Before having to call off this past week’s Bloody Good Horror Podcast due to coming down with a case of the plague, I spent the recent Labor Day Weekend partaking in a horror of a different sort, known mainly as the Marshall County Blueberry Festival! While there was much fair food and other portly sundries to be had all weekend, there was a high quotient of rednecks unleashed and nice reunions to be had!

In the picture above, you’ll notice three distinct slabs of manhood there. At one point in the history of Plymouth, IN you could dare say that these three individuals were nigh inseparable! The gentleman with bad taste there, mainly speaking towards the Purdue jacket he chose to wear there, is my old friend Rick.

Throughout the years Rick and I have remained quite close and visit each other regularly. I bring up Rick here on this home of horror to bring up a funny story. Rick just so happened to be present at the viewing of the movie that quite possibly scared me more than any other; Arachnaphobia. It’s no secret to those that know that I’m deathly afraid of spiders and tend to break down into random screams and arm flailings when I find myself face to face with the little bastards! So, you can image that for whatever reason I decided to watch such a movie, it was met with mass hysterics. By the end of the movie, I don’t know how much of it Rick had managed to see. He spent most of the film rolling about on the floor laughing at me, as I watched from his kitchen, peaking around the corner at the TV screen. It was that bad.

Rick has had his share of diving into the world of fandom with me as well. While his love of horror may not run quite as deep as mine, there was a time that his love of comics was right up there along side of me. Even today as we both hit our mid 30’s, you’ll find conversation turning to the various line ups of the X Men teams or other old comics as well as movies and the like. Rick has found himself a lovely wife that does have a high hankering for horror, so his intake has increased quite a bit of as of late!

The other guy there in the snazzy Hawaiian shirt there is my old friend Noble. Sadly, over the past 10 years or so, Noble and I drifted out of touch and hadn’t spoke to each other in some time. After finding each other recently on Xbox Live, (Gamer Tag=CinemaFromage if your’e nasty) we soon fell back into old ways and old stories and started keeping in touch more often. With this recent trip home, Noble and his girlfriend Abby were able to join us at our annual family BBQ, reuniting the two of us again after nearly 10 years!

The significance of Noble and the workings here at Cinema Fromage actually run pretty deep, despite being incommunicado over so many years. Throughout high school and a few years outside of it, we were brothers in nerdery and fandom, often to scary lengths. Together we both journeyed into the world of comic book collecting and faced creepy mouth breather that ran our small towns only shop. We journeyed to our first comic book convention together. We discovered and obsessed over certain video games together such as the NES system’s “Shadow Gate” and most importantly; we explored the early stages of horror movies together. Such films as “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “The Gate” and many more were seen by the two of us together for the first time. The memories of hanging out in Nobe’s dungeon like basement bedroom reading tattered copies of Fangoria and watching badly recopied video tapes over and over are long and familiar. Essentially, Noble’s partly to blame for me eventually turning into a horror blogger!

So, while this post originally started as a chance to regale you with images of redneck debauchery, it has instead turned into more of a lesson on revisiting your roots. As a writer, I share a tip with any other fellow writer out there, and the non writers as well. Sometimes it’s nice to reconnect with old friends. In the face of burnout and writers block, it helps to refresh your memory just why you turned the craft in the first place. With old friends come fond memories, both things essential to re-stoking the fires!

Oh yes, slutty looking cows may spark some ideas too. What that idea is? That’s up to you. Pervert.