Meta: Uncle Strangely's Dark Mansion of Big Crap Scares

As much as I hate to Collins out on you and whore my other web projects here, there's now officially a Tumblr annex to the ol' And Now the Screaming Starts. For folks who dig on ANTSS, but find it a bit trying on the attention span, management is proud to introduce Uncle Strangely's Dark Mansion of Big Crap Scares. It's ANTSS without all the jibber-jabber. It is not a replacement for ANTSS, but a supplement. Think of it as ANTSS that forgot to take it's medication, so it's now all fidgety like.

Meta: Unmasked.

Sorry Screamers and Screamettes. I need to post this somewhere and extract the URL. But, the mystery is over: that's CRwM, sans mask.

Meta: Pod people.

You might have theorized that the reason I hide my face behind a mask and communicate almost entirely through the written word is that my face is horribly mutated and my voice sounds like the churning of a million blood-gorged insects attempting to free themselves from a vat of semi-congealed KY jelly.

You can test half of your conjecture by clicking over to I Love Horror and listening to his inaugural Horror Round Table pod cast.

That's right, CRwM speaks! And speaks! And speaks some more!

The lovely and talented Brad, of I Love Horror, invited the lovely and talented Vardulon, of Castle Vardulon, and the lovely and talented Divemistress, of Zombots, (see the sidebar for all magical links to all this talented loveliness) to discuss the state of horror, remake madness, sexism in horror, and other topics.

And then Brad added me. Was it a mistake? Or did Brad do it to the Internet on purpose? You'll have to listen to find out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was not actually sitting at a round table. In that sense, the title of the pod cast is deceptive and I apologize for that in advance.

Meta: Holy crap! We're totally famous!

So Mr. McHargue, of I Love Horror (see the sidebar for linking action) fame, apparently really digs on the blog. So much, he was even willing to face near universal public humiliation by publicly proclaiming his love over at Horror Squad. Seriously:

One of the first blogs I came across when I decided to start my own, ANTSS has remained, at least for me, the standard of excellence among horror bloggers.

That's a man kiss!

Thanks Brad and to any new friends who may have found the blog through his kind write up. I'll keep chugging along and, hopefully, I can keep it all interesting for y'all.

Meta: Awards season.

Seems like everybody is giving everybody awards these days. And, as living proof that surplus drives down value, even I've received one! That's right, loyal Screamers and Screamettes, horror blogger and nifty person Sarah, of the blog Scare Sarah, has awarded your humble horror host with the Kreativ Blogger award.

Regular readers know that I generally don't get into the meme-award thing, but it seems like everybody's having a grand old time with these things lately and it's been some time since I've shouted out to some of the blogs I dig, so away we go.

First, I've gathered that I'm supposed to tell you seven interesting things about myself. I promise you that I can definitely tell you seven things about me. Whether they're interesting or not, well . . .

Thing the One:
I have this fantasy in which I go back to sixth-grade, but fully possessed of everything I know and have learned up to this point in my life. I know that I should use this foreknowledge to fight injustice, stop 9/11, and head off the AIDS crisis - but what I honestly imagine doing is learning guitar and preemptively stealing every song that I ever dug and condensing several decades of musical awesomeness into a single, unbelievable rock career that would make me the undisputed God of Rock. Aside from the sketchy ethics of stealing (even though, technically, these songs didn't yet exist when I stole them), the real flaw in this plan is that my musical tastes are pretty goofy, so the idea that anybody would somehow be more excited by my preemptive versions of, say, Daisy Chainsaw's "Dog with Sharper Teeth" or Left Lane Cruiser's "Big Mama" than they were when these songs first appeared and then sank into obscurity is wrong-headed at best.

Thing the Two:
I once started writing a novel that was about a quartet of custom-porno filmmakers who get hired by a cryptofascist multimillionaire to make large-scale hardcore flick set in the Holocaust. I got five or six chapters into it when my hard drive died and the novel was lost forever, which, considering, was probably not such a terrible thing to have had happen. It's working title was Camp Romance.

