DEAD SEA MONKEYS STORY UPDATE

In my last post I confessed the shame and guilt I felt for having accidentally murdered unborn sea monkeys in my youth. But as it turns out I'm not so alone in my residual self-loathing after all. After reading the post, a good friend came forward to share the pain she feels over the demise of her own sea monkeys. Seems that my friend, whom I will call "Lissa" (since that's her name), purchased sea monkeys many years ago as a Christmas gift for her daughter, who was four at the time. It was all very innocent and well-meaning, Lissa told me, and her daughter was enchanted with her new little pets. In a perfect world, the story would have ended there: happy child, frolicking sea monkeys, a shimmering new batch of lifetime memories for all. But as we all know, the world is far from perfect. I'll let Lissa explain just how far from perfect it is.

"My daughter went to her father's for the weekend," she recalled, "and she was very worried about the sea monkeys being all right while she was gone. And so the next morning, when I came downstairs and saw the flourescent cover of their bowl lying on the floor, I knew it was going to be bad."

You see, unfortunately for the sea monkeys, and for the little girl who loved them, Lissa's household also included one of the many Weimeraners that she has owned over the years. And while most Weimeraners are high-spirited, curious dogs, the one living in Lissa's house at the time was apparently very thirsty as well. So thirsty that it had taken a long draught out of the sea monkey bowl in order to wet its whistle, and, naturally, the defenseless little brine shrimp inside the bowl were sucked down its parched doggie throat as well.

And so what did Lissa do? Well, what any guilt-ridden, but resourceful mother would do. She re-filled the sea monkey bowl with water and sprinkled pepper in it, hoping that her daughter would mistake the pepper flakes for frolicking brine shrimp. And apparently she did...until Lissa's son happened to notice that the brine shrimp were conspicuously non-frolicking.

"He looked at me and said, 'Mom, I think these sea monkeys are dead,'" Lissa told me, her expression reflecting the discomfort the memory still managed to evoke.

Despite Lissa's feelings of residual guilt, the years since the tragic demise of her daughter's sea monkeys have washed away most of the pain for all involved. Lissa has a new Weimaraner who eats plastic instead of drinking sea monkeys, her daughter is a young woman now with much more on her mind than the welfare of brine shrimp in a water-filled bowl, and the sea monkeys...well...with any luck, they're having the time of their little after-lives in an aquatic section of heaven. But it just goes to show you, no matter how bad you feel, whether it's because of your role in the death of innocent sea monkeys or something else...you're never really alone. Someone, somewhere, is even more stupid than you.

Skol!

ALL GOOD SEA MONKEYS GO TO HEAVEN (EVEN IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY KILL THEM)

I seem to be on a paranormal jag these days, and so, since I am, I thought that I would share a post I stumbled across on Stephen Wagner's about.com paranormal phenomena website the other day. A reader called Clavi wrote in following the tragic and untimely demise of her sea monkeys:

"Last September (2012), living in London, my housemate bought me sea monkeys for my 21st birthday," reports Clavi. "I hadn't had them since a child, so loved it! A few weeks later, our house held a party, and a friend was so drunk he poured vodka into the sea monkey's container. Safe to say, I became very angry and upset and threw him out of the house. I guess it was the nostalgia from my childhood that made them mean so much to me. "About a week later, after spending the evening watching TV with my housemate, I went up to bed around 1 a.m. I turned my bedside light off and was attempting to go to sleep when I saw about ten tiny lights above my head -- my sea monkeys! They looked like tiny little luminescent flies, but after about two seconds, they were gone. I didn't have them long as pets, but they meant a lot to me, and I'm glad they could pass over to the other side in peace."

Okay, well, it's hard to know what to think, isn't it? I mean, on one hand, if all living creatures (great and small) possess spirits (if not necessarily souls), then it stands to reason that sea monkeys must possess them as well, doesn't it? Then, again, I've had dogs and cats that I've loved dearly, who, after they died, never so much as paid me an obligatory supernatural wet kiss, so how come Clavi rates a luminescent fond farewell from a bunch of speck-sized brine shrimp that she herself admits she had only "known" for a short time before they went belly-up?

