Matthew Cullifer's Blog
November 4, 2017
I welcome the words...
From September 1998 through April 2000, I wrote this rambling chronicle of excess and waste, originally called "Dope Classic" but later christened "Memoirs of a Suicide Bomber." I started, but didn't finish the sequel/prequel--"Confessions of a Domestic Terrorist" in 2005. The final chapter, "Redemption Song" was begun in 2010.
All three novels, incomplete and raw, were lost when my laptop crashed a few years ago. Oddly, I didn't particularly mourn their loss. I wouldn't have wanted my parents to read any of them. They're gone now.
"Dixieland" came in a flash--68,000 words from March to July 2017. It was the first thing I wrote that had a definite start, middle, and end. I had little to do with it. The story came from somewhere else. I was a vessel.
I wrote a short story, "Kudzu," immediately after. It's 4000 words. I'm working on another novel now, "Water Tower." I'm 35,000 words in since August.
The words are flowing freely now. They didn't always. It has brought a peace that has mostly been elusive. An idle mind is the Devil's workshop, they say. In my case, it's a breeding ground for anxiety and stress. I welcome the words...
All three novels, incomplete and raw, were lost when my laptop crashed a few years ago. Oddly, I didn't particularly mourn their loss. I wouldn't have wanted my parents to read any of them. They're gone now.
"Dixieland" came in a flash--68,000 words from March to July 2017. It was the first thing I wrote that had a definite start, middle, and end. I had little to do with it. The story came from somewhere else. I was a vessel.
I wrote a short story, "Kudzu," immediately after. It's 4000 words. I'm working on another novel now, "Water Tower." I'm 35,000 words in since August.
The words are flowing freely now. They didn't always. It has brought a peace that has mostly been elusive. An idle mind is the Devil's workshop, they say. In my case, it's a breeding ground for anxiety and stress. I welcome the words...
October 24, 2017
Of Monsters and Madmen (slasher flicks)
We got cable TV in 1980. I was five years old, and lived in an isolated rural area, but in many ways, that black coaxial cable connected me to the outside world--a world that soon revolved around Star Wars, raunchy comedies like "Porkey's" and "Revenge of the Nerds," and perhaps my favorite--the slasher flicks.
Secretly, we rooted for Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Kreuger, but of course there had to be a sole survivor--the virginal heroine. We can argue that slasher flicks were in fact a morality play, in which those who engaged in sex and abused drugs and alcohol were being punished--or that Michael's butcher knife, Jason's machete, and Freddy's finger knives represented male genitalia--but what fun is that? Thirty five years ago, it was mindless fun that was repeated by a sequel almost annually. We wanted more gore and more inventive kills than the last installment. Little did we know, the trade off was a reduction in quality.
John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) is a classic, and could be considered the "Step Father of the Slasher Flick Genre" behind Hitchcock's 1960 gem, Psycho. The 1981 follow-up, picked up directly where Halloween ended, and despite negative reviews from critics, was satisfying. The body count was higher and there was less suspense than the original, but it's far better than any of the sequels.
On a side note: Halloween III is a creepy film, that might have a better reputation if it was known simply as "The Season of the Witch" instead of having the Halloween moniker attached.
Halloween 4 had its moments, but Michael Myers just didn't look as sleek (cool) as he did in the first two films. Part 5 was awful. Part 6 was worse. Too much time was devoted to building a motive for Michael, when all we wanted was a mindless killer.
The return of Jamie Lee Curtis in 1998 brought hope, but the unfortunate name "H2O" killed the enthusiasm. The franchise should have ended there, but Michael never dies. He returned in the aptly named Resurrection--one of the worst movies ever made.
2007 ushered in the unnecessary Rob Zombie re-make (it wasn't as bad as the dreadful Gus Van Sant Psycho remake though). Again, Zombie tried to humanize Michael--a character we had loved since 1978. In the process, Michael, the person, became wholly unlikable. He's a madman--a killer. The wanton and random display of brutality was endearing, not the backstory.
Don't even get me started on Zombie's sequel that fell apart after the first fifteen minutes.
The Friday the 13th franchise dabbled a little in back story, but it was simple: a mother's revenge followed by a son's. Jason was a killing machine, and it didn't matter who got in the way.
The first four movies were excellent. Part V stunk. Part VI was campy and fun, but the rise of supernatural Jason wrecked the remaining films in the series, including the 2009 remake.
The original Nightmare on Elm Street terrified me as a ten year old. The concept was fresh--here the threat comes when you fall asleep, and sleep is unavoidable. The series could've been gold, but they turned into a comic vehicle driven by one-liners from Freddy. Only part 3 is worth watching.
Perhaps, I'm longing for a simpler time in my own life--when the killer dispatched his victims in 90 minutes and was seemingly vanquished himself at the end....
Secretly, we rooted for Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Kreuger, but of course there had to be a sole survivor--the virginal heroine. We can argue that slasher flicks were in fact a morality play, in which those who engaged in sex and abused drugs and alcohol were being punished--or that Michael's butcher knife, Jason's machete, and Freddy's finger knives represented male genitalia--but what fun is that? Thirty five years ago, it was mindless fun that was repeated by a sequel almost annually. We wanted more gore and more inventive kills than the last installment. Little did we know, the trade off was a reduction in quality.
John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) is a classic, and could be considered the "Step Father of the Slasher Flick Genre" behind Hitchcock's 1960 gem, Psycho. The 1981 follow-up, picked up directly where Halloween ended, and despite negative reviews from critics, was satisfying. The body count was higher and there was less suspense than the original, but it's far better than any of the sequels.
On a side note: Halloween III is a creepy film, that might have a better reputation if it was known simply as "The Season of the Witch" instead of having the Halloween moniker attached.
