Writer: A Metamorphisis from Crazed Child to Desparate Blogger

I would like to think that I'm a creative individual. It's a lifelong goal of mine to get a piece of my work published and enter the pantheon of authors. As long as I can remember I have tried to come up with stories, mostly to entertain my young brain and to give me something to do when my parents were watching television, my brother was on the computer, and my Game Boy was out of batteries. I started with action figures. I would sit in my room (at the time without a television) and have Goku from Dragon Ball Z fight the Sandrock Gundam robot, then come up with some ridiculous story as to why there were resorting to fisticuffs. Why? I have no clue, but it gave me something to do. Eventually, I got a pro wrestling ring and made a fake wrestling federation with my wrestling action figures (with the occasional Digimon and Mighty Duck). I became the booker for my fantasy federation. Everyone had a story and a feud they were involved in. I would come up with a backstory to why Blastoise beat Triple H for the World Heavyweight Title, and why the Blue Power Ranger turned on his tag team partner the Green Ranger and crush his ankle with a Tech Deck. This also started me down the path of fantasy wrestling booker. An activity I still regularly engage in.

It seems stupid to me now, but it kept me entertained, and above all established a love of storytelling that stuck with me. I have all my action figures, minus the wrestlers and ring, sitting in a box in my basement. I even kept my favorite Digimon and two Gundam models in my room. I'm staring at them as I type this. They're simply too sentimental for me to throw away. They nurtured the creative side in me that's never gone away. I'm hoping one day to hand that box to my son and tell him to go nuts.


Eventually I got a TV in my room and stopped playing with toys. I was growing up dammit! No time for toys now...






So I moved on to playing more video games.







Oh and video games of the late 90's and turn of the century. Pure abominations! Shitty sharp polygonal graphics, atrocious audio that makes BrokeNCYDE sound like the London Symphony Orchestra, wonky controls, and storylines that often made no sense (or had no story at all).

So again I made up stories for the games I was playing. If for any reason, to justify why I was playing such a turd to begin with.



Time moved on and I started actually reading novels. Because I felt the need to impress my parents I never spent much time in the children's section at Barnes and Noble, and even as a sixth grader, the 'young adult' genre made me want to regret any urge I had about picking up a paperback.

I ventured into the Science-Fiction / Fantasy aisle instead. I became drawn to the epic covers of pulp fantasy books, they looked more like reading a video game than those Pendragon books in the kid/teen/tween/whatever section of the store. I picked up some book (I don't even remember) and showed it to my parents. They were impressed I wanted to read such large book with small print. It was way above my reading level at the time, but I wanted to take a stab at it anyway.

Reading these books gave me two things. First off, it showed me how expansive a story can be. Fantasy novels drop you in a setting and immerse you into a world (something I've tried to adopt in my writing) and leave you there in an expansive story arc that would often last three books. The second gift it gave me was a massive increase in my vocabulary. Not to blow my own horn, but I was always gifted with a large lexicon and from an early age I was very well spoken. Reading always gave me a new word to wiggle into my daily conversations in some subconscious way to impress and dazzle others.




7th grade then descended upon me, and I was in that awkward, geeky, self-discovery phase everyone encounters in middle school. I didn't want to do my work, I hated everybody, girls didn't like me, and I was going through that goth crisis that seemed to hit my town in 2003. It was like a prelude to the emo scene thing, only in my opinion, much much worse.

All I wanted to do with my time was dress in black, be 'misunderstood', not give a fuck, and maybe kiss a girl. There was no reason to read or do school work, certainly not a point in my life where I consider myself an intellectual, or even sentient at that rate.




Life sure is angsty and bleak during that time between your testicles dropping and palming your first tit.


It was during this time I picked up my first comic book. I found a copy of Art Spiegelman's Maus in my school's library. I read both volumes in two days. A month later a friend handed me a comic book that has changed my life both better and worse.





I was given Jhonen Vasquez's Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.