Maybe it all comes down to the energy of the person involved. Apparently, Clavi has the right kind of energy for attracting sea monkey spirits, whereas I, a person who has spent years and years reading and writing about the paranormal, as well as attending spiritualist gatherings and more than my share of seances, is totally wanting when it comes to attracting the spirits of furry, warm-blooded mammals that I more or less considered members of my family. Do I sound bitter? Well, I am. But there's a little more to it than just feeling jealous of Clavi's nocturnal visitation from the spirits of brine shrimp. You see, I was once the owner of some sea monkeys as well. It was in the late 60's, when I was around ten, and I ordered them from the back of an Archie comic book. When, after weeks and weeks of waiting with bated breath (pun intended), the things finally arrived in our mailbox, I was excited beyond words. I wasn't stupid enough to believe that real sea monkeys actually wore miniature crowns like the cartoon ones in the ad, but I was absolutely convinced that I would be afforded "hours of fun" watching them cavort around in their bowl and do whatever the hell else sea monkeys do to show off their zany nature. But they never got the chance to show me so much as a cartwheel. Why? Well...because I accidentally killed them.

That's right. I'm confessing it right here in this post. At the age of ten, caught up in the kind of feverish excitement that only comes from being the new owner of a package of brine shrimp eggs (yes..they mailed them out in egg-form...big mistake), I invited all of my friends over to see my new pets, which, naturally, led to all kinds of touching and holding of the water-filled container in which I had placed the eggs...which, in turn (and inevitably) led to one of my friends pretending to spit into the container, at which point, I grabbed it away from him and dropped it on the garage floor. And that was it for the unborn sea monkeys. And for me...as far as sea monkeys were concerned, anyway.

So, now, what have we learned from this post? Well, I can't answer for you, but as for myself, I like to think that I'm at last ready to let go of my sea monkey guilt and move on...just like Clavi's luminescent sea monkey spirits. And as for any residual bitterness just because none of my pets have ever come back to see me...well, I think I can get over that now, too. After all, maybe the reason I haven't ever heard from them is that they're just having too good a time on the other side to bother with this one. At least, I hope that's true.

Skol!

CREEPY MANNEQUIN WEDNESDAY PHOTO

Yes, I know it's still Tuesday, but Wednesday being "Creepy Mannequin Photo Day", I just thought I would post this a bit early as tomorrow looks to be pretty busy for me. And God knows I am a woman who hates to let my public down. So enjoy...or be terrified....whichever emotion wells up inside of you in response to the photo below. And have a good Wednesday. Til next time...skol!

CONFESSIONS OF A PARANORMAL JUNKIE

In my last post, I wrote about my guilty pleasure passion for Asian horror flicks. But my love of the supernatural doesn't just stop there. I'm pretty much a junkie when it comes to paranormal subjects, including some which are rarely discussed in more mainstream circles. And for my first post of February 2013, I thought it might be fun to share some of them with you. Uh...fun for me anyway. For you...well, it's always a gamble. But here's hoping. Ready? Let's roll...

BLACK-EYED PEOPLE

They come to your door or window at odd hours of the night, sometimes even in the daylight, knocking and asking to be let in. They can be men, women, or children, and, according to most accounts, seem to be otherwise perfectly normal except for their strange black eyes and the disconcerting sense of dread that seems to accompany their appearance. Are they vampires? Demons? A predatory sub-race from another, unknown dimension? No one seems to know, but the internet is rife with websites containing "true stories" of encounters with them. And I, personally, can't get enough of these stories. Of course, being a former newspaper reporter with a modicum (at least) of skepticism in my bones, I don't take every single story at face value. But you can ferret out the fabrications fairly easily. They're the ones that contain every single detail associated with the main theme. The stories I tend to believe are the ones that don't read like a sophomore English attempt at a horror tale, and in which the writer seems genuinely confounded at having been singled out as the target for the encounter, and ends with a plaintive query for readers to offer some sort of opinion on where these unsettling black-eyed beings could come from. Interestingly, a good number of these encounters seem to occur in Wal-Marts, where the writer is nonchalantly going about his or her business when, suddenly, they look up to find that they are being watched by an otherwise normal-looking person with black eyes....setting off the infamous "sense of dread." Reading into the subject of black-eyed people, I was surprised to find that there are accounts that go all the way back to the 19th century, although, in those days, the people giving the accounts were more likely to associate the beings with the devil. Devils, demons, or denizens of another dimension, "the black-eyed people" are defintely one of my favorite paranormal subjects. To read more about black-eyed people, you can go here.

