The Addams Family

It's funny how brains work. An example? 

Last night, I was talking to the Sidekick about the items we brought to the Treasure Shack. There's an online login where you can track the things you're trying to sell through them. For some inexplicable reason, this made me think of The Addams Family, the first movie to be exact. I remembered the scene where Morticia is looking for items to donate to the auction for orphans and seniors. So, I tell the Sidekick about it, laughing because I have always found it incredibly funny, and he's listening, but thinking I'm a little crazy. 

Tonight, we've put the film on, and it is brilliant. 

That might seem like a bold statement, but I stand by it. There are too many laughs to count and the brilliancy is in the details and dialogue, like when Morticia is at the employment office and the subject of Gomez comes up. 

The personnel officer says, "What is he - a loafer? A hopeless layabout? A shiftless dreamer?" 

Morticia replies wistfully, "Not anymore." 

It's solid gold. All of it. The whole movie. We could all take a lesson from the Addams family. They love each other unconditionally, not despite their oddities, but because of them. They don't expect each other to change. And they embrace their weird. They let their freak flags fly ... high! Don't we all have a little macabre in us?  

Also, this movie takes me back to when I was a little kid. I used to rent it all the time. It's one of those films that have withstood the test of time. 

What are some films from your youth that you still love to watch? 

Ogdred Weary

Today is Edward Gorey's birthday! For anyone who doesn't know of this uniquely amazing man, he was a master illustrator, creative genius, and one of the rarest gems ever to exist on this rocky plain. Not only can we celebrate his macabre books, which there are over a hundred of, but his unusual way of looking at life. This man was the true definition of strange and brilliant. And I am grateful he existed, for the world would have been a far less interesting place without him. Before Tim Burton, there was Mr. Gorey and his ominous tales told through a tip of a pen.

Even though Gorey's literary catalogue is deep and plentiful many of his works are hard to find, all because of his love for word play, especially anagrams. A lot of his books were published under pseudonyms of his own name, most notably Ogdred Weary. Another name he used was Eduard Blutig which actually isn't an anagram, but still a word game. Blutig is German for bloody or Gory. A few of the other names he wrote under were Mrs. Regera Dowdy, Raddory Gewe, and E.G. Deadworry.

Here are some more ponderable facts about Edward Gorey:

• His parents divorced when he was 11 and remarried when he was 27.
• He attended Harvard and roomed with poet Frank O'Hara 
• A lot of John Bellairs cover  art was illustrated by Gory.
• A few of Gorey's works were in fact wordless and his illustrations always had a Victorian and Edwardian style to them, not to mention an air of ominousness. 
• An unabashed 'pop culture junkie' Gorey loved television, movies, and soap operas. He stated in interviews his love for Batman and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. 
• Gorey was never married and confessed to have little interest in romance. 
• When asked about his sexual orientation, he said, "I've never said that I was gay and I've never said that I wasn't ... what I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else."
• His home in Cape Cod is called Elephant House and is now the Edward Gorey House Museum.
• This quirky gentleman left the bulk of his estate to a charitable trust for animals, dogs, cats and even bats and insects. 

A Gothic icon, Gorey stretched the bounds and falls into a very grey area. Though his artwork is often categorized for children, he did not write or draw for our youth, nor did he have much of a fondness for them. In truth, Gorey's works cannot be put into any one genre. Sure, you can find his books in the humour or cartoon section at your nearest bookstore, but he experimented all the time and often his artwork falls into a surrealist niche. Not to mentions his experiments - books that are wordless or ones the size of a matchbox, popup books or ones filled with inanimate objects - these only make it all that much harder to classify this man. 

Gorey himself described his work as literary nonsense. Which kind of only endears me to him more. Though he once said, "Ideally, if anything were any good, it would be indescribable." And that truly is what this man was. Good and indescribable.

Happy Birthday, Edward Gorey, you beautifully odd man. May your dark humour live on forever. 

U Is For Unnerving (Or Uncomfortable)

Why do people love Halloween so much? 

Is it the costumes and candy? The special editions of their favourite television shows? The Horror movies? Or decorations? 

Much like Christmas, Halloween has a huge following - some might even say it is cultish - but it isn't the warm, let's all hold hands and show each other we love one another feelings. It's being unnerved. Uncomfortable. Creeped out. Terrified. Frightened. 

In this month, North Americans will spend millions of dollars on spooky costumes, haunted attractions, scary movies and anything that will give them a thrill and chill. It is ingrained in us to believe we should avoid our fears. Close our eyes at the frightening parts. Run away from the bad. Except these days people disregard the most common learned behaviour and chose to embrace their fears instead of run away from them. And that is because we love being scared. And that's exactly what October is selling. 

Human beings are funny creatures. We need to explore what we do not know, and we go out of our way to try and master situations that are threatening or dangerous. This comes down to control. As we approach losing control, we get a bigger thrill, more satisfaction. Of course, we would be insane to try to do this in real life. If someone is chasing us with a knife, we are going to run...unless we have a death wish. So, while we love the thought of facing danger and staring down evilness, we also want to have safety. 

Here enters artificially created horror that won't actually harm us. It certainly isn't the same. No, not at all. But it still produces the adrenaline spike we crave. The prickling of skin. Uncontrollable giggles. Shiver up our spine. Manic laughter. Cringing in our seats. We love these feelings because ultimately they make us feel alive. Whenever there is a race in our heart and a rush in our blood, we are reminded that we are here, participating. 

And we love that reminder. 

More so than being alive, horror and Halloween allow us to explore the unknown (another 'U' word). We revel in the darker side of life. That which we do not understand, and which might not even exist, excites us. There's a reason vampires are so popular and ghost stories are shared around camp fires. The supernatural enthrals us. What is even more interesting is that this curiosity for the mystical, mysterious and macabre only grows as we get older. Though some children are fascinated by witches and ghosts, their fixation with it pales in comparison to adults. 

Often, children are less afraid than the grown-ups surrounding them. This can be attributed to the fact that kids don't  understand the reality of life and live in a fantasy land where everything is going to be okay. Adults, on the other hand, know all too well how harmful the world can be. It's this fear of being hurt that makes us react the way we do to horror films, roller-coasters and anything else that has elements of danger. 

On the surface, Halloween appears to be a holiday for children, but this isn't true. If you dig a little deeper, you will see that this month long event is geared towards adults.