Monsters are Real 6:25 PM

Monsters come in a seemingly infinite variety.  Although their popularity fluctuates, there are specific horrors that have continually occupied the collective pop culture consciousness.  In honor of this holiday season, Sleeping Horse Pills takes a look at some classic monsters.  In this installment we focus on Vampires.

DRACULA

Dracula is arguably the most famous of all the Vampires.  These mythological bloodsuckers have been been around ever since evolution presented the very first human necks worth biting, long before the Twilight franchise went and douched vampires up forever.

1934 Max Ernst vs. Twilight

Vampires first became popular in the 18th century when Eastern European culture slowly migrated into the west.  It was 1897 when we were first introduced to Dracula himself via Bram Stoker's genre defining novel.  It was nearly 100 years later when I noticed a resurgence in the popularity of Vampires while I was attending High School.  I actually found most of the Goth Chicks really attractive.  Getting past all the black Victorian clothing and Egyptian Ankh's was an annoyance while trying to get to the pale skin beneath,  but it was nowhere near as annoying as having to deal with the ever present Anne Rice novel.

Sexy Goth Girls?  You Decide.  Answer after the jump.

A

B

C

Yeah, Twilight is bullshit and 1994's Interview With A Vampire was pretty dumb too.  They represent the unfortunate trend of dumbing down the mythos and candy-coating the sexuality already inherent in mythological beings for the gratification of tweens and frustrated housewives everywhere.  Karg puts it best when he says "Vampires are just sick.  It just reflects sexual perversion in women".  It's funny because it's true.

Not all Vampire films have been as vapid and ridiculous as the previously mentioned box office nightmares.  Max Schreck plays one of the most recognizable manifestations of a vampire ever portrayed, in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu.  It can be seen in it's entirety here.  The symphony music is pretty cool, but it's awesome if you start it at 1:19:00, turn down the sound and crank the Static Age album by the Misfits instead.  Nine short years later, Bela Lugosi would make Vampires the sexy, suave characters we know them as today in the original film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Two Awesome Vampire Flicks You Might Have Missed:

1.  The Hunger - I am always amazed at how many people have not seen this amazing 1983 vampire flick starring Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie.  Yeah that's right, David Fucking Bowie!  Deneuve and Bowie are stylish vampires who are too cool and high class to use fangs.  Instead, they slit the throats of their victims with tiny blades hidden in their matching necklaces.  Deneuve grows weary of her lovers every few hundred years so only grants them partial immortality.  When David Bowie begins his rapid decline we meet the famous Dr. Sarah Roberts played by a young Susan Sarandon.  Bauhaus has a cameo as a band in a nightclub playing "Bela Lugosi's Dead" and it's has one of the best lesbian love scenes ever filmed.  If Twilight makes you come in your pants then this movie will make your fucking head explode!

2.  Vampire's Kiss - Fans of the zine might remember a short review of this film in the piece entitled Nicolas Cage Amazed and Disgusts from Sleeping Horse Pills Issue #1.  Another entry in the 80's canon of vampire flicks, this dark humor has Nic Cage at his most brilliant as he plays a delusional Manhattan executive losing his mind as he rapes and murders in the belief that he has been bitten and turned into a vampire.


I put together some of my favorite moments from Vampire's Kiss and The Hunger in the very short video.  There's one small F bomb so slightly NSFW, the video and the answer to the multiple choice quiz can be seen after the jump, check it out!

The Nam Diaries 11:46 AM

Michael:  I'll tell ya one thing, if I find out my life had to end up being in the mountains, it'd be all      right, but it has to be in your mind.                                                                                                       Nick:  What?  One shot?                                                                                                                         Michael:  Two is pussy.   

