This is really great.
I'd totally put small rectangles of dark wood beneath the dirt....like old coffins.
Image source.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Cemetery In A Jar
The Eyes
I grew up with a constant supply of Scar Stuff, Vampire Blood, and Glow Goop. The Scar Stuff and Vampire Blood were pretty much related, waxy cousins, since one was almost always used with the other. Making a scar and then adding that weird thick toothpaste-like squeeze of Vampire Blood down the middle was magic. Then you'd show your mom and hope she fainted. But she never even gasped. Not even a little.
The Glow Goop was tricky. There aren't many uses for it. And you had to "charge" it first under a light. And then run to a dark place to experience the glowy joy.
Then my father brought home a lamp for our bedroom. My brother and I hated it. Plucked from someone's trash who had better sense than my father. A neighbor's trash. I guess their kids outgrew it, and it was now our turn.
It looked a lot like this. Same concept, but the fisherman's face on ours was wider and older.
So one night, before bed, we stuck two little blobs of Glow Goop on each of the Fisherman's eyes. The lamp was doing its thing, charging the Goop so the statue's new eyes would glow nice and bright.
Then we turned off the light and tried to sleep. Of course we stared at the eyes - two pale green orbs. Watching us. I'm sure we were commenting that it was "cool" no doubt. At first. Then rolling over and trying to ignore the thought of those eyes. Watching. I'd turn over briefly to fix my sheet....watching. I'd close my eyes and tell myself I'd keep them shut, and then slowly open my eyes....watching. Like one of Blake's men from THE FOG, now that I think about it.
It didn't take long for us to have that lamp back on and be scraping that Glow Goop out of his sockets with our nervous fingers. Though residue remained for quite a long time. Like months.
And we learned to live with tiny pale green eyes....watching.
Incense
When I'm building props in the yard or the garage, I've gotten into the habit of burning a few incense sticks while I work.
And always on Halloween night.
I've promoted these before and wanted to mention this company again. In my experience, the finest incense sticks around. With none of that base-note generic incense smell, just the scent on the label.
I've been burning Anise, Licorice, Clove, and Dirt. Those four scents should be combined on a stick and called Halloween.
Click below:
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
Green Fairy Elixir [Candy]
My brother gave me a pack of these awesome absinthe sweets.
The taste is dark and peculiar, and it's actually made with the mysterious green stuff.
all-things-italian.com
Thursday, June 7, 2012
The October Game
The rich syrupy smell of sweets filled the bustling house. Louise had laid out apples in new skins of toffee; there were vast bowls of punch fresh-mixed, stringed apples in each door, scooped, vented pumpkins peering triangularly from each cold window. There was a water tub in the centre of the living room, waiting, with a sack of apples nearby, for dunking to begin. All that was needed was the catalyst, the impouring of children, to start the apples bobbing, the stringed apples to penduluming in the crowded doors, the sweets to vanish, the halls to echo with fright or delight, it was all the same.
Now, the house was silent with preparation. And just a little more than that.
Image by Joe Campanella.
Read the short story here.
The Dwarf
Aimee felt her heart beating. A full minute passed.
There stood the Dwarf in the middle of the small blue room. His eyes were shut. He wasnt ready to open them yet. Now, now he opened his eyelids and looked at a large mirror set before him. And what he saw in the mirror made him smile. He winked, he pirouetted, he stood sidewise, he waved, he bowed, he did a little clumsy dance.
And the mirror repeated each motion with long, thin arms, with a tall, tall body, with a huge wink and an enormous repetition of the dance, ending in a gigantic bow!
“Every night the same thing,” whispered Ralph in Aimees ear. “Aint that rich?”
Aimee turned her head and looked at Ralph steadily out of her motionless face, for a long time, and she said nothing. Then, as if she could not help herself, she moved her head slowly and very slowly back to stare once more through the opening. She held her breath. She felt her eyes begin to water.
Image from The Eyes of the Portland Monk blog.
The Next In Line
All of them had open mouths. Theirs was a perpetual screaming. They were dead and they knew it. In every raw fiber and evaporated organ they knew it. She stood listening to them scream. They say dogs hear sounds humans never hear, sounds so many decibels higher than normal hearing that they seem nonexistent. The corridor swarmed with screams. Screams poured from terror-yawned lips and dry tongues, screams you couldn't hear because they were so high.
Image by liberalmind1012.
