DC's

* (Halloween countdown post #7)

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Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook The Class, Death Seminar (2005)
‘In “The Class, Death Seminar”, lifeless bodies obtained from a morgue are the students. The teacher is artist Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook who stands in front of a blackboard, at times lecturing on the topic of death, and at times engaging a conversation with these students. Together teacher and students re-examine attitudes towards death andpuzzle over the life-after-death conundrum.’

 

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Jonah Freeman, Justin Lowe & Jennifer Herrema Scenario in the Shade (2015)
‘It could be said that Freeman and Lowe kind of pioneered the current wave of creepy immersive installations with their very disturbing 2008 project “Hello Meth Lab in the Sun.” Their latest effort, “Scenario in the Shade” imagines a massive, slightly dystopian arts festival stretching between San Francisco and San Diego, and is infused throughout with paranoia and fear.’

 

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Sarah Sitkin Bodysuits (2018)
‘Through this collection -which accurately reproduces histories of anonymous lives, with their scars and the passage of time- the Los Angeles-based sculptress seeks to create the opportunity to inhabit other bodies to reflect on their real importance. A way of understanding the material that makes us an “habit” – the clothes that you can never take off, but you can learn to see beyond-.’

 

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Peter Caine Overseer (2005)
‘Even a decade later, Caine’s twisted snowscape populated by animatronic yetis with evil glowing eyes is still more than capable of haunting our sleepless nights. Wandering into the hellish scene was a totally surreal experience reminiscent of the classic Rankin/Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special on acid.’

 

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Dora Budor Adaptation Of An Instrument (2016)
‘Steel, plywood, perforated aluminum, acrylic sheets, vinyl welding screen, vinyl- and urethane-coated laminate flooring, vinyl strip doors with mounting hardware, LEDs, motion-sensitive computer system, hardware, polyurethane foam inserts, hot-rolled steel panels with patina, protective wax, urethane resin, dye, amphibian props used in the film Magnolia (1999)’

 

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Ian Haig The Foaming Node (2018)
‘The Foaming Node tells the story of the last remaining observers who were members of a cult of sorts who followed the transmissions and evacuations of the mysterious Foaming Node, whose main project and mission was the distribution of the human body. This is their story.’

 

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Tracey Snelling Famous Horror Film Houses (2013)
‘Sculptor Tracey Snelling’s miniature horror world is, indeed, the antithesis of paradise. Featuring houses from The Birds (1963), Halloween (1978), The Amityville Horror (1979) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), the Oakland native calls the art installation “a homage to the horror film.”’

 

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Sarah Best Various (2012 – 2014)
‘Looking at Sarah Best‘s sculpture makes me think about the 1978 Hustler cover where a woman is being put through a meat grinder, next to a Larry Flynt quote stating “we will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat,” or the Cattle Baron poster showing the “choice cuts” on a naked woman. That is what Sarah Best is doing, juxtaposing dismembered female limbs and butcher’s hooks, some in white plaster, others painted like the gruesome, hacked off body parts they are.’

 

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Eliza Douglas Living Dead (2019)
‘Douglas’s video work in the exhibition appears as some fragmented version of the TV series The Walking Dead, from which she has cut out all scenes with actual humans. Her binge wathing performance as a postapocalyptic zombie in front of a large mirror-like screen, is a self reflecting and parodistic commentary on a contemporary social media centered life and her own objectification as a figure in the art and the fashion world.’

 

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Kyle Edward Ball Heck (2020)
‘A little kid wakes up in the middle of night to the sound of his mom’s television blaring.’

 

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Alex Da Corte Die Hexe (2015)
‘This site-specific installation, titled Die Hexe, which literally means “the witch,” transformed Luxembourg and Dayan’s Upper East Side townhouse into a ghostly dollhouse, each room featuring wildly different decor, from gothic velvet-coverings to mod mirrored walls. One particularly unsettling section featured a morgue, replete with cadaver drawers.’

 

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Chloe Piene Blackmouth (2004)
‘Chloe Piene is a fine artist known for her skeletal and morbid imagery.’

