Servicing your characters

What I’m watching: Servicing your characters

I write a lot, considering dozens of articles I’ve written this year, as well as short stories and books. Somewhere along the line I’ve fallen into the habit of trying to write only when I’ll get paid.

So this blog, which dates to the early 2010s, when i was getting a regular paycheck for writing, has been neglected in recent years.

But with the former twitter disappearing up its own asshole and no other social media really coming on strong, I’m trying to make myself maintain an online presence somewhere besides social media.

So I’m here again, like some kind of drunken traveling salesman, returning home to the family he’s neglected over the years and promising to try to be better about just being here.

One easy way to do this is to write about what I’ve been reading or watching lately. So a quick checklist:

Yes, I’m watching “Yellowstone.” Again. I’m introducing my wife to it but I’m enjoying watching it again, despite how preposterous it gets as the series goes on, with the Dutton family killing man and beast with seeming impunity.

What I’ve always liked best about “Yellowstone,” though, is its servicing of its characters. The show juggles a lot of characters as the series goes on and a lot of writers who are inclined to turn up their noses at the show and its writer/creator would do well to take a few lessons.

If you’re writing a big, complicated story involving a lot of characters, you need to remember to make those characters consistent – not like shows dating back to “Melrose Place,” which would have characters completely change up their character to hook up with someone who had literally just tried to kill them – so that viewers and readers almost – almost – consider they’re watching and reading about real people they might know. Yes, in the case of “Yellowstone,” they’re awful real people but they seem true-to-themselves.

What I’m also watching:

I’m trying to watch some horror/thriller/suspense films during the month leading up to Halloween. Slow going so far, but I’ve enjoyed “Them,” the 1954 thriller about giant ants, and “Dressed to Kill,” the unhinged 1980 sexual thriller. The latter is a lot to take, 43 years after it came out.

I’m also watching “The Crown” for the first time and so far I’ve enjoyed the Clair Foy seasons best. And I’m rewatching “For All Mankind,” which does almost as good a job of world building as “Yellowstone.” The latter does best with its building out of its world by introducing more stories about Yellowstone ranch hands.

Halloween on the TV

  
When I was a kid, I loved everything about Halloween, including the way it changed TV.

For days leading up to Halloween and definitely on the day itself, TV channels and networks would run Halloween-themed specials. Not just Charlie Brown but old movies on the local channels.

When cable exploded in the 1980s, the selection was even greater. I loved the movies and specials that aired on AMC and TCM.

Tonight I’m confronted with more movies than I’ll have time to watch, from “The Lost Boys” on VH1 to “Dead of Night” on TCM to the “Blacula” movies – both of em – on Bounce, the local “urban” station. 

It’s a seasonal embarrassment of riches. 

Today in Halloween: Skulls under glass

Have you noticed how much skull stuff there is out there this year?

These guys remind me of the invaders from “Mars Attacks.”

Today in Halloween: Hello there!

Regular readers of the blog know I love Halloween and like to share items old and new.

Above, first time I’ve seen this piece of decor.

My thought: Sure, everybody likes it when it’s for Halloween!

Today in Halloween: Have fun, trick-or-treaters

For three Octobers now, I’ve used this space to recall my lifelong love of and wonder regarding my favorite holiday.

I’ll leave the last post for this year to this happy looking group of trick-or-treaters.

Be safe, have fun.

Today in Halloween: Want to see something really scary?

This isn’t news, of course. Everybody knows the seasons overlap in the land of retail.

But it still strikes me as startling to see.

 

Today in Halloween: Calvin goes trick-or-treating

Apparently only a couple of Bill Watterson’s “Calvin and Hobbes” newspaper strips make reference to Halloween, although it would seem like a natural holiday for a kid like Calvin.

Earlier this month, I posted the first Halloween-themed Calvin here.

Here, as we begin the long slow wind-down of our month of Halloween, is the other.

Today in Halloween: Collegeville costumes and the Tylenol scare

How did a horrific health threat change Halloween as we know it?

