Saturday, April 30, 2011

June Gloom and Other Ghastly Tales

For the second year in a row we're putting on a scary story concert following the Annual Sam Hinton Festival in Poway. This year I'm in charge of organizing the thing and being the MC, and I'm taking some chances on some talent unknown to the rest of us.

Down in San Diego City (I live in North County - for those of you unfamiliar with the internal arangement of San Diego County, send me an email for a primer) there is a group of artists who tell personal stories in that moth style that's becoming so popular with the youngsters these days. And, because I wanted this year's concert to be different, and bring in some new faces I contacted these guys looking for talent. They turned me on to two guys who write horror and tell stories, and they seem like nice guys to me.

Of course this doesn't come without concern, people are worried about bad language and too much gore (I've gotten in trouble for beng too scary a couple of times last year) but I wanted to try something new. As I told Marilyn, this is either gong to be really good, or a violent train wreck!

Anyway, on to the important stuff - what I'll be telling: I'm going for a first-person twilight zoney feel, so I'm going with two short stories that I'll tell in each half of the show.
First up is Stephen King's Here there be Tygers, which I read in a book of scary stories while sitting on the toilet, and the very first line of the story is: "Charles had to go to the bathroom" so I made it my own.
Secondly, I just recently read Man From the South by Roald Dahl, which is a great suspense story (Alfred Hitchcock did an episode of it) but I've heavily modified it and unlike the original version the finger will come off!

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