Posts Tagged ‘blog’

The content of the show and this website will focus on retro horror. It’s what I like best, and since I have a list of horror websites I check out I discovered that there’s no way to compete.

Besides, there’s a lot of overlap; how many sites and podcasts covered Zombieland this week alone? All of them, that’s how many. I like to get everyone’s take on something, but it gets dull after the fourth or fifth review, and so many of them come at you at once. That’s the downside to being hip, everyone ends up talking about the same things at the same time.

I’m not hip, never have been. Some people are leaders, others are followers. I’m neither, I’m busy looking for the perfect microbrewery.

So I’m going to poke around through history and dig up the obscure.

Did you know we technically have almost an entire century worth of genre movies available to us right now?

A film version of the story of Frankenstein was first made in 1910 as a silent picture. Film, or “moving pictures”, had only been created as a medium about a decade and a half earlier.

Although the film is only about 15 minutes long, and has all the limits of a silent era film, it still marks a kind of genesis of genre filmmaking. Even at this early stage in the development of the film medium, monsters, fantasy, good and evil, all had their birth in popular culture at the same time.

Today, this film is available on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcLxsOJK9bs

Could the people involved in this film even begin to imagine the technology we have today, various digital mediums from DVDs to downloadable movies? And yet, we enjoy an availability of entertainment unmatched in decades previous. Films from the silent era though the decades that followed, where we see the birth of technicolor, stero sound, video tapes and beyond are all ready to be discovered.

It’s 2009, almost 2010. That’s one hundred years of genre films.

In this sense the contemporary hardly exists at all. All of us, from 16 to 60 years old, will most likely have one thing in common: most of the films we will ever see were either made before our time or seen well after the time they were first released to theaters (those that made it into theaters).

It’s like the old saying, an old joke you haven’t heard yet is a new joke to you. Thanks to the technology of video, the past is just as accessible to us as the present.

So who needs to be topical? Who needs to be trendy or current? Why “live in the now”?

The past IS now.

Well, I seem to have mostly recovered from my illness. I was down for over two weeks which never happened to me before. I wasn’t a confident supporter of Obama’s socialized medicine, but now I wish I had some insurance or something. I can’t afford the doctor now, and I was stuck with using leeches.

I have a crapload of work to get caught up on. I’m doing some designing for my business as well as other work, so the zombie painting is going to progress slowly as I work on it an hour or two when I can. I designed a logo today for the first time in years, and it’s good to be making art again.

Speaking of the painting, I realized that the Ghoulzone t-shirt is a bit on the expensive side. Even I can’t pay for one, and that’s just sad. I’m looking into alternatives to see if I can get my t-shirts down below 20 bucks each, because I’d pay that for a good shirt. Most cheap shirts just have a one or two color text message or something simple on them, but my painted designs have to be full color, and that costs. But they’re going to be worth it.

In the Zazzle store I have mouse pads and art prints/posters and mugs which are quite reasonably priced, so the zombies and future horror paintings will be available in the Ghoulzone store in any case, so I’m sure you can find some affordable stuff there.

Now I’m off to enjoy eating some solid food for a change. I still have Irritable Bowel Syndrome though, but at least I’m used to that. I just need to eat some tree bark at every meal and I’m good to go.

See ya soon, still getting back to working on more content and podcast stuff.

I had a birthday sunday, not much fun. I’m middle aged, broke, and I have the worst stomach virus I have ever had. Everything comes out liquid. I am a human balloon full of gasses, I look pregnant. Maybe it’ll be a boy alien.

Things are getting worse. Like R.J. MacReady, I want to make sure there’s some kind of record. As reluctant as I am to talk about my personal life, nobody can say I didn’t tell anyone. IT’s like The Thing is after me, and I’m trapped at the ‘Pole. I have no flamethrowers.

Haven’t worked on the zombie design for a few days but it’s 2/3 of the way done. I think people are going to like it, so I may have a chance to sell a few t-shirts and get one dollar a piece in profit for each. Yay! Be an artist!

Ow ow ow ow…

• I’m about halfway done with the next t-shirt design. It’s zombies! Zombies are fun to paint. And blood and brains too. Why didn’t I think of this sooner?
• Ghoultoons coming back, I’ve been busy and haven’t finished this week’s yet. I’m going to try to do what I did before and work ahead a little to make sure they get back to regular updates.
• I will be a guest host for the vacationing McPierce in an upcoming episode of A Little Dead Podcast. More news to come. Also, I am told by a few people that my podcast is missed, so let’s hope this inspires me to get back to it.

