Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

This sequel makes two look tame. An exorcist fights bandits with the help of his ghost companions. Nonstop action obscures the lack of plot. The scene where the boy ghost is folded and trapped in a wine jug has to be seen to be believed.

Ricky Lau's Hong Kong Comedy Horror film Mr. Vampire II is sillier than the first but ultimately fun. More movies should reference hopping vampire lore. 

I do not have any assignments related to Halloween this semester, but my Freshman Composition class has focused on folklore readings, including an examination of Henderson State University's "Legend of the Lady in Black." I was looking for articles on folklore on college campuses and included part of a chapter on college student folklore from Richard M. Dorson's 1959  American Folklore.  They were surprised by the legends about paper grading and class attendance. For example, many students believe in the fifteen-minute rule that you are excused if your professor shows up after the first fifteen minutes are over. I have never tested this one because I am usually prompt. I told them that I had often heard about the process of throwing tests and papers down the stairs and giving them grades based on how far the papers sailed when I was an undergraduate. The idea is that professors grade papers by tossing them down the stairs and determining grades based on their position...

The idea for the album formed in a conversation between Hood and former bassist, Earl Hicks, in which they discussed writing a semi-autobiographical screenplay about their youth in the south and the plane crash that almost ended Skynyrd by taking the lives of vocalist Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and backup vocalist Cassie Gaines in 1977.   Their chartered plane, a 1977 Convair CV-300, converted from a CV-240 ran out of fuel and crashed in Gillsburg, Mississippi near the end of a flight from Greenville, South Carolina, where they had performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray were also killed in the crash, while 20 other people survived, including guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington. Bassist Leon Wilkeson, keyboardist Billy Powell, and drummer Artimus Pyle, who crawled out of the wreckage with members of the road crew, were also injure...

When I was a kid, we would often go for dinner at Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty in Minocqua, Wisconsin. I marveled over the large slices of white bread with butter, the tin cups filled to the brim with milk and water, and the manufactured ambience of the old lumber industry that covered the walls. I loved that place and still do; there was something about it that dredged up old memories, remembrances of a past that never existed merging with a real past. The lumber industry was a major part of American history as the demand for timber rose in parts of the country that had little access to giant timber. At its peak, in 1900, annual production of lumber reached around 35 million board feet and the Midwest was depleted of much of its virgin timber. Major industries, such as railroad and coal mining, depleted resources as the nation entered a period of expansion and technological development after the Civil War. Lumberjacks maintained a sense of identity and traditional pride even...

The buzzing of far away tools run roughshod over my static mind as the waxing of Lou Reed relates the modern state of "viciousness." Another day in the intellectual rat race of love, shattered by promises of work and relaxation, mugging for some far off camera Will you be the true prospect, or clear delineation and demarkation, of a confident future, nay past, clowning like a businessman? The terminus of this period of stagnation ends in three bangs, like celebrity deaths or folkloristic tropes or statistics -- the year is clearly marked as 2014, the jigsaw puzzle of being bailed out is consistently cut from my parent's best wishes. The lines of a Catholic school girlhood are marked clearly on your face; lines of my pagan youth mark mine like the aged face of a forgotten prom queen. Tell me again of your hopes and dreams. No rest is all that matters. We run. We fall. We continue on and on. The fuzzy cat with a scepter knocks us down like pawns. The leaves...

Another year, another April Fools' Day, and I haven't played a joke or had one played on me. In fact, it's been years since someone has fooled me and even longer since I've been fooled. I guess traditions are made to be broken, and I'll now almost certainly fall for something later today. April Fools' Day is one of those holidays that has apparently gained more cultural cachet with the increasing prominence of social networking. Post after post on my timeline has paid some lip service to the time honored tradition of fooling one's friends, family, and acquaintances. Fake news stories find a ready audience on Facebook and twitter. Although not as ubiqitous as yesterday's opening day baseball posts, there is still something about April Fools' Day that resonates in the national (and international) zeitgeist. A day to drop all the stress and drama in order innocently fool our peers appeals to the embittered psyche. If it happened on the opening day...

When I was a kid, long before I began delving into folklore, collecting stories, and thinking about how differently stories are told in an oral form than a written one, my friends and I used to visit Holy Cross Road in an effort to experience supposed supernatural phenomena. This concept is commonly referred to by folklorists as Legend Tripping. Adolescents tend to venture out at night to explore places that are considered supernatural or haunted. Often certain rituals are carried out in order to either prove that kids were there, or just to prove that they aren't scared. Holy Cross was definitely the premier place for teenagers to go when I was in High School. I'm not certain it still maintains this status, but we certainly had fun going there. Our first trip there was an adventure in itself. I had heard many stories about the place -- it maintained quite a reputation. These stories ranged from the tame (unexplained noises) to the truly bizarre (gnomes, floating men, shot ...

 "Now, why do we want to go messing with the moon for? If God wanted a man on the moon he would have built a road there. I get a hundred thirty-five dollars a month from Social Secure, and I sure can't afford to live there." -- Veris Metzger in James York Glimm's Snake-Bite: Lives and Legends of Central Pennsylvania , 1991.  Maquoketa Caves State Park in Jackson County, Iowa.