Horror-Rama Rocked!

I had a fabulous time at Horror-Rama. It was an all horror show in Toronto this past weekend. Here are some pictures!

American Horror Story: Hotel Thoughts with LOTS OF SPOILERS

I waited all summer, partly with eager anticipation, partly with dread that I’d be bitterly disappointed. But now it’s here and I’ve seen both episodes.

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

American Horror Story: Hotel is gorgeous to look at. Each scene is a feast for the eyes from shadowed hallways to luscious sets to glamorous costumes. As always, the make-up is perfect if overdone, and hair is always amazing, every strand artfully placed.

As I’ve opined before, I’ve fallen into the worlds of AHS knowing they will be flawed, that I won’t be completely satisfied, that I’ll have to wait through less engaging storylines to get to my favourites but that’s how it is with any show. No one is going to create your exact perfect show and I gave up long ago thoughts about flowing storylines that arc and end. Some do. Some don’t. Such is the Winchester House that is the American Horror Story series.

I was hoping Hotel wouldn’t be just another haunted house show but I knew it would be a combination of several tropes as that’s how it rolls in Murphy’s worlds.

There are several themes happening here as always. The main question is do I like it?

On many levels, I love it.

On a couple of levels, I’m not in love.

Things I Like

I love Lady Gaga as an entertainer so was curious to see how she’d fare on this horror show. She’s fine as a Bathory vampire assembling her minions and little monsters. I have no issues with her acting or character. Her scenes with Matt Bomer are hot, her scenes with Finn Wittrock are hot, her scenes with everyone are hot. She doesn’t overplay the “smoldering looks” or even her dialogue. I rather like her understated blank vampire. She’s not falling into playing a typical vamp which would be easy to do.

I liked how the Countess threw away her lover without a thought. That’s a real vampire! Good stuff! Also, she already told us that she doesn’t want to fall in love, and so, despite her feelings, she moved on to the pretty model junkie. After she turns Tristan, she tells him (Finn Wittrock) that they have immortality but to keep it they have to be smart. Since Tristan isn’t the brightest bulb on the tree, we know he’s going to have something gruesome happen to him, and likely by the hands of Bomer. Also it’s likely to occur within a couple of episodes since Wittrock said in interviews before this season that he doesn’t want to do a full season because of other commitments.

I like the idea of Iris (Kathy Bates) being one of the only real humans in the place because she wants to be close to her son.

Evan Peters blew my mind. He’s playing  the sadistic serial killer magnate who built the hotel. He’s based on real life Chicago serial killer who built a hotel specifically designed to torture, rape, and murder people and to hide the bodies. When we first meet Peters, I didn’t even recognize him. He looked older, his acting was impeccable, he was fantastic as a fifties type character. I hope he doesn’t lose the intensity he had in this episode as the series moves along. I’ve never seen him act so well. His talents were wasted completely in Freak Show. All he did was drink, cry, fuck, and get angry, lobster hands or not. He was wasted in Coven. His Frankenteen character could have been so interesting but they threw him away as a sex toy. So here’s hoping that he continues to rule the hotel with a tight murderous fist and doesn’t lose his accent or his little pencil thin moustache. Didn’t Walt Disney have one of those?

I like the ideas of vampires and ghosts and who knows what else as well as humans living in this hotel.

I was happy they played Hotel California in the first episode since we all knew they would play it at some point, so it was good to get it done. I love that song however it’s such an obvious choice.

All the music is great and really suits the story. Murphy does have a knack for matching music to story. Even if the music is horrible (like some of those AHS singing numbers), it always fits.

I like all the sex.

Things That Bug Me

Well, it’s always easier to complain about things, so here we go.

My biggest plot hole complaint is the Wi-Fi situation. Iris told the Swedish girls that the hotel is a black hole for technology, cell phones don’t work, and there’s no Wi-Fi. There are landlines in the rooms.

So, was she lying to the girls? Did they turn off the internet when they were there? How did they block the cell phones from the satellites? Did the ghosts block the phones?

In episode two, Tristan sits in the lobby flipping through grindr on his cell phone. He hooks up with a guy within minutes from the comfort of his couch. Why does the Wi-Fi work for him? Because he’s a vampire? That makes no sense.

