ARCHIVING
My Blogger dashboard looks like the tracklisting on a Napalm Death album so I've decided to kill a few more of the bastards off.
I'm going to ram a few older entries in here so please feel free to skip the following and go look at some porn or American flags or whatever else gets you off.
From The Ram Diary:
Better out in the open than sat inside festering like a nun's holy but ill used juicy bits....
LOST
I grew up in a Lancashire market town called Wigan. George Orwell put the place on the map in 1937 - I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt - but I didn't find myself there until 1972. I remember being small enough to still be holding my mother's hand as we walked around the market one Saturday. At some point I let go of her or she let go of me and when I reached out for her hand and grasped it there was an odd noise from above. I remember looking up and seeing a complete stranger looking down at me whose hand I was now squeezing. I let go and turned to find my mum only to find more strangers. Panic is a nasty thing when you are that young. It seemed to take hours for her to find me - probably minutes - and when she did I was a sobbing wreck. I have other memories of that market but they involve monkeys so I'll save them for a later entry. Recently I was killing time before a flight out of LA and found myself at Universal Studios. As I queued for the backlot tour a kid of about six grabbed my hand by mistake. Not having children of my own it was quite a surprise to have this grubby little hand suddenly wrapped around my own. I looked down at the wide eyes of a boy about six who dropped my hand as if it were a dead thing and shot back to his own family a few feet behind me. I smiled at his mother who was giggling at her son's embarrassment. I got into the car that was taking me to The Bates Motel and down to Amity and realised that I had come a very long way from Wigan.
THE HAND OF FRANKENSTEIN
I first saw the James Whale Frankenstein movies when I was really young. BBC2 used to show these late night horror double bills and every weekend I would go to bed terrified. I remember they showed wonderful stuff like Race with the Devil doubled up with old Vincent Price movies... Anyway, it was Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein that had the biggest hold on me. I haven't seen them in years but bought both of them on DVD just a few weeks ago in Australia. I'm waiting for a suitably windy evening to watch them back to back. Because of these movies I had recurring nightmares for years. It was just one scene that I invented but the setting was very much the Universal version of black and white eastern Europe. There's a wedding going on but I linger outside the church next to this large font. At some pint I realise that the thing is full of not water but soil. Then a hand claws its way to the surface and I wake up terrified. It doesn't seem like much but as a kid this thing was with me every night. Later on, more sophisticated horror movies scared the hell out of me (Night of the Living Dead especially) but it was the Frankenstein movies that have held their place as my number one scary friends. In college I got to study Mary Shelley's book for the first time and fell in love with it. I'd read it years ago but as a child had not gotten much further than deciding that without Boris Karlof it was pointless. I reread it still. It's not only the best of the Gothic novels but also the very first sci-fi novel. I got to teach the book for a little while as part of my failed experiment in a teaching career and getting other kids turned onto that book was a big thrill. I never mentioned the old black n white versions much though. Maybe that was a mistake.
HULK CRUSH
When I was a kid I eventually destroyed all my toys.
I remember having this toy stuffed monkey called Chips who I had for years. Then one day I decapitated him, sewed the hole in his neck up, threw the body away and rechristened him Monkeyhead.
Kids are weird.
I had a tonka jeep that just had to be destroyed because the adverts on TV told me that it was indestructible.
I almost lost an eye when I put a Hulk plastic action figure in my dad's wood vice and crushed him until he exploded like a lethal green plastic handgrenade.
I have maybe two surviving toys from the whole of my childhood.
Now instead of an attic full of crap I have this recurring urge to watch things go BOOM.
Mike is blogging to: Therapy? Peel Sessions
My Blogger dashboard looks like the tracklisting on a Napalm Death album so I've decided to kill a few more of the bastards off.
I'm going to ram a few older entries in here so please feel free to skip the following and go look at some porn or American flags or whatever else gets you off.
From The Ram Diary:
Better out in the open than sat inside festering like a nun's holy but ill used juicy bits....
LOST
I grew up in a Lancashire market town called Wigan. George Orwell put the place on the map in 1937 - I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt - but I didn't find myself there until 1972. I remember being small enough to still be holding my mother's hand as we walked around the market one Saturday. At some point I let go of her or she let go of me and when I reached out for her hand and grasped it there was an odd noise from above. I remember looking up and seeing a complete stranger looking down at me whose hand I was now squeezing. I let go and turned to find my mum only to find more strangers. Panic is a nasty thing when you are that young. It seemed to take hours for her to find me - probably minutes - and when she did I was a sobbing wreck. I have other memories of that market but they involve monkeys so I'll save them for a later entry. Recently I was killing time before a flight out of LA and found myself at Universal Studios. As I queued for the backlot tour a kid of about six grabbed my hand by mistake. Not having children of my own it was quite a surprise to have this grubby little hand suddenly wrapped around my own. I looked down at the wide eyes of a boy about six who dropped my hand as if it were a dead thing and shot back to his own family a few feet behind me. I smiled at his mother who was giggling at her son's embarrassment. I got into the car that was taking me to The Bates Motel and down to Amity and realised that I had come a very long way from Wigan.
THE HAND OF FRANKENSTEIN
I first saw the James Whale Frankenstein movies when I was really young. BBC2 used to show these late night horror double bills and every weekend I would go to bed terrified. I remember they showed wonderful stuff like Race with the Devil doubled up with old Vincent Price movies... Anyway, it was Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein that had the biggest hold on me. I haven't seen them in years but bought both of them on DVD just a few weeks ago in Australia. I'm waiting for a suitably windy evening to watch them back to back. Because of these movies I had recurring nightmares for years. It was just one scene that I invented but the setting was very much the Universal version of black and white eastern Europe. There's a wedding going on but I linger outside the church next to this large font. At some pint I realise that the thing is full of not water but soil. Then a hand claws its way to the surface and I wake up terrified. It doesn't seem like much but as a kid this thing was with me every night. Later on, more sophisticated horror movies scared the hell out of me (Night of the Living Dead especially) but it was the Frankenstein movies that have held their place as my number one scary friends. In college I got to study Mary Shelley's book for the first time and fell in love with it. I'd read it years ago but as a child had not gotten much further than deciding that without Boris Karlof it was pointless. I reread it still. It's not only the best of the Gothic novels but also the very first sci-fi novel. I got to teach the book for a little while as part of my failed experiment in a teaching career and getting other kids turned onto that book was a big thrill. I never mentioned the old black n white versions much though. Maybe that was a mistake.
HULK CRUSH
When I was a kid I eventually destroyed all my toys.
I remember having this toy stuffed monkey called Chips who I had for years. Then one day I decapitated him, sewed the hole in his neck up, threw the body away and rechristened him Monkeyhead.
Kids are weird.
I had a tonka jeep that just had to be destroyed because the adverts on TV told me that it was indestructible.
I almost lost an eye when I put a Hulk plastic action figure in my dad's wood vice and crushed him until he exploded like a lethal green plastic handgrenade.
I have maybe two surviving toys from the whole of my childhood.
Now instead of an attic full of crap I have this recurring urge to watch things go BOOM.
Mike is blogging to: Therapy? Peel Sessions
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