Fall Fun Series II: Movies, Manis and Melts

Spooky movies (or television shows, or books, or what-entertainment-have-you) are the name of this weekend’s FFS game (games, too, if there are any that are autumn appropriate.)  Supernaturally-tinged things have always been *my* thing, so I have quite a few schlocky favourites I like to pull out around this time of year.  Turns out I also have a number of matching manis (with a major emphasis on the Beetlejuice side of things) AND some complimentary wax melts as well.  This is far from an exhaustive list of favoured frightening films, and there are an absolute ton of one-off television shows I love that bring the delightful Halloween spooks (Roseanne’s Halloween episodes were brilliant, as were Buffy’s, AND Brooklyn 9-9.)  But these are clearly the ones that have captured my nostalgia-lovin’ heart.  Don’t know what to tell you, I likes what I likes. 🙂

I probably shouldn’t have included Beetlejuice on this list; that’s an all-the-time watch around these parts, no seasonal designations necessary.  Here I’ve paired five very striped manis with Super Tarts’ Beetlejuice, who apparently smells like apple butter, oatmeal cookies with icing and buttermilk pancakes.  I would have thought mold and moss, but I’ll take these fruity pancakes over that rank-sounding combo any day.

I have mentioned before that my favourite movie to watch at this time of year is Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows.  It is SO bad!  But Jeffrey Donovan. 🙂  Actually, I love this makes-no-sense-on-any-level sequel so much, I bought this hideous-sounding (and kind of hideous-smelling) Blair Witch wax tart, a blend of Leaves, lemon, marshmallow cream and “a hint of salted caramel.”  None of those scent notes are particularly compatible, but then again, nothing in the movie works in tandem either.  Except Jeffrey Donovan’s farm rat hotness – it’s clear, a focusing point for my attention.  And eyes.  Or would that be his foine naked arse there at the end of the movie? … (sorry, got a little carried away there…)

I keep thinking that one of these days I’ll simply will myself into liking The Walking Dead through pure osmosis, but that remains to be the case.  It’s just a terrible, terrible show.  And this is coming from the person who freely admits to loving Death Note.  So until that day arrives, I’ll just content myself with a number of walker-centric manis, as well as this Zombie Brains wax tart from Super Tarts.  I like the design of this clamshell; it looks like that snot green, TWD-inspired polish on the far right, Look at the Flowers, Lizzie.  Don’t love the smell, though – this key lime, pomegranate and cotton candy blend is hella powdery and provokes mini sneezing fits.  And that simply won’t do when you’re sprinting through the Atlanta woods with a pack of walkers hot on your heels (oh, who am I kidding, this is The Walking Dead; they can’t get above more than a leisurely stroll.  That’s why everyone keeps dying and why they haven’t made it beyond Virginia in seven seasons.)

The Addam’s Family is so cute.  I love how hot Gomez and Morticia are for each other, like they’re always just on the verge of throwing down right in front of Lurch and Cousin It.  I’m actually sort of surprised they only have three children – you know they’re boning down allllll over that creepy old house.  Here I’ve paired Addam’s Family, another Super Tart blend of salted caramel, pie crust and pumpkin cupcakes, with Glam Polish’s indigo-to-purple matte micro-glimmer, Wednesday.

Better than Beetlejuice.  Better than The Goonies.  Better than Death Note, ha!  The Lost Boys is legion and I won’t hear a single word against it.  I’ve also joked in the past that I think Super Tarts missed the mark on this scent blend.  As yummy as it is, no way in Santa Carla hell would David and his crew smell like pomegranate, apple cider and toasted marshmallows.  More like salty sea air, spilled bong water and general boy funk.

Speaking of the undead, here’s everybody’s favourite masked movie killer, Jason Voorhees.  Well, I suppose all those horny, machete-d camp counselors aren’t so fond of him.  I used to sit down every Fall and marathon all bajillion of the Friday the 13th movies until one day, I realized I didn’t actually like them very much.  The mid-to-late ’80s sequels in particular (V, Jason X, Jason Takes Manhattan) are atrocious.  But I will always have a soft spot in my heart for 1986’s Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, in which Jason is bested by an outboard motor.  It’s easily the worst of all of them!  This wax blend – another clamshell from Super Tarts – is quite nice, though, a pleasant, mild combination of apricot, buttercream, ice cream scoop bread and a slash of red berry currant.

And while I have no wax inspired by Gravity Falls, I’d be remiss – remiss, I tell you! – in leaving it off this list; the residents of Gravity Falls are so into Halloween, they create a mid-point holiday by the name of Summerween to satisfy their never-ending need for creeps.  They carve Jack-o-Melons, visit obnoxious Summerween Superstores and get haunted – or is that hunted? – by the Summerween Trickster, a malevolent meanie made entirely of discarded “loser candy.”  It’s kind of the cutest. 🙂

Calamity Carol

As in Carol of The Walking Dead.  Although…alluringly alliterative though it may be, is “calamity” really the correct descriptor for Carol Peletier’s very particular brand of post-apocalyptic madness?  Girlfriend’s ice cold, and I kind of love it.  Or I loved it right up until she suddenly – and abruptly, because this is The Walking Dead – began acting completely contrary to her long-established character, running off alone to ruminate on man’s inhumanity to man, when she should have been back in Alexandria terrorizing small, frightened children with her apocalypse cookies and impressively detailed death scenarios.  I totally hate-watch The Walking Dead, so I actually don’t have much of a stake in it one way or another, but I’d like to see Carol get her mojo back next season – every apocalypse needs its rage goddess.

