Coffee & Menthol

Coffee. Fuel. Writing-fuel! Oh yes!!! With Coffee Mate and two sweetners, it tastes great. I never used to drink the stuff, as it always gave me migraines, but I had the urge for a cup, and now I love it.

Also, on the am I smoking or aren't I issue: yes I am (again), but not forever. I've switched to roll-ups (have I already said this?). They taste much better than regular cigarettes. Much more satisfying without having to smoke four kingsize cigarettes in a row ... which was bad, bad, bad!

Now the cigarettes I used to smoke were Menthol ones, as I loved the taste. But with roll-ups, they're obviously don't come in that variety ... however, I've discovered Menthol Filter Tips, and I'm in just a little bit of smoker's heaven.

And when they say Menthol, they mean it! These things have got a kick like I've never tasted. The menthol practically knocks you out if you take too heavy a drag on it. Absolutely lovely.

Watched a couple more ONE STEP BEYOND episodes. They are awesome! I love how they're dramatised and directed. There's a "real" quality about them that make the episodes ahead of their time, in comparison to some of THE TWILIGHT ZONE episodes.

John Newland’s ONE STEP BEYOND

"What you are about to see is a matter of human record. Explain it: we cannot. Disprove it: we cannot. We simply invite you to explore with us the amazing world of the Unknown ... to take that One Step ... Beyond."

WOW! I am in love with a TV show I'd vaguely heard of years ago, but had never seen ... until today. ONE STEP BEYOND. I'll tell you this, it's much better than the classic Rod Serling's THE TWILIGHT ZONE. It's more horror-orientated, with focus on true-life paranormal encounters, instead of fiction stories of various genres. This lends each episode a certain quality, a quiet uneasing menace of "it really happened", however loosely based on fact, it gives the show an edge all of its own.

I watched a couple of episodes today and I can say I'm totally hooked. There were 96 episodes made between 1959 and 1961. The mere fact that it predates THE TWILIGHT ZONE by about nine months is interesting, but what's more impressive is ONE STEP BEYOND's format. It's exactly the same as THE TWILIGHT ZONE! The show's host, John Newland, introduces the start and end of each episode. Serling obviously found "inspiration" from this for his own ZONE.

But what's really impressed me is the quality of the stories, and the fact that John Newland directed every single one of the 96 episodes! This is a phenomenal achivement in itself, and I can't believe I've only just started watching this gem of a horror series.

The show is available on less than stellar quality transfers. Something to do with the copyright not being renewed! So the show is in the public domain, but with a show like ONE STEP BEYOND, it's the quality of the stories that matter, and the lack of a digitally remastered DVDs is better than no DVDs at all. One company has released 50 episodes in a cheap boxset, and they're supposed to be releasing the other 46 episiodes later this year. I'll definitely be picking them up, and reviewing the odd episode on my blog.

What I find strange is how the show has a cult following, but has hardly been acknowledged by the critics. I've read the synopsis' of every episode on TV.com and I can honestly say that each one sounds brilliantly unique. Newland's direction is subtle and concise. There's no filler, no dull bits, and his camerawork glides around a lot with an economy of style that most contemporary productions simply lack.

Some of the later episodes were also filmed in England! So there are great production values and a few British actors that make appearances.

If you haven't seen any episodes of ONE STEP BEYOND, see it!

Keyboard Daze

My keyboard fucked up the other day. This happens to me a lot! At least every few months I end up buying a new keyboard. I should stockpile them like nuclear weapons, but I never do.

The reasons usually are:
1: I spill drinks over them.
2: I drop them (it happens).
3: The plug-in thingy, the bit you plug in to the computer fucks up.

It was number 3 this time. One minute it was working, the next I found the cable unplugged from the computer and when I plugged the keyboard in, nothing worked.

It's so annoying when it happens - ALWAYS when I'm just in the mood to write something.

The cheapest place to buy keyboards, and the only place open after hours is the behemoth of shopping consumerism hell that is Tesco Extra, or Tesco Express, or Tesco Auschwitz, or whatever it's called. Whatever it is, the experience of shopping there - for me - is the total idea of a living hell, an actual nightmare in conscious experience ... you get the idea. I don't like shopping there. That's why I shop elsewhere, but when you need a new keyboard on the quick, you have no choice but to endure Tesco Extra.

