Short Stuff: Spooky Recommendations

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Listen to the Curse of Miss America on the iHeart radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey and welcome to the short stuff, Josh Chuck, Jerry sitting in for date, this is short stuff, Chuck and this is a slightly different kind of short stuff I would say for Halloween. That's right, Halloween and maybe beyond everyone because we had an idea a while ago about perhaps adding an episode here and there where we do recommendations because people are always saying, "Hey, when you guys recommend books and movies and recipes and stuff, we really like that kind of thing, and this is maybe a chance to formalize it, so we're going to ask you to let us know what you think about this, if maybe once a month in place of the regular short, we recommend things that we're watching and reading and eating and drinking or whatever, it could be like a new sleeping regimen. Maybe not that, it could be. So maybe one of us will take their recommendation and then after the break, the other one will do theirs. How does that sound? Sure. Yeah, we should say everybody, we're literally figuring this out as we go along and stuff you should know fashion. Why don't you take it away? Let's hear what you're recommending. Oh, geez. Well, you know, I love me some good horror movies, so I thought maybe I would just recommend a few good horror movies for Halloween. All right. Let's chat. Have you ever seen Trick or Treat? Trick our treat? I don't think so. Is it the movie from the 80s? No, it's from the the oughts, I think, the mid oughts. Okay. All right. I'm seeing it's from 2007. Yeah. Bizarre Lee stars Anna Pacquan, the Oscar winner, the youngest Oscar winner of all time. Okay. And it's just this little sleeper movie that flew below everybody's radar, but it's actually one of the most interesting Halloween anthologies ever. It's really woven together. There's some legitimately scary stuff to it. There's a lot of creepy stuff. There's a lot of funny stuff, which to me is like, if you're able to pull off comedy with horror, that's a real trick to do. And I think they did that because it wasn't all comedy. It was like, you know, kind of here there. There was some funny stuff. Now I'm seeing that it's an anthology film, so it's several stories all by the same person. It's not one of those sort of co-directed things. No, no, no. It's all the same person and I don't remember who directed it. I think it was a writer-director kind of thing. Yeah. Michael Darty. Okay. So he did it all, but in the way that it's an anthology is, you know, like with the normal anthology, there's like somebody telling somebody a story and then in between them, you come back to that present, you know, reality. Yeah. Like the Crip Keeper or something. Yeah. Exactly. With this, everything is all woven together and it says like earlier that night or something like that. So it kind of jumps around a little bit, but it's not like, it's really well done as far as horror anthologies go. Awesome. It says here in my little lookup device that it has gained cult status, even though it was not very much seen. Yeah. I totally buy that. Yeah. I don't want to make it sound like it's a high art or cinema. It's not supposed to be. So it's just a fun little, it's very bloody. So don't make any mistake about that. Basically, if I ever recommend a movie, it's either disturbing or bloody or both. Okay. I should just give it a cab, yeah. You got another scary movie? Oh, sure. I'm not a million of them. Let's see which one. I will say, I'll tell you one that I've seen a couple times now. There's a movie called Molok, Molok, Molok. How do you spell it? M-O-L-O-C-H. It's the name of a demon. And I think like a real deal demon, it's not made up. Yeah. Although I don't think this is based on a true story. This looks scary. It is scary. It's not supposed to be funny. And it is kind of an attempt at cinema. I think it's Dutch. Yeah. Dutch folklore. And it's about this, I don't want to give too much away, but it's about this family that's basically being targeted by Molok, the demon. Okay. And there's all sorts of really interesting reasons why. And there's like subtitles and everything. Do you subtitles bother most people? I know they don't bother you. But do you know anyone who are like, I can't watch movies because of subtitles? Well, I don't know. I mean, back when we were doing movie crush, I do remember hearing from people that some people like it didn't bother them. Some people loved foreign cinema. And some people like had like really like solid reasons for not liking it. Like either they maybe had dyslexia or it was distracting for them or like in an ADHD sort of way. So there's all sorts of reasons. I don't like them other than like, well, what to read. I'd never considered that, but that's a really good point. Great. Okay. Good. Well, if you don't like subtitled movies, I don't think there's an English dub, too. I think it is all subtitles, unfortunately, but there's a movie that I told you about before that I loved is called Lamb, the A24 movie with the girl with the dragon tattoo. Yes. And it is a completely bizarre and off the wall, but it's also one of the most heart-rending movies I've ever seen. It's just so there's parts of it that you just want to like hug everybody, but it's a concern or a horror movie. Oh, really? Yeah. It is in Icelandic, I think, and there's subtitles. And it's so well done that I watched it once without subtitles. I think maybe even the first time, and I knew I basically got everything that was going on, except for like a couple conversations that really didn't matter that much. That's cool. I like that. I think I've had that experience before. Yeah. It is. It's kind of fun because you're like, I'm part of the universal humanity. I don't even need words. Yeah. I don't even need to understand what's coming out of your mouth. Well, I have, this is spooky season for movies for me, you know, when I watch a lot during October and I just last night was looking up like what are the best horror movies of the last, you know, of the 2020s and and have a short list going, so I'll add these to the list and I appreciate it. All right. Well, let's take a break and then come back and we'll hear about your stuff. If there's a million times more digital intelligence than there is biological intelligence, it's hard to imagine humans being in control in that scenario. I'm Walter Isaacson, host of the new podcast, The Builders. Right now, we're living through an AI arms race. 