DailyNightmareOther kindred spirits elsewhere on the Web
As a kid, I preferred the Addams Family to The Munsters but you’ve got to admit that the the cars that the Munsters drove were pretty cool. Here is a papercraft version of the Barris designed Munster Koach. The guy who turned this car into a paper model has a link for donations so send him a buck or two. The model is quite fantastic.
Yesterday I mentioned the cool papercraft coffins at Ravensblight.com — I’ve got one on my desk as I type this. And right next to it is another papercraft model that is, if this is possible, even cooler. It’s a “Shambler” from the video game Quake. Remember that? It was the first papercraft model I ever assembled and it was relatively simple to make. Just print the .pdfs on heavy paper, ideally from a color printer, cut them out with an x-acto blade, fold and glue ’em up with normal white glue. I became quite addicted to papercraft for a little while last summer since it’s so cheap and the models can be pretty darned fantastic.
Ravensblight.com is a fun, well-conceived and executed concept website that takes as its central metaphor a haunted town. The MOST fun part for me at least was the “Toystore” which features a couple DOZEN creepy papercraft models to print out and build.
Papercraft for those not familiar with it is a craft somewhat similar to origami in that you start with a flat sheet of paper and you end up with a three-dimensional object. But since the “rules” of papercraft allow scissors and elaborately printed paper, the object are — to be blunt– WAY cooler than origami. The technique behind papercraft is a pretty cool mixture of high-tech and low-tech. High tech computer-aided-design tools are used to create 3-d models of things… in Ravensblight’s case, for instance, mechanical bats or the tiny coffins shown above. Then another program “unfolds” the object into a 2-d surface and saves it as a .pdf. From a crafter’s perspective, it’s all low-tech simple: all you have to do is download the .pdf’s, print them with a color printer ideally on stiff paper and assemble. It’s a great rainy day activity and heck it’s a blast to have a little line of coffins on your desk!
Zombies invaded my household awhile back and occupied my family’s attentions night after night for several weeks. By “zombies” I of course mean the addictively amusing table game from Twilight Creations. I’m not enough of a game aficianado to know the correct term for this kind of game; it is card-based but also has a board that is assembled piece by piece as the game progresses. And the coolest part of the game perhaps are the plastic zombies that serve as obstacles to the players. In the expansion sets, there are even cooler variants of these zombies including glow-in-the-dark “radioactive” zombies and zombie dogs.
The object of the game should be familiar to anyone who knows a thing or two about zombies and that is, brute survival – and since only one person can fly away on that helicopter at the end (the victory condition) the side objective is making sure that other players don’t escape before you do. The theme changes nicely based on the different expansion sets, ranging from Night of the Living Dead (zombies original recipe), Dawn of the Dead (zombies in the mall), Day of the Dead (military zombies) and on to zombie dogs, college zombies and sewer zombies. Our household has got ’em all and they’re all great though the expansion sets, obviously require the original Zombies! game. One piece of advice I’d pass along is to pick up an extra “Bag o’ Zombies.” The number of zombies figures in the starter box isn’t really enough for even a middle sized game. And who wants to run out of zombies?
The artwork on the cards graphically illustrates the action of the card. In fact there are a couple cards whose illustrations are so intense that my daughter insists we take them out of play. The only drawback to the game that we’ve found is that the board sometimes ends up snaking out larger than our table, especially when adding an expansion set. The remedy that we’ve found is to push all the furniture to the edges of the room and play on the floor!
In short, Zombies! is a blast. Games without an expansion set seem to take a little over an hour which is a nice length for an evening’s entertainment — with an expansion set or two… well, don’t start one of those if you don’t want to be occupied til the wee hours. And heck, Zombies! or any table game is a great excuse to shut off the TV and actually look at the members of your household.
From Australia, with love. Imagine this cheery little warning tucked between ads for, I don’t know Quantas airlines and Vegemite.
The whole perspective of this public service announcement is weirdo-creepy, ain’t it? The image of the Grim Reaper as a bowler knocking down human pins in some dank Goth bowling alley just twists and turns in my head like a hungry corpse-worn. Compare and contrast, won’t you? this little video tidbit with the image of death as a chess player in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
My suspicion is that anyone reading The Daily Nightmare would also be interested in the creepy-fun merchandise offered at “PushinDaisies.com” My personal favorite is the anatomically correct human heart made from a whole pound of chocolate (dark or milk) — though I’m also attracted to the cupcake tins shaped like skulls. Prices don’t seem too bad either.
One magazine that is essential for eccentric do it yourselfers is Make. What makes it particularly interesting to a reader of the Daily Nightmare is that Make is putting out a special Hallowe’en issue with all manner of cool creepy projects. Pre-order now and it’ll be shipping in August.
http://store.makezine.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=HALLOW07
Several years ago, I dined at “Transylvania House,” an eastern European restaurant that served honest, nourishing peasant food — I had a hauntingly delicious bowl of tripe soup as an appetizer–with all the tawdry ambiance that its strip mall location allowed. Crammed in between the entrance and the kitchen was a man with a guitar and an amp who serenaded diners with tunes like Monster Mash and the theme from the Munsters. He was fantastic. I dropped a few bucks in his tip jar when we left and I picked up one of his promotional stickers. He went by the name of Creepy Clyde.
I came across that battered sticker the other day and scanned the internet to see what Clyde was up to. Evidently quite a lot. Check out his website:
Clyde hosts a movie series and has produced a cd of his original tunes. His nicely polished work is a loving pastiche of “safe” TV horror personalities — like my home-town favorite Sir Graves Ghastly — and cheery monster pop like Monster Mash. He’s just so darned good-natured about the whole thing too that he almost makes me feel like a kid again. Check out the commercials for his shows up on YouTube for a taste of what he does.