 

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Torbjørn Rødland Various (2008 – 2012)

 

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Cameron Jamie Masks (2019)

 

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Gabríela Fridriksdóttir Tetralogia North (2005)
‘Gabríela focuses, like the surrealists, on the spontaneous, but with the proviso that the spontaneity grows from the seed of the forefathers. She takes arms against rationalism, and bends the rules to her will. She seeks answers in what happens between waking and sleeping, the objective and subjective, or in the tension between the mind and the material world. She entangles the observer in her web of symbols, thus activating the web.’

Excerpt

 

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Gary Hill Tall Ships (1992)
‘Gary Hill created “Tall Ships” in 1992 in which he projected grayscale images of people on to the wall of a dark corridor. The feeling of the piece is one part “Twilight Zone” and one part “Strangers in a Dark Alley”. The people in the images move and appear to try to interact with the viewers. A girl runs forward towards the viewer, an old man glares at the viewer. The overall feeling is that the viewer is looking into the spirit world, and likewise the spirits are looking back.’

See it in action here and here

 

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Marianna Simnett The Needle & The Larynx (2018)
‘In The Needle & The Larynx, artist Marianna Simnett is in the hands of a surgeon who injects her larynx with Botox, a procedure usually undergone by young men wishing their voices to be lower. Shot in excruciating slow motion, the surgeon’s needle enters, probes, then withdraws from her throat. A hypnotic soundtrack whirls through a surgical description of the procedure, a pop song about Botox, and a confession of the artist, spoken in her newly deepened voice.’

 

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Pere Portabella Cuadecuc Vampir (1971)
‘Created on the set of—and as a parallel production to—Jess Franco’s 1970 Dracula adaptation, Cuadecuc Vampir blends outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage into a seamless montage. But this is no Brechtian attempt to cleave the viewer from the artifice of narrative: cinema’s “lies” and the means of their construction are undifferentiated, forming at once an opaque documentary about the vampiric nature of the camera and an eerily beautiful take on the Dracula story. It recalls the elusive fog of Dreyer’s Vampyr much more than the Euro-horror stylings it leeches from.

‘Director Pere Portabella obscures his source material through a variety of techniques including film negative, overblown light, and negative space, then cleverly cuts between “narrative” and “documentary” shots, erasing the perceived difference between the two. The sound design is essential: there is no live or diegetic sound, but a carefully manufactured soundtrack of ominous hammers, drills, and drones, broken a couple of times by witty musical irruptions that underscore the artist’s control over the audience’s experience.’

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Francesco Albano Various (2017)
‘The Turkish sculptor Francesco Albano has dedicated his creative energy to really grotesque and marvelous realistic sculptures of human bodies melting, hanging, dripping down or being distorted in wicked and horrific ways. In his most recent solo exhibition, called “On The Eve,” the artist presented his new sculptures. They seem like creatures, not necessarily of human descent, had shed their skin and run away. The draped boneless skin bags, without faces or any other signs of identity, create a truly unsettling view.’

 

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Ed Atkins Us Dead Talk Love (2012)
‘A two-channel video and surround-sound installation Us Dead Talk Love that focuses on a dialogue between two cadavers who reflect upon representation, immanence, and narcissism. The artist describes the work as “a tragedy of love, intimacy, incoherence and eyelashes.”’

 

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Monica Cook Volley (2012)
‘The animation video is projected in the back room of the gallery separating itself from its stars. Its content is a connected series of narratives meandering at times softly and at time psychedelically through the gooey seduction, birth and death of the creatures. The soundtrack is proof of the emotive power of music in film, as it wraps these sappy, gushy and simultaneously disturbing and disguising images in unconditional love. It truly is “hard to watch and at the same time impossible to stop watching,” as the press release notes.’

Excerpt

 

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Thackery Medical Museum 1842 Street (?)
‘Travel back in time to the dirty streets of Victorian Leeds to explore life among the grime and the bedbugs. Walk through the streets of 1842 and be surrounded by the smells and sounds of Victorian life. Meet the characters who live there and discover what was making them ill. Enter the frightening world of surgery before the discovery of pain relief and anaesthetics and explore the tools of the Victorian surgeon.’

 

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Wang Qingsong Iron Man (2008)
‘In Iron Man (2009), Wang Qingsong created a hero in his own image affectionately referred to as Iron Man. This term Iron Man refers to an oil worker hero (Qingsong worked in the oil-fields for over eight years) who dedicated his life to developing Chinese oil industry in the early 1960s. In this video this strong-minded hero has been beaten up by a lot of fists but always straightens up his head facing sideways as if Taking Death As Merely Going Back Home. He avoids the fist by playing Chinese Tai Chi (a Chinese body-exercise system of slow meditative physical exercise designed for relaxation, balance and health). Finally, though losing hair and teeth in the course of the beating, he still smiles at his opponents.’