Here are some of the reasons I don't like shopping there:
1: It's a giant warehouse, filled with aisles like a maze. The analogy of battery hens / human shoppers springs to mind.
2: It's hot. The temperature is always high, so when you go in, you feel very uncomfortable and can't wait to get out in to the cool air. They do this so the customer/buyer turnaround is as quick as possible. I don't think it's healthy for food to be in a hot environment, but there you go.
3: The staff are like Gestapo agents. I'm being serious. Seriously, they have an attitude. I won't recount the time I went shopping with my sister and she was accosted for daring to weigh her vegetables on the digital scales. It was a miracle my sister didn't floor the cunty shop assistant.
4: The tills are designed so the conveyer belts are nice and long for lots of people's groceries, but when the groceries have gone through and you're trying to pack - under the watchful glare of impatient cashiers and the next person in the queue - you realise that there's hardly any room at this end of the till to actually pack your shopping! It's a tiny space.

So normally I shop elsewhere at a friendlier, less rage-inducing supermarket, with nice staff, wide aisles, huge tills with lots of space to pack your shopping away, and a room temperature atmosphere.

But no keyboard is like no paint brushes for an artist. I had to buy a new one straight away.

So I walked the two miles to Tesco Hextra, buy the cheapest keyboard there - ironically, it's a really good keyboard - then walk two miles back, which at this stage I've got a banging migraine and I'm on autopilot and just want to get home and see whether the new keyboard works and it's not my computer that's just fucked up.

New keyboard, works great. And in another few months, I'll have to go through it all again.

Update-type-thingy

I guess I should do an update. Well, Roy Scheider died. That's a sad loss for cinema. The guy rocked. Always at his best playing neurotic characters on the edge, always ready to loose it - the kind of characters, and character actors, that Hollywood no longer utilises to their own potential. And the 2008 Oscars forgot to mention Scheider during the "In Memorium" montage bit.

Saw a Scheider film I'd never seen before, COHEN AND TATE, from 1989. Extremely rare b-movie crime/thriller, crying out for a DVD release. From director Eric Red - THE HITCHER, BODY PARTS. Haven't enjoyed a film like COHEN AND TATE for a long time and loved every gritty little minute of it. Roy Scheider stole the show in the film. I'd never seen him play a villain - apart from ROMEO IS BLEEDING - and he really lit up the screen with the intensity.

There was an earthquake in England the other week. It was about 1 AM, and I was on the computer, thinking, I really must go to sleep soon, when my glass of melted ice and lemon and lime soft drink (or pop, as it's called in the UK), started to shake just like the scene in JURASSIC PARK. Then the walls started to shake, then the bed, and then I did what you're not supposed to do in an earthquake, I jumped up and panicked, ran downstairs in my boxer-briefs in the dark, shouting: "What the fuck is that?" It was over in a few seconds.

I've slept through earthquakes before. Slept through storms where the windows rattled and the house shook. When I'm asleep, I am dead to the world, so this was the first time I'd experienced a tremor awake. It was a bit creepy. Very intense. Complete lack of control, where all you can do is just endure what is happening, and wonder if it'll ever stop. Thank fuck it did.

Still haven't 100% shaken my killer cold. It's really starting to fuck me off now. It's becoming second-nature to blow my nose. I'm surprised the thing isn't as red as Rudolph. Too add insult, I woke up this morning with a crick in my neck, so now I'm feeling like a broken puppet. What next? No, God, don't answer that one.

Saw a rare British horror film from the sixties called THE SHUTTERED ROOM - loosely based on a H.P. Lovecraft story, with Gig Young and Oliver Reed. Very atmospheric.

Haven't done ANY writing lately. I've just not felt up to it, but really want to start writing something soon. I can feel the urge to write building up, and I'm actually sat at my desk typing this blog, so that's a start.

Oh and I'm still smoking, but I've switched to roll-ups ... which is interesting. They taste completely different to regular cigarettes, but I am getting bored of the whole smoking thing. I think, sometime soon, I'll give up for good and go without.

A Cold, A Cough, And Some Cigarettes

Whoosh, been totally fucked this last week. I've had a killer cold, bunged up to hell, snot coming out of my nostrils like slugs, a cough that could wake the dead and a throat that looked like vines were growing up the roof of my mouth.

All in all, a bit of a cold. Today I felt much better and feel like facing the land of the living, instead of staying in bed.

I managed 6 days without a cigarette. A record. Then went out and bought a fresh pack. Then I went two days. After that, I thought fuck it. I'll smoke: but I'll just smoke less. Maybe one day I'll wean my way off of them completely.

I've been watching some great old film noir movies lately and enjoying them a lot. Haven't watched any horror, for which I will do so soon.

Can't wait for THE MIST to come out on DVD. Seems like I've been waiting forever for it to be released.

***spits violently at random stranger***

I've been off in other places lately. Not been online.

Roy Scheider died. That was a sad day. Love that guy's movies.

