#QUITE LITERALLY ATTIC WIFE AND FAMILY DOG | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theveryworstthing · 4 years

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So over on patreon Trevor asked for my take on the Addams Family and I grew up LOVING the Addams family movies so here we are. Instead of doing a straight up style interpretation, I decided to do a full on design challenge, using the characters as bases to make a black southern gothic Addams au. I actually drew the kids first, using the character bases of Wednesday and Pugsley to create some delightful kiddos I'm calling Sunday and Blanche. I of course then redesigned Gomez and Morticia into Carlisle and Mortesha.

The Addams have a very specific high aristocratic goth aesthetic (they've got a butler and nobody really works among other things) so in this re-imagining I wanted to go with vibes that run a little more middle class/upper middle class. I thought it would be interesting to think about what would be considered weird and off-putting in an entirely different culture, and how being a big ol' goth is way less controversial than it used to be.

I tried to keep this short (HAHAHAHAHAHA) so I didn't spin off into an essay about villain coded families, black people in the horror genre, and normalcy as it pertains to social survival, but just...bits of that are in these designs and lore. Keep that in mind.

Also I made the kids twins because they've flip flopped in age so much in different media and also twins run in my family (i'm the daughter of one). And let's face it, I'm pulling a lot of their southern gothic traits from living as a southern goth so *shrug*.

10 thousand pounds of lore incoming loooooooooool.

The Parents

From the moment he saw her he knew that there was a 50/50 chance of him either never making it out of that swamp alive or marrying the figure that was creeping out from under the distant willow tree in a black cocktail dress. The third time she found him trussed up in one of her traps, he complimented her rope work and asked if she'd like to go out sometime after his head wound stopped bleeding.

Or while it was still bleeding.

If she was into that.

Some kids and a mysteriously burnt down Piggly Wiggly later, their love is still as strong and inescapable as a bear trap in a sink hole.

Carlisle Guillermo (now Addams through marriage but I wanted to give him two first names for a name since Gomez has two last names) makes a vaguely described living practicing ‘law’ around town. A loophole king, people come to him from miles around with contracts signed in blood, fights over chunks of hair buried in their rivals’ yard, dehydrated primate hands, memories that seemed like dreams until the evidence of their happenings became too real, and other regular Legal Items asking for counsel which he is all too happy to give. For a price. Sometimes that price is a homemade pie and sometimes it’s a million dollars, depends on who you are. Whatever you’re asked to pay it’s worth that price, and if you try to scam him out of work or he just plain doesn’t like you? Well. He knows how to twist a contract better than anything at the crossroads.

And he always gets his due.

He doesn’t just serve the local (living)humans though, there are many things that need proper legal representation in this day and age. You wouldn’t believe how many city councils try to build on sacred burial grounds even after he lets them know that his ghostly clients are totally gonna haunt the FUCK out of the ensuing shitty condos and curse their families for all eternity. At least 50% of his energy goes towards dealing with real estate bullshit.

Carl is an excitable and good natured(?) man who loves his family, cigars, dancing, and his many knife-based hobbies. People find him very charming once they get past the feeling that they’re talking to a sultry gator badly disguising itself as a human. I didn’t put a ton of deep thought into designing him, mostly I wanted to make a middle aged dude who looked like he would have been voted ‘most likely to smooch the literal devil’ in high school. Tbh he probably has, but no demonic ex’s can compare to his lovely wife~

Mortesha Addams(her name was already perfect so I just tweaked it)is a woman of many talents. A self proclaimed homemaker, she prides herself on a greenhouse full of Concerning Foliage, a beautiful wasp apiary, and a coop full of what are probably chickens that she keeps for what are probably eggs. She’s also an avid creator of the outsider art that can be seen around the estate. She has taken on the family business of selling her homemade goods in a little stall by the road just outside the swamp with her mom, and makes pretty good money doing so. A surprising amount of poison gets bought in quaint southern towns.

Speaking of poison, people who come out to the edge of the swamp to buy it are usually carrying a lot of secrets around, and Mortesha knows most of them. It’s not like she pries the truth out of people, it just so happens that many nervous hellos eventually turn into the tragic backstory power hour if she’s alone with a client for long enough. She supposes that’s just how people are. Despite the fact that the Addams are very active in the community (whether the community likes it or not) she especially, as a direct descendant of the first Addams matriarch, is seen as…Well not an outsider because the community feels A Certain Way about outsiders and despite it all the Addams are their people, but maybe something like an exception. They feel like whatever weirdness they’re hiding can’t be weirder than any given Addams, so they get a little loose with their words.

This is amusing to her, since Addams’ don’t naturally keep the kind dramatic secrets that their surface level prim and proper neighbors do. It’s much more fun to openly talk about those things.

Do they have a sadly decrepit yet terrifying grandma up in the attic? Yeah, like three. They got a tv, all the creepy porcelain dolls they could want, and they’re close to family. Where do you keep your gram-grams?

Any bodies buried on the property? Yeah some, but most are thrown to the gators.

Any creeping through the balmy summer night with ill intentions? Yeah dude, everyone loves a nice family stroll.

