Today is the first day of Fall. Damn it.

When Spring started the temps never got out of the 40s. When Summer started the temps never got out of the 50s and it rained for a month straight. We didn’t get Summer weather until the middle of August.

I was hoping that, if Winter carried into Spring and Spring carried into Summer then Summer would carry into Fall.

No dice. It’s totally Fall weather out there now. Cold in the morning, nice in the afternoon, cold at night.

Crud, I hate when Summer ends.

At least it means Hockey isn’t far away.

When I was in High School a few of my friends were really into horror movies. I wasn’t, but not because I had anything against them. I just hadn’t seen a good one yet. I was more into Sci-Fi. Then one day I found myself over some one else’s house watching Hellraiser II and loving it on a couple of different levels. First, it was scary as all hell (no pun intended). Second, it was a gross out that I thought looked cool instead of just gross (lets rewind to when Julia comes out of the mattress). Third, it was a collection of fantastic one-liners coming from all directions. It was interesting in that the obvious principal monster in what was essentially (at least to me) a monster movie was not really the bad guy. The bad guy was a normal looking guy.

I really liked the movie and not long after Larry and I rented the original Hellraiser. I liked Hellraiser II… I loved Hellraiser. Again, the obvious monster was not the bad guy. He and his monster cohorts were just four demons doing their job (and enjoying it). The real bad guys were a woman and her brother-in-law who had a fling behind the husbands back. It all kinda spiraled downhill from there for the two of them. It was exceptionally gross but not as bad as the sequel. Somehow the gore actually meant something. It wasn’t just splatter for the sake of gross out.

I found out the movie was written and directed by an English guy named Clive Barker who was primarily known as a writer. He had started out writing short stories and then moved on to novels before taking a shot at films. I went to the Tewksbury town library and picked up a novel called Damnation Game. I read it over the course of a few days and was absolutely hooked.

Over the course of the next year or so I read everything I could get my hands on. If I found myself in a library or bookstore the first (and often only) place I went to was the Horror section and the authors whose names began with B. His short stories were unbelievably intense. Dread still sticks in my memory as the best of those. His novels were often hugely imaginative works where the world was transformed into something completely incredible. Weaveworld, Imajica, The Great and Secret Show, and it’s sequel Everville all kept me glued to the page. I devoured them. I couldn’t get enough.

Then he started losing me. He made a couple of movies that weren’t all that great. Candyman was okay but his original story was infinitely better. The same could be said about Lord of Illusions. Neither movie was bad, but neither was all that wonderful either. He published two novels, Galilee and Sacrament that did absolutely nothing for me. He then published a couple of novels that were geared toward children, and a couple of collections of his plays (he wrote plays before turning to short stories). None of it was bad, but none of it was enough to rope me in. After a few years he wrote a novel called Cold Heart Canyon that was pretty good, but then he seemed to stop publishing new fiction.

He moved on, I moved on. My tastes changed a lot. I still enjoy a good horror movie these days, but I don’t have a lot of interest in seeking them out. I still read as much as I can, but horror just isn’t drawing me in much anymore. Many years have passed and (most) of the things that called to me when I was in my teens and twenties aren’t calling to me now that I’m in my thirties. I am much more into comedy and action movies than anything else now, although the Sci-Fi is still a big draw. When I look at the books I’ve been buying over the last five years or so, most of them are histories or biographies, or even travelogues (and Sci-Fi). It has been ages upon ages since I’ve read a horror novel written by anyone other than Stephen King, and let’s be frank here; The King’s work isn’t very horrifying and hasn’t been for a long time.

What is the point of this, you may ask? Well, three things in recent months have happened that have very much surprised me.

First, I found myself in a movie theater with my step-son a few weeks ago. We were seeing the movie G-Force, the one about the hamsters working as secret agents. Before the movie started there was a little short film/PSA type thing that played. It was clips of reasonably famous people talking about dreams. There was one scraggly looking Englishman who said something about how his dreams might be nightmares to other people but they were fun to him. After a few other faces flashed on the screen another shot of this same Englishman came up and it had his name displayed. Clive Barker. I didn’t recognize him at all. I was surprised by that. Granted, I hadn’t seen his face in years, but still… he was my A+, #1 favorite writer, I should have recognized him.

A couple of weeks later Jen and I were in the Salem public library. We were wandering around the stacks looking at whatever was there. I happened to find myself in Fiction – B and looked for that familiar name. There he was. Much to my surprise, there was a novel there I had never seen before. Mister B. Gone. He had managed to sneak a new book out without me having any clue. There was a time when I knew of his upcoming releases long before they hit the shelves.

Today I was hit with a third surprise. He snuck a movie out right under my nose too. The Midnight Meat Train. It’s based on one of his better short stories and the reviews look pretty good. I have read four or five and most of them agree that it is the best Barker film since Hellraiser.

I will probably read Mister B. Gone at some point. I have a lot of things I want to get to first, but it is on my to-be-read list for sure. The movie however is probably going to be missed. Watching movies without my wife isn’t much fun for me and I don’t think a movie about people being butchered (literally) on the New York subways is something she’d be all that interested in. If I find myself lying awake some night with you’re-not-sleeping-tonight level tooth pain and it’s on cable somewhere I might watch it, but otherwise probably not. It wouldn’t be the first of his movies I didn’t see, and the ones that really interested me the most were those he wrote and directed which is not the case here.

You don’t really notice your own tastes changing. You don’t really get to see your personality shift from interest to interest. Still… I have hard cover copies of The Great and Secret Show and Everville on our new IKEA bookshelf. Maybe a nostalgia read is in order. For old times’ sake.

Thanks for the frights Clive.

