Terror Film Festival

Welcome to my life. Day 5793. Greetings my Sanguinary Seraphins. Yanks lost today. They made a valiant comeback only to give it all right back. Kind of a let down. I was already popping champagne (wine cooler, really, but it's all good). Ended up drinking it anyway. To drown my sorrow. Raymond watched the game with me. I think my enthusiasm is contagious. He seemed to get really into it. Maybe it was just all the tight uniforms.

Anyway, today I wish to highlight another awesome October Film Fest. It is our month is it not? This one's called Terror Film Festival and it's on this weekend in Frazier, Pennsylvania. I hear that's like right outside of Philly.

There selection is a mix of big budget Hollywood flicks with a couple of cool indies thrown in.

In other news I'm getting pretty excited about Halloween. There's going to be a big ol' masquerade ball at school. I still haven't picked my costume, though. I've done witch and vampire so many times. Zombie is fun but only when you're around other zombies like for a zombie walk. Kind of hard to party when you're oozing brain juice. I'll probably just do vampire again. At least I won't have to go shopping. I've already seen Helen's costume - fairy. Totally gross. If she tries to sprinkle pixie dust on me, I'm going to sock her one. Would love to hear from some of my readers concerning their Halloween costumes, especially original ones. If you send pictures, I'll post them on the blog. This blog is such a great escape. Sometimes I feel like it's my secret identity. Or that the rest of my life is. Here in cyberworld I have so many friends and followers, people are always sending me cool Farmville gifts and what not. In real life I'm kind of a loner. Nobody would suspect that I am the great Lara Baxter, Goth blogger extraordinaire. I doubt anybody at school follows my blog. In fact I hope not. I kind of like this arrangement. They could all kiss my ass. Sure there's a Goth community at my school but it just seems like as much of a little click as the cheerleaders. And even they think I'm weird. I have my own style. And just cause it's dark and dangerous doesn't mean that I'm following any stupid trend. Especially not that Twatlight tip that all these little girls are on. I swear, we used to be anti-fashion. Now we are friggin fashion. Anyway, true Goths don't give a shit. They walk by the beat of their own drum. That's what I am.

Zombieland Hollywood Zombiewalk 2009 Exclusive!

Welcome to my life. Day 5771. Greetings my Flaccid Fornicators. Yes, it's true! Yours truly has acquired this exclusive video of last night's Hollywood Zombiewalk celebrating Zombieland! (only 24 hours to go!) That's right, you won't see this vid anywhere else! It was made by a guy named Benjamin Fields who just happens to be a huge fan of Lara's Thoughts and who graciously donated this incredible video for Zombie Week. The music is from some band called Madisonprep. The song is called Inspiration Point. Enjoy!

Armagged-it-on!

Welcome to my life. Day 5766. Hello my Ailing Anchovies. So Dad's been freaking out all day about Iran and how they have a nuclear weapon and how this is the beginning of World War III and whatever. I mean, if it happens, it happens. Nothing I can do about it. I guess I can write a letter to Ahmadinajad but I don't even think he reads English. Still, it kind of affects the way we look at life. Our plans and what not. Not much point continuing this education business if the world is going to end in a couple of years. Apparently all these religions and tribes all say the world is going to end in 2012. So why the hell do we continue to do shit? Let's PAAAARTY! Seriously, if the world's gonna end, I'd like to say I spent the last couple of years of it getting wasted rather than learning about the Magna friggin Carta. This kind of reminds of me of one of my favorite books, The Basketball Diaries, by Jim Carroll who died last week. R.I.P. Big Jim! Anyway, he wrote that book when he was fifteen, much as I'm writing my blog now. I think it's important to record these years. I mean, it's kind of hard to recapture that 'teen' spirit when you're all old and jaded. Jim grew up in the 60's when everyone thought the Russians were going to destroy the world. Hiroshima was still pretty fresh in everyone's mind, too. In the book, Jim becomes a junky and throws a promising basketball future away. Somehow you can't help but feel that the Russians had something to do with it. This sort of thing affects us kids. Psychologically. I was seven years old when 9/11 happened. Later on I found out that those planes flew over Indian Point. That's a nuclear power plant on the Hudson River. I don't live that far from there. It would have been the end of yours truly. Those crazy Arabs momentarily had my life in their hands. And they chose to spare it. Jim Carroll may have had the threat of annihilation but I had the genuine opportunity. Sure, I was too young to really appreciate it, but hell, it gives you perspective. You've all fucked up this planet so bad we have no idea if we even have a future at all! Maybe that's why zombie flicks strike such a chord. They're really about the end of the world. And they kind of help us laugh it off. You might say zombie flicks help us learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.




A brief history of Zombies

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word Zombie entered English circa 1871 and is derived from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, which in turn is of Bantu origin. A zonbi is a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will. So, the first zombies were brought back to life through voodoo, a powerful and mysterious witchcraft.

Zombies gained notoriety as an obscure offshoot of the horror genre of the 1930s, most notably White Zombie (1932) with Bela Lugosi. Few zombies from that time remain, mostly because they didn't have a whole lot personality. There are several B-Movies of the 50's that experimented with the idea of the dead returning but it wasn't until 1968, when George Romero gave us Night Of The Living Dead that the genre as we know it really came to be. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, zombies are the pinnacle of Special Effects Make-up achievement in the movies.

Here is Mr. Romero's Site:

GEORGE ROMERO