 

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Phil Solomon The Secret Garden (1988)
‘The Secret Garden’s title recalls the Frances Hodgson Burnett children’s novel of the same name, but it could as easily refer to the wondrous cinematic space summoned by Phil Solomon. His techniques of chemical processing and optical printing create something entirely new from his borrowed reels of found footage, hinting at a composite story involving childhood trauma. The film teeters between the extremes of narrative and abstraction, wonder and terror. Flashes of subtitles mention a mother’s death and a plot for revenge, while faces of women and children appear as shimmering specters of light on celluloid then dissolve into a constellation of sparkling light. It feels as though Solomon has transported us to an alternate reality, a prismatic distortion of the past imprinted on the texture of celluloid.’

 

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Agnieszka Polska The Demon’s Brain (2018)
‘In The Demon’s Brain, a multichannel video installation created expressly for the exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, Agnieszka Polska grapples with the ethical question of how individuals can assume social responsibility amid the overwhelming demands of the present moment. The point of departure for the work is a collection of fifteenth-century letters addressed to Mikołaj Serafin, the custodian of Poland’s salt mines. In her videos, Polska melds live action with animation to tell the fictional story of a young messenger tasked with delivering these letters on horseback. Along the way, the boy loses his horse and he gets lost in the forest. There he has an unexpected encounter with a demon, whose monologue fuses Christian theological ideas with today’s developments concerning resource consumption, environmental destruction, data capital, and artificial intelligence.’

