Review of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Part 1)

Review of The Amazing Spider-Man

I’m going to start this review like I do all my reviews—I’m going to start with the preproduction and move into generalities of the film, commenting on things that will not ruin any of the major plot points of the film if you have not yet seen it. Then I’ll follow that up with an in-depth analysis of everything which will include spoilers and can be read after you see the movie.

Acting: 7/10

Story: 7/10

Effects: 8.5/10

Overall: 7.75/10

 
When I first heard that Sony had dropped negotiations with Sam Raimi to direct a fourth Spider-Man movie I was a bit skeptical. I mean, Spider-Man 3 was not nearly as good as Spider-Man 2, but I didn’t hate it. I kind of enjoyed parts of it—even though it suffered from Joel Schumacher syndrome in that it had two too many villains. But the studio’s decision to go with someone else wasn’t a shocker after the critical failure of the last one (and let’s be honest, lots of people jumped on the hate bandwagon because the popular opinion was negative; why else would it have made the money it did if it was so bad?). Then Sony announced that not only would they be switching directors, but that they would be rebooting the entire franchise from the ground up, essentially erasing all of the mythology created over the last ten years. New actors, new mythology, new suit, new everything. So, yeah, I was a bit grumpy after all I had invested in my fandom. But I kept an open mind because, after all, it was the only way I was going to get to see Spider-Man on the big screen again.

When they revealed Andrew Garfield had been cast as Peter Parker I was. . . indecisive. Another citizen of the United Kingdom had been given the part of one of America’s greatest heroes. We already had Christian Bale as Batman and the recent news that Henry Cavill was cast as the new Superman. All of them Brits. My other hesitation was that Garfield was kind of a good looking guy, and Peter Parker is supposed to be anything but. Not that he is supposed to be a hideous monster of a human, but he’s supposed to blend in, which is something Toby Maguire did very well. He wasn’t hunky or hot, just there. I thought that Garfield was a decent enough choice, but I wondered if there wasn’t someone better suited.

And speaking of being “suited.” A few weeks after filming began, the first official photo of Andrew in the new Spidey suit hit the net. It was a morose picture of a battered and dirty, maskless Peter Parker, his suit with huge claw marks on it. At this point is where the second major rift happened in the fandom world. Much like the outright hatred of the new U.S.S. Enterprise from J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek, people started swearing not to see the movie based on a single still image. I was . . . again, indecisive. Yes, the suit looked like it was made of pieces of basketballs sewn together and painted red and blue. It didn’t have that silky sheen of spandex—nor did it look like Peter had crafted this outfit on his own (a major flaw that the first series suffered from). But that wasn’t the huge news. The major reveal was the mechanical web-shooters. Raimi worked hard to force the idea of the organic ones on us, and it started to take hold, so much so that even the comics adapted them for a time. But, again, this news put a huge frowny face on fans who simply refused to see someone else’s vision of the character. Then a few more photos turned up of the full suit revealing the gold-colored eyepieces and I was still not thrilled, but willing to wait until some kind of teaser trailer popped up to see the suit in action. After all, I wasn’t big on the raised webbing on the earlier costumes until I actually saw how it functioned on film.

I was impressed with the teaser released last year. More than that, I was intrigued. There seemed to be a nice mix of character and action as well as a bit more of a nod to the origins of the character. So I waited patiently.

If you’ve made it this far, good for you because now I get to talk about the movie.

The film opens on a little-explored chapter in young Peter’s life: his childhood. We are treated to a mystery right away in the ransacking of Mr. Parker’s home office that Peter discovers during a game of hide-and-seek. Right away the story takes off as the child is whisked away to his aunt and uncle’s house (played by Sally Field and Martin Sheen, respectively). Mr. Parker is vague about details and his final words to his son are “Be good.” Instantly it is present day and Peter is at high school. From here the story drags a bit as we see Peter being bullied by Flash Thompson, as well as allusion to Peter’s fondness for photography.

Also in this first segment are all of the necessary character informational scenes that are needed during an “origin” story of this sort. Peter being a science nerd (something that was kind of left out of the Raimi trilogy); Peter being uncomfortable around girls; Peter being a victim. But there is also a pivotal scene in which a pre-powers Peter shows us his tendency to stand up for the little guy. These scenes are well-acted and do a pretty good job of portraying life in high school—though they all seem to go to Midtown Science High School, so I’m not sure if that is an advanced school or something, but Flash isn’t really the science type, so I’m not sure how that fit in.

That’s when everything changes for Peter and everyone around him. He discovers his father’s old briefcase, one that was entrusted to Ben and May by Peter’s father with a promise to keep it (and Peter) safe. I won’t spoil what’s in the briefcase here, but suffice it to say, its contents lead Peter to seek out Dr. Curt Connors at Oscorp by sneaking into their intern program. There he bumps into Gwen Stacy, who works as an intern to the aforementioned doctor. After more than a little flirting, Peter wanders off and finds himself in a room full of spiders who are spinning on some kind of device to harvest their webbing (under a blacklight for some reason). No need to go into great detail about what happens here—it’s pretty self-explanatory. Boom. Spider powers.