It could not have come at a more perfect time. I was a young misanthrope and the book stuck to me like Anne Rice on vampires. It was mind bending, ultra-violent, surreal, random, and most importantly, it made violence funny.


The collected graphic novel ran the circuit through all of my friends and eventually got destroyed by being in too many backpacks and lockers. We've replaced it over time. My copy is sitting to my left on a bookshelf stacked with all my other comics.





Both books had a deep impact on me. They showed me that comics could be more than just Spiderman saving Mary Jane, or Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. Comics could be anything and everything. Vasquez's artwork for Johnny showed me that I didn't have to be a great artist (something I always lacked) to make a comic. His drawings were crude compared to a Marvel or DC comic book. He relied more on shading and greyscale to convey emotion more than anything else.


After being near-obsessed with Johnny the Homicidal Maniac I decided the one thing I would try doing was draw comics. I began to keep a marble composition book with me at all times. During school I would scribble down thoughts for stories or write in a journal I labeled my 'Die-ary', an homage (or blatant rip off) of Johnny's journal in the comic. Clever no? I began drawing comics, mainly of people I didn't like at the time (which was everyone) getting killed. My style was an exact copy of Vasquez's as I couldn't really draw any better than he did, nor did I care to try and improve my technique. Eventually, by the time 8th grade rolled around I had decided that drawing wasn't for me, and I ditched the composition book in favor of scribbling ideas in the edges of my notebooks.



Around this time I started my first blog as well. I joined Xanga and started blogging about my interesting middle school life, which, as I gaze at this Xanga from yesteryear, was horribly boring. I also used too many ellipses. Really, every other word is punctuated with a "..."


I also copy and pasted lyrics to show how I was feeling...

It wasn't a great start to blogging, and there I go again with the ellipses. Shit.


I think I went through three Xangas. One apparently for every year of school (7th, 8th, and 9th grade). All about my life. Nothing of interest whatsoever.




After reading that Xanga I'm glad I stepped away from blogging and writing altogether. I was too self-absorbed. I channeled any hatred I had towards myself rather than the world, which, in my opinion, makes for 80% of the interweb's social and cultural bloggers. Perez Hilton hates himself I guarantee it, he just attacks Hollywood the same way I attacked Hot Topic.



Sidebar to Perez Hilton; Read this, I mentioned you in it. Give me a mention. It's proper netiquette, and I need the site traffic.




I took a break from writing period until this came along, well the King of Ants LiveJournal specifically, but you get it. I took a break from my pulp sci-fi / fantasy and started examining classics, as well as historical non-fiction to become better well-rounded. There wasn't any time to write in high school, and I was better off without it.


This helps my creative pangs that I get day to day. Writing a bit about Slasher movies is a lot quicker than a novella about pain, the internet, and machismo-driven consumer-culture.



Did I just give something away there?

The Vanguard: Horror Movies

So this is the debut of The Vanguard. In this column (well, the only column so far) I'll take whatever piece of culture that is ridiculed and bastardized and try and defend it for it's merits. Think of it as giving the beaten red headed step child the Annie treatment.


I debut the column discussing horror movies. Why such an odd debut? Because I will be attending the Monster-Mania Con in Cherry Hill, New Jersey later today.


That doesn't sound like good grounds for me writing an entire piece about horror films does it? Well considering the looks I get from people when I tell them I'm attending this convention, I'm more than sure this deserves some time.






We all love a good scare. Something that will make you jump, scream, look both ways when you open your door, and give you nightmares for weeks. Lord knows I do, and considering that the Saw franchise alone has grossed around the 350 million dollars in the United States, I'm sure you do too.

So why is it that the devout horror fans are ridiculed for their love of films everyone watches? We look down on them for whatever reason. They're gore-hounds, violence-fanatics, something clearly is wrong with these people.

