Lex Thomas's Blog, page 4

Everything to Sell Anything: Introducing New Upgrades and Product Releases

Today we’re excited to share a series of new product features and improvements focused on helping our customers sell in multiple ways online — including physical products, digital content, classes, appointments and reservations. With more and more people thinking up creative ways to sell the things they’re passionate about, and against the backdrop of new business formation over the past 18 months, we are focused on giving today's entrepreneurs everything they need to thrive in one seamless, integrated platform.

We believe that small businesses intend to sell more services and digital products as they scale in the future, and that services-based businesses are poised for increasing levels of online success as the way businesses transact online broadens. These updates were inspired by the trends of the evolving small business landscape and the flourishing creator economy, enabling our customers to sell more, easily add new revenue streams and earn passive income.

With video becoming one of the best means of audience engagement, among the biggest product innovations to be released is Squarespace Video Studio, an app that makes it incredibly simple for businesses to produce professional-quality videos to engage their audiences and help sell their ideas, products and services. 

Highlights across Squarespace’s product suite include:

Tools for selling products. Sell anything online with expertly-designed templates that can be populated with products, services, or content, enabling anyone to start taking payments and managing orders instantly. 

Introducing the Squarespace Video Studio App — An app that helps anyone create professional-level videos that promote their business and tell their story effortlessly. Intuitive templates seamlessly pull in Squarespace product images and brand styles, and smart voiceovers powered by AI or your own recordings can be added to narrate. Videos can be easily shared anywhere, including social media, to drive traffic and sales. Squarespace Video Studio is available globally in English for iOS beginning today.

New Marketplace Tools — New tools for marketplace sellers to build their brand and grow their business with integrations to their Etsy shop products and reviews, making it easy for any Etsy user to create their own online store while also continuing to manage their Etsy shop efficiently. Our integration with Etsy is currently available to Squarespace users internationally translated in Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese.

Tools for hospitality, events, and appointment-based businesses. Manage reservations and schedules through Squarespace’s existing Tock and Scheduling products, and spend less time booking and more time serving customers.

Take Reservations & Orders— Earlier this year, Squarespace joined forces with Tock, the only fully integrated, end-to-end hospitality management system. Tock provides a seamless experience for time-slotted businesses like restaurants, wineries or bars, to manage their reservations, events, and to-go orders from one convenient location. Tock is currently available in English, operating in 26 countries and 200+ cities around the world.

Book & Manage Appointments + Classes — Squarespace Scheduling allows businesses to share their availability on their website, social channels, and through email or text for easy management of any kind of appointment or class. Squarespace Scheduling is currently available as an add-on to all Squarespace customers or as a standalone product in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. 

Tools for selling access to exclusive content. Squarespace provides powerful membership subscription tools that let you create your own private community via Member Areas. Create subscriber areas that give your customers access to private blogs, newsletters and more.

New Tools for Video Classes — Coming this Fall, expanded ways for educators, content creators, and community leaders to monetize their expertise by allowing them to sell video classes in Member Areas, a Squarespace product designed to help customers sell access to content through memberships. These new tools help businesses to organize, categorize and curate their video content, enabling flexible subscription models and showcasing their videosin beautiful class libraries that fit their brand. Video Classes will launch later this year and will be available to Squarespace customers internationally.

Tools for creators. Make your brand stand out with features powered by Squarespace’s award-winning design tools, which help you drive sales and maintain consistent branding across your entire digital presence.

New Web Design Tools — Multiple dynamic new features to help businesses customize the design of their site to stand out and establish credibility.

Background Art that enables customers to choose from a wide variety of eye-catching gradients, shapes, repeating patterns, and other animations to use as a background for their website. Background Art is currently available to Squarespace customers globally.

Auto Layouts that simplify managing sets of related content, while also providing new layout options. Customers can easily turn lists of content such as product reviews, customer testimonials, product features, and more, into interactive carousels and banner slideshows with a single click. Auto Layouts are currently available to Squarespace customers globally.

