Because the show must go on.

This week’s Thursday Morning Quarterback comics review roundtable sees me sound off on The Immortal Iron Fist, Captain America, 52, American Virgin, Ultimate Power, What If? Featuring Wolverine: Enemy of the State, and X-Men. If I’d been more on the ball, Acme Novelty Library #17 could have gotten in there. Blame me, Chris Ware.

And from the sublime to the ridiculous: Check out “Bad Guys Wear Pink,” an original art piece I edited featuring comicdom’s nastiest pink-hued villains. If you’ve ever wanted to see Parasite eat Barbie dolls or wondered how Sinestro feels about the recording artist behind “Get This Party Started,” now’s your chance…

Sasquatch, Hedorah, Frankenstein–shades of all these famous monsters can be found in this pretty enthralling clip for Menomena’s “Cough Coughing,” directed by Jonnie Ross. Just when you think you know where this little creature-feature music video is going, it goes someplace else.

A hi-res version can be found here.

Now here’s a great horror video. It’s for the song “Sheena Is a Parasite” by UK outfit the Horrors (love the name, love the look, pretty sweet song too), and it’s directed by Chris Cunningham, whom horror fans will likely remember for his insanely harrowing clip for Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy,” or a longer collaboration with Aphex called “Rubber Johnny.” I’ve been putting off watching this thing for a month or so. Boy, do I regret it.

Damn.

I have no dog in this race, but Jason Adams wrote the following in his latest post in praise of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, and it’s a doozy:

Yes, Weisz’ character is written in the well-worn shorthand of The Perfect Gal, with big loving doe-eyes and a wicked laugh, who once ran ahead in a sexy dress and who now needs to be rescued.

“Who once ran ahead in a sexy dress”–pow.

Hi, I’m Sean Collins. Have we met?

Stacie Ponder on Candyman

My swell co-worker Rick Marshall’s five favorite scary movies

Mersidotes’s five favorite scary movies (the inspiration for Rick’s list)

Jason Adams whups on Yahoo! UK’s top ten horror movie list

Rich Juziak on Saw III, Chaos and “torture porn” horror films

An underwater photo from Loch Ness that diddled my sea-monster skittle

Idaho State University’s Professor Jeffrey Meldrum, Sasquatchologist and faculty pariah

Eve Tushnet wants you to read Love & Rockets

Eve Tushnet still wants you to read Love & Rockets

The University of Arizona Marching Band plays Radiohead so well that it literally made me cry

I’ve been drinking the Smuttynose Brewing Company’s Pumpkin Ale a lot lately

Nostromo Design makes some great horror t-shirts

The Symphony of Exploding Heads

I have now ordered Season One of Battlestar Galactica on DVD for the third time. The first time, a month went by before the seller informed me they were out of stock and refunded my money. The second time, I received some weird bare-bones version with different packaging and next to no extras. Let’s hope the third time’s the charm. So say we all.

I’ve returned to my seat at Horror Blog Steven’s Horror Roundtable this week, talking about a movie that scared the crap out of me as a kid. Here’s a clue:

Still kinda scares me now, actually.

Feast your eyes, glut your soul on the final Lost TVQB roundtable until, like, Valentine’s Day or something. I’ll miss you, fish biscuits.

Meanwhile, watch me jabber on about Dr. Strange: The Oath, Batman, Stormwatch: Post Human Division, 52, Gen 13, Punisher MAX, Superman, Tales of the Unexpected, and Ultimate X-Men in this week’s Thursday Morning Quarterback comic-book roundtable.

Lame

Lame

Lame

Gawker in particular should be ashamed of itself. This meme was cheesy and overplayed by Friday evening.

1) I’ve actually seen more people saying/writing “you’re gonna be sick of Borat catchphrases by next Tuesday” than I’ve seen saying/writing Borat catchphrases themselves.

2) The commentary on VH1’s Top 100 Songs of the ’80s is awfully perfunctory: They didn’t bother to say that “Just Can’t Get Enough” was written by Vince Clarke, who went on to form Yazoo and Erasure; they didn’t bother to say that “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” was a cover, etc. If all you’re going to do is have Godfrey sing the first line in the chorus and have the narrator say “the crowds thinned out in the ’90s, but such-and-such is still going strong,” is it even worth doing?

My day-job adventures continue:

Behold, the longest Lost roundtable review EVER.

And hear me sound off on Superman Confidential, 52, Justice League of America, Criminal, Ex Machina, The Exterminators, Midnighter, Tales Designed to Thrizzle, and X-Men: Phoenix–Warsong in our Thursday Morning Quarteback comics-review colloquy.

For my uncharacteristically unenthusiastic take on this week’s Lost episode, check out Wizard’s weekly TVQB roundtable.

Last week’s Horror Blog Horror Roundtable saw me waxing nostalgic for my bright college years and the Rocky Horror experiences I had therein.

