"Assassinated" Arizona congressional Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is UNDEAD

She has become Ligeia, every simultaneously living and dead character straight out of Poe's short stories. The press disagrees all over the place: She's alive, she's dead, she's in critical condition--no, no, wait, she's dead, really, we mean it this time, really.

Welcome to the (mis)information age. One story has it that she's alive one moment, the next, that she is dead. No one needs to be told to jump to conclusions when the press has already done it for them in this era of instant gratification.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted--under copyright law. Welcome to the 19th century, it's back, and everyone's an expert on anything you can name, regardless of whether they have any credentials or not.

Breaking News: Gabrielle Giffords is undead, undead, undead, undead...

http://news.google.com/news/story?hl=en&q=Arizona+congresswoman+dead&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dyWPwW5FGhNgspMMUxFOa5u4-U5_M&ei=vMkoTZ6OOISq8AahufT8AQ&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQqgIwAA

Edgar Allan Poe @ J to the Power of 7

WWW--Of all of the pieces, articles, and observations I've written on this site since August of 2006, I can say that this series written on Edgar Allan Poe comprises some of the very best of my writing. I have related very deeply to Poe almost my entire life for a host of reasons and consider him above Whitman and the New England "mystics." His only real peer in my opinion is Mark Twain, possibly Herman Melville, and Ambrose Bierce coming close on his heels.

Poe saw the horror that was the America of his time and the darkness of the human soul, while Melville, Twain, and Bierce saw where it was all heading, Melville even before the American Civil War in his prescient short story, "Bartelby, the Scrivener: A Tale of Wall Street" (1853). Read this story now and tell me with a straight face that the man wasn't brilliant, wasn't aware of the wrong-turn America began taking around that time, now culminating in what could very well be the endgame of the species.

For being the bearer of bad news, Melville's incredible popularity waned, and he died poor and all-but-forgotten. Edgar Allan Poe wasn't much luckier, yet the notion that he wasn't popular or famous during his short life is inaccurate--he was. The problem was that Poe's publishers were greedy scumbags who paid him poorly, just like most employers nowadays; he was literally the very first American to attempt making a living by writing alone, which should tell you something about the rest of his literary peers at the time.

At the very end of his life, things were looking up. I admire all of the aforementioned writers deeply, but with Poe--with Poe--I feel like one of many of his humble protectors. In the last few years, morons in various America cities have tried to claim him as their own, and without any merit. Philadelphia is perhaps the most egregious case in their claim to his remains, but Boston might be even more galling, the town he hated the most and called "frogpondia." What do these people want?

Publicity, of course, and God knows they don't have the moral courage Poe had to be himself, for better or for worse. What they want is to take the easy route: none of the suffering and poverty that the great writer had to endure, with some of the benefits he was barely able to have in life. The legend came after his death. Riding on the coattails of a dead man who suffered the tortures of the damned is immoral. Enjoy (or don't)...

A good place to start (follow the labels):http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2007/08/poe-toaster-is-not-mark-felt.html

"Lohan refers to Obama as 'first colored president'"

New York, New York (not the Scorsese film, silly)--She's at it again: Lindsay Lohan has stuck her foot in her mouth, and not her new g-friend's. You know, she's 22, and she's in the spotlight. How would your youth look if it was on billboards, televisions, in print, DVD, downloads, celebutante rags, and all the others forms of media?

And she didn't choose this, her parents did. They made her be a child star, just like Fatty Arbuckle's did. I assume they ripped-her-off too, because what's family for in America, after all?

Look, she blogged about her sincere support of Barack Obama on her own personal blog, it's OK, calm down. Have some dip (thanks George Carlin), relax.

There was a time--and for some there still is--where referring to a Black American as "colored" was a far cry from what the rest were calling them--namely, "niggers." It's shameful, all of it, I know. I can assure many readers out there that the Amish still use this term when referring to Black people, but they hate most all outsiders whom they refer to as a bloc called "the English" (English-speakers).

She meant well, but it came out very-very wrong. People make mistakes, like getting tit-jobs. This is getting down to human anthropology here, it is what it is, but I don't think Lohan meant anything derogatory by it, she's just young and naive, and apparently gay for now. Great, now many Black Americans are really gonna hate her now...did I mention that she has poor taste in friends? That too.

