I grew up in a place called Ladera Heights which is either in Culver City or Los Angeles, depending on who you ask, but definitely, usually, not Inglewood, also depending on who you ask. I live now in Inglewood, only a few blocks from my old house, on a street called Victor Ave. My best friend from elementary school grew up on this street. His name was Tremaine.

When we were 11 and 12 we would meet up at the Ladera shopping Center, always at Music Plus, which later became the Wherehouse, then Music Plus again. Now it’s a bank. When it was Music Plus, (which also rented movies,) we’d usually find each other in the horror section, and then we’d drift over to rap.

I don’t know what was cooler to us, horror movies, rap music, or comic books. I don’t think I could have put them in any order because we’d usually bike down to the mall to look at comics in Waldenbook store, but horror was definitely a big thing for us.

We were little kids and our parents let us watch what we wanted. My parents left me alone when they went to Vegas when I was 8 and I just watched horror movies for 2 days and 2 nights all by myself. It was Heaven.

Anyway me and Tremaine were so into horror we read and collected Fangoria and Gorezone magazines. It’s really a miracle our folks didn’t freak out or care because we were some unusual kids. And creative. But it was from those horror magazines that I learned about making special effects. So I had my dad take me and Tremaine, and Clayburn and Corey and Jason all out to Hollywood and we bought liquid latex and fake blood so I could make my own little horror creations. Those were the days of summer nights and sleepover pillow fights in the den. 

There was a small crew of us that had formed together through elementary school and we all bonded in one way or another over a shared love of horror. We planned to make a movie. I had fake snakes and hands and fake hypodermic needles and I started getting nice with the liquid latex. 

We never made a movie however but it was always a dream.

Anyway I, Medusa was born out of a long childhood fascination with horror movies. Tremaine was always the better writer but I wanted to try to tell the kind of story that would have been cool to weird kids like us.  

- SKIP 2 MY LOOP

p.s. #CGIstillsucks #Bringbacklatex