Speaking of cell phones, Scarlet takes a selfie with her brother in the kid room and it looks like she used a cell phone. If she had a cell phone, why didn’t her parents call or text her? I don’t recall her ever checking her phone unless I was looking away.  If Tristan hadn’t been using his phone, I wouldn’t have noticed her phone situation. But it bugged me that his phone works and hers doesn’t.  Because she’s human? How about all the travel time away from the hotel? Wouldn’t her phone work then? If her parents are so worried, why didn’t anyone call her or track her phone? Dad IS a cop!

How come none of the cops saw her on the buses or walking home if they’re supposed to be guarding her? Wouldn’t they think to check the hotel since she’d been there before and had made a new friend?

Why did dad dismiss Scarlet’s story so quickly? He saw Holden in the hallways so why wouldn’t he believe that she did as well? Is he pretending to not believe her so that he can investigate by himself? There are so many piddly plot holes in the cop story that may or may  not ever get filled.

When Scarlet speaks to Holden for the first time, the words, the acting, the entire shebang was so ridiculous that I could barely watch it. No children would act like those two did. GAH!

Chloe Sevigny is underused again. She is such an intriguing gorgeous weird actress and perfect for horror movies.  I don’t really like her acting, I always feel like she’s “acting” but I could watch her do anything for hours. That said, her role sucks. I hope she gets to break out into being a lusty vampire or something as the series moves along. Right now, she’s a whiney baby and I hate that character. I will give big points for the measles spiel to the anti-vaxxer. It was appropriate to the plot, a parallel of mothers who think they’ve done right by their sons and yet in the end, failed them. This also echoes Iris' plot line as well as she tries to be close to her dead junkie son.

Finn Wittrock’s casting is disappointing. I’m sure it’s not much of a stretch for him to play a coked up pretty boy model turned vampire sex toy. Of course, there’s hope that he’ll reveal he’s actually an evil master manipulator from another vampire nest or something else trying to infiltrate the Cortez, but I doubt it.  He did a great job in Freak Show and should have a more complex character to play. Well, maybe he will be revealed to be something completely different.  You never know with American Horror Story. In the meantime, I’m not complaining one bit about all those sex scenes.

I don’t like the crying heroin chain-smoking junkie Nancy Spungen ghost. Yes I get she’s the addiction ghost, she likes to watch them die, she’s always sad so she cries and moans, she lures other addicts to their deaths. I get it all, but I don’t like her character. Perhaps it’s how Sara Paulson plays her or the direction or the script, I’m not sure. I don't like how she smokes, it doesn't feel real. Too much smoking that is smashing us on the head with the addictions theme. She gets on my nerves and I hope she gets more monstrous and less weepy as the series goes on. The only truly "horror" part of the show was when she scared Scarlet but otherwise, she just cries and smokes. Of course, there always has to be a weepy ghost in a haunted house so her character is not likely to change.

I feel bogged down with the heavy handed addictions references. Addictions to drugs, booze, sex, blood, murder, cleaning, video games, smoking, and more are like hammers to the head sometimes in these first two episodes. 

At any rate, overall I'm enjoying Hotel and I'm excited to see what's going to happen next! 

Musings Triggered by the Bill Cosby Situation

The other night I watched the 20/20 interview with 27 of the 53 women who have accused Bill Cosby of compromising their naivete in some form or other over the past many decades.

Like most of you, I was sceptical but did have an eyebrow raised when these stories first came to light so many years ago. I’ve spent my life in the arts, some in the performing arts for that matter, and there are many whispers about these types of incidences by specific individuals who feed their dark desires on the innocent.

This was more so in my youth but certainly the abuse of power is still rampant every where. When I watched many of these women recall their stories or watched their reactions to the others’ stories, I was catapulted back to the seventies, much different times for sure.

There were stories, I saw stories, I was part of stories myself, of women, girls being molested, groped, raped, drugged, and more. Back in those days, as is often mentioned, women remained quiet. Sometimes they didn’t even tell their friends about incidents and they certainly didn’t tell their parents. Sometimes they thought the incidents were a good thing and perhaps it may have been for a while, but in the end, the woman in the submissive power position had a broken heart and likely even what we know now as post-traumatic stress disorder.  But people rarely said a word outside of the gossip. There was no point. Who would anyone tell? Who would believe where the truth lay? Two or three sides to every story and all that.

