Negative Creeps

Harris Smith is "a writer and media producer living in New York City." He posts select covers and panels from comic books, novels and magazines (movie reviews too) on his blog, Negative Pleasure.

Not content with words and pictures, Smith hosts Negative Pleasure 2, a tumblr image blog with even more pics, links, and none of that pesky text that gets in the way.

His Oct. 12 posts on Tumblr focus on occult/satanic images from various films. Bonus points if you recognize the movies from which he harvested. Our new intern, Marie, declared that she felt she should go to church after looking at those pics. Which means Mr. Smith's blog is a rousing success.

Prior October posts are a bounty of horror comic shots to tease, torment and delight your eyeballs. Visit both his blogs and destroy the remainder of your afternoon.

A Friendly Reminder

Just in case you missed the announcement, October is National Donut Month. Please do your part. Do not ignore your civic duty.

"The Gobble-uns 'at gits you"

We missed the birthday of James Whticomb Riley (1849 - 1916) yesterday, so to make up for that grievous error, we will acknowledge the Hoosier laureate's birth today.

Riley, an American poet who touched on all the important poetic themes -- childhood, death, love and weird bits of folklore -- frequently wrote in Indiana dialect which, when read aloud makes the reader sound like a Scottish hillbilly.

One of the best examples of Riley's dialect writing is also his most famous poem, "Little Orphant Annie." It just so happens that the poem is seasonally appropriate, telling the story of a strange servant girl who tells the children terrifying tales of the monsters that will steal them away if they don't behave. (Yes, the character is also the inspiration for both the comic-strip heroine and the rag doll Raggedy Ann. Nice one, James.)

Get your Hoosier scares on by reading the full text here. And if you haven't already, raise a glass to James Whitcomb Riley. Scumps!

[Some students of poetry can't handle Riley's folksy style, and generally think he's a lesser poet when compared to his peers. Hogwash. Even his "bad" poems are worth a look, including the often maligned but in fact, quite funny, "The Smitten Purist."]

Don Post Mask Not Included

VERNE LANGDON
Music for Zombies: Grave Music for Brave People
The Phantom of the Organ/The Vampyre at the Harpsichord
(Electric Lemon)
If a well-intentioned adult played Music for Zombies at a children's Halloween party today, kids likely wouldn't respond to its vintage radio-drama sound. They might laugh and ask if they can watch Hostel 2 instead, or simply wonder why minor chords on a theater pipe organ are supposed to induce shivers. [Also: If that Frisbee lands in my yard again, it's mine. -- ed.] We call those kids chumps.

Verne Langdon -- a hidden treasure of mid-20th century Hollywood -- plays piano, calliope, and Hammond and pipe organs on these nine tracks he composed. The music is bookended by the sound of a crypt door opening and closing.

"Zombie Sonata" taps a Beethoven vein, if Ludwig had been listening to broadcasts of Inner Sanctum, and ends with a man's agonized screams. "Flowers of Evil" is all classic pipe-organ moodiness, and a guaranteed way to end a bad first date. The three part "Zombie Suite" feels a little too lush, but you do get a calliope-mad recording of Langdon's "Carnival of Souls" -- a tune he liked so much he recorded it on nearly every keyboard available to him at various points in his career.

Barely cresting the 30-minute mark, Zombies is just long enough to get you through a dramatic reading of W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw. (Hint: Program the tracks so "Tombs Egyptian" syncs up with Sergeant Major Morris' visit.)

Now, if you want to send the kids crying into mom's apron, Langdon's double-shot The Phantom of the Organ/The Vampyre at the Harpsichord will do.

Phantom has Langdon helming a genuine theater pipe organ, extracting the iciest chords he can. Really, there's not much more to it than that. The listener's appreciation for pipe organ and being serenaded by a disfigured obsessive who lives in the sewers below the Paris opera house will dictate how much you get from this disc. ("Sound Trip through the Catacombs" has some nice sound effects, including sicko giggling and terrified ingénue screams.)

Likewise, Vampyre features Langdon going solo on the harpsichord. It starts out at a dirge pace, and even drifts into a pleasant, almost Bach-like place for "Eternal Life Suite." "Carnival of Souls" appears again, far spookier on the plucked strings of the harpsichord, followed by the short, dizzying "Flight of the Vampyre." If Daniel Ash of Bauhaus didn't learn some of his guitar vamps from this album, then we're returning our black nail polish.

This music will at least scare the kids by virtue of the fact that you own it. Point your speakers out the windows on the big night, turn out the lights and dramatically decrease the odds of having to give away any candy.

Reference materials: If you like the incidental music from old horror shows on television and radio, or have a jones for odd organ LPs found at thrift stores, these records will make you quite happy.

Bonus fun fact: Phantom and Vampyre were played for years in haunted-house attractions at various theme parks in Southern California, and all three of these albums were originally available to order from the back pages of Famous Monsters magazine. FM founder/editor Forrest J. Ackerman wrote the hilariously purple liner notes for Phantom and Vampyre. Read them aloud and you'll sound like a villain from the Batman TV series:

"That doomed avatar of evil, brother-in-blood ... the Count: Draculon!"

Fell In Love at the Arcade

We may be stretching the Halloween theme here, but get your own damned blog if that's a problem. If you aren't visiting Monster Brains at least once a week, you're missing out on one of the best art blogs around.

Monster-themed pinball machines is the theme for the week of Oct 4. Per Aeron Aelfry, the monster brain behind the site, you can expect "monsters, aliens, robots and mythological abominations that infested the pinball machines of the past!" It starts with a "devils and demons" collection that's surprisingly filthy and violent.

But let's be clear on the following:

You got that?

An Eyeball Feast

Artist Matthew Kirscht is inspired by vintage Halloween postcards and decorations. He recreates and builds on that early 20th century style of mass-produced seasonal art that, to modern eyes, can feel at once both more innocent and spookier than modern Halloween décor.

Black cats, skeletons and jack-o-lanterns -- faces frozen in manic grins -- dance and conduct creepy business that sometimes involves anthropomorphic candy and vegetables. If you have the cash to spare, Kirscht sells prints and originals. Otherwise, point your peepers at his Website, Shiverbones.com and his Flickr photostream.


[Kirscht has plenty of non-Halloween work and his morbid comics are funny too.]

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's National Donut Month. And being October, it's also a month during which we're allowed to talk about dreadful things with abandon becasue, you know, Halloween approaches. Ostensibly we'll do so as often as possible this month with the second annual Typing Monkey Halloween Frenzy.

To start off, it is paramount that we share with you the existence of Halloween Magazine. If a print version ever existed, we would have a subscription. But that it's there on the Web, all year round, makes our hearts grow three sizes. Poke around the site and find all manner of stuff related to the holiday.

Now before we push this pumpkin down the hill, let's take a moment to catch our breath and enjoy this old jazz reel of jump-blues king Louis Jordan performing "Let the Good Times Roll." (The audio is slightly off, but who cares.)


[courtesy FourDices]