Entertainment

I have been a long time fan of Stephen King’s stories but not so much his movies. The main reason is that compared to his writing, the movies generally suck.

I read my first King novel when I was ten (1976 if you really want to know). That’s when I fell in love with horror/mysteries in general. I stayed up all night Christmas eve that year reading Salem’s Lot as well as The Amityville Horror by George Lutz. I was hooked and the bar has been set by the feeling I got when I read Salem’s Lot. While certainly not his scariest book, for a ten-year-old it was pretty darn terrifying. I watched the TV miniseries when it aired in ’79 and of course I was still pretty young then, so as far as I was concerned it was a terrific movie.

In general the movies that came out from ’79 until the late 80’s seemed to me to be low-budget, and just didn’t capture what I got out of the books, but the last few years, since the Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption were released, they have been getting better and better. The most recent flick to come out is The Mist, which is to be released in theaters on November 21st. Directed and adapted from Stephen King’s short story by Frank Darabont, not surprisingly the director of the aforementioned Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile, this looks to be a serious thriller and chiller. I checked out the trailer over at themist-movie.com and the wife decided then and there that she wasn’t going to see it with me but Pete, my ten-year-old wants to go see it with me and I may just take her.

The Mist by Stephen King is also one of my favorite short stories, really a novella in itself. There are several that I really like and consider favorites though, most of them in Skeleton Crew as is The Mist. The Reach, while not a horror story, really shows how Stephen King can grab your attention and keep hold until he lets go.

If you aren’t familiar with the Mist it details a mist that rolls in to a Maine town and traps the townspeople inside a grocery store. As they realize that there are some sort of creatures out there, things start to get ugly, both inside and outside the store. You are better off going to check out the two trailers at http://www.themist-movie.com/, as well as the webisodes that are up to get a general idea of what the movie is about and look for me at Arbor Place Mall Theater a few days after it’s out. I would love to go see it on opening day but it’s too crowded for my tastes and with the hours I work I won’t have a day off work until about the 27th anyhow.

I guess this was an anthem for quite a few guys (and ladies) when they turn 18. This is a clip of Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson doing 18 live.

One of my favorite albums by Alice Cooper is definitely his first, Love it to Death. Back in 1971 the band had not fully gotten into the dark gothic shows that would come along a few years later but you can already see the creepiness starting to show.

This isn’t the best video I could find on Youtube but I prefer live Rock & Roll to recorded any day of the week. It’s a video of Alice & band performing in Detroit in 1971.

I had every intention of coming home to write tonight but think I am going to glue myself to the TV and then pass out. Cya…

Byrne Reese has released a Podcast plugin that allows you to link to a podcast on the Internet including your own podcasts or just simple MP3 files that may be on your server and has included a freely downloadable flash MP3 player as well. I have been waiting on a decent mp3 player that I could embed in posts and it looks like this might be it. I am extremely happy to see this and might get back into doing an occasional podcast.

I thought that the recent Melting Pot Heavy Metal Addiction podcast would be a good one to test it with.

When the wife and I got married 19 years ago, we didn’t have tons of money and neither did anyone in our family. The reception itself was held in the clubhouse of the condo’s where my wife’s Aunt lived at the time, and for entertainment we pretty much had ourselves and possibly a country music station. I don’t really remember too many details as I had been up extremely late the evening before. I do have lots of pictures though and they help bring the memories back. The one I remember most is the feeling of relief when we got the heck out of that place and drove off to go on our honeymoon.

Hopefully it will be quite some time but when the girls eventually get married I want them to have fond memories of everything that happens on that day and that includes even the Wedding Music because one of the big things that they will remember is the music that is played at the wedding. I can remember times in my life and certain years and decades by the songs and when I hear one it brings back those memories. That’s why GIGMasters can be such an integral part of the whole thing.

GIGMasters is the Internet’s premiere booking service for entertainment since 1997. The provide entertainments for weddings as well as other special events and have a large database that includes thousands of performers all across the United States and Canada. They will allow you to book a wedding band, DJ or musician in just minutes with access to audio, video and client reviews.

Remember Poltergeist from 1982? Not too bad for today’s standards as far as special effects are concerned, but still pretty scary. The oldest girls and I have spent the evening watching it.

It’s pretty funny because she was just asking about the movie last night. She wanted me to rent it from Netflix and I told her that with it being Halloween it was just about guaranteed that it would be on TV in the next week or so. Sure enough it came on at eight tonight and we have been watching it together.

I never did get to see the movie back in the eighties. Even with all of the hype and stuff I was too busy hanging out and partying to go see any movies aside from the stuff that was playing at the midnight movie, like the Rocky Horror Picture Show…

I already posted this over at my tech/entertainment site but then realized that it would fit in well here with Halloween coming up.

Apparently during the last stop on her U.S. reading tour, J.K. Rowling let the cat out of the proverbial bag about one of her main characters from the Harry Potter series, Albus Dumbledore.

Heck, there’s even a poll up over at CNN as to whether she should have outed Dumbledore. Pretty overwhelmingly 60% say no and I tend to agree. I could care less about homos and stuff like that, it’s just not an issue in my world but I do think that it’s going to end up being a bigger deal over the next few weeks than she thinks. The stories stand as they are and should have been left alone. Now she has succeeded in alienating even further possibly millions of fans who will never get to read the wonderful stories, at least until they are adults and can move out of their anti-homo households.

Personally I doubt if my children (who have read the books) ever even noticed the passages that are being referred to and I see no need to point them out and muddy the waters of an already developing sense of sexuality.

My question is are they going to cast the part with a lisp?

Apparently one of the cable stations is having a Hitchcock weekend right now. The wife was flipping through channels and came across The Birds, one of my favorite movies. Hitchcock was so ahead of his time in movie making it is amazing. He brought terror to new heights with his movies. The Birds is a must see and if you’ve never watched it you are seriously missing something.

Here’s a word from the master himself about The Birds, starring Tippi Hedron and Rod Taylor.

Queensryche has released a cover of Pink Floyd’s Welcome to the Machine that is surprisingly good. It’s not that I am surprised that Queensryche is good, I already know that, but quite often a really good band will release a cover and it will suck.

It’s available on iTunes, I don’t know about Amazon yet but will find out later this afternoon when I get home from work. Click the album cover for the link to the song at the iTunes store.