Excerpt

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Carsten, Cool, like minds and all of that. Yeah, Benicio Del Toro is terrific in it. No, RT is really not a horror movie. We weren’t playing with the strictures of that genre at all. Avoiding them if anything, especially with portraying the film’s ghost. Staying away from the standard portrayal of ghosts was one of the hardest things, but I think we managed. Rice & beans with plantains sounds so good I might just break my usual habits and down that combo, if my microwave can handle it. ** _Black_Acrylic, No, the writing class got cancelled again?! What is going on with these flaky proprietors? Really, what’s their problem? A small writing class is optimal. That sucks, I’m sorry. Go Scotland! ** James Bennett, I think my jetlag has finally vamoosed. Exciting about the Bob launch. Ever given thought to doing a Ssnake launch here, at After8 particularly? I’m going to a reading there on Friday by another New Narrative vet, Camille Roy. I’ll be here in late November. In fact, if you want to catch ‘Room Temperature’, it’s playing at a festival here on the 23rd and then gets its French theater release on the 26th. In any case, yeah, let’s def meet up. Well, you know I’m an enthusiastic booster of Paris as a home base. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It’s true, what a term. Cats and Bats is dreamy, or was last year. At one point you walk into this bakery set, and there’s a huge ‘oven’ that opens up and you’re forced to walk inside it and get ‘burned alive’. The graphic designer’s designs look like shitty memes, but our distributor thinks he’s a ‘genius’. We’re fighting tooth and nail, and we’ll see. They have ‘final say’ but we’re counting on them not wanting us to be angry. Of course love is an Emo! What else could he be? Love hoping that a little hunt he’s currently on to find a venue to screen ‘RT’ in Vienna pays off so you can see it, G. ** Steeqhen, Yeah, sad and complicated like most good things, sadly. I’ve avoided Pokemon Go for exactly those reasons. Which one is Steve? I haven’t played Minecraft, but I saw the movie version on my last flight, and it was unexpectedly pretty fun. ** Måns BT, Hi! That post was from about 6 years ago. When I went back to restore it, I saw that the boy’s mother had left a comment sometime between when it was originally posted and now. She said, ‘Why are you so interested in this?’ Which made me feel really weird since I don’t really know how to answer that question. I’m just making Halloween posts to get in the spooky mood. And I’ll be going to Parc Asterix’s pretty solid Halloween makeover event in a couple of weeks. And that, I fear, is pretty much all I have. I just did a search and the only things I found in Stockholm that even vaguely resemble a haunt are an Escape Room called ‘Fox in a Box’ and, more promisingly, it says that ‘throughout October, Gronalund transforms into a fright-filled oasis, packed with thrilling rides that will give you an adrenaline rush. For horror fans, there are 5 different haunted houses to visit with face terrifying clowns, zombies and cult leaders.’ So maybe you should do that? I watched the first three seasons of ‘Lost’ and was addicted to it, and then I moved to Paris and didn’t see that last season or two because it wasn’t showing over here. High hopes that Signe will say yes. That would be so great. Mm, I think you should be both flattered and scared. And probably not encouraging at all? Yikes. Tell me more. ** Steve, I don’t know ‘The Long Walk’. I’ll look it up. I watched ‘Sinners’ on one of my recent flights. It wasn’t bad. Not sure about the Whittier hell house. I know a church is involved, but I don’t know how wack they are. A friend is going this year and will give me a report. ** HaRpEr //, I weirdly, or maybe not weirdly, remember that Andrew Gosden thing. Yeah, it was kind of riveting. Assuming you’re still alive and not possessed by evil spirits, etc., how was the building? Not a total letdown, I hope. I didn’t know that about that political party, no. Are there any younger, newer UK music artists there who fall into that class eccentric British rock band category as epitomised, in my mind at least, by Sutch, Bonzo Dog Band, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, etc.? ** Bill, Hi. Yes, I think Dominik saw the Besson ‘Dracula’. Strange this sudden influx of classic horror monster update movies. There are at least two ‘Frankenstein’ movies out or coming out. Alvin Baltrop … I’m blanking. I’ll investigate. ** Stil, Hey! Second AD, wow, that’s a lot of work, or at least the second AD on our film seemed to be doing 5 times more work than almost anyone else. He was kind of a blur. Nice, though. The film itself seems interesting? Here too, it’s getting chillier every day, and the sunlight looks slightly ill, which is a big plus. I’m still all film work stuff almost all the time. We’re starting to do press for the upcoming theater release over here, so it’s a bit nuts. I just read some books I liked a lot, but they’re in a post coming on Saturday so I’ll leave their titles for then. I’m really liking the new 7038634357 album ‘Waterfall Horizon’. And Mego just rereleased Kevin Drumm’s great ‘Sheer Hellish Miasma’, and I’ve been listening to that a lot. Any hot tips from you? ** Uday, Geometry, ugh. When my math classes in high school started teaching geometry I just completely gave up and settled for barely passing grades from there on out. Love is kinda of overrated and over-defined, but it’s true there’s not much better. Love back in your direction. ** Nicholas., If I have to die, and I’m still not 100% convinced that I’m going to have to, I just want to know far enough in advance that I can get my shit together and not make everyone else have to do that. If only California was colder. Then it would be mecca. Or something. ** Corey, Hey. It was good to see you too. Sorry for being so lagged and distracted by the occasion. Everyone, or some of you, Corey has a tip. Thus: ‘For people in New York I recommend the Bradley Eros show at Microscope Gallery in Chelsea. Good experimental films and collages, and also some old posters from Downtown experimental film screenings. It’s on until Oct 25th.’ Hm, I think when I’m in the US, it still feels like home, which it sort of is since I still have an apartment there and go there not too infrequently. I think maybe if I actually spoke French I’d feel differently? ** Okay. Today my galerie is doing its part in my blog’s onrushing Halloween roll out. See you tomorrow.

* (Halloween countdown post #6/restored)

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Missing teenager, Machans Beach, Cairns
12/03/2011

QLD Police are seeking assistance from members of the public in the search for a missing 13-year-old boy from Machans Beach. Initial investigations indicate the youth left school on Wednesday afternoon on a bus bound for home. Declan Crouch caught the bus from Hoare Street, Manunda around 3pm. Declan’s school bag and uniform were later located at home. Police and the boy’s family have conducted numerous checks with friends and are seeking information from the public. Police hold serious concerns for the 13-year-old as it is out of character for him not to contact his family. He is described as around 170cm tall with a slim build and collar length brown hair usually worn over his eyes. He may be wearing black or maroon basketball shorts and a black t-shirt.

