Ross E. Lockhart's Blog, page 70
July 18, 2011
Adult Beverage: Green Flash Trippel / LEGO Cthulhu
Sunday night is upon us, leaving me wondering where the weekend went. I'm not sure I'm ready for tomorrow to be Monday. I had about eight hundred thousand words I was hoping to read. Instead, I read about eighty thousand, maybe I'll hit a hundred tonight. Fortunately, most of those were the right words. So I'm pouring a "modern all-malt trippel dry-hopped and bottle conditioned" for words spilled and all those words yet to be read.
Trippel pours muted glowing amber, thin-headed and visibly carbonated. Line graph lacing details triumphs and tragedies on the glass. Sugar and brandied fruit on the nose. Pleasantly yeasty. Fruit on the tip of the tongue, followed by bittersweet bready yeast and honey. Substantive mouthfeel with roiling carbonation. Lasting bitter antiseptic alcohol finish. More Californian than Belgian, but a unique take on the trippel. Dangerously drinkable.
And the closest thing to an official LEGO Cthulhu set, Gateway of the Squid (#8061), has been acquired.
July 17, 2011
Countdown to Cthulhu: Congratulations to Laird Barron
The Shirley Jackson Awards Website
And via Aeron Alfrey, here are nearly a hundred awesome gruesome examples of 1970s monster art by British comic artist and writer Ken Reid. Click here or on the picture below to see more.
"The 'Orrible Octopus", by Ken Reid
My tweets
Adult Beverage: New Belgium Lips of Faith Super Cru / Guerilla Marketing
We're over at Jan and Randy's for veggieburgers and the baseball game. I'm having a New Belgium Lips of Faith Super Cru.
Super Cru pours ruby-golden with a full, quickfalling head leaving tendrils of lacing. Crisp pearskin on the nose. Sweet and fruity up front, bright and boozy with a quick Fat Tire bitter along the palate. Balanced carbonation, creamy as it rolls across the tongue. Wet finish, with lasting pear essence on the walls of the mouth. A little peach schnapps pucker, but not aggressively bitter. Lacks a little something at the back of the throat.
And Jennifer and I did a little Guerilla marketing for The Book of Cthulhu today. Recently, we ordered a batch of postcards featuring the book cover from Moo.com. They arrived yesterday. Today, we mailed them out to fifty-nine hand-selected independent California bookstores. It's shotgun marketing, so we'll see if it gets any orders.
Here's the back:
And we spotted this at the grocery store this afternoon, perfect for health- and animal rights-conscious cephalophobes like H.P.L.:
Maddie's not sure what she thinks of the postcards, but she'd really like to try that vegan calamari.
July 16, 2011
Countdown to Cthulhu: Saturday Morning Cartoons
So pour yourself a nice, big bowl of Cthulhu Crunch or Myth*Os (they're blasphemously delicious!), grab a spoon, and let's take a trip back in time to October 27, 1987, with this classic episode of The Real Ghostbusters, "The Collect Call of Cthulhu". And as Dr. Peter Venkman said, "Anything that looks like Godzilla wearing an octopus hat shouldn't be hard to find."
"The Collect Call of Cthulhu," Part One:
(Can't see the video? Click Here)
Commercial Break #1:
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Commercial Break #2:
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"The Collect Call of Cthulhu," Part Two:
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My tweets
July 15, 2011
Countdown to Cthulhu: Southern Gods, Badass Twins, and Dark Gods
In The Book of Cthulhu contributor John Hornor Jacobs's debut novel Southern Gods (Available everywhere August 1), Southern Gothic meets a Lovecraftian Elder God... and gives birth to the blues.
(Can't see the video? Click Here)
David Drake calls Southern Gods "scary, smart, and effective both as Lovecraftian fiction and as a Southern Regional novel set in 1951." Laird Barron says "John Hornor Jacobs will turn heads with this debut." W. H. Pugmire exclaims "Great Yuggoth, what a great debut novel!"
I was planning to post about Southern Gods a little closer to the book's August 1 street date, but John's giving away two signed copies on Monday, for the pittance of a comment on his blog, and since he's recently featured "Why I'm Badass" interviews with authors such as Matthew C. Funk, Donna Moore, Weston Ochse, and fellow The Book of Cthulhu contributor Molly Tanzer, you have no excuse but to go comment. Quick, quick... we'll wait right here.
Molly Tanzer recently blogged about writing her story "The Infernal History of The Ivybridge Twins," a decadent, yet elegant, tale of eighteenth century incestuous twin necromancers, on The Billion Light-Year Bookshelf.
If you can't wait until Septeber 1 to read Molly Tanzer's "The Infernal History of The Ivybridge Twins" in The Book of Cthulhu, you can find it in the Innsmouth Free Press anthology Historical Lovecraft, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (another contributor to The Book of Cthulhu) and Paula R. Stiles.
And Happy Birthday to The Book of Cthulhu contributor T. E. D. Klein, whose "Black Man with a Horn" gives me chills to this day. "Black Man with a Horn" was (as I mention in the introduction to The Book of Cthulhu) not just my first exposure to the larger Cthulhu Mythos cycle, but also my first taste of John Coltrane. Klein's collection, Dark Gods , deserves a place on any self-respecting horror fan's bookshelf (hmmmm... my copy appears to have wandered off), and his 1972 novella "The Events at Poroth Farm" (collected in Peter Straub's Library of America anthology American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now) is a must-read. Less essential--but fun in its own gory, twisted way--is Dario Argento's 1993 film Trauma, which Klein scripted.
(Can't see the video? Click Here)
