The Westall UFO (We Are The Mutants post)

As regular readers will be aware, I write for other sites occasionally. You'll also know that I've written about UFOs and aliens from time to time, usually in the context of the Sunday Afternoon Reader articles.

Well, those interests have finally combined in my first piece for We Are The Mutants! A relatively new online magazine, We Are the Mutants focuses on the history and analysis of Cold War-era popular and outsider culture, with a strong emphasis on speculative (sci-fi, fantasy, horror), genre, pulp, cult, occult, subculture, and anti-establishment media. In other words, it's right up my alley, and I think a lot of you will really enjoy it too. There's plenty to be found for nostalgia buffs and more serious historians alike. 

I've put together a piece about the 1966 Westall sighting, a famous Australian UFO incident. With a huge crowd of witnesses to the event and possible government conspiracy to cover the whole thing up, it's a fascinating insight into the Cold War paranoia of the time -- and you can read the full story here.

This will hopefully be the first of several pieces from me for We Are The Mutants. As always, keep an eye on this page for updates, but you can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook too. 
 

Sunday Afternoon Reader, Part 8

Well, my local library had its annual clear-out sale this weekend. I bought a bunch of things, but these are the ones that will probably be of the most interest to you, dear reader. Let’s browse our way through the 8th instalment of Sunday Afternoon Reader!

Unscripted: World Wrestling Entertainment

Authors: Ken Leiker, Mark Vancil

Year: 2003

WRESTLING! I’ve recently returned to wrestling fandom after many years away, so this was a perfect find. Unscripted is a coffee table book, which ostensibly provides a bit of a behind-the-scenes (though still heavily curated) look at some of your favourite WWE Superstars.

“So what?” you ask. Well, in 2018 shoot interviews have been done to death, and pretty much every WWE star has mouthed off on social media at some point. But in 2003, this book would have been quite novel. Kayfabe was on the decline, but glimpses into the inner workings of the company were still rarer than today.

As with most coffee table books, the emphasis is on the images rather than the content. The photography is mostly quite good…but it is coupled with some exceptionally ugly early noughties graphic design and typesetting. There are some interesting tidbits shared within though – Matt Hardy and Lita at home together, Stone Cold with his hunting rifle, Ric Flair calling Triple H “the best performer in the business” (which exemplifies why I have never been a Flair or Triple H fan), Vince discussing his childhood and Undertaker summing up his experience in the industry.

Some of it rings a more than a little sad now. Undertaker has since divorced and remarried, Matt Hardy and Lita split over a decade ago and a number of wrestlers featured are retired or dead. Most depressing of all are the images of Chris Benoit, who was a big star for the company in 2003. Just four years later he would commit the most horrific crimes an already scandal-ridden industry had ever seen. 

Still, this was an interesting read for me, as it was published around the time I stopped paying attention to wrestling. I still played the WWE Raw Deal card game with friends occasionally, but mostly I was busy with the multi-layered commitments of senior high school. Wrestling necessarily took a backseat…also, John Cena was getting a big push by then, and I was entering some of my prime heavy metal years. White boy rappers were not my thing at all.   

Creatures of the Night: In Search of Ghosts, Vampires, Werewolves and Demons

Author: Dr Gregory Lee

Year: 2012  

Huzzah! Another addition to the ever-expanding paranormal shelf. I haven’t looked at this in great detail so far, so I can’t say much about it yet. I’ll have to come back to it once I’ve had a more thorough look. At any rate, Dr Gregory Lee has written a number of different books previously, all of them looking at esoteric subject matter.

Books on this kind of subject matter are becoming increasingly hard to come by, at least in my usual haunts. The supernatural publishing boom died off some years ago, and the older books from the 70s to the 90s really just don’t show up in second-hand bookstores as readily anymore.

Indeed, once upon a time I might have even passed this one over as it’s not expressly about UFOs or aliens. But times are tough, and you take what you can get – especially for only two bucks. Also, the cover is designed to look like an old issue of EC’s horror comics, which is a nice touch.

WWF WrestleMania: The Official Insider's Story

Authors: Basil V. Devito with Joe Layden

Year: 2001

Another wrestling book!

This time, we get an overview of the history of Wrestlemania, up to the year 2000. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but it seems fairly comprehensive and has some great photos from the mid-1980s onwards. Liberace once appeared a Wrestlemania? Amazing!

Importantly, you can really see the evolution of the company from cartoonish fun into the Attitude Era. The Attitude Era was still in full swing when this was published, and everything was ADULT and EDGY. Costumes get darker, matches get bloodier, stunts get wilder and the fanbase changes.

Your feelings about this transition will vary. The Attitude Era is apparently held in very high esteem these days, but I didn’t actually enjoy it much as a teen. Sure, it gave us some good characters and matches – but I don’t think it was inherently superior to what’s available today. I was never a big fan of The Rock, Stone Cold or Triple H (though I’ve come to appreciate them all to varying degrees) and the manufactured “edge” seemed contrived even to a wannabe goth kid like myself. 

