Tea!! Tea!! Tea!!

The promised side-sequel to "Poe-read-a-thon 2".

My mother and grandmother were big time Stephen King fangirls.

And big time tea drinkers.

Ma was a nut for Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock.

And as I said in the Poe review, Poe inspired Rod Serling and Hitchcock.

Here's a pic from her laptop of Hitch with a raven.

And here's the ceramic music box she made for my cousins that played the Hitchcock TV theme when you pressed the spider's pom-pom butt.

Anyhoo, Poe also inspired Lovecraft, who inspired King.

So!! It was only natural and inevitable that King wrote an 80's episode of Zone.

It was "Gramma". Originally a story in "Skeleton Crew".

In that, an ailing Gramma is left alone with the put-upon and terrified child protagonist, and at one point, she calls out for tea.

Barking it wickedly like "Tea!! Tea!! Tea!!".

Ma and Gram thought that was funny, and that line become a running gag years, even decades later.

When they'd want tea, they'd say it like Gramma.

Fun fact: Gramma (the character) turned out to be a witch, and she starts chanting spells, and the spell contains the name of Cthulhu.

So!! Gramma is a Cthulhu-cultist!

Yeah, King worked Lovecraft into that one!

Wild! Told ya he was a fanboy!

Fast-forward, and when Gram passed, I inherited her Stephen Kings.

I really ought to dig out "Skeleton Crew".

That one's got "The Mist" in it too. It's a damned good anthology.

Ma, following Serling to everything he did, also dug "Night Gallery".

Teenage me wasn't as into it. She was kinda bummed.

I dunno, maybe when it played at night time on its original airing, that made it scarier.

In broad daylight on Sci-Fi Channel, it was kinda silly and cheesey. IMHPO.

Nowadays, on CometTV, I dig it more for the guest stars.

So, in a long roundabout way, I'm glad she turned me on to it.

Like I said in the Serling post, 80's Zone really pulled off what "Gallery" was going for scares wise.

Ironically, no one reruns it. So I've only got 60's Zone, and Night Gallery. Womp-womp!

Ma's favorite King horrors were "Shining" "Pet Sematary" "IT" and "Tommyknockers".

I only saw the "Tommyknockers" movie, and it wasn't great, so I've never touched the book.

Maybe I oughta dig that out too.

Her favorite King non-horrors were "Misery" and "Dolores Claiborne".

Heh, I even said in the old "Dolores" review...

I remember my mother devouring the book in one day, and raving that it was a masterpiece, and proceeding to tell me the whole plot over the next 45 minutes.

So, I kinda felt like I'd already seen it.

But, I'll be damned, the flick still delivered.

It's up there with the really good ones, like "Stand By Me", and "Shawshank", and "Misery".

She liked "Stand By Me" and "Shawshank" okay, but they were "guy stories".

I really think "Dolores" was her favorite King thing ever.

Think she might have even said so.

Been awhile, so it's fuzzy. I remember her being really impressed.

Geez, that's gotta be kicking around too....

When I find it, I'm grabbing it.

If I don't find it, I'm re-buying it.

Um, yeah, that's it for this specific rabbit hole.

I don't feel the need to do a giant multi-parter dedication, because this whole blog is her memorial in a way.

She got me into most of what I like, and we shared a lot of it.

Especially the fantasy genre stuff.

Especially "Time Bandits" "Baron Munchausen" "Princess Bride" "Dark Crystal" "Labyrinth" and "Willow".

So yeah. With all of that, I carry her with me.