Dapple, Bub.

auto-reversepsychology:

Shocktober
(click the link or the image above to hear the mix)

A knock that many of my film-snob friends and associates would hold against me is that I don’t have the horror movie pedigree that they all do. My horror genre introduction was at the almost exclusive courtesy of Empire Video Store in Crown Heights, BK and WPIX-11 in the pre-WB-cum-CW days. Back then, “New York’s Movie Station” was by far my favorite channel; particularly because of their tenth-month campaign known as “Shocktober.” Unlike most of my acquaintances who fondly recall being scared shitless by their childhood encounters with the genre, however, I always looked to the “Shocktober” lineup for refuge from a much more daunting reality.

Every October, WPIX would run the gamut of horror classics (and, let’s face it, hack-jobs) old and new. This is where I developed my taste for horror flicks. When I say I can’t take True Blood or the Twilight series seriously, it’s because I’ve seen The Lost Boys. I don’t confuse the “torture porn” selections du jour like Saw or Hostel with true horror movies like It and Nightmare on Elm Street. And anybody who’s seen truly nuanced, low-key superb acting in classics like The Thing knows that there’s no default “it’s just horror” excusability for lousy acting in scary movies; yet understands that cheesy performances don’t stand in the way of truly great late October party movies like Friday the 13^th. I may not have any rich backstories of horror fandom (other than seeing Child’s Play in-theater when I was five and having nightmares all weekend), but my love for old-school horror both good and bad is no weaker from having seen them all in my bedroom.

The true gap in my personal history (save the aforementioned Chucky fright) is that I was never actually scared by any of these flicks. What you have to understand is—I grew up in Brooklyn. Allow me to clarify, for those enmeshed in the tumblr-based romanticism culture of Williamsburg: I was not a midwest transplant—I grew up in 1990’s, pre-hipster Brooklyn.

A month into the first grade, we were issued printed memorandums in-class on the danger of group of deviants who were lacing candies and temporary tattoos with LSD and handing them out to small children, amused by the prospect of them going insane and requiring years of psychiatric treatment. Time progressed, and the nature of the All Hallows Eve threat escalated. Third grade was the first mention of sexual predators who dressed in costumes to lure in youngsters close enough to spirit them away to their basement photographic abuse studios. Junior High marked the onset of schools letting us out early on either the 31^st or the Friday before Halloweekend, urging us to get ourselves home before High School bullies were unleashed upon us with their arsenals of, concussing frozen eggs. Freshman year of H.S. introduced me to the citywide panic of Halloween gang-initiation rituals, which often involved our more criminal contemporaries committing curveball incursions against strangers of their own age; i.e. us. There was never any trick-or-treating; we could only commute to costume parties by gypsy cabs; I never even saw the famed Halloween parade until I was twenty years old.

Horror flicks at Halloween hold a larger space in my heart than any nostalgia or tradition could. They weren’t my “eureka” moment that inspired me to be a filmmaker. My undying affection for the genre isn’t borne out of a love of being in a state of piss-my-pants fright. Quite the opposite: during intimidating times spent in a dangerous place, scary movies were my security blanket.

ruchador:

solaravada:

whatisreal:

This hurt me to read. When are we going to start caring more about other human beings than we care about our precious, precious fear and hatred?

Because all gay people that commit suicide do it because they’re gay.

Right? Isn’t it incredibly offensive to limit a group by saying that the only problem they could ever have psychologically is their sexual orientation? That’s like saying if I ever made out with a shotgun, it’s because I can’t surf the Internet for more than six minutes without reading or hearing the word nigger eight-hundred and fifty-two times; as opposed to other types of equally “real-life” magnitude problems like running a business in the worst economic climate in eighty years. I’m certain that if any of my openly gay friends read this, they wouldn’t feel any empathy from the writing—they’d want to punch the author of it in the face.

The further implication that being straight is a default affront to homosexuality and the self-esteem of homosexual individuals is also ridiculous (at least). At the very most, however, it’s socially damaging to the folks who just want to be left alone with no greater sense of interest (including this sort of white-knighting) in their homosexuality than anyone else’s orientation. Here’s an idea—how about we all just learn to mind our own business and stop giving a fuck about who’s putting what where. The people who posted the images of Tyler Clementi didn’t push him to kill himself because he was having gay sex in those images; he killed himself because he was having sex in those images period. A pair of sociopaths who couldn’t mind their own business decided to breach another person’s privacy and literally laid him bare to the world. That would drive a person—regardless of sexuality—to suicide. You want to keep people from offing themselves? Minding your own fucking business is far more effective than convincing everybody that not cross-dressing is a hate crime. 

thisistheglamorous:

oldtobegin:pressdarling:ihatemyname:katreeeena

(via neurolobe)

ruchador:

chastinn:

fuckyesanime:

“we’ll be a dream”

ruchador:

—homeistheocean:

mutation-:

(via silverscents)

yellowblog:

vermouth:

tuckmeintonight:

youremykindofbeautiful:

itsnotyouitsme:

blossomclouds:

ayeevuh:

(via paigedanielle, soot-sprite)

this reminds me so much of you nickie :’) you made me one of these! XXXX