Similarly to Unscripted, some of it makes for pretty sad reading these days. Given that it’s been more than 30 years since the first Wrestlemania, it’s inevitable that some of the faces you see are no longer with us…but it’s depressing to realise how young some of them went. Rowdy Roddy Piper, Miss Elizabeth, Macho Man Randy Savage, the Ultimate Warrior, Chyna… 

As someone once noted – maybe Matt from Dinosaur Dracula? – wrestling books are always a product of the time they were written. WWE plays pretty fast and loose with the kayfabe canon, but they’re just as happy to do it with their actual history. If you happen to be on their shitlist at time of writing, you’ll be written off as irrelevant, made to look terrible or simply excluded altogether. Given the controversy surrounding Hulk Hogan since 2015 – and the necessity of talking about him a lot in the context of early Wrestlemanias – WWE will probably want to save another instalment for the more distant future. 

The Ultimate Metallica

Author: Ross Halfin

Year: 2010

As I’ve noted elsewhere, I fall into the classic metal cliché of loving Metallica’s first four albums and not wanting much to do with anything after that. In 2018, belonging to their fandom can be slightly embarrassing, as many of their fans really seem to think they’re the final word in metal and this is in no way true.

I don’t say this to try and be trve or kvlt; I have a Master of Puppets poster flag on the wall of my office, I own a bunch of t-shirts and I even bought the Hetfield Funko POP a while ago. I was lucky enough to see them live in 2004 during a lightning storm, which was incredible.

But do I care to hear new music from them? Probably not. Still, for $5 I felt I couldn’t pass up this lavish hardback book, which no doubt cost at least 10 times that on initial publication.

Ross Halfin has been photographing Metallica on and off since the 1980s, so you can trace a course from their young and hungry days through to around 2010. How you feel about Metallica now will pretty much sum up how you feel about that, but either way there is some genuinely nice rock photography. Halfin is a talented guy, and it would be interesting to see some more of his work with other bands.

Interspersed among the photos there’s some notes from admirers and some thoughts from Halfin himself. But the real highlight was the obscenity-laden email on the very last page, which rips into Ross for a variety of perceived sins, including insulting “ROBB FLYNN of the TRULY LEGENDARY MACHINE HEAD” and being “the EXTREME epitome of POMPOUS BRITISH WANKERY”. This, dear reader, made it worth the price of admission alone.

POP! Rocks – Alice Cooper (Top Hat)

Though not the first shock rocker (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Screaming Lord Sutch all predate him), Alice Cooper has still become one of the most iconic rock frontmen in pop culture. Acts like KISS, King Diamond, Rob Zombie and Ghost – to name just a few – all owe Cooper a considerable visual debt. And though I’m more of a “Greatest Hits” kind of fan, he’s been an inspiration to me, too – if a skinny kid with a big nose can become a heavy metal icon, there’s hope for all of us.  

Naturally enough, Funko was going to come calling at some point and turn him into a POP. Today, we take a look at the results!

Now, I couldn’t find a specific photo where Alice is wearing this exact outfit. The corset/harness thing and ripped pants look like they’re from the Billion Dollar Babies era – which would fit with the snakeskin theme on the box – and the earliest pics I noticed of him with a white top hat and tails seem to be from the Welcome to My Nightmare album – so let’s just say it’s meant to be him sometime in the mid-70s. If you can identify the outfit more specifically, let me know in the comments below. 

Either way, a lot of Alice Cooper’s stage costumes are variations on these themes, and even those with only a passing familiarity of the man will recognise him easily. The only real surprise is that he isn’t depicted with a snake, considering that’s one of the things he’s best known for. Still, that may come in the future; though his basic look has remained the same for decades, there’s still been plenty of variations that would lend themselves to POP figures.

As usual, the paint could be a little tighter, but it’s fine for the most part. Additionally, check his cane before making a purchase, to make sure it hasn’t warped in the box.       

The sculpt makes him a little skinnier than your average POP, and he doesn’t come with a stand. Fair enough; Alice Cooper isn’t a particularly big guy. But given his very top-heavy construction, it creates some balance problems, and I have some concerns about his long-term ability to stay upright. Skinnier POPs like Elvira and Batgirl have a tendency to warp around their legs and feet over time; while he’s not that petite, I could see something similar happening further down the track.

These issues aside, I think it’s a solid piece. There’s also a straitjacket version available, which is a Hot Topic exclusive in the USA. Either one is well-representative of the character, and a fun addition to the shelf.

Novella Update 4: Writer’s Block and Death Metal

If you’re following me over at Facebook or Twitter, you would have seen in the last few days that I just finished a major edit of Lost Tunnels. Now I plan to go through it manually – which essentially means I’ve printed it off and will be working through it with a literal red pen, trying to spot any previously unseen typos or grammar issues.