Thing the Three:
I have three tattoos. The first of which was inflicted upon me in a Richmond hotel room by a woman who actually went by the professional moniker Teddy Bear. Though Teddy Bear was quite lovely and talented, what she was not was fluent in Chinese. Consequently the Chinese figure I have permanently stained on my skin apparently means nothing. It's nonsense in a language I can't read. Despite this, I'm still quite fond of it.

Thing the Four:
When I was 17, I was briefly wanted by the FBI. As silly as this sounds, it was all a big misunderstanding and I was never arrested or charged with anything.

Thing the Five:
I once calculated the estimated number of books that I could read assuming I live to the average age of an American male. This was a massive mistake. For years I would avoid reading books that looked fun because I would think, "Is this really so great that it should be one of your remaining [fill in countdown number]?" Eventually, I got over this obsession. I'm glad I never did it for films; I probably would have never started a horror blog.

Thing the Six:
I wish the term "bedswerver" - a now neglected slang term for an unfaithful person - came back into common usage. It is so wonderfully descriptive.

Thing the Seven:
My wife and I once debated getting a cat as a pet. We brainstormed some names and we thought that they were all so good that we couldn't eliminate any of them. So we hit on this plan that we would give the cat a rotating name. We'd place a chalkboard in the kitchen and write "This week the cat's name is:" on it. We'd work through the names we already had and add new ones as they struck our fancy. We figured the cat wouldn't mind as it was unlikely to give a crap what we called it. (The same plan, we theorized, would not work for a dog.) We purchased a chalkboard and mounted it on the kitchen wall. But we never got a cat.

Okay, now on to who gets the award. Since this is the Kreativ Blogger award, I think it should go to a blog that goes beyond the standard "thumb's up/thumb's down" reviews, net trawled "coverage" of pop culture, and you're predictable "I Googled it, then wrote it" analysis. I'd also like to use it draw attention to a great blog I haven't really plugged before.

I give this to the Mark and ShadowBanker, the boys of Ecocomics. The vast majority of comics writing on the Web is little more than fanboy mash notes and poison pen letters. Admittedly, the quality of the material discussed might be a little more highbrow and the writing more nuanced or clever than the chatter on the floor of the NYCC - but really it comes down to the same thing: People telling you what they liked and hated, ad nauseum. Emphasis on nauseum.

Ecocomics instead takes familiar material and, by applying economics concepts to it in an accessible and entertaining way, actually opens up the material to fresh understandings. Instead of arguing about superhero decadence or lamenting some random creator's political biases, Ecocomics reminds me of the geeky joys of playfully overthinking the characters and concepts I love. Remember those silly/great arguments about who could beat who in a fight? Remember obsessing about continuity contradictions? Ecocomics manages to evoke the pleasures of that sort of active fan engagement without the normal schmaltz of dweeb nostalgia. It reinvests the comics with possibilities and a sense of pleasure.

There's a lot of great writers out there ready to tell you what they enjoyed. Ecocomics is one of the few comic blogs out there that invites you to enjoy comics with them.

Meta: Watch us pull an upset!

Screamer, Screamettes, and the curious passersby, lend me your ears!

Long time readers have probably figured out that I'm not a big "blog award" type of guy. It's always nice to know you're well thought of, but I don't tend to run long strings of blogger-gifted awards and the like on the side of my blog. It's just not my scene.

That said, B-Sol of Vault of Horror is running an interesting feature he's dubbed "Ms. Horror Blogosphere." Think of it as the Ms. Universe for women who have strong opinions about the film work of Paul Naschy or the have contributed to the Great Fast Versus Slow Zombies Debates of the '00s.

Breaking somewhat out of character for a second, I'm going to urge every single person reading this blog entry to go to Vault of Horror and vote for Heather Santrous, the blog mistress of ANTSS fave Mermaid Heather.

"But CRwM, why should we go so far out of our way - that's like two whole mouse clicks - to vote for Heather?" you may well ask.

I'll tell you why, my skeptical friend.

FIVE REASONS TO VOTING FOR HEATHER SANTROUS

1. If you enjoy ANTSS, you owe Heather a vote of thanks.
Heather's own blog was, a little more than three years ago, was what inspired me to start a horror-centric blog. She was an early supporter of my work and has been part of the ANTSS story ever since. So if my blog has even given you a chuckle, something to think about, a new band to listen to, a movie to check out, or just a way to waste the work day away, then please show a little appreciation by throwing a vote to the woman who, in a way, started it all.

