Column Teen Horror Time Machine Vampire Beach Vacation: R.L. Stine’s Goodnight Kiss Books Fun in the sun… with vampires? By Alissa Burger | Published on June 27, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The beach seems like the last place you would expect to find a vampire. Fun in the sun isn’t really their scene. But when the sun goes down, there are lots of shadows on the shore, beach bonfires, and moonlight strollers, often in singles or intimate pairs, which make for easy pickings. If the beach in question is a vacation spot, there’s also a transient, seasonal population of tourists coming and going, with fresh blood regularly rolling into town. These tourists often don’t know the area well or have ties to the local community, and while on vacation, they might be more likely to cut loose and make some risky decisions, so if one of them disappears or turns up dead every now and then, who’s going to make a fuss? In R.L. Stine’s Fear Street Super Chiller duo, Goodnight Kiss (1992) and Goodnight Kiss 2 (1996), the beach community of Sandy Hollow turns out to be the perfect place for vampires.  The vampires of Sandy Hollow refer to themselves as the Eternal Ones, and most of them have been vampires for generations, though they have no memory of their pre-vampire lives. This could explain why these particular vampires look, think, and act like teenagers, with little of the awareness or self-control that one might expect from decades of experience and survival–but it does help them more effectively blend in and connect with the teens upon whom they prey. When the young men and women vacationing in Sandy Hollow head out for a night on the town in the hope of meeting other kids (and maybe even making a love connection), the vampires are there to welcome them with open arms and sharpened fangs.  Stine definitely puts his own spin on the established vampire mythos and expectations. The vampires of Sandy Hollow are fanged monsters who sustain themselves by drinking the blood of humans, though they call blood “the nectar” (Goodnight Kiss 13). They can turn into bats, but they have to spin rapidly in place in order to do so. As Stine describes this transformation in Goodnight Kiss, the vampires “were spinning together, whirling with the wind beneath the smooth, steep rock cliff, whirling together—and then rising apart, rising into the dark sky, soaring high, then diving low over the beach, still dotted with groups of young people” (25). They sleep in coffins, with soil from their native land. A stake through the heart will kill them and so will the sun, usually, though they can move safely through a heavily overcast or rainy day. If a vampire feeds on a human three times, the human is transformed into an Eternal One. Given the amount of time the vampires spend with individual humans, there should reasonably be a significantly larger vampire population in Sandy Hollow, but Stine doesn’t tell us much about the hierarchy of the local vampire community, so it’s possible they fight for territory, that vampires move on to other locations once the summer is over, or that not all the vacationers-turned-vampires survive. Some of the vacationers who become vampires also head home with their families when the summer fun is done, carrying their curse back with them. The Sandy Hollow vampires are also really competitive, with a “who can turn one of those teenagers into a vampire first?” wager at the center of both Goodnight Kiss and Goodnight Kiss 2.  In Goodnight Kiss, the trio of human friends spending their summer in Sandy Hollow are April Blair, her boyfriend Matt, and their friend Todd, who have come from Shadyside. April and Matt have spent summers with their families in Sandy Hollow before, but it’s Todd’s first year there and they’re excited to show him around. Vampires Jessica and Gabri (short for Gabriel) are thrilled to make the teens’ acquaintance as well, with Jessica setting her sights on Todd and Gabri zeroing in on April. Goodnight Kiss 2 features three guy friends: Billy, Jay, and Nate. Like the first book, two of the guys (Billy and Nate) have spent summers in Sandy Hollow with their families in previous years and know their way around, while Jay’s there for the first time. Without internal romantic distractions among their friend group, this frees the fellas up to meet three beautiful vampire girls: Kylie, Irene, and April (the same April from Goodnight Kiss, who didn’t get a happy ending). The teens are all traveling with their families, staying in beach houses or condos, but aside from some younger sibling drama—April’s twin younger sisters are a handful and Nate’s mom makes him take his little sister along when the guys go out—they pretty much have free reign. They don’t seem to have curfews and stay out half the night. Their parents have their own lives: Billy’s parents only come to Sandy Hollow at the weekends, so he’s there on his own all week, and when Nate’s little sister starts (unsurprisingly) having nightmares about vampires, his parents take her home and leave Nate at the beach to keep partying unsupervised.  