Ed Gein (2000) review

Modern American horror began on November 16th, 1957 in a little farming community named Plainfield, Wisconsin: This movie gets a lot more criticism than it generally deserves. Indeed, it is extremely low-budget, but it basically nails the whole point of Ed Gein better than anyone ever has, or possibly ever will. What seems to disappoint most people is the fact that the film sticks so closely to the story of what actually happened, rather than the speculations and additions. Not that Eddie didn't kill anyone, mind you...

The reality is, Ed Gein was not a serial killer in any respect, and murdered only two women whom he may have felt resembled his dead mother. It's unknown factually beyond that, though he might have killed his brother in an argument when both men were hunting. The photograph to the right is of the body of his second victim, Bernice Worden. What he is most remembered for, in reality, are the ghoulish excavations he committed, and his "articulations" of dead bodies.

It's very difficult for us to imagine in our current era how much of a bombshell Ed Gein was in late-1950s America. People didn't talk about mental illness or domestic abuse in those days. In fact, it's my own humble opinion that we still haven't entirely coped with the knowledge of such aberrant-behavior.

Why do people do such things? There really are no answers here, which can a very disturbing reality in a modern world that appears to have explanations for nearly everything. But sometimes, there are no clear answers. The makers of "Ed Gein" have shed some much-needed light on what is really known about Gein's metamorphosis into a full-blown ghoul. Surprisingly, a great deal of the psychological subtext of his life has leaked-into films "based" on his "true story."

Most successful of all--naturally--is Hitchcock's "Psycho," but Steve Railsback and Chuck Parello have shown us a very clear scenario into why Ed Gein became the man we know-of today. Gein was basically bisexual and had a strong desire to BE a woman, like his domineering mother. Gein's real problem was being schizophrenic, however. The addition of the strident religious fanaticism of his mother probably didn't help, as many sufferers hold a fascination with the cosmological.

As stated in "Psycho" so well, he wanted to "...become his mother," in a sad-attempt to "bring her back to life." His father was a pathetic drunk, and as is well-known, his mother had a god-like dominance (coupled with religious-fanaticism and sociopathological attitudes) over the young boy. Ed was also deeply traumatized by an incident on the family farm where he saw his parents slaughtering a pig--Ed was unable to assist them, and was often called a "panty-waist" by his mother.

The incident, and a few others, are reenacted convincingly by Parello and company, and much of the film takes-place in Gein's head (where it belongs). Feeding his insanity with detective pulp-magazines, published accounts of cannibalism and head-hunting in the South seas, and a deep fascination with the Holocaust and war crimes committed under the Third Reich, it was clear that Ed Gein was obsessed with death. In time, he would attempt to embrace and control it, wearing the tanned-skins of cadavers that he had stolen from a nearby cemetery. Ed Gein was a ghoul, not a serial killer, and he sometimes wore the skins taken from these bodies so he could be a woman. Insofar as anyone can tell, all the "parts" came from deceased women.

Also interesting is the story behind Gein's brother Henry and his mysterious death. While it could be viewed as speculative, it's known that Henry was found dead (allegedly of a heart attack while hunting) with bruises to the back of his head. A fire had been started around his body, pointing-to Gein again, as he must have panicked after murdering his brother and either tried to dispose of the corpse or create a scenario that would explain-away his involvement.

The film also speculates on whether Gein fed human flesh to people he knew--this is unknown, but some of the stories around Plainfield attest that he did, and that hunting deer was repugnant to him. The detail is pretty amazing, with some incredible asides by Railsback that add to our understanding of Ed Gein. One scene has Gein at the local watering-hole mentioning how he'd like to have a sex-change, which was explosive news at that time, from Sweden.

This event --like nearly all others in the film--really happened, and Gein's comments were taken as they often were: a joke, that he was pulling everyone's leg. That's how Ed Gein was viewed--a leg-puller, an oddball flake and a shitter. He wasn't taken seriously, which is why it was so hard for people in Plainfield to comprehend what he was up to out at the farm.

There are a few continuity errors: the headlights of a car are clearly from the 1990s in one insert-shot, and there are a few moments where the production design could have been closer to what 1950s America looked like. But, all-in-all, what you have here is the definitive film on Ed Gein. It's all here, in all its pathetic glory. This is what happens when someone is neglected by family and society, both spiritually and medically; this was simply a sick man who needed help. Nobody did so until it was too late, leaving just another example of how we are not a very proactive culture.

