Kate Racculia » Author

Happy Halloween, everyone!  (And not to be overly pleased with myself, but my last blog post was only a week ago.  Holla!)

Every year I glut myself on scary movies: two years ago, it was all ’70s psychological psych-outs (DePalma, The Omen, The Exorcist) , then it was ’80s slashers and dream-stalkers (Mike Myers, Nightmare on Elm Street), and this year, sort of by accident, I’ve found myself watching gimmicky camp and comedy—Rocky Horror, Shaun of the Dead, and a marathon of Vincent Price vehicles, including Masque of the Red Death (mostly meh, though it does star onetime McCartney honey Jane Asher); House of Wax (which I’m actually watching right at this moment); and The Tingler, which is PHENOMENAL, in an evil bug puppet sort of way.

Tingler shown actual size.

I watch horror movies the way other people watch rom coms—to me they’re like meatloaf and mashed potatoes, an oversized sweater and thick socks.  I didn’t always love horror movies; Thriller scared the holy hell out of me at a very young age, and it wasn’t until I was in my late teens that I even thought to consider “watching scary movies” and “fun!” weren’t mutually exclusive concepts.  But they ARE fun, and very comforting in their formulaic way: you know who’s going to die (anyone obnoxious and peripheral is toast); you know who’s going to live (plucky young ladies are golden); and you know, right around the hour and a half mark, shit’s gonna get real, people who’re gonna die, die, and people who’re gonna live, survive.  And along the way, especially in older horror movies, there are all kinds of funky/charming/bloody awesome practical special effects, none more spectacular than the infamous Omen plate glass decapitation.

I’m not sure what my cinematic bloodlust says about me as a person, if anything.  But I do know that it’s a rare and lovely thing when a scary movie legitimately scares me, and the 2010 Actually Freaked Me Out A Little Award goes to The Changeling, starring George C. Scott as a grieving composer with one pissed off poltergeist for a roommate.  A primo example of accomplishing more with less, it’s a modern (well, c. 1980) haunted house movie with a fantastic first hour—as the plot becomes more complicated and less subtle, it loses a little something, but it’s still very well done and creepy as all get out.  The season’s nearly behind us (or will be, in about four hours EST), but it’s always a good time for meatloaf, mashed potatoes, restless spirits and severed heads.

Oh boy is this blog post overdue.  I know because a) the last post I wrote referenced summer vacation, and the trees have been prime for peeping for many many weeks now, and b) the first thing my former roommate’s mother said when she saw me recently was “Kate, you have to post on your blog!”

So hi, everyone!  I hope the past two months have treated you well.  They’ve been busy, great months for me, full of visits with friends and family, a wedding (congrats, Lucy and Shane!), a new job, a new apartment, and a new (to me) car.  The car is pretty much blowing my mind, as I haven’t had one at my regular disposal since I came to Boston seven years ago; when I went to the grocery store last week, I bought a gallon of milk, a gallon of juice and a pumpkin, ALL AT THE SAME TIME.  I haven’t done that since 2003.  Actually, I probably haven’t done that ever.

Other notable things that have happened since I last posted on this blog:

1) DUDE.  This Must Be the Place was reviewed in the NY Times Sunday Book Review.  That was pretty [expletive] rad!

2) The fourth season of Mad Men got super awesome, stayed super awesome, and ended super awesome.  Mad Men is one of my favorite shows—yes, I’m comfortable now appending that with “of all time”, right up there with X-Files, Freaks and Geeks, Twin Peaks, and Buffy—not only because it’s insanely stylish and beautifully crafted (though it is), but because it’s so complex and rewarding as a character study.  I could say more, but to do so would be spoilertastic and I know of at least one reader who has explicitly requested she not be spoiled, and I…might have a history of doing so.  I should have been saying more all along this season, but I’ll just leave you with this picture of Peggy, from The Greatest Episode of All Time.  (I may have named my car Peggy the Phantom, half in honor of Ms. Olson).I’d like to think that, had I been working in an ad firm in 1960s Manhattan, Peggy and I would have been tight.  Or I would have *been* Peggy.  Though I don’t think I could have ever pulled off that hat.

3) I’ve listened to this song no fewer than 8 kabillion times.  To continue with the Mad Men theme, I imagine this is the music video Don Draper would make if he had a beard and a voice like Lou Reed.  And was a nerd.  So: not Don Draper.

4) Did I mention I moved?  I moved!  And the new digs are already feeling like home.

5) More happened, but if I’ve learned anything on my sojourn through the valley of the shadow of No Blog Posts, it’s this: save some stories for later.