From Zombos' Closet

An Interesting Email

At around two this morning I read a most entertaining and interesting email. Detesting my lack of understanding, as shown in my review for The Sick House, the writer went on to identify me as an expletive, expletive, expletive fag.

First, I am actually quite happy that someone was so emotionally involved with one of my reviews that he took the time to convey his feelings to me, graphic though they may be. Second, I admit I'm a bit confused by the use of the word fag. Did the writer mean I'm an expletive, expletive, expletive bundle of wood, or cigarette (I'm British in spirit, but don't smoke), or small breaded piece of fish or meat (doesn't describe me at all)? Or perhaps he meant it as a disparaging term for supposed homosexual tendencies (I'm heterosexual in practice, although I've suspected I'm bisexual in spirit--at least in my fantasies).

So, while I'm ecstatic to have fan email, this one has left me elated but disappointed that I don't quite get the writer's intended message.

As for my review of The Sick House, to paraphrase the words of Roger Ebert--when he summed up his expert opinion on Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo--the movie sucks. At least that I'm certain of.

I-CON 2006 and Me

"It looks like you are suffering from being back-blogged," said Dr. Dippel. His slightly hunched-back assistant nodded in agreement.

I shook my head in disbelief. "It can't be. I must have a bad head cold, nothing more."

"Tsk, tsk," said Dr. Dippel. "You do nothing else but stay up all night reading questionable literature and writing that silly blog of yours. As if anyone reads it." I could have sworn his assistant snickered.

I looked at them. They whispered to each other, then smiled at me. I hate when doctors and assistants do that. "You must remain in bed all day, and especially, no blogging for a week," he said. His assistant nodded in agreement. I could have sworn he wagged his finger at me, too.

"But doctor," I protested, "I am so behind in my blogging I cannot quit, not even for a moment. And then there's I-CON! I must go, I must keep searching for all that is horrorful and wonderful to blog about."

"Tsk, tsk." They threw up their hands, scolded me, then started to leave my bedroom. Dr. Dippel turned and said "If blog you must, then I suggest you take some NyQuil and dress warmly."

"And write shorter blogs!" said his assistant. There, he did it again, he wagged his finger at me.

I was left in silence. How could I stop blogging when so much still needed to be said? If only I could find more hours in the day and night. There is so much to do. How will I ever catch up? And write shorter blogs!? Such effrontery to literary etiquette must not be allowed to happen, even if the average attention span of a blog reader is measured in milliseconds and page blips. How will I ever make do? Such are the eternal questions we face when blogging. I put them aside for the moment and got out of bed, dressed, and headed to I-CON 25 at Stony Brook University. I would not let little things like a painfully throbbing headache, stuffy nose, and mucous-filled membranes stop me. No way, no how.

You Have Now Entered the Bookstore Zone

Another Sunday; another day in another week. Only this time a crack appears in the fabric of one hour. A hole, if you will, that suddenly swallows the mundane minutes, the usual seconds, twisting them into threads so unusual they border on the bizarrely out-of-time. A happy trip that quickly turns to consternation, makes a brief stop at disbelief, then hightails it full throttle to a place most experienced readers fear to go...next stop, the Bookstore Zone...

I visit my local Barnes & Noble, all two floors of it with Starbucks nestled in one corner by the magazine racks. It has been a while. I like B&N's magazine racks; they are better stocked than Borders. I find Gorezone and Screem issues and nod with satisfaction. I poke and prod a little more among the magazines then take the up escalator in the middle of the floor. My mission is simple: page through any books I can find on The Prisoner television series and check out the Horror Section for any interesting titles to browse. 

I circle the second floor. There's Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy, but no shelves marked Horror. I am confused. It gets worse when I see a small book rack set aside for Television. I start thinking my browsing experience is not going to be a good one. I'm sure of it when I can't find any books on The Prisoner.

I give up trying to find the Horror Section by sight alone and search using the nearest computer. Within two minutes an employee comes rushing over to berate me for using it. She tells me it is not for customer use. I think about pointing out how it is on, there is no sign saying I cannot use it, and how I can easily use any of the computers at Borders to search for books, but I decide against mentioning it. Over her continued petulance with my audacity, I ask where the Horror Section is. She looks at me with consternation, thinks about it some more. "Horror?" she asks. "Yes," I tell her. "Authors like Lovecraft, King, Ramsey Campbell, you know, Horror." She looks behind her, though I am not sure why,  then says, "Those books are in Fiction or Science-Fiction."