In each book, one of the main characters has his suspicions about what’s going on and tries to warn the others: in Goodnight Kiss, Matt’s a horror movie buff and knows the signs of vampire predation when he sees them, while in Goodnight Kiss 2, Billy has come back to Sandy Hollow this summer specifically to destroy the vampires, who killed his girlfriend Joelle the summer before. Like the prophetess Cassandra, however, their warnings fall on deaf ears and cost them friends: April breaks up with Matt and starts dating Gabri instead, dismissing Matt’s warnings as simple jealousy, while Billy’s friends tell him he’s crazy and Nate punches him in the face after Billy scares his little sister. Interestingly, people in Sandy Hollow talk about vampires plenty: there’s an abnormally large and aggressive population of bats in the beach community, who all live on an abandoned offshore island referred to as Vampire Island, and the community theatre’s summer production is about vampires. But no one actually believes in vampires, despite these connections (and the troubling number of mysterious deaths with bodies bearing neck puncture wounds), Vampires are make-believe, as everyone tells Matt and Billy, including the vampires themselves.  Goodnight Kiss and Goodnight Kiss 2 follow a similar trajectory, as Matt and Billy desperately try to convince their friends of the danger of the vampires before it’s too late, even as Todd and Jay grow weaker by the day, with every night bringing them closer to becoming Eternal Ones. Some of their attempts at proving the existence of vampires are clandestine, like when Matt follows April and Gabri to the local carnival and takes pictures of them, in the hopes of proving that Gabri’s a vampire when he doesn’t show up in the pictures (which works just as he anticipated, though Matt lurking in the shadows to take pictures of them is still creepy). Others are a bit more aggressive (and maybe even slightly unhinged), like when Billy, Jay, and April seek shelter from a storm in the theatre’s basement, then Billy lies about what time it is to trick April into staying after sunrise so he can open the door and shove her outside to see if she bursts into flames (which fails miserably because April is just pretending to be a vampire to trick and then destroy the real vampires. She’s also not actually April, but April’s cousin Diana, still devastated over her vampire cousin’s suicide by sunlight after being turned into a vampire last summer).  Matt and Billy both have to make the trip to Vampire Island for their final confrontation with the monsters, pushing through wild undergrowth to the burned out, abandoned houses the vampires have claimed as their own and dodging swarms of bats (who aren’t all vampires, though it’s hard to tell which ones are real bats and which are vampires in disguise, so best to be wary). Matt has to make his final stand alone, using a rowboat oar as a makeshift stake to kill Gabri in memorable fashion. As Stine writes in Goodnight Kiss, Gabri “opened his mouth to cry out, and a gray moth fluttered out … And as Matt stared in horror, Garbri’s body collapsed to the floor, folding like an accordion. His eyes stared lifelessly up at Matt, and Gabri’s face began to crumble, the skin drying and peeling, flaking to powder until the entire skull was revealed … And then the skull too disintegrated. Fell apart and crumbled” (206). Jessica is killed by fire, when Matt sets her ablaze and “Her wild cry faded only when her face began to melt, rivulets of skin dripping down like a burning wax candle” (212). In Goodnight Kiss 2, Billy and Diana head to Vampire Island together, a united front. Billy stakes Irene, who crumbles much as Gabri did, but Kylie is killed by the sunlight. When the light hit Kylie, “her skin began to shrivel and peel off … [she was] bending in pain, howling, howling … Until her head rolled off her body. Her body tumbled to the floor, across the square of orange light, melting, flaking, shriveling” (209). At the end of each book, the heroes are finally believed, emerging victorious, as the main vampire antagonists have been destroyed.  But the larger vampire threat persists. Goodnight Kiss and Goodnight Kiss 2 feature some of Stine’s most fatalistic endings, with success achieved only to be snatched away moments later. In Goodnight Kiss, Matt has defeated the vampires and won April back, only to have her turn on him, as she “reached up and grabbed his shoulders with surprising strength, and bared her fangs, slender and pale in the light of the half moon” (215) as she attacks him. In Goodnight Kiss 2, Billy and Diana are united in their hatred for and desire to get vengeance on the vampires who killed people they loved, but it turns out Billy is a vampire too, attacking Diana in the book’s final pages, in the bright, public space of the local pizzeria in front of dozens of witnesses, so it at least seems likely that the Sandy Hollow residents will have to acknowledge the existence of vampires now (not that does Diana much good).  Goodnight Kiss and Goodnight Kiss 2 present an interesting riff on the traditional vampire narrative, upholding several expected components like bloodsucking, the ability to transform into a bat, and death by staking, while re-situating these monsters within an idyllic beach setting. While the world through which they move and the teens with whom they share it may deviate from the usual story, the vampires of Sandy Hollow are just as dangerous as the more conventional versions of these monsters, as they prey upon this seaside community and leave a trail of dead teens in their wake. The even greater horror, however, is for those who survive as Eternal Ones, the teens who have been transformed into vampires and will now take their turn hunting, whether in the streets of Sandy Hollow or in their own hometowns.[end-mark] The post Vampire Beach Vacation: R.L. Stine’s <i>Goodnight Kiss</i> Books appeared first on Reactor.

