Der aktuelle Zustand der #DanseMacabre-Baustelle #Efteling https://youtu.be/mHu5HR9F1ro
Is het ritsysteem van Danse Macabre gearriveerd?
Verder in deze video: veel metselwerk, een stalen geraamte en mallen!
https://youtu.be/9rarMblAx3M #Efteling #DanseMacabre
"The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger" was released (albeit in limited release) on June 10, 1982.
This means THAT will be the next work I cover after The Boogeyman.
Not only that, I'll be going through the ENTIRE Dark Tower saga. From prequel to the horrid movie. From written word to graphic novels. I suspect this will take me an entire year, if not longer. There are 361 items I've captured for this stage of my journey - but what a journey that will be!
#dansemacabre #thedarktower #stephenking
***SIDE NOTE***
Tomorrow, I'm "circling back" to watch The Boogeyman (2023) and listen to the podcast episodes that came out about it.
And then I move onto the next step of my journey.
I am trying to keep in chronological order of novel release, with a few exceptions. For example, I moved on to Doctor Sleep right after The Shining, and that reaped so many rewards for me. I also chose to wait until The Bachman Books collection before hitting those novels.
Final thoughts about the book:
🟡 This felt like the longest read of any of his works so far. Even though it didn't match The Stand in terms of page or word count, it felt like a much longer read without things like dialog and action to keep things moving along.
🟢Stephen King is one funny m-f'er. There were definitely lines in this book that had me cracking up out loud.
đź”´ It was really tough to relate to material being discussed that were relevant 50-60 years ago.
This brings me to the end of the Danse Macabre portion of this journey. Another achievement unlocked! Here are some final thoughts and stats:
Number of items consumed: 3
Hours spent: 16
Days passed: 16
Movies watched: 0
Current ETA for completing this entire journey: Oct 2027
When the co-host of this very popular Stephen King themed podcast admits he hasn't read Danse Macabre in a 90 minute episode about Danse Macabre, it's a bit disappointing and an anti-climatic end to this step of the journey.
Today, I'm listening to the only other episode of Danse Macabre from all the podcasts I subscribe to. This one comes from The Kingcast with guest Chris McCay.
Day 611
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I watched The Blair Witch Project and Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows last night, again, based on King's recommendation from his new forward to the 2010 edition of Danse Macabre.
And again, I was seriously disappointed. And bored. Very bored.
A 3 hour episode commenting on a very thick book that itself is a commentary on horror doesn't lend itself to catchy phrases to share or witty insights worth repeating. It's pretty much a straight rehashing of King's major themes as retold by a group of millennials applying them to more recent film and written works.
Day 610
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Now listening to the first half of The Losers' Club epic episode on "Dance Macabre". I'm quite surprised they spent so much time on this non-fiction work, but they did release a 3-hour episode on it.
And I've reached the end of Danse Macabre where King ends with a list of 100 must-see horror films and 100 must-read horror books.
An obsessive-compulsive individual (like, I don't know, someone who is on a 6-year journey to explore everything King-related) might just take those lists on as a challenge.
The first Dionysian incursion in The Exorcist comes when Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) hears that lionlike roar in the attic. In The Stand, Dionysus announces himself with the crash of an old Chevy into the pumps of an out-of-the-way gas station in Texas.
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And on it goes for several paragraphs drawing parallels between two of my favorite books. I'm in heaven.
About five years ago I finished The Shining, took a month off, and then set about writing a new novel, the working title of which was The House on Value Street. It was going to be a roman Ă clef about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, her brainwashing..., her participation in the bank robbery, the shootout at the SLA hideout in Los Angeles... the fugitive run across the country, the whole ball of wax.
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I wonder where that story went off to?!
I completed that lengthy chapter and for posterity's sake, here are the 10 books King covered:
Ghost Story - Peter Straub
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The House Next Door - Anne Rivers Siddons
Rosemary’s Baby - Ira Levin
The Body Snatchers - Jack Finney
Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
The Shrinking Man - Richard Matheson
The Doll Who Ate His Mother - Ramsey Campbell
The Fog - James Herbert
Strange Wine - Harlan Ellison
People who read horror fiction are warped, I told the reporter; but if you don’t have a few warps in your record, you’re going to find it impossible to cope with life in the last quarter of the twentieth century.
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My God, if only he had an inkling as to what would transpire in the first quarter of the twenty-first!
King describes the story “Croatoan” from Strange Wine that sounds so f---ed up, I won't repeat it here. But I will be securing a copy of this book, I assure you!
The next book in his list is "The Fog" by James Herbert (which, as King is quick to point out has no relation to John Carpenter's movie of the same name).
Never heard of this author or the book, but this edition's cover is quite nasty!
Day 609
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It's my final day with the book Danse Macabre! This "top 10" contemporary horror books section (at least, contemporary as of 1981) has been interesting. I don't think I'll be picking up all of them to read ("The Doll Who Ate Its Mother" is a hard pass) but there are a few I'm genuinely interested in.