Unlucky 2013

Happy October 1st!

The greatest month known to man has begun and for me this is cause for much celebration. Sadly, for the first time in four years, I won’t be ringing in the Halloween season with a thematically appropriate movie marathon. I just have too many irons on my plate (?) this year to count down (and write up) 31 scary movies. You’d be surprised how long it takes to get those posts down to single digit typos.

I’ll still watch more than my share of weird shit this month but I wouldn’t be able to maintain the intense pace the full 31 requires. My new job is pretty time intensive and I’m embarking on a few new side projects to boot. Then there’s the whole new dad thing. Fatherhood is awesome but it turns out I can’t stand to do anything but hang out with my kid during the two precious hours a day I’m not working or sleeping. Watching straight-to-DVD horror titles doesn’t really rate.

Interestingly and not unrelatedly, I’ve noticed a serious shift in my movie tastes. I recently read the review for Hatchet I wrote five or six years ago. That kid – gleefully extolling the blood soaked carnage and “creative kills” – is basically a stranger to who I am now. It’s not so much that I’ve gone squeamish. As I said last year, having a baby is not for the faint of heart. I just don’t find as much value in ever more convincing ways to eviscerate actors in high definition. I appreciate the artistry and hard work great effects require but extreme violence for its own sake doesn’t really rev me up the way it used to. Luckily slasher flicks and torture porn aren’t the only games in town and I’ll always be keen on the spooky, the monstrous, the utterly inexplicable.

So I’ll still be enjoying this month on my own, scaring the heck outta myself in a darkened room. You’ll just have to imagine the part where I write about it the next day and say fuck too much. Do me a favor and imagine I’m being really clever, okay?

PS – My buddy Rob gave my daughter a copy of Goodnight Goon. It’s the bee’s knees. If you have kids and you’re considering traversing October without this book, well, you know, don’t.

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