Halloween Hurricane

"Those are the voices of twelve thousand killed in a typhoon, seven thousand killed by a hurricane, three thousand buried by a cyclone. Am I boring you? That's what the wind is. It's a lot of people dead. The wind killed them, took their minds to give itself intelligence. It took all their voices and made them into one voice. All those millions of people killed in the past ten thousand years, tortured and run from continent to continent on the backs and in the bellies of monsoon and whirlwinds. What a poem you could write about it!"

-Ray Bradbury, The Wind, from The October Country

It's like Bradbury wrote this story for a Hurricane on Halloween.

Halloween 2010 Pictures

The whole story: http://watchthenight.blogspot.com/2011/07/revenge.html

I owe a lot of credit to PumpkinRot for the huge amount of inspiration he provides daily. Particularly, the witch jars and some of the pumpkin designs are heavily influenced by his work.

The Revenge

In the legends that were told around roaring fires on cold autumn nights, the horsemen never showed himself until nightfall. These days, people walking past the churchyard could hear the pounding of phantom hooves on the packed earth of the road as the horizon darkened the first segment of the disk of the falling sun. Some of the travelers claimed to see the figure on horseback out of the corner of their eye. Those that were brave enough to turn their head and look at the shadow saw nothing. Just an entanglement of bare branches against an orange sky littered with cold cobalt clouds.


Sightings of the horseman always took place on the road through the forest, well outside of town. Now, people living on the back streets of the village claimed to hear him stalking the cobblestone lanes in the early hours of moonless nights. They would wake from their sleep to hear the unearthly high-pitched neigh of a horse outside. But when they parted the heavy winter curtains of the bedroom window they only saw whispers of fog floating in the road. The ethereal vapor swirling about as if someone had just ran through it.

Of course there were those in Sleepy Hollow that felt these stories were completely absurd. Tales of the horseman had been told since the first time a war cannon was fired near the Hudson. And in the twenty some odd years since that time, the tales of the horseman were very clear about the specter’s habits, none of which bared any resemblance to the whispers that circulated today. Around every sewing circle there were those who vehemently denied the current rumors, citing past stories such as the one involving the old schoolmaster as corroboration. Others insisted that the ghoul was growing frustrated after years of looking for his missing piece.

Finally, one November evening a story emerged that some would say proved the rumors.

Alison Van Houten lived on her family’s farm at the edge of the forest, just outside of town. The Van Houten family was one of the most well respected families in Sleepy Hollow, despite their lack of wealth. When the Eikenboom family lost their home to a fire several years earlier, the Van Houten’s were the first come to their aid with more than enough food from their humble pantry and the best clothes in their closets. And in the rare case that Van Houten family would ask for a small loan as a last resort, their creditor would be paid back more than he was owed over time.

At the age of seventeen, Alison was the oldest of the Van Houten children and was known to help care for her younger siblings. Although quiet at times, she was valiant and steadfast and above all else honest.

Imagine the shock of the townspeople when Alison burst into the Inn that November evening. She was without a coat despite the early winter wind and her clothes were torn and dirty as if she had fallen badly. As everyone in the Inn crowded around to help her she began to tell the tale that no one could forget.

She had been walking along the road to the north of town, near the old church. The sun had begun to dip below the horizon as the air began to turn frigid. Suddenly out of the corner of her eye, Alison had seen a shadow like many Sleepy Hollow residents before her. She apprehensively turned, hoping there would be nothing there like in the rest of the stories. Instead she saw a large cloaked figure sitting upon a massive black stallion. The horse was covered in grime and the remnants of dried up vines clung to his coat. The figure was draped in black rags that danced in the wind. Alison would say that the fabric was tattered and scorched as if from riding through the fires of Hell. A hood covered the creature’s head. But as the last rays of sunlight hung in the cool air, Alison could see without a doubt that there was no head beneath the hood. The horse breathed heavy and began to stomp the earth.


Alison turned and ran. The horseman waited, almost as if to give her a head start, but within seconds he was right behind her. The horse began to overtake her and out of the corner of her eye, she could see the horseman’s reaching hand. Before she had a chance to make a move an icy, gnarled hand grasped the back of her coat and began to drag her alongside the horse. Thinking quickly, Alison lifted her arms over her head and out of the coat and hit the earth with a thud. She expected to feel a deathly grip on her neck, but nothing. Looking up she saw the road was empty except for a rolling mist up ahead. Alison got up and ran to town as fast as she was able, stopping at the first building she encountered, the old Inn.



