Appetite for Horror

Ever since I was a kid I always had an appetite for horror movies. I became hook on the thrill and the excitement these movies brings. I put a good amount of my money on collecting these types of films. The horrify nightmare seems like good dreams when I wake up with cold sweats, I know the film did what it was attended to do which was scared me. There are numerous reasons why I love the horror movies probably even more than I am aware of. The aspect of being scared, being introduced to the fear, effects, and the plot of what I think is the scariest movie ever.

I enjoy horror films because for me there is no other cinematic genre consistently provokes many different emotional responses. I really like that feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when a good horror film scares me or gives me a shake or two. The thrill and excitement of seeing one of these is amazing. The plot is interesting and the makeup is incredible. Mainly all the horror films are predictable which do not seem exciting to others, but it is to me. For me I hardly think they are bad or not good. I can watch just about any of these and it will surprise me, and no matter how bad they are they are still entertaining. It is excitement and fear without any kind of danger. The feeling can be describe as somebody that like to read or a person that like to eat delicious food that is the feeling I get out of these.

My introduction to horror was watching the movie Child’s Play as a young kid. I was probably a little young to be watching that film, but I watched it anyways thinking that I would turn on like the film. I was wrong and at that exact time when I saw Chunky I became hook onto horror. I never had seen that kind of genre of movies before. My father brought home that film. The movie scared the pants off my sister and me. But as I got use to the fear I began watching this movie over and over again even though if I would jump at time. The film really gave me a sense of horror and I have to admit that I like it and wanted more.

Best Album I Ever Heard

There is no bigger lie on Graduation than when Kanye West claims he doesn’t “try hard,” as he does on the single “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” West tries extremely hard at everything he does. And unlike his hip-hop and rock peers most of whom want Grammys and good reviews as much as he does he’s unafraid to tell you.

On Graduation, West tries hard to address the problems on his first two albums, and succeeds: The new disc is tighter than Late Registration (fifty-one minutes long), with no skits (thank heavens) and less ornate production. None of the beats clobber you as immediately as “Jesus Walks” or “Gold Digger,” but most of them improve on every listen: This is an album that you first like, then love. “Good Morning” elevates from a gentle hook to a perfectly chosen Jay-Z sample; “Barry Bonds” is a mix-tape song with a moaning groove that you could listen to for weeks; and on “Flashing Lights” and “Stronger,” West single-handedly takes hip-hop back to its pre-Run-DMC disco days.

As a lyricist, West will never possess the pure cool or formal mastery of his mentor Jay-Z, but he’s grown as a writer. (See the off-kilter, dreamlike “I Wonder.”) And given the lousy year hip-hop has had, the music needs his spazzed-out, neurotic creativity more than ever. As for the rest of you rappers: Try harder.
Following the MTV stint, West was nominated in 8 Grammy Award categories for the 50th annual Grammy Awards. He won four of them, including Best Rap Album for Graduation and Best Rap Solo Performance for “Stronger” from Graduation. During the four-hour televised Grammy Awards ceremony, West also performed two songs: “Stronger” (with Daft Punk) and “Hey Mama” (in honor of his recently deceased mother).

Graduation is the third studio album by rapper Kanye West, released on September 11, 2007. The title of the album follows the college theme of Kanye West’s previous two studio albums, The College Dropout and Late Registration. The album artwork was designed by Takashi Murakami. Graduation, which was nominated for Grammy Album of the Year, has received three Grammy Awards, including Best Rap Album, thereby making West the only artist other than Eminem to win three Best Rap Album Grammys.

Graduation topped the Canadian, UK, and US album charts; however Curtis debuted at number one on the Irish and Swiss album charts, claiming the top spot on the Billboard European Top 100 Albums chart.
Graduation’s first week sales of 957,000 and Curtis’s first week sales of 691,000 marked only the second time ever (since Nielsen SoundScan began collecting data in 1991) that two albums sold more than 600,000 in a week in the United States. The first occurrence of such an event was in 1991 when Guns N’ Roses released Use Your Illusion I, which sold 685,000 copies, and Use Your Illusion II, which sold 770,000 copies. The first week sales totals of Graduation and Curtis have outsold the first week sales totals of Guns N’ Roses’ two albums.