 

Search continues for missing boy, 13
March 14, 2011 8:57AM

POLICE and SES volunteers are continuing their desperate search for a missing 13-year-old boy from Cairns who hasn’t been seen since Wednesday night. About 17 SES volunteers searched through thick bushland and paddocks near the boy’s home yesterday but failed to find any clues to his whereabouts. A ground search and door knocks will continue today and possibly an aerial search by helicopter. Declan was last seen catching the bus home from school on Hoare St, Manunda on Wednesday about 3pm. His school bag and uniform were found at home. It’s understood he may have been upset after an argument with a family member.

 

Police hold fears for missing Machans Beach teen, 13
March 14, 2011 12:46PM

THE desperate search for a missing 13-year-old schoolboy continues, after a sweep through dense bushland yesterday failed to find any clues to his whereabouts. Now missing for five days, Cairns Police Child Protection Det Sgt Mick Gooiker said police held serious concerns for the young boy. “We’re very concerned about his disappearance,” Sgt Gooiker said. “He has been upset with things at home and left, but none of his friends have heard from him since. If he is staying with friends, that’s fine, we just need them to contact police to let everyone know that he is all right. He hasn’t popped his head up on any of the social network sites and according to his friends he hasn’t been in touch with them either, which is out of character for any 13-year-old.” Insp Ellis said Declan’s mother mentioned he “goes for a run” when he gets angry and was checking the area to make sure he hadn’t come into harm. Police also confirmed Declan may have dyed his hair with a purple tinge about two weeks ago.

 

Mother hopeful missing son will be found
Mar 14, 2011 6:50pm

The mother of a 13-year-old north Cairns boy who went missing five days ago says she remains positive he will be found safe. “By this stage I’m wondering how the hell he’s managing because he’s only 13,” she said. “He’s very inexperienced. He’s very young. He’s not street-wise. I just want him to come home and just to know that everything is fine… or if he can just ring us and let us know.” Cairns Police Child Protection officer-in-charge Glenn Horan said it appeared Declan went home, changed out of his school uniform and left the house without any personal possessions. “He certainly doesn’t have access to many funds and he had no phone with him and it does appear that he hasn’t accessed any of his computer accounts,” Sen Sgt Horan said.

 

Search for missing Cairns teenager continues
March 16 2011

Police are hoping that a mannequin dressed in clothing similar to that of missing boy Declan Crouch placed at his last known location will prompt any witnesses to come forward. The mannequin will be placed in the vicinity of Machan’s Beach and police and detectives hope to speak with pedestrians and locals in the area to garner any further information about the missing 13-year-old boy.

 

Missing Cairns teen Declan Crouch may be in Victoria, police say
March 17, 2011 8:49AM

Friends of 13-year-old only Declan Crouch said he had been talking about heading to Victoria before disappearing suddenly more than a week ago. The Trinity Bay High School teen – popular with the girls and into music, books, and computers – got off the bus from school, got changed at home, and vanished, taking nothing with him. “He was well-liked, had a tight-knit circle of friends, loves reading adventure and fantasy books, listens to music on his iPod touch and burns off energy by jogging in nearby bushland, his bewildered mother said. “We are in the dark as to what made him leave.”

 

Police hope video helps find missing boy
Mar 22, 2011 10:13am

Police in far north Queensland have released home video of missing 13-year-old boy Declan Crouch to help people identify him. Police have used a mannequin dressed in similar clothing at the place he was last seen to try to draw more information from the public. The teenager has also not used his bank account, his social networking sites or contacted friends since his disappearance. Senior Constable Russell Parker says a search of local bushland, creeks and rivers is continuing.

 

Mum still believes Declan Crouch is in hiding
March 31, 2011 11:57AM

Thirteen-year-old Declan Crouch has been missing since leaving his family’s home at Machans Beach, near Cairns, after school on March 9. His mother, Ruth, today said she believed her son was in hiding somewhere but realised he may have met with harm. “In my heart, I really think he’s hiding, but in my head I appreciate that there are certain other options police need to consider,” she told ABC Radio today. “But at this point I’m not even going there.” Ms Crouch said the only reason she could think of for he son’s disappearance was that Declan, who she described as “extremely intelligent”, was not very engaged with his schooling. She also said Declan had expressed a desire to go to Canada as she drove him to school on the morning he disappeared. “He wanted to go now, of course. But I said you can’t go now but maybe down the track you can do an exchange program or when you are older you can do a gap year.” However, she said, he’d left his passport at home and wouldn’t have been able to book a flight. She otherwise painted a picture of a typical teenage boy who loved heavy music, dark clothes, soft drink and computer games. Ms Crouch said her son had a “vivid imagination” and would think he could get by on his own. “That’s my real concern – that he thinks he can manage but may get himself into situations he thinks he can handle.”

