What Was Your Childhood Monster?

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To promote her new book Fearless*, writer Christine Rains hosts the What Was Your Childhood Monster Blogfest from August 7 - 9, 2012. She invites participating bloggers to write about whatever kept them shivering under their bed covers during childhood.

Now, if any of y'all have been following my little bloggy-blog, you know that I'm of Portuguese descent, so my childhood monster has a Lusitanian flavor. My parents immigrated to the U.S. in the late 60s and recklessly brought the Coca  along with them. (I'm amazed they got it through Customs.)

I feel I should give y'all a pronunciation guide, here: Coca has two syllables, with emphasis on the first. The "o" sound is similar to that in the word "cook" and the "a" sounds like "uh." So if you've the courage to say this thing's name aloud (and I wouldn't recommend you do it often, lest you attract its attention) you should pronounce it COOK-uh.

What the hell is the Coca? I'm damned if I can describe it to you. According to the Wikipedia entry I linked to above, it's a long, cloaked figure, either masculine or feminine. Whatever—I got the distinct impression from my parents that if the Coca got me, I'd not be looking at it for very long.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746-1828). Here Comes the Bogey-Man (Que viene el Coco), 1797-1798.
Etching and aquatint on laid paper, Plate: 8 5/8 x 6 1/16 in. (21.9 x 15.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund, Frank L. Babbott Fund, and the Carll H. de Silver Fund, 37.33.3Image: overall, 37.33.3_SL3.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph. Image credited as per Brooklyn Museum specifications.

The Coca is a bogeyman (or woman) whose name is invoked by Portuguese parents to keep their kids in line. The last thing any Portuguese kid ever wants to hear is the stomach-twisting threat, "Lá vai a Coca!" ("There goes the Coca!") The words are usually accompanied by an upraised hand with a finger pointing up, indicating that the mo-fo is on the damn roof and ready to TAKE YOU OUT if you don't cut whatever crap you're up to.

I must have got up to a lot of crap when I was a kid, for I recall my mother frequently heralding the Coca's arrival. Apparently, when I was but a wee Goth, I enjoyed throwing things into the toilet (silverware, shoes, food, money, etc.). Mom told me the Coca would rise up from its boggy depths if I didn't stop. (Then she had the nerve to get annoyed with me when, as a teen, I balked at cleaning said toilet. What the hell did she expect?) And the Coca got around—I couldn't go down to the basement or go play outside because, according to Mom, the Coca might see me. To this day, I have to check behind the basement door and make sure all available lights are on before I can venture into a cellar.

Whatever it was the Coca would do to you if it got you was too terrible to articulate and, frankly, further explication was generally unnecessary. Adults would utter the warning with such looks of dread and such intonations of doom that only the very brave (or stupid) ran the risk of putting the Coca's patience to the test. I refused to call on the Coca for backup when Balthazar came along because I think it's basically bullshit to terrorize one's children for the sake of one's own ease and comfort. But even now, though I've arrived at the ripe age of 41, Mom still cautions me against being out on the streets late at night, because you never know where the Coca might be lurking.

*An electronic version of Fearless is available for FREE on Smashwords and a print copy for $3.99 on Createspace. Pick it up NOW!

The Liebster, Reloaded!

In the continued vein of catching up with stuff...

The grooky (groovy + kooky = grooky) ghouls over at Horror Shock Lolipop bestowed this upgraded Liebster Award upon me a few weeks ago. I've received it before, but with different rules (which I nonetheless intend to bend a bit, but still...protocol, you know). Thanks so much for thinking of me, Madame Luciel, Erinia Spooky, Lilia Tombs, and—ahem—Vagina Galore! :-D

The Rules:

• Post 11 things about yourself
• Answer the questions the tagger has set for you
• Create 11 questions for the people you have tagged to answer
• Choose 11 people and link them in your post
• Go to their page and tell them
• No tag backs

I've very recently had to come up with numerous things about myself (twice!) so for Rule Bender #1, I'm just gonna link back to the very first award post in which I had to do this kinda thing.

And here are my answers to Horror Shock Lolipop's questions:

1. What's the best horror-themed or spooky attraction you've been to?

The only one I've been to was in L.A. - I was there on business with a co-worker, and he, myself, and a friend of mine local to the area went to a "haunted house" (this was October 2010). Even with one guy before me and one behind (heh heh) I twitched from the anticipation of being completely freaked out of my mind. (By fright, you dirty birdies.) We reached a smallish room in the house, adorned with framed pictures of clowns. I said to my friends, "God, I really can't stand scary clowns." Right on cue, a clown-faced dude poked his head out from one of the frames and cackled at me. Perfection.

2. If you had to come up with a new type of monster, what would it be and what would you call it?

It would suck all the bubbly energy from those who are relentlessly cheerful first thing in the morning and it would be called DePerk-aTron™.