                                                                      -The Deer Hunter  

The last time we checked in with Karg, he was navigating his way through Bac Ha, a cloudy hilltop village in the northern mountains of Vietnam.  Once again Karg shares, through his personal journals, the delicate balance between the hunter and the hunted deep within the Heart of Darkness.  National beer and Homemade corn wine are his only protection from the unexpected coldness of the climate.  The damp, chilly air at this altitude is reminiscent of the weather on the mountains of Western Pennsylvania in the late 1960's during deer hunting season.  Despite apprehensions, Karg travels even further into the mountains with Jimmy, the bartender from Wisconsin.  What fate awaits them amidst the mountain dwelling Hmong?  Do they make it back alive or does Jimmy play Nick to Karg's Michael?  This is our one chance to find out my friends, so put three bullets in the chamber and *click* the jump.  We only get one shot at this and Sleeping Horse Pills ain't gonna hunt with no assholes.

                              

Sleeping Horse Pills: Found Objects 8:25 PM

I'm always walking around with my head down.  It's a practice that lends itself to finding money or drugs that have carelessly been dropped by someone.  I developed this habit from years of trying to find money and drugs that I have carelessly dropped.  Years ago, on my way to a My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult show, I arrived in Denver only to realize that I had lost some party favors somewhere along the way.  I turned around and drove 30 miles back to Longmont and found my tiny stash of LSD in a huge Burger King parking lot strewn with greasy fast food wrappers and all the flotsam and jetsam a pit stop on the side of I-25 is wont to collect.  If anyone would have just casually been scanning the ground, their Double Whopper could have been a much more interesting experience.

It's pretty rare that I actually find anything as useful as cash or drugs but sometimes whatever catches my eye ends up being interesting.  As they say, "One man's trash is another man's treasure".  Please enjoy the first installment of Sleeping Horse Pills: Found Objects, in which I will share my collection of trash.

 

SHP:FO#1

I recently found this discarded/lost notepad at work.  I flipped through it, and most of it is simple, mundane tasks and notes related to the job.  But then I came across some writing that seemed out of place.  Some of the scribbling takes on the style of a journal entry and this catches my eye amidst the usual lists and reminders that typically define a work notepad.  There is some powerful venting and frustration that the anonymous Puncher of the Clock felt the need to record.  I have obscured the names to protect the disgruntled and to protect as well, the corporate machine this particular drone relies on for a life sustaining paycheck.

It looks as if this employee was gearing up for a meeting with the Management and was ready to get some shit off their chest about RED, whom they think just isn't quite pulling their weight.  Apparently, it's a response to an issue that has already been addressed.  The note to self even goes so far as to couch it in language that clarifies what they themselves are being accused of ("what you're saying is....").  I guess they thought they should get their thoughts down on paper so they knew exactly what they wanted to say in the upcoming meeting.  It is questionable that they would throw RED under the bus while using BLUE as a shining example of proficiency in the work environment.  I guess it just boils down to self preservation.  However, this dude should get a raise just for being prepared for such a meeting.  I wish I had the presence of mind to write that shit down.  Instead, I just walk around having that conversation in my head.  I stroll through the workplace very animated, talking to myself as I pantomime and fantasize about what the interaction might look like.  No wonder people stare at me.

This page of the notepad is a bummer.  And by bummer, I mean Totally Awesome!  As always, you can click the image to enlarge.  Kudos to this member of the American Workforce for being introspective and knowing what they do and do not want.  In a situation like this, do what old Rocky Dennis does.  First, failure is not an option.  Remember what Yoda says, "Do or do not.  There is no try".  And don't beat yourself up over some perceived failure, beat up your coworker or even your immediate supervisor.  It's amazing how much pressure of the job can be relieved by throwing a little boot stomping party for your least favorite supervisor.  Basically, do everything short of going in there with your guns a-blazin', so you can alleviate the need to associate being miserable with your workplace.  Seriously folks, what's the worse they can do, write you up for insubordination?  The Employer/Employee marriage is a fucking business relationship.  You are obligated to do your job and do it well, but you don't have to buy into their philosophical posturing or subscribe to their politics. Shit, here comes the boss! 

