I’m pretty sure I now know where the Event Horizon went.

I noticed a couple days ago that the Fangoria website was down. (You should check out their hilariously unprofessional new site) I was making the rounds and sending out press releases for the Splatcademy Awards and, naturally, wanted to hit them up with the info. I didn’t think much about it because, really, I don’t give a shit about Fango anymore. It has sucked for a long time and there’s no reason to pay the outrageous price tag for eighty pages of advertisements for shitty films.

Then today, Professor Bleak posted a link on our forum to a long behind-the-scenes, drama filled blog post about the implosion of Fangoria. No offense to that guy, because I totally believe him when he says he put in a lot of time and effort on Fango’s site…but Fango’s website sucked. I don’t know anything about web design but that thing was just brutal to look at. There was mindless shit everywhere and the interface was confusing. It was hard to find anything you wanted so I don’t have much sympathy when he gives his sob story of how the big mean “print” people looked down on him. Frankly, I’d be pretty embarrassed to put my name to it.

It just goes to show that no matter how petty and immature a lot of podcasters can get, drama exists on the highest planes of horror. We’re talking an actual business here, with employees and cash flow…and this kind of shit is going on? Wow. Ryan Rotten of Shock Till You Drop  did a sort of “pro-Fango” editorial that certainly sees the glass as half full. You can tell the guy is good friends with Timpone and Gingold and that he doesn’t want to burn any bridges, but when is it time for some respected genre personality to say “Dudes, you totally ran this great franchise into the ground”? Where are the big filmmakers and industry fans that will put aside their need for cheap promotion for their latest shitty films to stand up and decry what has happened to Fango?

Everyone seems to agree that Fangoria sucks nowadays. Even supporters say it’s “lost its way”. Why does Fango suck?  This is why. That cover alone is enough for me to totally accept that the Fango I knew and loved is dead. The day Twilight makes an appearance in Fango is the day the magazine should die.  I’ve moved on and most of its readers have as well. We’ll still have fond memories, of course, but Timpone and company have succeeded in completely destroying the brand name that was once so effective (and has now been replaced by Rue Morgue, get over it HorrorHound readers). Who’s running this shit, Charles Band? The nail in Fangoria’s coffin was their refusal to embrace the internet and switch to a daily news machine that capitalized on its industry heavy name and contacts, and its refusal to change the magazine to a more commentary driven vehicle with a focus on smart, genre intensive articles. I’m not saying Fango should have turned into the Cahiers du Cinema of horror mags, but any idgit could see that you need to adapt and change relative to what is going on around you. Rue Morgue did that (though I personally feel they fail more than they suceed), Timpone decided that the name was really all that mattered and decided to put his focus on allowing the worst filmmakers ever a venue for their shitty movies. Frankly, Timpone and Gingold should have been fired years ago. Maybe they’re great guys in person, but they obviously can’t handle running a company and that should have been identified before any of this got this far.

Fangoria is dead. D. E. A. D. The name may hold some nostalgia for horror fans that grew up in the eighties, but now, who cares? That rag’s just a waste of good trees. Fango will never have a major web presence because now there are so many other sites that do the “daily news” thing and are so plugged into the industry that not only will they be years behind if they relaunch, but I can’t possibly see them offering anything of value, thus “taking” other well established sites’ readers. The only way the magazine comes back from the dead is if they take a year long break, fire Timpone and everyone else involved, put some actual thought into revamping and revitalizing what has become stale and unimportant, and most importantly, hire smart and intelligent horror writers. Believe it or not, if Fango took a break and put some effort into reinventing themselves, there are still plenty of horror fans out their that would jump at the chance to make this rag respectable again. Even if it’s only bi-monthly or quarterly.

This won’t happen, though. I’m sure Timpone will hold on to whatever he can just so he can continue getting pity sex from goth horror whores. The day Fangoria died was when it became so ridiculous and irrelevant that the people who grew up loving it just stopped caring. And that happened years ago.

Yikes.

No, seriously.

