Update

Couple of things while I'm feeling out of it. Nothing big, just had a long night after the car battery died outside Costco. Three hours in twenty degree weather, with the state of things these days I can't complain. I'm actually happy that I dealt with it calmly, thank you, therapy. And I'm happy the AAA driver had a replacement battery. Things like tis should be the worst that happens to any of us. Except villains. Death to villains, am I right? 

First off, if you want a chance to win a free little index card sketch of Jerry from The Eltingville Club, visit my Instagram feed here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C2dtU2oxVM9/ for a shot at it. I drew it while on the phone listening to on hold music. One doctor actually had some decent instrumentals, I was surprised to hear that. 

Speaking of doctors, I've got all my appointments lined up in a row for my hand and neck. My insurance is covering steady physical therapy past the initial six sessions, which was great news. Physical therapy has been really helpful. I need to get off my ass more often, though. They added three routines last week that shouldn't have taken the wind out of me so easily. I'm waiting for a quote on getting gum surgery, the insurance got goofed up on that so it had to be resubmitted. Laser surgery would cost $10,000. I will not be getting laser surgery. It sounds fun, though, like that scene in Logan's Run. Or laser Tag. Anyone remember Photon in New Jersey? I sucked at that. Little kids would run past me, shoot me three times, I'd fall down running up a slight incline. I loved/hated Photon. Anyway, yeah, gum disease. Also the name of the first Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode we wrote. There's a piece of information that isn't one to grow on. Knowing that about me definitely isn't half the battle, Yo, Joe, etc, etc. 

What else? Oh, I got another cover assignment. I'm drawing a little more, doing the stretches from my physical therapy sessions have helped with the pain. Same for the medications I'm on. They still make me sleepy a lot more than I'd like, right now it's six of one. I'd rather be tired than be in pain. But I'd rather not be tired, because I should be more productive. If I end up getting neck surgery maybe I won't need to rely on the pills as much --? I have no idea. 

Important WINKY THE PIRATE CAT news: Winky has discovered gift wrap bows, and they are her favorite toy ever. During the holidays I had to wrap a present for the kiddo and I lost a silver bow I brought up from the basement. Weeks later I found it under the radiator. Winky had stolen it off my desk and slapped it around the room. Now she has a bunch of them to play with. It's the only thing she's ever played fetch with. So that's been a lot of cheap fun. 

My Instagram won't connect to my my photo reel anymore and I can't figure out a way to fix it. I rebooted the phone and looked up online to see what the smart kids do. The smart kids weren't much help. This is not a big deal but I typed about it anyway.

I did an interview with a podcast recently that will be online soon. I have a couple more interviews lined up. It's mostly been Eltingville-related. I have no problem with that, of course.

I need to try to get my act together and try making videos for this site. I have a mic. I avoid even the simplest technology. But if I can get over my weirdness of not calling doctors I can try to deal with other stuff. I even made a phone call this week. I have become very phone-phobic over the past fifteen or so years. My mother didn't recognize my voice. Ha ha. It's actually kind of sad, I shouldn't laugh. Then again, my therapist told me not to denigrate myself for dealing with these things. I downplay them as small and silly, but like she said, it's something I'm dealing with, and that's something. I still can't help feeling like an idiot sometimes, avoiding so many things. Which is another thing to deal with. If you're dealing with similar issues, you know hat I mean. 

I watched three Brazilian horror movies on Tubi recently: Dark Swamp (2008, aka Mud Zombies, aka Mangue Negros), Dark Sea (2013, aka Mar Negro) and The Black Forest (2018, aka El bosque Negro). All directed by Rodrigo Aragão, a filmmaker I was previously unaware of. I was overtired after sitting in my car for almost three hours,  and couldn't sleep, stumbled across The Black Forest, enjoyed it, and fell down a Tubi rabbit hole while eating rice crackers and drinking sodey pop.  All three are worth checking out for various reasons, especially if you like practical effects-heavy low budget stuff influenced by early Raimi, splatter-era Peter Jackson, Romero zombies, etc. I went in blind on all three of them. Swamp was messy and clumsy, the most Raimi-inspired, the cheapest and the most same-old in terms of no budget zombie doings. parts reminded me of Squirm, obviously Night of the Living Dead. Some of the zombies act more like Raimi's Evil Dead, it's scattershot splatter  with a lot of textural glop, mud, blood, guts, grue, swamp water, sweat. Some okay stuff, and some terrible (the characters in old-age makeup are just awful, especially the one who has a ton of terrible dialog), and some fun DIY puppets and animatronics for the effects fans (no CGI, save for some terrible landscape/background work, especially towards the end). Black Sea is the most Brain Dead/Dead Alive-heavy of the three, it gets extremely gory and out-goops and out-slops Mud Zombies by leaps and bounds. It's sort of the Evil Dead 2 to it's Mud Zombies Evil Dead, if you follow. It's got a lot of the same themes, fixations and feels like a reworking of the first movie. More practical effects, more outrageous stuff, this film looks like it was exhausting to make for everyone involved. Watch it and you'll see what I mean. The Raimi influence adds a cursed book, more supernatural shenanigans and a Lovecraftian angle (look fast for a mention of Dagon in the evil tome). It's a kitchen sink of rubber suit monsters, zombies, mutant zombies, broad humor and butchery. Not everything works, but enough does that it's a minor miracle (if you like this sort of thing). The use of casual homophobic slurs by several characters is a bummer, especially since one major character is a badass cross dressing brothel owner who nobody messes with and the filmmaker seems taken with. Our shunned outsider character (there's one in all three movies) is the main recipient of the insults. I don't know, it's a weird element that isn't in the other two movies. 

