1,000 Words

From here.

Wendigo

The girlfriend and I are about to sit down to the 2001 Larry Fessenden film, Wendigo.

 Not this particular Wendigo, though this one is the first thing I think of when I hear the word.

We've been on a slow Fessenden kick since having discovered his 1996 vampire film Habit a few months ago, which I ended up liking a lot. It was thoughtfully paced, had believable characters, and was set against an unmistakable and atmospheric 1990s New York City backdrop. It also had a very well-played "is she or isn't she an actual vampire?" angle that brought George Romero's Martin immediately to mind.

Wendigo has gotten some great reviews, so we're looking forward to it.

Bonus: Here's a great Onion A.V. Club interview with L.F.

"Trust me, I've been doing it for nine years."

I chuckled at this exchange from a Reddit thread on how to keep yourself amused on a 13-hour flight:

Happy Dependence Day!

So...

"And now, the spider gets to give the bug a biiiiiig sting!"

This month's Film Club selection at Final Girl is the insane Jack Hill "classic," Spider Baby. As is mentioned in her update, you can get it via Netflix instant-watch, or even watch it fo' free right here, if you dare. Me and the girlfriend had the incredible good fortune to see this one on the big screen, at part of last season's Summer Camp Cinema Pay-to-Get-Out Horror Marathon, at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington.

Watching this flick in a dark, sweaty theater full of likewise sleep-deprived, overly-caffeinated movie fanatics was an unforgettable experience. It was as much an exercise in hilarious audience participation as it was a primal fight to maintain basic sanity. Absurdly fun.

Tonight on Syfy: Dinoshark

9pm Eastern! Roger Corman presents: Dinoshark!

Look at this thing. It's like a tyrannosaurus head stuck onto a shark body.

How can you even think about watching anything else?

Apparently Corman himself has a cameo as a marine biologist.

I still think the name "Syfy" looks like the hip new re-branding of The Syphilis Channel.

NY Salt Ban?

"Chefs call proposed New York salt ban 'absurd.'"

Well, yeah.

Because it is.

Chopped@Home

Inspired by this post over at the very enlightening (and frequently hilarious) NYC food blog F the Chef, I challenged my girlfriend to a cooking competition a few weekends ago. The idea was that we'd go to the supermarket and each pick out three or four ingredients that the other one would have to use to create a dish. It was to be a contest fraught with intrigue and peril. How did we fare? (Watch out, don't miss the food pun, there.)

"So, how do you make a picture called Sharktopus?"

Roger Corman explains:

I started with this: The first one was DinoCroc and then DinoShark. And you could assume that there was a prehistoric crocodile and prehistoric sharks, so maybe there could have been dinocrocs and dinosharks. But there never was... a half-shark, half-octopus doesn't exist. So I had to come up with some way to justify this. My theory of this type of picture is, the audience wants to see it, based on the title, or they wouldn't turn on the channel.

Damn straight, I want to see Sharktopus.

Prune Whip... Jellied Chicken... Hot Dog Salad Dressing...

'Nuff said.

I've got a crazy-long post in the works, detailing the adventure my girlfriend and I had a few weekends ago playing our own version of Chopped: the Home Game, but in the meantime, I had to link to this incredible collection of...

Awful Recipes from the Past!

Gloriously disgusting.