An All-Star Tribute To Terror

For the first time since I've been old enough to care about and/or stay up for the Oscars, I skipped this year's ceremony entirely. It wasn't any deliberate decision to boycott but rather an admission of total apathy. Even though I've often scoffed at the Oscars in years past, I've always felt connected enough to watch - if only to goof on them. This year, I didn't even care enough to do that.

On the upside, the occasion of the Oscars did inspire a couple of blog posts I that I really enjoyed from Kindertrauma and Freddy in Space, both coincidentally involving events that occurred twenty years ago.

Over at Kindertrauma, Unkle Lancifer waxed nostalgic about Silence of the Lambs' 1992 Oscar sweep while Freddy in Space posted the same year's genre's answer to the Oscars - 1992's broadcast of The Horror Hall of Fame, enthusiastically hosted by Robert Englund and billed as "an all-star tribute to terror."

Lambs' big night ought to have signaled a change in how horror was perceived by critics and studios but instead it just led - at least in the short term - to studios cashing in on the public's appetite for horror while labeling their films "psychological thrillers." Over time, Lambs' standing as a genre picture has become more widely acknowledged and studios have become less embarrassed to call their horror films horror but in '92, the perception of "horror" was closer to what was seen in '92's Horror Hall of Fame - the third and final outing for the annual ceremony that began in 1990.



Oscar hasn't been generous to the genre since '92 and as far as publicly honoring the genre goes, we now have the Scream Awards rather than the HHoF but the Scream Awards aren't exclusive to horror and also they're a little too "cool" for my taste. It's hip to be a geek now - sometimes obnoxiously so - and the Scream Awards reflect that. But in '92, being a genre fan was still regarded as dorky and The Horror Hall of Fame was, in turn, a little dorky itself - which exactly is why it's still endearing to watch.

In a way, 1992 was the best of both worlds. The genre achieved real prestige with Silence but was still off in its own private nerd corner with The Horror Hall of Fame. A year like that is worth its weight in (Oscar) gold.

Kindergarten Meets Kinder-Trauma!

Every parent thinks their child is a potential prodigy and I'm no exception. While some kids are sports stars in training or budding musicians, my five-year-old son Owen loves to draw. Even better, he's latched onto his father's love of the weird, the geeky, and the macabre.

His artwork recently caught the eye of my pal Unkle Lancifer of Kinder-Trauma and Unk has been kind enough to put a spotlight on Owen's drawings. Click over to Kindertrauma for a mini-gallery of Owen's handiwork, including his renditions of the posters for such above his age range fare * as Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse (1981) and Man's Best Friend (1993) as well as the slightly-less-scary likes of Mark Hamill as Flash nemesis The Trickster!

My thanks to Unk - I hope everybody enjoys the pics! Here's a couple more of my faves:





* For the benefit of anyone who might be concerned, I should add that Owen doesn't watch R-rated movies yet (well, except for Army of Darkness), he just loves looking at the DVD covers!

Now Serving Dessert

Help yourself to some pie, people - today marks the one-year anniversary of this blogspot! I'm not one for blowing my own horn - or even for owning a horn to blow - and this blog will be no exception but I do feel like the occasion should be marked by a few words.

Mostly that would be simply "thanks". Thanks to folks like Steven Wintle of The Horror Blog, Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique Online, and mystery man 'Arbogast' of Argobast on Film. Without coming across The Horror Blog and becoming aware of the blogosphere at large, I never would've been inspired to start Dinner with Max Jenke in the first place. And to unexpectedly be included after just a few months on the web and with less than forty posts to my credit as part of the Blogroll at Cinefantastique and Arbogast's 'For Your Information' links section was in both instances a great - and greatly appreciated - source of encouragement. I didn't take those links for granted and knowing that I was lucky to be exposed to the readership of both those sites spurred me on to be as active as possible in posting here.

I also have to give a special shout-out to my pals Unkle Lancifer and Aunt John of the indispensable Kindertrauma. Besides sharing damn near the exact same taste in horror as I do, thanks to their support I was invited to be a part of The League of Tana Tea Drinkers and to be included among that company has been a major incentive to keep writing.

Often times when I look at what other bloggers are up to, I feel like I'm doing the dog paddle in a pool full of Michael Phelps'. But even though I feel like some of my posts should've never made it online (I won't say which ones!), after just a year to have received the kind of support I have makes me think I'm getting more right than wrong here. I've never checked my hit count so I have no idea what kind of traffic this site receives (I'm superstitious about knowing things like that) but I hope that anyone who's come to Dinner over the past year hasn't left hungry. Or worse, with indigestion!

And before I completely forget my (table) manners, a final thanks to my friend Marty Langford for generously creating the banner seen at the top of this blogspot.

As soon as I added that element to the page, I felt that Dinner with Max Jenke was something real. So here's to Year Two - I predict a lot of junk food on the menu still but I've got to stick to what I've got in the kitchen!