After dinner this evening, I was feeling strangely restless, so I thought I'd take a walk down to Blockbuster Video and rent some scary movies.

Downtown Berkeley is pretty bustling on a Friday night. I stopped to admire the new public art project near the BART station - a big red metal pillar with a bell-shaped projection. It's a resonator tuned to the Earth's resonant frequency. It's way below the threshold of human hearing, but if you bang on the bell with your fist, you can feel the pillar vibrate. And I suppose, transmit some of that vibration to the Earth itself. You guys feel the Earth move tonight? That was me.

There was an unusual concentration of panhandlers down on the south end of Shattuck, which puzzled me until I saw the Catholic Worker Services van. (The population of street people in Berkeley is fairly stable: most people have their regular spots to panhandle and sleep in, so I usually run into the same people over and over. But tonight four strangers asked me for change -- I assume they were drawn out of their usual stomping grounds by the van distributing food or coffee or other services.)

I picked up a pair of Clive Barker films: Hellraiser and Lord of Illusions. I was tempted to be a completist and pick up Candyman, but I thought I'd start with these two. After all, I'm not really a big fan of horror films. I picked these up because:

• I'm on a Clive Barker kick.


• As part of my Clive Barker kick, I picked up Doug Winters's biography of Clive Barker at the library a while back. A hefty chunk of the biography was devoted to discussion of Barker's works in prose and film, most of which I hadn't read or seen. Winters actually managed to make the films sound worth seeing.


• Based on Winters's description, Lord of Illusions isn't really a horror film, anyway.


• Because I've always been curious about this Pinhead dude

As I was walking home, I passed the BART station again. There was a young woman standing out front, singing one of those awful songs -- I didn't recognize it, but the kind that some teenager always wants to stand up and sing when you're at a wedding or a Bar Mitzvah or something like that. Usually with syrupy piano accompaniment. That kind of song. People were snickering as they passed. She did have a decent voice though, and she did seem to be having a good time.

And then I got home, and I didn't feel restless anymore, just sort of relaxed and content. So, I decided I'd post a journal entry, and then maybe do a little writing. And then maybe after that, I'll watch a scary movie.