What about dangerous forbidden love? If an adult Addams isn’t incorporeal then they’re either queer or in a torrid romance with some person/thing mysteriously drawn to that awful swamp. Sometimes both at the same time. Most times actually.

Mortesha would know.

The current head of the Addams family is just as outgoing as her husband but a lot quieter and harder to read. She never really seems to get mad about much and always has a genteel smile for everyone whether they deserve it or not. A seven foot tall human shaped “Oh, bless your heart”. A perfectly composed Lady even when she’s, oh I dunno, burning down a Piggly Wiggly. You know. A regular southern mom. Chat her up at the hair salon for 50% off a jar of wasp honey with your next purchase of a mysterious but foreboding packet of herbs.

Designing her was pretty easy because I just drew a lankier Grace Jones and called it a day. I had some problems with her outfit simply because if we were going HARD southern gothic then she’d probably be wearing a white/cream dress with a fuller skirt but I thought keeping the silhouette and the black was more important. She’s supposed to be an anti southern gothic southern gothic character anyway. A woman who looks like she has a million secrets who is actually the most open person you could meet. For better or worse. The red hair came from a coloring error that I really ended up liking (my mom had red hair her whole childhood that only darkened up in high school so I can buy that an Addams can be naturally fire engine red) and the veil was to get more of that classic Morticia silhouette in there.

The Children

Sunday and Blanche are the twin children of Carlisle and Mortesha Addams. Some say the Addams clan got their cursed homestead when a wealthy local businessman made a deal with the devil and lost, leaving his grand mansion to his least favorite maid and cutting his losses once he realized that the swamp would do everything it could to drag the house into the water and take what was owed with its horrible curse. Others say that the family has just always squatted there and no one really cares because man, fuck that particular swamp. Have you been in there? Absolute horror show.

Anyway.

Blanche is the more outgoing sibling and quite the engineer/mad scientist in the making. He started going grey at 2 weeks old but considering he was also rocking some extra fingers, toes, and a tiny tail (he takes after his dad), his parents just put it on the 'not life threatening' pile and decided not to worry about it. He's the kind of smart that teachers find utterly infuriating, less a dog eagerly learning and obeying commands and more a hyena who keeps teaching itself how to pick locks. He has a few friends in his school's robotics club (which they honestly allowed him to make so the school could contain his... creations) but mostly hangs out with his sister exploring the swamp. They find all sorts of neat things in there! wedding rings, suspiciously lumpy garbage bags, cloaked cultists who can't read private property signs, it's an adventure every day!

Blanche is all about experimentation with his creations, his look, and his tether to this mortal coil. Is lipstick a cool thing to try? Let's find out. Can he get out of a strait jacket fast enough after being pushed into the depths of the swamp by his sister? let's find out. He's not dead yet and confused local doctors can attest to the fact that he's rarely attained more than a bad bruise so he's pretty set on continuing to kiss rattlesnakes on their cute little heads and have his sister practice her knife throwing at him until that fact changes.

Blanche is very much a country goth. Cowboy boots (customized by his mom), knife, and lighter are daily accessories. He likes to wear the crusty swamp jewelry they find (the rust adds a splash of color!) and despite appearances he does try to keep himself neat. He's just got natural Grunge Colors and a tendency to wear clothes he likes until they fall apart. Pugsley always seemed the most modernly styled to me (which might just be because little boys clothes have been the same for a long time) so I wanted Blanche to be the most purposely fashionable Addams. Everyone else is goth by nature, but he's the only one truly familiar with goth as an alternative fashion.

I got really into designing Blanche because honestly, I find Pugsley to be the most boring member of the family. And he was hard to design! I had to mess with his vibe a lot to get him looking how I wanted. I know he's supposed to evoke an " 'evil' little boy next door who's parents never reign him in", but that's just goth Dennis The Menace. I's 2020. We can at least go queer goth Calvin.

Sunday was much easier to design. Wednesday was my favorite as a child (of course) and I really wanted to keep the spirit of her look while adding things like billowy sleeves (it gets HOT down here), big poofy twists instead of braids, and a nice tie. She's a professional after all, been running the local pet cemetery since she was 6 and the previous groundskeeper met with an unfortunate accident after telling her that tarantulas don't have souls. Her specialty is creating beautiful naturalistic animal funerals similar to those that Maquenda (https://linktr.ee/artofmaquenda) makes, and she takes pride in creating miniature dioramas of her subjects after each burial which she uses as a kind of 3D catalog for future clients.

She really wants to try out her skills on humans one day. Well. Publicly try out her skills. Lotta random bodies float into the swamp. None of them have turned down her requests for diorama models so far. Most seem downright flattered. Plus, she usually figures out which graveyard/crime scene they floated over from and gets her parents to give them a lift back. She'll even help enact terrifying revenge from beyond the grave on whoever put them there if she's not, y'know, busy.

