Spectrevision Radio

Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.

For more episodes, or to support the podcast,

go to weirdstud J.F. Martel.

What does walking mean? On the face of it, this is an absurd question. Walking doesn't have a meaning. It is, on the other hand, a means, a way to get from one place to another. In other words, a means to countless possible ends. Say, for instance, you're walking to the corner store in 1989 to buy a pack of smokes and the latest issue of Fangoria.

I'm thinking of a particular walk, one that I made often as a kid, though this time stands out for reasons that will soon become clear.

The cigarettes weren't for me, I should mention.

At 12, the pleasures and horrors of smoking were still a few years off.

They were for my stepfather.

I left the house with a handwritten note just in case the man behind the counter asked for proof.

He never did.

This was another time.

What made this walk different was the added incentive, the glossy magazine Fangoria, tossed into the errand like a vial of water tied to a stick in front of a mule to keep it moving through the desert.

My stepfather must have figured that a magazine full of monsters and gore would be as enticing to me as a fresh pack of cigarettes was to him, and he was right.

The errand became a pilgrimage.

With each step, I imagined the wonders awaiting me in those pages, interviews with makeup artists, special effects wizards, and horror directors who had devoted

their lives to externalizing the insides, so to speak, the insides of the mind and the insides

of the human body. In 1989, recall, we were at peak gore in horror cinema, and I was there

for it. So the ends of this particular walk filled it with meaning.

Exquisite nightmares superimposed themselves on the familiar sights of my street.

The telephone wires looked like entrails drooping from pole to pole,

like garlands for some barbaric festival.

...