2. Heather's made of awesome.
Before she got a gig, Heather posted a movie review on a near daily basis. There are blogs that have gotten famous boasting of their similarly prolific posting, but Heather quietly rocked that post-rate as a regular thing. On top of that, she posted regularly on a second blog. I don't know how. Just made of awesome, I guess. Admittedly, her posting has slowly slightly of late, but only because she's now working in a forensics lab. That's right, she's just slowed down a little bit so that she can WORK AMONG THE SECRETS OF THE FREAKIN' DEAD! That's called talking the talk and walking the walk!

3. Because rooting for the underdog is emotionally rewarding.
As of this writing, the candidate in the lead BJ-C, the woman who writes Day of the Woman. DotW is the "sister blog" of Vault of Horror, the very blog holding the contest! (Look below the poll and you'll see the promo link to her blog.) This isn't to suggest that there's any cheating or favoritism at work here. B-Sol and BJ are both stand up folks and they run a fair game. But let's be honest, Day of the Woman has a definite home court advantage. A vote for Heather is a vote for a dark horse candidate. When the dust settles and everything's over but the screamin', win or lose, won't you feel a little bit better knowing the your vote went for the scrappy newcomer that nobody thought had the heart to go the distance? Sure you will.

4. I wasn't going to mention it, but . . .
Given the current dust-ups about feminism and horror, I was kinda surprised to see that most of the candidate posts included glam shots. Will the Mr. Blogosphere contest have every spookshow-manfan posting shirtless beefcake shots? (Calm down Sean - we know.) But, since I didn't make the call to include them, I feel comfortable pointing out: She's a looker. Not only are you voting for a prolific, inspiring, genuine person; you're voting for swell-looking lady. You know, if that sort of thing matters to you. Which we know it doesn't. But if it did, you know, hypothetically matter. She is. Just saying.

5. Make your vote matter.
Horror blogging is a crowded field and there's a ton of good work out there. Many of the candidates on B-Sol's list have been doing great work for a long time and have justly earned themselves great reps in the horror community. A few could be called, without fear of exaggeration, major pillars of the horror blogosphere. But, our great numbers can also be a weakness. With so many of us, some bloggers just slip by the crowd. Wouldn't it be great if the "Ms. Horror Blogosphere" were used to promote a rising star. Instead of tacking yet another icon to the ever-growing sidebars of widely praised bloggers, let's turn this into an opportunity to get an under-recognized voice out there to the wider reading public. A vote for Heather will actually make a difference.

There you go. That's my pitch. There's more than 20 excellent candidates up for your consideration. So go, vote. And let's make Heather our Ms. Horror Blogosphere.

Meta: Coming attractions. Now with working links!

Next month, ANTSS will be celebrating its third anniversary and you're all invited to attend!

Long time readers may already know that this means we'll be running our annual tribute to frights and fantasy in the silent film era. The first year we called it "The Silent Scream Series." Then, "The Son of Silent Scream Series." This year you're all cordially invited to swing by "The House of Silent Scream Series."

This year, not only will I be doing my regular reviews of genre classics from the dawn of the film age, but I'm bring along a whole bunch of friends to lend a hand.

Guest bloggers and I will be sounding off about sexy robots, scandalous vamps, mad scientists, famous surrealists, secret societies, fantastic monsters, and more.

Do come. We're all so looking forward to your presence.

For those who want to play catch up, here's look at what we've done in the past:

Silent Scream Series 2007

Waxworks, dir. Paul Leni, 1924

Frankenstein, dir. J. Searle Dawley, 1910

The Bells, dir. James Young, 1926

Eyes of the Mummy, dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1918

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, dir. John Robertson, 1920

Son of Silent Scream Series 2008

Au secours!, dir. Abel Gance, 1923

The Man Who Laughs, dir. Paul Leni, 1928

The Lost World, dir. Harry O. Hoyt, 1925

The Penalty, dir. Wallace Worsley, 1920

Call of Cthulhu, dir. Andrew Leman, 2005

Meta: Hey! We're famous!

