Laurie Carroll-Kuna's Blog

My first thought when I agreed to join Nancy Gideon’s Haunted Open  House was that, in keeping with the season, I’d discuss horror movies. However, I HATE those movies. They freak me out and, unlike many of my friends, I in no way enjoy “getting a good scare.” Reading the daily newspaper or watching political advertisements on television is enough scare for me.

That being said, I’d love a chance to remake a few ghost/Halloween/horror/slasher films I’ve consciously avoided so I’d actually enjoy watching them. (Full Disclosure: Just before starting my teaching career, I helped my first volleyball team do a spoof of the original Halloween called Hanukkah. The main character, a troubled Jewish boy, killed people with a menorah. Just to be clear, the player who came up with the idea is in fact Jewish. I pretty much just provided some camerawork and my ꞌ65 Plymouth Satellite as the getaway car.)

So, having already remade the first of the Halloween genre, I’m going to try my hand at the original slasher-film—The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Whose chainsaw fires up the very first time the cord is pulled? Or never runs out of gas? Or never jams, particularly when cutting through all that bone and gristle? Maybe a professional lumberjack’s. But a run-of-the-mill crazed killer’s? I don’t think so.

To me, it’d be far more challenging for the murderer—not to mention entertaining for both audience and intended victims—if the chainsaw was electric and the power cord only 100 feet long. Dialogue would go something like this:

Evil Killer: Time to die! [He brandishes the chainsaw.]

Hapless Victim: [cringing in fear] Oh! My! GOD!

Plucky Heroine: [from across the street] Run, you idiot! His cord won’t reach all the way over here to my house.

Evil Killer: Come back here! Come back . . . [He yanks the plug from the outlet.] @#!! I KNEW shoulda gotten a battery operated saw.

Fun, huh? And much more entertaining than pointless gore, although some would argue that pointless gore perpetrated on ridiculously stupid victims is justified. However, as this is my blog and I disagree with that last sentiment, it will receive no more attention.

Moving on from slasher films, let’s turn to monster movies. OOOOOO, scary. Frankenstein terrified me, and even watching the original Psycho on my parents’ 15-inch black-and-white TV for WNEM’s Saturday Matinee — I was scared spitless. As a high school senior, saw the silent Phantom of the Opera—accompanied by a live piano player, no less, just like back in the day—and got a serious case of the creeps.

But what if the hideous nature of these films was due to a particular fabric rather than some other factor? And what if the fabric itself refused to die, instead of the psycho killer, monster, or giant rodent? Wouldn’t this reduce the spookiness? And if that material was polyester, wouldn’t that make all the horror elements ridiculous? Well, since as my title says, you just can’t kill that stuff, we’re going with polyester.

Picture it now: The Frankenstein monster is terrorizing the local peasantry who, despite stabbing at him with pitchforks and various other death-dealing hand-held farm implements, can’t wound him through his clothing. (Incidentally, polyester is the only bargain material Dr. Frankenstein could get in large enough quantities to cover the monster’s bulk.)

As is their wont, the townspeople hold a town meeting. A tailor who is in fact a refugee from Fiddler on the Roof comes up with a plan . . .

Tailor: I’ve heard of this cloth. An entire generation of Americans was forced to wear it in the 60s, thus setting off years of turmoil, civil unrest, and body-odor problems.

Mayor: This cloth must be magic! We’re helpless against it.

Constable: Indeed. We can’t so much as penetrate the monster’s clothes. We’re doomed.

[Grumblings of agreement and despair are heard in the background among the assembled townspeople. There is an aura of fear among them.]

Tailor: Perhaps we’re going about this all wrong. Perhaps we need to look for a different way to circumvent the polyester.

Curmudgeonly Old Townswoman: [sitting by the fire, smoking a corncob pipe] Why don’t we just set its damn pants on fire? That monster guy will go up like a Roman candle.

Tailor: Or better yet, a group of our bravest, strongest men could corner it somewhere and burn its clothes with torches.

Curmudgeonly Old Townswoman: Great idea, Genius.

.  .  . And so it goes. Although I’m sure many other scary movies could be improved by using polyester, a lack of space here forces me to leave it to my readers’ imaginations to develop more suggestions.

