There are few things finer in life than plopping down on a hot summer day in your backyard, wobbly pop in hand, with a few friends and loved ones. Roasting in the heat as a soft breeze licks the sweat away from your skin, your beverage slides ice-cold down your throat. Someone tells a joke as the burgers flip on the grill, sending up a tower of greasy pillar of fire into the heavens.

And then, the existential dread kicks in.

From NewJersey.com:

Renee Jensen was enjoying the summer in her Harrington Park backyard on Saturday with her boyfriend, Alex, when she spotted something near the side gate.

The object appeared to be airborne, headed straight for the yard.

“Did a freaking bird die in midair or something?” she thought, going over to see what it was.

Looking down at the object, she jumped back.

It was Pennywise the clown. Albeit, a stout, cartoon version of the murderous clown from “It,” but Pennywise nonetheless. The plush character’s mouth was reddened with fake “blood.”

“It came at an angle and I just watched this thing, it didn’t hit a single tree and went straight over, just cleared the gate and hit the pine branches and hit the ground," says Jensen, 42, still a bit shaken from the incident.

She only has one neighbor in the vicinity, and they were not around at the time little Pennywise entered the yard.

So, as one does, Jensen lost every last bit of her shit. Read the rest

There are times in life when you're presented with something that you never knew you wanted but, once its in your head, you're certain you can no longer live without it.

That this isn't a real film has gnawed out a sizeable chunk of my soul. Read the rest

I'm a sucker for a good horror movie, and even this trailer gives me goosebumps. This remake of Stephen King's Pet Sematary comes out in April 2019.

From Esquire:

The concept was so spooky King himself hesitated to publish his book in the first place. “I found the result so startling and gruesome that I put the book in a drawer, thinking it would never be published. Not in my lifetime, anyway.” he wrote in a 2000 introduction for the paperback, according to Entertainment Weekly.

“I’m particularly uneasy about the book’s most resonant line… ‘Sometimes, dead is better,’” King wrote. “I hope with all my heart that that is not true, but in the nightmarish context of Pet Sematary, it seems to be. And it may be okay. Perhaps ‘sometimes dead is better’ is grief’s last lesson.”

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Machines come to life and start killing people. Stephen King's cocaine fueled 1986 thriller Maximum Overdrive is still wonderful fun today. Read the rest

When preparing the screen adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining, director Stanley Kubrick highlighted, crossed out and wrote marginalia throughout his personal copy of the hardback novel, available online. Read the rest

Illustrator Hal Hefner created this great double homage to Charles Schulz and Stephen King. It does seem as if he missed an opportunity to put Marci in a denim jumper and holding a sledgehammer, though. Read the rest

Entertainment Weekly has the scoop. Nice tutu.

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Charles Ardai looks to the past, and past angry internet message boards, to find something worth cherishing in a new novel.