The Martian Chronicles
The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmitted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness, their mouths fringed with nails so they resembled steel-toothed carnivores, spitting them into their swift hands as they hammered up frame cottages and scuttled over roofs with shingles to blot out the eerie stars, and fit green shades to pull against the night. And when the carpenters had hurried on, the women came in with flowerpots and chintz and pans and set up a kitchen clamor to cover the silence that Mars made waiting outside the door and the shaded window.
Painting by Raymond Chase.
From The Dust Returned
In May, MGM purchased the rights to Bradbury's From the Dust Returned.
More at dreadcentral.com
The Halloween Tree
They waited, sad for no reason, lost for no reason. They thought of Pipkin and a Halloween that might be a rotten pumpkin with a dead candle if, if, if -- Pipkin wasn't there. Come on, Pipkin. Come out and save the Night!
Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Something Wicked This Way Comes
For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth....Such are the autumn people.
Image by Rob Sheridan.
Dandelion Wine
It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.
Recipe here.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Ray Bradbury's Passing
Just learned of his death a moment ago.
I owe my love of short stories to that man.
And he helped make loving the High Holiday of Halloween feel a lot more legitimate.
Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury.
To Fall Into His Grave
The sky is growing lighter, showing her more of the graveyard around her: the corpses borne on the rising water, the maggot-ridden mud. Theophile's face yawns into hers. Rosalie struggles against him and feels his sodden flesh give beneath her weight. She is beyond recognizing her love now. She is frantic; she fights him. Her hand strikes his belly and punches in up to the wrist.
Then suddenly Theophile's body opens like a flower made of carrion, and she sinks into him. Her elbows are trapped in the brittle cage of his ribs. Her face is pressed into the bitter soup of his organs. Rosalie whips her head to one side. Her face is a mask of putrescence. It is in her hair, her nostrils; it films her eyes. She is drowning in the body that once gave her sustenance. She opens her mouth to scream and feels things squirming in between her teeth.
"My cherie Rosalie," she hears the voice of her lover whispering.
And then the rain pours down again.
Poppy Z. Brite, Wormwood
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
The Bridge Builder
An old man, going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep, and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.
"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"
The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."
W.A. Dromgoole
Fireplace
Found this strong-scented candle at Walgreens.
Earthy and incensy and perfect for inside a jack o'lantern on Halloween night.
And only $4.99
The Skeksis
Originally the Skeksis spoke an alien language based on ancient Greek and Egyptian, specially created for them by linguist Alan Garner. Jim Henson stated, "My whole approach to this film is visual. I wanted as little dialogue as possible because I believe the story is stronger that way. Dialogue becomes a crutch. If you have all these alien-looking creatures, why should they be talking in English? An early concept was to have the Skeksis just making noises, but in a way you knew what they were saying." Gary Kurtz responded to the non-English version stating, "The audience thought that they were missing something. Actually, they didn't need to understand the Skeksis' dialogue at those points. The translation of what was being said is really quite banal. The strength of those scenes was instinctively knowing what's going on...But the Skeksis scenes were quite long. You had to concentrate. The audience wasn't prepared to do that." The response of the test audiences led to the replacement of the Skeksis language with English dialogue.
From MuppetWiki
Monday, June 4, 2012
May's Project
I took the month of May off from blogging, and everything else, to get a big prop project completed. In late April, I was contacted by a director making an independent film who was interested in my work. I agreed to build 12 large props for his movie.
And May was a blur.
Here they are, crated and waiting for the truck to take them to California.
Unfortunately, that's all I can share at the moment.
But I'll definitely be providing updates when permitted.
Now Playing: Procession
The new album by the amazing Desiderii Marginis.
Absolutely love this one.
Click below for samples at Cyclic Law Records:
Currently obsessed with "Her Name Is Poverty."
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
Watched this great old Hammer film this morning.
Click below for the main theme:
Crossing-over
In late March, there’d been a sleet storm throughout north-central New Jersey. Her husband had died several days before. There was no connection, she knew. But since that time she’d begun to notice at twilight a curious glistening to the air. Often, she found herself in the doorway of her house, or outside, not remembering how she’d got there. For long minutes, she would stare as the colors faded and a glassy light emerged from the sky and from the Scotch pines surrounding the house. It did not seem to her a natural light, and in weak moments she thought, This is the crossing-over time. She watched, not knowing what she might be seeing. She felt aroused, vigilant. She felt apprehension. She wondered if the strange glistening to the air had always been there but in her previous, protected life she hadn’t noticed it.
Joyce Carol Oates, Pumpkin-Head
Image by alexisweiser.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Lucifer Rising
Jimmy Page's rejected score for the film Lucifer Rising.
Pretty amazing track.
Click below:
Thanks for the heads up, Ghastly. Never heard of this before.
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