Next weekend we are planning on going to the Rochester Fair. We’ve heard it’s not very good this year, but we already told the kids we were going and it would be hard to let them down based on one review. Besides, even if it’s terrible there will still probably be something they’ll love and it’ll be worth it just for that.

Jen and I are also planning on taking a New Hampshire leaf peepin’ trip in the very near future. Last year we hit the Kancamangus Highway twice. Once on a specific leaf peepin’ trip and once on the way back from Mt Washington. This year we haven’t decided where we’d like to go, but there is a good chance we’ll go back on the same route we took last year.

In preparation for this I started reading a book Jenny Claus gave me last Christmas. It is called Weird New England and it is a collection of strange, bizarre, spooky, and… well… weird stories from around New England. I’m still on the first chapter, but so far we have a haunted covered bridge and a haunted village in Vermont, and a grave robbing in Malden, MA.

I like the idea of using a book like that as a travel guide, but I don’t know if I’d actually follow through. As cool as it would be to say that I visited a haunted covered bridge in VT, if the ghost of Emily popped out and said, “BOO!” I would probably shit a brick and run home and never go outside again. (hehehe)

So we’re looking for Northern New England leaf peepin’ destinations. If you know of a place leave a comment.

Have a wonderful day, and don’t let the ghosts scare you (too much).

Addendum:
I found a few links to recommended scenic drives and leaf peeping sites. Share with your friends, I always say:

http://www.helium.com/items/1283299-information-on-leaf-peeping-in-new-england

http://new-hampshire-travel.suite101.com/article.cfm/leaf_peeping_in_new_hampshire

http://www.helium.com/items/1226084-us-highway-between-portland-and-acadia

If I find more I’ll post them here.

More…
From http://www.nhstateparks.com/waterfalls.html
LOWER FALLS, ROCKY GORGE & SABBADAY FALLS
On the Kancamagus Highway. Lower Falls is 7 miles west of Conway, while Rocky Gorge is 2 miles further on and requires a .1 mile Con way walk in. Lower Falls is right on the Kancamagus, and is a busy spot on hot summer days. It has pools, small sandy beaches, picnic tables, parking and changing rooms. Rocky gorge has picnic tables, drinking water and parking; swimming prohibited in the Gorge, but you can take a dip in the pools above the falls. Sabbaday Falls is located 3.5 miles west of where Bear Notch Road joins the Kancamagus. You can’t swim here, but the 25 ft. falls’ beauty is well worth the easy .3 mile hike in.

http://gonewengland.about.com/cs/nhsightseeing/a/aanhwaterfalls.htm

http://www.visitnh.gov/why-new-hampshire/exploring-the-great-outdoors/waterfalls.aspx

This one references Kancamangus a lot.
http://www.newhampshire.com/outdoors/nh-waterfalls-lakes.aspx

Covered bridge?
http://www.coveredbridgesite.com/nh/albany.html

The second page of this .pdf is awesome.
http://www.nhvacationhome.net/images/Kancamagus_Highway_Guide.pdf

Weekends need to be longer. Two days is not enough. Last night we went to dinner with some friends, Mike and Tammy and their daughter and Maria and Roman and their soon-to-be-baby-who-is-about-four-weeks-away-from-being-born.

Mike is taking a new job in a couple of weeks. He is going to work four 10 hour days and then get three day weekends. I’m kinda jealous.

Today is going to be quiet. Jen has to do some work and I have to do lots of laundry and a few errands. Last night was great, today will be too. Just a different kind of great.

Yesterday we finished off another complete (so far) television series on DVD. We watched the last (so far) episode of Scrubs. Now we need a new television show that is out on DVD to obsess over. We have a bunch of years worth of Smallville, which Jen really likes. We have the full run of The X-Files, which I really like. We also have everything available so far of South Park which we both really like. To top that off, we haven’t watched the two most recent South Park Seasons on DVD. I think we’ll start there and see what happens. I generally do not like television, but watching shows commercial free at my leisure takes some of the lame out of it. We’ve watched start to finish two sitcoms recently, Friends and Scrubs. They are both shows I avoided when they were on the air, but I liked them both on DVD. Maybe TV doesn’t suck as bad as I thought it did.

Okay, off to do laundry!

I woke up this morning, took a leak (well I did!), and downed a few advils. Then I went to check my mail. Not much, only took a second. Then I checked twitter. Ahhh, so the Bruins finally traded Phil Kessel.

I was very much on the record as not wanting to give him up. I was also, in the last week or so, very much on the record as just wanting the whole damn circus to end. I was seriously sick of listening to Kessel speculation in the press. I just wanted it to go away, no matter how it was resolved.

…and now it has. Kessel was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs for three draft picks. That’s all you ask? Well, how about a 1st and 2nd round pick in 2010 and a 1st round pick in 2011. Consider that the Leafs haven’t made the playoffs in something like 1,100 years (slight exaggeration) and you see the potential for this deal to be ginormous in favor of the Bruins.

Now we have to root for the Leafs to suck up a storm for the next two years. I always root for the Leafs to suck, but now we have some major incentive.

Kessel had surgery in the off season and won’t be back for a couple of months. We were going to be missing him for a while regardless of his contract status. He probably was not going to hit the 36 goal mark he hit last year. Still, there is a lot of production that is going away.

Except… I keep forgetting about Marco Sturm. He missed almost the entire season last year. He’s in the 25-30 goal range too. Maybe that’s what the B’s are looking at. Roster wise this is almost like a straight up trade, Kessel for Sturm. Considering that Sturm is more of an all around player, while Kessel is pretty one dimensional, I would say the deal they made looks REALLY good. Assuming Pete makes three really good picks, and further assuming that the Leafs do their part and suck immensely.

Go Bruins!

Go Suck Leafs!