Alison Van Houten would recover from her experience after several weeks, but would later move south to what was once known as New Amsterdam to avoid being a constant topic of conversation in the sleepy village. Of course there were those that doubted her story completely, using past legends to support their argument that this could not have taken place. But those in the river valley that held the legend as sacred believed her. When they told the story around roaring fires on cold autumn nights they would say that having not been able to find a suitable head, the horseman now came searching for souls.

More pictures here.

I owe a lot of credit to PumpkinRot for the huge amount of inspiration he provides daily. Particularly, the witch jars and some of the pumpkin designs are heavily influenced by his work.

Tim Burton Awesomeness at the Museum of Modern Art.

There was so much cool stuff at the exhibit. Rooms filled with drawings and paintings. One of the rooms included all movie related items such as the Edward Scissorhands costume (Johnny Depp must be small), the Headless Horseman's cape (so much stuff going on that you don't see in the movie), 3 Batman Cowls, the Catwoman suit, the Penguin's baby carriage, the Corpse Bridge Puppets, and best of all the Nightmare Before Christmas Puppets (probably close to 20 of Jack's heads, each with a different emotion) and the Vincent puppets!

Close Encounters

After possibly years of ignoring the weatherman telling me when the International Space Station was visible in the sky, I finally decided to take a look. It's pretty cool. After checking it out last night I looked online and found this handy website that told me the station would be visible again tonight. I decided to set up my camera tonight and took these pictures with a 30 second exposure. The first pictures are fairly unfooled around with. The second picture of each set is enhanced to make the space station more visible.

Jacob

It's only about 3 months late, but I finally have pictures of the Halloween display I created this past year. The idea for the scarecrow design and lanterns comes from the always inspiring PumpkinRot.



The crows were particularly bad that year, continually raiding the corn crop. Jacob’s father told him to build a scarecrow to stave off the birds. That afternoon, Jacob went out to the birches on the far side of the fields. He collected three large limbs from the speckled white trees, picking up twigs along the way. Back at the house, Jacob bound the three larger limbs together with twine, creating the letter ‘Y’ out of the wood. Next, he took what had once been his father’s old, tattered flannel shirt. Jacob had found it in the barn where it had been waiting to be shredded into rags. He carefully slid two of the branches into the worn brown and orange check sleeves.

The pumpkin patch was to the west of the corn fields, just on the outskirts of the woods. It was still early in the season, but Jacob searched the twisting green vines until he found a pumpkin large enough. It was dark orange and flat and wide. He heaved the gourd out of the dirt it had rested on all summer and carried it back home.



Sitting on the back porch, Jacob hollowed out the pumpkin and with a carving knife he created a face of two askew triangles eyes and a grinning mouth full of jagged teeth. He took the wooden body and pumpkin head out to the clearing in the center of the corn fields. He placed the post of the scarecrow into the ground and carefully added the fleshy skull on top. To finish off his creation, Jacob tied bundles of twigs to the end of each arm. The primitive being now reached to the sky with thin and gnarled wooden fingers. Satisified, Jacob headed home.



In the days that followed, Jacob returned to the fields many times to check on his scarecrow. Each time he visited Jacob found feathers entangled in the scarecrow’s twisting trap of fingers. Several crows lay dead on the ground nearby. Jacob was proud of his work. Not only were the birds staying away from the crops, but they were literally scared to death to go near that field. But, Jacob also had misgivings about the dead birds. Something seemed off about the whole thing. And in the middle of the night when Jacob would awake in his bed, he would swear he heard the scrapping of twigs against his bedroom window even though there were no trees on that side of the house.



The months passed and the chill of November swept through the valley and winter followed. The harvest was long over and the crops were gone. But while the extra pumpkins rotted in the field, the scarecrow’s head became dry and hard. His mouth began to sag and his teeth curled in slightly but his grin was still there. And so he stood under the grey clouds of the winter sky waiting for the next growing season.

Armistice Day

"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind"

-Kurt Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions

One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes. World War I is long over. I wonder if the veterans of World War II heard the voice of God at the end of the war. Or maybe just the scream of the atom echoed in their ears at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

November!