Besides arts, crafts, and pet based funerary arrangements, Sunday is an avid lover of archery (any ranged weapon really), books where little fantasy adventure animals die dramatic deaths, and history. She is That Kid who eagerly raises her hand when asked who Christopher Columbus was and ends up being sent out of class after 15 minutes for making 'a scene'. Her favorite party trick is just picking an item in the room and talking about how it relates to either some obscure historical figure with a buck wild life or a horrible disaster. At least one charity pancake breakfast ended with children in tears after her vivid description of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Social-wise, while Wednesday is the girl that people ask to smile because they think she'd, "look so pretty", Sunday is rarely asked anything at all. People just kind of assume from her quiet nature (in between horrible history facts) that she's angry all the time and that she hates everyone. This is untrue. She hates some people but she's ambivalent to most everyone else and even downright friendly if you bother to talk to her like a person instead of a terrifying cryptid. Like, she IS a terrifying cryptid but she's also a little girl.

That’s about it for now. One day I might do the other family members but for now I’m happy with the four I’ve redesigned. Making an au! Lurch in a family that doesn’t do butlers could be interesting. Over on patreon I put forth that he could just be Motesha’s mute little brother (similar bone structure) but Amy Crook had the nice idea of quote: “ a mysterious "cousin" that "helps around the house" whose origins are both long in the past and faintly unsettling. He's good for lifting heavy things, like that tank of propane you're about to throw into the burning Piggly Wiggly... “ which i now consider canon. Who's kid is he? How old is he? Not important. Anyone willing to commit arson with you is family.

Annnnyway. This challenge was a lot of fun! I love indulging in AU’s.

#long post #the addams family #Character Design #au #design challenge #i am incapable of doing a design challenge like a normal person #oh god i forgot the cut lol

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wahbegan · 5 years

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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Easter Eggs or References or Whatever You Wanna Call ‘Em

Several stories are flipped through without ever actually being read, all corresponding to actual stories in the books. These include: The Wendigo (guy dragged off into the sky by demonic wind spirit that calls his name and burns off his feet), The Attic (dude steps on a nail that’s literally it it’s a joke story), The Cat’s Paw (a dude shoots a cat who turns out to be his neighbor’s wife), Somebody Fell From Aloft (Actually a pretty good one, a mysterious corpse nobody recognizes drops from seemingly nowhere onto the deck of a ship in front of this shady crew member who panics and tries to heave the body over the side when it laughs and wraps its arms around him and drags him under too and yeah turns out it was the corpse of a guy he’d murdered on his last ship), The Hook (Oh fuck you you know what The Hook is), May I Carry Your Basket? (Dude offers to help hooded old lady carry her basket the basket says THANK YOU turns out yeah her severed head is in the basket and it like bites him or some shit idk), Strangers, (A dude on a bus is like I DONT BELIEVE IN GHOSTS and this woman next to him is like well eat my delicious ectoplasmic ass then and disappears into thin air), aaaand The Ghost with Bloody Fingers (another joke story, this hotel room can’t be rented because whenever someone tries a ghost with bloody fingers jumps out moaning about his bleeding fingers until this hippy dude checks in strumming his guitar and when the ghost tries to scare him he tells him to quit his whingeing and just put a fucking bandage on it)

Additionally, the story of uhhh STELLA’S that Ramon reads is Sam’s New Pet, also from one of the books, where a kid gets this ugly-ass dog and somehow doesn’t realize it’s just a giant sewer rat. Stephen Gammell, of course, decided “sewer rat” meant “unholy abomination in the eyes of God”, judging by his illustration

Tommy is named after Thomas, one of the farmers in the original Harold story, as is Ruth from The Red Spot

Speaking of Harold, in the original story he doesn’t JUST skin Thomas alive, when Alfred comes back he’s actually laid Thomas’ skin out on the roof and is drying it in the sun, like to turn it into leather. Some people take this to mean he’s gonna make a scarecrow out of Thomas, making the body horror transformation a more family-friendly version of the actual ending to the story

The teen’s deaths are all foreshadowed to one extent or another. Ruth’s arachnophobia and Tommy beating Harold are super obvious, but that’s not all. August, as part of his generally neurotic and anxious demeanor, is CONSTANTLY on people about what’s in the food they’re eating (that has animal body parts in it, the chemicals in that candy are giving our boys Hodgkins in ‘Nam, etc.). Chuck I think by far has the subtlest, as he is seen before he leaves the house to have an overbearing religious mother who hugs him extremely tightly to herself, prompting him to say “don’t hug me like that” before he leaves, mirroring his death via Pale Lady.

Speaking of The Pale Lady, the basic plot structure of him ending up in the EXACT place that The Pale Lady warned him not to go in his dreams due to his efforts to avoid it mirror the original story, even though everything else is changed.

The Haunted House is probably written for Stella at the end, even though the climactic sequence doesn’t resemble the story at all, because the whole movie follows the same basic premise as The Haunted House. The protagonists find the ghost of a woman killed by family over money in a haunted house, something very important is in the basement, and the ghost only rests when her killer(s) are publicly outed and brought to some form of justice.

Sarah Bellows’ ghost, since they used Gammell’s illustration for The Haunted House for The Big Toe (Gammell made no attempt to depict the creature, only the boy digging up the toe), is based on Brett Helquist’s illustration in the later release of the book.

Speaking of which, Gammell’s rendition of The Haunted House Ghost had no eyes, and as such you can also see her eyeballs float to the surface of the stew August is eating (although he only eats the toe as per the story).

