HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Have a safe and Happy Halloween, everyone!
The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk’s home for puffer fish and horseshoe crabs gets a sprinkling for the season.
“All Dolled Up” now available in JITTER!
Just in time for Halloween, my short story “All Dolled Up” is now available in Jitter!
So, if you like creepy dolls…even though this one has a Christmas theme…be sure to head on over here to pick up a copy!
If you prefer to read electronically and would like even more content bang for your buck, you can subscribe to Jitter for $20/year. That will give you access to not just Issue #7, but all of them. You can subscribe here.
If you’re curious, here’s the splash page for “All Dolled Up”: https://jitterpress.com/all-dolled-up-by-kristi-petersen-schoonover/
…Oh no! Scary panties…
Halloween may be all about showing off your best costume…but that doesn’t mean the parts of you people don’t see shouldn’t scare up some fun, too!
I was surfing around on Hot Topic and came across this irresistible The Shining hipster panty set: https://www.hottopic.com/product/the-shining-hipster-panty-set/11428991.html Read the rest of this entry
The new HALLOWEEN isn’t terrible
I’m not a professional film critic and I don’t pretend to be, but I figured, since everyone is asking, I’d share a few of my thoughts on the new Halloween.
If you don’t like spoilers and plan to see this movie, you may not want to read further (or, if you want to wait for the Dark Discussions episode, we’re recording it tonight, so it’ll probably be released next week).
Overall, I came out of this movie feeling like Read the rest of this entry
A Watery Halloween Treat!
These are plants at the bottom of a lake, but look closely at the one on the right — it looks like a skeleton clinging to something.
I got a very special treat recently—I95 Rock’s Ethan Carey, who’s probably just about the only other person as obsessed with Candlewood Lake’s creepy legends as I am—cited a blog post of mine on his blog here:
http://i95rock.com/those-that-stayed-behind-beneath-candlewood-lake/ and here: http://i95rock.com/dont-panic-stories-of-a-candlewood-lake-monster-are-simply-urban-legends/
It’s great to know these legends are being shared—it’s what keeps them alive. The original post about all of the legends is here: https://wordpress.com/post/kristipetersenschoonover.com/9576 or where it was originally published at the New England Horror Writers blog here: http://nehw.blogspot.com/2016/08/legends-of-candlewood-lake-guest-blog.html
I have plans, eventually, to put together an entire short story collection based on these urban legends, but at the moment I only have a few pieces. The good news is that the drowned souls legend to which Carey refers does have a short story based on it: it’s called “Rightfully Mine,” and it appeared in Sanitarium Magazine Issue #49—which is out of print, so if you’d like to read it, just send me an email on my Contact page and I’ll send the story straight to your Inbox!
Me (left) and my brother Chuck swimming in Candlewood Lake. This was taken in either 1981 or 1982, so I would’ve been 10 or 11.
My Odyssey with 2001; see it in IMAX through November 11!
I wasn’t born yet when Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey changed the world, but thanks to the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, I was able to experience what it must have been like to be there—and I even got to meet the film’s star, Keir Dullea!
Me, outside the IMAX theater entrance at the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk.
When my housemate, Charles, heard this was coming, he was excited…not that he hadn’t already been to a few showings in New York and elsewhere this year already. But it is a film that had a profound affect on him. He saw it multiple times when it opened in 1968, and he not only has the program that he bought the first time he went to see the film, he has other ephemera as well. And there was also something special about this presentation in particular.
When 2001: A Space Odyssey opened in 1968, it was shown in 70 mm Cinerama. I’m no film history expert, but Cinerama in the late 1960s was shown on a large, curved screen and is considered a lynch pin in the development of the widescreen format we have today (if you’d like to know more about this, visit here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/movies/long-before-imax-the-curious-tale-of-cinerama.html)
As far as I know, the MA’s presentation may be one of the closest anyone will get to experiencing the movie the way it was intended: Read the rest of this entry
DARK DISCUSSIONS enters the DEVIL’S GATE
The Dark Discussions crew enters the Newport Beach Film Festival official selection Devil’s Gate. This interesting piece starts off as one thing and seamlessly evolves into something else. You can watch the trailer for the movie here: https://youtu.be/4Hqs6XzYqog and you can listen to DD episode on Stitcher, Itunes, and here: http://www.darkdiscussions.com/Pages/podcast_345.html.