The next chunk of the story is dedicated to Peter exploring his new powers, starting with a somewhat humorous and expertly choreographed scene on a subway train. Here we see Peter starting to come out of his shell and he explores all these cool new things he can do. He is both awed as a teenager and intrigued as a scientist. Also prevalent is the fact that director Marc Webb made it very clear that he was going to do a lot of practical stunts as opposed to relying on the rubbery and cartoonish style of CG. And it works very well here. Watching an animated humanoid bounce around in all of its digital glory is well and good, but it lacks that verisimilitude at someone like Richard Donner put into Superman with the use of cranes and wires to pull Christopher Reeve off the ground.

From here on out the story gets complicated and to discuss it too much would end up with spoilers all over the place, so I’ll hold back on that until a little later. But here’s what I can say: The Amazing Spider-Man is probably the second best portrayal of the webbed wonder since 2004’s Spider-Man 2.

The acting, for the majority, was excellent and could have been excellent even without the Spidey element. This was just an all-around well-acted film. Garfield did a great job as the spastic teen Peter who bridges the gap into over-confidence after he gets his powers. Martin Sheen pulls of a fabulous Uncle Ben that puts that not-acting touch that Cliff Robertson missed. Sally Field as Aunt May was overshadowed by her reduced role (in this film), but her scenes were strong and she brought Aunt May back into the realm of believability—most of the incarnations (on-screen and in the comics have her as just plain old). Rhys Ifans was great as Dr. Connors, but his Lizard was shaky and over-acted. Emma Stone, while fun to look at and dream about, might not have been the right choice to play Gwen. Her strength as a woman (as an actress and a character) really made it hard for me to believe that she needed saving; more that she only needed help cleaning up the mess after she kicked ass—and yet a pivotal scene has her hiding in a closest.

The effects were top-notch! Many a mile has been crossed in the advance of technology in the decade since the first film, and the blending of CG and live-action stunts was relatively smooth in most cases. Unfortunately, everything that was great about the effects was severely crushed by the awkwardness of the CG Lizard. Though he was 8-feet tall, green, and has a tail, his face was far too human. I think the design would have been right up the alley for, say, Killer Croc in a Batman movie. But Lizard only looked partly transformed most of the time. I was hoping for a nice mix between something like a Jurassic Park raptor and Dolph Lundgren.

Well, that does it for Part 1. Part 2 should be along sometime soon. Maybe after I see The Dark Knight Rises.

My Official Halloween Horror Story of 2011

Dear Parents

by Nick Miranda

Dear Parents,

Your child was delicious.

Sincerely,

The Faculty at Riverview Elementary.

*     *     *

Dan had read the letter more than a dozen times. It was on the school’s letterhead—all very official-looking.

The worst part was that he hadn’t seen Emily since Wednesday, when he put her on the bus  taking her and her classmates for a school-sponsored camping trip. If he had opened the letter on a day where he had picked her up from school, he would have tossed it out without more than an aggravated second thought. But her absence was the fertilizer for the seed of insanity that the note had planted in his mind.

Dan loosened his tie with one hand, afraid to let the letter out of his grasp; afraid that if he set it down the words would change. He had to wait for Kelly to come home—needed to show it to somebody, to have another opinion. Kelly would tell him it was a joke and he would believe her. She would call him silly for even having the slightest inkling that the faculty at the elementary school were flesh-eating monsters. She would call one of the other parents in Emily’s class to reassure him. She would poke fun of him for the rest of the night, casually deflating his perceived fear.

But until she got there, Dan felt trapped, isolated. He was aware that it stemmed from his memories of Emily’s mother, Ruth. She had been raped and murdered on her way home from the grocery store. She’d said that she would be right back—and wasn’t. He should have gone with her, should have turned off the damn baseball game and went just for the hell of it—like in college when they would wander around Wal-Mart at two in the morning for no other reason than to do something together. But the Reds had been creeping up on the Braves, scoring three runs in the top of the eighth and bringing the score to within one. A win meant a wild card spot in the playoffs. The grocery list wasn’t that big; couldn’t she handle it without him?

He had succumbed to a masochistic, self-flagellating torturous guilt. He was starting to snap often. If Emily coughed, he had to be talked out of taking her to the emergency room. If she let go of his hand for more than a second, his mind frantically went through all the horrible scenarios resulting in her brutal demise. Just when he really felt that he couldn’t live his life is such a way, he met Kelly during a family therapy session. She meant the world to him and Emily. Having suffered the loss of a brother at a young age, Kelly knew the pain they were suffering and she had practically been running the group when Dan joined. The personal attention she paid him was really the catalyst that cemented his feelings for her. Emily took to her fast and gave Dan the go-ahead to marry her.

When Kelly came in, Dan shoved the letter in her face before she even had a chance to shut the door.

“I need you to read this and tell me what you think,” he said, his voice coming out in a single, rushed wave.