Naming the woman from the dream The Pale Lady is most likely a reference to The Pale Man from Producer Guillermo Del Toro’s previous film Pan’s Labyrinth, but that’s just speculation

One of Sarah Bellows’ brothers was named Harold, leading to a current fan theory that since Sarah’s victims are never actually seen dead, they are never allowed to die and are instead re-purposed into monsters for future stories. Again, conjecture, but interesting and at least seen to be demonstrably true in the case of Tommy

This is probably a coincidence but the only other time I’ve heard the surname Bellows in a fictional capacity is a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds song “The Kindness of Strangers”, in which a young woman named Mary Bellows lets a charming stranger who’d helped her with her bags into her hotel room and he responds by cuffing her, gagging her, and shooting her. And what can I say Guillermo Del Toro seems like the kind of guy who would listen to Nick Cave

Okay here this is more substantial, The Jangly Man is a combination of three stories. His repeated cry of Me Tie Dough-ty Walker and making the dog bark strangely back at him is from yeah that story (though that ends with the dog dying of fright, the severed head saying Me Tie Dough-ty Walker, and the dude going insane from fear), his shtick of coming down the fireplace one severed body part at a time and then assembling himself is from What Do You Come For? (a woman says she’s sad she’s so alone and a bunch of body parts fall down the chimney and turn into a man and start dancing and she asks why the fuck he’s there and he’s like “to kill you, dip-ass why do you think”), and his appearance is, with a couple liberties, based on Gammell’s illustration for Aaron Kelly’s Bones (a widow’s husband gets out of his grave and refuses to stay dead, his corpse dancing and partying all day and night and claiming he’s never felt so alive. Finally, she tricks him to dancing faster and faster until his body flies apart and he stays dead. What a b*tch).

#Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

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analogscum · 6 years

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CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980, d. Lewis Jackson)

MERRY SCUMSMAS! Welcome to the very first installment of our 4-part Christmas series, in which we’ll be covering some truly twisted holiday flicks! Now, if you’re anything like me, you may find the Christmas season to be a difficult time of year. Sure, there are decorations and hot cocoa and all of your favorite animated TV specials return for their yearly viewings, but something about Christmas just feels…sad. Hollow. Disappointing. The opposite of Halloween, if I really had to put a finger on it. Maybe all the cheer only reinforces what a crappy year you’ve had. Or you find splurging on gifts to be a financial strain. But what I really think it all boils down to is a human problem. It’s hard to wish for peace on Earth and goodwill towards your fellow man when your fellow man seems dead set on making sure that Earth is anything but peaceful. Hell, it seems like most people don’t even care enough to put in the effort to simply just be nice. They’d rather just settle for naughty. Well, wouldn’t you know it, that very problem is addressed, albeit by a maniac in a dirty red costume, in our very first film, 1980’s Christmas Evil!

We open on Christmas Eve, 1947. Two little boys, Harry and Phil, and their mother sit on the staircase and watch as Santa Claus shoots down the chimney. Now, this is the first instance in which I was genuinely surprised and confused. Does this film exist in a universe where Santa Claus is real? I saw that motherfucker shoot down the chimney, don’t try to gaslight me on this one! Or, is this supposed to be viewed as just a childhood memory, laced with some magic realism? Don’t worry, we never quite get a straight answer. Anyway, Santa leaves a bunch of presents, hears one of the boys giggling, gives them a wink, and shoots back up the chimney (again, do NOT try and gaslight me here!) Then all of a sudden the boys and mom disappear, like that one shot in Blue Velvet after Frank Booth yells “I’ll fuck anything that moves!” Now Phil, the younger of the brothers, does not believe that that was the real Santa that they just saw. Harry, however, still believes that the big man exists, so he heads back downstairs for some unspecified reason, and what doe he see? It seems that Santa Claus has snuck back into the house, and Mommy is, um, doing a little bit more than kissing him underneath the mistletoe. In fact, Mommy is writhing in pleasure while Santa Claus says hi to the little man in the boat. Yikes! Harry, totally traumatized, runs upstairs to the attic, where he smashes a snow globe and slices his hand open with one of the shards of glass, spilling blood everywhere. And thus, the horror movie trope of Santa Claus as a lecherous old creep was born!

Now it is present day. Harry, despite the fact that he saw Chris Cringle feasting on his mom’s lady sandwich all those years ago, seems to be totally well-adjusted and normal. Well, there is the fact that he listens to Christmas music all year round. Oh, and his apartment is furnished with Christmas decorations even when it’s not Christmas. Right, and when he shaves in the morning he gives himself a shaving cream beard and goes Ho Ho Ho! into the bathroom mirror. Yup, totally well-adjusted and normal. Another hobby Harry has that is very healthy and not deeply disturbing at all is spying on the neighborhood kids from the roof of his apartment building via binoculars. Don’t worry, he’s only doing it so that he can record which of them have been naughty and which of them have been nice! And c’mon, it’s not like he’s whispering incredibly creepy things to himself while he watches them, like oh what a sweetheart and oh my dear little angel and…wait, no, never mind, he’s definitely whispering those things to himself. One boy takes out the trash, so he’s good. A girl is brushing her doll’s hair, which strikes me more as neutral but Harry seems very taken with it. However, this one little bastard named Moss Garcia is looking at the centerfold of a Penthouse magazine! Ooooh, does that ever burn Harry’s grits! How he hates Moss Garcia! In his book of naughty children, he notes that Moss “throws rocks at dogs, uses profane language, picks his nose, impure thoughts, negative body hygiene.” Ummm, hey, at least the guy is observant?

