Soon, all the monsters will be hot.

Well, vampires have been hot for a while now. So have aliens. Then werewolves got sexy. None of those is really all that surprising. Sure they're threatening figures, but the body horror element is not in your face the whole time they're on the screen. But then zombies got hot. Now we've got a hot Frankenstein's monster. There seems to be some sort of a trend at work here. Playful stretching of the qualifications for what's hot (at least three of these dudes are technically room temperature) might not be a bad thing. Maybe we'll get a hot evil robot next, or a hot ghost?

So I was trying to watch a good scary movie in the theater recently when things suddenly got a whole lot scarier. Hipsters walked in the door. You might be asking yourself why hipsters cause such dread in the souls of other human beings. You might not necessarily even be a hipster to be asking that question. Well, I'll explain it succintly: hipsters think they're cool enough to get away with shit that they would never tolerate from other people. To wit, the idiots who interrupted a screening of a spooky movie. It would not have been a social foul for them to walk in late, but they had to walk in late and then proceed to navigate their trendily-clad asses past an entire row of people trying to watch the movie. This was not due to a shortage in available seats. Maybe they thought everyone wanted to appreciate their cunning fashion sense? We didn't. Then they must have thought we wanted to appreciate their witticisms as they texted other people and exclaimed over the texts all during the rest of the movie. Hipsters, nobody cares about your texts. The final straw, though was during an eery scene which was suddenly interrupted by somebody's hand shadow reaching into the projector light to "snatch" at the smoke. Granted, it was kinda funny the first time they did it. It was not amusing the rest of the 10 times. Not cute, hipsters. Not cute.

Hello there. The web is protesting SOPA and PIPA today so I'm not doing an extended post here, just putting up a classic movie poster. The storyline of this movie is not altogether irrelevant to the topic at hand, so go see it if you get a chance. Or read Poe's short story. Isn't media cross pollination awesome?

Double Dipping

A housemate charged with making dinner started assembling an unlikely assortment of ingredients out of the pantry - it really was past time to hit the grocery store - but, undaunted, he combined them and came up with something that looked surprisingly appetizing. Then he proceeded to eat it right out of the casserole dish that everyone was going to be served from. I don't mean he was testing it to see if it needed anything. I mean he grabbed a fork and dug in. It made me realize I have some conflicting beliefs about double dipping. I've lived with some pretty outstanding cooks, and I've seen them taste the sauce and put the spoon back in plenty of times and thought nothing of it. It's like taste testing canceled out the germs, which is ridiculous. If the cook puts the spoon back into the pot uncleaned, of course any germs on that spoon are not canceled out. Yet, the housemate's actions made me immediately start looking for my keys to go for takeout. Germs acknowledged! Then it occurred to me that the difference in perception of the double dipping behavior might not have anything to do with germs, but more to do with the type of cook implied by that behavior. A taste tester cares deeply about the end result, and seeing that behavior is a good sign that the dish will taste good (germs bedamned). Whereas, my housemate is the sort of fellow who will eat anything that doesn't run away fast enough. Who knows what that thing tasted like, regardless of how good it looked?

Attack of the Robot Lawyers

I've been noticing a creepy trend in ambulance chaser ads. Okay, a creepier trend. The attorney is always carefully posed, mannequin-like, and throughout the impassioned speech about how, for a fee, he is totes on your side, his (or sometimes her) head moves back and forth like a metronome, but his body does not so much as twitch. They move just like animatrons from Disney World.

It's Skynet, I'm tellin' ya.

Infernal Machines

The future is upon us. Only, the machines aren't going to kill us by direct means, oh no. What will happen is that ordinary consumers' heads will explode when they realize how much money they have spent on machines that they have no clue how to operate. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAAA! *COUGH*

I might be preaching to choir here, but....

Whatever you do, don't commit crimes during the season of peace. Not only are you probably creating extra bad karma for yourself, but if you get caught, you will reap the whirlwind of a criminal justice system that is in slow motion due to all the people using their vacay time at the same time, just in time for you to have to wait in the pokey until after New Year's before your case really gets under way. So whatever you were thinking of doing, reconsider. For so many reasons, it's just not worth it.

Weird Questions that Won't Leave You Alone

If Buffy Summers were to flick somebody upside the head, would her fingers be strong enough to knock that person out?

Some email spam is weirdly compelling.

Got an email spam today. Not really all that different from any other day, except this one, from someone named Maria but who is probably actually named Yuri or Vladimir, invited me to "get a control of your prick." Maria Yuri Vladimir, you don't know how much I wanted to get a control of that prick, specifically to control him right back out the front door, but I really don't think your pharmacist with the wacky spelling can help me with that. It is kind of funny how the sheer silliness of the subject line made me click on an email I might have otherwise consigned to the spam folder without looking at it. It would seem my taste for goofiness is breaking free from the limits of trashy movie watching to influence everything I read or see.

