A Childhood Nightmare and a Little Middle-Eastern Thrash

For the past I-don't-know-how-many-months, I've been trying to get up the nerve to actually try painting again. Last Sunday morning, I finally did it! I know I've done better but I'm pretty fuckin proud of myself for jumping back in and doing something using no more than a memory and a basic sketch. This particular memory comes from when I was little, and saw a preview for Return of the Living Dead. I slept with my door open and could see the front door from my room. That night, I could swear I saw in the shadows a zombie leering at me, waiting for me to make a movement so he could tell I was alive.
ANYWAY, last Saturday night I let Isabella stay up a little late so she could help me figure out paper mache. She was a big help tearing up paper and helping mix in flour, and last night she helped me paint it a little.
I was excited for this week to come, because it's Fall Cleanup week in East Grand, and I had a hankerin to get the basement taken care of. I had an awful lot to sort through, especially since quite a bit of our things have gotten water damage over the summer (I know, my fault). It killed me to have to go through my comics and end up throwing out about 1/4 of them because they got so waterlogged they just fell apart in my hands. What really got me, though, was opening a box of framed drawings I was nervous about. My JROTC certificate I got my senior year for outstanding achievement is together but virtually ruined, and my 3 favorite pencil drawings ar completely wrecked, including the "Dusk" band drawing from high school. Oh well.
On Wednesday night, I decided to move some things out of the garage into the basement. It all fit onto a pallet, safely out of potential water zone. I can store stuff efficiently like it ain't nobody's business, I just don't always want to, because it makes it harder to get at when I need it. But the garage never looked spacier. Now, if the weather permits, the men can have somewhere to go during my Halloween party when they get tired of all the nagging---I mean, when they start doing stupid things that annoy their women.
Speaking of Halloween party, I am hearing more and more enthusiasm for the whole dressing up thing. I do not require it, but I greatly encourage anyone who wants to show up in costume to feel free.
What am I Watching?
I don't remember if I've mentioned it yet, but I thought I would take a moment and endorse a couple online comics I've come to read regularily. One is a comic that started around the time I started Golden Brown in 2006 and has since taken off and evolved way beyond my own little story. It's called Dr. McNinja, written & drawn by Chris Hasting, inked by Kent Archer, and now colored by Carly Monardo. I'm sure I've bored people talking about it by now, but if you do lik Golden Brown, Dr. McNinja makes just a little more sense. Another I've been reading for a while is Red Meat. It's a somewhat-weekly strip that makes a little less sense, but is very funny. The creator, Max Cannon, even has a couple little cartoons on the Comedy Central website. The last one is called Thinking Ape Blues, by Mark Poutenis. It's pretty much about the adventures of a naked man, an ape, and a robot. Really, it's more about their observations and philosophies, which can swing easily into the misanthropic. I like his opinions on stuff. I consider these guys esteemed colleagues.
Townies- Schlarb, Ohio is overrun by weird people. As the story goes, the local mental institution had taken in "freaks" from all over the county, and when they were let out, they stayed in Schlarb, where they are apparently harrased by locals with more immature malevolence than brains. I thought the characters were interesting--especially Dickie (played by Harvey Pekar's buddy, Toby Radloff!), a local garbage picker who finds a fresh corpse in the back of a pickup and makes her his girlfriend. Despite this, the characters could have been better developed, as could the story. There isn't really any defined plot to follow, and even when an attempt is made to go deeper into a character's head (Caduceus, for example), it falls flat and fails to deliver. The ending is open-ended and confusing, but all in all, it was still a good movie, and it's always entertaining hearing Toby Radloff talk.
Heavy Metal in Baghdad- A journalist comes into contact with Acrassicauda, "Iraq's only metal band", a group of young men trying to make a go of it in a country that offers them no hope or opportunities for metal. He tries to keep in contact with them from 2003-2006, and finds many changes with them along the way. It's really interesting to get an Iraqi's take on things like the fall of the Hussien regime. They mention that the first year after it was great, it seemed like there was a lot of hope, but in the following years they saw massive bombings, rebellions, violence, and all of it apparently presented in a different way to the U.S. than the Iraqis see it. By 2005, the camera crew is warned to never go anywhere alone in Baghdad for fear of kidnapping. Band members were reluctant to even do interviews because they might be seen with English-speakers and thus be targeted. By 2006, they had managed to get out of Baghdad and end up in Damascus, where they couldn't get jobs, couldn't get out, and even after recording a 3-song demo and playing a good show eventually had to sell their instruments to pay their rents. What I heard of these guys sounded great, and I can't even fathom the kind of shit they've had to live through and come to know as "normal"--two of the band members are best friends, they lived 15 minutes apart in 2005, and hadn't seen eachother in months, because neither wanted to risk his life making that kind of trip. The ending was depressing, but the good news is the band is not dead: they are all currently in Istanbul, and still trying to make it. They have even set up a Heavy Metal in Baghdad blog to keep us updated.
Rabid Grannies- A family congregates to the house of two old sisters celebrating their 92nd birthday. The family is a bunch of greedy assholes, apparently, and the only one not invited appears to be a satanic third sister who delivers a box to them with a curse inside. The curse turns them into hungry demons who proceed to kill their family one by one and eat them. Effects are cheesy, but there is a nice effort put into the killing scenes, even to the point of disturbing in a couple. I thought the grannies as demons were very silly, but in the moments before they turn, when they're still human but with husky voices and crazy 1000-yard stares, they are creepy as hell.
Bloody Mama- One of the many films detailing the exploits of Ma Barker and her sons in the 1920-30's, directed by noneother than Roger Corman. I was surprised to see not only Shelley Winters (Poseidon Adventure, Lolita, Roseanne) in the starring role, but also a young pre-Taxi Driver/Godfather II Robert DeNiro in the role of Lloyd, one of her sons. This version strongly suggested sexual relations between Barker and her sons, and even a little bisexuality here and there. A few effects and a lot of effort was put into the killing scenes, and the acting was phenomenal, especially Shelley Winters.