What are you feeding my dogs?

Something about this exchange which took place earlier today made me squeel with delight in the knowledge that I have at last begun to unravel every major mystery in the known universe. 

The last two episodes of the second season of television program Hannibal have included two of my favorite moments of the series and in recent television history.  Episode 11 – entitled Ko No Mono – contained such a beautiful, tear-inducing intimate conversation between Will and Hannibal, discussing Abigail, time and philosophy.  It summed up so much of the intellectual and emotional heart of the series which keeps me frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog who has just mauled a child because his government funded leech parents weren’t paying attention and let him run all over the damn neighborhood while they watched something on their 75” widescreen TV and chatted with their friends on their new iPhones for each new episode.  And then episode 12 – entitled Tome-wan – finally showed Mason’s fate.  It was something fans of the books and movies already knew would happen but that only made the anticipation greater.  And it was delightfully brutal, once again striking that perfect balance of horror, gore and absurd black comedy.  This show was made for me.  Tonight is the season 2 finale and I may cut off my own face in anxiousness.

 

I awoke on my sofa sometime after midnight after falling asleep while watching William Friedkin’s 1977 film Sorcerer.  This is no indictment against the film as I was quite tired at the time.  However I awoke with a very palpable feeling of dread.  I did not want to leave the living room for the bedroom but I was expected.  She was waiting but I was somehow certain there was going to be someone or something else other than her in that bedroom.  I heard a man’s voice from behind the door, guttural and almost mocking.   For some reason I still opened the door and only saw her lying on the bed, her face masked by the darkness.  Despite the familiarity of her presence I did not feel any comfort and part of me wondered if that was really her at all or she had been replaced by some kind of doppelganger.  I lay down next to her and tried my best not to cry.  Something else was in there with us.  A few minutes later she stood up from the bed and left the room without saying a word.  I knew what would happen next.  I know the door would fling back open again and things would come inside and they would join me on the bed.  I would be having sex with monsters and they would get inside my head and inside my body.  Their skin was red and they wore black robes.  I was too frightened to ever scream.  They chanted things I could not understand.  I think for a moment I was floating.  My hands clutched the sheets and trembled along hot and rough skin.

Astute followers of my work no doubt noted with much anguish the extensive preamble I gave to the film Dracula 3D in Monday’s blog post (here is a helpful link for any new fans http://creamybrandenblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/where-have-all-brides-gone.html   ) while not following through with a proper review. 

I continue to be stunned by the sheer amount of garbage we prioritize on a daily basis.  This cannot be what was intended.  So many artificial people running around and screaming and judging and fucking, everyone so deeply loves the exchange of body fluids.  You are so grotesque, so unbelievably disgusting but I guess that is true about the rest of us as well.  What useless things we all are.  How can anyone take pride in the bullshit they do every day when none of it means anything?  How can anyone care when it is all so empty?  Fucking pathetic, every last bit of it. 

Sunday I tuned in to the Billboard Music Awards despite my searing hatred for awards and billboards.  My chief motivation was to see Shakira perform her song “Empire”.  Upon deeper reflection and examining the darkness of my soul I now realize this was my sole motivation.  Yet my world was thrown into chaos as I did know when the Colombian songstress was going to perform.  As such it was by complete accident that I watched Iggy Azalea’s performance of her song “Fancy”.  My initial reaction was a frozen state of abject horror.  Yet after roughly one minute – 60 seconds for all you time fans out there (my jungle love!) – my subjugation (incorrect usage) swiftly turned into adoration.  Simply put, I fell in love with the song.  Everything from her 80’sesque flow to her gangsta tude’ to the sexy chorus by pop charmer Charli XCX all contributed to a song which left me in a state of hippity-hop delirium.  And yes, I am well aware that all the true hardened urban music loving homies and g’s out there will dismiss this tune as so much faux rap drivel but if I cared what they think then I wouldn’t have started that infamous gangland war in east L.A. last year where no less than 89 people lost their lives with over two hundred more being hospitalized and roughly 3.5 million dollars racked up in property damage.  But damnit, I still think we can bring back our fair city.  If we can just cut through all the bureaucracy and peck away at the knees of Big Business we can clean up the streets and make sure no child ever has to walk to school afraid ever again.  Basically, what I’m saying is that for the past 5 days I’ve done but walk around with a smirk and say “Who that? Who that?  I-G-G-Y.  Who that?  Who that?  I-G-G-Y.”  This made some of my co-workers band together and form an elaborate plan to discredit me in a public venue, frame me for embezzling millions of our tax dollars and insure that I end up in a federal prison where I will be penetrated covertly (just as our army does to Middle Eastern countries) on a nightly basis.  Azalea’s studio album debut is entitled The New Classic and it is a foregone conclusion that I will purchase this album and listen to it while driving in my car to go visit my formerly estranged daughter at her new ocean view penthouse where she lives with her fiancé who is a hotshot CEO at a cutting edge software company.  I’ll wrap my arms around her in a fatherly hug and tears will well up in my eyes as I beg for forgiveness yet again for all the softball games missed and all the letters not written during all those lonely Christmases. 