Stylized Headers that help customers personalize their top navigation bar with gradients, borders, transparency and more—plus Image Masks, which offer more creative freedom for presenting photos with new shapes and modern cropping options. Stylized Headers and Image Masks will be available to all Squarespace customers globally by the end of the year.

New templates with updated expressibility features and built-in tools that are designed to help customers across a variety of industries stand out—whether they’re offering memberships, scheduling appointments, or hosting a podcast. The new templates are currently available in English, with additional languages coming soon.

Unfold Updates — The Unfold app offers everything for anyone to be successful on social media. With these new updates, Unfold users will be able to schedule their social posts weeks in advance across multiple Instagram accounts, and better optimize their “link in bio” pages with one of Unfold’s beautiful, animated Bio Site templates, enabling them to share their website and social pages, embed videos, and start monetizing—all in one place. The Unfold app is currently available in all Squarespace supported languages for iOS and Android. Post scheduling will be released by the end of 2021.

Updated Brand Consistency Tools — The ability to automatically apply brand elements—like colors and logos—from Squarespace websites to Email Campaigns, Squarespace Video Studio and Unfold Bio Sites to easily achieve brand consistency across multiple customer touchpoints. Site Styles in Email Campaigns is currently available to Squarespace users globally. The ability to automatically generate an Unfold Bio Site from a Squarespace website is now available in all Squarespace-supported languages for iOS users, with Android availability to follow.

In addition, we are releasing a brand campaign from our award-winning in-house creative and marketing department, “Everything to Sell Anything,” which brings to life our new vision for the platform. The spot features examples of what can be sold or monetized on Squarespace—from ceramics and podcasts, to tarot card readings and voiceover services—and will run across television and digital media, with out-of-home assets on display in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Toronto. 

For information on the new products, including a keynote video that features Squarespace executives, please visit https://www.squarespace.com/sell-anything.

From the recording booth of John McEnroe:

You may know me as tennis legend John McEnroe, or as the voice of Netflix’s hit show Never Have I Ever, but soon you’ll know me as the voice of everything. Yes, I am serious.  I’m working with Squarespace, the website building and ecommerce platform, and Netflix, to go from tennis legend to voice legend. 

Why? Well, ever since I got my start on Never Have I Ever, I asked myself “why stop at one hit show?” So I’ve decided I’m going for it – and I have a Squarespace website to prove it. After all, you haven’t really made it unless it’s on the internet. And just like with anything else I’ve ever done, I didn’t just make a site. I made a John McEnroe kind of website: johnmcenroe.squarespace.com. It really is one of the greatest things on the web. Just look at it. You can see my work, watch my auditions, book voice appointments and buy all kinds of incredible swag. You can even watch a documentary I made about the whole thing.   

And look, if I can start my next chapter, you can too. Not convinced? Just take a look at some of these glowing reviews:

“We jumped at the opportunity to help John build his brand online and launch his career as a VO artist – last I checked he was completely booked through 2023.” –  Kinjil Mathur, CMO of Squarespace

“John’s been asking to narrate other Netflix shows for months now. I keep asking myself, how did he get a hold of my personal email address? But I have to say, his Bridgerton audition is pretty great.” – Bozoma Saint John, CMO of Netflix

“John really captured the essence of Daisy’s and helped us get the word out about our mops. With John’s talents in our corner we’ll never become mopsolete.” – Daisy Chirillo, owner of Daisy’s Mop Shop

“I get so many calls from people asking me why the heck John McEnroe is the voice of my answering machine… which is funny because instead of answering them I let it go to voicemail again so they can have a second listen. It’s great.” – Amy, voicemail customer

Don’t you just love the sound of happy customers in the morning? I know I do. And already, I can’t wait for my next gig. 

If that hasn’t sold you on my talents yet check out my reel at johnmcenroe.squarespace.com.