Haven't had a cigarette since Wednesday. I've kind of stopped smoking, but half of me is giving me emotional torment as to why I've quit smoking, so I'm in psychological turmoil for a cigarette, and half feeling fucked off at myself for stopping in the first place. Great, I will live a few more years. My healthy heart can barely take the anticipation!

Completely lost my fucking appetite since Wednesday. My stomach is constantly rumbling, and I'm drinking way too much pop for it to be healthy, and I'm sick of chewing chewing gum as a cigarette substitute. I have got muscles in my jaw that most mortal men do not achieve! So I'm chewing gum like an addict and pissing like a sailor.

So I'm feeling grumpy as hell, and could quite easily grab a gun and shoot random, annoying people ... only guns are banned in this country, along with everything else that is remotely entertaining, so I guess ... I'll chew some fucking gum instead.

"Don't they ever migrate?"

So I wake up early, head over to imdb.com and find out that Suzanne Pleshette has died. She played Annie Hayworth, the raven-haired school teacher in Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS.

This got me thinking about the film. Well I can't sleep, so I might as well write something constructive at 6 AM!

It's a very odd role. When she's first introduced, you think she's just another character, and although she's not in the film that much, she's quite important to the structure of the film, and the whole way the film balances out as it progresses.

It is at her character's house that the film really gets going when - in a very scary scene of unease - there's an ominous thud at Annie Hayworth's door. What can it be? Well, it's a dead bird that struck the door full-on. It must have lost its way ... dive-bombing suicide birds, or omen of impending doom?

Pleshette's character, connected to Rod Taylor's character, Mitch Brenner - she used to go out with Mitch in the movie - but now we presume, through Hitchcock's clever use of picking exactly the right actress, delicately framing Pleshette and Hedren in the same frame, at opposing sides; that Annie Hayworth is the complete opposite of Tippi Hedren's character, Melanie Daniels. Or is she?

She's also a lesbian.

Now when you're a kid, even then, you know that Pleshette's character is "different". She dresses in dark clothes, has a husky voice, offers immediately for Hedren's character to share a room, and generally acts like a lesbian. Oh, and she smokes like a man. This is the sixties, after all. Not content with just THE BIRDS in the film, Hitchcock has fun with the complexities of his characters.

THE BIRDS works on many levels. Visually, it's a tour-de-force of survival horror. Thematically, it's as rich in psychological dilemmas as Hitchcock's VERTIGO. But in THE BIRDS, Hitchcock uses the film to build impending apocalyptical doom through fearsome character interaction and development.

THE BIRDS aren't on-screen that much, and the film becomes more effective because of it. The frantic reactions of characters in the film, their cursory glances at one another; sometimes frantic during the attacks, other times predatory against other characters through their own feelings against one other. THE BIRDS pits a lot of self-involved characters against a mass onslaught of far lesser creatures of limited intelligence. Yet THE BIRDS win.

Pleshette's character in THE BIRDS can be seen as the original harbinger of the birds themselves, before Hedren becomes the "focus" of the ferocious bird attacks. Notice, if you will that most of the attacks come in the film, directly in scenes involving Pleshetter's character, Annie Hayworth: the scene at her house - the bird hits the door. The scene at the party she attends - the birds attack. The scene at the school - the birds attack.

It's not until the Hayworth character is killed - off-screen, only to be discovered in a disturbing sequence where we "see" and discover the body for ourselves, as the camera moves forward from the characters' point-of-view - that any sense of hope, much like her character harboured for feelings of Mitch, and for the future in general - are lost, and all hope for survival in Bodega Bay is gone.

The film becomes a metaphor for the characters in the film. Most people don't migrate. They don't move on. They never change. The birds may come, but they'll pass, surely? With Mitch Brenner and family, with Annie Hayworth, they are stuck with their lives in Bodega Bay. But when THE BIRDS do come, they're here to stay.

"Don't they ever migrate?"

Where is Christian Avery Bryant???

When Horror authors go missing ...

A few years back (was it really that long!?!) I was in contact with an American horror author: Christian Avery Bryant. Apart from having a very cool name, he is also a very talented writer.

I lost contact with him and was just thinking about him this morning, and can I fuck as like find any trace of him on the internet. His website has gone. His blog - which I didn't know existed - has gone. His email address is gone. His various author pages on the net; all gone.

It's like he's vanished!

Christian, where the hell have you got to, man??? I'd really like to have a chat, see what's happening.

Christian is the author of 'I AM NOT THE MOTHER OF GOD', which is available on Shocklines.

If ANYONE knows him, or knows anyone who knows him, or has seen him, please get in touch, cos I'd really like to get in contact and see how the man is.

Thanks.