Disastrous Details

For halloween I carved my best Jack Skellington head, & handed out too much candy, (which I soon realized when spiderman exclaimed, "wow, did you see how much she gave?" to his evil cohorts Zombie and "Bloody face boy"). We watched "the Nightmare before X-mas" and sang along to the fabulous soundtrack, I love it more and more each year.

I am so engaged in the Lemony Snicket series right now, I cannot tell you. (Well, actually I can dear reader, and I'm going to.) I did not fall for H.P. this much, not even close, (I enjoyed the first volume, and found the later ones to be rather boring, too much sports for my liking.) The writing in "A Series of Unfortunate Events" is so intelligent, honest (read:blunt), literary, and terribly dark in places. He tells you things that many people would not want to hear, as well as sharing the recipe for a lovely Puttanesca Sauce. There are wonderful moments when he pulls the reader aside like a close friend to tell them something important about human nature and life, (mourning, death, sadness & fear), an example:

"...it is a sad truth in life that when someone has lost a loved one, friends sometimes avoid the person, just when the presence of friends is most needed."
or...
"Unless you have been very, very lucky, you have undoubtedly experienced events in your life that have made you cry. So unless you have been very, very lucky, you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit."

My only wish is that they had gotten Tim Burton & Henry Selick to do the movie version. I do not like the fact that every good story has to be turned into a movie (it has the effect of impressing someone else's vision on our imagination, even illustration can do this at times), but at least Mr. Burton has a similar gothic vision of the world to that of Mr. Snicket. Sadly, it is not to be. So for the time I will enjoy my own impressions and enjoy being immersed in a good story. A piece of writing has so much more dimension in your mind than just the visual, (smell, texture, painful feels, etc). That being said, I do so love the illustrations done by Brett Helquist.

Some links for you...
Robot Johnny has a list of "movies and t.v. shows that scared the crap out of him as a kid", (not horror films.) My list would include "Tommy, the Who", "H&R Puffinstuff", and the "Hilarious House of Frightenstein", whose site I have no interest in perusing, and Thunderbirds, with the psycho marienttes. And I definitely agree with his inclusion of the theme song to Dr. Who. Years of damage.

Also from Robot Johnny, beautiful patterns galore at Squidfingers.

Miniature Book Kit, link from Rigdonia.

The Journal Comic.

I'm off to make a fire, some mulled cider, and curl up with a good read on this rainy and damp Saturday afternoon.

Posted by kerismith at November 01, 2003 12:27 PM