Why are the rest of us are in the horror closet? Too ashamed to admit we crave the violence, the gore, the dismemberment, decapitations, eviscerations, cannibalizations, and complete terror these films give us that we treat them (and their fans) like giant jokes, only to secretly help that god awful Friday the 13th remake take in 19 million dollars on its opening day.



The dichotomy lies in society really. The reason we watch horror movies is because of the fear it brings us. The fear that we feel raises our adrenaline levels providing us with that same rush you get when you ride a roller coaster or vandalize someone's car. We're attracted to these films so easily because it gives us that rush without endangering us. A theater playing oh, say, A Nightmare on Elm Street, is the ultimate safe haven for someone still craving that rush.

Ok, so that's why we all love horror movies.



So why do some of us not show our love openly?

It's our society. A society that admonishes the very violence that makes up our lives. In the minds of the populous violence is the barbaric trait that separates man from beast. It is our duty as civilized individuals to repress any notion of violence we may have, no matter how instinctive it may be. It's people who believe violence is a virus rather than an instinct, who feel the need to repress it instead of find a creative (and safe) outlet for it. It keeps people who view and enjoy these movies from expressing themselves lest they become social pariahs.

Sorry, I got a little Reverend Lovejoy there.


It's because of the violence that horror movies are consistently regarded in having no class. Rodger Ebert has been quoted calling slasher films "Dead teenager movies" is a prime testament to this. As we all search to climb the ladder of social hierarchy, the last thing we want is to be bogged down liking Halloween H20, so instead we hide it.


What I've always found interesting about horror films is how the majority of people fail to see the social commentary that they can provide. After all, we look at the films of the past to analyze them for their social content, so why not horror movies? I'm not saying that EVERY slasher flick in creation has some deeper meaning hidden in it, but there are a few cases where there's some extra meat on the proverbial thinking bone. Scary movies are a true reflection of what society currently fears. What you see in the theaters and on your couches is a glimpse into what our collected conscious is afraid of. Art imitates life after all.

Take the Godzilla and B-monster movies (Try Them!) of the 1950's. Typically, they're stories about ordinary creatures ingesting some sort of vile nuclear ooze and becoming 120 feet tall and causing destruction. When released in the 1950's, these films capitalized on the public's fear of science in the fallout from the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II. The fear of the nuclear unknown and of science in general is what these drive-in classic symbolizes.


Not a real stretch right?

Consider the "Dead teenager" slasher movies that filled up cinemas all throughout the 1980's. Images of masked strangers stalking, hunting, and preying upon young adults and then killing them in the most gruesome ways. The big slasher movie boom occurred during a period when child abductions and kidnappings were at an all time national high. We were a culture of fear in the 80's, our greatest enemies were our next door neighbors, the boogieman, the fear that what you saw wasn't exactly true. American cinema reflected this by giving us Michael Myers, a demented killer who stalks suburbia, the one place families move to because they're deemed safer than the city. This theme is immersed in most slasher pieces of the era (Friday the 13th, My Bloody Valentine, Maniac, The Prowler, etc...). Wes Craven being the genius he is, wasn't happy with just those underlying themes. In his now classic entry to the genre, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Craven treated the film as an allegory for enlightenment, dealing with struggling through the last level of consciousness to achieve enlightenment.

For Craven, Freddy Krueger became the enemy that stops us on the path to nirvana. He was the final challenge one must face to either break through to enlightenment, or fall all the way back to step one (or in this case, get sucked through a bed). Craven has stated in interviews that he viewed the journey of Nancy in the first film as himself battling through his struggle to reach inner peace with the eastern religions he studied in the 80's.



Wes Craven is also to be credited for re-sparking the horror genre in the 1990's, which had grown dull, predictable, and boring, with Scream, Craven's attempt to satire the entire slasher wave of the 80's. His infusion of irony and parody mixed with classic genre elements are a fantastic example of meatier horror films of the last few years. Way better than Leprechaun in the Hood.





I know a lot of my defense here has been centered around the work of Wes Craven, but I'm giving premier examples of the genre to examine. I'm well aware that there are more than a fair share of horror movies that are crap-tacular.