John McEnroe
Voice Artist 
1-833-4MCENVO

About John McEnroe
John McEnroe is a pop culture icon and a tennis legend. Ranked No. 1 on the all-time ATP Tour tournament win list with 155 combined singles and doubles titles, John marveled the tennis world as a player of considerable skill and finesse. However, it’s John’s fiery competitive spirit that truly makes him one of the most memorable sports icons of all time. John began his professional career in 1978 and quickly became ranked number one in both singles and doubles. He won 77 career singles titles, including seven Grand Slams, and was ranked No. 1 in the world for four consecutive years (1981-1984). In 1999, John was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. An Emmy-nominated sports analyst working at all four Grand Slam tournaments across ESPN, NBC, Eurosport, BBC and Channel 9 Australia, he has firmly established himself as the voice of tennis. John founded the Johnny Mac Tennis Project (JMTP), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to help educate and support under-resourced NYC-area kids through his John McEnroe Tennis Academy at Sportime, Randall’s Island. A former father of the year, John and his wife, rockstar Patty Smyth, have six children and currently reside in Manhattan.

About Squarespace
Squarespace is a leading all-in-one website building and ecommerce platform that enables millions to build a brand and transact with their customers in an impactful and beautiful online presence. Our suite of products enables anyone at any stage of their journey to manage their projects and businesses through websites, domains, ecommerce, marketing tools, and scheduling, along with tools for managing a social media presence with Unfold and hospitality business management via Tock. Squarespace democratizes access to best-in-class design, helping our customers in approximately 200 countries and territories maintain consistent branding across all digital touchpoints to stand out online. Our team of more than 1,400 is headquartered in downtown New York City, with offices in Dublin, Ireland, Portland, Oregon, Los Angeles, California and Chicago, Illinois. For more information, visit www.squarespace.com.

Press Contact
Squarespace Communications 
press@squarespace.com

2016: The Year of THE GIANT

Infected zone starter kit

So, we just wrapped up edits on the next QUARANTINE book, THE GIANT. Yes, there will be another one! If you follow us on Twitter, then maybe you know some of the details already, but it tells the story of a different hero from McKinley High -- the ax-wielding Loner, Gonzalo. We're really excited for you to read it because it revisits the early, crazy days of the quarantine but also reveals a whole new world we've never explored before in the series -- the infected zone of Colorado, populated by tribes of teens and the murderous adults who hunt them. If you thought McKinley was intense, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

We hope to have a cover reveal soon, and look for a sneak peak of the first two chapters in the upcoming paperback release of QUARANTINE: THE BURNOUTS. Then, grab QUARANTINE: THE GIANT when it hits bookstores in the fall! 

So many Quarantine videos...

A couple months ago, the amazing STEM Outreach team at Northern Illinois University invited us to DeKalb, IL to participate in QUARANTINE: THE FIELD TRIP. We were honored that our books were chosen to be the inspiration for a day full of live-action gaming with 200 students from the Chicago area, but we had no idea of just how awesome it would end up being. Check out what happened:

To watch more videos from that day, check out the PRESS section of our site. STEM continued the awesomeness that night by screening a horror movie at the local Egyptian Theater that we chose. If you're looking for some scares, check out our movie recommendations from that night:

For more of our horror recs, check out this list, or who or we kidding, just read the rest of our blog for years worth of #31HorrorFilms31Days hits and misses.

To round out our video blow-out, here's one of the best fan trailers we've seen for Quarantine so far (keep making 'em, we love 'em!):

#31HorrorFilms31Days Round 3

October has come and gone, and once again we have suffered Daniel Kraus' 31 day horror movie watching challenge. This time we both hit the magic number in the final hours, and just like the past years, it really started to drag on me near the end of the month. I'm starting to feel that to do it right, you should double or triple feature movies whenever you can, to make up for the days where you just don't feeling watching horror. And I think you should end the month on really good ones, or ones that have a special meaning to you, so that you're not trudging through slop in the final stretch. Next year I think I'll try to up the quality when I get to the point that I'm a little numb from watching so much horror, and a little less tolerant of cliches and shoddy execution. 

Below is our two movie lists, and a bunch of images from our horrific month. 

Next year, do it along with us!