 “What do you think of the painting Lavender Mist by Jackson Pollock?” I asked.

“I like lavender,” she said.

Where have all the brides gone?

It seems I have reached an impasse. 

The other day while driving around and imagining how mutilated my corpse would look depending on what nigh-unmovable structure I chose to slam the car into I decided to take a pause and head on over to Ye Olde Best Buy.  Upon arrival I sprinted to the movie section with all the grace of a man literally on fire sprinting for a ham sandwich at an all-night diner but I eventually arrived relatively unscathed.  Even though I knew full well where stood the horror section I still asked a kind-faced, khaki wearing clerk for directions to test his mettle.  His immediate verbal direction and accompanying pointing finger was as humbling as it was helpful. 

And so I stood there gazing at the racks, waiting until it leapt out as I knew it would.  There it was: Dracula 3D as directed by Italian horror maestro Dario Argento – he of such classics such The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red and of course Suspiria.  The film had bounced around the convention circuit for the better part of last year before finally making its way to blu-ray in this year of our Lord twenty-fourteen.  I virtually heard nothing but horrible things about this flick.  Literally everything from the acting to the special effects, set design, lighting, general direction and 3D effects (which sadly I would not be able to enjoy due to my heartbreakingly impoverished lifestyle which does not permit me to buy a 3D television set) had received the most trenchant of criticism.  This alone would have ensured a purchase by yours truly but what made it a particularly special and personal kind of buy was my love for the director.  Those aforementioned films (and many others) have provided me with untold hours of enjoyment.  It is true that his status of a horror master faded years ago and the quality of his output for the past two decades would make anyone call into the question the validity of his famed and respected reputation.  Yet I am someone who can savor Mother of Tears as much as Inferno and so this purchase was made with refreshingly un-ironic love and fandom.  The fact that it stars his daughter Asia Argento – whom I have been in love with for untold centuries – also surely helped in making this buy a wholly satisfying experience. 

And so it was that I sat down on my bourgeois sofa (after playing a game of hide-and-seek with  a woman of Colombian and Arabic descent) and began consuming a short stack of blueberry pancakes while viewing Dracula 3D. 

My above sentence reminds of the fantastic first 10 issues or so of Ben Edlund’s comic book The Tick.  If any of my dear readers have any interest whatsoever in things which will enrich their lives they owe it to themselves to seek out this work (in one of its many editions) and read it cover to cover.  Beautiful line work and masterful comic – both in the comedic and in the sequential art sense of the word - writing.  I recall loving the cartoon as a child but do not remember much of it at all.  However I do recall there were some fantastic action figures which were released when the cartoon was in its day of hay.  There was even a special bendable gold colored Tick figure which was individually numbered and limited to only 2,500.  One of the great personal tragedies of my life is I actually saw one of these figures at a Toys R’ Us department store and failed to act.  It was a gorgeous thing to behold and I coveted its greatness; I wanted to own it.  Yet for some reason I opted not to make the purchase.  I cannot recall if this was due to a simple fiscal dilemma such as the then continually decreasing value of the American Dollar or if I was too intimidated by its beauty; my avarice failing to compensate for my other glaring inadequacies.  Regardless of the reason – and I think it is quite telling that the reason has left my memory while the yearning ache still remains strong as ever – I left the Gold Tick there on the rack and I would never see it again.  This failure has haunted all my days.  Very recently I discovered a Gold Tick on the online auction and shopping website eBay.  Once again I was faced with the same choice, the same chance to shape my destiny into something greater.  But once more I decided against making the purchase.  However this time I had a reason and the decision not to make the buy was a self-imposed punishment that I may never forget the consequences of cowardice and hesitation.  Thusly, I remain entrenched in my own personal hell where the brilliant sight of a Gold Tick always remains in the distance; teasing and taunting, I hear its siren song but know it can never truly be mine.

Here is a link for you to see a Gold Tick with your own eyes.  Look.  Look and see.  See what I've denied myself.  See what I've lost....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Tick-Gold-Metallic-Bendable-Action-Figure-from-Gordy-Toy-Limited-2500-Made-/171310317197?pt=US_Action_Figures&hash=item27e2e3fe8d

I recently purchased the new Lacuna Coil album and listened to it while coming home from a brief trip wherein I decided the fates of no less than 5 people.  It can be truly said my first exposure to this band came from a woman who was living in a tee-pee in a park at the time and scarcely had more than a pair of shoes and a very expensive water purifier to her name.  I look back on her with fond, wistful sentiment.  I know now she is in a more economically stable point in her life.  But is it a better point?  That is the sort of question which keeps me up well into the blackest hours of the night. 

