Haunted House Week: Puttyface

Puttyface is based on a photo passed around my former office. It was of two girls that had previously worked there. No one wanted the picture, but no one wanted to throw it out. So this photo was snuck into the photo collection someone with family pictures on their desk, and the time taken to notice the new photo wagered upon. There was no one to give it back to when it was eventually noticed, so the prankee became the pranker, and stuck it in someone else's photo collection. It's on my replacement's desk now, for all I know.

The completely incidental side note that sparked my idea for this story: I didn't recognize either of these girls, but my time there overlapped with both of them. I knew what they looked like, but that particular photo had them both in puttyface, so they didn't look like themselves. Occasionally it becomes permanent: Mark Hamill syndrome.

I should probably apologize for the attempted Michael Caine accent. This is one of the earliest stories I've written. I don't think there's any noticable difference between the older stories and the ones I wrote toward the end of my daily writing - either rock-solid consistency, or a stubborn refusal to get better from practice. I try to alter the voice of these stories, and so for this one added Cockney rhyming slang. Toward the end of these, when Jeff was hatching the podcasting idea, I stayed away from typing any voice I didn't think feasible coming from my mouth. And Puttyface is why. Don't ask me what robin or Mae West means: look it up. It'll be valuable learning in case you actually run into Michael Caine and wish to converse. - Sean

Haunted House Week: Ghosts of Lascaux II

No, you didn't miss anything. There is no original Ghosts of Lascaux story, just this one, part II. Or deux, as I'll attempt to pronounce. Not that anyone can be blamed for seeing a Roman numeral and wincing at the idea of another horror spinoff. Every good (and sometimes rightfully forgotten) horror movie is clawing its way out of an untended tomb like a persistent zombie. Was anyone calling for a Wicker Man remake? When a Stranger Calls? Black Christmas? Hands up, horror fans, if if you never even knew about some of the source material that these freshly squeezed turds ruin the good names of? And if for some accidental reason the remake doesn't put people to sleep, then there's a sequel to the remake, The Hills Have Eyes II or another Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I haven't seen the new Halloween yet, but I hope the persistent Zombie behind that one is the exception to prove the rule.

See what I did there? Zombie? Rob Zombie? God, I'm hysterical. Anyhoo, here's Ghosts of Lascaux II, for your emjoyment. If you like it, I'll write a III and IV and a Ghosts of Lascaux II vs. Demonic Toys. - Sean

Haunted House Week: Persistent Reg the Chimney Sweep

Welcome to Haunted House week. Hopefully these seven stores will make you look at the alarm system wired to every window of your house, your big mean dog, and the gun locked in the dresser ... and trade them all in for a crucifix and a deed that's not on Indian burial ground.

I've personally never seen a ghost, but I've looked for them. I've checked mirrors when I'm alone, investigated creaks, and even crawled under the floorboards of a colonial tavern. So far, nada. Zip. Only thing I found was an old 7-Up bottle. If ghosts exists, maybe they only show up to people who really don't want to see them. Never to the guy with the thermal camcorder, always to the six-year-old who saw his first X-Files episode.

We kick the week off with Persistent Reg the Chimney Sweep. Here in New Jersey, the chimney sweeps are aggressive as all hell. They'll call you up regularly, insisting you need this service or that. I live in an apartment, and I still get the calls. When I say that I don't have a fireplace ... they still try to sell me. That's persistence. I can see them building me a chimney, just so I'm now able to use their services. Good thing none of them sell artificial arms. - Sean

Ghost Week: Here With Me

Addendum to the previous Harry Potter post: what makes the Asperger's-lite appeal of shutting out the rest of the world to read "book seven" especially nice that that other people help you with the shunning.

I had responsibilities today, and the dare I say magic of the Harry Potter books kept me from them. Others would go look after a child, or fold laundry: Jeff was reading Harry Potter! Can't you see that this person is reading a book in which dramatic events unfold in a narrative structure? Where mysteries are introduced that get revealed, but only if he has enough hours to read the pages in sequential order? Where characters experience events that alter their personalities?

Smarmy sarcasm aside (Although let the adults who only read Harry Potter books please stop throwing stones at the kids who only read them? The cauldron, in this case, is just as black as the pot and the kettle), Rowling's books are great but I really don't see what unique gifts she has that dozens of others writers have, in other unique ways. This is not to impugn her at all, but to suggest that there are other books and book series out there that are just as enjoyable, but few are reading because their main character is named something other than Harry. (Or even if they are named Harry -- you're welcome, Michael Connolly.)

But, thanks to the kindness of others, I finished up my Harry Potter book. Now I know everything, except how it ends. Um, I was reading the sixth book. I'm a bit behind.

Today's finale of ghost week is one of my story, Here With Me. In a perfect world I'd post for all my stories and Sean for his. But Sean's on vacation, so I will be filling in for him not only for posting every day but reading as well. Half the stories will still be his, though. And I will blame any spelling mistakes or mispronounced words on him, regardless of who's recording.