Now it's my turn to show consternation. "But Lovecraft is not science-fiction or simply fiction, he's Horror." I am adamant on this point.

Scott Essman Remembers Uncle Forry

Scott Essman remembers the Man of a Thousand Famous Monsters...

 

If there were any movie monsters on the radar of young boys from the Baby Boomers to Generations X and Y, it was surely due to the influence of Forrest J. Ackerman, who died today at age 92. From 1958 through the early 1980s, Ackerman edited over 200 issues of the fanzine "Famous Monsters of Filmland," a monthly magazine that is more responsible for the proliferation of genre fans treasuring their knowledge of science fiction, horror, and fantasy facts and personalities than any other publication like it - and very few were or have been since.

"Forry" as his fans knew him (also Count Alucard - Dracula backwards) was more than a publisher, collector of memorabilia, and ultimate fan, of which he was probably the greatest at each endeavor as far as his chosen genre; he was the spiritual father of all things monsters and space adventure. He was the ultimate champion of the marginalized B pictures that burst onto the scene in the early silents and became a mainstay of youthful picture-going. He was a figurehead who represented the wealth of pure joy that fans feel for their favorite films and heroes - and often villains - from those tomes. He was all of those things, but even more than that, director and Ackerman friend John Landis once called him "generous to a fault" when asked to describe his mentor - who he often put in his films in cameo appearances. Ackerman was renowned to give free tours of his Hollywood Hills "Ackermansion" a house where he kept numerous props, books, and other items from his favorite projects of the past.

When Famous Monsters debuted in 1958, traditional science fiction and movie monsters had given way to atomic-age grand-scale epics and low-budget monster quickies.  But Ackerman, through his own personal interest, appealed to the 12-year-old boy that he eternally became by running photos and stories of bygone horrors such as the Universal Monster classics, and exalting the triumphs of their creators, such as Frankenstein director James Whale and monster makeup guru Jack Pierce, while giving due credit to the Boris Karloffs, Bela Lugosis, Lon Chaney and Chaney, Jrs. and their ilk. Also easy to forget is that in 1958, no publication existed as "seriously" dedicated to the study of movie "sci-fi" - a term that Ackerman coined - and the behind-the-scenes aspects of movie ghouls and gremlins. In fact, the explosion of genre movie magazines in the wake of Famous Monsters is undoubtedly due to Ackerman's genuine passion for the field, a dedication that he imparted to his legion of readers, many of whom number the top makeup artists and directors of the past thirty years.

As is often told in fan conventions and festivals, the generations of Boomers and Xers who first read Famous Monsters often had to sneak out to the newsstand to get the latest copy behind their parents' backs, then read it in their closets with flashlights on after bedtime. In the end, now that his original audience has had children and a new group of Gen Y and millennials have come around to discover old issues of FM via eBay, Ackerman's pursuits as editor of Famous Monsters and a noted Hollywood personality probably had an impact on more people than he could possibly know. As was carefully documented in Paul Davids' documentary "The Sci-Fi Boys," Ackerman, along with his close friends and peers, including author Ray Bradbury, and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, created a whole world of fans who went onto become creators themselves.

Evidently, from the films of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, to the stories of Stephen King, to the homages in the films of Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro, Ackerman spawned not only a vast fan base but an equally large and committed group of aspiring artists. And as any who knew him could attest to, he did so with graciousness and an abundance of love for not only the films themselves, but also the people involved - in both the making of the movies and the sheer numbers of fans who celebrated them. In the realm of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, that makes Ackerman a wholly unique individual whose kind will not likely ever be seen again.

People As Cogs In The Machine

Perusing the Wall Street Journal I came across this disturbing trend in the retail sales industry. There is something oddly similar here to the perfunctory roles victims in horror films play, where, more often than not, character-driven actions are replaced with expedient, redundant, superficial actions dictated by a script writer to fit his by the numbers use of hackneyed terror mise-en-scène. Leaving an audience with a sense of quantity importance, not quality importance, dissatisfaction.

In the article Retailers Reprogram Workers In Efficiency Push, by Vanessa O'Connell, she reports "Retailers have a new tool to turn up the heat on their salespeople: computer programs that dictate which employees should work when, and for how long."

Cue Midnight Syndicate's ominous music to play in the background as you continue reading.

