Hoffhines Shoots Writer R. O'Donnell

Fine photographer Eric Hoffhines shoots away at writer R. O'Donnell. Eric Hoffhines graduated with a BFA in Photography & Cinema from Ohio State University. He has freelanced for CNN and worked in all areas of production for ABC Network News, Nightline, and the original Oprah Winfrey Show.

Eric has worked as a cameraman and editor on the Fox Chicago comedy special Twisted starring Matt Besser of Comedy Central’s The Upright Citizens Brigade. For continuity, Eric co-created, along with O'Donnell, commercials featuring Besser that were shot and edited ala Ernie Kovacs for a seamless hour of programming. Sponsors included McDonalds, Toyota, Jiffy Lube, Ameritech, and Office Max.

The Kreep Remembers Bread-lines Haunted By Depression Era Ghosts & Goblins

I have lived through many rigid times in America. Over the centuries, I have witnessed some awfully strange and fantastic trials surrounding our cultural composition. Especially during the Crash of 1929, preceding the Great Depression.

It is a dreadfully sad affair when you see your neighbors forced to move out of their lovely homes to bed down with friends and family; people desperately consolidating their lives to compensate for a quick n’ crumbling economy. It is frightening too because you fear the shadow of poverty and despair might envelope you next. It might tap you on the shoulder and whisper in your ear, “This way, please.”

Nothing was more peculiar, however, than to observe some of the ghosts and goblins on my block scrambling to readjust to this unanticipated human condition. Spirits were now aimlessly wandering the streets, haunting the alleyways and breadlines because their dwellings were now vacant of human beings. During these hauntingly needy times, not only the living suffered but also all the dead.

During this depression I was fortunate enough to find work on the college lecture circuit, regarding my book The Vampire – Allegory & Accuracy. Alas this only fascinated a small band of adolescent bloodsuckers calling themselves The Brood. This ragtag band of kids loved my observations, surprised by the exactness of my dissertations, and subsequently they followed me throughout the countryside. They too were falling on hard times, you see, because the wealth they amassed usually came from their affluent victims, and of late, they were as penniless as all.

Never the less, The Brood decided to create a community that, for better or for worse, feed off each other. They were, now more than ever, oddly particular in whom they let in to their tight-knit crimson tribe. It was no longer sufficient to randomly pick victims based on their stature. Now they had to assess the quality of their character as well. The Brood was morally evolving, no longer collecting monetarily but spiritually for the first time in their blood-sucking lives.

This was truly an optimistic outcome to a contemporary national crises, one that not only augmented the quality of their tribe overall, but allowed me to join them in their cause. Which I did immediately: it was inevitable; pulling together in a spiritual equality is why we survived into the next millennium–end of story.

An likewise, with today’s re-Depression looming, forcing all of us to reexamine our dependency on affluence and credit card misapprehensions, it is time to seek spiritual companionship with one another once again. Since we should never judge a person by the size of their wallet, for in these coarse times that mindset will certainly leave you, like the spirits were, wandering the streets alone. Yet the principle that we finally come together based on the quality of our hearts and not our bank accounts is a positive consequence of simply “losing it all”. And so it is my kreepy friends, dust t’dust. For you can’t take it with you in the end. For even the dead know this for certain.

In e†ernity,
Brazillia R. Kreep

DUST T'DUST

O’ how we tally silver
In calm we count thy coins
Over n’ over
Over n’ over
Whilst family nurtures on
Tic tock thy clocks
Whoosh the winds of speculation
Care little for the squall
T’procure life’s devotions
Beyond white picket fences
Fancy trimmings
Gilded blessings
More n’ more
More n’ more
Fill t’brim t’overflowing
Further parent’s score
Until plastic cracks
Snaps thy credence
Bleeds upon the floor
Red, white, n’ blue
American dreaming
T’know nothing’s indissoluble
Dust t’dust
Dust t’dust
O’ tepid angels
Therefore
Wherefore
No more

source: R. Productions

The Kreep Pens Bloody Valentine

What if Cupid watched the slasher flick My Bloody Valentine 3D?