-T 

THOMAS

1) NIGHT OF THE DEMONS - 80's Halloween costumes. Strobe lights. Mirror demons. Oh my god the lipstick scene. This one was a lot of fun. 
2) STREET TRASH - A discontinued malt liquor that melts the drinker into multi-colored goo wreaks havoc on hobos. This movie is gross, in bad taste, foul in multiple ways, but it was carried out with such wreckless abandon and blind enthusiasm that the result left a lasting impression on me. The hobo village in the junkyard with the dirty king on his throne of trash was insane. The multi colored explosions were insane. The premise was insane. Pretty much the whole thing was insane, aside from the stretches of bland acting and boring scenes.
3) DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE - A weirdo who was abused by his mom murders innocent women with a flamethrower. Yikes. This one bothered me.  I think it was because I didn’t really buy the story math of how his childhood abuse would result in him becoming a woman-burning serial killer, and all the murders made me sick. 
4) THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD - Four tenants of an evil house dramatically die. Very British and theatrical, very focused on the drama rather than the horror element. 
5) TOURIST TRAP - Animatronic mannequins, a killer who wears empty-eyed doll masks, and death by plaster face mask. One of those slashers I never knew about. I plan on watching this again. 
6) BONE TOMAHAWK (2015)- Old West sheriff Kurt Russell vs. cave-dwelling troglodyte cannibals. Amazing. The Western part, which is most of the movie, was so well done and entertaining, and the horror climax/last third kicked ass. 
7) DEADLY BLESSING - Evil Hittite neighbors. It's like Wes Craven's Witness. Killer end. The horror scenes are actually good, which is no surprise from Wes Craven, but the Hittite neighbor drama didn’t pull me in. I loved what happens in the last minute of the movie though. 
8) HE NEVER DIED- Henry Rollins is an invincible, violent, emotionless man who just wants to play bingo. Loved it. 
9) THE DEVILS - A man of faith is destroyed by his own religion. My head is still spinning. This was a great movie. Oliver Reed was amazing, as usual, as a priest in 17th century France who sleeps around a lot, and gets declared evil and an agent of the devil for the sexual fantasies he's put in the minds of the local nuns, especially the head nun with a deformed spine who fantasizes about him to no end. There is a lot of shocking scenes, but whats more hard to handle is watching him be the only one living in accordance with the principles of the religion, as the church destroys him for being a blasphemer. It definitely stays with you. 
10) THE BEYOND- A gate to hell. Cataracts. Eyeball gore. Blind girl standing in the middle of the highway. 
11) POPCORN - Baloney face wants revenge. Please bring back electrified seats in movie theaters.
12) SUBSPECIES - It's all about awesome-looking evil Romanian vampire Radu Vladislas. I recommend watching the Subspecies series but only paying attention when Radu is on screen. The rest of the scenes are hard to pay attention to anyway, but Radu is great, and gets more fun to watch each movie. Finally an evil vampire instead of a romantic one. And the actor who plays him is a blast.
13) BLOODSTONE: SUBSPECIES 2 - This one has Radu's mom in it
14) WHEN A STRANGER CALLS BACK - Carol Kane returns. Bad guy is reluctant to exist. First and last 30 are great, although it pulls a move in the very end that is pretty ridiculous, but if you go with it, it's pretty fun. 
15) IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS - The horror author is God and he is cruel. Choice is an illusion. It's all a big joke.
16) ZOMBIE - Amazing underwater footage, satisfying gore. Good times. I love horror in a happy setting where the colors a bright and cheerful instead of the same old grey green palette. 
17) EVIL DEAD TRAP - A Japanese reporter receives a snuff film/love letter and decides to investigate. Big mistake.
18) CASSADAGA - A twisty ghost story with a heinous serial killer. I couldn't handle the puppet parts
19) BLOODLUST: SUBSPECIES 3 - Radu dies in each movie and comes back in the next. This was by far the best death
20) BLOODSTORM: SUBSPECIES 4 - Best one. Radu's really strutting his stuff. How is there not a Subspecies 5 yet?
21) SEPTIC MAN - I need some bleach. 
22) SPOOKIES - A huge mess with some fun parts. Like the farting mud men.
23) BLOOD DINER- Cannibals, a talking brain, feminist overtones, an ancient Lumerian goddess. Totally bonkers
24) LATE PHASES - A tough old blind man prepares to battle werewolves in his retirement community. Good stuff
25) LET US PREY - A mysterious stranger brings out the evil in everyone but her. Sort of. Cool soundtrack -T
26) THE BLOOD LANDS- Move to Scotland and your neighbors will kill you. I liked the happy part in the beginning -T
27) DAY OF THE DEAD - Green zombies, grey zombies. Zombies with souls. Gore. Gets right to it. So 80's and fun -T
28) DEAD SNOW: RED VS. DEAD - The man with the evil arm needs Russian zombies to battle the Nazi zombies. Funny
29) C.H.U.D. - Sewer mutants, eventually -T
30) COOTIES - More of a comedy but enough gore to count. They needed cootie shots #circlecircledotdot
31) NIGHTMARE WEEKEND - A supercomputer turns debauched young women into mutants. I think that was a movie 

