"SMELL MY FEET!"

Here it comes. Its Wednesday, October 27, 2010, and this is The Side. Only a few days remaining until Halloween and I spotted a new story about age limits placed on Trick-or-treating. What's weird is I thought that this was the norm. I thought everywhere had an age limit of 12 for trick-or-treating. Sure I hit up a few places in high school, but those were people I knew and there was a smile and wink to it. It was my way of wishing them a Happy Halloween. I was busy riding my skateboard through the neighborhood and spraying the kids and their parents with silly string as they were out and about. No problems and all in good fun. The kids would scream. A few of the parents would too. Most of the dads would laugh. But still, that amount of effort on my part required a little sugar boost, so if I needed to stop in for a treat, it was a great reason to say "hi" to some folks and ask how their holiday is going.

I do have a bit of a problem with high schoolers trick-or-treating, especially if i don't know them. They don't put much effort into their costumes. They don't say "tick or treat". I have a hard rule. You want candy from me on Halloween, you better say "trick or treat". It's just sad when I see some goofy kid holding out a bag and looking at me expectantly through a cheap rubber mask. "And what do we say?" I'll ask him (its always a him). "Um... please?"

Damned kids have no since of tradition. What are we teaching out children when they can't even beg of candy properly on candy beggin' night?

SPOOKY COMIX!!

DRACULA: THE COMPANY OF MONSTERS #3 is in stores today. This comic is really taking its time with its pacing, but there's still all these things going on that keep me in the story. We have a new element with a vampire hunting family investigating the killing of the research team from the last issue. This immediately made me think of VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST and the monster hunting group in it. There's not a ton of resemblance between the two groups, but it just had a similar feel to me. Its a good thing that they did get introduced in this issue because they deliver the only action in it.

That is not to say in any way that this was a boring issue. Evan is under a ton of pressure from his uncle to get Dracula to do his bidding and use his powers to aid in a hostile take over. At least that's what Evan is told. He's getting grief from his friends and co-workers about not keeping them the loop about the project he's working on. And let's not forget the vampire in the basement.

Dracula is written very interestingly here. He's highly intelligent, and spends his time locked up but studying the word around him through media. This isn't Dracula like we know Dracula. We expect the devious monster. However we are shown Prince Vlad, who calmly discusses business, politics, and his life. He seems very honorable here, especially in his treatment of Evan, whom he treats with the utmost respect. At the same time, he'll ask to be let out of his confinement and that voice in the back of our heads starts whispering, 'the second he gets loose everyone is going to die'.

This is an old school horror story like I love them. A person messes with something he really should, like Victor Frankenstein or Henry Jekyll. And like them he unleashes something he can't control. Certainly Conrad seems to have the upper hand now. But literary statute tells us that that's only temporary.

SPOOKY BITING!!

I do enjoy a good monster, and certainly there are plenty to choose from. Growing up I did enjoy the classics, vampires and werewolves. Nowadays, zombies are all the rage and I like zombies alright but not so much as monsters themselves but for the situation in which they're often used. There's been a few stories with "vampire apocalypses" but I haven't seen one with a "werewolf apocalypse". OK, the werewolf one I understand. Things would only go straight to hell one night out of the month. The vampire apocalypse stories I've read were pretty lame as well. Zombies still are the reigning champs of apocalypse creatures. I think a lot of it has to with their relentless unreasonable nature. They're more of force that needs to get beaten back, and in most movies and stories can't ever really be beaten. There's always more zombies and they're always still coming for you.

One thing all three of the creatures I've mentioned have in common is biting. Getting bitten is the way one typically becomes a vampire, werewolf, or zombie. And here's where it starts to get weird. If a zombie bites you, its horrible. Usually there's a character who tries to hide it from the others hoping he doesn't turn into a zombie, but he almost always does and turns on everybody at an inopportune moment. Werewolf bites are always treated the same. Some animal attacked someone. They thought it was a big dog or something. Next full moon, the zaniness ensues. Vampire bites are the sexy among the crowd that wears black way too much. The predatory act gets sexual twist to it, because it doesn't matter that these guys are just zombies with slightly higher IQs, they have much better skin and brood a lot.