Graduation sold approximately 900,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release, becoming the highest sales week for an album in 2007 (topping Linkin Park’s Minutes to Midnight, which sold 726,000) as well as West’s highest sales week to date, topping his 860,000 opening week of his previous album Late Registration. In addition, it became the 15th highest sales week for an album since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking data in 1991, and the highest sales week at the time of its release for an album since 50 Cent’s The Massacre opened with 1.4 million in March 2005. With this, it became the tenth best-selling album of 2007, selling 1,891,918 in the United States.

Graduation was certified 2× Platinum by the RIAA and has sold 2,913,926 copies in the U.S. up to October 2008.

Obsession with Huston Novels

Huston is one of the very few authors to have the movie rights to one of his books (Caught Stealing) sold before it was even bought by a publisher. A movie based on Caught Stealing was under development by Crossroads Films. However, recent Statements by Huston have suggested Crossroads Film’s option on the book has expired.

Caught Stealing along with Six Bad Things and Huston’s fourth novel, A Dangerous Man, follow the lovable anti-hero, Hank Thompson, as he works his way through mistaken identity, his past, and a new life for himself.

In 2005 with the release of Already Dead, Huston put a new spin on vampires with the beginning of a new saga he refers to as the “Joe Pitt Casebooks”. A departure from his first two books, Already Dead focuses on Vampire clans which control the underworld in and around New York City, as well as protagonist Joe Pitt, a vampire who does odd jobs for different clans, while retaining the gritty noir style Huston is known for. So far the series contains Already Dead, No Dominion, Half the Blood of Brooklyn, and the most recent Every Last Drop which was released in September 2008. The series will have five books when complete.

In 2006 Huston joined the list of print authors who have decided to try writing American comic books. In April 2006, Marvel Comics launched Huston’s reboot of the Marvel character Moon Knight. The work is an ongoing series, for which Huston wrote the first 12 monthly issues. His run concluded in December 2007, but he continues to aid in the plotting. He also wrote the second Ultimate annual in August 2006.
Huston’s first stand-alone novel, The Shotgun Rule, was published in August 2007. According to the author, “The Shotgun Rule is the story of a group of teenage delinquents that break into the wrong house and steal the wrong thing in a California suburb in the ’80s.” This book also marks Huston’s first book in third person instead of his trademark first person view.

Also, Huston has had two short stories featuring the same female protagonists published in two anthologies focusing on different aspects of noir. The first was published in Expletive Deleted on November 20, 2007, while the second was published in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir on December 3, 2007.
Huston’s latest book, The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death was released in early 2009 and introduces a new character, Webster Fillmore Goodhue, that will be further developed in upcoming books.

One of my Inspiration

Takashi Murakami (born 1 February 1963 in Tokyo), is a prolific contemporary Japanese artist who works in both fine arts media, such as painting, as well as digital and commercial media. He blurs the boundaries between high and low art. He appropriates popular themes from mass media and pop culture, and then turns them into thirty-foot sculptures, “Superflat” paintings, or marketable commercial goods such as figurines or phone caddies.

Murakami attended the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, initially studying more traditional Japanese art. He pursued a doctorate in Nihonga, a mixture of Western and Eastern styles dating back to the late 19th century. However, due to the popularity of anime and manga, Japanese styles of animation and comic graphic stories, Murakami became disillusioned with Nihonga. He became passionate about otaku culture, which he felt was more representative of modern-day Japanese life.

This resulted in Superflat, the style that Murakami is credited with starting. It developed from Poku, (Pop + otaku). Murakami has written that he aims to represent Poku culture because he expects that animation and otaku might create a new culture. This new culture is a rejuvenation of the contemporary Japanese art scene. In interviews, Murakami has expressed a frustration with the lack of a reliable and sustainable art market in post-war Japan, and the general view of Japanese art as having a low art status. He is quoted as saying that the market is nothing but “a shallow appropriation of Western trends”. His first reaction was to make art in non-fine arts media. Then he decided to focus on the market sustainability of art and promote himself first overseas.

In 2008, Takashi Murakami made Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” list, the only visual artist included.

He aslo did the cover of one of me favorit ablums The Graduation by Kanye West and he did a video as well for Kanye “good morning”

Murakami’s style, called Superflat, is characterized by flat planes of color and graphic images involving a character style derived from anime and manga. Superflat is an artistic style that comments on otaku lifestyle and subculture, as well as consumerism and sexual fetishism.