Ann Taylor Stores Corp. installed a system last year. When saleswoman Nyla Houser types her code number into a cash register at the Ann Taylor store here at the Oxford Valley Mall, it displays her "performance metrics": average sales per hour, units sold, and dollars per transaction. The system schedules the most productive sellers to work the busiest hours.

Contrary to Number Six's (Patrick McGoohan) "I am not a number, I am a free man!" defiant outcry in The Prisoner, it appears the retail industry is hellbent on doing just that: quantifying a person's work life into a series of statistical numbers to bolster the bottom line. Only the Village by the sea, where Number Six is held captive, has become the mall, and the determined Number Two, always looking for ways to force Number Six into submission, is now your typical retail chain determined to squeeze every cent of productivity out of its employees. To be fair to retailers, with spiraling costs associated with acquiring and distributing merchandise to sell, and the shrinking average shopper's budget for spending, they are looking toward workforce-management systems to improve productivity and cut payroll costs. On the negative side of all this, the word quality is not a buzzword associated with this initiative; quality of life and a reasonably stress-free working environment are not great expectations here either.

Some employees aren't happy about the trend. They say the systems leave them with shorter shifts, make it difficult to schedule their lives, and unleash Darwinian forces on the sales floor that damage morale.

The buzzword here is Darwinian. The article goes on to cite instances of people stealing sales away from other employees at one retail store, and the establishment of standards specifying how long it should take to greet a shopper (3 seconds), how long to help someone trying on clothing (2 minutes), and how long to fold a sweater (32 seconds). Employees are also ranked by their sales quota, which could have negative consequences for weekly pay and hours worked. In a closing note, the system could be used to more efficiently schedule managers, too. Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, I suppose.

So much for the notion of a rewarding work experience. This sounds like an upcoming Joe Hill novel.

The Horror Movie Victim's Guide to Being a Good Victim

Let's applaud the hapless victims in horror films. They contribute so much to our enjoyment of their terror, their hysteria, and their blood. They are sliced, diced, minced, blintzed, mangled, strangled, eaten, beaten, slurped, blurped--feel free to insert your own action verbs here--and grilled and chilled in countless ways, just to make us jump in our seats, upchuck our popcorn, or tickle our fright-bone. They lighten our distressing job's tedium and those tomorrow's and tomorrow's and tomorrow's doldrums. Their witless, death-attracting antics creep forth in an endless and frenetic pace from film to film, keeping us happy--because we are not them.

The more paranoid you are, the safer you are, that's the public service message every horror movie leaves us with. Anyone who takes a dirt road detour, leaving the sureness of good solid tarmac beneath their wheels, well, what more can be said? If you follow directions from a toothless, unwashed, gas station attendant with expensive tourist swag in his unkempt excuse for living quarters, you're just begging for it: the drawn-out and quartered, bloody end of it. But if all horror movie victims acted smart and careful we would be bored stiff because nothing bad could come of it. So why do we keep writing books that show potential victims how to survive?

They're Tearing Down My Coney Island

I don't know why I'm crying, but I am. I don't know why there's a lump in my throat, but there is. Astroland is closing. They're shutting down Deno's Wonder Wheel Park. They're tearing down my Coney Island, the one seen in fading Polaroid and Kodachrome snapshots blurring into history, and watched on YouTube snapcasts pidgeonholed into two-minute slices for quick viewing. My tawdry, unattractive Coney Island will be replaced by the upscale, condo-dwelling, MP3-swilling crowd, which quantifies, properly socializes, and neatly categorizes everything into discrete gigabytes of wholesome 0s and 1s on their thumbdrives.

Press start. Hit play.

In our digitized and homogenized world is analog entertainment inconvenient? Entertainment which hasn't been iPodded, or frontal corporatomized, or discretely measured into binary drips repeatedly delivered through popular media and fat business: who still wants it? Entertainment with tattoos flaring, piercings gleaming, and inner voices speaking first, inner ears listening last: why not open a mall instead? The not so pretty entertainment best enjoyed in ill-fitting clothes and loose bodies summed into fractions instead of rounded numbers: what, no Starbucks? Coney Island's skewed amusements have sidestepped the ubiquitous, commercialized, lockstep entertainment formulas medicating us through every day until now. But its time has run out.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe I'm out of touch and all's right with the world. Or maybe, just maybe, the closing of this historic amusement park, this last bastion of hucksterism and questionable rides, of piss-smelling walkways, seedy denizens, and plastic trinkets--maybe this is the death knell for the gritty, indiscreet, and impertinent analog amusements unfit for our digital consumption. You know, the fun stuff not approved, not sanitized, not reamed out to hell by our wannabe clean-cut, moral-spewing but not doing culture?

