Dale Hawkins, RIP!

Fare thee well, sir-- if I were still a drinking man, I'd pour one out for you.

Spring Fling

Shows! Shows! Shows! The winter is drawing to a end (although you'd never know it by stepping outdoors) and it is finally time for the Spook Lights to step out of hiding. We have new songs to play, a new seven-inch to sell (although I still haven't come up with any artwork for the cover yet), and new shows scheduled for your viewing pleasure.

Our self-imposed hibernation was supposed to last until the end of March. Every year we come back on April Fool's Day and pick some unlucky local bastards to open for us(in this case a new band called THE MOUTH BREATHERS)... But we decided to cut our break short this year when the chance to play with KID CONGO POWERS presented itself to us. What, you think we'd just say "NO" to an opportunity like that?

Kid's newest project, THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS (check out their album DRACULA BOOTS right HERE) are playing at the Jackpot Music Hall on March 13th, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't ready to drop trou for ANYONE who would give us a chance to open this gig. Luckily, my integrity was never compromised-- all it took was a couple of quick hone calls to seal the deal.



(It turns out that Kid makes his way to Kansas often-- his drummer is one-half of the brain trust behind THE HARVEYVILLE PROJECT, where the Pink Monkey Birds have recorded BOTH of their albums!)

Honestly, though-- I'm still armpit-deep in the new screenplay, so this movie thing is really first and foremost on my mind. The story is all mapped out for me, I have most of my actors lined up many of the locations scouted. All I need is a decent camera and someone with a knack for constructing miniatures and I'll be well on my way. And when I say "a knack for constructing miniatures," I don't mean DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS figurines... I mean something like THIS:

Science MADNESS!

Here's an old chestnut I happened across by sheer accident:




That's me in the back row-- it's hard to tell from the quality of this scan, but my costume that year was an effective hybrid of FREDDY KREUGER, HERBERT WEST, and JASON VORHEES-- I remember that I discovered the movie REANIMATOR that summer and immediately sculpted the face of Jeffrey Combs into my mental totem pole of horror icons. The bloody lab coat in this picture survived nearly a decade's worth of "mad science" themed Halloween costumes-- I kept it all the way into college, where it was eventually set on fire.

I just realized that I've lost count of how many mad science costumes I've worn through the years-- not just on Halloween, mind you, but for ANY occasion when a crusty lab coat and a set of glowing test tubes might come in handy... This is starting to feel like a photo gallery in the making. Stay tuned to this page for any further developments.

On a related note: my Freddy glove in this picture is totally homemade. Unable to afford one of the fancy plastic ones from the toy store, I cut razor shapes from a cardboard cereal box, spray painted them silver, and glued them to an old brown gardening glove. THAT'S dedication to form, my friends. When it comes to deviant lifestyles, I was definitely born into this one.

Connection: MISSED!

Someone posted THIS as a "Missed Connection" today, and it is OBVIOUSLY about Curvacia VaVoom:

"Basically, I love seeing you around town! You walk around like you own the place, like you're the rock and roll queen of the universe, which you are. This is good. My problem is that I don't see you anymore. You're not serving your community of admirers the way you used to. Maybe you could just spend Saturday afternoon doing some window shopping? Some drinking? Maybe star in more movies, play more shows? To be absolutely clear, if you set the hair up Really Big and wear The White Boots, you would be doing great service to your community. Come on, have a heart! :)

So basically I know the answer to this too, but on the off chance: I WANNA BE YOUR LOVE SLAVE. I can play guitar a little myself, and I could be tuning yours. Getting drinks for you is not too menial for me. How about helping carry things? Do you need a listener? More? I'm happy to help the cause in any way possible. The cause being: YOU!! Because--and I know I'm not alone here-- I can tell that besides being the queen of the rock and roll universe, you are a Great Person to Be Around. "

Seeing as how whoever-it-is referenced the band AND the movie, and seeing as how those are both projects that we very publicly undertake as partners, I can only assume that this person knows she and I are...um... AFFILIATED.

So how should I respond to this? Does this guy sound like potential stalker to anyone else? I don't know whether to be paranoid or angry right now. Should I reply to their post as a means of luring them into a trap? Or should I just laugh it off? I'm interested in hearing some thoughts from the void...

Truer Than True Stories

Taking a moment to think about Messrs. Holly, Valens, and Bopper on the anniversary of their fated plane ride (which was yesterday, actually-- even in the blogosphere, I remain fashionably late)...



I've always felt that The Big Bopper got shafted after his death-- how come no one ever made a schmaltzy Hollywood biopic about him? It's the part Dan Ackroyd was BORN to play!

Anyhoo, "The Day the Music Died" holds an especially terrifying place in my fractured subconsciousness, and not just because it sucks the life out of any listener within a thousand yard radius. I first heard it at my grandparents' house during the summer between third and fourth grade. I was hanging out in the creepy spare bedroom with my cousin when it came on the radio. My cousin was describing a book with a funny title to me-- HELTER SKELTER, I think it was. He had just finished reading it, and being in his early teens/late adolescence at the time, was thoroughly freaked by the horrific violence described within.

"You could hear them screaming over a while away!" he said. My grandparents' house was in the country, at least twenty miles from the nearest town-- I realized with a shudder that NO ONE would be able to hear us screaming all the way out here.

"They cut out her baby and wrote HELTER SKELTER on the walls in blood!" The walls in the spare room were clean and white, and I could see in my mind how clearly any blood-messages would show up on them.

"The MANSON FAMILY," my cousin said. "It's a true story, and they never caught all of them-- they could still be killing people RIGHT NOW!"

Of course, I had to sleep by myself in the spare room that night. I never closed my eyes, not once, I just laid under the covers and cried and listened to that chorus repeat in my head: "This'll be the day that I die! This'll be the day that I die!"



I didn't even know what the lyrics were about until much, much later. I overlapped the song and the story for so long that they became inseparable to me-- it was always a song about the Manson murders, as far as I was concerned.

On a (mostly) unrelated note: TUESDAY WELD is a Druidic high priestess, and the plane crash was rigged as a sacrificial offering to her. Or so some people believe. How many more lives will end before her reign of terror is finally stopped?

The Cries of a Lonely Anachronism

As an adult, I am hopelessly out of touch with modern technology. There were moments in my youth when I strived to be on "The Cutting Edge," but those days, like the digital age, have rapidly passed me by. In an era when most people get their news from The Internet™, I still find myself opening a print newspaper and frowning at the advice column. Admittedly, I have to walk farther to steal one since my neighbors gave up their daily subscriptions many years ago, but I think the point remains: I have failed as a citizen of the new millennium.



Evidence: I still use a land line. I don't have a cell phone, and I pride myself on the fact that I have never sent nor received a "text message." It is my private hope that I will hear the BEEP of my life-support system flatlining before ever hearing the BLIP (or worse, feel the BUZZ) of an incoming message from anyone, ANYWHERE. Especially while I'm at lunch, or worse, in a MOVIE THEATER. It's tiresome enough having to erase your voices from my answering machine when I get home from work, people-- I certainly don't need to be troubled with your lives while I'm out in PUBLIC.



I maintain that part of the reason I have been more successful creatively than many of my peers is because I don't waste my time "downloading apps" or whatever it is these kids do nowadays in lieu of collating zines or conjuring mix tapes or digging through thrift store donation bins. If there is something on the World Wide Web more life-affirming than any of these activities, I certainly haven't seen proof of it. Have you?