Team ANTSS pulls out a win! For nearly three years now, ya'll have been supporting me as I ramble on about movies, books, comics, and random weirdness. Together we've made the site popular enough to rate inclusion in Ilzoc's "Meet the Horror Bloggers" series on his excellent Zombo's Closet of Horror site.

The closest thing to a "who's who" of horror blogs, compiled by the tirelessly dedicated Ilzoc, and we made it.

Tired of hearing me pompously pontificate about movies, music, comics, books, and random weirdness? Click on over and hear me pompously pontificate about me! It's navel-gaze-tastic!

Meta: My better half.

Pictured above, standing in front of the art section of McNally Jackson: SoHo's finest source for vendible books, are me and my lovely wife. She's the one on the right.

No, your right.

While I'm normally one to avoid this sort of self-display – after all, you didn't come here to read about me – I have to mark the occasion of our anniversary.

Thanks Jess. I love you.

As for the Screamin' fancy, come back tomorrow. We'll, um, I don't know, do Jeepers Creepers 2 or something.

Meta: "I've liked you for a thousand years."

Hey kids, you may or may not have noticed a slow down here at ANTSS. Basically, my high-tech home wireless network, which I made primarily out of stolen alien technology, the parts of dead criminals, and nearly 500 rubber bands, utter collapsed about a week ago.

I've been stealing work time, making pilgrimages to the library, and so on if an effort to work around the increasingly less temporary problem. I fancy I've managed to keep the posts pretty regular, but if you've noticed a lag, I apologize.

Though I owe a special apology to both Mermaid Heather, bloggeress extraordinaire and one of the formative influences on this very blog you're reading, and Curt of Groovy Age of Horror fame, who is the very image of a modern major horror blogger. These two fine folks both selected me to receive the award/meme Premio Dardos and I, in my mind-boggling laziness, have not responded to either of them.

So, first, some thanks.

The lovely and talented Heather is not only a movie reviewing engine – her blog features full reviews of feature flicks four or five times a week – but her willingness to review anything, from the grimmest new fare to the dustiest of classics, makes her standout from a horror fandom that seems increasingly obsessed with jealously guarding ever-narrowing fiefdoms of subgenre appreciation. I started this blog after following her and a few others around and seeing how they did things. In a way, this blog is partially her fault.

As for Curt, anybody reading this blog is probably already familiar with Curt's work. Driven bloggers tend to be a bitter breed, their boundless energy a facet of their seemingly limitless stores of distain. Curt, on the other hand, is one of the most expansive, curious, and demanding horror bloggers pounding a keyboard. He roams wider than most bloggers and, in his searching, asks better questions. Not even the academic horror bloggers I follow tend to chase down topics with the vigor Curt musters.

You can find links to both blogs on the sidebar.

In appreciation I dedicate this posting of Plumtree's "Scott Pilgrim" (the source of the famed comic character's moniker and an insanely catchy song) to Mermaid.



And Curt gets this slice of retro-groovy: "On roule à 160" by Mareva.



Now, who to pass this thing on to . . .

We've got to save that for another post.

Meta: I'm sorry. So sorry.

Dear Screamin' Cats and Kittens - and especially you, generous and kind reader - I must beg and grovel for your forgiveness.

I haven't posted in like two billion days (in hamster days and metric). I could try to pass it off as the consequence of sudden over-employment (the curse I wish on all freelancers) or cop 'tude and claim that there's been naught worth my writing about.

But we'd know those would be lies. Damn lies!

The simple truth is that I'm a fool. That's right. I'm a blind fool who has simply taken you - gentle, wonderful, intelligent, and let's not mince words here, downright sexy (y'all know what I talkin' and don't pretend you don't) reader o' mine - for granted.

Please be patient. There are more posts in the works. Here at the ANTSS labs, we're putting the jumper cables to the neckbolts of flick reviews for The Strangers and Mister Vampire, and book reviews for Tashen's Horror Cinema book and a truly horrible, horrible comic book about a hipster, tattooed, Gossip Girls moody boy, Zen monk Frankenstein's monster (seriously, yo, it was worse than whatever worsetiness you just imagined).