When the real Coney Island closes forever, where will Deno's Wonder Wheel Park and it's over fifty Spook-A-Rama, "the world's longest spook ride" go? Okay, well, sort of; it was the longest ride if you counted in the interminable twisting and turning of the Pretzel rotating car as you traversed a narrow outside courtyard, between the darkness of the two buildings once used to contain the myriad terrors popping up at you.

In an almost forgotten summer, in a long ago year, the kid I was got the joke. Before I could inhale my first gasp of disgust at the yucky "spiderwebs" touching my head in the brief, utter blackness of building one (how long had those strings hung in the dank, musty air?), I was flung into the bright sunlit courtyard to make my lengthy--and very uneventful--journey toward building two where the real horrors waited. Most of the ten-minute ride was spent in that courtyard, whirring around the track, looking at fake plants with signs that read "poisonous." In-between the hissing sounds of compressed air escaping, unoiled machinery screeching, and quivering soundtracks, I swear I could hear William Castle chuckling in the dark of the second building when I finally got to it.

But I took this mindshot long ago, well before building one was torn down and the courtyard track dug up, replaced by more--better--money-making concessions; well before the lurid outside facade of fading, peeling-paint monstrosities was replaced with more innocuous figures of Laurel and Hardy, and Disneyized pirates, banishing the leering, bug-eyed gargoyles, spookshow skulls, and pitchfork-wielding devils to limbo. The salty air hastened decay and ever-increasing safety codes did the rest; little remains of the original grotesqueries quickly flashing by in the darkness; but still they scream for life beyond YouTube and Twitter.

Although many of the original displays have been replaced, either through deterioration or the need to upgrade to current safety codes, Spook-A-Rama has accumulated one of the most eclectic collections of stunts to be found in any dark ride. Some were built on the premises when the ride was new; some are from long-gone manufacturers such as Bill Tracy and Animated Display Creators; others are from newer current studios like Distortions Unlimited, Halloween Productions and Screamers; and many are of unknown origin. Still others were acquired from neighboring Coney Island rides that had closed, such as Tunnel Of Laffs and Dragon's Cave, as well as the aforementioned 'Hell 'N Back' Tracy-furnished ride at Rockaway.--Bill Luca, www.laffinthedark.com

Pause.

Astroland, the "space-age" theme park's lease on life has expired, too. I was there in 1962 when it opened. I won't be there when it closes after this one last season. Many dark rides have come and gone, but Dante's Inferno is still there. Sure, it's changed, but haven't we all? Its original theme, Dante's Divine Comedy, no longer applies, instead replaced by a hodgepodge of stunts (lingo for the creepy, often cheesy, tableaus) walled behind glass, safely distancing you from the scares, keeping the improper terrors properly out of reach. Nothing here lunges at you or threatens you. Like most digital entertainment: you just watch. Aside from a circular saw dismemberment, most of the terror comes from twirling around in the dark, strobe lights, and waiting for the next stunt. Unlike the denatured facade of Spook-A-Rama, Dante's Inferno still has skeletons and a pitchfork-wielding devil clutching a victim. Being portable, maybe the ride will find a new home elsewhere.

Slow-reverse. Play.

Take a deep breadth of air from the Coney Island boardwalk. Do you smell it? Deep-fried and crispy-brown it comes, heavy with salty, peppery heat, topped with sugary-sweet dripping ice cream cones, mingling with the odors of sun-bleached wood dried out by wind-blown sand and etched by the thousands of footsteps mashing thousands of potato knishes, squishing millions of hot dogs, kindling endless romantic dreams and littering Coney Island whitefish across many long-gone summers stretched end-to-end.