Kelly took the letter and read it. Then read it again. She did not smile like Dan had hoped. She looked at him over the top of the paper, then read it for a third time. She let out a long sigh as she lowered the letter to her side, out of view.

“What is this?” Her tone was flat, careful not to be accusatory.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I opened the mail when I got home and I thought it was something about the camping trip.”

Sensing his eminent, emotional collapse, Kelly reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly.

“Probably just a nasty joke from one of the older kids at the school,” Kelly said.

“I thought about that. But then I started to wonder how they did it.” He began pacing, two steps one way, two the other.  “Could a school kid break into the main office and type this up, print it off, and put it in the out-going mail without anyone knowing? Then I started asking myself if any other parents got one, or just us?”

Kelly pulled him to her, embracing. He felt how tense his own muscles were, a subtle trembling in the arms he wrapped around her. She smiled and he realized for the first time that he had said “us” when talking about parents. Had he finally included her into his life so deeply that he considered her Emily’s parent? Emily thought so, calling her Mama-Kelly. But he had to keep an eye on things, make sure she didn’t forget about her real mother.

Dan broke away. He felt better, but his face was pallid and his posture rumpled. She vigorously rubbed his back.

“Come on,” she said, smiling. “We’ll order some Moo Shu and I’ll call Vicky, see if she was pranked, too.”

It was just like Dan had expected from her. She was going to help him, going to fix this.

Kelly had turned her back to Dan when she called Vicky Bollinger so that Dan couldn’t see her face while she spoke. She often did that for his benefit so that he wouldn’t get freaked out if it was bad news. Dan mentally tallied all the little things she knowingly did to ease his stressful condition. All the times she went casually through the paper and pulled out the pages with content he might find disturbing. Sure, his mind spent a few seconds wondering what terrors those missing articles contained, but in the end he forgot about it while reading the drollness of the rest. One of his friends called these actions of censorship, said that Kelly was babying him. Dan called them acts of tenderness.

He could hear Kelly’s part in the conversation with the other woman, a mother of a little boy in Emily’s class. There were lots of “Uh-huh” and “Mmm.” He briefly wished that he could hear what Mrs. Bollinger was saying. Had she gotten a letter as well? Were she and her husband taking it seriously or had they done what Dan should have done and pitched it a second after reading it?

Kelly said “Goodbye,” and turned, hanging up the phone. She tried her best to keep a poker face, letting her eyes stay locked on the molded plastic answering machine next to the phone. Her hair dangled in front of her eyes, blocking Dan’s view of her face.

“Well?” he asked impatiently.

“The Bollingers also got a letter,” she said. Kelly lifted her head and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear that didn’t stay there for more than a second. Her face reminded Dan of a life-like rubber mask—yeah, it looked like Kelly, but there was just enough wrong with the expression that he felt lied to, bothered. She wasn’t taking this as well as she was pretending. “They think it was some kind of joke being played by a student or a janitor, maybe even one of the teachers.”

“But how?”

“The school sends out mass mailings all the time. We get four or five a month about fund-raisers, rule changes, and up-coming events. It wouldn’t be hard for one of the night cleaning crew to print off a fake letter and send it out to the entire enrolled mailing list.”

Her forced casualness bugged Dan. And she wouldn’t look at him, which made him think she was more concerned than she wanted him to know about.

Dan felt the collar of his shirt begin to dampen with nervous sweat, making the fabric feel cold and heavy, like it was slowly tightening around his neck.

Not able to stand it any more, Dan grabbed the letter from the dining room table and walked out of the house. Evening was birthing night quickly. The sky was the blue-gray color of the milk in the bottom of Emily’s cereal bowl after eating one of her sugary, fruity breakfasts. He knew that if he wasn’t able to find a suitable answer by the end of the night he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to sleep—maybe not until Emily came back on Sunday afternoon. If she came back. After all, the letter said that she’d been eaten, hadn’t it?

Across the street, and four houses down, was the Chapman residence. Christine Chapman was the room mother for Emily’s class and often drove her son, Todd, and Emily to school. Dan remembered that she worked for the police as some kind of analytical accountant. Maybe she could help, call in some favors, get a cop—or SWAT—to head up to the campsite and check on the kids. If not, then she could at least use some clout to start an investigation as to the letter’s author. She probably owned a gun—didn’t everyone who worked for the cops have a gun? The thought of stealing the gun crossed Dan’s mind, but he pushed it aside when he realized that he, first, didn’t know what he would do with it, and, second, that he was too much of a coward to actually use it.

Dan knocked on the Chapman’s door, his knuckles rapping out a variety of hurried rhythms. Why weren’t the answering? Was Mrs. Chapman already deep into her frantic search for her own child? Was she, at that very moment, on the phone with the squad commander, organizing the police raid on the campgrounds, strutting through her living room in her pants suit and high heels, talking firmly and authoritatively, plotting the safe return of her son?

Engrossed in his own series of scenarios, Dan didn’t notice the door fly open. The sudden shock sent him jumping back. He tripped on his own feet and stumbled into the railing.

