About – ESCAPATORIA

Welcome to Escapatoria.

As the URL suggests, I write words here. Those words currently focus towards reviews, but ultimately they can be about anything that strikes me as worth putting into consciousness at the time. Use the categories and tags listed in the sidebar (on a desktop) or bottom navigation menu (on a phone) to narrow down focus.

You may know me from one of my many other projects, which can be found HERE. If none of that rings a bell, keep on reading.

Brief Introduction

I’m a 40+ year old who occasionally acts like a dumbass on the internet. I grew up loving horror movies, reading R.L. Stine, thinking video games were the bees knees, and writing silly things. I started really getting into music as a teenager as a passive fan, mostly of then-labeled alternative metal bands. Upon graduation I thought of seriously pursuing web design and astrology but life led elsewhere. By my mid-20s I finally had better resources to explore music, which ended up being a whole lot of stoner rock. In 2007 I started a heavy-focused music blog, where I learned I didn’t really care for “professional” writing and eventually decided I wanted to help bands other ways, which led to assisting a music booking agency. While that continued and I grew my love of movies on the side, life twisted around to reduce the scope of what I could do and had energy for. Fast forward another decade, and I’m still excited about horror, heavy music, and nerdy shit much like I was as a kid and, often, writing about it. So here I am.

Movies

As a kid: I learned young that I loved horror with Tremors, Little Shop of Horrors, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Later came Fright Night, The People Under The Stairs, and Once Bitten. Elsewhere, I repeatedly watched movies known to capture the young 80s lady imagination like Labyrinth, Dirty Dancing, Fern Gully, and Fried Green Tomatoes. Of course, I also watched most of the big movies of the 80s and 90s and thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit was absolutely amazing.

As a teenager: I started my teen years thinking Terminator 2, Brainscan, Batman, and Batman Returns were wonderful… followed by From Dusk Till Dawn, Scream, and Ravenous. I also loved the weirdo-fuck out of Freaked, an idiotic comedy about a guy and his friends who get kidnapped and turned into horrific monsters after visiting a theme park. Styrofoam cup.

As an adult: Digital cable and watching a lot of random indie movies led to a broader appreciation of Film™ even though my tastes largely remained stupid. I saw Taxi Driver and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid close to the same time and realized I was not giving older and non-horror movies much of a chance. A few years later I used my first DVD-by-mail experience to rent The Happiness of the Katakuris, one of those “…I have no words” sort of movies. On the cusp of streaming times I saw The Mist, where I learned my sense of humor needs work because I’ve never laughed that hard at a movie before. After that I saw Little Otik, broadening my interest in horror more into foreign territory, and Pontypool, which did something I wouldn’t have imagined to be as interesting as it was. As streaming popularized and movies were easier to see, I started watching just about anything I could get my hands on and getting a sense of how to interpret ratings and reviews to prioritize what to see first. Pushing the limits of my interests or what I think I have the patience for have led to wonderful (well, technically speaking) movies like The Handmaiden or Dunkirk.

More recently: I still love horror. I seem to have a preference for horror sci-fi and Nope checked a lot of boxes. Mandy from a few years ago was great, and Train to Busan before that made my day. Recent movie Dune was very effective and sounded beautiful. Hoping to see more well-crafted epic fantasy (LOTR, Conan, Legend) in the future and I’ve been wanting to see more tactile and creative stop-motion, claymation, puppetry, or mixed animation-live styles (Mad God‘s plot was missing but hey now with that there) for ages.

Music

As a kid: I grew up around very serious adults and a collection of deaf people, so music wasn’t necessarily a thing for me beyond what I got out of pop culture. I had no clue beyond that I thought some music was cool and some music sucked and I’d make fun of all of it.

As a teenager: The making-fun intellectualism turned into falling in love with Tool. Just before that I had started really enjoying mostly radio music along the lines Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Gravity Kills, and Stabbing Westward. After that it was Korn, Slipknot, and A Perfect Circle. In my late teens into my early 20s I got sick of “heavy” and “serious” music and listened to The White Stripes, Placebo, and Le Tigre, and started making a point to educate myself musically in terms of culture, picking at popular music I’d missed from the 80s and before.

As an adult: And then I decided I needed to listen to more Monster Magnet. That led back to a prior brief check-in of the band Kyuss, which opened the door to stoner rock… and pretty soon after that I blacked out and woke up covered in Sleep merch moments away from beginning a unrehearsed conspiracy-filled monologue about the dangers of shirts. You did this to me, Dave. Stoner rock and doom aside, I had a while of listening to electronic like !!!, Vitalic, and Peaches, later I spent a while appreciating “weird” heavy music and bands that sound more like Converge or Meshuggah, and I learned that I generally like music as long as it doesn’t twang, interrupt my internal monologue (about the shirts, of course), or come across like disposable trash.

