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Goth Chick News: Disposing of Real Vampires: A Historical Tutorial

Goth Chick News: Disposing of Real Vampires: A Historical Tutorial

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A Bulgarian Vampire
A Bulgarian Vampire

Specific issues of preparedness inevitably crop up at certain times of the year.

Beginning in June, people in the coastal areas of the US begin thinking about laying in a supply of necessities in the event of a hurricane. Sometime in December, people in the Midwest do the same to get ready for the possibility of being snowed in. And near the beginning of October, it is once again time to begin considering defensive tactics against vampires and zombies; though we all know that unlike weather conditions, they are a constant and ever-present threat.

On the zombie front, the US government has us covered.  The Center for Disease Control’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response devotes an entire area of their website to “zombie preparedness.”  There you will find tips on how to plan for a zombie apocalypse, as well as tools for teaching zombie preparedness in the classroom. However, a careful search of the CDC site turned up only minor bits of useless vampire defense advice – generally in the context of how to cope with an infestation of bats.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that humans are already well (nay instinctively) versed on how to deal with vampires; you know, stake through the heart and all.

Turns out, you’re dead on.

In June of this year comes the news that the collective intelligence which drives us humans to go looking for the first pointy object we can lay our mitts on when faced with vampire troubles may not be learned from penny dreadfuls after all. Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed two 700-year-old “vampire” skeletons, stabbed in the chest with an iron rod which was in the tomb next to the bodies.

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Goth Chick News – 13 Questions for Author F. J. Lennon

Goth Chick News – 13 Questions for Author F. J. Lennon

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image0042A while back, I developed a crush on bad-boy musician and ghost hunter, Kane Pryce.

And without examining the psychology behind that statement too closely, let me clarify that technically speaking, my crush is actually focused on Kane’s creator and storyteller extraordinaire, Mr. F. J. Lennon, author of Soul Trapper and Devil’s Gate.

Normally the object of my obsessive stalking behavior that is part and parcel of the season simply becomes the center of a little shrine in the underground offices of Goth Chick News, where the blender generally sits.  They remain blissfully unaware of their elevated state until sometime around mid-November when the shrine comes down, the blender goes back up and my attention returns to annoying former child stars who are trying to stay “former.”

A shrine to anyone located in any basement can be a little off-putting; which is why it doesn’t get discussed much.

So you can imagine (or maybe you shouldn’t) that I was as giddy as a Twilight fan at a flannel shirt sale when Mr. Lennon actually agreed to a little chat with me about his personal experiences which gave birth to such an intriguing and haunted character as Kane Pryce.

However, the creep-factor goes way beyond Mr. Lennon’s imagination and spills right over into reality, as you will soon see.

Mr. Lennon, meet everyone.

Everyone, meet author, game designer, and the paranormally tuned-in Mr. Lennon.

You’re about to find out what the attraction is…

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Goth Chick News: The Grass May Be Greener Over There, Because That’s Where the Bodies Are Buried

Goth Chick News: The Grass May Be Greener Over There, Because That’s Where the Bodies Are Buried

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image0041As you know from last week, we here at Goth Chick News are very busy relishing the many tasty offerings that come along with the season.

In the Midwest, haunted attractions are dominating the GroupOn offerings, temporary Halloween stores have popped up in every vacant strip mall store-front with Midnight Syndicate music wafting out of their doors and even our friends over at Gorilla Tango Burlesque have gotten into the act with their latest show Boobs of the Dead.

Ah the season… no one can resist it.

From the West Coast, we are about to be smothered under a virtual onslaught of new holiday (i.e. scary) films including Frankenweenie, V/H/S, Sinister and…you must have seen this coming, Paranormal Activity 4.

So it was only a matter of time before the East Coast weighed in.

And there it was.

I just knew the New York-based team at Wunderkind PR wouldn’t let the season pass without gifting me a new horror offering, and considering this might well be the very last season ever (being it is 2012 and all), they really outdid themselves.

Instead of introducing me to a new Master of Horror, they introduced a new Mistress – and about time as well.

Ania Ahlborn, author of The Neighbors.