Gaslighting

Gaslighting is insidious. It happens slowly and often by a charming and captivating person. A teacher, a director, an actor, an author, a baseball player, a lawyer...it doesn’t matter the walk of life. What matters is that unless it happens to you, it’s hard to understand how a person can become hypnotised and not see a situation clearly for what it is until she has been away from it long enough to assess it.

Most of these women were teenagers when they were allegedly seduced by Cosby. They were star-struck no matter how tough they try to sound, they were eager to please, they were beautiful, they were compassionate and pliable. They remind me of a couple of girls who had been rumoured to be involved with their high school teachers oh so long ago. At my age, I see the situation much differently than I did when I was still young, inexperienced, and naive. In most of the cases I heard about, the teachers in question weren’t much older than the student. They were early twenties and the students were seventeen or eighteen. So it wasn’t like a forty year old with a sixteen year old or anything like that. Even so, that would be considered a criminal offence in these modern times.

Back then, it would have been more of a scandal had these ideas proven true or been discovered by more than a couple of high schools of teen girls with a love for gossip. None of the stories involved drugs or rape, just inappropriate power abuse perhaps, or maybe a natural sexual attraction.

The Cosby stories make me sick because he allegedly drugged, raped, and gaslighted some of these women in various combinations. I know these scenes, it was how it was for so long for women for years. I understand why these women didn’t come forward. I totally get their finding courage in a united solidarity against their alleged abuser. I applaud this situation coming to light once and for all.

Why Don’t Women Come Forward?

Because we live in a society where we “bring it all on ourselves” in the eyes of those who are supposed to help us. Society wants women to look a certain way and when she does, she’s supposed to put out one way or another. If she needs to be bribed with drugs to get there, so be it. If she needs to be slipped some drugs to put her in the mood, well, why the hell not? After all, she’s there, alone with the dude. She must know what he wants. And why wouldn’t she want to give it.? He’s Bill fucking Cosby. And Bill, being an arrogant psychopath, hurries the process of her thinking that perhaps she’ll proceed from flirting to wham bang thank you ma’am by slipping her a mickey and having his way with her. Then while she’s still in a state of trauma, he continues to seduce her again, stroking her fragile memory to soothe away what really happened and implanting false memories so that another opportunity can present itself. Or he’ll angrily discard her, but not before spinning her head so fast that she questions her own sanity. Bill Cosby or not, the woman chose to be alone with the man, and no doubt had dressed up for the occasion, and so her presence there implies consent in the eyes of  way too many segments of public opinion.

Of course, being present with a man does not imply consent to anything. It doesn’t matter why she is there at all. It doesn’t matter why she didn’t leave if she didn’t feel comfortable. What matters is that something bad happened and it wasn’t her fault.

Why Don’t People Listen?

• If a woman has big breasts, she’s asking for it.
• If a woman is alone with a man, she’s asking for it.
• If a woman goes to a man’s apartment and is alone with him, she’s asking for it.
• If a woman accepts a drink from a man, she’s asking for it.
• If a woman accepts a joint from a man, she’s asking for it.
• If a woman accepts coke from a man, she’s asking for it.
• A woman asks a man out for coffee, she’s asking for it.
• A woman asks a man out for drinks, she’s asking for it.
• A woman invites a man for a home cooked meal, she’s asking for it.
• A woman goes to man’s studio for private coaching lessons, she’s asking for it.
• A woman can’t afford the full price of a service and wants to make a payment plan, she’s asking for it.
• A woman accepts gifts and dinners from a man, she's asking for it.
• A woman pays for gifts and dinners for a man, she's asking for it.
• A woman wears revealing clothes, she's asking for it.
• A woman wears tight clothes, she's asking for it.

You get the idea.

Last night I was walking home from the bus stop towards my apartment. It’s a few blocks and a rough part of town. I don’t go out after dark unless I have somewhere specific to go. There was a man on the side-walk and a couple in a car. I walked towards them on the side-walk. I saw the man look at me, and I felt vulnerable. I stood taller, and looked him in the eye. He lowered his gaze and slunk from the car into the doorway. Since I’ve lived in the hood for five years, we all somewhat know each other by sight. I sensed he knew I felt threatened cos he was a man at one in the morning. He had seen me eyeing crossing the street, as I had to anyway at some point. But he stepped back, sensing how i felt uncomfortable and it made me feel better as I clutched the keys between my fingers, and wiggled my steel coated toes in my Doc Martens.