This week’s Lost TVQB roundtable review is up at the day job, and if I do say so my damn self it’s a hoot, thanks to some particularly candid responses from the participants. I should also have you know that I passed up a chance to go backstage at the Goldfrapp concert in NYC last night so as to dutifully return home and watch this show on my TiVo, that’s how goddamn devoted I am to you people.

Also at the day job: this week’s TMQB comic review roundtable, which sees me mouthing off about the most recent installments of WildCats, 52, Union Jack, The Authority, Civil War: X-Men, The Exterminators, Ghost Rider, Omega Men, Runaways, Ultimate Fantastic Four, and X-Men: First Class.

Have at you!

Over at the day job’s site, we’ve posted our list of the scariest moments in comics, which I edited and helped assemble and write. Go have a look!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you an Indian knockoff of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. I simply cannot begin to describe its sheer awesomeness.

At a couple of points I think he’s saying the same thing that Mola Ram says when he rips the guy’s heart out in Temple of Doom. I guess that means something scary in Hindi?

After receiving a couple of emails from concerned bloggers, I took a look at the Horror Blog Update Page, and man, is it screwed up. It looks as though a large number of blogs listed on the site are not having their updates registered. Unfortunately, I’ve learned over the couple of years that I’ve been maintaining the page that there’s really not a lot that can be done about problems with it–it runs off of blo.gs, which has been a miserable, buggy piece of shit ever since Yahoo took it over. My only advice is to sit tight and hope for the best, unfortunately.

I’ve been sitting on a whole bunch of links for while now. What better day to unleash them on an unsuspecting world than this triskadekaphobiariffic Friday?

Turner Classic Movies now has a late-night programming block (launching tonight!) called TCM Underground, hosted by Rob Zombie and consisting of double-feature line-ups of such quote-unquote classics as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Bride of the Monster. Do check it out. (Hat tip: the day job’s site.)

In movie news that you just might already be aware of, the official trailer for Zack “Dawn of the Dead” Snyder’s adaptation of Frank “Sin City” Miller’s ancient-Greek war epic 300 is up. I love it, but then you’d probably figure that given that it’s a meeting of those two artists, with one of my all-time favorite nine inch nails songs playing in the background.

Speaking of trailers that made me say “holy smokes,” get a load of Tarantino ‘n’ Rodriguez’s Grind House. I guess this one mostly focuses on Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” half of the double feature. Hoo doggie.

Horror-comic hermit Al Columbia has a new website, AlColumbia.com. Much rejoicing in some corners. (Hat tip: Eric Reynolds at Fantagraphics.)

I wish I could remember where I first saw this link, but Full Metal Jacket‘s nightmarish drill sergeant R. Lee Ermey (currently starring in that Texas Chainsaw remake prequel) says that Stanley Kubrick hated his own Eyes Wide Shut because of the work turned in by superstar couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Far be it from me to disagree with Kubrick about Kubrick, but, well, I disagree.

Dark But Shining’s Daniel Laloggia muses on mirrors and Clive Barker’s Candyman.

Taliesin Meets the Vampires is a very good vampire-focused horror blog that, for whatever reason, I only just discovered. Go have a look.

Speaking of things I don’t know how I missed, I-Mockery.com’s Greatest Horror Movie Moments page is a hoot and a half–it’s sort of like a funnier, more in-depth, occasionally schlockier version of RetroCrush’s justifiably famous list.

In a similar vein, Jared von Hindman’s Head Injury Theater is chock full of looooooong tributes to various horror classics, as well as “horror” “classics.” From Clive Barker and The Descent to The Monster Squad and Lifeforce, there are dozens of ways to spend a lazy workday not working around this impressive site. Is there any better thing to do on Friday the 13th?

Got this in my inbox today. Sometimes I love checking my email…

ZOMBIECON 2006

This mass street manifestation is in the tradition of

SantaCon with a Halloween twist:

On Saturday, October 21, Zombiecon will commence in Midtown, with

hundreds of people dressed as brains-hungry zombies terrorizing

innocent tourists, children and the rich as they search for Bloody Marys,

brains, and braaaands. All horror and zombie enthusiasts are invited to

join in on this ghoulish spree of shopping, bar-hopping, and street theatrics.

Spectators will be eaten–all are encouraged to dress and make-up in

their bloody, oozing, putrid, undead best. Any interested zombies MUST

RSVP to zombiecon@gmail.com for secret updates and locations. You can

also check out the website www.zombiecon.com.

The other day my mild-mannered mother informed me that she’d rented the remake of The Hills Have Eyes from her cable’s video on demand service. This isn’t at all the type of movie you’d think she’d go near, but she was sitting around and decided she wanted to watch a scary movie, thought the title sounded good and creepy, rented it and watched it and had a a scary time. (Although she did say that she didn’t know it was going to be that scary. “They ate people!”)

I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy. When was the last time I watched a horror movie just because I was in the mood, just because it’s fun to watch horror movies? Let alone a movie from the current brutal-horror wave! To watch something like Hostel without going back and forth about whether doing so constitues an endorsement, to watch it just because it might be scary without fretting about whether it would be too much (as though I couldn’t just turn off the movie if it were)…