Would it surprise you to learn that Harry works at a toy factory? I didn’t think it would. Over at the Jolly Dreams toy factory, Harry is bummed out. On one hand, he’s been promoted to an office job, but he misses working on the factory line, because he cares about the quality of the toys. You know who doesn’t? The fat cats in corporate, that’s who! However, his former coworkers on the factory line aren’t much better, they’re portrayed as lazy and cynical. In fact, one such working stiff, a guy named Frank, basically bullies Harry into working his shift so that he can leave for vacation with his family early. Harry begrudgingly agrees, but when he’s walking home later that night, he passes by the local redneck bar, and who does he see? Why, it’s Frank! And he’s knocking back some brewskis and yukking it up with his roughneck buddies, laughing his head off about how he lied about leaving for vacation and shoved his shift off on that schmuck Harry! Harry handles this incredibly well, i.e. he runs home like an embarrassed child, then angrily hums “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” while crushing a doll in his bare hands. Could this be, I dunno, some sort of fancy pants foreshadowing? Well read on, college boy!

It’s Thanksgiving, and now we get to meet Harry’s younger brother Phil, who is played by one of my favorite character actors, Jeffrey DeMunn! This seems to be one of the first in a series of uptight assholes that DeMunn made a career out of bringing to irritated, deeply caucasian life, and for my money, few out there play an uptight asshole better than Jeffrey DeMunn. In the case of Phil, he’s always yelling at his kids to turn down the volume on the TV, and he seems to be offended by the very existence of his brother Harry. He thinks that Harry is a loser and an emotional cripple, which is kinda harsh. But at the same time, his wife makes up for this by going TOO easy on Harry, and is basically like, hey, Jeffrey DeMunn, when Harry comes over for Thanksgiving dinner, could you maybe not bring up the fact that he works in a factory and lives in a shitty poor part of town and is clearly mentally ill and possibly a pedophile? To which Jeffrey DeMunn is like, grumble grumble grumble I’m Jeffrey DeMunn! As it turns out, he needn’t have worried, because literally a minute after having this conversation, Harry phones up the house and is like, hey, it’s me Harry, I can’t make it to Thanksgiving this year, because I’ve got to take some nascent steps into full on Santa psychosis, ok byeeeee.

Harry goes about setting his plans into motion. The guy’s a bonafide craftsman; he’s sewing himself a Santa Claus suit, he’s in his basement like, smelting his own toys, he’s painting a sled on the side of his creeper-ass Econoline van, he even manages to smear some mud on his face and hands and terrorize that little shit Moss Garcia, ooooh he’s just the worst with his potty mouth and nudie mags! Anyway, now it’s time for the Jolly Dreams factory Christmas party! Everyone is getting super schwasted and dancing to a terrible disco version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” (does this now qualify as a motif?) when Harry is introduced to a new exec named Gordon. Gordon, it turns out, spearheaded a project wherein Jolly Dreams is going to donate a bunch of their surplus toys to a local children’s hospital. Harry is like, this plan seems really nebulous and non-specific, like, how many toys should we be setting aside, how many children are at this hospital, etc. And Gordon is just like, hey, I dunno, it’s just a publicity thing, who cares about those sick kids, it’s the me decade, babe! As you can probably imagine, this does not sit well with Harry. He storms out of the party, stealing a bunch of Jolly Dreams products on his way out the door, goes home, and immediately attaches a fake beard to his chin. He laughs and winces in the mirror, mumbling to himself, “it’s me!”

Now, I’m going to jump ahead a bit, usually I reserve final judgments for, well, the end of these pieces, but I’ve gotta say, I really enjoyed this movie, and part of what makes it hold together so well is the lead performance by Brandon Maggart as Harry. Maggart usually played supporting or cameo roles throughout his career, but here he truly gets to shine, totally revealing the wide range of Harry’s psychosis, and making you ultimately sympathize with him, even when he goes totally off the deep end and starts straight up murderizing people. Speaking of which…

Hey everyone, it’s Christmas Eve! But instead of St. Nick, it’s fuckin’ Harry Claus roaming the streets in his creeper-ass Econoline van. He breaks into Phil’s house and swaps out all of the presents for the kids with his homemade presents. He goes to the children’s hospital and almost gets shot by a hundred year old security guard, but then everyone is like look he brought presents what an awesome Santa Claus! He even gets in one final swipe at that rotten shitheel Moss Garcia by leaving him a giant sack full of dirt! Haha, take that you little pervert! Things kinda go off the rails a bit when Harry finds himself in front of this ridiculously gigantic church that looks straight outta Tim Burton’s Gotham City, and these three upper crust preppy assholes decide to poke fun of him for absolutely no reason. Sho what does Harry do? He pulls out a hatchet and butchers these people to death right there on the church steps in front of at least a hundred witnesses. Do any of them try to stop him? Nope!