I’ve had a multitude of waitress jobs. One place I lasted at three weeks because the manager was always grabbing my boobs “occidentally.” I complained to the head waitress, a much older crusty lady,  after I had quit and she laughed and said “who do you think anyone would believe, you or the manager? Just come in for your last pay check and be done with him.”

Women are vulnerable everywhere.

Creepy Cosby

For what it’s worth, I often found Cosby creepy. I always wanted to like the Fat Albert Show when I was a little kid, but the dude in the hat with no face just creeped me too much to watch it. When I was a young adult, The Cosby Show was the big hit everyone in the universe watched and enjoyed. I watched it on nights I wasn’t working or rehearsing or whatever. I never liked him. I found his mugging offensive, and his smirk lecherous. Looking back, I get the chills. I never understand why they chose him to be the Jell-O Tree Man. I did enjoy listening to his stand-up comedy on the radio. Most of his jokes made me laugh back in the days before Andrew Dice Clay and raunchy comedy took root. But looking at the man always rubbed me wrong. Now I know why.

I don’t know what is going to happen with this case. I’m not sure I even know what I want to happen with the case. All of the ladies incidents but one aren’t eligible for any kind of case but one just might be proceeding and we’ll see where that goes.

October Events

On October 3, I'll be attending Eeriecon for one day. This is in Buffalo.

October 8 6:30  Brentwood Library
I'll be presenting So You Want to Be a Horror Writer?

October 15 6:30 Merrill Library
Horror Writers Association Ontario Chapter will give a presentation on horror writing.

October 17 and 18 Horror-Rama
You'll find me at the HWA ONT booth both days. I'm also on a panel about Stephen King with Mick Garris.

October 22 -25  Stanley Hotel
I'm hoping to attend the horror writers retreat in Colorado! I'm still looking for some side projects to help me achieve this goal!

Over the past month, I had a few adventures.

I was insanely busy at Fan Expo. I had a tarot reading booth in the Horror section. I was on five panels and organized six. They all went very well I thought.

I wasn't sure what to expect with my personal panels but I had magnificent turnouts for both my Ghost Hunting panel and the Tarot101 panel. I let some people share ghost stories at the end of the Ghost Hunting panel. There were some pretty creepy ones! People loved touching the Scorching Ball at my Tarot101 panel even though it was pretty cold that day because of the air-conditioning. But I'm sure I captured enough souls to propel me forward for my next adventures!

"What Scares You?" HWA ONT panel moderated by Richard S. Todd with panelists Sèphera Girón, Nancy Kilpatrick, Suzanne Church, Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, and Brian Clement.

 Ariana/Sèphera and Julianne Snow in front of Ariana's tent.

Ariana was swamped with readings for four days! It was great fun!

Author Matt Patterson came by to see Ariana. 

 Greg Lamberson was autographing at the Medallion Booth!

Tonya Liburd is a happy host at the HWA ONT booth! 

"So You Want to Be a Horror Writer?" HWA ONT panel hosted by Richard, with Sèphera, Suzanne, Lou Rera, Nancy Kilpatrick, and Stephanie Bedwell-Grimes.

 Bill Snider and Suzanne Church welcome people to the HWA ONT booth.

The Sunday morning corset panel! 

HWA had a panel opposite my corset panel but I managed to sneak a pic as they were wrapping up.

On a nice day in September, I went to the Toronto Library to see Richard S. Todd give a presentation about self-publishing. He's a great speaker and the audience seemed to enjoy his ideas.

The Editor's Desk

On a lovely evening in September, I attended the nEvermore launch.

 Michael Kelly

 Nancy Kilpatrick

 Nancy, Sephera and Caro Soles

On the last weekend in September, there was a city-wide event called Culture Days. I had my photo taken by the Nuit Blanche exhibitors. It might be on display at Nathan Philip Square during Nuit Blanche but I'll be in Buffalo.

If you need editing or proofreading give me a shout: sephgiron @ rogers.com
My website with rates is here: Scarlett Editing
If you want to check out other copy writing services, I recommend The Editor's Desk
If you want a tarot reading by email or Skype or need a tarot reader/gypsy/fortune teller for your party, my rates are at Tarotpaths