My interest in writing started around the fourth grade. A teacher assigned a project where we wrote a “book” which we illustrated and bound ourselves. My book was about snakes and consisted of page after page of partially or entirely plagiarized excerpts from the encyclopedia entry for snakes. The book was called Snakes!. Colored pencil drawings of snakes formed each letter of the title. When I held the final product in my hands, beheld what I had wrought — presumably — via my nascent creative drive, I thought, ‘I’m so impossibly talented, I’ve already written a book. Snakes! will be a worldwide bestseller. I am a literary God.’ It would be many years before I stopped having this thought every time I wrote something.

My post-Snakes! output moved into the horror genre or more specifically, the torture porn/ slasher genre. In fifth grade, I bloomed (wilted) into a misanthrope who despised his classmates and yet craved their attention. If I met myself at age ten, I would feel an intense compulsion to strangle myself for being a self-involved little worm (says the adult writing an essay about his childhood). Maybe I’m exaggerating; maybe everyone felt like an outcast, but in any case, I started composing a list of all my classmates — a flashing neon red flag to any teacher paying attention. I would ask for kids’ last names if I didn’t know them, and if they asked why I wanted their names, I said, “I’m working on a special project.” Also a massive red flag. I might as well have said, “I’m making a list of people to murder, and I’d like it to be as accurate as possible.” Fortunately, I didn’t murder anyone, and instead used the names to write a horror story about the class pet, an iguana named Iggy, growing to enormous size and devouring all my classmates.

To be clear, young adult horror paperbacks were all the rage in the 90s, and so most of my budding literary lexicon originated in books by R.L. Stein, Paul Zindel, and Stephen King. I did not possess words like “literary lexicon”; I had “bloody chunks,” “splattered brain matter,” and “oozing fluids.” So while most of the writing is, shall we say, unsophisticated and, you know, childish, once the giant iguana ate someone, the story transitioned into shockingly graphic descriptions of “intestines spilling out like wet coiled snakes” and “a shower of bloody chunks like crimson confetti.” I murdered, via my imagination, a huge portion of my class — with particularly gruesome death scenes reserved for the kids I didn’t like — and the oddest part? They loved it (the boys, at least). Such is a ten year old’s ego, seeing their names in a story was a thrill, and dying horribly in the story, somehow that appealed to the darkly morbid part of them.

When the faculty became aware of my “masterpiece,” my math teacher Mr. Solomon took me aside. He said, “Do you think Dr. Seuss ever wrote the kinds of things you’re writing?” which seemed like a strange question. I said, “Who said I wanted to write like Dr. Seuss?” It was the only intervention I can recall. This was a year before the Columbine shooting, so no one worried too much yet.

Meanwhile, my English class would assign journal entries at the start of class: “What did you do over the weekend?” or “What would you do if you could fly?” As an adorable ploy for attention, I challenged myself each day to write the most grisly and disturbing journal entries possible, no matter how mundane the prompt. If I had a scab, I’d pick it open and smear my own blood across the page. At the time, I thought it was funny. One time, the prompt was, “What did you dream about last night?” My response: I dreamed a man broke into my house, dragged me out of bed, sliced me open from throat to belly button, reached into my chest cavity, ripped out my stomach, tore my stomach in two, held one half over his head, and, like a fleshy shot glass, dribbled my partially digested dinner into his gaping maw. The teacher said, “Okay, that’s it. Go to the counselor’s office, Brad.” I didn’t mind. The counselor had a sweet sandbox in her office.