 The website Instructibles features step by step instructions on doing and building all sorts of practical things. But imagine my rapture and bliss when the other day instructions appeared for something both blissfully impractical as well as somewhat nightmare-related. Follow these instruction to make a blood spurting device from an old “swiffer.” The instructions also contain a recipe for fake blood.
When vampires and werewolves seem a bit stale and tame, check out the catalog of real world horrors at Dismal World.com. Particularly striking is the “Must See” area and in particular “Unforgettable Photos.” There are also competently written essays about many topics of social and political horror. This cavalcade of atrocities was enough, perversely, to make me feel extremely fortunate, if even just for the moment.
Artist Deanna Molinaro dreams up slightly troubling bedtime tales and publishes them both on her website in .pdf format as well as in limited edition hardcopies. Her website also has snaps of her deliciously demented sculptures and drawings.  Personally, I’m sending her some cash for a copy of “The Lonely Sea Monster.”
The artist Michael Paulus has used standard anatomical proportions to sketch out the skeletons that are implied by various classic cartoon characters. The effect is rather innocently eerie and bizarrely charming. My personal favorite is Charlie Brown whose grinning skull is downright unnerving.
http://michaelpaulus.com/gallery/v/character-Skeletons/
This guy, Dave Devries, takes the artwork of children and then paints realistic versions of the monsters they’ve envisioned. He’s published a book of the monsters and interviews with the children called Monster Engine: an experiment with children’s art. On the site is also a short movie where he demonstrates the process and describes some of his ambitions.
Happy was the day I stumbled upon the dark surrealist digital imagery of Erlend Mork. Mork’s work places suggestive and stylized elements next to passages of utmost clarity, all layered and at times effaced with washes. I am not saying anything new to note that these key elements of artistic surrealism echo the internal logic of dreams. Mork’s darker fixations also link his subject matter to what we discuss on the Daily Nightmare.
A skeptic would say it’s all just Photoshop and I admit, some pieces are more effective than others. I’m unlikely to make a digital believer of someone in a few words but if you are so interested, look at these pieces in particular:
For me, the cello – an instrument I’ve played as a amateur for nearly 3 decades – is the wordless voice of my soul. It’s ethereal, melancholy, gutteral, lonesome, joyous, graceful…each in turn. This piece nicely illustrates at least one grouping of my mental ensemble.
Everything sounds more serious in German, n’est-ce pas? I hesitate to comment on this piece, “The Fool’s Dream” because it might reveal too much of my own psychology. But is that young man dutifully collecting the nightmares of others, putting in canning jars their jarring dreams? Is this like my project here? Am I then the fool?
The mass of erudition, piled in an unbelievable space with a surface like an old photograph. Whimsical perhaps but show this image to any scholar or better, a failed doctoral student and observe the weary smile creases at the edges of their eyes.
This entry is an addendum to the “Other Haunts – Monster by Mail” post. Y’see, the same GENIUS, Len Peralta, is also behind “The Zombie Alphabet” found at e-zombie.com Letters made by zombie calisthenics. Perfect for greeting cards, dontcha think?
Zombie Letters from e-zombie.com
I squealed like a mouse in a fan belt when I stumbled across “Monster by Mail.com” For a very reasonable fee, Len Peralta will draw a 4″ x 5″ color portrait of a made-up movie monster of your choosing. And for $10 more, he’ll send you a time-lapse movie of its creation. I couldn’t resist so I sent in a few bucks to see his interpretation of what I, the Grim Gnome, look like. I think he really captured the demonic glint in my eye and the gnarled twist in my grin. You can almost SMELL my bad breath. Though he’s got me decked out in obviously new clothes, obviously new due to the relative lack of bloodstains on them.
Here’s the movie of Len’s deft pens. It’s like watching a quick sketch artist who’s set up shop near the red carpet of a B-movie festival.
And even if you don’t want to see the demon of your dreams immortalized in art, check out the Monsters by Mail site, (or Len’s Flickr site) where there are DOZENS of great creatures.
Does it sort of bother you that someday you’ll likely have to buy a casket that will be used pretty much for one day and pretty much for one purpose? Then check out the wares at Casket Furniture.
(http://www.casketfurniture.com/ )
The models there run from fun to functional. All seem handsome and well-crafted. And if you’re a do-it-yourself-er, they also offer plans. If I hadn’t already made plans to have my body composted and fed to my Rosa Rugosa, I’d be eyeing that “Eternaltainment Center” model.
If you need a break from the relentless onslaught of nightmares, phobias and horror presented here, check out Slow Wave. For over ten years, artist Jesse Reklaw has been posting illustrated dreams. (Ten years — that’s like a millennium in internet years!) The illustrations are charming and the storylines follow the weird sensibilities of dream logic. Printed comics and original artwork are also offered for sale at the site.
If you are cursed with a commute to your 40-hour cage, you might consider listening to the offerings of Pseudopod, the web’s original horror podcast. There is something wonderful about hearing a scary story, something that recalls a ghost story told around a campfire. The voicing talent at Pseudopod delightfully mixes irony with sincerity which allows the creepiness of the stories to come through. HOWEVER, the Pseudopodians are very clear that NOTHING on their site is appropriate for children, so if you’re a child, ah, stay away. Otherwise, check it out.
 My suspicion is that folks who enjoy reading other people’s nightmares might also enjoy reading other kinds of scary writing. The Harrow is a particularly tasteful horror e-zine that publishes new fiction monthly. I’ve haven’t been reading it for a long time but the writing that I have seems quite fresh and high-quality. Worth checking out.