Like Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami takes low culture and repackages it, and sells it to the highest bidder in the “high-art” market. Unlike Warhol, Murakami also makes his repacked low culture available to all other markets in the form of paintings, sculptures, videos, T-shirts, key chains, mouse pads, plush dolls, cell phone caddies, and $5,000 limited-edition Louis Vuitton handbags. This is comparable to Claes Oldenburg, who sold his own low art, high art pieces in his own store front in the 1960s. What make Murakami different is his methods of production, and his work is not in one store front but many, ranging from toy stores, candy aisles, comic book stores, and the French design house of Louis Vuitton. Murakami’s style is an amalgam of his Western predecessors, Warhol, Oldenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as Japanese predecessors and contemporaries of anime and manga. He has successfully marketed himself to Western culture and to Japan in the form of Kaikai Kiki and GEISAI.

I Love Graffiti

Graffiti (singular: graffito; the plural is used as a mass noun) is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property. Graffiti is sometimes regarded as a form of art and other times regarded as unsightly damage or unwanted.

Graffiti is any type of public markings that may appear in the forms of simple written words to elaborate wall paintings. Graffiti has existed since ancient times, with examples going back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. In modern times, spray paint and markers have become the most commonly used materials. In most countries, defacing property with graffiti without the property owner’s consent is considered vandalism, which is punishable by law. Sometimes graffiti is employed to communicate social and political messages. To some, it is an art form worthy of display in galleries and exhibitions; to others it is merely vandalism. Graffiti has since evolved into a pop culture existence often related to underground hip hop music and break dancing creating a lifestyle that remains hidden from the general public. The controversies that surround graffiti continue to create disagreement amongst city officials/ law enforcement and graffiti artists looking to display their work in public locations. There are many different types and styles of graffiti and it is a rapidly developing art form whose value is highly contested, being reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.

Some of the most common styles of graffiti have their own names. A “tag” is the most basic writing of an artist’s name in either spray paint or marker. A graffiti writer’s tag is his or her personalized signature. “Tagging” is often the example given when opponents of graffiti refer to vandalism, as they use it to label all acts of graffiti writing (it is by far the most common form of graffiti). Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and might incorporate the artist’s initials or other letters. As well as the graffiti name, some artists include the year that they completed that tag next to the name, for example “Tox” an artist from London, becomes Tox03, Tox04, etc. John Tsombikos claimed subsequent to his arrest that his “Borf” tag campaign, which gained recognition for its prevalence in Washington, D.C., was in memory of a deceased friend.

Another form is the “throw-up,” also known as a “fill-in,” which is normally painted very quickly with two or three colors, sacrificing aesthetics for speed. Throw-ups can also be outlined on a surface with one color. A “piece” is a more elaborate representation of the artist’s name, incorporating more stylized “block” or “bubble” letters, using three or more colors. This of course is more time consuming and increases the likelihood of the artist getting caught. A “blockbuster” is a large piece done simply to cover a large area solidly with two contrasting colours, sometimes with the whole purpose of blocking other “writers” from painting on the same wall.

A more complex style is “wildstyle”, a form of graffiti involving interlocking letters, arrows, and connecting points. These pieces are often harder to read by non-graffiti artists as the letters merge into one another in an often undecipherable manner. A “roller” is a “fill-in” that intentionally takes up an entire wall, sometimes with the whole purpose of blocking other “writers” from painting on the same wall. Some artists also use stickers as a quick way to “get-up”. While critics from within graffiti culture consider this lazy and a form of cheating, stickers can be quite detailed in their own right, and are often used in conjunction with other materials. Sticker tags are commonly done on blank postage stickers, or indeed anything with an adhesive side to it.

Stencils are made by drawing an image onto a piece of cardboard or tougher versions of paper, and then cut with a razor blade. What is left is then just simply sprayed-over, and if done correctly, a perfect image is left. Many graffiti artists believe that doing blockbusters or even complex wildstyles involves too great an investment of time to justify the practice. Doing wildstyle can take (depending on experience and size) three hours to several days. Another graffiti artist can go over that piece in a matter of minutes with a bubble fill-in. This was exemplified by the writer “CAP” in the documentary Style Wars, who, other writers complain, ruins pieces with his quick throw ups. This became known as “capping” and is often done when there is “beef”, conflict between writers.