This will hopefully be the final round of edits, though having spent plenty of time working in print media I know it’s entirely possible that weird inconsistencies can creep through even at this stage. Nonetheless, things are still on track for a late June release! As always, keep your eye on Facebook or Twitter for updates.  

Today, I also wanted to talk about Writer’s Block. As someone who’s spent many years working as a professional writer, I am not a big believer in writer’s block as it’s depicted in popular media. Writer’s block is typically shown to be a torment of some creative type who just can’t get their words onto the page. There’s some “terrible” blockage which preventing them from expressing their GENIUS to its fullest. This tends to manifest as an excuse for stuffing and acting like a huge jerk in pursuit of rediscovering their creativity – and doing pretty much anything but writing in the process. If you move in any sort of creative circles, you may have even met a few people like this in real life, and they are almost always a huge chore.  

Sure, I’ll happily admit that some days of writing are easier than others. On the creative front I’ve had days where I stare at a blank page and can barely get anything down. Lost Tunnels is a relatively short novella, but it’s been an incredibly difficult process working through it. In the workplace, though…well, that’s a different thing. When you’re working in magazines, try telling your boss that you didn’t turn in a piece of copy before deadline because you had “writer’s block”.

Writing is a learned skill, just like anything else. It comes more easily to some than others, but this is true of just about anything – IT, fixing cars, painting, fishing, whatever. Do it enough and you develop a toolbox (as Stephen King calls it) of techniques that you can draw on to fake it to you make it. Turns out if you sit there and try to write, rather than just talking about wanting to write, you’ll get more done. 

Writing requires discipline, and that’s quite distinct from how people tend to imagine the “creative process”. I was talking about this with a musician friend last week over a few beers and was quite explicit in saying that for me the process is to sit my ass down, work at what I need to work at and eventually the “Muse” will show up. It gets easier with time, and you develop a skillset you can draw on.  Pretty much any established writer will tell you something similar.

People who romanticise the “creative process” and cannot do their “thing” except under very specific (i.e. anally retentive) conditions are not going to get very far with any of their creative goals. There will always be an excuse to not do it, and hard work is virtually excluded by definition. I know I have my preferences about how, where and when I like to write…

 But to be honest, you can do it just about anywhere if you practice. The modern open-plan workplace is not a place sensitive to my personal “creative process”, but…well, I don’t see the Western Capitalist working system suddenly shifting to accommodate my particular wants anytime soon. I just need to get on with the job at hand.    

But enough venting. Over the next few weeks, I hope to talk a bit more about practical techniques for freeing up your creativity and preventing your own brand of writer’s block. Today, let’s talk about music. I find listening to music extremely helpful in freeing up my creativity. This is not revolutionary advice; many authors talk about it, and author/ghostwriter Roz Morris runs a column speaking to different authors about the music they use here.

Now, heavy metal is my first and foremost musical love, but it’s not always the best tool for the job. Unless I’m very familiar with the album in question, it can take me out of what I’m doing and serve as a distraction. Instead, I like to find something appropriate for the genre I’m working on, e.g.:

• If I’m writing something fantasy-related, I might listen to something like the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack, or perhaps Mortiis’ early work. 
• For sci-fi, I might crack out Tangerine Dream, Jean-Michel Jarre or some more modern synthwave.
• When I’m doing on a copywriting gig, I tend to throw on some kind of 80s pop mix. All of this helps me get into the right mood and headspace for writing in that particular world.  

Lost Tunnels is a horror novella, and it traverses a few different moods during the course of the story. Accordingly, I went through listening to different stuff during different phases of writing. Initially, I spent a ton of time listening to Fabio Frizzi’s film scores – specifically his soundtracks for Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters and The Beyond. They’re two of my favourite horror films, so they seemed like good places to start.

But as writing went on, things began to vary a bit more; I listened to a lot of Amebix’s second album Monolith. The came Blood Incantation, particularly Starspawn – this where the death metal of the article title kicks in! There was also a bunch of Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham solo work thrown into the mix, depending on the particular scene I was working on. One band to emerge to the forefront was Popol Vuh; probably best-known for their soundtrack work with Werner Herzog, they’re often thought of as an ambient group, but they really span a much broader range.

Some of these seem like more relevant influences than others – I mean, there’s nothing particularly terrifying about “Big Love” – but everything I listened to helped me get into the particular mindset I needed for a scene.

I don’t expect you to get the same stuff out of any of these bands that I did, but I would suggest that you try listening to music while you’re writing if you haven’t already. And if you are, maybe try listening to something new as well – see how it affects your mood, and accordingly your writing. Tell me how you go in the comments below!

New article at Astral Noize

As a lot of regular readers know, I'm a big metal fan. And one of my favourite bands is Nile -- the Egypt-obsessed guys from South Carolina. Their first album Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka has just turned twenty, so I've contributed a piece to Astral Noize about its legacy. 

 

You can read the full article here -- hope you enjoy it!