The Penguin

Just a little something I whipped up at work: © 2016 Richard M Schlaack Groovy monsters, digging some bat- poetry in a coffin- house. Enjoying the likes of Allen Ghoulsberg, William Burrows, and Jack Scare-o-whack. And what's the title? You guessed it: "Howl". Rick Out.

I love telling stories...ghost stories, most of all. In honor of the upcoming Spookiest Month (October, in case you're wondering), here's one of my favorites: Taily-Po They say that when the wind is high and the moon rides like a heavy-laden galleon over seas of cloud, and the air is cool and sharp with cinammon and wet-rot, and the few leaves left in the trees clack and clatter like dry bones dancing...that's when the lights rise out of the swamp, and men don't walk abroad at night. Because it's out in the moist and fetid brackish backwaters, the drowned cemeteries where the muck clings and the slime grasps at your boots like a noisome lover, that the worst of the spirits dwell. And at midnight they roll in with the fog. Old Man Jenkins sat puffing his pipe by the fire in his little cabin at the edge of Big Musky Swamp, quite alone except for the hound dogs who whimpered in the kennel out back. His room wasn't much to look at - rough boards, dirt floor, ...

The Movie: Creepshow (1982) Director: George A Romero Starring: Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielson, Ted Danson, Stephen King, et al. This movie was written by Stephen King, and features makeup work by industry legend Tom Savini. Following the format of old EC and DC horror comic books ( Tales from the Crypt , for instance), it consists of five short tales of terror - "Father's Day", "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill", "Something to Tide You Over", "The Crate", and "They're Creeping Up on You!" - framed by the story of a father punishing his son for reading a Creepshow  comic book. Depending on how you view retro horror comics, the stories will either make you groan grotesquely or giggle ghoulishly. I fall into the latter category. Watching awful people receive their comeuppance at the talons of a gore-dripping corpse is immensely satisfying, no matter who you are; it speaks to the kid inside you, the little angry fearful ...

The Movie: La Residencia/aka Finishing School/aka The House That Screamed (1969) Directed by: Narciso Ibanez Serrador. Starring: Lilli Palmer as the Headmistress, Madame Fourneau; John Moulder-Brown as her son Luis; Cristina Galbo as Teresa, the new girl; and Mary Maude as Irene, the sadistic trustie. A new girl, Teresa, shows up at a dreary French boarding school run by the authoritarian Madame Fourneau. Even during the first hours of her stay, things are weird - she keeps feeling like she's being watched. Things get no better when she finds out what the girls get up to in the woodshed with the delivery man, and has run-ins with the sadistic Irene, who operates the dark underbelly of the school. But soon girls are turning up missing, and there is a murderous madman on the loose. Will Teresa escape the school with her life? At first I thought this was going to be an Italian exploitation film (boarding school girls! Sexual liaisons! Lesbian headmistresses! Murder!) and ye...

Just an odd thought...I tend to feel like the hero of my own story. Everybody's against me, but by God they're stupid and wrong, and I have to make sure they know they can't get one over on ole Rick. I wasn't born yesterday. I may not always be right, sure, but I know what's right for me, and ain't nobody in this world is gonna take me for a ride. But after a while I have to ask myself: am I the hero here, or just a villain? This was all brought on by my night job, washing dishes at a bar in Lansing. It sucks. It really, really sucks. I suppose if you're used to that sort of thing, it's a pretty damn good job, good pay, etc...but I'm ambitious and frustrated. Cleaning up other people's messes makes me irritable. It's a mix of lonely solitude interrupted by annoyance, spiked through with the paranoia that somebody else is making me do their job. For a while it was okay because I got along with everyone, but we just had a rash of firings, a...