Wizard goes “Hollywood” this issue, exploring the details of the court battle over the Spider-Man film rights, following Todd McFarlane through appearances on Howard Stern and other high profile shows, visiting Jay & Silent Bob’s CONTINUE READING... The post WIZARDS The Podcast Guide To Comics | Episode 94 appeared first on The Retro Network.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Rep. Bob Good introduced the Life Act on Thursday, legislation that outlaws abortions of unborn babies “to the fullest extent at the federal level” by prohibiting federal dollars from being used for abortions. The Virginia Republican’s bill, which builds on a consensus from House Republicans to provide stronger enforcement mechanisms for pro-life laws, bans federally regulated health care programs from using funds to pay for abortions and federally regulated health plans from covering abortions. The bill protects mothers whose lives are in danger but does not make exceptions for rape or incest and would protect mothers from being prosecuted for the death of her own child. It also would ensure that ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and stillbirths can be “appropriately treated.” It would also make it a federal crime for licensed medical professionals to participate in interstate commerce or accept federal funds to “perform or prescribe an abortion at any point after fertilization.” “There are 63 million fewer Americans alive today because of Roe v. Wade,” Good told The Daily Signal. “Even after this horrific ruling was overturned, abortion remains the leading killer in America. It has prematurely ended the life of countless [children who may have become] doctors, teachers, pastors, and engineers.” “Thankfully, the Dobbs decision did overturn Roe, finding there is not a constitutional right to abortion, and returning the regulation of abortion to the people’s representatives,” he added, referring to the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “In a post-Roe America, Congress must legislate to protect life. It is our duty to follow the science that life begins at conception and end abortion so that every American has the chance to live.” GOOD_104_xmlDownload A one-pager about the bill emphasizes that “science confirms that life begins at the moment of conception,” adding that “abortion is antithetical to our American values as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.” “It is abundantly clear that Congress should continue to protect life at the federal level,” the one-pager says. “The Supreme Court’s decision returned the issue not merely to the states, but also ‘to the people and their elected representatives.’” The legislation is supported by pro-life groups, including Concerned Women for America, Heritage Action for America, Students for Life Action, and Live Action. The post EXCLUSIVE: ‘Life Act’ Would Outlaw Federal Dollars Going to Abortions appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. X, a prominent social media platform, has seemingly phased out its association with the Israeli identity verification firm AU10TIX, shifting instead to American company Stripe to manage its identity verification services. The move followed reports that AU10TIX had suffered a data leak. This transition comes amidst concerns raised by some of X’s users regarding the safety of their personal data, particularly their photo IDs. The call for X to disengage from AU10TIX also gained momentum after specific users highlighted the risk of intelligence sharing. But rather than dropping the controversial digital ID system entirely, X has simply switched companies. Starting to introduce digital IDs for social media use can severely inhibit free speech by stripping away the protective layer of anonymity and pseudonymity. This change could deter users from expressing controversial or minority viewpoints for fear of personal or professional repercussions, particularly under oppressive regimes or in sensitive situations. Such a policy would also heighten surveillance risks, as linking social media profiles to real-world identities makes it easier for both governmental and non-governmental actors to monitor individuals. The ability of controversial or targeted vulnerable groups to safely organize and communicate could be significantly compromised, leading to a decrease in diverse voices and activism online. Additionally, the introduction of digital IDs can create significant access barriers for those lacking the necessary documentation or technological resources, disproportionately affecting disadvantaged populations. The potential for data breaches in the systems managing these IDs poses a substantial risk, with the misuse of personal information being a critical concern. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Despite Backlash, X Continues Digital ID Verification with New Partner Stripe appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

