And that’s what I did. After a year they broke up and that’s when I started seeing her less frequently. So we jump now to my senior year of high school. I was still fat but people seemed like me for me (finally) and even if they didn’t I had developed a nice “I don’t give a crap what you think of me” attitude. And then one day, just as God was about to start laughing at my torment, she walked in again. Stunning as ever. Just seeing her made me want to do great things, and lucky for me we had a few classes together. Our friendship became strong once again and over time, somehow she saw something in me that no one else did, and we started dating again.

I was in heaven I mean, I couldn’t believe that she would give me another chance and by now my love for her was so strong it was driving me crazy. I thought to myself, “I can’t lose her again. I have to be the perfect boyfriend.” But my version of the perfect boyfriend was anything but, and I chose to be the same old me again (playing games, lazing around not giving a damn) and it led to strike two. So once again she called it quits and this time it was like an atom bomb dropping on my life. Have you ever seen the episode of South Park where Wendy breaks up with Stan and Stan gets really depressed and stays in his room all the time and then goes goth? Well that was me (except for the goth part).

At this point in the story I graduate and leave the high school forever. Now she was a grade behind me so she still had a year to go. Needless to say I hardly ever saw her.

Then in 2006 I met a girl named Molly. I never thought I would ever love anyone as much as I loved the girl of my dreams whom I lost. But Molly made me believe again. Until she cheated on me and destroyed my heart and soul. Now I’m not trying to bash her here. She has actually since gone on to lead a great life. She met a guy whom she really adores and who really adores her and they have since married. She’s living with him now, I believe she’s a nurse (I only say that because that’s what she was going to college for when we dated) and she has a little black cat. I hear she’s doing great and I’m happy for her.

I bring her up because during our relationship I made the mistake of telling her about this girl from high school. Well she didn’t like that one bit and she forbade me from talking with this girl any longer. I fought this tooth and nail for months. I thought, “No way. We are just friends and we don’t even see each other a lot as it is and since I’m 100% faithful and always have been I see no harm in remaining her friend.” But eventually the battle got to be too much for me and I gave in. Now this is a moment in my life I am not proud of in the slightest. I Myspace messaged this girl and told her I was done with her. She wasn’t happy about it, and we ended things a little badly.

Well a little while later guess what? Molly and I broke up. It was a liberating thing and I then dedicated my life to focusing on me and making me happy again. It was nice. 

So life seemed to be looking up again, until I lost my job. To this day I have never been so terrified. Looking for a job on a daily basis and getting nothing was something that nauseated me. Little did I know that things were about to get a lot worse. That friend of mine that she dated in high school? He was my best friend since we were ten years old and shortly after I lost my job he passed away from cancer. It was devastating and to this day I miss him greatly. I decided to blog about him on my myspace page (back when I had one) and it helped me get some things off my chest and say goodbye to him in another way.

So I get an interview, ace it, get the job, and leave. As I’m pulling out my phone rings and I see I have a voice mail. I put the phone to my ear and out comes the sweetest voice. A voice I haven’t heard for about three years at this point. It’s the girl and she wants to meet at Denny’s to catch up. That night we met, and the second I saw her all those feelings came rushing back to me. It was like we had never split at all. We arrived at Denny’s at ten o’clock at night and didn’t leave until eight the next morning. We talked into the night about everything that had happened with us over the past three years and to this day it is a milestone in the cannon of my life.

So this girl. She’s unbelievable I mean really, she doesn’t just light up a room. The lights freakin’ explode when she enters. After we rekindled our friendship we kind of spent every waking moment together. Well not EVERY waking moment but eventually it did get to that point haha. That was one hell of a summer. I remember one night in particular we were hanging out at her parents house which wasn’t far from the Denny’s we initially met at so we decided to walk there being as it was a warm summer night. We had yet another great meal and conversation there and then began the trek back to her parent’s house. On the way back we saw a meteor shower. No joke it was the night of a meteor shower, first one I had ever seen. We looked up into the night sky and she said “make a wish.” I wished that we would be together again. Not just as young lovers or even best friends turned lovers but as something stronger. As soul mates who travelled far and wide to find each other and the seas were kind enough to grant us a meeting. A couple weeks later we were boyfriend and girlfriend once again.