What will happen to the boardwalk when the condos come, and the shopping malls, and the theaters? Where will Sideshows by the Seashore be, the last place where you can experience unusual, analog performers with their imperfect bodies, undulating Ray Bradbury tattoo illustrations, gasoline-thirsty throats, bizarre feats no one else dares to do, and physical triumphs no one else has been cursed and gifted with, showing all off in a genuine, traditional ten-in-one circus sideshow? Where will Satina the snake charmer slither to, or Otis Jordan, the frog boy, roll and light a cigarette with his lips, or Zenobia, the bearded lady, give it a good tug, or Helen Melon, who is "so big and so fat that it takes four men to hug her and a boxcar to lug her!" be hugged? What place for them in our digital age of bodily perfection and propriety? YouTube? No. You can't take the hammer to pound that way-too-long nail into the Human Blockhead like I did on a stifling summer day. You can't touch Satina's way-too-big snake, either, or smell the alcohol swabs as the Human Pincushion sticks needles into his bare flesh.

Fast-forward. Stop.

One last breadth, one last ride. Coney Island's ghosts, Astroland, and Deno's Wonder Wheel Park will depart at the end of the 2008 season. Dreams, imagined futures, and forgotten pasts to follow. But, hey, just catch them all on YouTube. 

George Romero On Long Island

George Romero had come to Long Island, along with actress, Lynn Lowry, to grace a showing of his 1973 film, The Crazies. What more can any sane horrorhead ask for? To have the chance to meet one of the most influential directors in modern horror cinema is always a gold star in my book. And Lowry, who starred in The Crazies and Shivers, was charming. Oh, and Zombos tagged along, but managed to stay out of trouble. Perfect.

We arrived early. Zombos went for the popcorn and I went for the tickets. Since we had over a half hour to kill before the show, we headed into the café for coffee. The Huntington Cinema Arts Centre offers hot organic popcorn, to boot. It was a pleasant surprise to find Lowry already there, manning an autograph table. Romero had been delayed in traffic.

Zombos immediately darted over to her table and perused her photographs, anxious to get an autograph. The range of photos ran from demure to quite racy, and Zombos' hand instinctively paused over the raciest one. I whispered one simple word in his ear, and he chose more wisely, settling on a headshot that could be displayed proudly. That word, of course, was ‘Zimba.’ There are many miracles I can perform as valet, but reviving his corpse after Zimba got through with him if she saw the photo he almost picked up is not one of them.

We hurried into the theatre to get good seats for the show—the place was starting to get crowded—and Zombos ran smack into Creighton from Ghoul a Go Go. He was incognito of course, all six feet six inches of him. I picked Zombos up, brushed him off, and we found two excellent seats. Zombos mumbled something about Creighton being Tor Johnson’s illegitimate brother, but I kept him from causing a scene.

The theater quickly filled to capacity, and Lowry introduced the film. The Crazies is a quirky, at times unintentionally funny and rough film done with no-frills camera work and on a shoe-string budget: one shoe’s worth. But standouts include the white hazard-suited and gas-masked military personal popping up in the town, who are just as clueless as the townsfolk, the really bad hair makeup, and an interesting series of fast cuts between scenes and dialog during the conversation between the ineffective military personnel in the town, and the ineffective military brass outside. The acting is adequate, the art direction okay, and the slow spreading of the virus through the characters and the town still effective, especially in today’s political and social climate. It reminded me very much of the classic Star Trek episode, The Naked Time, where people lose their Ego filters and start to act—well—crazy, but in a way that reflects their repressed desires.

After the film, Romero and Lowry held a short QA session, though most of the questions were directed to him. The questions were lively, the answers priceless. Here's a paraphrased sample of Romero's answers:

There were a lot of scenes involving food in this film. Was this on purpose?

No. I’m told my stuff makes people un-hungry, actually.

I heard that this film had trouble with distribution. What was the problem?

Lee Hessel; he didn’t have clout. He was not a big enough distributor.

What was your favorite movie to make?

I don’t know. Hard to say. I think it has to be a film I made called Martin.

Your film [The Crazies] is more relevant today, with Katrina, 911…[not sure how the question ended, but Mr. Romero’s response is quite revealing.]

I was a child of the sixties; we thought we had changed the world. Not sure why everyone is still shooting at each other.

What was the movie that inspired you the most?

Tales of Hoffman; it's a beautiful film. Back then it was harder to see a film when you wanted to. There was a kid in Brooklyn who had a 16mm print I would go and watch. That kid was Martin Scorsese.

What made you come up with the film, the idea?

So hard to answer these questions. I don’t know. You come up with an idea in the shower.

What are you currently working on?

Stephen King’s From a Buick 8.

What would you do with the sequel to Land of the Dead?

