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« September 2008 | Main | November 2008 »
Friday, October 31, 2008 - 16:11:59
Passion of the Crust
My best friend was in Arkansas for a month, and as Christi was getting ready to leave, we decided to get some Indian food and watch horror movies. We knew we wanted to watch at least one classic horror film, and at least one really cheesy B-movie. We got a lot of options, and I was particularly thrilled to find a movie about an evil gingerbread man, running wild through a bakery. I talked that one up--it's called GingerDEAD Man, by the way--but sadly it didn't come in from Netflix in time. So, we substituted Plan 9 From Outer Space. We have a perverse love for really terrible movies, so the fact that it won awards for Worst Movie and Worst Director, as well as the fact that after Bela Lugosi died, he was doubled by someone's chiropracter seemed really promising.
We watched Halloween for our classic horror, but we didn't actually find it scary. First of all, we couldn't figure out the geography of what was happening. Maybe we weren't paying attention, but we couldn't keep track of who was next door, who was down the street, and who was three blocks away. Second, a girl spent half her screen time running around in nothing but a man's shirt and tube socks. I was just not raised to go outside without any pants on. And finally, why, oh, why Jamie Lee Curtis did you keep leaving the knife behind? Leaving it, in fact, right next to the body of guy who was trying to kill you? Really? I never knew I was such a stickler for continuity and logic, but I found all of those things really distracting.
We rounded out the night with a zombie comedy called Dance of the Dead, which was Christi's choice, and a pretty inspired pick. I described the movie, which is about a bunch of zombies who rise from the dead and attack a town on prom night, as a bad movie that knows it's bad. That's not really accurate, though. It's a horror movie that doesn't take itself seriously. Zombies explode out of their graves, and if that image isn't funny enough, the behind the scenes footage showing how that effect was achieved is pretty hilarious, too. Think Shaun of the Dead set in high school.
It was a nice way to spend her last night in Arkansas, but what about The GingerDead Man? Watching a movie starring Gary Busey as an evil cookie (That's right, Gary Busey!) is not the sort of thing that's fun to do alone, so my friend, Shea, agreed to watch with me. He also had the clever/disturbing idea to eat gingerbread man cookies while we watched. Wait, did I say disturbing? I meant delicious.
Monday, October 27, 2008 - 21:29:43
I Could Just Eat You Up!
I'm the kind of person who likes to exercise, so long as I can pretend that I'm not actually working out. I listen to music while watching TV as I run so that there's plenty of stuff to think about besides how much further I have to go. The catch is there are only two TVs at my gym, so sometimes I don't have a say in what I end up watching.
This weekend, I went to the gym and had my choice of sports (No, thank you! If the goal is to focus on things other than working out, watching sports shatters the illusion.) and music videos. I picked a treadmill next to a guy who was hauling ass, and we watched one or two videos before Best Week Ever came on. That's fine, too, though. It's fast paced, and very visual, so that could work. Except, according to the collection of clips VH1 had assembled for me, this is one of the more bizarre weeks in pop culture--and that's saying something.
First, there was a bit from Dancing with the Stars, and while I haven't watched this season, I knew that Cloris Leachman was on it. Until that moment, however, I hadn't seen her dance. So, I'm running along, and a guy who could probably be her grandson is grabbing her chest and making sexy faces. At one point he does a dramatic wink like "Oh, yeah!" and the whole thing was so wrong it knocked me off my stride. I glanced at the guy next to me to see if he found it off-putting, but he didn't seem to notice.
But then, THEN, they showed a clip from a show called Living with the Wolfman, and there was no closed captioning, and I had headphones on, so the specific details are a bit unclear. From what I could see, though, a woman was lying down with a bunch of wolf pups, and one of them was sniffing her, licking her face, and then, best I could tell, it BIT PART OF HER FACE OFF!!! Possibly her lower lip. I can't say for sure, but they showed it three times, and there's clearly biting before the pup retreated to chew on something fleshy.
Do you know about this? Have you seen it? If so, please explain it to me.
It was completely disturbing, and just when I was about to get back into a groove, I was scrambling again. This time, though, my neighbor turned his head and we exchanged a nice, "What the hell was that?!?!" moment. It's the closest I come to developing relationships with people at the gym. When I show up, I just want to get my workout started. When I'm done, I'm sweaty and red in the face, which seems like a bad time to strike up a conversation. But I find moments like that comforting. Whenever something unusual happens, I like to look for somone who gives me a look that says: "I know! Crazy, right?" I trust my myself to judge such things, but sometimes it's nice to check.
Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 11:17:58
Fair Play
My best friend, Christi, is in town for a few weeks, and she was really excited to go to the state fair. I figured now was as good a time as any for my annual funnel cake, plus we knew some people in the Celebrity Cow Chip Throwing Contest. Since they were going to stand in a ring and throw poo, we felt it was only right that we show up and support them while being thrilled that we didn’t have to participate. In the end, the ladies were well represented as
We left the rodeo after the final toss since it turns out Christi is allergic to rodeo and couldn’t stop sneezing. Just as well, there was plenty of fried food to be had. Before the night was over, we’d eaten corn dogs, funnel cake, and a fried Oreo. Also? Bacon dipped in chocolate.
Monday, October 06, 2008 - 23:02:35
So, this is 30? It's not bad.
I turned 30 in March, and I was a little worried about it to be honest. I decided the best way to deal with it was to spend my birthday hanging out with as many friends as possible. I spent the year before living in
It's like this: I told Reg that I just wanted to see everyone and hang out a bit. I contacted a few people including my buddy Ben, but it turned out he and his wife, Charlotte, were going out of town. Lame. Everyone else could make it, and we planned dinner on Saturday night at my friends Meg and John's house
That night, as I was getting ready to go to dinner, Colleen thought it would be "hilarious" to "joke" about how they hired a male stripper for me. Ha? I knew they weren't serious because
And I saw this:
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