RAKES

The most interesting thing about "the rake"...a slender, humanoid creature whose MO includes sneaking into bedrooms (mostly in surburban areas) late at night where it crouches beside the bed and behaves in a threatening manner...is not so much the alleged creature itself, but the fact that, following a sudden flurry of online interest in 2008, most written accounts of encounters with it seem to have disappeared. Its brief moment in the spotlight was centered mainly in upstate New York, but there were those who claimed to be able to trace its history all the way back to the 12th century. Real or not, the rake is fascinating mainly because of the apparent "black-out" surrounding the subject. To find out more information about rakes, you can go here.

EVP

I love listening to evp (electronic voice phenomena) almost as much as I do David Bowie or The Beatles....and that's saying something, trust me. Supposed spirit voices captured on recordings when no other evidence of a paranormal presence is in the vicinity, evp fascinate me not so much because they are the alleged voices of spirits, but because of what the alleged spirits say in them. In one of my favorites, which was recorded in a cemetery, a female voice with a faint Irish lilt can be heard saying, "I'd love to find my stone." In another, recorded at a Civil War site down south, the person making the recording starts off with a somewhat jocular request for any ghosts who might be present to "stand in front of the camera so we can take your picture." While there was no response in real time, when the recording of the moment was played back, a male voice can clearly be heard to reply, "Why? 'Cause there's bullets in it?" If you want to hear some equally interesting ep for yourself, you can find some good ones here.

PHONE CALLS FROM THE DEAD

Sometimes referred to as "phantom phone calls", accounts of alleged telephone communication from the Great Beyond are more prevalent than you might think. I first read about the phenoneon in an engaging, well-researched book called (appropriately enough) "Phone Calls From The Dead" written in 1979 by Raymond Bayless and the late D. Scott Rogo. Since then, I'm always on the look-out for new accounts of people who pick up the phone to hear the voices of deceased friends and loved ones on the other end. Sometimes the "spirit" on the other end is merely calling to check in or to say good-bye, but in my favorite accounts, the calls are rather lengthy and involve what seems to be at the time a completely normal conversation. It's only when the conversation ends and the "spirit" hangs up that the recipient of the call realizes that such a conversation couldn't have taken place because "Aunt Joanne" or whoever has been dead for nine years. It's this strange "amnesia" that sometimes takes place during the course of the phone call that I find most intriguing of all. Does the spirit cause it on purpose? Or does the caller's own brain, unable to fathom the possibility that the dead person could actually be on the other end of the line, simply shut down for the duration of the call? I doubt we'll ever know. But to read more about phones calls from the dead, you can find more information here.

Well, that's it for now. Hope I didn't scare you. If I did, just turn on a light, have a shot of whiskey, and you'll be fine. Until next time...skol!

CREEPY MANNEQUIN WEDNESDAY PHOTO

It's Wednesday...and you know what the means, don't you? Besides it being Prince Spaghetti Day, that is. Or Hump Day. Still not sure? Okay, I'll clue you in. Wednesdays have just become this blog's official "Creepy Mannequin Photo Day." Of course, as far as I'm concerned, all mannequins are pretty damned creepy. But that's the reason I'm doing this. I'm facing my fears. Working my way from mannequins to snakes, although, just between you and me, I'd have to be extremely hard up for ideas to actually hunt down a photograph of a snake and post it here. So, for now, let's just stick with mannequins. Here it is. Good luck with the ensuing nightmares.

Skol!

NOODLES OF DOOM

My obsession with Asian horror flicks began about six years ago when my younger son started dating a girl who was (exactly, according to her) half Greek, a quarter Black, and a quarter Japanese. More precisely, her father was Greek, and her mother was half-Black and half-Japanese, the latter having actually been raised in Japan by her adoptive parents before relocating to the States as an adult where she met her Greek husband, who had relocated to the States from the island of Cyprus as a child. Confused? I hope not. And it's not all that important anyway. The real point is, during my son's year-long relationship with said girl, the three of us watched dozens of Asian horror flicks together, sometimes two or three a weekend, immersed in what I now like to call my "Noodles of Doom" phase. It wasn't just movies, either. The three of us also spent a great deal of time learning to cook Japanese food, visiting Japanese restaurants, and watching "Magibon" videos on YouTube (if you don't know who Magibon is, you can find out here, not that you'll necessarily be any better for it). My son and his girlfriend even invested in Japanese language flashcards and made an impressive foray into learning how to speak rudimentary Japanese, which, along with the Danish speakers who were also living in our house at the time, made for quite the little in-house Tower of Babel. But that's another post. This one is all about the horror flicks.