Follow the people in the truck as they travel on their way.

Did Richard Matheson’s novel, I am Legend, influence your film Night of the Living Dead?

Yes. I ripped it off. It was made a couple of times…I felt that, basically, it was about revolution. And I wanted to do a film about that.

A very young fan got up and asked this question:

Were your horror movies supposed to be this funny? [a nice chuckle from the audience followed the question].

I grew up reading EC comics. To some extent, I can’t resist trying to be silly with it. Hell…Bride of Frankenstein is f**king hilarious.

And finally:

What things really frighten you?

What scares me is what people do to each other.

After the QA session, we queued up for his signing. Zombos and I waited for close to two hours on a long, spiraling line. (Now there’s a horror film treatment in there somewhere.)

As we inched ever so closer, Creighton joined the line and begged his sister, who was ahead of us, to give Romero a DVD of Ghoul A Go-Go’s episodes.

“My word,” said Zombos, “she’s as big as he is. It’s a family of giants.”

She refused, saying it would be embarrassing. Creighton turned to the Goth couple behind us. They graciously accepted to hand the DVD to Romero. We finally met the man shortly after midnight and got a signed poster of Dawn of the Dead.

It was worth the wait.

Interview: Raymond "Coffin Joe" Castile

There is a method to director/persona Jose Mojica Marins' madness. Ze do Caixao, or simply Coffin Joe to his American horrorhead fans, is a sardonic and sadistic Nietzschean-styled anti-hero, whose mundane heretical beliefs lead him to humiliate and torture countless victims — in wonderfully gruesome and fun ways — yet sanctimoniously cherish and laud over children at the same time.

There is something strangely entrancing in watching the machinations and sardonic deeds of Coffin Joe as he painstakingly struggles to find the perfect woman to bear his perfect son, while gleefully terrorizing and murdering everyone else in the process.

Coffin Joe, a village undertaker who dresses the part with dark top hat and billowing cape, is introduced in Marins' first film, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. The archetypal fortune-telling witch, as well as Coffin Joe himself, deliver monologues at the beginning of the film; the witch, to presage future events, and Coffin Joe to rant about his philosophy of heresy and superiority. The spook show styled sets, chalky opening credits, and grainy chiaroscuro blend together to create a moody and surprisingly effective low-budget film. The ease at which Coffin Joe slips into serial killing mode is startling, and he easily can be seen as the nascent model for later nihilistic anti-heroes of the killing-screen, including Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter, and Freddy Kruger.

In the second film, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, higher production values (well, somewhat higher), allow for more open set pieces, and a color interlude detailing a fun, Trash Cinema version of hell, complete with muscular pitch fork carrying devils, and well-endowed topless female victims. Lots of blood, too. There are Universal Studios horror -styled homages galore, including the requisite horribly-deformed and murderous hunchbacked assistant, and the mad scientist  laboratory complete with flashing lights, sounds and operating table.

In one memorable scene that will have you looking over your shoulder and itchy all over, lots of big, hairy spiders crawl over sleeping nubile women. Eventually, the torch-wielding village mob, fed up with Coffin Joe's deadly antics, finally hunt him down through a sticky swamp at the end of the film.

Raymond Castile knows Coffin Joe well —

And So It Begins!

Welcome to Zombos' Closet of Horror, a rather dark and cloying place, filled with untold treasures and just plain lousy stuff that Zombos keeps stuffing into it. I am Iloz Zoc (just IL to my friends), full-time and long suffering valet to Zombos. You remember Zombos, don’t you? A grade B actor in numerous grade C horror films, most of which are forgotten by his few remaining and decaying fans.

He is such an aging dilettante; always looking backward, while reluctantly moving forward into the new age of horror on screen and in print. He pines for the old, less gory days, but secretly enjoys those zombies and slashers, and the occasional science fiction or fantasy tidbit. And I, his patient and understanding servant, am charged with finding more and more room in his immense closet to accommodate his passions of the moment.

And then there is Zimba, Zombos' dark mistress of the sonnets. She hates horror with a passion, and his acquisitions even more. So many nights have I waited until she falls into her undead sleep, to slip into the dark hallways of the mansion on tiptoe, precariously balancing those acquisitions oh so quietly past her door, trying desperately not to wake the unholy beast within. It was bad enough that Zombos had to give up the hearse for a mini-van after they were married, but give up his treasures, never!