The 1960 Rod Taylor film, of the same name, was in steady rotation when I was a kid. I don’t think I’ve seen it in 25 years, though, so I only have the vaguest memories of it. In my mind, the Morlocks looked like Blanka from Super Street Fighter II, and the access points to their underground layer looked remarkably like the concrete sewer risers in my hometown. When I was 10, the city began work on a large system of culverts just outside my […]
Guess who’s coming to dinner…..
*Spoilers below* I have a complex relationship with H.P. Lovecraft. I love the quietly brooding and tremulous fear that pervades the Lovecraftian world, which allows me to tolerate his dense and often impenetrable language. Like much of his work, there is a simmering horror in the background of this story. It’s barely glimpsed in the beginning, and swells throughout. Like the best of his works, there’s something unsettling that slowly envelops the reader in its darkness. Lovecraft doesn’t knock you over the head with terror, […]
By way of introduction, might I offer a rice cake?
What the hell did I just read? Okay. Let me start over. My knowledge of Ernest Hemingway prior to reading this can best be summed up by three things. First, there’s a claim (most likely apocryphal) that he once won a wager that he could craft an entire story in only six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Second, in response to William Faulkner saying, “[Hemingway] has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary”, Hemingway […]
A life measured and found wanting
We all know this story. We’ve seen it acted out with Muppets, or Mickey Mouse, or monstrosities that reside in the Uncanny Valley of Doom. We had the story read to us when we were children, and grow up to read it to our own brood. It’s been adapted numerous times for every medium. It is as ubiquitous as Shakespeare, and as indelibly tied to the Christmas season, ironically, as Capitalism itself. Which makes it almost impossible to review. It’s impossible to look at this […]