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Lukas McClish, a Californian hiker who became lost and stranded in the Santa Cruz Mountains, has been found 10 days after he first set off for what he thought was a three-hour hike.McClish left for his hike on 11 June, but became lost in part due to recent wildfires destroying landmarks used for navigation. After the 34-year-old did not return for 16 June – Father's Day – his family reported him missing, triggering an intensive search and rescue effort.McClish went into the wilderness with “just a pair of pants, and my pair of hiking shoes, and a hat”, according to an interview he gave to ABC7. "I had a flashlight, and a pair of folding scissors, like a Leatherman tool. And that was about it."But you work with what you have, and McClish survived by drinking water he had collected from a waterfall with his shoe. Finally, 10 days after he set off, he was found by a rescue team, exhausted and in need of sustenance, but alive.        IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.So how long can you survive without food and water? One paper points out the obvious, that "experiments with humans are ethically unacceptable" on the topic. You can't just stop giving a person water and ominously start a stopwatch.Instead, we have to learn from real cases of people trapped or lost in the wilderness, or food- and drink-deprived in other ways. That paper looked at reports from the media, concluding that "it seems possible to survive without food and drink within a time span of 8 to 21 days", with that time improving to about two months if it is only food that is absent.This seems a little on the optimistic side, however, with the general consensus being that the average person can only go about two to three days without water. This will vary wildly depending on the health and age of the person, of course, as well as other circumstances such as the environment's temperature. In 1979, a then 18-year-old Andreas Mihavecz was locked up in a police cell in Germany by mistake following a car accident in which he was a passenger. He remained locked in the basement cell for the next 18 days, with the officers responsible for his arrest all believing he had already been released. When he was found again he had lost a lot of weight but was still alive, though barely.Back in the 1940s, in one of the few experiments conducted on humans, two scientists deprived themselves of water and ate a dry food diet, like a cat. The 28- and 33-year-olds survived the experiment, which they stopped before it became life-threatening."By the third or fourth day their faces had become somewhat pinched and pale and there was a suggestion of cyanosis about their lips," a paper on the two reads. "This general appearance of ill-being vanished within a few hours of the restoration of fluid, and the symptoms of dehydration passed off long before physiological rehydration was complete."Before setting out on hikes that might feasibly leave you wishing you'd Googled "how long can I survive without water" if things go wrong, it is best to inform someone where you are going and take adequate supplies with you. It is also recommended by the US Forest Service that the moment you realize you have become lost, you should stop and try to reorientate yourself. "Get out your compass and determine the directions based on where you are standing. Do not walk aimlessly," the service writes. "If you are on a trail, stay on it. All trails are marked with signs (where intersections meet) and with diamond blazers or markers. However, signs are sometimes vandalized or stolen. As a very last resort, follow a drainage or stream downhill. This is often a difficult path but could lead to a trail or road. Again, this could be very dangerous." The best course of action, if you cannot find your route, is to attempt to attract attention from others. Should you attempt to self-rescue, they recommend that you stop and rest before you are exhausted, and avoid hiking in the heat. Of course, most importantly, you will need to find shelter and water to avoid dehydration. Here's hoping you have a trusty shoe.

