Let there be monsters

Sitting here at mom's, as I came over to watch last night's WWE Smackdown, and found a treat.  Mom had kindly taped me CSI the other night.  I've never watched the show before, but she taped it for me cause it was a vampire/werewolf Hallowe'en episode. 
So I was watching that episode of CSI and thinking about stuff. 

1. this is why I hate the whole goth scene
2. this is why I wish I had taken an actual university course in Mythology and Folklore instead of just trying to study it on my own all these years
3. this is why I miss my buddies from college cause this was the kind of stuff we were studying and the kind of people we made fun of
4. I wish I could write that good

I used to have a vast collection of episodes of shows on vhs (so we're talking between 1992-2001) that were along that vein. Shows (like the X-Files, and talk shows that showed "real vampires and witches") that played on the then growing subculture of vampires/werewolves. Part of me was fasinated by the lengths others would go to, to show they were different and powerful.  Part of me was fasinated by the lack of originality people were showing. (I'm a cynical bitch what do you want from me... a cookie)

I think one of the reasons my buddies and I loved the movie Subspeices was because it mixed real mythology/folklore from the area it was filmed in with modern traditional movie themes.

Few of my old vhs tapes survived (most got eaten by a evil vhs player in 2005) which as a collector is a sad feeling. But one show still sticks out in my mind, that was a documentary called "Mysterious Forces Beyond"
It was only a half hour documentary and it did focus on the role players at that time. Trying to understand why they were wanting to be singling themselves out as ...well not normal. Asking the question "what is it that fasinates us with vampires?"

When I was in college, I did a documenatry for my film class on vampires.  This was in 1994, before the big blow out of vampires. (we had Forever Knight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was still only a bad movie and not even a tv show yet, and Kindred the Embraced was still only a role play game) My professor told me I was wasting all my time and that no one would ever be interested in a documentary on vampires. Less then a year later, not only was Forces Beyond released, but suddenly we had vampire documentaries, conventions everywhere, and well you get the idea. 
Was I before my time, I like to think so.

But yet, everyone was pulling the same two or three facts from the folklore history and not bothering to expand on it.  Once again, the trend was leaning towards role play and not finding why the myths are around.

I was going to go on abit and talk about anger and how that fits in with all this but I'm hungry and want to end this post. I'm thinking pizza with lots of garlic. And I'm sure anyone reading this who knew me twenty years ago is thinking right now "who are you and what have you done with our Harley?"