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Listen out of character from Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Pods or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are back and I am going to recommend a couple of spooky books, everyone, because I have talked before, kind of briefly on the show about having never really gotten into horror or fiction, but jumped back on the bandwagon when I randomly picked up a book that just looked cool from the author, Keith Rossin, a very great writer from Portland to Stephen King, and the lesson Stephen King has championed. And I had started reading, you know, I read his duology, Devil by Name and Fever House, which was a zombie thing, and both of those are great. And then I read his follow up to that, which was Coffin Moon, which was about a, was a vampire story, which was great. I think all of these have been optioned by the way, so hopefully they'll come to a movie or TV screen near you. And then I got an advance copy, I know I shouted it out briefly, but I want to talk to everyone about his newest book, Cron, as we know, a Cron is a witch. And this is a witchy story. And again, I don't want to give too much away, but it is a really great witchy story that goes in all sorts of kind of cool directions. What I love about Keith's books is that they are, first of all, they are expertly written. He's just a really, really great writer. And after having read some lesser horror novels since then, I picked up another couple by other people. I now really appreciate like how great Keith is, just with the, with the pin or the thingies on the keyboard. Yeah. So he's a great writer and, and all of his books had this humanity and this heart. And they always involve some sort of family story going on that. So a lot of it is heartbreaking at the same time as being like super scary. And he just, he has such a way with describing things in such a gross, gross way. Oh, yeah, that's tough to do, man. Yeah, I mean, he, he's words like that people don't use anymore, like Torpor and stuff like that, where like I got to look it up even to see what that is. And so he's just a very great descriptor, which are my favorite kinds of writers. So check out Cron and all of his books, but Cron is the most recent one. And I'm in touch with him via Instagram. And he seems like a really good dude as well. Well, sure. If you're on somebody's bandwagon, they're probably good dude. Yeah. And we're both adoption dads. So we have that in common in chat about that. Pretty cool. And then the next one, you know, I think I told you I'm not going to shout it out because I told you on the plane on the way home from the cruise. The one I was reading about the theme park wasn't very good, but I did read another pretty good one called Hidden Pictures. It is a horror fiction novel by Jason Rekulack. And it was a New York Times bestseller. And I'll just read the description on the back because it doesn't give too much away. Okay. Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she takes a job babysitting Ted and Caroline Maxwell's five year old son Teddy. She immediately bonds with a sweet boy who is never without his sketchbook. His drawings of the usual fair trees, rabbits, balloons, but one day he draws something different, a man dragging a lifeless body. Then his stick figures evolve into increasingly sophisticated sketches depicting one disturbing scene after another. Is Teddy troubled or is he channeling forces he cannot possibly understand? Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory must decipher the images and save Teddy before it's too late. Nice. Who wrote that? His name is Jason Rekulack. I guess this is how you pronounce it. And Stephen King also has a cover quote saying a one of a kind thriller. I loved it. And it's good. And the kind of one of the fun things here is is the author draws these pictures along the way. Oh yeah, that is cool as well. So he's drawing these pictures. And it's the first sort of creepy one. There's just a nice impact you have when you're seeing these kind of just kid drawings and all of a sudden you see the creepy one. And the story takes a lot of twist and turns. I'm sure this is going to be option. I'm sure it already has and it's in that pipeline because it would make I think it would make a pretty fun movie. You know, I think that a horror story is one of the hardest types to carry through an entire novel because you have to pay everything out just so you have to go all in and then top every scene essentially or else it's just like what do you do it? I think short stories are the ideal or is the ideal format for horror? So if you can pull off a horror novel, you're doing something pretty spectacular in my opinion, not not many people can do that. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm kind of new to the whole thing, but we have read a bunch of short horror for, you know, or Halloween episodes. So I think I'm with you on that. So it's I'm not sure how much more I'm going to go down the horror lane because I'm kind of one for two with the non Keith Rossins when he was I was four for four with him. Yeah. And I'll read every book that Keith puts out like as soon as it comes out. I'm like that big of a fan at this point. Keith spoiled you. He has spoiled me. He can't go back. I need to read a Stephen King. I know it's kind of silly that I haven't. So wait, wait, wait, wait. You've never read a Stephen King novel of any like none of them or is that what you're saying? Is that what I'm picking up? No, I've never read any horror or any Stephen King. And so I've had people recommend various ones. I would like to read a really scary one. Maybe I should read the shining that might be a good one to start out with. So it is nothing like the movie, you know, right? You are. You know that from being I've heard a lot of that. Yeah. Okay. I think Stephen Kings and actually a great example of what I'm talking about. My beef with his novels is that very rarely by the ending. Are you just like, man, this is a great ending. It's like a great build up. The payoffs out there. His short story collections are out of this world though. All right. So yeah, maybe consider it. Maybe I should do that. Yeah. Yeah. But let me know what you think of whatever Stephen King book you read. Do you have a particular short story or anthology of his that you can recommend? I like the earlier ones like skeleton crew or whatever the other one is. I can't remember. It had like a bandaged hand with the eye in the middle of the palm. Yeah. Creepy stuff. But he had some really good like genuinely scary short stories. And then his son Owen, whose pen name is Joe Hill. He has a great story collection short story collection called 20th century ghosts that I think blows his dad out of the water. Oh, okay. Well, he has a quote on here too from Joe Hill, one of the best and most inventive ghost stories I read in years, a beautiful dark rush of a novel. I didn't realize that was his son. I guess he he did that to keep from appearing as a nepo baby. Yep. And I think that was a great move. And yeah, even if his dad's calling publishers to get his stuff published, he deserves it. He's that good. All right. Well, check those out. This was kind of fun. I liked it. I hope everyone else did. Yeah. I liked it too, Chuck. I hope I didn't hog too many recommendations. No. This is this is great. I thought it was well balanced and went down smooth. Okay. A fine scotch. Well, let us know if you took this like a fine scotch or if you're just like guys don't ever do this again, we want to hear all of it. And I think short stuff is out. Happy Halloween. 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