I must say a sincere thanks to Deb Dixon for not only giving me the title for this piece, but tangentially the idea as well. I’d sent her a book about quilts, and in the ensuing emails discussing it, I said my mother had cut thousands of polyester squares and used them to make quilts for every family member. Mom backed each colorful top with an appropriately sized bed sheet, resulting in comforters that have lasted for years virtually without noticeable wear. Debbie’s response was, “Polyester. You just can’t kill that stuff.”

And from that sage observation came this riff on making scary movies the way they should be made. As the song says, “I Get by With a Little Help from my Friends.”

I’ll be handing out a copy of 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories, so the giveaway is for U.S. only – Good luck!

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Let’s see what everyone else is giving out!

In my current work in progress, Strange Magic, the heroine, Medusa Morelock, tells her daughter that she’s decided to start her own antisocial network. Titled Get Out of My Facebook, she’ll be the only member. No one will be allowed to “friend” her because she doesn’t care about what others are eating, the workings of their intestinal tracts, or whether their toddlers hit (or missed) the potty-training stool. Because Medusa’s a witch who tolerates human beings but doesn’t really like dealing with them, this idea is totally in character for her.

Of course, I’m solely responsible for my characters’ quirky traits, so it should come as no surprise that Medusa’s attitude about social networking is eerily similar to my own. In fact, last summer with friends who are FB aficionados, I declared my plans to launch “Get Out of My Facebook.” One promptly pulled out her smart phone and posted my idea to her page. Then she took a picture of our group with said phone and posted that as well.

Because I’m a bit of a Luddite, that made my head hurt. I say a bit of one because true Luddites oppose technological change, and while I’ll never be the first with the newest gadget, upgrade, or cutting-edge technology, I at least have old gadgets, outdated upgrades, and dull-edge technology. My nephew and his wife (both techies of the highest order) felt so awful that I’d used a film camera—albeit a Nikon 35mm SLR—at their wedding they gave me their oldest, smallest digital camera for my birthday. Then last summer I went crazy and bought a used Canon D-SLR. I’m still dizzy from that huge leap forward into the 21st century.

Admittedly, FB and other forms of social networking have their uses — especially for connecting with long-lost friends and relatives, promoting books, and keeping in touch with like-minded people, such as other writers and, most importantly, readers. But just like Medusa, I have little tolerance for people who constantly post mundane details of their lives. We all have to eat, sleep, and perform other bodily functions. At the risk of sounding, well, antisocial, you are not unique in those areas. Please feel free NOT to share.

Unlike Medusa, I’m not telepathic, so my methods of communication are all the “normal” ones.

Besides my annual holiday letter, which I have to write as soon as I’m done with this blog, I really prefer communicating via telephone. That being said, there’s a reason why I have Caller ID. I can ignore all numbers I don’t recognize (and some that I do) and let the phone ring until voice mail kicks in, the robo-call ends, or the caller hangs up. If that reflects badly on my character, consider this: Writing is incredibly time-consuming. If writing time doesn’t take priority and things like social networking eat up that time, my progress stalls.

And let’s talk about texting. Several years ago when a friend said I needed to learn to text, I replied, “No, I don’t.” I own a TracFone solely to make calls when I’m away from home. I’ve sent one text in 10 years, and that was two weeks ago. I had to email my “textee” to see if the message got through. The point is my phone is for speaking to people, not sending them obscure abbreviated messages. That goes against every English-teacher instinct in my body, and if that makes me a dinosaur, so be it.

In the interest of preserving real language and promoting public safety, I’ve considered offering my services to the local police as a purse snatcher. This is how it would work: I’d go to a mall, grab the purse or merchandise of every shopper texting while carrying packages, and then promptly turn my contraband over to Security. Then I’d leave them to lecture the “victims” on why it’s dangerous to be distracted in public places. Hopefully the security people would admonish these idiots with my sister’s pet phrase for when her children did something foolish —“Did you learn anything?”

Years ago, the comedian Gallagher proposed identifying reckless drivers by using rubber darts with sticky notes attached. When drivers did stupid stuff, witnesses would shoot a dart at that person’s car. At the end of the day, the driver with the most stickies on his/her car would get a ticket. Of course, with road rage what it is today, singling out reckless drivers could get you killed, but I think it might work with reckless/clueless pedestrians. Like the mall texters, every time someone does something stupid with a cell phone, they should be shot with a sticky-note dart. At the end of the day, whoever is wearing the most stickies should have to write—by hand, in cursive—letters to every English teacher they ever had apologizing for totally slaughtering the English language.

How’s that for anti-social Luddite thinking? LOL