So Harry is on the lam, and he finds himself at a very cheery Christmas party. All of the adults are super nice to him, and the kids are happy to see him, so he just plays along for awhile, and he’s in his element. He’s dancing the polka and giving the kids presents and knocking down shots that people are handing to him, they’re lovin’ this Papa Nöel, and apparently don’t notice the giant blood stains on his robes. When he decides it’s time to leave and go pay Frank and his family a visit, Harry Claus leaves the children with the following speech:

“Be good little girls and boys. Listen to your parents and do what they say. Obey your teachers and learn a whole lot. If you do this, I’ll make sure you get wonderful presents every year...But if you’re bad little girls and boys then your name goes into the bad little girls and boys book. And I’ll make sure you get something...horrible."

Shit, if that ain’t genuinely chilling, then your chill-o-meter may be broken.

Harry is really feeling his Santa Claus oats at this point, so he hilariously tries to actually go down the chimney, and nearly breaks his back. So he just breaks in through the back, the kids see him leaving some presents, and then Harry makes his way back to the master bedroom. Frank wakes up and is like, uhhh, Harry? What are you doing here, ya schmuck? And Harry starts to smother him with his bag full of toys! Whoa! Somehow this doesn’t wake up Frank’s wife, and Harry starts to get bored, so he grabs the star from a miniature Christmas tree next to the bed and fuckin’ SLASHES FRANK’S THROAT WITH IT! The wife wakes up and starts screaming, the kids watch as Harry Claus flees the premises. Ummm, Merry Christmas?

Christmas morning arrives, and Phil has an uneasy feeling. He just knows that Harry was somehow involved with these murders and break-ins last night. His wife, of course, is like, you’re being too hard on Harry, you’re totally blinded by your disappointment in him as a brother, you need to be nicer to him, to which of course he replies, grumble grumble grumble I’m Jeffrey DeMunn! Meanwhile, the cops are on the hunt for a murderous Santa, pulling in all sorts of drunken reprobates and mall goons for lineups. Harry, apparently realizing that the jig may be up soon, goes over to Jolly Dreams and destroys the rest of their toys. When he’s driving his creeper-ass Econoline van home, it gets stuck in a snowbank, and he finds himself on a gorgeous, picturesque suburban street lined with beautiful Christmas lights, and a bunch of kids are like, Yaaaay it’s Santa! He’s like oh, hey kids, here are the last of my presents from my murder satchel! The parents of these kids, meanwhile, realize that this guy must be the murderer, so one of them, this fuckin’ guy who’s dressed like a 1920s street tough for some reason, pulls out a switchblade and is like, the show’s over, Cringle! You make one move towards those tots and I’ll box your ears, seeeeee?! And Harry is like, you dumb asshole, you’ve forgotten the meaning of Christmas, children need an adult figure to look up to, who can teach them the difference between right and wrong, and the whole goddamn world seems to be in dereliction of that duty. Our 1920s street tough, of course, understands none of this, and despite protests from both the children and the fellow parents, who just wanna let the cops handle it, this guy lunges at Harry, and a minor brawl ensues, but Harry gets away.

Now, here’s where things start to get a bit…loopy. All of a sudden, these adults have formed a LYNCH MOB, and they’re chasing Harry down the streets while brandishing TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS! Where the hell did all of these Frankenstein-esque accessories come from?! So Harry hightails it to Phil’s house, where they finally duke it out once and for all. Phil is like, I always wanted a normal, strong older brother to look up to, and you let me down, and now you’re murdering people you sicko, to which Harry is like, you broke my heart by not believing in Santa Claus and I saw some crazy shit that you wouldn’t understand, to which Phil, quite understandably, is like, all of this shit is because of something I said when I was six years old?!?! THAT’S BULLSHIT, HARRY! GRUMBLE GRUMBLE GRUMBLE, I’M JEFFREY DEMUNN!!! And he fuckin’ chokes Harry out until he’s unconscious. He brings Harry’s lifeless body out to the van, at which point Harry wakes up and hilariously sucker punches Phil in the face, and goes speeding off. But oh balls, he’s surrounded! He’s got the angry mob coming from this direction, his angry brother coming from that direction, so what does he do? He drives his creeper-ass Econoline van off of a bridge. So that should be the end…but hark! What is that I spy? A dirty white van, and it’s starting to fly! In the light of the moon, all the townsfolk are stunned! They’re totally speechless, even Jeffrey DeMunn! “And I heard him exclaim as he rode out of sight, Merry Christmas to all! And to all a good night!” GODDAMN WHAT AN ENDING!

So yeah, I highly recommend Christmas Evil. Based on the title, I was expecting your typical high body count, gory slasher faire in the vein of the Silent Night, Deadly Night series, but instead I got something way more special: a dark character study about a vigilante loner who just so happens to be obsessed with Santa Claus. Like Travis Bickle but with a red stocking cap instead of a mohawk. And it helps that this is a genuinely well-made film too. The pacing is on point, the camerawork is full of really good tracking shots, and the soundtrack is buzzing with industrial Lynchian madness. It’s too bad that the director, Lewis Jackson, never made another film aside from this one. Still not convinced that Christmas Evil deserves to be a weirdo holiday classic? Well, here’s what no less an authority than John Goddamn Waters had to say about it, in his 1985 essay “Why I Love Christmas:”

“Forget White Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life and all the other hackneyed trash,” Waters tells us. “Go for the classics: Silent Night, Bloody Night, Black Christmas or the best seasonal film of all time, Christmas Evil (“He’ll sleigh you”).