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Goth Chick News: The Creature Had Good Taste and So Does Tim Burton

Goth Chick News: The Creature Had Good Taste and So Does Tim Burton

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image0021As it may have been with you, for me it all started with the original Universal Studios’ monster movies.

By “it,” I mean a lifelong fandom of the black and white, the subliminal scare, the camera angles and the long shadows; the classics created not because they were drenched in buckets of gore and nauseating realism, but because, as Bela Lugosi said in Ed Wood:

They were mythic. They had a poetry to them

Sigh.

Naturally, meeting someone associated with one of these films is the Goth Chick equivalent to winning the lottery; especially as those individuals who still are around to meet often do not venture far from the sunny and warm climates where they have retired.

Last weekend, Christmas came early when two of my all-time favorites from vintage Hollywood horror found their way to Chicago to attend The Hollywood Show.

Ms. Julie Adams, whose very presence and bearing makes you want to call her ma’am, is best known to many for her portrayal of bathing beauty Kay Lawrence in Universal’s 1954 classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Admittedly, my knowledge of Ms. Adams’ fifty-seven year career was extremely limited which she teasingly pointed out.

I wasn’t just the bit of cheesecake in the Creature movie you know. I actually worked with Elvis too!

Correct on both counts.

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Goth Chick News – Behind the Screams at Fear City

Goth Chick News – Behind the Screams at Fear City

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image002Much like a debutante in a designer tulle dress, only different, we here at Goth Chick News also count down the days until the start of “the season.”

What is “the season” to those of us who will never be invited for cucumber sandwiches at Buckingham Palace?

It’s that time of year that kicks off after Labor Day and runs through November 1.  It is bracketed at one end by the appearance of Spirit shops in every empty strip mall location and the 75%-off-sale in said stores at the other, and is affectionately known as Halloween to everyone else.

Considering this may well be the very last one, this year we kicked off “the season” in a spectacular and appropriately apocalyptic fashion (it is 2012 after all).

As mentioned last week, Black Gate photographer Chris Z and I had the pleasure of meeting the devious master minds behind one of Chicago’s premier haunted attractions: Fear City.  Co-owners Chuck Grendys (also the proprietor of the movie-building shop, Big City Sets) and Jim Lichon (an Emmy-winning set decorator for Harpo Studios) invited us to visit during the day before all the screaming starts, and we burned rubber out of the Black Gate office parking lot to bring you the scoop.

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Goth Chick News: Chicago Comic Con 2012: The Best (Creepy Stuff) at the Con

Goth Chick News: Chicago Comic Con 2012: The Best (Creepy Stuff) at the Con

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image002Once again, it’s time to welcome the pop-culture bacchanalia that is Wizard World’s Comic Con back to Chicago; and this year’s event was bigger and more chocked full of celebrities, costumes ,and other “things that make you go umm?” than ever before.

Wizard World, Inc produces Comic Cons across North America that celebrate (and oh how they celebrate!) graphic novels, comic books, movies, TV shows, gaming, technology, toys, and social networking. The events feature celebrities from movies and TV, artists and writers, and events such as premiers, gaming tournaments, panels, and costume contests – this year was no exception.

And splattered amongst the super hero paraphernalia and 8-sided dice is enough tasty tidbits to make Comic Con a Goth Chick News favorite.

So as we prepare to wade into the sea of gratuitous spandex which is inexplicably drawn into the orbits of talented artists and other creative types wherever they gather, rest assured that if you missed out on San Diego or Chicago, fear not:  click here for a list of cities where there is still time to partake this year, or begin planning your road trip for 2013.

Now stay close, keep track of your buddy, and whatever you do, don’t talk to the shirtless guy in the unicorn costume.

Let’s go in…

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Goth Chick News: Knocking (Tentatively) on the Devil’s Gate

Goth Chick News: Knocking (Tentatively) on the Devil’s Gate

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devils-gate2Devil’s Gate: A Kane Pryce Novel
F. J. Lennon
Atria/Emily Bestler Books (400 pp, $15 in paperback, $9.99 eBook, August 7, 2012)
Reviewed by Goth Chick

First, a disclaimer.

