Halloween Horror Film Journey, Part 1

Cass has always liked being in on things from their beginnings. He loves my old toys and baseball cards; he loves old comics when they sell the facsimiles; he loves the old black and white Ub Iwerks Disney cartoons, as well as pretty much any old B&W animation; and now he's getting into---by way of our access to Peacock---the Golden Age of Universal Horror.

So far:

We just sort of started. A few things worth mentioning before too much longer: These films are "horror" with the quotation marks, and by that we mean they're okay for the six-year Camille to flit in and out of and not be too bothered; also, none of these four is even 80 minutes long.

In 1931, Universal released Dracula (two versions made at the same time and using the same sets: an English language version and a Spanish version (the Spanish is often considered superior)). It was met with success, and like anything from the studio system: if it hits, they do it again and again.

The rights to Wells' Invisible Man were secured, but James Whale went with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein instead, and it was released that same year, 1931. In 1932 Karloff was back as Imhotep in the Mummy, and they finally got to The Invisible Man by 1933.

Tod Browning, who directed Dracula, made Freaks in 1932, and King Kong was released in 1933, so this does seem like quite a Golden Age.

Anyway, these movies are tame by today's standards, but hold certain charm. There is almost no score at all in Dracula, and very little in Frankenstein. We're so used to manipulative music that when it's absent, it's jarring. The sets and extras are all very exciting, and while I would have picked the side of Dracula over Frankenstein when I was a kid, the Frankenstein movie is the better achievement for me at this age.

I'm not sure I'd ever seen either movie from start to finish. The Mummy is another I hadn't seen, at least not the Boris Karloff version. The Hammer version, sure; and Brendan Frasier, of course. With this one, I was pretty surprised that the museum honcho, played by Edward van Sloan, pretty much figured that Karloff's Ardath Bey was in fact Imhotep, having returned to raise his former lover from the dead.

So...the mummy, Imhotep, wakes when a guy opens a cask that says "Anyone who opens will be cursed and killed." He doesn't kill the guy, just takes the scroll, leaves, and soon is barely more fleshed in and has returned to the museum calling himself Ardath Bey. Bold, baby!

So, I mentioned Edward van Sloan earlier, and not for no reason. He played Dr. Van Helsing in Dracula, he was the mentor doctor in Frankenstein, and he was the (what we'd call) the Egyptologist who kept his wits about himself in the Mummy.

Van Sloan was not in The Invisible Man, but so what. The special effects were awesome. The guy, Dr. Jack Griffin, was great as a serious bad dude, and I don't think enough was made of his having-to-be-nude all the time. What a crazy story---it goes where you'd expect a madman who becomes invisible to go, besides only mentioning the nudity in passing.

We're moving onto the Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), the Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954), and then possible Hitchcock's The Birds (1965). I showed Cass that with Kanopy (a nice streaming service that is free with a library card) we can watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), two silent era classics.

This is low-stakes and fun. Plus, I haven't seen many of these films, or not in a very long time. Psycho, maybe? Monster Squad? Maybe we'll graduate to the slashers before too long...maybe even Kurt Russel's The Thing.

Maybe a double feature, like The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982)...we'll see.

So...it begins with a Y?

In the American League this year, there's a very quiet chase for the Triple Crown occurring. That player got my attention and rekindled a list I had working in my head over the years.

The first point where I noticed this, a decade ago, caused me to look dive into the info, and some sense became apparent.

Check out this list of names:

• Yasiel Puig
• Yoenis Cespedes
• Yasmani Grandal
• Yordan Alvarez

What do they all have in common?

I mean, jeeze. I see a lot of names, and rarely have I seen one like these. Besides all of their first names begin, oddly, with the letter Y, they are all Cuban baseball players.

And I thought: What's up with Cubanos and Y-names?

Well, turns out, after the Commie revolution, when the US spurned helping the Caribbean nation, the Soviet Union came through with aid. The friendly nature of the Soviet government lead to a friendly view of Russian, eh, stuff. And Y-names are something that occur naturally far more in Russia than here. Like, a couple of big boys here, the first human in space and an actor, the King himself:

• Yuri Gregaran
• Yul Brenner

I did once have a manager who's name was Yurii, but he wasn't Cuban as far as I know. Maybe his folks?

Yordan Alvarez plays for the Houston Astros right now, and leads the league in batting average, is second in homers (only two off the lead), and second in RBIs (only four off the lead). Triple Crowns are quite rare, with the last one being captured in 2013 by Miguel Cabrera, and then the most previous one was Yastremski in the '60s. Quite the year in baseball, and maybe the last one for a while. Fingers crossed the lockout doesn't obliterate the upcoming season.

Auditory Illusions

We have a big ass fan in our bedroom, and by that I mean something like this (not this brand) and not an actual Big Ass Fan:

In the summer months (and often later) we bring it out of the depths of storage to put it on the dresser and aim at the bed, even when we have our AC blasting the cold air enough to make the inside of the apartment pleasant. 

While our fan is as loud as a small airplane, I can't say the effect is mind-blowing in terms of cooling us. It's like a tepid breeze, maybe. Lotsa bluster, but tiny effect.

Anyway, if I finish brushing my teeth and shaving and other bedtime ritual activities before Corrie and get into bed with this thing on, I lay my head on my pillow and wait. Usually my left ear will be down on the pillow, and during this time my brain tries to work with the blaring sound of this fan. 

Sometimes it will sound like a sprinkler is going, often of the type Ron uses at the Farm. Sometimes it will sound like Corrie's using her electric toothbrush, even though I was there next to her as we both used our toothbrushes at the same time for the pre-programmed two minutes. (On a side note: until I got an electric toothbrush, I'm not sure I ever brushed my teeth long enough.) Sometimes my brain tells me that the faucet is still on.

Every time I experience this phenomena, I've found that once I sit up and let both ears hear, whatever my brain was telling me it was hearing instantly disappears, and the roaring drone of the big ass fan surrounds my skull. 

And even though I know that my brain is just trying to work out the auditory information and put it into terms that it, and I, can understand, the illusion is something I oddly enjoy.

Somewhere my Youtube algorithm had a video that I actually watched, and I was thinking about it in terms of my auditory illusion with our fan. Now, just, follow me here...there's a scene in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey towards the end where we see the results of the Trojan Horse scam, and Odysseus and the guys sneak out of the horse, quietly kill a few guards and work their way to, and then open, the gate, letting in the rest if the Achaens (assembled Greek armies).

The scene has a pulsating percussion beat that keeps you keyed up, getting tenser by the second, until you find yourself white-knuckling the (uncomfortable) chair in the theater. (Side note #2: why were the chairs in our DTLA IMAX theater far shittier than the ones at our local DTLB theater?)

The video I watched that glommed onto this idea of auditory illusions is about the illusion that the film's composer Ludwig Goransson devised that sounds like an infinitely increasing tempo. It sounds like it amps up infinitely while remaining able to both be heard by human ears and played by human musicians.

If that sounds like something up your alley, a discussion of how that works, with the explainer trying to do his best to replicate something similar in his studio, then just click this link, baby: The Impossible Rhythm Illusion from The Odyssey.

The one who hates out fan the most, unsurprisingly, is Picasso. Sorry, bud.

How much do personalized license plates cost?

I mean...maybe the joke is worth it?

Good day, to you, good citizen, party on!