3. What's the worst film you've ever seen (any genre)?

Years ago, before my sis was born and I was just a little Goth, my parents rented a one-bedroom apartment. I slept on the sofabed in the living room and when my dad stayed up late to watch bad movies, I, perforce, was exposed to them. One night he watched some hideous thing, the name of which I've no idea, that featured a typical four-person American family lost in the woods. They came upon some old manse-type structure and, peeking in through some cellar windows, saw a kind of black mass, led by a priest and attended by nuns, who threw themselves in a cauldron of fire in sacrifice to God only knows what. Blerch.

4. Best book you've read (any genre)?

Oh, Lord, to choose only one! Gah. With apologies for copping out, I just can't do it...

5. If you could create a theme park ride, what would it be?

It would be the Cocktailpalooza, intended solely for parents bringing their kids to the theme park to detox after schlepping their progeny around said park in the hot sun for hours on end.

6. Would you rather have a zombie attack or an alien attack?

Zombie attack, 'cause the rules for dealing with them are clearly laid out in Zombieland and Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide.

7. What's the food that scares you the most?

Squid.  ::shudders:: (For which I blame Elizabeth Twist.) :-P

8. What music do you love / hate?

Love alternative rock. Don't much care for country.

9. Would you rather live underground, in the sea, or in space?

Oye, vey. BY the sea would be fab.

10. Spiders: Creepy or cute?

Useful for gobbling up other creepy critters, so I let them live. Plus, it's bad luck to kill 'em.

11. If you could have any "super power" you wanted, what would it be?

Invisibility, so I could be the proverbial fly on the wall...though, not in the presence of spiders, it must be noted.

Now to bend the rest of the rules: I've very recently crafted 11 questions/tagged 11 blogs, and I've just not got it in me right now to attempt it again. So I'll not tag anyone in particular, but instead invite all readers to answer the following question by commenting, below:

Apart from having children and paying taxes, what's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you???  :-)

Dark Romance #4 ~ The Legend of Old Gregg

You'll find SPOILERS below, so if you haven't seen this thing, but intend to, you may want to give this blog post a miss (though I do link some wee snippets of the episode below, if you're interested in checking it out).

The Legend of Old Gregg is an episode from the second series (season) of the British comedy show The Mighty Boosh. I first became aware of the Boosh on a Jet Blue flight from, I think, Texas to California - thank God for those little tellies on the seat backs! It was featured on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim and I'm oh, so glad I tuned into that. The one episode I saw stirred me up enough to buy the Boosh box set on Amazon, for a really sweet price, and I haven't regretted the impulse buy for a moment.

The two Boosh, if you will, are Howard Moon and Vince Noir. Moon, a painfully uncool wanna-be hepcat, plays comic straight man to Noir's super cool, "King of the Mods" wide-eyed simpleton. (I'm over-simplifying, of course - Noir's a canny character but can come off as a bit goofy, now and again.) The show follows their escapades into some often sublimely surreal environments, and The Legend of Old Gregg is one of my favorites.

In it, Moon and Noir flee London after a spectacularly unsuccessful music gig (largely because their disgruntled audience threatens to visit violence upon them). They travel to the village of Black Lake and arrive at a pub (which is as good a place as any to recapture your "edge," I suppose). While there, they're advised to go fishing on the lake in order to sort of clear their heads and reconnect to their creative muses. They do so but when Noir proves to be a more successful fisherman than Moon, Moon sends him away in a fit of pique. Back at the pub, Noir shocks the locals by detailing where he's been and, too late, learns of the dangers of the lake on a full moon night.

Moon discovers the danger for himself when he gets his first bite of the night - Old Gregg. How, in the name of all that's holy, to describe Old Gregg? He/she/it is a humanoid monster with seaweed hair, a sort-of mustache, and a "downstairs mix-up" frequently referred to as its "man-gina." He alternates between stereotypical gender roles, first aggressively male, then submissively female - mostly, he comes off like a scale-covered dude who also wears a tutu and, later, a wedding gown, so pinning a sex on Old Gregg is a bit tricky. Oh, and he paints watercolors (naturally) and likes a glass of Baileys (for which I can't say I blame him - yum!) Anyway, Old Gregg develops a crush on Moon and whisks him away to his underwater cave/cocktail bar/quasi-disco. Moon's hardly up for a seduction but, when Old Gregg's attraction seems it will take a turn for the fatal, plays along in the hopes of escaping. This he eventually does, with a little help from Noir and their friends - however, unbeknownst to them, though the tide is high, Old Gregg's holding on.

The dark romance of it all: When Moon does his about-face and invites Old Gregg's advances, he explains his reversal by saying that, sometimes, when people begin to have romantic feelings for others, they hide them by playing games. "Love games?" Old Gregg asks, which launches them into a funny, freaky, and funky duet. Really, it's the music in this episode that enamors me, as well as pathetically lonely Old Gregg's single-minded (and, admittedly, homicidal) determination to win Moon's love.

You can find the entire episode in snippets on YouTube, though, if you dig bizarre British humor as much as I do, I strongly recommend you buy the DVD, at least series two, if not the box set. (Hey, you can even watch just this episode on Amazon's Instant Video for only $1.99!) Too, you can check out more clips on Adult Swim's Web site, if you wanna try before you buy. These fellers got the sea funk - don't you wanna get it too? I think you do.