In the meantime, for public penance, for abusing the near-sacred faith you - yes, you, dear reader - put in me, I offer this musical apology.

Happy Non-Denomination Specific Celebratory Winter Season Event!

Whoever you are, I hope this winter season finds you and yours happy, healthy, and joyous.

Thanks for all the readers who have followed this thing for two plus years now. I hope it's been as fun for as it is for me and I look forward to our third year together.

Image from "I Wish I Were" t-shirt by Ian Leino, available at Threadless T-Shirts.

Meta: In the silent era, nobody could hear anybody scream.

Today marks the second birthday of And Now the Screaming Starts!

As this shambling blogtastrophe heads into its terrible twos, I'd like to thank the regular readers who were with me pretty much from the start – Sassy, Spacejack, Cattleworks, and the lovely and talented Mermaid Heather – and the host of new readers who have joined us along the way. And, of course, we shan't forget a shout out to the folks of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers, who just this year decided to make me their token "Yeah-I've-Seen-All-Those-Saw-Movies" Guy.

As we did last year, we're going to celebrate the blogiversary by returning to the roots of cinematic horror and spending a week reviewing silent thrillers and chillers. That's right; I'm gonna call it "Son of the Silent Scream Series."

Starting this weekend, we'll cover a whole new set of sinister silents. This year we've got rampaging brontosaurs, psycho killers, beheadings, madness, nightmares, kinky sex hang-ups, cannibal cultists, haunted houses, and so much more! Please do stop by and join in the fun.

For those who missed the first series, you can follow the links below to last year's films:

Waxworks, 1924, by Paul Leni and Leo Birinski

Frankenstein, 1910, by Edison Films

The Bells, 1926, by James Young

The Eyes of the Mummy, 1918, by Ernst Lubitsch

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1920, by John Robertson

Häxan, 1922, by Benjamin Christensen

Meta: Now I know what real horror is.

Happy Monday, Screamers and Screamette's. But enough about you, let's talk about me.

Last Saturday morning, not only did I scratch the crap out of my glasses, but the hard drive of my previously happy and contented macbook died. It was chugging along just fine when, after an audible "pop," it gave up the ghost and presented me with the sinister White Screen of Death.

In essence, I'd piled up a couple grand in damages before reaching lunch. Not a good day.

This means that CRwM is temporarily operating half-blind and on borrowed computer time. I'll try to post regularly, but I'm thinking Screamin' fans – all five of you – might experience a bit of a slowdown.

I'll keep posting as often as I can. In the meantime, please feel free to explore the sidebar links. There's a boatload of horror, pop culture, and comic book goodness waiting for you on the other side of them there links.

Contest: 300 or "Madness? This is ANTSS Tricentpostiary."

This is the 300th post on And Now the Screaming Starts. To celebrate, I'm going to give away a free copy of the Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics as reviewed in this very blog.

"Holy Sister Carmen Lupita Herrera Villanueva de la Vega Campuzano and her 1,000 yapping zombie Pomeranians! A free book! How can I ensure that I am the person who receives said book?"

Well, dearest reader, I'm glad you asked. There will be a contest!

"A contest!"

Yes, a contest.

"That's great. I love contests."

I know. We all do. Now please stop interrupting.

Here's how you enter:
1) Write a limerick describing the plot of a horror movie. Any horror film that inspires you is fair game.
2) Email said limerick along with your name and mailing address to me at crwm44(at)yahoo(dot)com. Just type your limerick(s) in the body of the email.

You can send as many limericks as you please. The deadline for limericks will be one week from today: Wednesday the 16th. I'll announce the winner the day after the deadline.

Millions will enter, millions minus one will lose! And one will win!

Before we all rush to our quills and writing desks, I'd like to take the chance to thank everybody who has indulged me in this blog-habit of mine. I'd like to give a special shout out to the original group of readers who were early adopters of this thing: Dave, Spacejack, Sassy, Cattleworks, and Mermaid Heather. I'd like to thank all the members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers for adding me to their ever-growing roll of awesomeness. And I'd like to thank my wife, who absolutely hates horror movies, but puts up with me anyway – thanks babe.