“Christ,” Bob Chapman cried. He paused and waited for Dan to recover himself then said, “What the hell do you want, Dan?”

Dan stepped forward, brandishing the school’s letter like a TV cop showing his badge.

“Did you get one?” he asked.

Chapman squinted at the letter in the softening light. He looked from the letter to Dan, then turned to look over his shoulder. He stepped out on the porch, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Now’s not really a good time, man,” Chapman said. “Christine’s a little upset.” His eyes darted to the letter at Dan’s side, then back up. Dan knew that Chapman had hoped that he hadn’t seen him look.

“What did yours say?” Dan demanded.

“Same thing as yours,” Chapman said.

“Is she doing anything? Is she calling her friends on the force? Has anyone gotten a hold of the principal?”

The door opened and Christine Chapman stepped out. She was pale and her hair hung in knotted clumps—clearly she’d been running her fingers through it many times. Dan could see the stress attached to her like dust on a forgotten curio.

“Ten other parents,” she said, “got letters today. All of them have kids on the camping trip.”

The air thickened in Dan’s lungs. That was most of the families with children on the trip. Were they being targeted because their children weren’t home? If so, then it had to be someone at the school who knew who was going on the trip.

Christine finally looked up and saw Dan. She didn’t need to see the letter in his hand. “You make eleven.”

“And no one got one who didn’t have a kid on the camping trip?” Bob Chapman asked. Christine stepped closer to him and his arm hooked around her waist.

“Not that I’ve been able to tell,” she said softly.

Dan got the sense that he should go, that the Chapman’s needed each other. Silently Dan left their porch and started back home. He had just crossed the street when Kelly came flying out of their house, her eyes wide. She grasped him by both elbows, and took a second to catch her breath. Dan felt her heartbeat in her thumbs as they pressed into his arm—it couldn’t be thumping that fast from just the short run.

“Just got a call,” Kelly said, her words kicked out of her mouth in favor of big gulps of air. “It was the principal—some kind of prerecorded message.”

“What did it say?”

“I don’t know. The machine got it. I heard some of it, but I was too far away."

*     *     *

“Hello, parent,” the principal’s voice said. It came through the small speaker of the answering machine with a hollow, plastic sound. “We’ve gotten many distressing phone calls regarding a letter that some of you have received today. Let me assure that the letter is completely—.” Dan gripped the edge of the counter as the words were erased by the ringing of the school’s bell in the background. The clanging lasted several heartbeats, each one, Dan considered his last. “I hope that clears everything up,” the principal concluded. “Have a good evening.”

The machine clicked and was silent.

Dan looked at Kelly. Her face was a mirrored expression of confused shock.

“I didn’t hear what he said,” Kelly whispered.

Dan played the message twice more, and each time the important part was buried under the startling claxon. Kelly touched his hand, he knew, just to quell the coming flood of paranoia.

“Are they kidding?” he demanded. “I’m supposed to hear that and feel comforted?”

“Please, Dan,” she soothed. “Think about it rationally. I know you don’t want to hear the word ‘coincidence,’ but isn’t it at least sort of likely that things are turning out this way by chance?”

How could she ask that? It was nearly impossible that so many random events could transpire to create such a coincidence. Was he really supposed to believe that someone hacked into the school’s system and printed a fake letter? That the letter was mailed, by chance, to just those parents who had children at the school-sponsored camping trip? That a call from the principal of the school was accidentally diluted by the ringing school bells—at nearly six in the evening?

“You’re getting that look,” Kelly said. “You’re going to make yourself nuts. I wish I could convince you that on Sunday, the school bus will pull up and that Emily will come hopping down the steps.”

Dan stepped into her embrace, gripping her as if he were afraid she would be yanked away from him at any second.

“This is going to be a long weekend,” he sighed.

*     *     *

The rest of Friday and most of Saturday bled together. Dan stayed on the couch watching a variety of the worst television imaginable, trying to get his mind on Emily’s safety. He subjected himself to game shows, to mindless sporting events, even popular, scripted reality shows. Though his eyes took in the images, Dan’s brain refused to process them. Kelly made several attempts to encourage him to do something—anything—but sit there and fester in the insanity he was making for himself.

But Dan didn’t think he was crazy. He couldn’t separate himself from the creeping nastiness of his imagination, but he could differentiate between the plausible and the impossible. It was more than plausible that the letter was a real communication. It was even quite possible that the principal’s message was precisely timed to coincide with the blaring school bell, to distort the information that desperately desired. But it was impossible for Dan to shatter the glass prison of his overprotective subconscious. Kelly tried, and he appreciated her efforts, but he really would have preferred to be left alone.

His mind was constricted with memories of his bad decisions that had ended even worse than he could have thought possible. Naturally, he thought of Ruth. He recalled the look of genuine disappointment on her face as she looked over her shoulder at him, just before she closed the door and went out to die. He thought about the woman he dated just after Ruth’s death—how guilty he felt bringing her home for Emily to see, like the woman was some kind of animal in a zoo. Emily had looked right into the woman’s eyes and said, “I don’t think I want you for my new mommy.” The woman had left and never spoken to Dan after that. And then he’d met Kelly in therapy. And his decisions seemed to turn around and actually be the right ones.