LEX

1) BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA - An OG vampire gets angry and horny in this underrated classic. Gary Oldman turns it up to 11.

2) THE LEGACY - Sam Elliot is treated to an elegant stay at an English manor, and it pisses him off to no end.

3) FRANKENHOOKER - Rule one: don't bring a bag of "supercrack" to a hooker party. Actually, rule one of Frankenhooker is don't run your girlfriend over with a lawnmower. #wantadate?

4) DEAD AND BREAKFAST - Check, please!

5) NEW NIGHTMARE - Robert Englund plays himself, Freddie, and an ancient demon who loves playing Freddie. #metafreddie

6) GALLOWWALKERS - EL TOPO meets BLADE....and not in a good way.

7) BLADE II - Guillermo Del Toro blends NOSFERATU, FRANKENSTEIN, and ALIENS into a killer Marvel horror flick. Kristofferson steals it.

8) ALICE, SWEET ALICE - A'church'a ladies be'a crazy. Some nice twisty shocks.

9) GOTHIC - Laudanum, orgies, pythons, being human lightning rods. Just your average 19th Century writer's retreat.

10) SPLICE - Worst scientists ever.

11) COLD PREY - Who wouldn't want to kill a bunch of snowboarders who roll into your ski lodge and drink all your booze?

12) TRIANGLE - A bazillion reasons not to go on a cruise ship. Fun and unsettling. More Melissa George, please! #apileofSallys

13) WE ARE STILL HERE - We take our sweet time and we eventually get to some pretty sweet ghosts.

14) THE HOWLING - Dee Wallace takes a break from LA and discovers werewolves need therapy too.

15) EVIL DEAD (2013) - There was a book. They opened it. They shouldn't have.

16) THE BANSHEE CHAPTER - FROM BEYOND meets BLUE SUNSHINE. Decent jump scares, plus Ted Levine as Hunter S. Thompson.

17) DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE - He turns into a she. Self-loathing ensues. The only solution is to kill other people.

18) THE GATE - Pretty much a documentary about growing up in the '80s, except with a gate to Hell. #sacrifix

19) BURNING BRIGHT - A girl and her autistic brother get trapped in their house with a tiger during a hurricane. 

20) SAW - A dying man tries to make the world a better place through puzzles. Danny Glover whispers and falls down a lot.

21) ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES - A little levity was needed, cara mia, before diving into Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

22) TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 - Grandpa's the best chili cook there ever was!

23) WISHMASTER - Ohmygaaaaaaad! Do NOT say the word "wish" around that guy!

24) WISHMASTER 2 - Mo wishes, mo problems.

25) NIGHT OF THE COMET - Sisters are doin' it for themselves, and cosmic dust zombies are trying to stop them.

26) PUMPKINHEAD - DEATH WISH meets THE GRAPES OF WRATH, only with a witch, a gourd demon, and Lance Henricksen.

27) NIGHT OF THE CREEPS - Space worms get fratty. File this under "Where has this been all my life?!"