Researchers in Canada have used mathematical exercises and “biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies” to come up with a model for a zombie outbreak and how to survive it. They conclude that frequent aggressive attacks are the best way to fend off the zombie menace. Rather than having nothing better to do, the scenario is compared to other potential outbreaks the human race could come up against, like fungal or viral infections that could decimate our population. Zombie infection could be considered as just another unfamiliar disease.

PDF of full article

Article on BBC news

A Bakersfield father is accused of biting out one of the eyes of his small child and similarly mutilating the other eye, leaving the child blind.

After attacking the child, 34-year-old Angel Vidal Mendoza Sr. quickly left his apartment in a wheelchair, entered a backyard of a nearby vacant home and attacked his own legs with an ax, severely injuring himself…

The man had used a high-pressure pneumatic grease gun to inject his penis.

Learn not to try this at home here.

Exclaim reports that infamous Norwegian black metaller Varg Vikernes, otherwise known as Count Grishnackh, has been released from prison. The Burzum mastermind, a notorious wackjob, famously murdered his Mayhem bandmate Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth in 1993. When a Norwegian judge sentenced him to 21 years in prison for that murder and for other crimes, he smiled. In prison, he recorded a ton of suffocatingly grim and scarily weird Burzum albums and tried to escape in 2003. After serving 16 years of his sentence, he’s out. If you see him walking toward you on the street, maybe cross to the other side.

To me, one of the most screwed-up parts of the story is that, apparently, in Norway you can kill somebody and only get 16 years in prison. And that includes a freebie escape attempt. If you wanna kill some time (see that, kill? ha ha) search this dude’s name on YouTube. Lots of weird shit to gawk at.

News link

The freak accident happened when Nicholas Holderman, 20 months, was playing at home with his two elder brothers.

Somehow he managed to fall on to his parents’ car keys, one of which pierced his eyelid and penetrated deep into his brain as these X-ray scans reveal.

Miraculously the American tot has since made a full recovery.

Fifth-grader Jordan Hood thought the bloody vampire he drew in art class was scary, but he had no idea it would elicit a horrifying response from one of his teachers.

Tuesday morning, Jordan was assigned to draw a scary Halloween mask in art class.

By the end of the day, Jordan was being told he could not return to Pooler Elementary School until he passed a psychological evaluation.

“We live in an age where there is some hypersensitivity,” Bucky Burnsed, Savannah-Chatham school system spokesman, said Thursday. “But the child is back in school where he belongs.”

During art class Tuesday, Jordan drew a scarred vampire with bloodshot eyes and with blood dripping from its nose, mouth and down its cheeks. Art teacher Lloyd Harold helped the boy shade the sketched eyes to give the drawing an even creepier look.

“The assignment was to draw a scary mask or picture – basically a Halloween activity,” Harold said.

As a final gory touch, Jordan used a red marker to write “I Kill For Blood” under his drawing.

The picture was not destined for the cover of Fangoria magazine, but it fulfilled the requirement for fifth-grade Halloween art.

However, when Jordan’s homeroom teacher, Melissa Pevey, saw the drawing, she found it disturbing. Pevey was concerned enough to contact assistant principal Valerie Johnson and Campus Police.

But it wasn’t blood and gore that bothered Pevey. She believed the blood looked a lot like gang-related teardrop tattoos, and she thought the words “I Kill For Blood” could be tied to an infamous Los Angeles street gang known as The Bloods.

Weird news story about some unclassifiable monster found in Russia. Apparently there’s a possibly-related story out of the Hamptons from this past summer, but I missed that one.

From the linked article:
New information is surfacing that the famed “Montauk Monster,” the dangerous, weird-looking and still-unidentified creature that washed ashore in the Hamptons this summer, may be only the latest in a longer line of weird unidentified monsters washing ashore around the globe.

In 2006, a little-noticed entry was posted to EnglishRussia.com, a blog that catalogs strange and interesting photos from our neighbor that you can see from Alaska. That photo essay showed the carcass of a strange, reptilian creature that some “Russian soldiers” had found on a beach on the island of Sakhalin. But just what kind of creature is impossible to say

“According to the bones and teeth — it is not a fish,” wrote the fellow who posted the photos. “According to its skeleton — it’s not a crocodile or alligator. It has a skin with hair or fur.”