I wasn’t a Goth child though. I didn’t dress in black, and I wasn’t preoccupied with death. I was just mimicking whatever genre I happened to be reading at the time. By sixth grade, my interest shifted to science fiction — Star Wars, Bruce Coville, and Isaac Asimov — so all my stories became science fiction stories. I was pretty cool as you can imagine. It was then, in perhaps my most angsty melodramatic year, that I wrote a 114-page manuscript — which seemed like War and Peace length at the time — about a drug dealer who goes to space to escape being killed by the mafia, gets sucked through a black hole, crashes on an alien planet, and then leads an insurrection of beetle people against their reptilian overlords. I had a lot of time on my hands, yes indeed, a lot of time. The book is basically unreadable as, it turns out, I was not an undiscovered literary prodigy, but it’s interesting to note what I thought made a good story at the time: fighting, lasers, monsters, horrifying deaths, etc. At the time, I thought it was the best thing I’d ever read. I thought I’d be published by the time I turned twelve. Studies have shown that intelligent people perceive that they have low IQs relative to the population, and dumb people perceive that they have high IQs. Writing a book didn’t mean anything about how smart or talented I was. I was still a dumb eleven year old, just one with a lot of time on his hands and an irrational amount of drive. If I’d known how much I would have to write before I stopped sucking quite so dramatically, I would have redirected my interest to pottery or automobile repair.

I wrote two sequels to that first book, each longer than the last, steadily improving, but only marginally. Then I wrote two more books after that — also terrible, but with a slight improvement. After the first book, all subsequent ones were written in secrecy, and even when I finished them, I rarely told anyone because I’d awoken to the dissonance between what I was reading and the garbage I was producing. In the middle of writing, I’d think, ‘This is amazing!’ and by the end, I’d think, ‘This is so inconceivably awful, no amount of editing can ever save it.’ I couldn’t understand how the more books I read and the more stories I wrote, the worse my own stuff seemed to me. I’m an incredibly slow learner. I was the last kid in my elementary school to learn how to read and write; they sent me to remedial reading classes to catch me up with the rest of my class. I’m always conscious of this, and I remember all those bad books — which shall be seen by anyone! — and all those crappy stories. I can only try to be slightly better than I was the day before and hope that I am, but then again, I might just ramble about cats for ten pages instead.

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My cousin and I were watching the recently released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 DVD, and there’s a scene in which Harry, disguised as a Ministry employee, approaches the office door for the evil Professor Umbridge. Embedded in the center of the door, an eyeball peers around frenetically. Although it’s never stated, this is the eye of Mad Eye Moody, Harry’s dead professor and protector. My cousin said, “This pissed me off. They never mention that the eye is Mad Eye’s, and they didn’t include the part where he buries his eye, so all the emotional resonance of Moody’s death is omitted.” I said, “They buried Dobby the house elf. They can’t have these movies be 3-hour funerals.” She shrugged and said, “They should’ve included it.”

I thought that was the end of the conversation, but a little while later, there came a scene in which Harry’s following an old lady who’s actually a giant fucking snake wearing her skin. He follows her to her house, and then the lady talks to him in snake language, but he doesn’t realize anything’s up because, to him, we know it sounds like English. My cousin says, “This scene was so much better in the book. In the book, the old lady’s talking to Harry every time Hermione leaves the room, and so discovering that she was a snake was a bigger surprise.” I said, “Okay. But in the book, I wasn’t sexually attracted to Hermione in the least.”

Here is how I feel about it: books are books and movies are movies. Movies will never have the same effect as books, and likewise books will never have quite the same effect as movies. They are two different mediums with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, their narratives have to be constructed in two different ways. Books can portray complicated multiple branching plots with slow deliberate character development. Movies can portray the visceral thrill of images and music combined in a two hour narrative punch.

So when adapting a book to the screen, the notion of including everything is not just time prohibitive, but creatively impractical. If books were adapted word for word, not only would they be twenty hours long, they would be boring on an unimaginable scale. Much of the enjoyment of reading comes from descriptions of characters not doing much—just thinking, looking at their surroundings, contemplating recent events and what action to undertake. All the linguistic fireworks would be lost in a film. Suddenly, you just have a guy sitting on a bench or looking at a girl or walking down the street. You have something like the movie Somewhere except for twenty hours instead of two, a cinematically induced cerebral hemorrhage.