This true cinematic masterpiece only played theatrically for a few seconds, but it’s now available on videocassette and no holiday family get-together is complete without it…I wish I had kids. I’d make them watch it every year and if they didn’t like it, they’d be punished.”

Well that settles it, Scumbags! If this movie is good enough for the Prince of Puke, then it’s sure as heck good enough for me!

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andrewdburton · 7 years

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Book Review: You Need a Budget

In a nutshell: By diligently applying four simple rules, you can move from being at the mercy of money to being a master of money.

In 2004, Jesse and Julie Mecham were twenty-year-old newlyweds trying to make ends meet. They lived in the 300-square-foot basement of a sixty-year-old home. He was pursuing a master’s degree in accounting, while she was finishing a bachelor’s degree in social work. Plus, they were planning for their fist child.

The Mechams felt flat broke.

But because Jesse was (and still is) a self-proclaimed “numbers nerd”, he decided to create a spreadsheet to budget for every day of the year. The couple steadfastly stuck to their budget, and something surprising happened. Despite their meager circumstances, they no longer felt desperate about money. They paid their bills and still had a little left over for a couple of date nights each month.

Later, while brainstorming ways to earn extra money, Jesse wondered if other people would be interested in his budgeting method, which involved four simple rules. He started teaching others these rules and sharing his spreadsheet. In time, that spreadsheet morphed into a piece of software called You Need a Budget [my review].

Today, You Need a Budget is one of the most highly-regarded personal finance apps available. (Seriously. Everyone who uses it seems to love it. Its users are die-hards.)

In his recent book — also called You Need a Budget, naturally — Mecham shares the method that has helped him (and thousands of others) overcome financial anxiety. Let’s take a quick look at the YNAB method.

Note: Throughout this review, I’ve embedded videos from the YNAB YouTube channel. While these videos contain great supporting material, they use slightly different terminology from the book. Not a big deal, but I thought you should know.

Rule One: Give Every Dollar a Job

The first step to building a better budget, Mecham says, is to give every dollar a job. Ask yourself this fundamental question: “What do I want my money to do for me?”

Before you can give every dollar a job, though, you have to know which “jobs” need doing. Begin be listing all of the places your money needs to go — your obligations, the expenses that cannot be ignored.

For most folks, these top priorities will include housing, utilities, transportation, and health care — survival stuff.

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Once your essentials are covered, the hard work begins. Now you have to “prioritize your priorities”. After you’ve set aside money for your needs, you can do whatever you want with the money that’s left. Want to travel? Use your money for travel. Want to buy new shoes? Buy new shoes. Want to upgrade your car? Upgrade your car. “Take time to think about what makes you happy,” Mecham writes, “and add those things to your budget.”

Again, you’re trying to answer the fundamental question: “What do I want my money to do for me?” First, you want it to cover survival basics. Next, you want it to help you enjoy life.

“Before you can start bossing your dollars around…you have to decide what needs to get done. You’re literally writing a to-do list for your money. If you’ve never done something so proactive with your money, you’ll quickly see how it changes your perspective on each dollar you hold.”

Rule Two: Embrace Your True Expenses

What about irregular expenses? That’s where You Need a Budget‘s second principle comes in. After you budget for essentials but before you budget for the fun stuff, Mecham advocates setting aside money for what he calls “true expenses”.

These “true expenses” don’t show up as regular, monthly obligations. They take two forms:

Predictable expenses include things like your auto insurance or home insurance, which might be paid once or twice each year. They also include stuff like electricity bills (which might spike in summer and/or winter) or holiday gifts and trips.

Unpredictable but inevitable expenses are those curveballs life throws you: The transmission fails on your car, your 12-year-old dog needs surgery, you discover dry rot in the attic.

It’s these true expenses, Mecham says, that derail most budgets. The average person is great about setting money aside for necessities and, especially, for the things they value in life. They’re not so good at remembering to account for periodic insurance payments. And they’re terrible at planning for the unpredictable but inevitable obstacles.

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With his second rule, Mecham is trying to get reader to think long but act now. This can be tough for some folks. This sort of budgeting and saving feels like sacrifice. It’s not. You’re absolutely getting something you want — but it’s something you want or need in the future, not today.

“Every time you choose to put money toward a long-term priority,” he writes, “you’re literally spending money ahead to the future, setting Future You up for success.” Amen!

“Rule Two gets you to be proactive with your money on a much deeper level than you’ve ever experienced. When you think long and act now, you’re not just looking at your immediate bills — you’re seeing the bigger picture and you’re hyperaware of all your expenses. Your spending doesn’t surprise you anymore…”

Rule Three: Roll with the Punches

Even if you give every dollar a job and embrace your true expenses, your budget is going to take some unexpected hits. “There’s a difference between a plan and real life,” Mecham says. “If you obsess over sticking to the plan…despite any consequences, you’re sure to be stressed and unhappy.”