28) ALIEN RESURRECTION - Ain't no party like an alien party 'cause an alien party don't stop. #aquaaliens

29) WOLFEN - Predator takes Manhattan. Solid flick.

30) SINISTER - What it feels like to write a book.

31) DEATHDREAM - A Vietnam vet brings the war home with him. His parents do not approve.

Quarantine: The Field Trip

Are you a QUARANTINE fan who lives in the Chicago area? We're headed your way November 19th. Join us for a day of real life QUARANTINE role-playing and then a horror movie screening at the Egyptian Theater in DeKalb. 

#31HorrorFilms31Days

No, no, not again! 

It seemed like we barely had time to recover from the last #31HorrorFilms31Days, but it was time again to subject ourselves to an onslaught of horror. We both tried to watch movies we've never seen before, and both ended up hitting roughly the same numbers as last year. I hit 31 a few days early and could have gotten another four or five in, but I tapped out from horror fatigue. The bleakness and the brutality got to be too draining. Some movies, like Martyrs, were so disturbingly extreme that I wanted to watch Alvin and the Chipmunks for a month to restore my faith in humanity. I watched one movie that was so atrocious that I didn’t even put it on my list because I didn’t want to point anyone toward it.

There were good ones though. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was phenomenal. I can’t believe I’d never seen it and now it is a contender for my favorite horror movie of all time. I also loved Calvaire. Exte: Hair Extensions was bizarre and fun and the only evil hair extensions movie I’ve ever seen. The Collector and The Collection were a lot like Saw, and some people don’t like them, but I think it’s a fun franchise. Phantasm was sweet, Tokyo Gore Police was insane, and the Stacy Keach segment of Body Bags was mind-blowing and  hilarious. 

I can’t say I’m sorry it’s over, and I’ll be feeding my brain with a lot more happy stuff in the next month to balance it out, but I’ve already got a 34 movie list laid out for next year. Bring it on… but not for 11 months. 

-Tom

 

Here's our lists and some pics!

TOM:

1) STITCHES - A clown that doesn't finish a party can never rest in peace. And its soul lives inside a painted egg. 

2- THE SPELL (1977) - An ostracized, overweight teen uses witchcraft to get revenge on everyone she hates.

3) MARTYRS - I feel abused by this movie. Extreme French torture and dehumanization horror.

4) SHIVERS - Cronenberg knows how to make zombies scarier. Make them horny. 

5) FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED - Jeffrey Combs, the Wishmaster guy, fun special effects, and wolverine claws

6) PHENOMENA- She's psychically connected to insects and sleepwalks while a killer stalks. Slow build, great finish 

7) PROXY - The assault of a pregnant woman with a brick made me sick. And the rest of the movie was confusing 

8) SHAKMA - Locked inside with a murderous baboon. Bad monkey horror. Baboon was cool tho. 

9) THE REEDS - Friends take a boat into the reeds, a spooky wetland where plot slows and interest wanes

10) WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979) - Carol Kane gets an iconic phone call from a maniac. Great score. No gore needed

11) EXTE: HAIR EXTENSIONS - Evil hair extensions bursting from eyeballs, mouths, and wounds. Gross, fun and weird.

12) VAMP - Grace Jones and her vampire strippers. Whole movie is drenched in pink and green light 

13) THE CONJURING - Well executed haunted house/exorcism movie.

14) CALVAIRE- (The Ordeal) Never let your van breakdown in the backwoods of Belgium. Horrific hicks. Pretty great

15) CARRIE (2013) - Imagine the 70's Carrie except remade so that by the end you don't care.

16) FORGET ME NOT- As her friends die, the world forgets they ever existed. Also twitching ghouls wearing duct tape

17) THE KISS - Her estranged fashion model aunt returns and wants to pass the family curse on to her with a kiss.

18) THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974) - Killer buildup. Amazing end. So scary. #thegrandpa. #chainsawchase #lovedit 

19) CRAWLSPACE - Klaus Kinski is a nazi landlord who hates privacy and likes to skateboard on his stomach 

20) THE CURSE (1987) - A glowing meteor hits a farm, ruins the crops, and drives the people and livestock insane. 