Now, I don't know how you feel about horror flicks, but chances are, you've seen your share of them. They were making them even before the advent of the "talkies", mostly with vampires and various incarnations of Frankenstein's monster as the central horror-inducing character. Obviously, the horror genre has come a long way since the days of pasty-faced ghouls stumbling around in shadowy mansions with their arms outstretched in classic "monster pose." And as a rule, I've never really been a fan. I prefer to be frightened in a more subtle way, with the spookiness implied (as in Hitchcock's "Rebecca" or the original "The Haunting of Hill House) as opposed to it being thrown in a big gory heap into my face ("The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "Saw"). But I do like scary movies, so when my son and his girlfriend first started ordering Asian horror movies on Netflix and taking over the "good" TV set every weekend in order to watch them, I was game for a viewing or two. I can't even remember the name of the first one I watched (although I'm pretty sure it was Japanese), but I know it included what I have since come to consider the four staples of a good Asian horror flick: young girls in school uniforms, a female spirit with long black hair, bizarre images on cell phone accompanied by eerie messages, and an excessive degree of cheesiness.

Yes, that's right---cheesiness. The more cheesiness the better. For some reason, the same cheesiness factor that I would never accept if I saw it in an American or European horror movie only serves to make Asian horror flicks even more appealing. It's sort of like pink flamingo lawm ornaments. Everyone knows they're kitsch (or at least they should). But if you put them on your lawn, knowing that, and to celebrate the fact, drape them in a string of white lights or put party hats on them, they transcend the kitchiness and become...well...art. Same thing with cheesy Asian horror flicks. Still not making myself clear? Okay, well, let's start with the first of the four staples: the young girls in school uniforms. While the Japanese horror flicks do it best, some version of the aforementioned characters seems to be present in nearly all Asian films of the genre. I suppose there's just something inately innocent about a schoolgirl in uniform that, when coupled with the threat of a paranormal entity out for revenge or whatever happens to be driving it in a particular movie, just makes the situation all the more compelling...even if it has become cliche. And, in this, I have to give the Japanese horror flick makers extra kudos simply because Japanese school girls have the best uniforms. I mean, come on, you don't have to have some weird fetish to appreciate those little pleated mini-skirts, white blouses with Peter Pan collars and girly neckties, and white knee-socks and loafers. All of which only make the dichotemy between the horrified school girls and their paranormal nemisis (es) even more jarring.

Which brings us to the second of the four staples: the female spirit with long black hair. I cannot emphasize enough the role that long black hair plays in Asian horror flicks. At one point during my "Noodles of Doom" period, my son, his girlfriend, and I estimated that of all the films we had sat through up until then, at least 80 percent of them had utilized long black hair as a major part of the horrifying process. Where do you think the little girl in "The Ring" got her hairstyle? From the Japanese horror flick on which the American version of "The Ring" was based, of course. But, once again, the Asian flicks do it best. It usually starts when we catch our first glimpse of the scary spirit lady who has been haunting the school/apartment building/train station or whatever, and experience that initial delicious frisson at the sight of the endless black mane hanging down over her shoulders as she moves slowly toward the....yes, you guessed it...horrified school girls in uniform. But it doesn't necessarily stop there. Sometimes, as the film progresses, the hair takes on a malicious life of its own, elongating even more until it takes on the form of black tenticles reaching out to grab the stunned victim, or, even more chillingly, snaking up out of the drain in the bathroom sink and wrapping itself around the victim's wrist, resulting in a terrifying game of supernatural tug-of-war that could go either way. That's another interesting thing about the genre. You never really know who's going to die in an Asian horror flick. The girl who, at the beginning of the film, seems to be the main protagonist doesn't always make it to the end. And even if she does, there's a good chance that she's still going to meet a gruesome demise at the hands of her supposed best friend who has somehow become possessed by the revengeful spirit, except, of course, we don't realize that until the very last frame at which point the best friend suddenly pulls out a knife just as the other girl starts to embrace her in an "Oh, Koko, we survived!" kind of way. I've seen it happen countless times, and it never fails to jump me, even though I know it's probably going to happen. But that's the beauty of it.