And finally, I give you Reason #2049 why I am not a trendy person. Even though I’m on Twitter (and have become bored by it since it’s being used mostly for advertising just like MySpace. Why volunteer for more advertising? I get more than enough without trying, in fact I do what I can to block it out) I went ahead and tried twice to do what everyone else has decided to do in droves recently for some reason, and get on Facebook. I give you the results below:

Facebook has rejected your Uncle Larry, my fiends.

Fake Larry is the name I use for all my Ghoulzone and horror-related activities, and I’m not going to change that for some social website. So you see here an example of that which plagues my entire life: even when I decide to join the crowd, fate prevents me from doing so. What was that Groucho Marx said about not wanting to be a member of any club that would have him? Maybe this is the opposite. I could probably write to them and maybe they’d go ahead and put me in the system, but I consider this a sign.

And incidentally, if you have some sort of content for your website that is “Facebook exclusive”, you are a fucktard. Why lock out people that are already interested in your content by making them join yet another internet fad membership?

Why ask them to follow you somewhere when they are already following you? What are you getting out of this activity? Is Facebook paying you to redirect your traffic to their website? Because they’re doing better than all of us as it is, and that’s the only reason I can think of to do so. Unless they are bringing more people to your own website, which is the only reason I considered joining.

Ghoulzone is Facebook Free. I welcome the horror community one and all to visit this website any time they like, and you will never be asked to join some other site, because The Ghoulzone is also fucktard free.

Follow me on Twitter!! I never advertise money-making schemes or porn!

I am gradually in the process of gradually revising and upgrading this website gradually.

So far I am engaged in Project A: The T-shirt Paintings Thingy. The only thing that will interrupt this project is if I can get freelance art gigs. Otherwise, this is my freelance art gig. My boss is cool, but his depression and constant growling is a bit distracting.

Also on the agenda is more content. I keep wrestling with this issue because I came to realize I’m just not up to competing with other horror sites. The people who run those websites have a tendency to go outside their houses and talk to other people, gathering interviews and reporting on films and events to create content and keeping up on all the latest news and releases.

I don’t have the ability to do all that, especially since I lost the key to my ankle shackles (chafing sucks) and my front door has a right handed knob and I’m left handed. You can see my dilemma.

So, it’s back to my roots and focusing on the two basic interests of mine that this site was made for:

Mud Wrestling and Pornography.

No wait, those are my other websites. I mean Horror and Comedy.

I feel I should make content that is unique compared to other horror movie websites, and by unique I mean I will avoid going to other sites and realizing that I wasn’t the first one to do what I’m doing. Ignorance is bliss. That’s what they say anyway, I don’t know anything about that, which makes me happy.

So Project B (saying “project” makes it sound all scientific like) is for me to get blogging. Yes, everyone thinks blogging is important. Don’t they? It’s a project and all project-like. To the people that write them. The readers are on their own. If they don’t like it they can blog about it. Anyways, this is me blogging and you reading, so let’s agree to keep doing what we’re doing.

Project C (formerly known as the Project Without A Letter) consists of trying to decide if I want to put movie reviews on the website. I made a section for it, then I thought “EVERYONE does movie reviews”. I usually think in quotes.

So the question is do you want to see yet another asshole reviewing the same horror movies others have already seen on yet another horror website? For one thing, I can be a movie reviewing asshole on my podcast (more on that momentillerary) and including the reviews on the site means more typing. If you knew what I was using to type this now you’d agree that this is not a good idea.

I therefore leave this question to you, the both of you who ever contact me about anything. Do you want it? Because I can do the typing if I use lotion and cloth bandages.

Project D is to get with the podcasting again. I wasn’t pleased with what I recorded for the last couple of “unaired” shows so I want to reboot the thing. I would like for it to be funnier, but I’d have to get a sense of humor and I’m still saving up to buy a really good one.

I still have the need to pontificate at length about my various “film theories”, and I need to justify the years of money and time I spent not enrolling in any film school whatsoever and sitting on couches watching horror movies and smoking things that smelled like cat shit and burning hair.