More recently: King Buffalo. Still love Tool and NIN for some reason. Doja Cat, Billie Eillish, Ashnikko. Heilung is doing something special. Big Business. Black (fuckin’) Cobra. Doooooom.

TV

As a kid: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the big thing for kid me. I watched a little of a lot of things but something about that show just worked for my 7 year old likeness.

As a teenager: Loved stand-up comedy and skit shows ranging from Carol Burnett and Benny Hill to George Carlin and Eddie Murphy Raw. My favorite show for ages was Rocko’s Modern Life.

As an adult: I started preferring TV that did something special if I watched TV at all. I loved the Science Channel, and I sometimes watched TV just because it was there, but otherwise I was looking for novelty. I thought In Treatment was amazing for being single-setting and breaking so many superficial rules that modern TV had decided were necessary to grab short attention spans. TV soon changed and I began to watch more and more shows, taking to drama like The Affair because of its story-telling style, then making the wonderful mistake of deciding to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation which opened up a vast rabbithole to a lot of sci-fi I’d missed years before.

More recently: I will take all the sci-fi now please. I’m all over the place since TV took off with streaming but the enjoyment I’ve gotten out of that genre this last decade can’t be understated. What do you mean there’s an alien invasion show literally called Invasion and it’s not about the aliens?! Sign me up for season 2! And it was bad, and we liked it.

Books

As a kid: I read everything I possibly could as a young kid. I literally won awards for reading so much. My preferences hovered around weird and fantastical universes or absurd goings-on, shifting towards young horror as I got older.

As a teenager: Initially I was all about R.L. Stine and related authors of the early-mid 90s. Then I read the Myst series (based on the game) and I was sold. Soon after that I got very bored with formulaic writing and all but stopped reading fiction. About the same time is when I got internet at home and let’s read ALL the things!

As an adult: Most of my paper book reading has been to learn about subjects or people, usually on topic of astrology. I made a point to read a few classics one year, including 1984 and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, both of which I loved. Years later I dedicated a summer to catching up on the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

More recently: I’m newly attempting to learn what style of fiction writing most appeals to me now. The last new novel I read and enjoyed was Project Hail Mary and I suspect at least science fiction is on the list. Do I still like horror, or just offensive bizarro fiction I can finish in an hour? Guess I’ll find out when I find out.

Games

As a kid: I grew up at exactly the time that the original Nintendo was popularized, so it was a big part of my childhood. I later fell in love with Gameboy. Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Myst (via 3DO) were huge for me.

As a teenager: Riven. I played other games, but Riven took the cake. It’s one of the best games of all time, and I have still never not cheated on the marble puzzle despite knowing how to solve it. I recently played the remake and *chef’s kiss*.

As an adult: I didn’t play many games I didn’t already own from the 90s or the Myst series until Skyrim came around, and hell yes to Skyrim. Also became a fan of The Sims and Stardew Valley.

More recently: A regular dose of brain-seizing phone games with occasional reminders that I still haven’t finished Obduction.

The Other Stuff

For as much as these things matter on the internet, I’m cis-lady. I’m a hard introvert, possibly an INTP or INTJ. I’m politically independent, albeit socially liberal-as-fuck. I don’t carry around beliefs or religion, though some paranormal and mythological concepts can be fun to consider.

I mentioned astrology up there, so I’ll type about that. I got into “sun sign” astrology in my teens but it was increasingly with criticism. In attempt to try to debunk it and set aside astrology people as ridiculous, I ended up learning a lot about it and eventually decided it can’t be properly debunked from a purely scientific perspective, so fuck it: I’m a 9th house Gemini and I love transits. In very recent times I’ve also been trying to teach myself tarot.

I don’t know what happened where since I sucked at art in school but I’ve lived for creative things in my adulthood. I’ve tried as much as I could afford to, and what I can’t, I can watch people do on YouTube. Love anything from overpriced bath products and candles to pour painting and resin to building houses and restoring furniture. If I had any land of my own, it would be covered in plants, Polly Pocket houses, and half-finished artistic projects. Also glitter. Assuming that never happens, I at least have band shirts.

I have, however, been writing since forever. And that’s what this whole thing here is about, so scroll on back and challenge your social media-acquired ADD with my many collections of words.

Tip Jar

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Credits

Header image credit: movie still from They Live.

Template credit: Simple Life, modified for color.

All text/words are mine unless noted.