Often times, movies are actually better than books, but the guy who read the book will never admit it. After all, he spent a couple weeks plowing through it, so he has a certain cognitive work-to-enjoyment ratio to justify. Look at some of the movies based on Stephen King’s work. You really think the film The Shining is worse than the book? Honestly? The book has the family being chased by hedges. Fucking hedges. How about Shawshank Redemption? What about Shutter Island. The book by Dennis Lehane, as I recall, was continuously irritating and, by the end, I wanted to set it on fire. Only Scorsese could make that dreck watchable.

How about fucking Jurassic Park? Gone with the Wind? Silence of the Lambs? Forrest Gump? The Godfather?

I can’t stand watching a movie and hearing, ‘The book was better,’ from some asshole. It’s that snide pretension, that bullshit notion that movies are somehow artistically inferior. It’s a statement that fails to address the film as an individual piece of work and means nothing to me. You might as well have said, “The text on the ticket stub wasn’t as good as the movie.” You might as well have said, “This chicken alfredo tastes better than the page from the cookbook.”

Similarly, comic book readers freak out when adaptations deviate slightly from the original. I remember when it was a big deal Spider-Man had “organic web shooters” instead of ones he invented in his bedroom. To which, I answer that it sure doesn’t make a lot of sense to movie-goers for an eighteen year old to inexplicably have the skills to engineer a device that shoots webbing as strong as steel cable while also coincidentally gaining the proportionate strength and reflexes of a spider. The concept makes sense in one medium, but not the other.

There’s no winning with some people. They split that last Harry Potter movie into two films, crammed it full of the, I’m sorry, countless unnecessary McGuffins from the book (three deathly hallows, something like six horcruxes, the sword of Gryffindor, and all the other random shit they had to find), and stuck in everything else of any interest, and still, you have people saying, “They left out the history of house elves, and their magical powers, and Dumbledore’s family history, and also—,”

Oh my God, just shut up.

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I have a mild case of coulrophobia. It’s not a crippling fear—it doesn’t keep me up at night, like some of my other fears do—but if I’m walking down the street and see a clown coming towards me, I’ll cross that street in a heartbeat.

I’m not alone. Clowns have climbed their giant shoes into the short list of the most common phobias, and now rank right up there with snakes, spiders, public speaking, and dentists.

So what’s the cause of this irrational fear? Here’s one easy answer: THE MEDIA. Unlike my fear of clowns, the media does keep me up at night, because it’s so entertaining. But evil clowns have permeated all forms of popular media, and are therefore hard to avoid.

Pennywise, the sadistic child-killing monster from Stephen King’s It, is the fictional clown most commonly fingered for causing people’s coulrophobia. Pennywise doesn’t have a monopoly on the killer clown industry, though. On TV, an early episode of The Simpsons inspired the internet meme “Can’t sleep, clown will eat me.” In the world of comics, Batman’s archnemesis is the Joker, a green haired agent of chaos with a penchant for committing gruesome murders while laughing hysterically. Similarly, perhaps as a blatant knockoff of Batman, Spawn’s archnemesis is the Violator, a giant, gruesome demon who disguises himself as a short, stocky clown. And then of course there’s corny examples of evil clowns, like the ‘80s movie Killer Klowns from Outer Space, or the musical group Insane Clown Posse, which are both more stoopid than scary, but they’re still kinda scary in their own way, especially ICP.

The media may have reinforced coulrophobia, but that’s not to say clowns aren’t inherently terrifying. Psychologists claim that clowns’ exaggerated features violate our basic idea of what people should look like. Since reading facial expressions is a social survival skill, our inability to read a clown’s emotions puts us on guard. The painted white face, fake red nose, and uncanny permasmile mask a clown’s true feelings and identity, which triggers our distrust and suspicion.