The banner for DARK DISCUSSIONS episode 345: DEVIL’S GATE. Collage by Philip Perron.
What the hell is Disney Bounding and can it be practical?
Me and Melissa at the Farewell Brunch at The Attic at Disney’s Boardwalk. I’m in my Alice in Wonderland Disney Bound. She made her dress herself!
Let’s face it—we Disney fanatics love to play dress up. Disney Bounding—the art of dressing to suggest your favorite character without copying it directly—hit my radar shortly after, a few years ago, the Disney Parks didn’t want adults going to the parks in costumes that were too close to the “real thing,” which might confuse guests (truth be told, it was probably around way before that, but that’s when I became aware of it).
I’d been to the parks a few times and seen some pretty amazing and creative outfits, but they were mostly pieces that Read the rest of this entry
MS for THE SHADOWS BEHIND has been delivered…and a new project
Margolynn gets an odd item in the mail in “Attempted Delivery.”
The manuscript for my upcoming short story collection, The Shadows Behind, has been delivered to the publisher, Books & Boos Press! The slated release date is April 2019.
This collection will contain some new stories, as well as some out-of-print pieces and reprints from currently available anthologies (if you’ve never picked any of those up, now you’ll be able to get some of them in one place). A few that are potentially included: Read the rest of this entry
IT’S 35 TODAY! Eleven things to appreciate about Jaws 3-D
Jaws 3-D–a movie that most people will tell you is a flaming piece of crap–was the film I fell in love with when I was 12 that basically made me the aquarium volunteer I am today. It inspired me to want to be around fish, and it inspired me to dream big and live in Florida (well, I’m getting to that part, still). So…on July 22, 1983, the film was released in theaters. In celebration of its 35th anniversary, I’m re-running an article I wrote for Jennifer Allis Provost’s MARCH MOVIE MADNESS blog series last year. Enjoy!
♥
The main title sequence for TV and prior DVD releases. Notice it doesn’t say Jaws 3-D. It was changed for these subsequent releases because effective 3D couldn’t be shown in those formats at the time. The restored 3D version, which I own, contains the original title sequence.
1983’s Jaws 3-D—one in a brief spate of super-hyped early ’80s 3D films—is considered the joke of the franchise, even though it was #1 at the box office[1] and got its own prop exhibit at SeaWorld Orlando (then called Sea World of Florida)[2], where it was filmed. There are still, however, some neat things that make 3-D eligible for at least a one-time watch.
The underwater exhibit was cutting-edge technology at the time this movie was made—and this film made fantastic use of preying on people’s fears about what seemed claustrophobic and possibly even not entirely trustworthy.
At the time, underwater attractions were novel, dangerous things.
In 1964, the founders of SeaWorld San Diego (then called just Sea World) abandoned plans for an underwater restaurant because it “wasn’t feasible.”[3] In 1980, the Shark Encounter, an under-the-surface walk-through, was on Sea World of Florida’s maps; in October of 1983—four months after Jaws 3-D’s theatrical release–Epcot’s Living Seas, which featured the aquarium-facing Coral Reef Restaurant, broke ground. While this new technology “wowed,” it also terrified: what happens if you’re in that tunnel and something fails? 3-D not only illustrates this scenario, it illustrates the solution. So while it’s clear that 3-D’s submerged multiplex was inspired by and publicized the real park’s exhibit, it heralded a new age: today, so many major aquariums have time-tested underwater attractions we take them for granted. Read the rest of this entry