My point is this; There are a lot of action movies that are shit too. Not every action movie is Die Hard, hell, just look at the filmography for Jean-Claude Van Damme. Comedy movies are the same way, you don't compare Animal House and You Don't Mess With the Zohan in the same sentence do you? No, you don't judge the genre as a whole, rather on a film by film basis, and horror should be no exception. I'm not going to try and find a way to rationalize Children of the Corn for you. I mean, I could, I'm very good at bullshitting symbolism and meanings of things, it's what's gotten me this far hasn't it? Some movies have no redeemable value other than to look at them and judge by what the film is discussing the overall status of the culture at that period when the film was made, I get that so there's no need to critique every movie. I'm aiming at the gold standards here.



I have nothing to say post-Scream honestly. This is where the genre has let me down and given holes in the defense I've so neatly assembled in the above paragraphs. The horror movies that aren't soulless remakes of past films do nothing but glorify gratuitous violence, which is all fine and dandy, but doesn't really give you much food for thought. I loved the first Saw movie. I thought it tapped in 21st century voyeurism and morals. The idea of the victim elaborately killing themselves instead of some mega killer slicing their throat's was intriguing the first time, just not the second, third, fourth, or fifth time, and the sixth time around won't be any different. Saw has become the consumer mass marker horror film like the ChildsFreddyWeenRaiser13th films did twenty years ago. A new one every year to add the same formula to the mix. The Saw franchise to me was always like the story they portray, they are slowly killing themselves for all of us to see. As I said above, unless it's a remake of an older film, new horror movies try not to deviate much from the Saw formula. The "torture porn" sub-genre of the splatter film is growing rather thin, therefore I don't have much to say about it. I know Eli Roth likes to think he's transgressive with Hostel, but he's not. He's just a sadist who can't make a good movie. Suck on it Roth.





This all comes from someone who isn't a horror movie buff. I just find the glares and stereotyping their fans receive irritating, so I opened The Vanguard to it.





And honestly, if your going to judge anyone for attending Monster-Mania Con, you better have some words for the thousand in attendance at this.

New Idea

I've done a poor job setting goals for what I actually want this blog to become. So far no one reads it and the only comment was on the opening post from fellow blogger and friend Michael Johnson (who opened a new blog, updated four times, and hasn't been seen since). My Twitter account which I thought would be used as a gateway for people to read this is usually filled with "@McFuckerton You Have a blog? Where!?" When it's in my page frequently.

I'm going nowhere fast, so being the idea machine I claim to be, I'm attempting to organize my thoughts into columns that I would type up instead of me just going on about something ridiculous. My problem has always been organization. I can come up with a million different topics or stories, but fail to execute them on paper. That's why figuring out what's coming next on here is like trying to read House of Leaves in the dark. It sucks, and is ultimately impossible.

My first thought was a column called The Vanguard where I'll defend topics, people, subjects, whatever that usually get bashed. In my opinion it's perfect. It has slowly dawned on me that I tend to be a fan of things that are generally looked down upon in the vast echelon we call pop culture. Expect pieces on the heavy metal genre, horror movies, pro wrestling, and anime in the near future.

That's not to say you, the reader can not influence what I write. If there's something you feel I should defend and write about you should comment or (more preferably) drop me a line on the Twitter @LobsterBloggerJ, and I'll strongly consider your idea as long as it's in the realm of reasonability and decency.


Ultimately, my goal is for this to actually have readers, and readers who will come back again and again, and communicate with me on how to make this project better.

On a side note there may be some talk about a podcast stirring with the above mentioned (and good friend of mine) Mr. Michael Johnson. We've worked together in the past (See Grief Digestion Theater) and seem to have a good ping-pong effect off one another. It maybe not be in an Abbott and Costello way, but in a way dammit.


That's all for now. Tomorrow I'll debut The Vanguard.