November must be my second favorite month, right after October. From my desk at work I can only see a window if the manager across the hall has his office door open. So when 5 o'clock rolled around and I happened to steal a glance of the world, I was shocked to see it was almost pitch black outside. WHY MUST WE SCREW AROUND WITH DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME?! But when I walked out the lobby door I was greeted with the slight smell of a wood fire and the cool dark night. It was then I realized I love November. As I drove home the full moon hung low over the small towns, lighting up the grey autumn clouds. The tangle of bare branches in the pale light. Most trees having yielded their leaves to the wind on the weekend. Straight out of an Andrew Wyeth painting.

The Night Orchard.

They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under them but among then and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

-Cormac McCarthy
(All the Pretty Horses)

A couple of things.

Wes Anderson is one of my favorite directors so I’ve been waiting on this one for some time. With The Darjeeling Limited coming out only two years ago, I didn’t expect to see Fantastic Mr. Fox for at least four years due to the stop motion animation. Needless to say I was pretty surprised when this trailer showed up last week out of the blue. I could not ask for anything more from the animation. It’s perfect right down to the way the characters’ fur ruffles as they talk. Despite the fact that the film is animated it sill has that distinct Wes Andseron style, the overhead shot of the desk is perfect. This movie has moved to second on my must see list, right below Where the Wild Things Are which brings me to my second find.

OK. So this isn’t really a trailer, but its well worth watching. This featurette is basically about Maurice Sendak’s thoughts on the adaptation of his book Where the Wild Things Are. There’s some interesting behind the scenes footage and also some commentary from Spike Jonze. Another note of interest is that the song at the end sounds like it is one of the original songs featuring Karen O.

The trailer for the new Richard Kelly film has also appeared online. The Box is about a family who is struggling financially. One day a disfigured stranger appears with box holding a button. If they should push the button they will get one million dollars but someone will die. I love Donnie Darko. I enjoyed Southland Tales, eventhough I didn’t understand a second of it. But this just looks like a let down.

Finally, the trailer for A Serious Man, the new Cohen brothers’ film has made its debut. Looks interesting. The trailer is cool. But something seems missing. I’m sure this movie will melt my mind anyway.

I lied. This is really the last one. Big Fan. I had never heard of this movie. I just happened to be on the Apple trailers webpage, saw a poster with Patton Oswald with his face painted, and clicked on it expecting to see a comedy. I was way wrong. But it turned out to be the most interesting thing I’ve seen this week.

They're here.

After starting these guys a couple of weeks ago I finally got around to finishing them. At first they all came out as dark as the short one on the left. I thought it suited him (he looks like he grew out of the ground in this picture) so I left him the way he was, but repainted the other two. They're sitting beneath a pumpkin vine that sprouted this spring after I threw last Halloween's pumpkins in the garden to rot.

These were inspired by the incredibly talented Bean over at http://thepumpkinhollow.blogspot.com.

Adams Who?

Once again, pure genius. I love the "Adams and Franklin" header, as if it's a TV show or something. The colonial version of The Odd Couple. More of this brillance can be found here.

Fire!

Last night was filled plenty of flashes and sparks and pops and screams and the bitter smell of sulfur.

Here comes the sun.

This trailer for Rockband: The Beatles is genius. My favorite part is the elevator ride with the costume change to the Sergeant Pepper's uniforms. The only drawback is the actual game has full 3D animation instead of what they show in the trailer. On the other hand, new controllers are being released based on the band's classic instruments.

I should have gone to school for animation.

More The Beatles: Rock Band Info

Favorite Things for the Week of March 15, 2009

1. Kate Beaton

There is no doubt in my mind that this girl is a genius. Her clever wit takes often bland historical figures and transforms them into some of the best comics around. Not knowing some of the obscure historical references, a lot of the time I feel that the jokes go over my head. But there are also aspects to them that make them universally funny. Being a Canadian, the artist often pokes fun at the American Revolution and makes references to Canadian historical figures that I have never heard of. She has a brand new site here. Below is my favorite and maybe her most well known comic, Tesla the Celibate Scientist.