Phobias are irrational fears. But is fearing clowns really irrational? Consider America’s evil clown history. Consider David Friedman, popular children’s party clown, alleged child molester, and subject of the documentary film Capturing the Friedmans. Or better yet, consider John Wayne Gacy, the scariest clown ever. Gacy raped and murdered 33 teenage boys in the ‘70s. Most of them he buried in his crawlspace. When he wasn’t raping and murdering innocents, Gacy dressed up as “Pogo the Clown” to attend parades and children’s parties. Gacy once said “A clown can get away with murder.” While on death row, he took up oil painting. He painted punk rockers, and dwarves playing baseball, but mostly, he painted clowns. PSYCHO.

Of course, it’s wrong to prejudge all clowns based on the depraved actions of a couple sick, rednosed individuals. I met some clowns once at a party (it was an adult party, the clowns were off duty and dressed like normals) and they were perfectly nice people. I even told them about my fear of clowns, and they were very understanding. Clowns aren’t for everyone. Then they took me out back, brutalized me with banana cream pies, electrocuted me with joy buzzers, and devoured my soul.

Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.

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Teen Vogue

What It’s About: Profiles of teen celebrities. Every issue, they also go inside the closet of a trust fund pre-teen who loves her Miu Miu bag but cant live without her Balenciaga, Prada, and Escada. My personal favorites are the hard-hitting exposes on teen drinking, teen pill-popping, and teen shopping addictions.
What It Says About You: You’re a mini-Anna Wintour which means you are a pubescent nightmare. When you’re old enough, you’ll probably even apply for an internship at Teen Vogue, following in the illustrious footsteps of Lauren Conrad and Whitney Port. As you get older, you’ll transition to reading grownup Vogue, bag yourself a hedge-funder named Barry and watch the days just languidly pass by. Sometimes, you’ll stir your finger into your cocktail without noticing because you’ll be completely in a daze. You’ll whisper to yourself, “I guess it’s….time….to get ready for the Multiple Sclerosis Disco Dance-Off Charity Ball.” Make no mistake: this will all be because you read Teen Vogue as a child.

Spin

What It’s About: Alternative music that was popular from 1999-2005. Spin is contractually obligated to put Arcade Fire, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes on the cover ever year, regardless of whether they have a new album out or not. They also have a fondness for ’90s grunge, Flaming Lips, and New York City. They are the only remaining fans of The Vines and The Hives.

What It Says About You: You’re afraid of change. You like to play Fever To Tell every time you get drunk, and your friends are always like, “There’s actually this new band out called-” and you’ll scream, “Silence!” before they can finish. The mood will be very tense and you’ll just play “Maps” to make it all better. You’ve been told you need to get professional help but you don’t listen. All the answers you need can be found in Oh, Inverted World by The Shins anyway.

Jane

What It’s About: Founded by the same editor of the revolutionary teen magazine, Sassy, Jane was a magazine marketed towards smart hip 20-something women-also known as me- that featured candid interviews with cool celebrities, a devil-may-care attitude and sharp wit. It was sort of like Jesus Christ in magazine form- that is if Jesus Christ was a cute 24 year-old feminist who liked to get drunk and make out with boys. Like everything else good in the world though, it ended up folding. Rude.

What It Says About You: You thank Anais Nin everyday for the existence of Jezebel, which is basically Jane in virtual form. You loathe the traditional girlie mag. You’re a woman who likes to talk about their vagina, orgasms, and the evils of American Apparel. You want to get laid tonight and that is not a crime, okay? Or you’re just a gay dude who’s in tune with the plights of women.

Us Weekly

What It’s About: The wacky things celebrities (often don’t) do. In most tabloids, every story almost always comes back to Jennifer Aniston being single. Poor single Jennifer Aniston. There’s another picture of her grocery shopping. What’s that in her cart? A single lamb chop, a bottle of Smart Water and a depressing cup of yogurt. Someone’s eating alone! Where’s Brad and Angelina? Oh, there they are! They’re in the South of France doting on that lesbian child of theirs, Shiloh! Blasphemy!