Until he put Emily on that bus.

She hadn’t wanted to go, but Dan and Kelly thought it might be good for her. A chance to building intrapersonal relationships, they called it. As she got on the bus, she gave Dan a similar look to the one her mother had. Immediately Dan wanted to yank her down the steps and cradle her and kiss her and tell her she was never allowed to leave his arms again. But the firm pressure of Kelly’s hand on his shoulder seemed to override his better judgment. Then the doors closed and the bus rolled away, Emily’s small, round face smiling warily at him as it grew smaller and smaller, then indistinguishable.

Dan turned off the television and rubbed the rough stubble on his cheeks and chin.

“You ready to go?” Kelly asked.

Dan was already on his feet, his hands firmly clutching the car keys in his pocket. He strode briskly to the car and waited impatiently for Kelly to catch up. He drove a little more recklessly than he normally would have, but the bus was due back at the school in fifteen minutes.

Dan pulled into the parking lot and saw several cars parked at awkward, disjointed angles, some with the doors still hanging open.

“Looks like a scene from a zombie movie,” Kelly said, trying get him to laugh. In response, he grunted. “You know, when the people come across a freeway clogged with cars?” Dan found a spot set apart from some of the other cars. He got out. He didn’t wait for Kelly, but had to keep himself from running towards the throng of other parents.

The pack of parents were mostly silent, some whispering sibilantly to one another, but it was loud with nervous movement. There was the hushed rasp of rubbing cloth, the brash crack of a nervous cough, and the surprising shock of a sneeze. Dan waded into them, most looking down at their shoes. The tension was palpable. They had each gotten a strange letter stating that their child had been eaten. Dan looked over at the Chapmans. Bob looked at him with a strange coldness. Christine was sallow and had dark circles under her eyes. Dan hoped he didn’t look that bad. But his heart went out to her—he knew exactly what she was feeling, the horrors going through her brain at the speed of synapse snap.

Dan looked over his shoulder at Kelly. She was standing away from the rest, arms folded. She smiled when she saw him looking at her. She gave a quick, comforting nod.

“Here it comes!” The voice belonged to a woman.

In unison, the parents turned their heads. Dan saw a shimmering yellow blob coming down the street. There was a collective sigh that he could almost feel rustling around him like a soft breeze.

The bus got closer and closer and finally made the turn into the parking lot of the school. It came up to the knot of people as if it were sizing them up. It stopped and the doors opened.

The only thing that came out was a rush of hot, dry summer silence and the faint odor of roasted meat.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Welcome to HorrorHouse

I am basically sick of being unemployed. The job market sucks, and even though I'm qualified for every job I've applied for, I'm still sitting here without any steady income. So it would seem that the best option would be to go into business for myself.

A few months ago, I made a Facebook update that I was thinking of starting my own magazine. Some of you asked some very good questions that I could only answer with a blank, manquin-stare--which made me fee really stupid, by the way. But it taught me one thing. That I was thinking on the small scale. Who would buy a magazine about everything? So I took that idea and ran with it.

Right now I'm in a class on small-press publishing, and, according to the professor, at the end of the class I will technically have all the information and skills needed to start my own independant press--which will be our final assignment in the class (capital and actual publication not included). So over the last few weeks I've put in some work into researching how things work at a press and have come up with something I like. I've developed a logo, a mission statement, and a target market. I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but this is just a rough idea anyway.

HORRORHOUSE PRESS

Mission Statement: We strive for the advancement of horror and dark fiction through the publication of new or experimental material that pays homage to the origins of the genre, but not mimicking it.

Target Auidence: The devoted fans of horror in all its forms, literary readers, and those interested in experimental fiction.














I really like the logo I've created. It is the basic idea of what we know a house to be, but it is constructed of the double-H in HorrorHouse. It is one of thouse simple designs that just happens to work well, I think.

The mission statement took me many drafts and attempts to get it just right. I didn't want to come right out and say that we want to piss on the Twilight Saga or that a lot of this mainstream horror sucks balls because it is all just a copy of what was done thirty years ago during the creative boom--well, acutally it was more of a publishing boom due to the success of the writings of Stephen King; every publisher clamored for horror so they could have that top-selling weird guy on their payroll. Anyway, I tried to find the one thing that I thought was lacking in the horror genre today and say "That's the stuff I want to pulish. The stuff that fills the gaps." I'd like to publish good writing, first and foremost, so it doesn't matter what the subject is, as long as it's good horror. I know that zombies are tops right now and that lots of houses out there have a zombie book or nine on the shelves. But a zombie book that I would publish would be different. It would have to scream at me that the horror isn't in the zombies, but in something else, with the zombies just being another obstacle for the protagonists to overcome. Like in World War Z, where the horror comes from the degeneration of society as told through the eyes of people from all different backgrounds.

