Wicker Man Studios
Nov 07, 2024:
#1: Preakfast, Totoro, Troll Hunter
#2: Guinness
#3: Sayers, Wodehouse
#4: More things above the dining table
#5 Foxes, Errol Flynn
#6 Hoodlum, Chad and Jeremy
#7 Delivery drivers
#8 Mugs
#9 Barb talks about the old song “Up on the Roof”
Links to songs mentioned by Barb:
#10 Kids’ books
By Park Cooper and Barb Lien-Cooper
This post contains SPOILERS for the wonderful spooky films THE CAT PEOPLE and CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE! So you should very probably consider going and watching them first if you haven’t already!
Okay, here we go:
When adults don’t care enough to save a child, what option does the child have but to save herself?
Well, it’s October now– things have been a bit delayed with our first contest, as you already know presuming you read our last newsletter. In case you missed it, the publisher of our story Hungry Ghosts celebrated its 10-year anniversary with a giveaway contest, giving away art and copies of Hungry Ghosts the graphic novel– and some copies of the ebook of the HG prose novel, too, as well as a digital story from Barb’s comic Gun Street Girl.
Park: Okay so what happened was that our internet went out yesterday. Spectrum– and by the way, we’ll be switching to Google Fiber in less than a week because of this, because it’s been happening more and more– Spectrum gave us unstable and then totally missing internet. Well, we played board games a little, but… for some time, I had been planning to re-watch the anime Dai-Guard, because we own the complete show on DVD. Back when Barb and I were in charge of a website called MangaLife, we reviewed things, and so companies would send us manga and DVDs to review. One such company was ADV, based out of Houston, and one such thing they sent us was the anime Dai-Guard. And Dai-Guard is really good in my opinion, but the funny thing is, it’s from the turn of the century (1999, adapted to English in 2002), so when Barb and I watched it, we were comparatively new to all this. Partly because of this: Dai-Guard holds up REALLY well!
Tony Peterson sat in his law office in Bangor, Maine, thinking about how far he’d come in such a short period of time. I went from trying to sue the Collins family for a worker’s injury—and lost— he thought, to moving to Bangor and starting over again with this practice. The clients kept pouring in, as if by magic…
Tony shuddered a bit at the word magic. He did not want to think about Cassandra Collins, and the love spell she’d put on him to bend him to her will…
He was shaken out of his thoughts by a knock on the door. “It’s open,” he called.
Tony’s secretary Effie came in with a package. “Today’s post had something unusual in it,” she said. “There’s no return address, but the name on the package just says ‘Cassandra…’”
Park: Okay so today Barb and I are going to discuss our new binge-watching show that isn’t 1966’s DARK SHADOWS: a little show called FORGED IN FIRE. Forged in Fire seems like a sort of reality show//contest show, and in some ways it is– but not like the others of its kind. Forged in Fire is about blacksmiths making knives and swords. Each round we eliminate one of 4 guys that we start with– last guy gets 10 thousand dollars. …But it’s so much better than that even makes it sound!
Park’s Dream Journal: 6/24/2023
I had a dream last night…
The intersection of two great entertainment franchises: AVENGERS and THE WEST WING.
COLD OPEN: President Bartlett is getting ready to have a big conference– in a building in downtown New York– great minds– scientists, doctors, philosophers, even a thinly-veiled version of whoever former president Jimmy Carter is in the West Wing universe.
The secret service and S.H.I.E.L.D. are begging President Bartlett to get superheroes for security, he says no. They beg and plead with him to compromise– maybe JUST Iron Man? He says no. “If we get Iron Man, all Iron Man’s enemies will decide it’s the perfect time to attack. No, I’ve got a different compromise.”
My husband Park and I spend a lot of time reading, listening to music, and watching movies, old TV shows, etc.
We’re also pretty picky about what we like.
So, I thought I’d make a list of some stuff I (and he) do approve of!
–“The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall” (read by Jonathan Frid)
I’m putting this up at the top of this list front for my fellow Dark Shadows fans! My husband and I are huge fans of the old supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows, and the lead vampire actor, Jonathan Frid, had such a compelling voice! So listening to him read this funny ghost story about how to outwit a ghost that makes rooms and people wet with water, is a minor treasure and a major pleasure for me.
–“The Erl King” by John Connolly
“The Erl King” is a scary poem about a father and son riding on a horse at night. The son starts hearing the voice of the “Erl King,” who is the king of the fairies. The Erl King wants to drag the son away to his fairy kingdom…
There used to be a television show called The Wonderful World of Disney, where a kid could see old Disney cartoons and live action films. We now have Disney Plus, which I have a free subscription to for six months because my husband got a new phone. But I’d trade Disney Plus for a horror channel that had as much old content as Disney has. About the best streaming service for horror is Shudder (we also have a six-month free subscription because of the phone thing), but it doesn’t have a lot of selection of older films, and I’m just not interested in their exclusive content. I do thank them for the quality of the prints of the movies they show. And I also thank them for all of the Giallo films they have. Finally, I thank them for showing my favorite folk horror film, Eyes of Fire. I appreciate Shudder, it just doesn’t have enough stuff that I’m into.
Park: So recently– and funnily enough this had never come up before– you explained to me that the first adult books you read were mystery stories, and then I suppose entire mystery novels, yes? So is that how you got into Dorothy L. Sayers?
Barb: As a child, I hated most children’s books. Only Dorp Dead, The Pushcart War, and The Egypt Game appealed to me. I hated kids’ mysteries where kids foiled jewel robberies, bank heists, found stolen loot, and so on. See, I knew that kids would never do such things, so I couldn’t suspend my disbelief…