Personal feelings on both the show and the comics aside, I love the idea of The Walking Dead, as evidenced by this TWD-themed polish from Dollish Polish, Look at the Flowers, Lizzie, a mucus-hued favourite.  Straight up, this polish looks like snot – ain’t nothing wrong with that!  Here I topped Look at the Flowers, Lizzie with two sweet flower studs and a couple of badass silver spike strips.  I definitely think Carol – any version, really – would approve.

Literary Inspiration: The Walking Dead

After kicking off my friend Julie’s reading challenge with my favourite novel, The Virgin Suicides, an ultra light and breezy choice (sarcasm), I thought I’d lighten things up a bit by diving into the comic book world of The Walking Dead, where of course nothing bad ever happens and everyone lives in perfect happiness perfectly, forever and ever (further sarcasm.)

The second challenge prompt called for a book inspired by art and literature, be it art history, a book on technique or, say, a comic.  I went the comic route, seeing as The Walking Dead Compendium 1 is right on my bookshelf (as is 2, for that matter), and as a casual viewer of the show, I’ve always been a little curious as to the similarities and differences between it and the books.

Compendium 1, a MASSIVE, forearm-taxing beast written by Robert Kirkman, Charles Adlard and Tony Moore, clocks in at 1,000 pages and covers the first 48 issues of the comics.  Save a childhood obsession with the graphic novel Tales From the Crypt, comics as a storytelling format have never really been my thing – I prefer novels.  And indeed, I had a bit of a hard time getting into a decent reading rhythm with the comics, with the dialogue either entirely absent (Rick waking up from his cop coma) or spurting from characters like word vomit (pretty much anyone upon introducing themselves to THE GROUP; after that you won’t hear from them again until they die.) Which might just be the style of comics in general, although if the show is any indication, I think that one may be particular to The Walking Dead.  I also found there to be a weird condensing of seemingly-pivotal moments (Rick’s awakening, Shane’s death, THE GROUP’s introduction at Woodbury) in favour of endless scenes of morality talk (but again, that might just be The Walking Dead.)

But after an initial period of hesitation, I started really, really getting into the story, digging hard on the parts where the book and the show would intersect and then deviate once again (Carol and Tyreese!  Super unhinged Hershel!  Sexy Dale and Andrea time!)  It was all going so well.

Where the comics lost me, though, and where I ultimately stopped reading, was with the introduction of Woodbury.  Fans of the show will remember that during the third season a new villain was introduced by the name of The Governor.  Completely insane by any definition of the word, The Governor of the TV show was an authoritarian psychopath with fish tanks full of walker heads in his livingroom, a zombiefied daughter in the closet and a super big hate-on for Rick Grimes.  So not a good guy.

But The Governor of the books is the WORST guy, a violent and sadistic rapist who cuts off Rick’s hand within about six frames of meeting him (there’s that pacing thing I was talking about) and gleefully, and repeatedly, assaults Michonne over PAGES.

As a matter of personal principle, I don’t watch or read anything that heads too far down the path of sexual assault (cruelty towards animals and torture porn as well.)  My tolerance for that is practically nil.  It’s insulting and uninspired writing used by lazy authors who can’t think of a motivating event for their female characters beyond rape (looking at you, Game of Thrones.)

So when the books – which to that point had been bleak, yes, and shocking, also yes, but still very much in keeping with the PG-13 tone of the show – took a hard, hard turn into ultra heavy sadism (there is one image I wish I could unsee that will haunt my dreams forever) I checked the hell out.  I feel like there may have been a switch in authors at this point, the change in tone – and not one for the better – is just that jarring and unpleasant.

So The Walking Dead Compendium 1 and I parted ways at about the halfway mark.  But as always, I had to do a bit of nail art to go along with my choice of book, this time a mani showing off my ultra tiny lettering skills, because every other option was just too depressing or inappropriate.  Which is just The Walking Dead for you (I should create a macro for that phrase.)

Arteries of the Sea

This manicure started out life as a coral design.  I was going to make a bunch of The Walking Dead Carl/Coral jokes, too (the filthier and more unhinged Rick gets, the more he defaults to bellowing for his son, CORAL!!! Please watch this short YouTube video that inexplicably makes me nearly pee my pants every time I see it for further explanation and laughter:)

All was going well with the CORAL!!! design until I added the dark orange and yellow shading along the branches of the you-know-what, turning this CAWWWWRRRLLL into something more closely resembling the diagram on page 74 of your grade 11 biology textbook.  Still pretty, although also sort of icky.  I don’t like it when my nail art gets too real.  Cotton candy zombie unicorns, yes, the inner workings of the human form, lord NO.