Here's the break down:

Zombie bite - Having an affair with that really heinous person from the office. You try to hide it the best you can, because once people find out you're as good as dead to them.

Werewolf bite - You were at that party. You had too much to drink. Things got a little fuzzy as the night went on. You woke up the next morning wondering what happened. Then its, "Wait I did what? With who?"

Vampire bite - It was a sensuous and seductive night of passion which you know you shouldn't have had. Unless you're a guy, in which case, some pasty faced bastard put the swerve on your girl.

Its a nasty and drooly state of affairs. Its pretty much accepted in society that biting people is just not done. That's unless its behind closed doors and with two, or more, consenting adults. So there's a little bit of a taboo, intimate element involved. With the zombies and werewolves we don't see them as human so the act becomes something purely predatory. But, make the monster look a bit more like an attractive person, then its all sexy fun time, please drink my blood.

It such a horrible bias.

People only seem to like the pretty monsters.

But remember people: if you love vampires then you're a necrophiliac.

SPOOKY MUSIC!!

Because most songs about vampires and zombies suck:



Alrighty, that's it for today. Join us next time for comic reviews and the tale of my final year of trick-or-treating.

I <3 Vampires

I wasn't originally going to call this this little rant that, but I in my morning web-browsing I found an ad completely at random but that title and it seemed like fate. And if that title seems odd coming from a guy who just made fun of "Twilight" one post ago, then read on and all will be revealed.

I like vampires, really. They're great villains. You can kill them off in the required gruesome fashion and not feel bad about it. I've tried to write them as protagonists and even once attempted to write one as a sympathetic character. It just didn't fly. It boils down to one very important thing: I can't bring myself to care about the dramatic immortal plight of something higher than me on the food chain. Let's face it, they're pretty much zombies without the skin problems and better articulation.

The whole 'they live forever see the ones they love grow old around them' doesn't fly, because in all likelihood the ones they love would end up dinner. I did see a t-shirt with a line on it from what I presume was the 'Twilight' movie: "Your scent is like a drug to me." I imagine the actor delivering the line made people swoon with is urgent and longing acting as he used it to win the heart of girl in the film who meets him and despite the fact that potential he's gonna kill her cannot stay away. (And if this isn't the case in the movie, please don't comment to correct me, because I don't care.) If this is indeed the case, I can see why the vampire in question is so smitten with her. He's got no game and she's obviously stupid. It's a match made in Beverly Hills 90210.

So, if this is the case then how do I feel about Angel and Spike from Joss Whedon's series BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL? I approve of these for a few reasons. Primarily, Whedon is wise enough to make fun of the whole brooding immortal bit in many other characters telling Angel "He should get out more" or the like. Also, there's nothing 'sexy' about vampirism in these shows. You lose your soul and become infested by a demon. Your face twists into something monstrous when you feed. The feeding itself isn't the trading fluids/metaphor for sex cliché either. It's a nasty predatory affair.

So pop culture aside, let's go literary. I tried to read Anne Rice's vampire books. Got bored into a coma and missed 1997. Thanks Anne. So, back up the trolley further to Bram Stoker's DRACULA. This piece struck the precarious balance between the vampire as the seducer and the monster. He was evil as the night is long no doubt about it. He was also an evil that liked girls; preferably young, hot ones. There's no conflict about bumping off because if you don't he's either going to kill you, bang your girlfriend before killing her or both in whatever order is convenient.

So, with the current vampire fad rampant with a certain recent DVD release, am I worried that the current piece of fiction I'm writing won't fair well because there's vampires in it that are evil? Nah. End of the day, vampires are great bad guys and nine times out of ten really lame goods guys. So, get out the garlic and stakes.