21) DEAD AND BURIED- Strangers who die in Potter's Bluff come back as locals. Melody Anderson. Stan Winston effects.

22) CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST - Oof. 

23) PULSE (2001) - Solemn people in Japan are haunted by internet ghosts. Awesome scary ghost walks. 

24) NURSE - Paz de la Huerta is a steamy serial killer minx who kills married men for succumbing to her charms. 

25) THE COLLECTOR - Booby trap gorror inside a house. Pretty sweet

26) THE COLLECTION - The fun continues at the killer's house in the sequel. I'm ready for part 3. The Collectables?

27) CHOPPING MALL - Deadly robots with laser guns are deployed to finally put an end to after hours mall crime.

28) FRONTIER(S) - Like Texas Chainsaw but in France, with brutal gore, Nazis, and every awful thing you can imagine

29) TOKYO GORE POLICE - So enthusiastically over the top that it's amazing.

30) BODY BAGS - Fun John Carpenter horror compilation. The one with Stacy Keach getting hair replacement is amazing 

31) PHANTASM - Two brothers are tormented by a tall mortician, hooded dwarves, and flying chrome torture balls.

 

LEX:

1) HAXAN - The world according to witches. Lots of old Danish women and WilliamSBurroughs (who oddly looks like an old Danish woman).

2) THE FLY - Girl meets guy. Guy kills baboon, merges with fly, eats tons of candy, & tries to make girl teleport.

3) OCULUS - Siblings fight a haunted mirror. The usual psycho dad bullshit goes down. I was hoping for more Latin.

4) OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN - Peter Weller renovates an NYC brownstone and one vicious rat effs it up. Pretty great.

5) PIECES - College. Where a Dean cuts up girls with a chainsaw and noone catches on. Evidently a college for the deaf

6) CUJO - The dog attack scenes are way more terrifying than the book. And @Dee_Wallace is so watchable.

7) FIRESTARTER - Lil' Drew Barrymore combusts an all-star cast but leaves her numerous superhip 80's outfits un-singed. 

8) LETS SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH - Some hippies land in like a really bad scene, man, and discover it ain't 1969 anymore 

9) BORGMAN - The devil hangs out.

10) THE MAN WHO LAUGHS - Ladies love a grotesque, surgically implemented smile. 

12) LONG WEEKEND A couple go camping and are such assholes even the animals want to kill them.

13) FRIDAY THE 13TH, PT. 7 - Totally original concept. Never knew what was going to happen. They should make more.

14) WITCHING & BITCHING - More witches than you can shake a broom at. A new favorite

15) TENEBRE - Giallo film about a giallo novel that inspires Italian women to be killed while nude. Top tier Argento 

16) PSYCHO II - Norman Bates tries hard not to kill again. And fails.

17) BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO - A sound engineer goes Mulholland Dr working on Susperia. More like Berboring Sound Studio 

18) PROXY - What happens when psychos meet at a support group. Unfortunately spirals into Lifetime treatment.

Netflix Menu - Foodie Horror

You love food. You love horror. You want to watch three movies and a repulsive reality show pilot. I've got a foodie horror Netflix menu for you. 

First up is Omnivores. The original Spanish title is Omnivoros, which sounds much cooler. It's the story of a respected food critic who investigates rumors of a clandestine restaurant that serves human flesh. It's really well done, and it was cool that it was Spanish, and the horror scenes themselves are stark and brutal. I don't want to spoil anything but it's a realistic tension builder from last year about foodies and cannibalism and there's a disturbing villain and an extra disturbing right hand man. Very disturbing. Watch on an empty stomach. 

If you were down for Omnivores, you should go ahead and pair it with the flavor of Dumplings. This Chinese horror movie is totally gross and quietly horrific. A retired movie starlet hates that she is losing her looks and she finds a woman who cooks magical dumplings that have the power to make you look young again. Once you discover the secret ingredient you'll want to puke. Like Omnivores there's a lot of focus on cooking and eating and chewing, and on gross mouth noises, but despite how disturbing it is the tone of Dumplings is much calmer and quieter most of the time than than the turn of the screw tension of Omnivores.