Meta: ANTSS becomes the Marvin of the horror-blogging Superfriends.

Today the fine folks over at The League of Tana Tea Drinkers invited your humble horror host to join the merry macabre band of malicious malcontents. I, cribbing a calm and collected response from James Joyce said, "Yes I said yes I will Yes."

So, Screamers and Screamettes, you might well ask, how will this meteoric, if entirely justifiable, rise to almost unimaginable Internet fame affect CRwM?

Well, in a rushed and utterly half-assed attempt to put the League logo on my sidebar, I completely wiped out all my links and had to scramble to fix my freakin' blog. I reckon that sort of regularly displayed incompetence should serve to keep me well grounded.

Sigh.

Still, it is an honor to be asked to join up. Please check out the new LOTT-D link in the recently un-destroyed sidebar and look for future ANTSS participation in League round-tables, guest shots, and other good stuff.

Meta: Somebody please think of the children!

For those who haven't noticed, a new link has popped up on the ol' ANTSS sidebar. If you haven’t tried it yet, clickee on over to Kindertrauma. Seriously. Do it! I promise you'll like it. Look, just click over once; if you don't like it, I promise we'll stop.

Kindertrauma is one of the most original sites in the horror-blog community. The blog is dedicated chronicling all those books, television shows, and flicks that scared the crap out of us when we were little. Some entries cover straight-up horror flicks (if the site is to be believed, the '80s slasher boom has left the current crop of 30-somethings with some pretty deep scars), but several entries cover those innocent childhood pleasures that, for some sadistic reason, turned on us: like the "space vampire" episode of Buck Rogers.

The bloggers behind this treasury of tot terror, Uncle Lancifer and Aunt John, happily take traumatic tales from their readers, so feel free to drop them a line about the bit o' media that left you permanently afraid of clowns/water/spiders/Santa or whatever else.

Meta: Flatulating my gassy bloviation all over the Internets.

Hell truly hath no fury like an Internet reviewer.

This one comes from a user going under the nom de Net "Scone Mason." Get it? Scone Mason. See what he did there? Watch out, Sconey Maloney kicks it up to a whole 'nother intellectual level in a second.

This is a review of House of Leaves, the cult hit spook story that used concrete poetry techniques, stunt layouts, and other tricks to tell the story of a young man obsessed with a manuscript purporting to detail the contents of a documentary about a haunted house.

Let's let the Sconester take it away.

This book was incredibly dull pseudointellectual gimmickery.

"Dull" count: 1

Bret E. Ellis's much touted blurb should be embarrassing to him, but more so to those who buy his books.

I'm not sure what exactly he means by "much touted" here. In standard English the phrase means to hype something up, to make much of it. Ellis's blurb is just stuck on the book like several others. The blurb itself isn't made much of. Perhaps he meant the blurb itself was doing the touting - but that's what blurbs do so it would be sort of like saying "the Crest add, which shamefully promotes Crest toothpaste . . ."

I can't say whether or not Ellis is embarrassed by the blurb. I can say that, as a person who has purchased some of Ellis's books, I can't seem to muster the proper amount of shame. My therapist and I will work on the crucial Ellis blurb issues in the future.

To mention Danielewski's charade in the same sentence as Pynchon, Wallace, and Ballard shows only that Ellis hasn't read any of those other writers. King, who is indeed the King of Hacks, is a proper comparative I suppose.

Ouch. I should add though that Pynchon once blurbed a Tom Robbins book - so treating blurbs as if they were anything other than a sort of cheap round agents force their writers to pay for now and then is, I think, a somewhat sterile exercise.

In Infinite Jest Wallace used copious footnotes to help tell the story.

Actually, the notes in Infinite Jest are endnotes. 'Cause they come at the end of the book. Hence the "end."

In House of Leaves there is one footnote that helps tell the story, and that is the group of letters from Johnny Truant's institutionalized mother. Those letters are the best part of the book. The rest is typing. 99% of the footnotes can be ignored, and as you approach the end, you can pretty much skip every other paragraph to the finish. Fake scholarly works inserted into a rewriting of The Amityville Horror (or pick your haunted house story) do not make it scholarly.

