The October Diaries: The Initiation

the-initiation-1984-A2
Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Sean and Christof
Read On! »


The October Diaries: Cat People

cat-people-1982-remake-black-panther-A1
Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Sean and Christof
Read On! »


The October Diaries: Deadly Friend

10514-deadlyfriend-A1

Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Shannon Neale, Sean, and Christof
Read On! »


The October Diaries: The Keep

The Keep
Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Jesse, Christof, and Sean
Read On! »


The October Diaries: Sorority House Massacre

10314-SHM-A1

 Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Sean and Christof
Read On! »


The October Diaries: Dead Silence

10214-DeadSilence-B2

 Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Sean and Christof
Read On! »


The October Diaries 2014

The Whiteman Brothers and friends celebrate The 31 Days of Halloween by reserving the living room exclusively for horror films that no one in the room has seen. Sean and Christof (and sometimes guests!) write quick first impressions about the films while honorary Whiteman brother, Max Brown, makes an illustration for each of the new-to-us horror movies.

October 1: The Town That Dreaded Sundown
October 2: Dead Silence
October 3: Sorority House Massacre
October 4: The Keep
October 5: Deadly Friend
October 6: Cat People
October 7: The Initiation
October 8: The Company of Wolves
October 9: Night of the Demons
October 10: Sole Survivor
October 11: Wait Until Dark
October 12: The Conjuring
October 13: Eyes of Fire
October 14: Next of Kin
October 15: Schizo
October 16: Hardware
October 17: Society
October 18: I, Madman
October 19: Curse of Chucky
October 20: The Hand
October 21: Someone’s Watching Me!
October 22: Something Evil
October 23: Insidious
October 24: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
October 25: Eyes of a Stranger
October 26: Bad Biology
October 27: The Sacrament
October 28: You’re Next
October 29: Poltergeist II: The Other Side
October 30: All Cheerleaders Die
October 31: God Told Me To



The October Diaries: The Town That Dreaded Sundown

Illustration by Max Brown

 Illustration by Max Brown
Blurbs by Sean and Christof

Read On! »



ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE: Jarmusch as Vampirically Cool Genre Equalizer

Jim Jarmusch is cool. Very few would have the misguided nerve to argue against this claim. His writing is cool, his directing is cool and his hair is very cool. His scripts seem to be written with the implicit intent of being undersold while his directing technique routinely undermines flash and outright refuses to sizzle. He often casts musicians like Tom Waits (who might be the epitome of cool) in leading roles and he is never afraid to let a shot linger glacially long enough to outlast contemporary audience expectations of what is appropriate.

Jarmusch is cool enough that venues should consider starting his movies an hour after the listed showtime in order to allow the images to arrive fashionably late to the eyeballs.

Illustration by Max Brown

Read On! »



The Most Shocking Indictment of the Fox News Channel You’ll Ever Read

So after enjoying a particularly rewarding episode of “Frasier”, I deleted it; naturally, I was ready to watch another. But here’s where Fate’s predeterminedly slam of fortoldish instinctualiZedness impacted my human-core with pre-provocognitive-esque preparednessliness of something I had known prior: at this punch of a remote’s button, the screen returns not to the data bank of recordings, but rather to the last channel viewed, which happened to be the Fox News Channel.

Thus the interfaced blinked to a man in a suit saying, “…so why don’t we go to a clip of that, people that go to things.” Then lower-resolution video of some bland, staged event (an event with a stage, mind you) being watched by a crowd.

The last tele-prompted (?) bit of speech re-uttered itself in the confines of my brain’s mind: …so why don’t we go to a clip of that, people that go to things.

There’s some equivocation here and I find it fascinating. Firstly and most-unimportantly, the possibility that the transcribed excerpt you’ve just now read twice should contain a colon where there’s a comma is not a possibility. The intonations confidently suggested the direct address. He was speaking to those who identify as “people who go to things.” But the paramount question now reveals itself to be, “WHICH peoples who go to things?”

There are two possible answers that I can render:

1) The man in the suit who is paid money to talk to lenses was addressing those of us at home who also go to things – things like events or whatever – because he knew we’d get a real kick out of footage of a stage and its crowd.

2) The man in the suit who is paid money to talk at lenses was addressing the technicians – the “men and/or women in the booth,” as they say – and he was reminding them of their jobs without using their names or their professional titles.

The last scenario delights me in an odd way. It’s similar to sensations conjured upon seeing someone who has ice cream smeared about the mouth, or even the sensations conjured upon being someone who has ice cream smeared about the mouth.

Where to go? What to do?

Others may have taken the easy road by watching another episode of “Frasier” (a paragon encrusted on the crown of Yester-Thursday’s Must-Seen), but I had the strength to write it down and explore these new emotions and soon-to-be-age-old quandaries by assigning words to them and then italicizing some of them.

The Epiphanic Moral:
I may not be the muscle you want in a fist fight, but my brain-space is buff with courage, bro.