As with the mission statement, my target auidence took a little time to craft correctly. Again, I didn't want to just come out and say "My target demographic is ME!" So I had to deconstruct what I like to read and classify that into the categories of different types of readers.

Now, I've read a lot of guidelines for submitting manuscripts to publishers and editors for all kinds of presses: commercial, independant, magazines, literary journals. There are a lot of things that they get right, but even more that they fail to address. Especially to someone like me who has a lot of questions. So here are the guidelines I've come up with for submitting to HorrorHouse Press.

Submission Guidelines:

(Note: all submissions should be sent hardcopy and include a SASE. Submissions that do not follow this important rule will be recycled without consideration.)

Novels: All novels should be queried before submission, and no queries should be sent for unfinished manuscripts. In the query letter, please indicate what makes your novel different from all others in the genre. If you have a literary agent, please include their information in the query letter. Should your query letter gain our interest, we ask that you submit a complete breakdown of your novel, chapter-by-chapter, as well as send three sample chapters; one from the begining of the story, one from the middle, and one from the end.

Short Stories/Collections: Short stories should be submitted via hardcopy to the address provided. Please include an introductory letter that explains who you are, what you are submitting, and where you have previously been published (if applicable).

If you are submitting a collection of short stories for consideration, you will need to follow a similar process as with submitting a novel. Query first, then provide samples should they be requested.

Poetry: Poetry submissions should follow the same guidelines for short stories, unless you are submitting an original epic poem, in which case you should follow the steps for submitting a novel.

Stage/Screenplays: Follow the process for submitting novels, except that instead of sending a breakdown by chapter, please create one that details the action by Acts. Also, if requested, send three scenes instead of chapters.

Okay, so how is this going to get off the ground? Hell, I have no idea. One thought was to hold a contest and charge a reading fee (actually pretty standard procedure for writing contests). The money from the fees could pay for a printing as well as a small prize (including a copy of the completed piece). That's just one idea, though. Everything is subject to change. And this will probably die a quick death, to be buried in the vast potter's field that is my mind.

On a final note, my card:

VERSUS: Match One!

WHO: Edgar Allan Poe VERSUS William Shakespeare

PREDICTED WINNER: Poe.

WHY: Poe's wirey and cranky and he's deeply devoted to whatever passion he's fulfilling at the moment.

LET'S GET IT ON!!!!

Poe didn’t care where he was—didn’t even care that after turning down a foggy alley in his beloved Boston the ground beneath his feet had changed from the uneven cobblestones to slimy, pitted earth. All he cared about was finding out where that wonderful smell was coming from. Oh, the sweetness of it. Like burning sugar and cut wood. Whiskey.
After spying a troop of drunken ne’er-do-wells flopping out of a doorway, singing aloud to a song with no melody, Poe figured he’d found his destination. The place was small, dark, and dirty. Just the place for his weary mind and heavy stomach. Again, his tunnel-vision prevented him from noticing that he was being noticed. Everyone in the place was glaring at him. But he sat down and ordered a whiskey. Silently, the inn keeper filled a wooden cup with the brew and gave it to the large-headed man with dark eyes. Poe took a single sip.

“This is terrible,” he said. Then he slugged it down and ordered another. But before he could bring the bowl to his lips, there was a commotion behind him, drawing his attention. A puffy-shirted gentleman came into the bar hollering incessantly about something or other. Poe’s head throbbed too much for him to care.

The huffy man slammed his hands on the bar and bellowed a guttural bark of frustration. Then he turned and looked at Poe, his eyes scanning him up and down like they were on springs. Poe admired the man’s costume, complete with starched, frilly collar. He certainly was a dandy. Must be part of some traveling group of actors up from New York, he thought.

“Sir,” the man said to Poe. “Be thee an alien?”

Poe looked at the man from the corners of his eyes. There was a striking familiarity to him, but the horrible alcohol was already clouding his overcast mind. He simply nodded and drank down his whiskey.

“From where dost thou deliver?” the man asked.

“Boston,” Poe grunted.

“Boss tone,” the man repeated. “Be it near far-Germania?”

Poe set the cup down on the bar and sighed, motioning the inn keeper for a refill.

“If you pardon me, sir, I wish to drown my sorrows in quiet melancholy,” he said. “I bid you good afternoon.”

The man took a step back, his round face reddening in the cheeks as if his wide collar had suddenly gone tight.

“You address me thus?” he huffed.

Poe turned on the man. He just wanted a quiet afternoon with his favorite vice, his most recent muse. Why wouldn’t this over-educated buffoon simply let him drift into maddening inebriation? Instead, he chose to ignore the gaudy purveyor of stage-English and downed his whiskey hurriedly.

But then the man’s hand gripped Poe’s shoulder and thrust him backwards, spilling his wooden cup of liquor.

“Dost thou take me for a rogue?” the man demanded. “Am I little more than the shite ‘neath his lordship’s heel?”