I’m revising, revamping, renewing, and retarding. I still don’t know if the podcast will come out on a regular basis, but I won’t be waiting months between shows anymore.

I would like to ask for your help. I would like to feature segments by other people on the shows, so if you’re interested in doing horror related podcasting and you’re too smart to start your own podcast, I invite you to try yourself out on my show. As long as your segment has something to do with horror and comedy, the rest is up to you. Talk about what you want, and don’t worry about being serious. I’m serious.

If you’re better than I am at it you’re not going to get played. I’m kidding. Nobody is better at it than I am.

Think of a funny name for your segment and we can make it a regular thing. Since I have no voicemail as yet, mp3 files are the way to get airtime on the show for just about any comments you have. Remember to keep on the two topics of horror and comedy. Be comedy, and be horrible.

Project Q (formerly known as The Project Too Cool To Be An E) is me begging you for more help with content. WRITERS. Write a column and you’re in. We can also make that a regular thing, for which you will regularly be paid nothing. Don’t be disappointed, I don’t get paid either. Probably because of my typing style.

Still, of you’re interested, submit and you may get your own column. Don’t tell anyone this, but my master plan here is to create something sort of like The Onion for horror. That is if I can figure out how to redesign this site to have a magazine-like format that will show updates to all the new content. Again, if anyone knows how I can go about this without being overwhelmed with the desire to smash my own skull against every available wall, please do let me know.

See, I’m begging for more free help on this too, and I should be getting it soon. I have been sacrificing the hamsters every midnight as per the instructions of He Who Walks Under The Wood Shavings, so I expect to receive the money, power, and pellets I so richly deserve.

The email link is at the upper left of this site where it says Contact Ghoulzone. Please write in if you wanna suffer along with me and spread the word among your horror hangouts that I’m looking for guest stars. When I figure out how to set it all up we will be Thunderbirds Go. I am ready to amalgamate. And learn to spell words like amalgamate.

Holy crap kids, I forgot to put up a new Ghoultoon on Thursday. Sorry about that, I guess I was too busy making photoshop jokes on message boards for other podcasts. I’ll try to get it on here tonight, I wanna do another comic strip to make fun of something else I saw in horror news this week, so those do take a bit longer anyway.

Thanks to all the new people that have been coming here to check them out.

In other news, George Romero announced that his new zombie film finally has a title which is apparently Survival of the Dead. Since the word survival is the antithesis of being dead, I’m not sure I get the reference. Who exactly is surviving here? The zombies are dead already, their lack of survival is what started the whole problem. Idunno, I just hope it’s better than Diary was. George is really looking frail these days so I hope he knocks us on our asses again soon, God bless’m for chain smoking to his heart’s content though. Sorry George, I’m still trying to figure out Bruiser.

 Night, Dawn, Day, what the hell was wrong with Twilight of the Dead? Oh right, that angsty vampire thing ruined that title. Sparkly ZOMBIES? Brrrrrrrr…

I’ve got chunks of podcast files that need to be edited, and when I get more recorded I just might have enough to release two shows at once. Coming up – I do my part to tip the hat to Michael Jackson in a slightly different way, I also compare two recent DVD releases and use them to explain that the hell is wrong with everyone. Yeah, I tend to do that. Then we go 80s retro and I have a few mysteries to clear up there too. Finally we get happy by killing teenagers. I will also have two promo files ready for anyone who wants to plug the show. One is short, one is long, both are funny. I hope.

Y’all come back now, hear?

Thanks to visitor Dark for pointing out code errors in my Wordpress template. I took his advice and fixed it, and the site is looking better in Firefox now. It’s not perfect yet, there are still some issues in the footer and such, which if you noticed are also showing up in the footer when displayed in IE.

But it’s looking better with most of the formatting loading properly and at least you can read the site, so that’s good enough for now.

I like the free template I found for this site after a long search, but I always wanted one that had a more simple layout and would be easier to tweak than this one. I just couldn’t find one that was quite right, with the three column layout I have now. Too much tweaking.

If anyone knows of a simpler free template, let me know and I’ll install it and give it a try. I’d particularly like one that already has a green-on-black motif like it is now.

Anyway, if you would like to visit a site that has lots of good horror-related content and does NOT have a fucked up format, go to Dark’s blog It’s Dark In The Dark.