Ghost Week: Aimee's Weird Pencil

Hello from San Francisco! Boy, let me tell you about the stuff I’ve seen here. There’s, uh, a big red bridge, and a jail on a rock, and pretty rainbow flags everywhere.

(Note: I’m writing this intro in New Jersey on Wednesday, and Jeff is posting it a few days later. As of this writing, I have no actual San Francisco experience to relate, just what I’m seen in movies. This will be a flawless substitution, unless there was an earthquake in the past few days. Then, it would seem odd that I’m posting this while not mentioning that I’m currently buried under five floors of hotel.)


So, San Francisco. Streetcars. Rice a Roni. The aforementioned big red bridge. Yeah, I’m enjoying my time here in the City of ... um ... Red Bridges.


Today’s story, Aimee's Weird Pencil, appeals to the kid inside all of us. (Note to cannibals: I don’t mean this literally. Put down the Sam burger.)

Ghost Week: The Gallows Bordello

Let me describe my favorite character in the Harry Potter mythos. Try to guess who I'm talking about.

This character seems innocent, seems like a decent person. But when the lure of Lord Voldemort arrives, this person will regularly abandon their family, friends, and basic social morality and become a slavish disciple, working feverishly and sociopathically to their singular ends.

I am talking, of course, about Harry Potter fans. The fans who wait until midnight to get the book. Who then stay up all night reading. Who call in sick. Who cancel visits with friends. Who grudgingly go to social events and either huddle in the corner with their hardcover brick or have conversations exclusively about how they'd rather be reading.

I'm not disparaging this at all. This is passion, pure, simple, and thus vitriolic. I love seeing this is anyone, reagardless of the reason. (One of my favorite things is to get someone talking about something they love and know a lot about. I have no interest in the Premiere League, but get my friend Dave going about Newcastle and my face lights up like Christmas.)

I do wish the Harry Potter fans could carry it over for something else in their lives. It's a common enough thing to rue that kids who gobble down the JK Rowling books don't do it for anything else. (Although a friend of mine has made quite a decent sum proving some do read more after all.) But isn't there anything else they can get excited about? Avril's album, or iCarly, or Greg Odom, or Stardust?

Passion is all mental, nothing more than psyching yourself up writ large. Harry Potter fans: go look at Amazon's not-yet-released list. Find a title that sounds good. Circle the release date. Count down the days. When you read it, it will taste as sweet as Maine blueberries. And you can do this for any book, any movie, heck, even when a video is finally in stock at blockbuster or released to pay-per-view. Anticipate.

For another anticipation exercise, click on the link to today's story, The Gallows Bordello, and then wait, oh, four hours. Try to figure out what it could be about by the title, and by its Ghost Week designation. Let me know what you think at dailyscares@gmail.com. I'll do my part to anticipate by not reading it for seven weeks.

Kidding.

Ghost Week: Jammed

I feel like I just got here, and already it’s time to go. I’ve got a vacation scheduled in San Francisco for the next week. Good thing these paragraphers are pre-written, or else I’d be scrambling to come up with Unique Ghost Story #4. “Um, there’s a house on an old Indian burial ground, and there’s haunting and upside-down people and stuff. Has that one been done yet?”

As is, I’m doing the usual scramble to finish all my work before leaving. This is about four times my usual workload, since I’m not only preparing to leave for a week, but also planning to stop working, start college, go through all the lengthy pre-requisite online math courses, and pay for school. Plus watch each Netflix movie the day it comes in, which sadly goes very high on my priority list. MBA, schmemBA, I’ve got a Hellboy cartoon to watch!

My life could be worse (and greatly shortened). I could be Petey Gibbons, star of Jammed. If you’ve driven on the bucolic parking lot known as I-287 recently, you have Petey to blame/thank.

Ghost Week: Old Ghosts

Hello, everyone. Sean here. You can tell because of my soulful blue voice, as opposed to Jeff’s feverish orange twang.


Actually, that’s not true at all. Jeff and I are twins, and so we genetically have the same vocal chords. Listen to some of my recordings and some of Jeff’s, and try to spot a difference.


During college we were both involved with the campus radio station, WTSR, and we tried not to be in the room at the same time. It would sound like some guy having both sides of a conversation. Twin shtick doesn’t work on the radio, and more often than not we weren’t doing any twin shtick but just talking about music, current events, and whatever bad odor was haunting WTSR.


Jeff’s voice sounds normal to me but – like most people - my own voice sounds hideously nasal. Once, I was listening to an old WTSR tape, and heard Jeff talking. After a full minute, I realized this was a tape of me talking – on-air conversations I had on-air in college dependly gravitated toward referencing a SeaQuest episode where the boat met Neptune. Instantly, the voice shifted from Jeff’s normal tone to my own squeaky embarrassment. Weird.


Speaking of inaccurate guesses at phenomena, here’s my story Old Ghosts. Vocal apologies for not being an old Mayan woman.