2. Watchmen

First off, trying to make a movie from the graphic novel, Watchmen, is nearly impossible. The novel is several books seamlessly intertwined into one, which is one of the many reasons that Watchmen is incredibly dense. That being said, a 3 hour movie cannot come close to telling every back story and every detail of this alternate 1985 universe. But the movie does have an incredible attention to detail and tries to live up to the book. The casting is perfect. The fact that there are no major stars helps to focus on the characters who deserve your attention. The music is amazing. At some points the songs fit the scene perfectly. In other scenes, the songs seem strangely out of place which makes them even better. The idea of fitting the movie into 1985 was also very well done. Scenes often felt like they were borrowed from a movie made twenty years ago. Although at times the historical aspect of the novel seemed overdone, i.e. Nixon’s nose and the ridiculous amount of celebrity look a likes. One of the things I was looking forward to the most was the ending, but it was altered. But I was strangely surprised as the new ending was just as good, becoming a commentary on the dangers of science. One thing that bothered me is that Alan Moore’s writing isn’t done justice. Some key lines from the book make it to the movie and the scenes often keep the same spirit as the novel. But a lot of the lines that I was looking forward to are missing. It might be not be the greatest movie ever made but I definitely enjoyed it.

3. I’M BRIAN FELLOW!

Tracy Morgan may be crazy, but these SNL skits prove how well he can act too. Brian Fellow is the host of the effeminate host of a talk show about animals. He often hallucinates that the animals on the show are schemeing against him. And his answer to most anything that confuses him is I’m Brian Fellow! Tracy reprised this role this past Saturday when he hosted SNL. His performance was missing something but was still worth seeing. Below is what may be the best Brian Fellow segment. The ‘fix this in editing’ part is priceless.



March 14:

5 Favorite Things of the Week of February 22nd

1. George Steinbrenner on Seinfeld

Larry David’s depiction of George Steinbrenner never fails to be hilarious. He’s a side character that sits behind a desk with his back to the camera 95% of the time, but ever line he has is “Gold, Jerry, Gold”. The ultimate Steinbrenner episode involves George sleeping under his desk at work and Jerry calling in bomb threats to the Yankees. But what might be even better are these deleted scenes where the real George Steinbrenner appears. Why this was cut I have no idea, the Elaine rant is perfect.

2. Wendy and Lucy

The first I heard of this movie was when I stumbled across this trailer. The film is about a girl traveling to Alaska to take a well paying job. Along the way she runs into obstacles that threaten her journey. The trailer is stark and at times almost scary.

3. The Great Gatsby

High society social groups aren’t something that I’m normally interested in but this book is the exception. Fitzgerald’s command of the English language is unbelievable. Every word is perfectly chosen to create phrases and sentences that are nearly impossible to duplicate.

“Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something-an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was incommunicable forever.”

4. Childe Hassam

Hassam was an American impressionist painter who worked in the late 19th. Early 20th century. His work speaks for itself. One of my favorite paintings, Avenue in the Rain, recently showed up in the oval office.

5. PumpkinRot









Pumpkinrot.blogspot.com is a blog by someone that loves Halloween and understands it perfectly. It’s updated all year with pictures of the author’s awesome creations and other finds. He does an awesome yard haunt every year in addition to scarecrows like Johnny Appleseed up above.

The Passing of Two Greats...

Within the past two weeks artist, Andrew Wyeth, and writer, John Updike, both died. Wyeth on January the 16th and Updike on January the 27th. Both were accomplished and brought a unique characteristic to each of their respective fields.

Wyeth was born in 1917, right in the midst of Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp, and the adolescence of modern art. But Wyeth looked to the past, using tempera as his medium (which dates back to before the Renaissance). His paintings are rendered in incredible detail. Each blade of grass is painted individually, lace curtains blowing in the breeze look perfectly light and airy. Most of his paintings have the somber, contemplative feel of fall and winter. His work, Christina's World, usually hangs in a claustophobic room next to the Surrealism section in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Hopefully he will get the recognition he truly deserves.

Updike was probably America's greatest living writer. He had a special gift for writing where every single work seems carefully chosen to create the perfect phrase. He was also very academic. He was incredibly knowledgable about the arts, writing several books worth of commentaries on American art. His novel, The Centaur, is somewhat autobiographical telling the story of a boy and his father living near Reading, Pennsylvania. He ingeniously intertwines this story with stories from Greek mythology, creating an amazing book. But that's just one of his many works.

With Wyeth hailing from the Philadelphia area and Updike growing up near Reading; Pennsylvania, let alone America and the world, has lost two its greatest figures in the arts.

Who the...

Everybody knows that a fairy tale starts out 'once upon a time'. But a truck driver's tale starts out 'you ain't gonna believe this shit'.