At that instant, Poe saw the man’s hand slipping closer and closer to one of the many belts he wore around his waist—the one carrying the small dagger. Without much need for mental clarity, Poe took up the nearest weapon to him, the wooden bowl, and tossed it into the brash bastard’s face. And in the instant the man closed his eyes and reacted to the projectile, Poe leaned down and charged his rival, slamming his large head into the man’s soft belly.

The two fell to the floor in a tangled heap, Poe doing his best to land a solid hit through all of the fabric the man wore. When that failed he raised up slightly and brought down both hands onto the man’s nose with the force of a meaty hammer. The man yelled in pain and flung his attacker off, curling into a ball. Poe took the opportunity and lashed out with his leg, the wooden heel of his boot connecting firmly with the side of the injured man’s head.

The man went down, groaning. Poe strode up to him, towering over his prostrate frame. He could hear the soft whimpers of defeat coming from the loud-mouth’s bloodied lips. My God, how good he felt. It was the first fight Poe had ever won. All those times as a child when he was the one bleeding came back to him. Like the ghosts of so many of his stories, the faces of the bullies lingered just out of his field of vision. And they made him angry. He wanted them to watch, wanted them to be afraid. He’d tried it with words with some success, but now he would give them something new to fear. Something new to himself.

Poe lifted his leg and brought the heel down again. The patrons in the bar gasped in horror. Good. They gasped when he did it again and again. Soon they stopped gasping, but Poe did not stop. Not until he was drunkenly satisfied.

He left the bar, trailing bloody shoe marks in the rugged dirt road. And after a bit of wandering, he passed through the fog bank and tripped over the memorable cobblestones. When he woke later that night, still in the alley, he found it hard to walk. Upon returning to his apartment, he discovered the heel of his shoe was missing and his trousers caked with dried gore.

With his head buzzing from the inferior whiskey, he lay down. Just before he shut his eyes, he noticed a small bust above his writing desk. It was of a huffy man with a too-wide collar, with similar features to the man Poe had bested the previous night. The engraved name: William Shakespeare.

WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED: Basically, Poe went ballistic and took his adversairy by surprise. I think that had Shakespeare been given another heartbeat, he might have pulled that knife and stuck Poe, ending this early. But Poe's built up rage actually worked to his advantage here. He lives to fight another day--probably with his own demons, though. And he might not win that one.

Introducing VERSUS!

I haven't done a blog in a while, mainly because school has started up again and I've overloaded myself. But Friday's are set up to be my easy days, so I might get to do one a week--more if I get nice and tweaked.

Anyway, with all the down time I don't have, I've decided to to start up a new thing to try and gain a wider reading audience--these four people just aren't cutting it (not that I don't totally love you guys for reading, because I do. You all rock!!)

I'm going to be doing a VERSUS column.  What is that, you ask?

VERSUS is going to be a fictional encounter between any two people where I come up with a setting, and a reason, and let them duke it out! Oh yeah, you heard me. I'm talking prime-time fighting revolving around two random people (real or fictitious). I'm going to break it up into three sections. Section One will be the breakdown: who's fighting and who's predicted to win. Section Two: the fight (ding, ding). Section Three: recap and explanation of why it turned out the way it did. 

I know that Wizard Magazine used to do something like this with comic characters, but I haven't been able to afford one in a long time, so I don't know if they still do. But mine is going to be awesome! You want Darth Vader versus a ninja? You got it! How about Superman versus the Little Mermaid? Boom! Done. I'll even throw in Mother Teresa versus Cthulhu just because I can.

BUT HERE'S THE BEST PART: I'll be taking suggestions from my friends on who goes at it next. And if I get stuck, I'll post a poll where you can vote on the victor--but the most popular choice might not necessarily win. Why? Because anything can happen, baby!

So if this sounds interesting, then tell your friends to follow me here or on Facebook so that they can get in on the action, too. But don't wait too long, because you never know when I'm going to change my mind. Sometimes I can get a little bit like Hunter S. Thompson on acid, mushrooms, and booze.

Somebody Help Hamburger Helper

I was at the store the other day, checking out the Hamburger Helper section--yes, we're that poor that Hamburger Helper is now in our cupboards. I looked at all of the different Helper helpers and was actually kind of impressed that they have such a variety, breaking it down into meats (tuna, chicken, or hamburger), and then into ethnic varieties (Italian, Asian, Mexican). I wasn't really paying that much attention though, because my eyes skimmed over most of them without a second glance.

But then I saw this young mother reach out and grab a box of Hamburger Helper Italian Spaghetti and Meat Sauce. It took me a second to register what had just happened. Now, I know that a box of Helper is pretty cheap, usually around $3, and in these hard times people look at price more than ever. But I can't for the life of me figure out why someone would bypass an entire aisle in Wal-Mart containing all kinds of flavored sauces and shapes of pasta for a box of Helper. Yeah, a jar of sauce is about the same price as a box of Helper; a pound of beef is about that much too, so you've doubled the price. Then factor in that the pasta costs a little less. So you're looking at a meal that costs about three times as much as the Helper. But think of the serving size.