It's telling that Augusta never had her son taken to get help, and one has to assume she was also deranged in a way that found expression in the sickest, darkest pages of the Bible--especially her fixation on the Book of Revelations, a tome that should be read as metaphor only. None of this is sexy and exciting to gorehounds and thrill-seekers who come to a film like this, not to learn something, but merely to stimulate their hunger for viscera. Grow-up.

An excellent film! How can you lose with ole' Steve Railsback, anyway? He bankrolled this one, and it was a wise move, they got a lot of bang for their buck. If the movie says anything, it's how insensitive we were as a culture at that time. Hardly anyone thought it that strange that Ed Gein had shrunken-heads hanging from his bedroom walls. His excuse was taken at-face-vaule: he'd gotten them from a relative who had fought in the Pacific during WWII.

Trophies of this sort were common, but should have been taken as a good example of the sickness and psychopathology of their owners. During the late-1950s, people might have thought it odd, but rarely would have blinked over it. That's how sick a culture we were at that time, and we aren't out of the woods surrounding Plainfield yet. We haven't coped entirely with Ed Gein as a culture yet, let alone Jeffrey Dahmer. Pity poor Ed, he's earned it.

Postscript: It seems possible Mr. Railsback was a target-for-death of Robert Blake at one time!

Tobe Hooper's Mortuary (2005) review

This was just so much fun, not perfect, but a lot of fun. People are still expecting Tobe Hooper to direct another Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is too bad, because this is a really enjoyable horror movie. It has a lot of great B-movie atmosphere, hot chicks, small town punks and some original gore concepts that left me feeling repulsed and violated. In other words, it's a very successful low-budget horror movie.

The idea of a conscious fungus colony is pretty creepy, gross, and horrific! Living-ooze is definitely a Lovecraftian theme, and some parts of the small town's back story resemble "The Colour Out of Space", "The Dunwich Horror", and a little bit of "The Outsider." Besides, what could be more primal than living-ooze? That's what we used to be, and where we'll eventually return (we appear obsessed in achieving this). Mortuary shares some similarities with Lucio Fulci's "The House By the Cemetery," one of the best "cursed house" films outside of the original "Haunting" (1963) or the "Legend of Hell House" (1973).

There are also a few nods to Hooper's "Poltergeist" (1982), and "Eaten Alive" (1976), and 1998's "Phantoms." This really is just a very funny and creepy ride that a normal family can watch together. It doesn't have any great statements to make and a lot of it isn't new, but the combinations in it are new. Let's be honest: sometimes it's just good to have some fun with the genre.

Denise Crosby was really great as the single mom who moves her poor family to a cruddy little California town for a job as the new mortician. They find a really rundown old mortuary that literally rests on an island of muck--we know we're in for some grim, dirty horror here, and Hooper and his collaborators deliver. Greg Travis returns from the Toolbox Murders (2003) as a shady local businessman who rents the accursed property to unsuspecting tenants. His foppish gimp character laughs all the time, creating a genuine sense of unease. All the characters are well-drawn and likable with a few notable-exceptions, so those characters "die" early-on as we hope for them to as horror fans.

What's impressive is howHooper's characters all seem to act as real people do, like Dan Byrd's as the son, he's very believable. "Normal" behavior and conformity are the targets of the film, and as is standard in a Tobe Hooper movie, they're the fodder for some spot-on social satire.

While the film is a light-horror with lots of black humor, the plot line is actually very grim. Many online reviewers have expressed anger at the climax of this film, calling it a "cheap ending," but I don't see this at all. Was it supposed to be a Spielberg ending where everyone's safe and happy? That would be a "cheap" ending. Did I mention the girl with the Kool-Aid hair looked pretty hot?

But, honestly, could the ending be any more unexpected? Horror has its conventions (no, not the merch ones), there are only so many, and the only options left are to mix-things-up. How is this movie any different from any 1970s-80s indie horror? Texas Chainsaw Massacre looks better with hindsight, but it was very cheaply done and only meant as entertainment. The same applies here. No, what many so-called "horror fans" expect is a predicatable, safe ending that doesn't go in new directions. Horror fans have been criticizing Hooper for revitalizing and redefining horror for a very long time. You can't please everyone. What angered many viewers was the fact that characters they liked and identified with died in a way that negated their identities.