One thing in one of these paragraphs is a complete lie but I am far too much of a gentleman to specify.  Though if any of my followers have the guts to corner me on the street and stick a knife in my engorged belly I may have no choice but to elucidate. 

Did the world just explode?

The poodles never bothered me

The real problem is that almost no one truly knows what they want or what is good for them.  More government interference and control is necessary.  I would like to record a concept album extolling the virtues of increased government control.  There are too many distortions present in mass media today and I am constantly afraid of people I see on the streets, people who live near me. 

So many terrible truths revealed. 

I am forgetting the face of my father.  I am knowingly living in sin.  There are no deals which can be made and I will not allow myself to believe otherwise.  I have disappointed you and I repeatedly disobey and tarnish everything you have created.  I sometimes like to consider the first time you smiled upon me. 

Also, Ang Lee’s Hulk from 2003 with Eric Bana is light years better than Louie Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk with Ed Norton from 2008.  I honestly challenge anyone and everyone in the entire world to watch both of these within a week and try and say with a straight face that The Incredible Hulk is a superior film.  In these days where superhero blockbusters run serious dangers of becoming nothing more than anonymous corporate chuff the original Hulk movie feels even more unique and more like a genuine artistic statement while the newer – and already more forgotten – film feels as weightless and sluggish as the worst of these movies.  The original was very much ahead of its time.  I will take all comers and welcome much discussion.  If need be I’ll devote 10,000 words to why I feel Lee’s film is greater. 

I see changes all around me, everything moving so much faster than before.  There is a wildfire coming for us.  Life has become like glass.  I cut myself and the skin does not heal as it did before and I do not know why.  They came into my room again last night and I screamed but I could not move and they took me with them. 

The dynamism and influence of Jack "King" Kirby’s work can never be overstated.  Kirby’s art is the exact opposite of my life: it is vital, beautiful and necessary. 

Can you feel my power?  I screamed this over and over again.  They all looked so terrified.  Sometimes I have moments where I forget who I am and sometimes I have moments where I become someone else.  There is such mutilation.  Why do I see these things?  There was a tiger looking at me last night as while I lay in bed.  I think it was a tiger.  I cry and my hands shake.  Someone is putting these things inside of me they are inside of me and they make my head hurt and my stomach hurt and they make awful things happen and I am so scared I do horrible disgusting things because of them and my body stains everything please let me go please don’t make me do this again please don’t come inside of me anymore I don’t know what to do no one believes me but they want to take me away to where they are from they have changed my body and my sex and I am something else and my face is burning. 

I must confess I have only ever read one comic strip of Mother Goose and Grimm but I find the art style to absolutely delightful and it makes me want to read all the thousands of strips which have been produced since its inception. Perhaps one day I will have the courage to do so.  The strip above is genius.  

I have seen you before.  It begins in the span of a few seconds.  I wonder how long it took for her to create the universe.   We travel across the dimensions and our trajectory marks out a line which divides them all.  You made a garment from the clouds and how it longed to finally cling to your body.  Are my desires so improper?  Is it ever supposed to be just one?  Where were you at the moment of my birth?  When I entered this world were you looking down upon me?  Were you smiling and did you hold me in your arms?  Was it your kiss which created everything beautiful inside of me?  Temptation is a wonder.  Our bodies are entwined and we dance to sweet music of angels.  There is harmony and bliss and I realize I have never known such splendor.  The morning stars heard her voice and all began to sing.  The children danced as my heart wept with joy.  Everything beginning again.   

Last night I purchased the James Bond movie Thunderball on blu-ray at a local conglomerate.  It has been years since I first viewed this feature film and I cannot remember anything other than the fantastic titular song by Tom Jones so I am not sure if I will even enjoy this film.  Still, something buried deep within compelled me to make the purchase, something big and mean and scary.  Speaking of which, many of the classic Godzilla movies – all iterations from the black-and-white original classic to the recent Millennium series – were released on blu-ray this Tuesday and I scooped up 5 of those films.  Godzilla movies make me so happy.  I am still cautiously optimistic about the new flick which opens next week.  I know I will be there opening day with my eyebrows shaved and sporting my Godzilla thong underwear.  I hope it does not disappoint.  So much of my life has been marked by disappointment.  That is why I so frequently imagine tying barbells to my legs and jumping into the river.  I enjoy the thought of looking up as I sink ever deeper in the murky depths and seeing the sun gradually eclipsed by an inescapable darkness.  I knew an old sailor once.  He told me he went overboard, tangled in the sails.  They pulled him out but it took him 5 minutes to cough.  He said it was like going home. 

When the mystery is over everyone dies.