I assume he picked Amityville and then added the "or whatever" because the house in Leaves really doesn't do anything that the house in Amityville does. The latter is haunted by the residents who were murdered there previously, has imaginary friends appearing and disappearing, possesses its inhabitants, has swarms of flies buzzing everywhere, rotting meat smells, and so on. There was, if I recall, a mystery room the Amityville folks found in their basement - a sort of crawl space behind their washing machine. Still, that doesn't seem to explain why the former house - with no ghosts to speak of, no flies, no blood and ooze running down the walls, no demonic voices or pig-like imaginary friends, no any Amityville-ish traits - is a copy of the latter.

I think what the Scone Ranger meant to say was something along the lines of "I'm pretty sure this is an unoriginal rewrite of something that, if I had read it, could point to at this very moment." And who can argue with that?

Lots of Latin and Greek references do not make it intellectual, and telling a story within a story does not make it literary when you don't care about the people involved.

Damn right. French is the language of vapid intellectuality. And the measure of all literature is whether or not you care about the people involved. Everybody knows that. That's why The Velveteen Rabbit is the cornerstone of Western literature.

None of these characters is particularly endearing, and putting the words on the page in imitation of the geography the characters are experiencing is impressive only to those easily impressed.

So, yeah, fuck you readers! I should point out that the funniest thing Scone-and-Rag Man does here is shotgun wedding to completely unrelated ideas into a single sentence, stretching the power of the poor comma until it screams. Check out this sentence. The first clause - dependent? who cares? - is about how none of the characters are endearing (not like, say, the endearing Oedipa Maas or those lovable wheelchair-bound assassins in Jest) and the second - is this the dependent clause? are there any dependent clauses? at least give us a sanity clause - is about layout issues.

High school kids probably love this book. Or college business administration majors.

Yeah. What the hell are you? Some sort of business administration major? Get a life!

Actually, I'm a little embarrassed by Here-I-Go-Again-On-My-Scone here: he clearly pulled his punches. I think he wanted to say something like "only poor and uneducated people" or "only blacks and Chinamen" would be impressed, but he was worried that this would make him sound like some sort of jackass who used stereotypes as an intellectual crutch.

Anyone who wants a challenge or to read something experimental should try Robert Coover's The Public Burning or John Hawke's The Beetle Leg.

Again, he's pulling his punches. I recommend sending several books through a shredder. Then taping them back up in random order. Read that mess, you mammer-jammer. Now we're talking about R-E-A-D-ing, baby. Anything less rigorous than this and you're just one of those pussy business administration majors that reads for pleasure or the sensation of novelty or escape or whatever pathetic excuse you cling to. You don't want people to think you're a pussy business administration major? Well, do you?

If this book changed your life, you need to get out more, go to a bookstore, then get in more.

This might be true. The only reason I stop to mention this line is that I don't believe anybody in the comment chain mentioned anything about this. If we're going to attack fanatical readers that don't exist, let's really make them crazy, right? Say: "I've heard that some people have been trading away their own infant children for copies of this book. I think those people are daft!"

There is nothing deep or deeply intellectual about this book, it is not a difficult read, unless you are unable to physically turn the book to read upsidedown or sideways, and there is certainly nothing to lead any well-read person to compare it to Wallace, Pynchon, or Ballard.

This is another one of those great pile-on sentences, like Scone-some Dove was trying to get the most out of some one-trip critical term salad bar. Does something have to be difficult to read to be "deep or deeply intellectual"? Wouldn't that make the instruction manual to the Airport wireless router I've got more "deep or deeply intellectual" than, say, Darwin's Origin of Species, which is written in a pretty straight forward style? Doesn't this make Edward Lear a more "deep or deeply intellectual" author than Pynchon, because Pynchon at least makes sense?

THere was not one sentence in this book that made me laugh the way Wallace does, or marvel at its genius the way Pynchon does.

Ballard has suddenly dropped out of the running. I don't know why. As for laughing, Leaves isn't really a comedy. I don't want to suggest that its not being a comedy could possibly account for lack of ha-ha's. Indeed, maybe it is a sign of just how crappy a writer Danielewski is that he was unable to write a drama-horror book that didn't send Pay-Scone into paroxysms of school-girlish twittering. Or, you know, maybe he didn't write any gags. I'm just saying it's a possibility and we should keep our options open.