And so I changed the title of this post to better reflect the reality of these nails, although I’m glad I was able to work in that Walking Dead joke regardless.  Bless you, Rick Grimes, you incompetent bastard; never stop losing your sh— CORAL?!?

Look at the Polish, Lizzie

Who knows, maybe if Lizzie had been into nail art instead of murder, zombie playtime and just generally going insane, things might have worked out differently for her.  And am I really making a joke about one of the most devastating moments in The Walking Dead, one that ends with (SPOILER) the execution of a child?  Yes. Yes, I am.  Because I’m apparently just as cold and shut-down as Carol (blasphemy – Carol is an apocalyptic rage goddess, and I’d really like it if she and Daryl would just start making out already.)

The Walking Dead airs on Sunday evenings, and so I thought Monday morning would be a good time to pull out this fun lacquer, Dollish Polish’s Look at the Flowers, Lizzie.  Chase away the Monday morning, post-apocalyptic blues and all that good stuff.  I love this polish, because it works in spite of itself.  I mean, it’s little bits of flesh-hued glitter suspended in a snot green jelly base – attractive!  Except it is – very much so – with a nice, not-too-goopy formulation as well.  The perfect polish for the zombie slayer on the go!

The Polished Dead

I don’t watch The Walking Dead, but in the interest of my ongoing education in pop culture and the fact that Ninja Carol is a total badass, I armchair quarterback the occasional episode. Fear the Walking Dead, however, is a show I can speak a bit more authoritatively on, if only because I’m continuously gobsmacked at how stupid the central characters can be. It’s a train wreck of reckless idiocy I’m powerless to tear my eyes from. I’ve since come to understand that the concept of a zombie is one that is totally unfamiliar to the denizens of the Walking Deadiverse, hence all the talk of walkers, geeks and anything-but-the-Z-word. But when the entire world is going to hell around you – civil disobedience, military invasions, burning hospitals, riots, police shootings, the woman next door who’s been stuck in a gap between your fences, snarling and bleeding from the eyes, FOR DAYS – it simply won’t do to put on a happy face, have a cuppa tea and wait for this all to blow over. “What’s going on, Dad?”, the befuddled catchphrase of one of Fear’s central mouthbreathers, has become shorthand around my home when you’re caught being a dumbass – “Dad? What’s going on, Dad? Why is there all this water on the counter? Dad? Dad? Daaahhhhh-aaaaaddddd?”

All that to say these are zombie skin nails, featuring a polish from last year’s China Glaze Halloween collection, Don’t Let the Dead Bite, that I think looks like entrails (in the very best way!) Guaranteed walker-approved.

Lizzie’s Been a Bad, Bad Girl

Fans of The Walking Dead will get this splatter effect manicure that draws heavy inspiration from the base polish I used here, Dollish Polish’s icky-gorgeous zombie green glitter, Look at the Flowers, Lizzie. I’m not the biggest fan of the show (my husband is The Walking Deadhead around here, although I casually watch just so I can stay up to date on my pop culture education) but even I know those five devastating words, uttered by a character pushed to the absolute brink of her humanity, truly sum up the moral core of this show – no matter who you were or the person you will never get the chance to become, if you’re not part of the solution, you are the problem. And problems need to be dealt with. Just devastating.

Know what else is devastating…ly gorgeous? This nail polish! Also, friends, that is the second such horrendous non sequitur I’ve dumped on you in as many weeks. It’s the written equivalent of a star wipe, and nearly as subtle! You deserve better! You ought to revolt and tell me to go get fu —————–

*** STAR WIPE!!! ***

For these zombiefied splatter nails, I brushed on three coats of Look at the Flowers, Lizzie, an unexpectedly delicate mix of black, white, pink, yellow and green glitter in a pale, mossy green jelly base. I had initially thought this polish to be quite murky-looking, but on the nail it’s a lovely, clear yellow-green shot through with brainy bits of multi-coloured glitter in hexes, circles and squares of every size. An incredibly beautiful and unique polish that has so much more to offer besides the shock factor of its name, although that certainly doesn’t hurt, because look at what this simple swatching exercise turned into!

To do the incredibly easy – but messy and stainy – splatter effect, I dipped a straw directly into the glittery red I always use when I need a bit of blood splatter in my manis, Ceramic Glaze’s Hong Kong Diva. The straw needn’t, and shouldn’t, be dripping with polish, but there should be enough clinging to the end so that when you next blow the polish onto your nails – and for the love of all that’s holy, please remember to BLOW as opposed to SUCK (God, Elton, can’t you suck?!”) – there will actually be enough to, you know, blow. Go one nail at a time, dipping the straw back into the bottle to grab more polish as you go. I typically clean up the inevitable over-spray on my splatter manicures, but I liked the more is more approach I went with here, although I can’t condone sporting this look around, say, your boss or your nana or anyone else you don’t wish to offend with your “bloody” mitts. It also shouldn’t need saying, but please do remember to cover up anything you don’t want to see splattered in red nail polish with a large plastic bag before you get to Dexter-ing.