But on to the third and fourth staples: the cell phones and the excessive cheesiness. Cell phones get a lot of face time in Asian horror flicks, not just because, as in other countries, people are always using them, but because, for some reason, the paranormal entities who inhabit Asian horror flicks seem to prefer communicating that way. Whether it's an inexplicable text from a dead friend, or the terrifying image of a still-living person meeting their end in some horrifying way (which invaribly happens for real within minutes of the image's appearance on the phone), cell phones are an integral part of the genre. If I had a dime for every time I've watched a school girl in uniform gaping disbelievingly at the screen of her pink cell phone as she witnesses the imminent death of the person standing next to her, I could buy a hell of a lot of udon noodles. (And I would, too...I love them.) But this of course brings us back full circle to the excessive cheesiness that provides the backdrop for the possessed cells phones, the horrified girls in school uniforms, and the scary ladies with long black hair. And in a genre in which cheesiness has been elevated to an art form, I have to say, that, hands down, the absolute best example I can give you of an Asian horror flick in which it all comes together is a little gem called "Attack Girls' Swim Team Vs The Undead."

Released in 2008, directed by Koji Kawano (I don't know who Koji Kawano is, but he or she is clearly a genuis) and starring Sasa Handa as the doomed heroine, "Aki", "Attack" has everything I've already mentioned as well as a hell of a lot more. In a word, it's pretty much the Holy Grail of Asian horror flicks. I'd give you a complete rundown of the plot, but I'm not sure it would make any more sense to you than it did to me when I first watched it the night before my son and I were leaving on a trip to London four years ago. Suffice to say, it involves a school girl in uniform who is actually an assassin on the run from the people who kidnapped her and turned her into an assassin, and along with the usual plethora of scary images and cell phone use, there are "undead" teachers and students, nudity, and even a pool-side lesbian lovemaking scene. Oh...and in the end, everyone dies, of course. But the very best thing about the film is that, toward the end, as Aki is in the midst of a life and death battle with her former "mentor", she lies down on the ground, spreads her legs, and kills him with a lazer that comes out of a specially-equpped tampon she has been wearing for just that purpose. I'd like to see someone do that in an American horror film. But I won't. Neither will you. It's the kind of thing that only happens in a Japanese horror flick with an unwieldy name like "Attack Girls Swim Team Vs The Undead."

Well, there you have it. My little treatise on one of my guilty (perhaps guiltiest) pleasures. Not that calling it a "guilty pleasure" means that I'm embarrassed or ashamed of my passion for the genre. If anything, I look forward to seeing more Asian horror flicks, although it will never be quite as much fun as it was back in the crazy, hazy days of my "Noodles of Doom" phase. And once you've seen a school girl called Aki shoot a lazer out of her tampon, well, let's face it...you've pretty much reached the pinnacle of viewing pleasure.

Skol!

YOU'RE UNDER ARREST, CHARLIE BROWN

Noooooooo! Can it really be true? Peter Robbins, the former child actor who provided the husky, world-weary voice of Charlie Brown in classic 1960's Peanuts TV specials such as "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", was arrested last Sunday on charges of....gasp!....stalking and threatening! Yes, I know. But pick your jaw up off the floor. You'll get carpet burn. And we're just getting started on this mind-boggling tale of yet another child star turned mid-life trainwreck.