Cupid is right outside a suburban window. An old angel with dirty wings, he stands there peek-a-booing through the frosty glass of someone’s living room. He takes a withered hand and wipes away the chill, wonders why the roses and the paper hearts aren’t hung around the living room akin to the holly and blinking lights that the Christmas angels all adore. He thinks his lovely celebration is dwindling. Cupid deems our hearts are growing bitter. So our wee-sized cherub with a duffle bag filled with dusty arrows and a bow shakes his head, walks away bewildered.

Cupid passes a movie theatre where the marquee flickers the latest show: My Bloody Valentine, now in dazzling 3D. He buys a voucher as the ticket taker rips it with a smile full of metal. The young boy behind the ropes doesn’t even notice the seraph, not at all. Which is a trick that Cupid mastered long ago. If you saw him, he would simply appear as someone you once loved.

Now Cupid hasn’t taken-in a picture show for ages. Of course he knows that this is a really creepy one, but he’s watched a few before. He remembers Alfred Hitchcock’sPsycho and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and figures incorrectly that the valentine in the title suggested something easygoing; at least it was “theme appropriate” to his cause.

It wasn’t long before the first 3D gore hit the big screen with a splatter. He ducked, stopped eating his popcorn too. More than anything, Cupid loved to munch on buttered popcorn. After today, he would never eat another kernel. He spit the rest back into the greasy cardboard bowl and slid it under his seat. He was glad no one noticed that he did that. They were all too busy screaming.

All around him couples were clinging to one another, shrieking n’ shivering from the horrors director Patrick Lussier (Scream I, II & III) persistently threw in all their faces. And they loved it. Every last adolescent one of them was in cheesy splatter heaven. Holding onto one another as if they were dropping off the face of a way too complicated world, My Bloody Valentine – 3D delivered such gratuitous ultra-violence to make their little hearts explode.

Later, Cupid finds himself peeking through the same suburban window. Two teenagers are sitting uncomfortably on the sofa. He knows that they are the next to fall in love. Without a thought, he summons a most severe malevolent demon from beneath the floorboards that’s more than willing to oblige. The creature pushes his face right into the couple’s. It scares the b’jesus outta ‘em as they scream like little girls. The demon disappears as quickly as he manifested. There was silence for a while. A little bit of steam from where the creature vanished hovered in the air. Then, as Cupid had predicted, they fell lovingly into one another’s arms.

In E†ernity,
Brazillia R. Kreep



source: R. Productions

Be Careful What You Wish For, An Ode To Coraline

The Kreep, Karmela, and Coraline box #46 from Liaka Films

I am so in love with Henry Selick's animated 3D masterpiece Coraline that I will see it a hundred times more, and if so allowed, many times thereafter. Such a luscious and ample world it creates. From the very launch of the film, a tiny whiff of shadowy wonder swiftly frees my inner child, taking him by the hand, touching the oh-so-curious nature of his heart, to place him delicately at the foot of magnificent awe and splendor.

Based on Neil Gaiman's superlative book, Coraline achieves a classic ambience, a look and feel that has and will continue to weave itself into the very fabric of our culture. Fantastic characters, visual parades of pomp and circumstance, Gothic flights of fancy all wrapped within a musical score by the stirred maestro Bruno Coulais, and this Coraline is easily and without question this generation's Wizard of Oz.

I have heard the whispers of caution to the kiddies. Ignore them all I tell you. For flying monkeys grabbing little girls and puppy dogs in the land of Oz certainly had me running for the covers when I was just a child, and the very reason I went back for more each and every year. Life IS scary after all, and unpredictable, and wondrous too. That's why Coraline fits the bill so scrumptiously.

I will not waste your precious time on regurgitated storylines or detailed moments that spoil the surprise, but rather encourage you to go out and buy your ticket straight away at once without delay. For when I sat in the theatre full of adults and wee ones chattering and guffawing about nothing much, the moment Coraline parted the curtains, there was a hush that lingered throughout the entire film. Only the collective waves of revelations, yelps, and opulent ovations remained until the final credits rolled. A wondrously fabulous thing indeed!

In Eternity,

Brazillia R. Kreep