 

Suicide suspicions in case of missing Cairns teenager Declan Crouch
June 03, 20117:21AM

After nearly three months of intense searching and a nationwide appeal, police believe they may have discovered the 13-year-old’s body just 300m from his family home. Police divers found skeletal remains in a hard-to-reach pocket of tidal wetlands behind his Machans Beach home, in the northern beaches of Cairns. When asked directly about the possibility of suicide, Detective Senior Sergeant Glen Horan said there were “signs” found with the remains that indicated the death was not suspicious, but would not elaborate. DNA samples, clothing and other, undisclosed, items found at the scene have been sent to the John Tonge centre in Brisbane. However, it was likely to take days for confirmation of the identity of the remains. Declan Crouch was known by his school friends as an “Emo”, an emotional goth, a sometime loner who dyed his hair, played computer games and preferred to listen to music rather than play team sport. Mrs Crouch told The Courier-Mail in an earlier interview he was bored with school and they had argued over his internet use.

 

Missing Cairns teen took his own life
June 11, 2011

Family and friends of Cairns teenager Declan Crouch are struggling to cope with news the 13-year-old took his own life. Police divers found Declan’s body in a mangrove swamp area near his Machans Beach home on June 1 but his grieving family have had to wait over a week for DNA confirmation that it was the 13-year-old. Cairns Police Detective Senior Sergeant Glenn Horan said the death was not suspicious and it appeared the teenager had taken his own life. “There is some evidence that Declan has taken his own life,” he said, adding that the boy’s family had asked him not to disclose further details.

 

Mourners say farewell to Declan Crouch
Jun 22 2011 17:45

He was a sensitive, kind-hearted 13-year-old boy who bore a resemblance to North American pop idols Justin Bieber and Nick Jonas. Since the discovery of his body in a mangrove swamp just 300 metres from his family’s Machans Beach home earlier this month, family and friends have been at a loss to understand why Declan would have taken his own life. A picture emerged of a decent young man with a sensitivity not often found among boys his age. He was a vegetarian who would rescue bugs from inside his family’s home before his sister had a chance to squish them and a supportive ear for his many friends as they endured the joys and tribulations of growing up. “He was like a philosopher at age 13,” his uncle Brian Crouch told mourners. Yet in many ways he was a typical teenager: one obsessed with emo music and who, as a friend told the service, once headbanged so hard his mother Ruth had to take him to see a chiropractor. Performance arts teacher Chris Mckenna, who hosted a holiday program Declan took part in, urged his friends to remember him as a fun, cheeky young man. “He was a bunch of fun, a cheeky little rat and I loved that about him,” he said.

 

Ruth Crouch confronting the suicide taboo
July 14th, 2012

It’s been more than a year since Declan Crouch’s body was found in dense scrub behind the family’s Machans Beach home. “I knew, I knew that there was a chance that he had suicided, but none of it made sense – he’s got a loving family, he’s got heaps of friends, he’s not being bullied, so why would he?” Declan’s mother Ruth asks herself. Looking back, there were telltale signs of Declan’s deep despair, but Ruth didn’t pick up on them. The tragic irony for the 56-year-old social worker is that her daily work involves assessing the suicide risk in her distressed clients. “I’ve been angry with myself for having knowledge in that area and still not being able to pick it or prevent it in my own family.” Only in retrospect is Ruth able to see what seems so obvious to her now. Her son Declan, who was enthusiastic and social during his pre‑teens, had become withdrawn and disinterested in the friendships he used to treasure. “I was actively encouraging him by asking ‘Who are you going to see this weekend’, or whose house do you want me to drop you at or do you want to invite somebody over?’ but he would just say ‘no’,” Ruth remembers. She could have had no idea about the private Facebook conversations Declan had with his mates about suicide or the sketches scrunched up in the back of his drawer depicting suicide. Ruth doesn’t hear much from the other school mums nowadays. But she doesn’t blame anyone for keeping their distance, especially the mothers of other young boys around Declan’s age. “If it was you, wouldn’t you be thinking ‘Oh my God, I wonder if it’s contagious? I miss those relationships, I really miss them, but it’s not their fault. They’re just responding to the stigma as well.”

