shut up & dance.com

Hi, my name is Joe and I’m a horror writer.

I guess it’s taken me a while to get to the point where I can admit it in a straightforward fashion. It’s not, “I guess I’m a horror writer” or, “People tell me what I’m writing is horrible” (which is not to be confused with people telling me my writing is horrible). Sometimes I sit and think it’s been a long twisting road to get here. The truth is, however, a case of life imitating art. It’s the act three twist that sets everything on its head: I didn’t go anywhere. I have always been here.

Even when I was readying Tolkien or Star Trek tech manuals, that was only my public reading, the acceptable stuff. But I think I carried a copy of “The Amityville Horror” for all of my eight grade year. I can’t even count how many times I checked out the battered, old, red book on demonology from the local library. I don’t remember reading them. I think I mostly got them for the pictures and the images they fired in my imagination.

So, long story short (got to save some of the mystery for later) – I love horror. I write it. I watch horror movies and I review them for a couple of websites (Red Carpet Crash and Talk Horror). And with this, I dip my toes into the horror blogger pool. If you used to visit here in the past, things are going to be a little different. Stick around anyway though. You never know what dark corner we could crawl into.

For those of you who are unable to or are just loathe to give up their favorite internal combustion driven mode of transportation, riding the light rail to work is an absolute blessing. Sure, I have to be out of the house extra early, but the ride never changes: forty-five minutes from the Oakest of Cliffs and then back again in the afternoon. It’s like riding in a car with forty of your best buddies, none of whom want to talk and someone else is always driving. Read the rest of this entry »

I got to go see an overly-hyped movie last night that I probably shouldn’t mention by name. It was a family affair since the missus and daughter Lili were there as well in official reviewing capacity. Me? I was just taking up to take up a seat. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve finally gotten through the first six minutes of “Antichrist”. It’s not that it’s gruesome, violent, overly-bloody or pornographically sexual (well, if you’re not counting Willem Defoe’s stunt penis or Charlotte Gainsbourg stand-in vagina), it’s just… Read the rest of this entry »

here we go ’round again.

Well, the Great Drupal Experiment has failed. I really just didn’t have time to decipher the Rube Goldberg machine of CMSs that is Drupal. I’m sure it’s great and robust and versatile for enterprise uses and whatnot, but I’m just managing a humble personal site and I need something I can get up and running much quicker. So, here we are.

With any luck, I’ll start having my old archived posts and movie reviews here soon and even start regular blogging on the horror genre. In addition, there will be other writers and features and a forum – which really is already here, but not linked up yet.

So, the adventure continues once again. Stick around.

Even during the grayest days of winter, you can still picture it in your head: children playing under a flawless blue sky, a picnic spread out on a checkered blanket, and Old Glory fluttering lazily on the breeze. While we’re at it, go ahead and throw in that whole mental list of things that go along with this. It’s O.K., I already know you’re thinking about it. Read the rest of this entry »

“Memories and possibilities are even more hideous than realities.” – H. P. Lovecraft

Reality.
Identity.
These are just a few of the things that philosophers, bards and other shiftless layabouts will drop gloves over for as long as there are philosophers, bards and shiftless layabouts. And not to throw myself into that endless fray, I would still like to offer this: who we are isn’t so much the sum of our experiences but rather how we perceive them. Read the rest of this entry »

Lycanthropy.
It is monsterdom’s Jan Brady to vampirism’s Marsha.

While considered one of the “classic” monsters, the Wolfman has clearly lost the PR battle with dear old Drac. But face it, being a vampire is just flat out more appealing that being a werewolf. Vampires represent repressed sexuality while werewolves represent the destructive impulses of the id. Read the rest of this entry »

High school and horror movies go together like… well, they just go together. The horrors of adolescence and its accompanying trauma has always been the perfect backdrop for any number of murderous monsters and maniacs. In general, though, the typical coupling of horror and high school means a set number of things: attractive but stupid youngsters who partake in drink and sex and are invariably dismembered or dispatched in gruesome ways. However, the truly horrifying part of this union is not the results but the staggeringly predictability that these events happen. Read the rest of this entry »

It was early Thanksgiving week when I saw my old high school principal staring back at me from my Facebook inbox. He looked a lot like he did when I was in school and certainly better than he does now (being dead is hell on one’s complexion I’m told). Not one to keep Mr. Guzick waiting, I opened the message. Read the rest of this entry »