CNN drooled over the news that 16 leftist “Nobel” economists came out swinging in a letter against President Donald Trump’s economic agenda, labeling it as  — wait for it — an “inflation” threat. The network left out key context that blew up the supposed experts’ credibility. CNN co-anchor Kate Bolduan joined forces with Bidenomics flunky and CNN Reporter Matt Egan to make sure the 16 economists’ anti-Trump mudslinging was spread far and wide during the June 26 edition of CNN News Central.  With his signature smirk, Egan bleated that the economists were warning that “Trump’s policies wouldn’t just fail to fix inflation. It would actually make matters worse.” Forget the already enormous damage President Joe Biden’s spending policies did to stimulate the inflation crisis, right Egan? He proceeded to elevate the rambling of the cohort led by liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz, whom Egan said was arguing that Trump would “‘reignite inflation.’ They point to what they describe as ‘fiscally irresponsible budgets.’”  Even in the face of the economic nightmare Americans have been living under Biden for the past three years, does CNN really think Americans are that stupid? Egan even decried how polling showed Americans’ were putting a vast amount of more trust in Trump than Biden on economic issues, “despite the fact that some of these leading economists are warning that the Trump agenda could actually make inflation worse.” The network might as well have just prefaced the entire segment with a condescending, “Attention, idiots!” Oh, dear, where to begin? Egan and Bolduan failed to point out that at least 11 of the 16 economists, including Stiglitz himself, were among the same collective of brilliant minds (sarcasm) who signed a letter in September 2021 openly endorsing Biden’s asinine $1.9 trillion stimulus that juiced America’s inflation crisis to a 40-year high disaster in the first place. “The American economy appears set for a robust recovery in part due to active government interventions over the past year and a half, including President Biden’s American Rescue Plan,” the 2021 letter praised.  If that wasn’t telling enough, the letter even audaciously claimed that Biden’s “agenda invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressures.” Yes, you read that right. [Emphasis added.] But that’s not all. CNN also didn’t bother mentioning that one of the signatories is married to Biden’s own Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was just interviewed by Yahoo! Finance blaming Trump for the economic catastrophe her boss helped bring about.  Also conveniently missing from CNN’s gaslighting was — as Fox News pointed out Wednesday —  that a number of the 2024 letter’s signatories — including Stiglitz — were Biden donors.  Anyone with a functioning prefrontal cortex would understand that being a donor to any political candidate exposes an inherent bias that comprises any modicum of objectivity. For goodness’ sake! The economists even outright asserted in their letter that “we all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump’s.” Oh, really? Is that why Egan reported in an article on CNN.com published the same day as his on-air appearance that “Even wealthy Americans are struggling to make ends meet” in Biden’s economy?  Conservatives are under attack. Contact CNN at 404-827-1500 and demand the outlet tell the truth about how terrible Bidenomics has been for the U.S. economy.

Part of the American tax-paying experience is knowing that eponymous Amanpour and Company host Christiane Amanpour will use her PBS show to promote Hillary Clinton and abortion. On Monday, she did both, concluding her show by reciting, “As Hillary Clinton famously once said, ‘human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights.’” In her final monologue to the camera, Amanpour hyped, “And finally, tonight, collective community from the workplace to the ballot box. Two years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the federal right to an abortion, and it's a key issue in the November presidential elections and perhaps also in France, where thousands of women have been demonstrating against the far-right ahead of their snap elections next week, fearing for their reproductive rights and the President Macron's move to enshrine them in the constitution could be undermined.”     National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, often the face of the media’s warnings about far-right French movements, supports abortion. It is just another example that journalists should avoid projecting their own country’s political spectrum onto other countries, but Amanpour rolled right along, “Meanwhile, in Brazil, women were also on the march demanding the end of a bill that would equate abortion after 22 weeks with homicide. As Hillary Clinton famously once said, “human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights.” Amanpour really does love that line. In December 2022, she welcomed Clinton to the program to look back at when she first made the remarks in 1995. During that interview, Clinton compared Roe’s demise to the Iranian and Taliban regimes as well as Russian soldiers who rape Ukrainian women. None of those comparisons struck Amanpour as outrageous, instead, she agreed, “But, I mean, how much persuasion can we expect when it comes to our—and I'm speaking as a woman, basic rights. Whether it's in the United States or around the world. As you said, they are human rights. At what point should these be enshrined even in the American law and Constitution even. I mean, I'm probably exaggerating. But it's extraordinary in 2022 that this basic right of women, half the world's population is still at risk.” If we wanted to be truthful and not neutral, we would say Amanpour is not “probably exaggerating,” she definitely is. Here is a transcript for the June 24 show: PBS Amanpour and Company 6/24/2024 CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And finally, tonight, collective community from the workplace to the ballot box. Two years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the federal right to an abortion, and it's a key issue in the November presidential elections and perhaps also in France, where thousands of women have been demonstrating against the far-right ahead of their snap elections next week, fearing for their reproductive rights and the President Macron's move to enshrine them in the constitution could be undermined. Meanwhile, in Brazil, women were also on the march demanding the end of a bill that would equate abortion after 22 weeks with homicide. As Hillary Clinton famously once said, “human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights.”