I'm rambling here, stick with me a moment more, because I don't know where I'm going with this, to be honest. I'm just typing about these movies to kill time before I can fall asleep (hopefully). ANYWAY, Dark Sea is pure low budget b-movie mayhem, it's a party movie, ambitious in what it tries to do with effects and gore and a busy cast of shouting/screaming weirdos. It's got pacing issues, too many characters means they all feel underserved (the character work isn't really solid to begin with, to be honest, it's all caricatures), but there's a lot of eye-opening weirdness in it. The problem with a lot of it is that while it's creative and there's a lot of filmmaking ingenuity on display, none of it really feels original. You've seen it all before, in original form, Romero, Raimi, Jackson, Fulci, Italian and Spanish gorefests, etc. 

What's not familiar are the locations and local culture. So you get that ethnographic angle, which adds a lot of interest to the proceedings (not that I perfectly understand the term. But it makes me sound smarter throwing it in there, and I think I used it correctly even if I couldn't explain it well in a debate. I'm no academic, and these aren't art films, so bleagh). All three films take place in or near Brazilian jungles and waterways, the characters are all poverty-stricken plain folk struggling to survive (along with some drunks, oddballs, outsiders and a few grotesques). .Black Forest takes better advantage of this in terms of atmosphere and overall visuals. It continues working with various elements from the earlier films (there's other films in-between that might do the same thing) -- but this is a more focused horror movie, with more assured filmmaking and storytelling. There's less gore -- although what's there is still crazy sloppy joe Fangoria fan stuff -- but it's more focused on folk horror and storytelling. Forest is actually an all-around good movie (imho), is what I guess I'm trying to say. That's why I checked out the earlier ones. I'm always fascinated with filmmakers who keep revisiting the same themes and sometimes keep making the "same" movies -- Don Dohler comes to mind, for lack of a better example. Maybe Rob Zombie's Texas Chainsaw-inspired dirty local fiends stuff is like that, I hated House of 1000 Cliches so I never went further in his psycho killer family oeuvre (think I spelled that correctly on my own? Nope!). Dark Forest brings back the same cursed tome and has some similar characters, relationships and elements that run through everything -- the outsider, the romantic obsessive, the mix of supernatural and zombie outbreak tropes, religious hypocrisy/uselessness, nifty practical makeup and splatter effects -- and all that blood, mud, sweat, dirt, etc. These are dirty films, Rob Zombie wishes he could have so much dirt and yuck and ick going on. You know that water pit in Argento's Phenomena? This is like that but spread all over the place. You need a shower after all this glop and wet and ecch. It's fucking palpable. Kind of amazing. 

I'm getting the sign from Winky to wrap this up. SO. The kitchen sink is less cluttered in Forest, and there's a character to actually root for. There's jerky humor like the other films but it's used more sparingly. The folk horror stuff is front and center, the other movies have some local legends tossed around and characters use folk medicine (all three films have the burned lemon "cure", often used on horrific open wounds). It's not exactly the same movie as the other two, but you're on familiar ground thematically. Firmer ground, craft-wise, better looking ground. There's some really effective shots and visuals, all-around you can see a lot of progress across the three movies. There's stuff I'd cut if I was forced to, but overall it's really solid and engaging. And still pretty gross. I'm going to watch whatever other Rodrigo Aragão movies I can find, there's an iffy-sounding Chupacabra movie and some others, I don't know if they cross over with these or not. Here's the IMDB link for his listings, if you want to check them out after all this spewing: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3208867/?ref_=tt_ov_wr. 

As usual, I wasn't planning on typing this much, ha ha. I should eat. I have half a sandwich from Stop & Shop in the fridge. And both cats are in the room so I have to supervise/referee. Hope everyone's well, hope this wasn't too clumsy, I'm not going to reread/edit. 

More soon, later (soon).