Road Jockey Portraits 9:11 PM

When I was a kid I wanted to be an "Army Man".  I played with the classic little, green plastic Army Men constantly and I think my mother still finds them half buried in various places throughout the yard of my childhood home.  A close second on my list of grown up occupations was an interest in pursuing a career as an Interstate Trucker.  The Army Man dream died pretty early when I realized that shooting people might be fun, but being shot might not be.  I also realized that I would never even make it through Boot Camp.  There was no way in hell I could tolerate some asshole yelling insults and threats inches from my face, trying to break me down only to build me back up into a Lean, Mean, Killing Machine.  I mean I barely made it past a fucking Bear Cub before I quit the goddamn Boy Scouts.  It didn't take much longer before the romantic idea of being a trucker faded away.  As I got older, I had all but forgotten this 18-wheeled dream.  I was reminded why the idea of being a trucker lost it's appeal when I ended up working in a warehouse loading and unloading trucks.

It was a busy warehouse where chaos took precedent over all, including trust and integrity.  We affectionately referred to it as The Dominion.  I worked with about nine other dudes and we all came from diverse backgrounds and we all had intense personalities.  Well, all of us except one dude who we called "Soft Serve" because he was about as unique and exciting as soft serve vanilla ice cream.  It was like throwing some guy that got caught jaywalking into a cell with 9 dudes who were in for drug trafficking, car theft and sexual misconduct.

 The danger of working with such a motley crew was secondary only to the fact that we were all driving 8000 lb forklifts in reverse, loaded down with 2500 lb pallets, at full speed through a tiny door from a huge cooler to semi trucks backed onto the loading dock.  The pandemonium of blaring horns, loud music, dangerous vehicles and just about every other industrial hazard one can imagine, was added to by the necessity of dealing with a wide assortment of truckers all day long.  Despite the anarchy of this environment, I managed to take portraits of several of these brave American road warriors.  You can see the complete gallery after the jump.


Although they have been romanticized and portrayed in numerous films like 1977's Smokey and the Bandit and a year later with Every Which Way But Loose,  America's fascination with truckers and trucking didn't end in the 70's.  Proof of our commitment to Long Haulers is the History Channel's current Sunday night offering of Ice Road Truckers.  The drivers on Ice Road Truckers are normal folks if not a little rough around the edges and Cledus "the Snowman" Snow and Philo Beddoe were just good ol' boys with a penchant for animal sidekicks and the occasional truck stop fisticuffs.

The image of truckers hasn't always been popular however.  In 2009 the FBI introduced the Highway Serial Killings Initiative.  This targets Over the Road truckers as suspects in every unsolved murder case in which a victim's body has turned up "along or near highways".  The Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation detected a crime pattern as bodies of murdered women began popping up along the I40 corridor in Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas.  The FBI developed a database and the red dots on this map indicate where over 500 bodies or remains have been found along our highways and bi-ways over the last 30 years.  It's unfortunate that truckers have been targeted just because these murder victims are surfacing "along or near" their workplace.  It's kind of like making every canoe, kayaking and fishing enthusiast a murder suspect because several victims have been found in lakes and rivers across America.  But then again, it's not too hard to imagine a long haul trucker exercising poor judgment after doing an eight ball off his dashboard and then arguing with some Lot Lizard over the price of blow job. 

Over the road truckers are a special breed indeed.  Despite belonging to an almost mythic fringe of society in which they are sometimes portrayed as less than savory, they are responsible for transporting about 10 billion tons of merchandise, essentially every single commodity we consume, to it's final destination every year.   70% of all freight that is transported annually in this proud nation is done over the road by truckers.  That's 671 billion dollars worth of goods that are transported by truck.  Sure, that's a lot of cheap plastic crap being delivered to Wal-mart but it's also all of our food and medicine. 

Well, enough of this Jaw Jacking Good Buddies.  I didn't mean to go Alligator Station on y'all.  I've had too much of the Ninety Weight tonight and now I'm just looking for a Dress For Sale before I Nod Off.  So let's get this Bucket of Bolts moving and head Like a Raped Ape to the next page.  Be sure to Keep Your Flaps down if you see a City Kitty Handing Out Christmas Cards.  The jump will take you Clean as a Hounds Tooth to the next page where you can Lay An Eye Out for my list of the top 5 truckers of all time, a few more stats and a gallery of my trucker portraits.  Alright, I'm gonna Pull the Big One so Keep em' Between the Ditches and Eighty-Eights around the house.