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, gosh, so many of them excite me. Cats and Bats was one of my very favorites from last year, and I’d love to see what they’re doing this year. The 17th Door is always kind of a masterpiece. But every single one of them has huge gravitational pull. I saw the preview of ‘Dracula’, and that’s exactly what it suggested. Such a timely, thoughtful love, sigh, thank you/him. Love firing the shitty graphic designer that RT’s French distributor hired to design its poster, G. ** Carsten, Very good question, dude. Sure, McKamey Manor. It was in San Diego in its early days. I never had the slightest interest in it. It was just some sadist using the haunt premise as catnip. Totally on your cheap horror <-> avant-garde suggestions. There’s a heck of an essay there that almost makes me wish I didn’t swear off journalism. ‘OBAA’: I liked it. I thought that on the level of filmmaking and editing, it was very lively. I appreciated the kind of lower brow Kubrickian stuff. De Caprio is such a mannered, self-conscious actor but PTA managed to twist his schtick into interesting shapes. I think the fact that critics are going apeshit for the film is just a sign of how crappy Hollywood films are these days. It’s just a crime movie with a timely thematic (revolution vs. the racist right). Nothing innovative or deep or transcendent at all. But it’s sufficiently big fun. Them’s my two cents. ** Misanthrope, I hope you can sort out the familial logistics obviously, but don’t put yourself through hell. I miss Rigby and Joe. So sad. Fucking death. I’m happy you’re not getting laid off via the revenge moves from Mr. T. Hope that sticks. Who fucking knows what’s going on these days. ** Stil, Hey there. So cool that the posts aced you. It would be very interesting to talk with the editors of those shows. It seems like what they’re doing is very complicated and meta, but I suppose it’s just a formula. It really works though. Weird. How’s stuff? ** Nicholas., Not to be boring, but California is the best. Or parts of it. There’s a store here that specializes in colognes/perfumes that smell like bodily secretions. They have a Tom of Finland cologne. Not sure what would smell like. Like steroids? Do steroids smell? ‘Blade’, yes, I think I saw 2 of them. Wesley Snipes is kind of a god or something. Boringly I would miss my eyesight the most, you know, being a writer and all of that. ** _Black_Acrylic, Shame Yuck ‘n’ Yum isn’t still active because you guys could’ve made that haunt happen and bankrolled a glorious future, I reckon. Good taste … what’s that? I’ve heard of it. ** Steeqhen, The UK does have haunts but few and far between. Which is extremely illogical. It sounds worth it to me. It is Halloween, after all. When Krispy Kreme first opened here in Paris there was a 3+ hour wait just to buy a donut. And now whenever I walk by it’s empty and looks like it’ll be closing any day. ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 2’ is roundly considered the most gay horror film ever. ** Steve, A real Hell House? No. Faux-Hell Houses, yes. If I were in LA, I would definitely hit up that purportedly real one in Whittier, but I strongly suspect it’s not real. My weekend was just the usual film stuff other than my Zoom book/film club and watching ‘OBAA’ on assignment. ** HaRpEr //, Tell me about it, *waahhh*. I’m a bad judge of what’s scary in haunts because I am basically immune to being scared in them. I just look for imaginative ideas and how well they use the space and formal stuff like that. From my observations of those around me, I think the big expensive ones like at Universal Horror Nights are the scariest. They can afford to buy the costumes and special effects to make bonafide scares happen. I hope you did investigate that site and let me know. Thanks for the Screaming Lord Sutch link. I’ll watch it. His schtick is really confusing to me, which of course is a compliment. I gave Carsten my ‘OBAA’ review up above. Sounds compatible with yours. And, yes, Sean Penn was very funny. ** Uday, See my mini-review in my message to Carsten. Wow, that’s intense: the thing with your friend. I’m forgetting what your living situation is. It sounds like it’s very drama-adjacent. Anyway, jeez, I hope you’re fully repaired and not warier of the future. ** Right. I brought back a strange, sad, somewhat spooky story for you for Halloween. That’s it. See you tomorrow.