-Teri Horton

Teri Horton is a 73 year old former truck driver who may just have a fifty million dollar plus painting. She bought it in a thrift store for the bargain price of five dollars. After a series of fortunate events Teri discovered that her bargain basement find maybe the work of the abstract expressionist, Jackson Pollock, who is responsible for such works as Autumn Rhythm (below).

"Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?" is the story of Teri's quest to have her treasure validated by the art community, a project she's been working on for over 10 years. We quickly discover that Teri isn't after the money. She's after something more important...respect. A series of interviews with art aficionados show just how superficial, ridiculous, and just plain cruel members of the art community can be. However, Teri is an everywoman or man who doesn't take no for an answer. Scenes of her hanging out at the local VFW show that she really is a common person who is up against a completely different group of people who have a reputation for looking down their noses at other people. Teri enlists the help of a forensic scientist to help her verify the authenticity of her painting. Using some very CSI like techniques, this man finds some interesting evidence that could make or break the painting. But you'll have to watch this movie for yourself, and make your own conclusion.

On Friday night, a comedian died in New York.

I can not wait for The Dark Knight, but I think Watchmen has tied up the top spot. Every bit of information that comes out about Watchmen so far has been nothing short of amazing, including the above picture. The graphic novel is incredibly dense and visually stunning. There is an attention to detail in that book that makes it unrivaled in my opinion. The background of every frame is loaded with references to other events in the book and from the pics of the set it looks like that detail has been carried on to the movie. I was leery of Zack Snyder directing at first, but from what's been released so far it looks like he's done one hell of a job. From his previous work on Dawn of the Dead and 300, I have no doubt that he can pull off the visual aspects of Watchmen. I think he took some crap for 300 because it wasn't the greatest story, but it seemed like he was just trying to keep the movie very close to the graphic novel. A lot of the scenes from that movie are taken from the graphic novel verbatim. If he does keeps that close connection with Watchmen then I don't think there is anything to worry about.

Damn, I thought that was closer.

After weeks...months...years of waiting, a new Indiana Jones trailer debuted on Thursday. Who would have thought that after 19 years the khaki clad, bullwhip toting, fedora wearing, treasure hunting ladies' man would be back. So how does he look after going missing for almost two decades? Not too shabby.

The trailer shows that eventhough he may be older, he's still the same old Indy. He's still getting chased through ancient temples and fighting bad guys (but this time its the Soviets, not the Nazis). The trailer gives us a look back on Indy's past adventures, shows some quick clips of action scenes (including Mayan? warriors), and hits us with some quick one liners. However, theres no real clues as to the plot. But being a teaser trailer, I wouldn't expect that much anyway.

The only real clue in the trailer is the shot of a box marked "Roswell 1947", furthering the idea that this installment will deal with aliens and maybe even link to Spielberg's Close Encounter. This seems a little far fetched but, personally, I like it. I think we saw enough of the middle east and surrounding area in the first three movies. It will be interesting to see what happens in South America this time around. There are enough theories about aliens interacting with ancient civilizations to make this idea interesting and not completely out of nowhere. And if it does connect to Close Encounters, even better. Connecting two seemingly unrelated movies is genius in my book. Sure there is a huge potential for failure, but Lucas and Spielberg have been working on this movie long enough that it should be good. They took their time, rejecting and rewriting scripts over and over again. I have faith in them.

Some of the most interesting scenes in the trailer take place in the government warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant was stored at the end of Raiders. Are the Soviets just looking for something relating the the Crystal Skulls or is the Ark involved? Every Indy movie begins with him searching for an artifact that has nothing to do with the main plot of the movie. Perhaps in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, that artifact is the Ark.

Last, but not least is the cast. Of course there's Mr. Ford, but there's also Cate Blanchett as some sort of Soviet leader. It seemed a little unusual to me at first, but from what I've seen she looks amazing. Then there's Shia LaBeouf, or as I still think of him, Louis Stevens. Is he Indy's long lost kid or just an accidental sidekick? But most interesting of all is Karen Allen's return as Marion Ravenwood. Surprisingly, she recieved almost no screen time in the trailer, but she is the person that I most want to see. How could you not like her? Marion is basically the female version of Indy. She was the only woman in the trilogy that had any real substance. And who could forget when she dominated that guy in the drinking contest?

Anyway, after 19 long years, I'm glad Indiana has returned. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens on May 22.