Sinister Missives

Legendary writer/director/artist/bon vivant Clive Barker announced on his Twitter account this evening that he is working with Disguise to create his own line of Halloween masks, a line he intends to expand each year:

I’m starting to get full-size sculpts for Halloween masks and costumes developed to give a wild, edgy look to my favorite holiday! In 2010 we’ll start with The Dark Bazaar. Then we’ll add characters to the mythology year after year - my designs for a whole new Halloween, with not a pumpkin in sight. I originate the characters as oil paintings. In 2011 we will get even darker, as we descend into The Pit.

I’m working with an awesome company called Disguise - great, creative people who want to give the holiday some bite, some fresh blood, some new Terrors. There will be big press stuff to follow. But you folks (Twitter followers) have been amazing to me during a really bad time in my life. You first!

Personally, as a long-time fan of Mr. Barker’s work, I cannot WAIT to see what he comes up with! Halloween 2010 already has a little something extra to look forward to!

Friend, client and fellow Halloween artist Heather Gleason put together this very cool video set to Ministry’s “Scarecrow”.

CNN is now getting its information from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Whether or not you agree with the policy, it should tell you how critical it is for your business to have more than just a website.

So it’s about 2:00 am and I’m sitting here working on a haunted house’s marketing materials for the upcoming season, while watching Buffy Season 2 on Hulu.com, after a long speakerphone conversation on my Blackberry with one of the haunted house industry’s most well-known personalities.

This is after a lovely dinner in my back yard with my family, watching the sun set and looking at our newly-installed lighting system, which is gorgeous.

I am so damned lucky I can barely comprehend it.

Not just the obvious stuff - my health, my family, owning a house, owning a business that I love. Did I mention the part about watching Buffy on Hulu? Of all the things I just mentioned, that’s probably the most likely to get dismissed or taken for granted, yet it’s also the most remarkable.

I’m working off a reasonably powerful laptop that has an output for a secondary monitor - I work on the big monitor while watching Hulu on the laptop’s built-in monitor. That I can watch a show that I absolutely love, for free, while I work in my office? That’s pretty amazing, and it was only a couple of years ago that it wasn’t possible without a significant cash investment.

Beyond that, if I want to, I can log into Twitter or Facebook and find out what’s happening to friends and family all over the world. We take that for granted, when we should be thunderstruck that we can do it. As much as I jokingly gripe about The Stupids on Facebook, I also have to say that it’s a small-scale miracle in my life - I’ve reconnected with people I haven’t talked to in decades because of it. I can’t dismiss or mitigate that.

My point: Appreciate what you have. Appreciate how easy the internet is making certain simple pleasures. Appreciate how easy the internet makes it to stay in touch with people you genuinely care about. Appreciate your family. Appreciate whatever is going on in your life that doesn’t make you say “ouch”.

You’re lucky to have it. ANY of it.

Following is an email I received on Easter. This is all the explanation that you need about why I do what I do.

Let me start with, I don’t want you to do anything for me for free, I know how to use Google, and I already have a job. I am writing to you to thank you for your artwork, your links, your websites and the fun you seem to have with Halloween, Zombies, Vampyres and the Horror industry.

I searched Halloween on My Space about a year ago. In that search I decided to check out your website. I downloaded some of your fonts, and found the Zombie Jesus [Easter "Zombie Day" eCard]. (Laughingly I sent the link to my girls, we are not believers in Christianity, etc. ) I have since then forwarded many links to various sites to my daughters. Currently my youngest is approaching her senior year in Graphic Design. (I am not looking for a job for her either) Really it is just a thank you for your candid banter, especially in regard to freelance and the world of art and graphic design.

As for myself, thank you for allowing me to realize that it is OK to be amused and a little obsessed with Halloween and Horror. I live in a closed-minded community that moves Halloween when it falls on Sunday. So on this Zombie Day, I remember that I now celebrate a day with hilarity and gore, rather than as a religiously-driven holiday, due to stumbling upon your site and a Zombie Day eCard.

Sincerely,
Ann Marie Jones Allen

So here’s what I learned from the epic (and genuinely horrifying) zombie holocaust dream I had last night:

1. Whenever it’s possible, run. Staying and fighting gives more zombies a chance to show up.
2. Secure the bodies of the people that just got killed by zombies, even if you’re still dealing with those zombies, ’cause if you don’t, in a minute, there’ll be a couple more zombies.
3. Everything is a weapon if you hit the zombie hard enough with it. In the face. Repeatedly. I killed one with an old metal 3-hole paper puncher.
4. Basement or upstairs? Upstairs. You can destroy a staircase and find a way down later; you can’t get out of a basement. Ben had that right in NOTLD.
5. Zombies that have been dead for awhile come apart easier than you’d think; even their jaws. Grab a piece and yank. Repeat until the zombie is… ineffective.
6. Don’t let your child out of your sight EVEN. FOR. A. SECOND.
7. If new people show up, let them in if you can. They might be able to help.
8. If new people show up surrounded by zombies only a few feet away… too bad for them. Better them than you.
9. When the guys in lab coats and biohazard suits show up, things might have just gotten worse.
10. If you see a dinosaur in the distance, relax. You’re just dreaming.

It’s been an interesting evening. A couple of hours ago I got a call from a guy who hired one of my direct competitors (in the haunted house industry) to do his site. There’s been a problem along the way; I was called, near as I can tell, because the assumption was I’d know what to do.

That’s flattering. Obviously it begs the question of why he didn’t just hire me in the first place, but hey, now he knows.

Then a little while ago a web design company that focuses on a different industry hired me to redesign their logo and website, which is a first for me. I’ve never designed another designer’s brand/website. That’s also flattering.

So I’m flattered. And maybe a little perplexed. But mostly flattered.

God grant me the serenity to accept the domains I cannot register,
Courage to register domains through ICANN,
and wisdom to know the difference between .COM, .NET and .ORG.

ShockTilYouDrop.com has a great article/interview in which Mick Garris, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, William Malone and Stuart Gordon are interviewed by Richard Elfman about how art has affected their lives and work. The interview was occasioned by the American Cinematheque’s tribute to dark artist Zdzislaw Beksinski whose art inspired Malone’s new film Parasomnia.

http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/topnews.php?id=9889