Tag Archives: vampire

31 Days of Junk, Articles

31 Days of Junk: Jones Soda “Blood Orange” (#8)

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Last October (2017), I made it a goal to drink 31 different beers—a new one each day—by the end of the month. Incredibly, I was successful in my attempt, which I dubbed #31FallBeers (look it up on any form of social media!) This year, I wanted to try something similar, but there were two important changes I needed to make. Firstly, I wanted to be able to expound more, so I decided against social media blurbs in favor of long-form posts on my site. Second: it needed to be much, much cheaper than drinking 31 different beers. The result? #31DaysOfJunk. Strap in and hold on tight, and please enjoy this month-long odyssey into the sugary, fatty belly of the autumnal beast.

I don’t remember how old I was when I and my friends discovered Jones Soda—14 or 15, probably—but I do remember what an impact it had on us as a group. At the time, our punk rock inklings were starting to mineralize; our obsession with art, and counter-culture, and whatever it was we thought was the meaning of life (skateboarding and watching movies), all coming together, coalescing to create who we were as young people and future adults. And suddenly, we had the perfect beverage which embodied all of that and more: Jones Soda.

Artsy photographs, a different one on each bottle, instead of a repetitive boring logo? Photos which could be submitted by anyone—even us? It was a game-changer. We’d had enough of Coca-Cola! We were through with Mug Root Beer. No more Surge! We wanted Jones Soda! And have Jones Soda, we did: we drank the stuff religiously, shelling out our allowances for over-priced 4-packs of the stuff.

It’s how I imagine Gen Xers felt when OK Soda came out.

I mention all of this because I probably haven’t had Jones Soda since then—so 20 years, give or take. (Good lord, where does the time go?) Wait, I take it back: last year, I did have a sip of some of their Thanksgiving-flavored sodas at a party. (Which were from the year 2005; we were drinking sodas that were 12-years-old.) All of this is to say: I haven’t had a proper, unexpired Jones Soda in a very long time.

I also haven’t had a blood orange in a very long time either, so I’m not sure if the flavor of this Halloweeny treat is spot-on. But it’s definitely orangey. Much like the soda I drank last week for #31DaysOfJunk, this one also tastes like a melted popsicle. That’s my biggest takeaway: Jones Soda Blood Orange tastes like a melted orange popsicle. So, y’know, good and sugary.

It has a brilliant, almost glowing, orange color to it. Downright iridescent! I will still take this over Surge any day of the week.

horror nerd of the month

HORROR NERD OF THE MONTH: Evil Ed!

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When you hear the name “Evil Ed”, what do you imagine? A big bearded dude with a dangly skull earring and leather vest, tearing ass through town on a chopper with those big angular ape hangers? Yeah, me too.

The “Evil Ed” we get in Fright Night, however, is pretty much the exact opposite of that: a diminutive, giggly geek with a penchant for pranks whose demeanor is best described as “repellant”. Continue reading HORROR NERD OF THE MONTH: Evil Ed! →

80s & 90s, Reviews

“The Addiction”

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In honor of the Iranian black and white vampire flick A Girl Who Walks Home Alone at Night being released on Netflix Streaming this week, I thought I’d talk about another contemporary monochromatic vampire flick with a female bloodsucker as the lead – The Addiction.

Directed by gritty and unflinching crime/exploitation maestro Abel Ferrara, The Addicition doesn’t seem to get mentioned much or at all in horror circles, but it’s as interesting and relevant now as it was in 1995 when it was first released.

Social commentary in horror films is nothing new – in fact, it usually lends itself in creating a longstanding and enduring piece of cinema; a celluloid sign of the times.  There was the consumerism of the 70s in Dawn of the Dead; distrust of strangers and the fear of Cold War in 1982’s The Thing; and there’s the heroin boom of the 90s in The Addiction. There was a reason that decade begat the term “heroin chic“: never had it been purer and cheaper than it was in the early 90s, and never was it more deadly.

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Drugs are a common theme in Ferrara’s films – as well as his life. The star of his film Ms. 45 and writer of Bad Lieutenant, Zoë Tamerlis Lund, died of a heroin overdose just a few years after The Addiction was released. There is perhaps no better director to handle the real life horror of drug abuse – the allegory of the undead in constant search of fulfillment – than Ferrara himself.

The subject matter is delivered in the most collegiate of ways, aided by the fact that the story follows a college student. Shot in black and white, the films feels at times almost like a student film or a documentary. The dialogue is verbose and poetic, with constant references to philosophers like Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Nietzsche. It’s about as Shakespearean of a vampire flick as you’ll ever come across.

Though completely different tonally, there are similarities between The Addiction and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, more than just their desaturated look and female leads. Girl also deals with a contemporary issue: the Middle East’s view of women and their lack of rights, their subservient role. Girl jams a big middle finger in the face of all that and wants the audience to do the same, much like Ferrara was trying to desperately grab the viewers by the shoulders and shake them, saying, “Look at how fucked up this life is.”

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Both solid films worth a watch, no doubt. Just don’t want The Addiction to go unnoticed when it deserves to be viewed just as much and deserves just as much praise as A Girl Who Walks Home Alone at Night. So go watch ’em both!