The third rule of You Need a Budget is all about making adjustments based on whatever comes your way. Because your budget is a plan that reflects your life and priorities, your budget should change as you life and plans change.

Rule Three is also about being completely honest with yourself about what’s truly important. Mecham conveys this concept with a story from his own life. For a decade, he and his wife overspent their budget grocery nearly every month. They kept setting optimistic targets, then missing wide. Eventually, his wife got frustrated. “I do not care what a can of corn costs,” she told him, and something clicked. They bumped their grocery budget to something more realistic.

Rolling with the punches is also about dealing with the completely unexpected stuff life throws at us. Imagine your garage door breaks, Mecham suggests. “The day before it broke, replacing the garage door was not a priority…The day after? Darn close to number one in [the] budget.”

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The bottom line? Changing your budget is not failing. Neither is missing your targets. Don’t let it get you down. Roll with the punches. That’s budgeting in real life.

“Change is so important that we’ve dedicated an entire rule to it…Rule Three is what will save you when all other budgeting apps, experts, and programs make you feel you’ve failed the moment you stray from the original plan. It’s what pulls your budget out of a spreadsheet and into the real world.”

Rule Four: Age Your Money

The first three rules of the You Need a Budget method create a framework that allows you take charge of your money, to control it instead of letting it control you. If you follow these rules, you’ll find that you gradually move from feeling pinched every month, to having enough, to eventually generating a surplus of cash. Rule four is about building a stockpile of cash so you have enough saved to cover your expenses for a very, very long time.

To explain this rule, Mecham introduces the idea that money has an “age”. He writes:

Money’s “age” is based on the gap of time between when you earned the money (money in) and when you spend the money (money out). If the money you’re spending on Tuesday was deposited on Monday, your money is one day old. If it’s Friday before you’re spending that money you deposited on Monday, then you money is four days old.

Your goal should be for your money to be as “old” as possible when you spend it. Mecham urges readers to aim to age their money for thirty to sixty days, but reminds us that five days is better than one — and one is better than zero. “Just keep working on increasing the time between receiving money and spending it.”

(He also notes that if you’re in debt, then the age of your money is negative. You’ve spent money that you haven’t even earned yet.)

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Mecham says that living off “old” money can feel like a pipe dream if you’re living paycheck to paycheck. It can seem like a luxury reserved for the super-rich. From his experience, that’s just not true. As you apply his rules, he says, you’ll move from having a stack of bills waiting for money to having a stack of money waiting for bills.

Final Thoughts

You Need a Budget is a simple book, but it’s excellent. It doesn’t try to throw the entire world of personal finance at you. It’s laser-focused on one thing: building a better budget. (And I appreciate that Mecham doesn’t use the book as a platform to pitch the You Need a Budget software, which is how he makes his living.)

The book includes chapters on budgeting as a couple, slaying debt, teaching kids to budget, and what to do when you feel like quitting. It’s also peppered with examples and real-world stories (some of Mecham’s own family) to illustrate the You Need a Budget philosophy.

Because Mecham has been reading and writing about budgets since 2004, he’s learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. He’s constantly receiving feedback from the tens of thousands of people who follow his program. This book is a culmination of that experience, and it shows. If you need a budget, I highly recommend this book.

Related Reading The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey All Your Worth by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi

The post Book Review: You Need a Budget appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

from Finance http://www.getrichslowly.org/2018/01/03/book-review-you-need-a-budget/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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foursproutwealth-blog · 7 years

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Book Review: You Need a Budget

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/book-review-you-need-a-budget/

Book Review: You Need a Budget

In a nutshell: By diligently applying four simple rules, you can move from being at the mercy of money to being a master of money.

The Mechams felt flat broke.

Today, You Need a Budget is one of the most highly-regarded personal finance apps available. (Seriously. Everyone who uses it seems to love it. Its users are die-hards.)

Rule One: Give Every Dollar a Job

The first step to building a better budget, Mecham says, is to give every dollar a job. Ask yourself this fundamental question: “What do I want my money to do for me?”

For most folks, these top priorities will include housing, utilities, transportation, and health care — survival stuff.

Again, you’re trying to answer the fundamental question: “What do I want my money to do for me?” First, you want it to cover survival basics. Next, you want it to help you enjoy life.

Rule Two: Embrace Your True Expenses

These “true expenses” don’t show up as regular, monthly obligations. They take two forms:

Unpredictable but inevitable expenses are those curveballs life throws you: The transmission fails on your car, your 12-year-old dog needs surgery, you discover dry rot in the attic.

“Every time you choose to put money toward a long-term priority,” he writes, “you’re literally spending money ahead to the future, setting Future You up for success.” Amen!

Rule Three: Roll with the Punches

The bottom line? Changing your budget is not failing. Neither is missing your targets. Don’t let it get you down. Roll with the punches. That’s budgeting in real life.

Rule Four: Age Your Money

To explain this rule, Mecham introduces the idea that money has an “age”. He writes:

(He also notes that if you’re in debt, then the age of your money is negative. You’ve spent money that you haven’t even earned yet.)

Final Thoughts

Related Reading The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey All Your Worth by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi

The post Book Review: You Need a Budget appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

#Wealth

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