Usually, in an American horror movie, the characters who aren't sympathetic die quickly and the "good" characters survive for the most part. Yes, it is the much reviled American optimism. Not many American horror directors allow sympathetic characters to die-off completely or have their identities taken over or destroyed (like the original "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers"). It's in the indie productions or Asian and European horror that this occurs in the story if it does at all.

We remember John Carpenter's "The Thing" (1982) because he breaks this rule again-and-again, even to the very end of the film. Knowing the rules helps! At the time, many people were angered by this but it's part of the original short story by John W. Campbell Jr. from 1938.

There is aboveground horror, and there is underground horror like Campbell and Lovecraft, Bloch, Derleth, etc. We know there are some things that you just don't do in a mainstream film, which is exactly why they should be done in horror. To do horror well, you have to betray the audience.

The only way for horror to progress is by a violation of contemporary taboos and a knowledge of what works in the genre. Killing the heroes certainly works, and that's too bad for those who feel emotionally betrayed by the authors of a movie. The ending of Mortuary was just a fun fake-out. There were two other scenes that stood-out: the infected mother robotically serving the kids dinner in a parody of domesticity and the scene in the subterranean well where the role of the "authority figure" gets deconstructed...literally.

As in "Funhouse" (1981), Hooper makes his infected completely mechanical and insane, replaying his own fear of the mechanistic nature of the universe. What could be more fearful than something that cannot be reasoned with?

The latter-scene was a nod to parts of his own "Invaders from Mars" (1986), his remake of the 1953 classic. If you hadn't noticed, most of Hooper's films center threats to a family unit in some way, or one family threatening another. He makes some pretty interesting comments on the family in his films and not all of them are sympathetic. This film just supports his countercultural credentials, and people get irritated by his jabs or when they simply don't get it. Sometimes, that's the whole point. Learning the horrible truths of our lives isn't supposed to be a pleasant experience.

The only major complaint I have with Mortuary is that some of the CGI effects could have been better. Some of sequences drew too much attention to themselves, but overall of they were pretty good considering the film cost less than $1 million when it was made. As much as it costs, why not do a few matte paintings and miniatures in the real world? It might look a lot better and could have even cost less. Another weak moment here was the scene in the mortuary where some accident victims "reanimate," and it could have been staged better, it looks hurried. Overall, the Mortuary looks great and has a very solid cinematography, it looks very assured. The real "star" of the film is the house, real location that was once the home to one of California's first senators. You can't replicate real decay and grime.

Nearly every small town has a local boogeyman story like the "Bobby Fowler" character, haunted places, and the cemetery surrounding the mortuary house was well-drawn: an accursed place of death where nothing grows...but something there feasts on the dead and the living underneath the earth. The townsfolk whisper rumors of the Fowler place and warn of its dangers after dark. Local folklore has it that the last family to live there vanished, perhaps devoured by the land itself. Even their cattle became sick and mysteriously wasted away. Time passed, and after the biggest rain in fifty years, something has reawakened to feast again on the town and its inhabitants. This is a portrait of a town that's literally decaying from the inside-out.

Hooper seems to enjoy portraying people in disintegrating social roles (cop, mother, punker, movie reviewer, skater, girlfriend, employee, businessman, sibling, goth, metal head, authoritarian, homosexual, criminal, judge, manager, wife, husband, etc.) portraying them all as a form of living-death, but who can complain when this is how we chose to "live"? The anarchist in me loves watching identities in free-fall, seeing conformity collapse abruptly beneath its own paradoxes.

All-in-all, Mortuary was just entertaining (I know, the end of the world!), with a few jolts and some effectively disgusting makeup that can only be achieved with almost no budget. The tone gets more-and-more hysterical and bizarre which is what I expect from Tobe Hooper. This is the same level of filmmaking he was at when he did Eaten Alive, and it's a low-budget attempt but very solid. The origins of the zombification were pretty original and there were some moments of greatness in the imagery. I'm a sucker for graveyards.

This is another great addition to the works of Tobe Hooper and he has nothing to be ashamed of here. The Echobridge entertainment DVD is excellent, with a 53 minute featurette, a great widescreen transfer, and even a commentary track and DTS-sound. Mortuary is a horror film for the family, and it's fun to watch. That's all it ever claimed to be: A decent B-movie horror with a some shocks. Nobody sets-out to make a masterpiece, they just do. Mortuary is a good reminder that everyone you've ever looked up to can be wrong, and that some people are just doomed from the start.

Revised, 12.01.2008