Where Southern Hospitality Meets Mind Shredding Insanity
I love me some Lorenzo Lamas. He is one of the mighty kings of sharksploitation with his starring roles in this movie and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus. Men want to be him, women want to be with him. This man and his perfectly coiffed head have been dropping panties for decades. My love for him is kind of like my love for ABBA. I will indulge late at night with the blinds drawn and never speak of it to anyone at the office.
Continue reading Dark Waters: Lameness with Lamas
It’s no picnic being a member of a minority religious community in the United States.
More than most countries, the US extends an enormous amount of privilege to Christians (especially White Evangelical ones). On the best of days, this ensures a level of political and legal insulation for Christians that is perpetually denied to Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and members of the eclectic and scattered communities of witches, pagans, heathens, and other freethinkers. This despite repeated malfeasance on the part of majority faiths and structures of hierarchy; this, despite the fact that the fear that attaches itself to “the other” in America so often blinds people to the wolves in their midst.
Continue reading I Genuinely Hated “Satanic Panic”
Despite the infinite variety of human experience and the limitless potential of the imagination, it is remarkably difficult to have a truly original idea. Many creatives thus operate as alchemists, combining the base elements of previously-worked-out tropes in hope of transmuting them into gold. In horror, this can involve the distillation of esoteric ingredients like obscure mythology or the rediscovery of old monsters in a new light; it can even throw any pretense of “originality” to the wayside, if it does so with enough arch self-aware humor (thus the success of The Cabin in the Woods).
Continue reading Friendship is Magic: ‘Creep’ and ‘Creep 2’
I know what you’re thinking. Susan, this is not a shark movie. Except there is no way you’ve watched this movie so you wouldn’t be thinking that at all. At any rate, you got me there. This is not a shark movie. It is a lake monster movie. I figured I’d branch out this week. At least it’s sharksploitation adjacent.
Continue reading Beneath: A little bit stinky, a little bit funCritically acclaimed short story writer, Steven Lloyd, spills all on his success, childhood, and writing know-how. Lloyd opens his literary black book to give you the contacts you need for a successful start in the publishing world. Also includes a foreword by Mark Sieber and an introduction by Ronald Kelly.
Critically acclaimed short story writer, Steven Lloyd, spills all on his success, childhood, and writing know-how. Lloyd opens his literary black book to give you the contacts you need for a successful start in the publishing world. Also includes a foreword by Mark Sieber and an introduction by Ronald Kelly.
(Titled with apologies to Max Cannon)
Stand just about anywhere in the Salt Lake Valley and cast your gaze up at the Wasatch Mountains. You will be greeted by a series of sedimentary shelves that mark the mountains like rings in a bathtub, or the shadow of a puddle on the concrete dried by the sun. When the sun hits the Wasatch just so it’s a beautiful sight, a rich layer cake of color and texture and only one of the innumerable natural wonders of my home state.
This spectacle is the geological fingerprint of Lake Bonneville, a Pleistocene-era paleolake that used to cover most of Utah in its chilly depths. At its largest, about 15,000 years ago, Lake Bonneville was 1,000 feet deep and covered 20,000 square miles, making it easily the largest inland lake in North America at the time. As the geologic eras ambled by and the Bonneville Flood unleashed the ancient lake, draining it forever, it left sediment on more than the walls of the Wasatch. One gift that this sediment gave the world is an expanse of nothingness known as the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Continue reading The Unlightable Bareness of the Bonneville Salt Flats
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