As many have pointed out, it is simply dull. I think a lot of people probably love the fact that they can say they read a 700 page book that is actually about 100 pages long if all the nonsense is removed and there aren't 20 pages with only one sentence or one word on them.

"Dull" count: 2

This is true, I know many people who regularly say, "I read a 700 page book that is actually about 100 pages long if all the nonsense is removed and there aren't 20 pages with only one sentence or one word on them." They've got a club that meets regularly at the Brooklyn Central library. The coffee is free. I recommend it.

Most of all it's dull.

"Dull" count: 3

Right. We got you. It's dull.

I usually toss aside a book this boring, but I wanted to be able to review it in its entirety.

Um, what? He read the whole book solely so he could produce this? He thought his crucial insights into the book - limited mostly to a discussion of a single footnote, the layout, and one of the marketing blurbs - was so essential, so important, so vital to our needs that he sacrificed himself for our greater good.

Wow.

Now I feel kinda like a total asshole for making fun of him.

I mean, I don't feel like as big of an asshole as Give A Dog A Scone is for finishing a book he hated just so he could flatulate his gassy bloviation (look it up, Sconed Age) all over the Internets. But still, I feel a bit bad.

I don't know Danielewski personally, but as a writer he and Ellis are a good pair, all hype. Two literary big hats with absolutely no cattle.

I like that touch. I do that myself when I'm reviewing Dickens. "Dickens and I don't travel in the same circles, but . . ."

Is it possible to negatively review something on the Inter-web and not sound like a jackass? This is actually a real question. I've done my fair share of trashing product I thought was subpar. But then I read some crappola like this and, aside from giving me yet another reason to hope the terrorists win, it makes me wonder if I shouldn't adopt a Believer-style review policy: only write about stuff you like.

What say you, loyal readers? Should ANTSS adopt a "if you can't say something nice" policy?

Meta: Now for something completely different.

Though it wouldn't classify as "horror" in any traditional way, I thought I'd use the blog to shamelessly promote my first-ever published work of fiction. That's right, baby, I've gone from copy slut to copy whore – CRwM's getting paid for it now!

The story, titled Abstract, was commissioned by – of all places – Forbes as part of a special report on the future and scenario planning. Warren Ellis, Cory Doctorow, and Max Barry were among the others commissioned for work.

Meta: Tomorrow, tomorrow . . .

I hope you've enjoyed the first ever series here on And Now the Screaming Starts. Let me know if you'd like to see more silent flicks, or series, or movies with William S. Burroughs narration, or whatever it is that floats your boat. I just want to hear from you. Would it kill you to write your friendly neighborhood blogger now and then? Would it? I'm worried sick about you.

Tomorrow, dear Screamers and Screamettes, marks the big one-year anniversary of And Now the Screaming Starts. In the course of a single year, we've been through a lot together. We've laughed and we cried. There have been contests and reviews, jokes and hatchet jobs. We started this blog as mere boys (unless you were a girl, which is none of my business, really) and we reach this milestone as men (unless you're a woman, but, again, that's between you and your gender and is none of my bee's wax).

So, just how do we celebrate the anniversary of a blog that has given so much and never, ever asked for anything in return?

Well, my loyal screamin' horde, sometimes the answer is thrust upon you.

In the comments to my review of Haxan, the last in our Silent Scream Series, I got this invite from one Ed Hardy, Jr., movie-buff extraordinaire:

Sorry, this has nothing to do with this post. But I wanted to invite you and any other interested parties to submit a nominating list to Shoot the Projectionist's survey of the 31 GREATEST HORROR FILMS, to be published on Halloween.

Here's a link to the original announcement:

Click upon this very link to be magically transported to your destination!

Thanks.

What better way to cap of a year of horror blather than a bit of ol' fashion canon creation?

Calm down, folks. We won't be making a weapon of mass destruction.

Instead, we'll be rolling out the Official ANTSS 31 Greatest Horror Flicks of All Freakin' Time.

See you tomorrow, fright fans. You could miss it, but then you'd like totally suck.