Now here we are, almost two years into our relationship and I couldn’t ask for more. I have found my one true love. People search their whole lives for something like this and never find it. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones. Oh and guess what? She’s just as beautiful as ever. When I wake up in the morning and turn and see her face, eyes closed sleeping peacefully into the morning it makes me rejoice. I am talking of course about my wonderful love Alecia Zhenee Waddell. The girl who let me step on her hand in ninth grade and still gave me the time of day. The girl who let me have two strikes and at one point completely throw the game gave me another chance. She saw something in my that perhaps I couldn’t even see in myself.

So in conclusion to this rather lengthy blog I just want to say that Alecia Waddell is my girlfriend. My partner. My soul mate. I couldn’t ask for someone more wonderful, beautiful, funny and kind. Even now while she sits on our couch watching funny videos on her phone she reminds me just how lucky I am.

Well, I’m going to call this one finished. I’m going to go tell her how much I love her.

Movie Review #1: Let Me In

In recent years my tastes in film have changed dramatically. For instance when I was younger I would go to the local movie theater to watch the latest and greatest action movie and leave the theater saying "wow that movie was awesome!", and it seemed that every movie I saw got this reaction out of me. Now it's much much harder to please me. Most of the time now I leave the theater saying "it was okay", or "it was garbage!". I really miss being able to go to see any movie and loving it but sadly as I've gotten older I've just realized that what I want in movies is greater than what the industry is giving me. Especially in a world where every big movie is either a summer blockbuster that's as thin as a wet paper towel or a horror movie remake (or ANY remake for that matter) that fails to deliver in the same areas that the originals did. In some cases the remakes are just plain awful (I'm looking at you Friday the 13th). Well a little while ago I heard about this movie called Let the Right One in based on the book of the same name. I was told it was a Swedish film based on a Swedish book about vampires. Well vampires, needless to say, have been done to death (pun INTENDED!) in most mediums and I can count the good ones on one hand so my enthusiasm for this movie was limited. But the movie came out to stellar reviews and it got me thinking. So then I hear about another movie called Let Me In that is essentially a Hollywood remake of Let the Right One In. "Well that's odd," I thought but miraculously this movie also came out to stellar reviews. So I thought okay, the book is doing great, and now both films are getting critical praise maybe I should check it out. Then the driving force behind me wanting to see the film came crashing at me when I saw the studio responsible for Let Me In was none other than Hammer.

A little background on Hammer as I know them.

Hammer was a British film company founded in 1934 that found major success in the horror genre when, in the 50's, they decided to remake some of the Golden Age Horror films such as Dracula and Frankenstein. These movies were so good they became known for reestablishing the Gothic Horror genre and really breathing new life into the medium. The movies were in color, there was more sexual undertones, and there was full on bloody violence. I myself own the first Dracula and Frankenstein films Hammer made and they are simply amazing. Well around the late 70's to early 80's they kind of disappeared leaving behind their many masterpieces and moving on to something better. However this meant that they pretty much disappeared entirely and nothing much was heard of them. Until now.

So seeing that Hammer Horror was making a comeback with this movie that was "reinventing the vampire genre" I couldn't help but get excited. The movie came in the mail through Netflix, I waited till night fell, and my girlfriend and I sat down with our dogs and watched it. To my great satisfaction this was not a typical "it was okay" movie. No this movie absolutely rocked me. I thought it was amazing, so much in fact that after we watched it I started it over again to watch it a second time. It's that good.

So here's a quick rundown. The movie is about a twelve year old boy living with his mother who's parents are going through a divorce. He befriends a twelve year old girl who moves in next door to him who just so happens to be a vampire. The movie is about their relationship growing from friendship to more and then to so, so much more. My likes for this movie are staggering. The camera work is incredible and some of the scenes actually had me scratching my head as to how they did it. There is a particular car crash scene that had my jaw dropped. The direction was top notch. The acting, especially from the young kids, was just awe inspiring. Where this movie really takes me in is with the story. The relationship between these two characters is done so well and so beautifully that in my opinion it's one of the best love stories I've seen in quite some time. The movie also uses the folklore of vampires to an amazing degree and answers some questions that most movies overlook. I wont give anything away but the last thing I will say is that the ending is just divine. Once again I wont give anything away but it's another scene that had my jaw dropped.

So in conclusion every now and then a movie comes along that is so good, and hits me so hard in such a profound way that it makes me want to make movies myself. This was one of them. By the far the best vampire movie I've ever seen and a love story worth feeling good about. Well in an almost morbid sort of way. So with that being said that is my first ever movie review and if you haven't seen this movie I HIGHLY recommend you see it as soon as you can. I still can't get it out of my head.

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend and I'll talk to everyone later.