I began reading an advanced copy of Devil’s Gate on August 5th, a full two weeks before the tragic news that Hollywood director Tony Scott took his own life by jumping from the Vincent Thomas suspension bridge in San Pedro.

Devi’s Gate could be about this bridge, but it isn’t.

Still, the creepiness factor remains.

Devil’s Gate, in which a “suicide bridge” plays a pivotal role, is actually the second in F. J. Lennon’s series which kicked off in 2011 with Soul Trapper and follows the turbulent life of rogue ghost hunter Kane Pryce. Without having read the first installment, I was initially concerned Devil’s Gate would seem diminished without the knowledge of Soul Trapper’s back story.

I am as excited as a goth chick ever gets, to report this is entirely not the case.

Here’s the low down…

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Goth Chick News: Going for a Ride with Ichabod Crane

Goth Chick News: Going for a Ride with Ichabod Crane

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image0061Until recently, we here at Goth Chick News have taken a long hiatus from commercial television. Although we readily agree there is nothing quite as frightening as reality TV, shows aimed at our particular genre were largely absent; that is until the viewing public fell in love with the likes of Walking Dead and American Horror Story, to name a few.

Lately, this tiny spark of cautious optimism has started looking like it just may catch. I mean, you can only watch so many reruns of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Twilight Zone before you give up hoping that anything made for the small screen will ever be worth staying awake for again.

Then this week comes word that the Headless Horseman may be cutting a bloody swath through not one but two television networks in the near future.

Insert tentative happy dance here…

First up is an adaptation from the gents over at Fringe, which itself has become a cult hit for Fox.  The network has given a pilot commitment to an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from Fringe creators and idea wonderboys, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci.

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Goth Chick News: Get the Lizard Guys on the Horn: We’ve Got Them a Gig!

Goth Chick News: Get the Lizard Guys on the Horn: We’ve Got Them a Gig!

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image0021I only remember two things about the 1998 remake of the pop culture film Godzilla (and that’s saying quite a lot since most people don’t remember it at all).

The first is that it starred Ferris Bueller, I mean Matthew Broderick, in a role that was in no danger of making us forget his previous day off.

Second, I remember thinking how nice it was for Tri-Star Pictures to put the lizard effects guys from Jurassic Park back to work. Their unemployment benefits had very nearly run out since The Lost World wrapped in 1997.

Godzilla movies and their collective cheesiness have always been fun in an Ed Wood sort of way, but the 1998 version was cringe-worthy on a whole different scale: which is why I have always fantasized about ambushing Sarah Jessica Parker at a red carpet event to ask her how it feels to be married to the star of a cinematic pile of lizard poop.

And though such a statement might cause Ms. Parker to fall right off her $1200 pumps, it is clearly no such deterrent to the rest of Hollywood who apparently has never met a remake they didn’t like.

Get Industrial Light and Magic on the phone and let’s hope they haven’t chucked those velociraptor puppets…

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Goth Chick News: Beware – The Tall Man Knows Your Name

Goth Chick News: Beware – The Tall Man Knows Your Name

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image008At a recent family function my 11-year-old nephew pulled me aside to say, “A friend of mine at school saw the Tall Man.”

Now it’s common knowledge among all the kids in the family, as well as their friends, that Aunt Goth Chick is conversant with all topics of the otherworldly variety. When they were all a bit younger I had a fabulous time not dispelling the notion that I was a substitute professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

As they got a bit older my role was to correct misconceptions about whether or not vampires were really afraid of crosses, or whether wolfmen actually turned all the way into wolves at the full moon.

But now, in that misty gray, pre-teen area between believers and skeptics, the local chapter of the Goth Chick Fan Club – Junior League needs to be handled carefully; take them too seriously and I could easily be sidelined as covertly making fun of them, not taking them seriously enough could result in the same.

And frankly, I enjoy my minor celebrity status as much as I enjoy being reminded of a time in everyone’s life when magic and mystery were still very possible and very real.

So even though I had never heard of the Tall Man, the seriousness in the little guy’s face told me it was something important and a topic that I, of all people, should be versed in. Luckily the arrival of dessert saved me from needing to make an in depth response and bought me the time to do a little homework.

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