Ghost Week: CU 2NITE BB

I am a huge fan of the Loch Ness Monster mythology. I read all the books I could find on the subject, and devised a truly wonderful plan -- in fourth grade, no less -- to prove or disprove its existence once and for all. But I neglected to account for the theory that the "monster" may have an egress to the North Sea. Also, there are not enough weather balloons in the world to drain Loch Ness and store it in a big water-balloon pyramid.

I gobbled down Steve Alten's The Loch last year, I'm eagerly awaiting the Water Horse (with effects by Weta -- I know it's a kids movie and Nessie all cute and huggable, but I'll take my monster any way I can) and I even subscribe to the Amazon Women on the Moon premise that Nessie was, in fact, Jack the Ripper. (If that's not YouTubed it really should be.)

The point is that I walked into "Incident at Loch Ness" excited to see not just a documentary, but a Werner Herzog documentary. And puzzled that I never heard of the movie. Not a peep.

Let me spoil it for you: it's the latest in a series of "mockumentaries," where for the first half-hour everyone swears what's going to occur is true, and then bizarre stuff happens. Like the camel's-straw of a puzzle piece that reveals the entire mess, you spit the fishhook out of your mouth, realize this is one of those movies, and start checking your watch. (In my case hitting the play button on Tivo to bring up the runtime bar.)

Werner Herzog, who's like Nick Nolte and Ben Cartwright had a kid and he was Ahab, plays himself. Everyone in this film plays themselves, especially the costar/writer/director/producer Zak Penn, who can now add catastrophically bad actor to his hyphenate list, which I have written as slashes, per yesterday's troubles about the hyphen or the slash. Herzog, a few early cameos, and the other production guys succeed in the role of acting like themselves. Penn drops line after line like dumbbells through glass coffee tables.

I don't know who this was supposed to be for. Possibly Werner Herzog and no one else -- he seems to really enjoy mulling the dichotomy of playing a man who doesn't believe in monsters proving there is no monster and getting rebuffed, to put it mildly, by repeated monster attacks. It's Herzogian, as Zan Penn actually says to the camera, which (since it occurred late in the film) was time number 43 I wanted to smack him). I think he's bald because others have pulled his hair out in frustration for him.

So the Herzog fans start watching a "documentary" which turns into a pretty bad monster movie, the Blair Witchy kind where it's all off-screen and the takes and long and given the choice between a gun and a second viewing you're saying hi to Misters Smith and Wesson. And the horror fans wade through 45 minutes of snorefest to get to the goods, which is another type of snorefest but at least the one they originally signed on for.

It's the rare sort of movie one (read; me) could write about forever, and you really need to see it to understand its badness, yet it's so bad it's highly unrecommended. So for the sake of a precious evening you will spend int he future not watching this movie, doing something better, I will stop.

Today's story is one of Sean;s, using Internet slang and whatnot. It's called CU 2NITE BB, and I can guarantee no Loch Ness monsters, iconoclastic German directors, or bald paunchy hipsters trying to do the cool thing by PRETENDING to be ur-foppish hacks while Ed Wooding their way through their own flop.

Ghost Week: The Ghost in the Gray Flannel Suit

It is with sad ado that we say a fond farewell (and a you are hereby uninvited from this house) to the vampires which have been the inaugural force, and move on to another type of deceased-but-not-quite being: ghosts. Ghost stories have the ability to be more literary, since they're massively symbolic. I don't even think it counts as magical realism when there's a ghost in a piece of fiction.

I don't cotton to the "magical realism" distinction that much. I understand in Central and South American storytelling tradition the reality is occasionally interspersed with something that can only count as fantasy, yet is treated as normal and doesn't veer the book into any sort of paranormal direction. But I can't help but translate the term as "fantasy, but, you know, still good." Perhaps I'm overly prickly on it, since I haven't read much magical realism.

Our kickoff Sunday-night story, The Ghost in the Gray Flannel Suit, is by me and has no lofty aspirations to magical realism. It's a wacky '60s workplace adventure. I tried to goof up the reading: it's still me, and no, I will not be using that reading voice for anything other than the microfiction equivalent of Down With Love.

Style question only I probably care about: when I mention a movie, should I italicize the title, as I just did? Put it all caps? Put it in quotes? Once when I had but a single style book I knew the answer: whatever the stylebook said. But I've had my brain acid-washed by a combination of Strunk & White, Bernstein, Chicago, AP, AMA, each magazine and account's house styles. Ask me a grammar question now, and I turn into Alberto Gonzales. Unable to answer, capable of holding multiple incompatible beliefs, hoping the question will simply be dropped because no one except editors care about the holy trinity of serial comma, dangling participle, and ending the sentence on a preposition.

So you may see DOWN WITH LOVE int he coming days and weeks, or "Down With Love," or "that knockoff of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day movies." Oh, but that invites the question of if I should have hyphenated the stars' names, and then en0dashed between them, or uses a forward slash, or the rare-in-non-URL-name backslash. So I'll stop now. But rest assured this same level of kvetch goes into every Daily Scare!