Halloween 4 had its moments, but Michael Myers just didn't look as sleek (cool) as he did in the first two films. Part 5 was awful. Part 6 was worse. Too much time was devoted to building a motive for Michael, when all we wanted was a mindless killer.
The return of Jamie Lee Curtis in 1998 brought hope, but the unfortunate name "H2O" killed the enthusiasm. The franchise should have ended there, but Michael never dies. He returned in the aptly named Resurrection--one of the worst movies ever made.
2007 ushered in the unnecessary Rob Zombie re-make (it wasn't as bad as the dreadful Gus Van Sant Psycho remake though). Again, Zombie tried to humanize Michael--a character we had loved since 1978. In the process, Michael, the person, became wholly unlikable. He's a madman--a killer. The wanton and random display of brutality was endearing, not the backstory.
Don't even get me started on Zombie's sequel that fell apart after the first fifteen minutes.
The Friday the 13th franchise dabbled a little in back story, but it was simple: a mother's revenge followed by a son's. Jason was a killing machine, and it didn't matter who got in the way.
The first four movies were excellent. Part V stunk. Part VI was campy and fun, but the rise of supernatural Jason wrecked the remaining films in the series, including the 2009 remake.
The original Nightmare on Elm Street terrified me as a ten year old. The concept was fresh--here the threat comes when you fall asleep, and sleep is unavoidable. The series could've been gold, but they turned into a comic vehicle driven by one-liners from Freddy. Only part 3 is worth watching.
Perhaps, I'm longing for a simpler time in my own life--when the killer dispatched his victims in 90 minutes and was seemingly vanquished himself at the end....
October 23, 2017
Boiled Peanuts
They say smell is the strongest sense tied to memory. I believe that fully.
My oldest brother was a gypsy until he discovered the north Georgia mountains in 1995. Before that he'd never stayed in one place for more than a year. Still, every October he would come to my parents house in Cuthbert, Georgia to boil peanuts.
Over thirty years later, the smell of peanuts boiling outside, instantly teleports me to the 1980s. It's a Saturday afternoon. There's a breeze. The weather is cool. Joe Montana is the greatest QB of all time and Ric Flair is the World Heavyweight Champion. Tonight, we'll rent a VCR from the Video Zone and watch scary movies...
My oldest brother was a gypsy until he discovered the north Georgia mountains in 1995. Before that he'd never stayed in one place for more than a year. Still, every October he would come to my parents house in Cuthbert, Georgia to boil peanuts.
Over thirty years later, the smell of peanuts boiling outside, instantly teleports me to the 1980s. It's a Saturday afternoon. There's a breeze. The weather is cool. Joe Montana is the greatest QB of all time and Ric Flair is the World Heavyweight Champion. Tonight, we'll rent a VCR from the Video Zone and watch scary movies...
October 17, 2017
"What he wanted to be when he grew up..."
Dixieland
Growing up, my heroes were teachers, writers, and professional wrestlers. I wanted to become one of the three.
I've dabbled with writing since I was fourteen--horror crap mostly that I'd stolen from Stephen King. Later in high school, I discovered the classics--Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck-- and like any angry, young man with a fascination with words, I dreamed of writing the fabled "Great American Novel." I wrote of things in which I had no experience: foreign wars, heartache, and death. It was rubbish.
Eventually, teenage heartache did come, and I handled it badly. I wallowed in it. Bret Easton Ellis' works entered my life, and he became the new messiah. Drug-addled, self-indulgent characters began to litter what I was attempting to write; they were lost, desperate. That went on for ten years and the words slowly to a trickle.
In the meantime, I became a teacher, a husband, a father, an assistant principal, and later a principal at an elementary school. The only words were academic.
In the spring of 2017, though, the words returned in a flash: "Friday night at the Gavin-Campbell Farm Center is hot as hell." I wasn't sure what it was or where it was going, but over the next three months, the words where there whenever I touched the keyboard. That sentence became "Dixieland," my first completed and coherent novel.
It's not for everyone. It's a niche novel detailing a failing professional wrestling business in south Georgia in the 1980s, but it's more than that. It's the story of fathers and sons, surviving and living. It's a love letter to days gone by, and a conversation that I never got to have with my Dad.
Follow me on Twitter @MatthewCullifer
Growing up, my heroes were teachers, writers, and professional wrestlers. I wanted to become one of the three.
I've dabbled with writing since I was fourteen--horror crap mostly that I'd stolen from Stephen King. Later in high school, I discovered the classics--Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck-- and like any angry, young man with a fascination with words, I dreamed of writing the fabled "Great American Novel." I wrote of things in which I had no experience: foreign wars, heartache, and death. It was rubbish.
Eventually, teenage heartache did come, and I handled it badly. I wallowed in it. Bret Easton Ellis' works entered my life, and he became the new messiah. Drug-addled, self-indulgent characters began to litter what I was attempting to write; they were lost, desperate. That went on for ten years and the words slowly to a trickle.
In the meantime, I became a teacher, a husband, a father, an assistant principal, and later a principal at an elementary school. The only words were academic.
In the spring of 2017, though, the words returned in a flash: "Friday night at the Gavin-Campbell Farm Center is hot as hell." I wasn't sure what it was or where it was going, but over the next three months, the words where there whenever I touched the keyboard. That sentence became "Dixieland," my first completed and coherent novel.
It's not for everyone. It's a niche novel detailing a failing professional wrestling business in south Georgia in the 1980s, but it's more than that. It's the story of fathers and sons, surviving and living. It's a love letter to days gone by, and a conversation that I never got to have with my Dad.
Follow me on Twitter @MatthewCullifer