What It Says About You: You’re an awful boring person with antiquated ideas about gender and sexuality! You’re also into body-shaming. Aggghh!

BlackBook

What It’s About: BlackBook essentially serves as a guide to the latest hippest restaurants, hotels, and stores for most major metropolitan areas. They interview interesting celebrities like Patricia Clarkson and always put some hot indie princess on the cover. BlackBook is sort of in an awkward place. It doesn’t feel like a proper magazine, but it also doesn’t have a powerful Internet presence like The Fader. The writing’s always solid though so we’ll see!

What It Says About You: You’re an older wealthy hipster, which can be kind of the worst. As the CEO for a T-shirt company, you’re traveling for business constantly, always staying at hotels like The Standard or The Roosevelt. You be up in the blogs like crazy, and you better believe believe you have the new Grizzly Bear! You act way younger than your actual age but it’s sort of NBD when you’re super rich.

Cosmopolitan

What It’s About: Making women feel bad about themselves. J/K, but kind of not J/K. Cosmo doles out bad sex advice every month, preying on the insecurities of women with their backhanded compliments and condescending tips. This magazine is so gross. Who reads it? I guess I’ll tell you.

What It Says About You: You form your opinions about dating through watching old episodes of The Hills. The book, He’s Just Not That Into You, changed your life and you probably even have The Ugly Truth and Killers listed as your favorite movies on Facebook. You just can’t get enough of Katherine Heigl.

Entertainment Weekly

What It’s About: Entertainment news told in a non-gossipy informative way. Interesting tidbits about the production of certain blockbusters. Agonizingly useless columns from Stephen King. Questionable taste in music.

What It Says About You: You’re a NERD NERD NERD! (Full disclosure: I’m a subscriber.} You’re a critic of some sort who’s in their 30s or 40s with an interest in superheroes. You don’t have sex very much but at least you own all of the Harry Potter movies! Sigh…

The New Yorker

What It’s About: Important smart things with a few “Ha. Ha. Ha.”‘s thrown in for good measure. The state of Joan Didion’s avocado tree is of great interest.

What It Says About You: You love what reading this magazine says about you.  You read it on planes, subways and the occasional train to Connecticut with great pride and superiority. You derive great pleasure from being a New Yorker fan. Feels good being all intellectual and shit, doesn’t it? It’s okay. You can admit it. I understand. I’m here for you, remember?

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When the zombie first appeared on film in the 1930s, audiences became hooked on what they saw. Often depicted with crazed, transfixed, and bloodshot eyes, an insatiable hunger for human flesh and above all, a reckless disregard for human life, these terrifying creatures were slow-moving pack travelers. Audiences loved witnessing the random chaos visited on everyone and everything by these soulless corpses. As popularly conceived, a zombie is an infected human who has died from a virus, only to rise up as the ‘walking dead’ with a severe attitude problem.

These eerie creatures first identify, then surround, their victims, spreading infection at high speed, rampaging as they go. No wonder they became an enticing subject for film makers who, over the last century, have created thought-provoking and horrifying films built around them.

When George A. Romero released The Night of the Living Dead in 1968 he began a new era in zombie film making. Romero raised the creature’s profile to definitive cult status and inspired both fans and film makers around the world with his unique take on the zombie genre: a mix of classic horror/gore overkill with humor that established a new standard. Sequels like Dawn of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, and Diary of the Dead followed suit. His work has continued to spur exciting contemporary directors to make modern zom-com classics like Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland which pay homage to Romero’s work. Other directors like Danny Boyle have taken a more serious and thoughtful stance, examining our drive to avoid irradiation as well as the impact of “total infection.”

Whatever the take, zombie films live on, and there’s no doubt that zombies will continue to dominate our screens for many years to come. With the firm belief that every zombie freak should have his day and draw up a list of the ten best, here’s mine.