WARNING: Today’s thought is short and may be a bit disjointed because I am still on the mend.
I wasn’t feeling all
that great yesterday. I woke up with a headache that steadily evolved into a
full on Godzilla type migraine by the end of the day. I didn’t realize how bad
it was until I was playing Boo-Opoly with one of my residents and I couldn’t remember
how to play the game. I knew I had to go home then.
The headache didn’t surrender when I got home, so I made some toast to feel
better, but after I dropped 2 slices because I couldn’t remember how to hold
things I decided to just go lay down. I couldn’t read cuz my eyes were all
wibbly but I needed something to distract myself. So of course I chose a horror
documentary and what do you know, I felt loads better after watching it. I
think it was because my brain identified with all the gory stuff on screen.
Creatures popping out of stomachs, alien life forms morphing out of dogs, King
Kong squishing someone, yup, that’s what my head felt like on the inside.
Finally, someone understands.
The documentary is a TV
series on AMC called Eil Roth’s History of Horror and it is in its second
season. People in the genre comment on a selection of topics for an hour and it
is so interesting to get their input. The segments aren’t nearly long enough but
they are so, so good and I do love me some
history.
In the various segments
they sometimes have my favorite movie critic Leonard Maltin and one of my favorite
writers, Stephen King. That man has a way with words that makes me want to cry,
both out of a deep sense of inadequacy and for the fact that he is just that
good. He can write long things, short things, scary things and thought
provoking things. Back in the day, if you picked up a copy of Entertainment
Weekly (now Monthly) and flipped to the very back page, he had some fantastic
things to say about modern day pop culture. He is just great, and where Bram
Stoker and Mary Shelley left off, Mr. King has picked up the slack. He doesn’t
to my knowledge throw scary costume balls like Anne Rice, but he has helped to
make October a very spooky place.
Consider some of my
favorites:1408 (which totally made me never want to stay in a hotel room
again), Apt Pupil (which gave me a fear of ovens) Carrie (which made me laugh
and cheer) Christine (which was the reason that it took me 25 years to drive a
car......not really but it sounds plausible) Cujo (which just plain freaks me
out, dogs are supposed to love people not eat them) Dolores Claiborne (which
made me fear housewives and wells) Firestarter (which made me fear blonde
children) The Green Mile (which touched my heart and made me cry) Insomnia
(which totally got bootlegged from my life........ya know, minus the whole mass
murder part) The Lawnmower Man (which made me fear computers, toasters, mowers
AND the telephone) Misery (which just made me love Kathy Bates that much more
and made me terrified to ever get famous) Needful Things (which just made me
laugh and laugh and laugh) The Secret Window (which kept the laughter going)
The Shining (which made me deeply afraid of hotels, made me proud of Timberline
Lodge, kept me out of bathtubs and freaked me out about little boys with bowl
cuts, big wheels and twins) and the Stand which was just too long but helped me
to spell the word MOON.
So yeah, thanks to Mr.
King I am just a big ball of neurosis. But you get over it, sort of, and wait
until the next one comes. My order for you today, go out, find a book, movie,
short story of Mr. Kings and scare yourself silly, then just repeat after me,
“there is no such thing as monsters, there is no such thing as
monsters.....................;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment