Cables

So I finally got cable back after a year and a half or so. Sadly, this means that progress on my two-volume history on the Balkan War has ground to a halt, but that is the price the world must pay to keep me in entertainment.

And what entertainment!

Did you know that there are several television shows devoted to parents with 8 kids or more? And at least three shows dealing with cakes? And about a gazillion shows where attractive people solve gross murders with forensic science?

Now that I have hundreds of channels at my fingertips and a DVR to tape them all, I have no use for the outside world at all. Plus, local and cable news keeps telling me how scary the world is anyway. So if I don't see you for a while, don't worry, I'm OK.

Festival Seating

So there's this Gainesville Fest thing. A bunch of bands play all weekend long. I've usually heard of like three of them. But I made it down this year. Sort of. Due to employee emergencies, I couldn't take the weekend off, so I could only make it down for the Thursday before to see Panthro UK United 13 play. They were awesome.

So anyway, this Fest is a pretty big deal; people fluff their beards and buff their star tattoos for months in anticipation. I gotta say, I was a bit apprehensive. My girlfriend (yes, girlfriend. You don't know her, she's from Canada.) drove down there, and I was sort of worried that seeing me around a bunch of my old, drunk friends might make her reconsider the whole thing. But I guess I passed. One of her observations: "Guys sure hug here a lot."

So the whole night/morning was pretty fun, but you know how I know I'm getting old? No, I was right up front for the band, I might be old, but I'm not a wuss. I know I'm getting old because here are some of the conversations I remember:

A pretty boss sale at J.C. Penney - two for one Dockers!

Different ways to write up/discipline problem employees

Astonishment that it was after 11 on a Thursday and we were all awake and out of our houses.

LETS. GET. WEIRD!

This old woman is trying to find a book on CD about one of the first Americans to climb Mt. Everest. She can't remember the title, but remembers the main character.

"He was always a weird little kid. He was always climbing and was never afraid of anything. I love weird little kids. I have a weird grandson and I just love him to death. I have a normal one, and he's OK, but I love that little weird one."

Too Much Horror Business

If you've read any of my stuff before, it is apparent that I have no taste or discrimination at all when it comes to media. Hell, I'll watch just about anything. And if that thing is Halloween-themed, I'll watch it even quicker. So after going home sick today I popped in my latest Netflix treat, "Paul Lynde's Halloween Special." I figured the cold medicine would enhance it.

Now, I knew going in that it wasn't going to be good. But I figured that it couldn't be that bad.

Holy crap, was I wrong.

Bad musical numbers and jokes you can see coming from a mile away make you wonder, "Was this for kids?" "Slow people?"

I suppose it can be instructional in showing the kids today how shitty TV could be back in the '70s, and Kiss does a couple songs, but other than that, stay far, far away.

You'd really think Paul Lynde would be much more discriminating in his choices of roles.

In happier media news, I finally got volume 5 of the 42nd Street Forever exploitation film trailer DVDs. Man, I could watch those things constantly. The best thing about this volume is the crazy juxtapositions between cheap-ass kid shows like "Pinocchio's Birthday Party" up next to the barbarians and boobs epic "Sorcerers" next to kung fu and science fiction trailers.

You should totally get that from Netflix. Hell, you should actually pay for it. Just stay far, far away from Paul Lynde.

Q: How Can You Tell I'm in Control of the Party Stereo?

A: "Troglodyte" by Jimmy Castor is gonna come up. I don't care if it's a Halloween party, Christmas shindig, Christening or Bar Mitzvah, that jam's coming on. And I've been doing it even before I discovered this awesome video.

Seriously, is that not the greatest thing you've ever seen?

Once I turn up the Cheap Trick, Van Halen and Thin Lizzy, however, it's probably time for someone to either drive me home or put me in bed.

Welcome to Scare the Children Theatre

I loved horror movies as a kid. Loved 'em. When I was a kid and we lived in the dorms at Mississippi State, every summer Friday night I'd walk down the hall to the communal TV and catch "Friday Night Frights." I'd spend my Scholastic book ordering money on monster books, so I knew all the monster's backstories.

Consequently, while I was scared of a lot of things in life (little yappy dogs, teenagers, lightning, etc.), horror movies didn't really scare me too much, mostly because I knew that they were made up, and that the chances of me running into a vampire or Frankenstein in Starkeville, Mississippi were pretty rare. My parents did take some archaeology classes, though, which freaked me out; everyone knows archaeology is all full of vengeful mummies and curses that can turn your kid into an orphan.

However, there were a few movies/TV shows that scared the crap out of me.

Sesame Street
The Count always sort of freaked me out. No, not because he was a little plush Bela Lugosi, but the fact that he had to count everything really rubbed me the wrong way. "Why? I know he's a Dracula, and they do weird stuff, but why can't he just stop counting?"

The Swarm
Saw this when I was about 8 with a friend in the theater. It's about killer bees coming up from Mexico and biting the hell out of people. The thing that really got me is the shot of a schoolyard (I think, I haven't watched it in years) where they show a dead little kid's hand clutching one of those big lollipops while bees walked over the sweet, sweet candy. That night my friend and I lost a lot of sleep due to the air conditioner's bee-like buzzing. I think we might have sealed up the windows and doors with towels just as a precaution.

SSSSSSS
So in this movie, Face from "The A Team" gets turned into a snake by a mad scientist. I'm not really sure why the scientist wanted to turn people into snakes, that's just the sort of thing you do, I suppose. The most horrifying part is the rejected man/snake hybrid:


I recently re-watched this, and yeah, it's still pretty creepy. But what was even more terriying than the creepy snake-man was the fact that my friend's mom was chain smoking while we were watching the movie. My mom had drummed into me the horrors of second-hand smoke and I was sure I was slowly dying of lung cancer as I watched a man turn into a snake.

The Legend of Lizzie Borden
So I watched this when I was probably 13 or so, much too old to be scared by anything on TV. It started the woman from "Bewitched" as the parent killing Lizzie Borden, and was a made for TV movie. How bad could it be?
Well, there's all this stuff about how the dad had a funeral home in the basement and it was sort of implied there was some bad touching going on down there among the corpses. I seem to remember that Lizzie knocks out a blood tube from one of the bodies as well that goes all over the place squirting blood. Later in the movie, Lizzie strips down so she won't get blood on her clothes while hacking up her parents. "Wow! Naked Bewitched lady," I think. "Now we're talking. Ahhhh! She's chopping up her parents!" The whole arousal/fear thing overloaded my teenage brain and freaked me out for days afterwards.

Dr. Livingston, I Presume?

Say I commissioned you to create a portrait of a creepy guy. Give him a scraggly beard, greasy hair, a weirdly rumpled assortment of clothing and a knack for ignoring personal boundries. Then you'd have an idea of the guy that came up to the desk last week. He was looking for some sort of information I can't recall right now, something about middle school locations, where to buy used vans and Miley Cyrus tour dates. After a while he stops and says, "Yeah. Yeah! That's it!"

I'm used to exclamations like this from the public, so I let it slide.

"That's who you look like! Did you ever see Sex in the City? You look like that one guy," he shouts.

"No, never really watched it," I said.

"Oh you know, he was in the movie The Office, what's his name?"

"Uh...heh...sorry, don't know."

"Yeah, see, you do that same smirk! Just like that guy!"

Guy wanders off somewhere and comes back with the IMDB profile of Ron Livingston, along with a handsome head shot.

"There, see! Looks just like you!"

I don't really get it, but at least it's not John Candy or something. I've also gotten Bill Murray and that guy who played Mr. Bean before. Nope, don't see any of them.