Side note- If the part you like about Dumplings is an aging actress resorting to magic to fix her problems, and you're not against melodramatic Bollywood horror movies with song and dance numbers, than you could watch Raaz 3. If you want more Bollywood after that, try the romantic thriller Raavan. One character talks a lot about having knives rattling around inside his skull, which made me like him. 

Third is a childhood favorite of mine that is not up to the quality of the first two. The acting isn't great, the budget is small, and the practical special effects look cartoonish by modern standards, but when you're putting together a foodie horror playlist it's hard not to include a movie about a white goo called The Stuff that is marketed as a replacement for all food, and that secretly controls the mind of whoever eats it. All food being replaced by a processed white goo = a foodie's worst nightmare. The movie is a lot of fun, more of a light dessert of ridiculousness after the heartier meal of the first two.The TV commercials for The Stuff that they made for the movie are great too. 

And finally, if you've ever wanted to watch real footage of a dead lion being skinned, gutted, and having all the meat flensed from its bones, you should check out Skeleton, Inc.. I think it was a pilot that didn't get picked up because there's only one episode, and I can see why. This stuff is hard to look at. The weird thing about it was once they pull the skin off the lion it looked so much like a monster from a horror movies that had a new respect for makeup artists. It looked like something I might have thought was cheesy if I'd seen it in a movie, but clearly I would have been wrong. The show is about a family business that provides skeletons for medical schools and museums, and it's their job to get all the flesh off of those bones, use flesh eating beetles to clean them, and assemble them back together. They're doing this disgusting work for a good purpose and it's actually pretty interesting to watch how they do it, but the first segment when they take the lion apart is gruesome and real, and bracing to watch, especially for meat eaters. 

Also, this has nothing to do with foodie horror but watch from 51:53 to 52:50 of Money Talks (1972). Yikes!

Thomas

Some pics from the last four years

It's been about 4 years since we started working on the Quarantine novel series. I can't believe it's been that long! I was looking through old photos and found a handful of writing pics from that time. In honor of Book 3 coming out today I thought I'd share some.

This was the writing area of the apartment I lived in while we wrote the first 2 books. Kind of cramped and crowded but I found that comforting. 

Here's Lex working on the couch in the other half of the room. I'm taking this photo from my desk. 

Here Lex is again, this time more stressed out. 

I like to write in a dark room. It helps me to focus. 

Writing requires lots of post it notes. 

My desk is always a complete mess. 

This is a hand drawn calendar I put on my wall in the month leading up to our deadline for the first draft The Loners The big numbers are the numbers of chapters that I'm marking down on the day I finish them. The bottom row is chapters that needed to be revised.

Here's Lex working on the couch at my painting studio, we'd work there sometimes too. 

Here's the hallway in the building where I had my studio, very Quarantine-y. 

At B&N at the Grove in LA for the release of The Saints. 

Drawing characters puking their lungs out.

 

LEX THOMAS JULY BLOG TOUR

To celebrate the release of THE SAINTS on paperback (today!) and THE BURNOUTS on hardback and ebook (July 22nd), we'll be all over the web in July. Look for interviews, guest posts and more from us here:

Wednesday, July 9th - Pinky's Favorite Reads

Thursday, July 10th - A Bookish Escape

Friday, July 11th - Icey Books

Saturday, July 12th - Bookaholics Anonymous

Sunday, July 13th - Books with Bite

Monday, July 14th - Bittersweet Enchantment

Tuesday, July 15th - Curling Up with a Good Book

Wednesday, July 16th - Karin's Book Nook

Thursday, July 17th - Ex Libris Kate

Friday, July 18th - Live To Read

Saturday, July 19th - Tales of a Ravenous Reader

Sunday, July 20th - Page Turner's Blog

Monday, July 21st - Young Adult Books: What We're Reading Now

Tuesday, July 22nd (THE BURNOUTS pub day!) - The Children's Book Review

And a few more still to be announced,  so check back here for QUARANTINE news all month . . .