PETER ROBBINS PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO CHARGES OF STALKING AND THREATENING IN SAN DIEGO SUPERIOR COURT EARLIER THIS WEEK

Okay, so, details. Well, it seems that the 56-year-old Robbins, who lives in Oceanside, California, became upset when his girlfriend, Shawna Kern refused to pay back money he had given her for breast augmentation surgery (guess "Charlie Brown" likes them peanut-sized) after the couple broke up in December. To show his displeasure, he allegedly left Kern a series of threatening phone messages, including one in which he said, "You better hide, Shawna, I'm coming for you...and I'm going to kill you." Robbins also allegedly threatened to kill Kern's son if she didn't return his car and dog. And it didn't stop there. Robbins was additonally charged with threatening the female surgeon who performed Kern's breast enhancement as well as a police sergeant who arrested him on Jan. 13 after he failed to pay a hotel bill. The erstwhile Peanuts star was arrested on stalking and threatening charges by U.S. Customs officials as he was returning to San Diego from Mexico last Sunday. He was released on $55,000 bail after pleading not guilty (big surprise) in San Diego Superior Court earlier this week. The bail was originally set at $550,000, but Robbins' lawyer, who described him as an "eccentric person" and "a distraught man", argued for the lesser amount, telling the judge that, prior to his arrest on the current charges, Robbins had never been in trouble with the law.

ROBBINS SMILING FOR "PEANUTS" FANS IN HAPPIER TIMES

Of course, Robbins is hardly the first former child star to land in jail after indulging in criminal behavior. The list of one-time Hollywood prodigies gone wrong is a long and tragic one (please join me in a moment of silence for Alfalfa, won't you?), and I could spend more time than I have to spare trying to analyze the reasons that so many of the kids we've watched grow up on TV and in the movies seem to come to a bad end once they exit puberty. But come on....the guy who did the voice of Charlie Brown? I mean, it's bad enough when someone like Todd Bridges (he played Willis in "Diff'rent Strokes", in case you've forgotten) is arrested for allegedly murdering his drug dealer (he was later acquitted) or the kid who wowed us in "The Sixth Sense" wrecks his car after a few too many cocktails, but when Charlie Brown gets hauled before a judge for threatening to kill his ex-girlfriend...well, for those of us who grew up watching the Peanuts TV specials, that's kind of like hearing that one of your old neighborhood pals (the nice, dependable kid who fed his pet dog every night and walked his little sister to school) has just shot up the local Dairy Freeze. It's not supposed to happen. Not to mention that it alters forever the entire Peanuts universe. How are we supposed to watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" next year knowing that the kid who supplied the sad sack voice of Charlie Brown grew up to be someone who threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend over a breast enhancement disagreement?

And who do we blame? The Little Red-Haired Girl for not returning his affections? Lucy for always yanking that football out from underneath him whenever he tried to kick it? Or maybe it was Snoopy's sense of entitlement that created the monster that Charlie Brown became. Or even Linus or Schroeder, both of whom were clearly much more interested in intellectualizing and philosophizing than in just being there for poor Charlie. There are even those who might argue that it was all those years of playing a cartoon character whose only adult role models were invisible people who sounded like trumpets when they talked that drove the kid over the edge and set him on the path to eventual ruination. I, personally, think that Sally might very well have been the "Yoko" in the mix, with her nasal-voiced neediness and complete disregard for her big brother's ongoing struggle with self-esteem issues. (Good grief! Did the little minx never notice how many times her overwrought sibling visited Lucy's neighborhood psychiatry booth?) Peppermint Patty and Violet may have something to answer for as well, although, off-hand, I'm not prepared to say just how they fit into the toxic equation. The only Peanuts character who seems not to have contributed to Charlie Brown's downfall is Pigpen, who was probably the only other member of the group less popular than the ironically nicknamed "Good Man" himself, even if he did seem blissfully unaware of that fact. I could go on and on positing the possibilities. But I won't. Some questions just don't come with ready made answers, Lucy's psuedo psychriatric pronouncements notwithstanding.

Bottom line, it's a sad day for Peanuts fans. And for those who never gave a damn about Peanuts or who perhaps even found Charlie Brown and his precociously pretentious little gang of over-achievers annoying, it's a sad day as well. Because, if nothing else, Peter Robbins' free-fall from grace is just one more reminder that, when it comes to childhood idols, nothing is sacred. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling (as I'm sure Linus or Schroeder would do if they were writing this post), to give your heart to a round-headed kid in a yellow sweater with a zig-zaggedy brown stripe around the middle is to have it torn to pieces.

Thanks a lot, Charlie Brown. Looks like you deserved that scraggly little Christmas tree after all. And to the rest of you...skol!