We’ve noted before that Halloween has shifted from a holiday for kids when I was young to one for adults. It’s a billion-dollar industry now, with teens and 20-somethings – and older people too – vying to see who can wear the grisliest or sexiest costume.

Above is a detail from a 1981 costume catalog from Collegeville, a Pennsylvania company that started out in the early 1900s as a manufacturer of flags but ended up being second only to Ben Cooper as the store-bought costume supplier to generations of kids.

But a 1989 article in The New York Times profiling Collegeville put a twist on Halloween trends that I’ve near heard before.

That’s the year that someone tampered with Tylenol capsules, secreting cyanide in the over-the-counter medicine and causing the deaths of seven people.

The Times – this is in 1989, remember – theorizes that the resulting scare might have prompted parents to keep kids home from trick-or-treating, years after the first rumors of razor blades in Halloween apples couldn’t kill the holiday.

But The Times maintains it also sparked interest in at-home Halloween parties, which prompted interest in more elaborate costumes for kids, which led to more costumes for adults, who had to be on hand for the party.

Here’s how The Times reported it, back in 1989:

When people in the Halloween business explain why, they quickly get around to a key date – the fall of 1982. That was when the chilling news broke that seven people had died from Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide. The infamous Tylenol scare almost completely destroyed Halloween. Some towns outlawed trick-or-treating that year, and parents everywhere kept their kids from venturing into the streets.

As a result, costume makers were devastated. But then some bizarre events began to unfold.

Children wanted to do something on Halloween. So if they couldn’t go asking strangers for bags of sweets, then they were going to party. Partying became much more popular. At the same time, parents got fussier about what their children wore. ”When they went door to door, the kids could wear a costume that you just get by with,” Mr. Cornish said. ”But when you went to a party with all your friends, you had to start dressing up a little more.”

As parents watched their children go to parties, they got envious. They wanted to dress up as the grim reaper or Yosemite Sam, too. So the morbid events of that year turned out, in the long run, to have been just about the best thing to happen to costume makers since Halloween was invented. As Bob Cooper, the president of Ben Cooper Inc., a Brooklyn-based costume maker, put it, ”There’s been a change in the way that the holiday is celebrated.”

I’m going to extrapolate here and suggest that since 1982, people have mostly gotten over their fear of tampered treats, so that’s no longer affecting Halloween.

But an entire generation of people born after the Tylenol tampering case are very accustomed to teen and adult Halloween parties now. They’ve been high school students, college students, members of the workforce and now, more than 30 years later, they’re parents.

And elaborate costumes for kids and adults, along with parties and trick-or-treating, are the norm for them.

So perhaps something fun and good came from something horrible.

(Image from plaidstallions.com)

Today in Halloween: Haunted house shock shot

There’s something about going through a haunted house. Like a good horror movie, it’s scary and fun and gives us a release.

It’s also pretty darn funny when you see pics of other people inside the place.

The past couple of years, photos of people looking incredibly scared from the Nightmares Fear Factory haunted house in Niagara Falls have been all over the Internet. I posted about them last year.

I’ve wondered what the people in the photos are looking at, though. I did a Google search and found what I think is the answer.

Spoiler alert if you’re planning on visiting, okay?

Apparently the thing frightening people in all the photos is … an illusion that makes it appear they’re going to be hit by a car.

Not a monster, zombie, even zombie baby (since many seem to be looking down). But realistic-looking car headlights.

So now you know.

I don’t think that diminishes the enjoyment we all feel in looking at these people being scared out of their minds, though, does it?

Here’s the attraction’s website.

Today in Halloween: Comics as treats

This never happened to me, although it would have been fine if it had.

In 1987 – which post-dated my trick-or-treating prime by a couple of decades, or at least a decade and a half – Marvel pitched bagged mini-comics as “the safe Halloween treat.”

This wasn’t at a particular  high point for stories about apples with razor blades or poisoned candy, but here’s an in-store sales pitch for the practice.

Did you ever get bagged comic books – or “mini comics,” whatever those were – when you were trick-or-treating?