The recommended serving size on Helper is 1 cup, prepared. That isn't much. And when you consider that when they show the stuff in the commercials, there is usually about three side dishes and a salad and bread. I doubt that mother was fixing such a lavish meal to her and her son. Now compare that to the jar, meat, and pasta and you get something different.

I mean, honestly, in most families, when it is spaghetti night, that is the feature item, usually served with a salad and bread, but nothing much. It is a meal in itself, with protein, grains, vegetables, and dairy if you like cheese (and who doesn't?). Plus if you get the big box of spaghetti, you can serve, like, ten people as much as they want.

I don't know. Maybe I'm missing the point of Hamburger Helper Spaghetti and Meat Sauce. Maybe it exists for the same reason the Chef Boyardee has canned Spaghetti and Meatballs. But I can see a need for canned, pre-cooked pasta. With the Helper, you still have to cook the noodles.

Anybody out there had Helper Spaghetti? What did you think? Worth it? Or is it better to get a jar of sauce and a box of pasta and make it your damn self?

Scott Pilgrim vs. Me

Thanks to a free trial weekend of Cinemax, I was able to DVR a bunch of movies I have not yet seen. One of which was the much-hyped Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Let me start by saying that I'm sick of Michael Cera. I liked him as George Michael Bluth on Arrested Development--and so must everyone else, because that is the only character he plays! From Superbad to Juno to Youth in Revolt, Cera plays the same stammering, weak-voiced kid with a chip on his shoulder and a desire to prove he's more than his character's cliche. But he always fails. Now, I actually liked Youth in Revolt, but that was only because of the alter ego his character created. The pathetic loser Scott Pilgrim is no different. From the very beginning, I hated the kid. He moped around for most of the movie, mumbling, whining and making me want to kill myself, and I'm supposed to identify with this idiot? His few shining moments actually came out of the blue, as in, he'd be getting his ass kicked and then come up with some cunning strategy for defeating his rival. And don't give me the argument that this is a movie about a kid who has video game-style battles, that I shouldn't take it so seriously, because all of that aside, this is a character-driven story, and the characters sucked.

Moving on to Romana. Mary Elizabeth Winstead was amazing as that character, but I, again, hated the character. Chicks like Ramona suck! They're selfish, egotistical, and fake. They pretend to be edgy and open and all about sexual power and freedom, but all they really want is for someone to look at them and want them, though they don't want to be tied down or labeled as a "girlfriend"--which is why girls like that are usually the ones who end the relationships, as shown in the movie. If there is one thing this movie got right, it is showing how ridiculous girls who act this way can be. I'm sorry, but I don't care how hot you are or much you pretend to be into me, if one of your ex-lovers shows up and demands I fight, then see ya! No girl is worth a vicious uppercut from a vegan-powered, anime-inspired, former Superman, Brandon Routh. And to make matters worse, this bitch runs off and hides when there is a fight (over her, by the way), only to randomly pop up later and say that "I do that sometimes." Piss off, you ditsy cow! I whooped up on three super-beings for you and you disappear, probably off flirting with some other unsuspecting loser to get a free cup of coffee. Gah! I hated Ramona and really think that Scott should have gotten back together with Kim, the cute, girl-next-door drummer.

Whew! Moving on . . .

This film actually did something a little different in that the actors they cast to be in their early 20s looked more like they were in their early teens. Usually, it's the other way around. I mean, is Sarah Michelle Gellar still playing a high school girl? While I thought that it was a good choice to actually cast actors into their age-appropriate roles, it looked off to me. Maybe I'm just too old. The little Asian girl who played Knives was actually the only one who I thought was just perfect. She was supposed to be younger than the others and really looked it.

My absolute favorite thing about this movie was Kieran Culkin! His portrayal of the openly gay, laid back, witty roommate and bed-buddy of Scott was genius. I could have watched a whole movie about him. Usually, I dislike gay characters in film and TV because I often feel as though they are thrown in there to be gay, and for no other reason. Lately there seems to be a rash of randomly gay characters popping up where sexual orientation plays no part in the story and is just there for a shock value. But Wallace Wells is the kind of homosexual that I'd like to party with. Why? Because he's cool with his sexuality and isn't forcing it on those around him. He isn't there to creep out a homophobe or make sassy, really faggy comments. He's just gay--and yes, it does play into the story, so I'm all for it.

Though I really didn't care for the story, I loved the way it was presented. Sadly, I think the irony of the 16-bit video games were lost on the characters and most of the audience. These kids were born into the N64/Sega Genisis/Playstation era and weren't around for the golden oldies of Contra, Super Mario Bros., or The Legend of Zelda. If this story were about a bunch of 30-year-olds looking to rekindle their past, it would have made a lot more sense--and I could have tolerated Scott Pilgrim chasing the worst kind of female creature there is.

Over all, I rate this a C-. It lost heavy points for having shitty characters and an over-used plot, but it gained points for its unique style and excellent use of star cameos.