Finding Your Music

So my mp3 player's battery ran out before I was finished with my walk and I had to schlep home with no tunes. And I realized that the route is kind of a drudge without music. Seemed like something true to life in general, that it's not so fun without that special touch of something. I've been going through the motions without the music, that little special something that makes the drudge part worth the while. Doesn't really matter what the music is. Just sing it! Even if it drives your friends crazy because you won't stop singing it after the movie has been over for hours.

Strange Cookery

You ever wake up at four in the morning and realize that horrible smell is something your housemate is cooking? You wonder: a) how that smell managed to make it all the way to your bedroom with such strength that when you close your eyes you can imagine that he's cooking on your nightstand, b) what kind of carnage are you going to find when you finally get up the nerve to investigate the kitchen, and c) how on earth are you ever going to get back to sleep when there is not enough incense in the world to cover that magnificent stench. And on that note, do not ever tell a meth addict he can come stay with you unless you have first spoken to his NA sponsor to be sure he is really on the wagon like he says he is. Seriously. Just don't do it.

The House Guest Who Never Leaves

You ever have one of those people in your life who asks to crash in the guest room, and then one morning you wake up and realize he lives there now? This epiphany usually happens as you catch him cadging your coffee before it's done brewing. He exists in your household like some sort of Zen exercise in patience, eating your food, using up your hot water, counting your shoes and generally making a nuisance of himself. His contributions include more dirty towels, more empty cereal boxes in the trash, and a cigarette butt collection growing on your porch. If only you could just throw him down a well and toss his Lucky Charms down after him. Alas, it is illegal in most states.

Hello Drunkie Poo, How Are You?

This is to all those folks who drunk dial call centers after tying one on. I salute you! You, who call in and have a rambling conversation with yourself before forgetting where you are and then hang up on me? You rock! And you, who can only holler the product name over and over again until your voice gives out in a spasm of coughing. You're special too. But YOU, Drunkie Poo - you know who you are - you call in asking about something I can't make out because you have lost the ability to enunciate, and you are damned insistent about it. You must have MumbleSnurfleMumble, and you must have it now! Drunkie Poo, it is time for you to unclench your fist from the bottle of Night Train and call it a day. Seriously.

May We Have Your Express Permission to Throttle You?

So I switched from limited to unlimited movies per month on a rental service which shall not be named, thus giving them more of my money. They evidently felt that because of this event, a reminder of their ToS was in order. Because apparently I'm given to rental promiscuity. And we all know what happens to promiscuous types in horror movies, don't we?

Grocery Store Horror

I don't know what it is, but lately every time I hit the checkout line at a grocery store, I get the clerk who is about three more shoppers away from his nervous breakdown. It doesn't matter if I change stores, either. I will still get the clerk who overshares.

Seriously. I've had clerks who regale me with terrifying stories about the condition of their feet, clerks who rant about "the greenwashing of America" when they see I have my own bag, and just tonight a clerk who felt free to let me know that he was feeling on the verge of being the headline in tomorrow's newspaper. Is it something about my face?

It's not like they're overtly threatening me, so much as aggressively telling me things their own friends probably don't want to hear about, much less a complete stranger. Now, I work in a customer-facing job, and I get customers all the time who take advantage of the fact that they have a captive audience in order to tell me things that make me ponder the efficacy of natural selection. Have I just gotten too comfortable with shining on things like that? Do I now have a demeanor that says, "hit me with your batshit crazy, I can take it?"

If only you could buy beer at the self-service checkout, then I could avoid this problem altogether.

Why Cash Isn't the Ideal Gift for the Recovering Meth Addict in Your Life

Sorry I've been so AWOL. Real life intrudes in the most surprising ways.

Take the month of December. I have a dear relative who has a December birthday. A number of well-meaning people gave him money for his birthday and for Christmas. To most people, especially during these hard times, that is a gift of thoughtful trust. Unfortunately to a meth addict, even one in recovery, it is a gift that looks an awful lot like a score. In the case of my relative, whom I'll call Darryl, it proved too great to resist. Darryl is now reining merry havoc on everyone who gave him the cash. Joy to the world. When a meth addict goes on a bender they're not difficult to find, because they tend to find everyone they know and get shouty. They kind of look like the dudes from Scanners, only without a synth soundtrack announcing their imminent tweaking, and not so much with the telekinesis as with the physical throwing of things. Property damage often ensues. Peace on Earth, good will toward men.

So, word to the wise: gift certificates. That's not to say that a determined addict won't find a way to trade that for drugs, but it looks less like a potential hit than the cash does.

What to do when you're feeling icky-poo

I've been down with the dreaded swine flu, and I highly recommend astragalus to anyone who comes down with it. I was diagnosed too late for Tamiflu to do me any good, but once I finally started taking the astragalus I began to improve rapidly.

What better activity for forced bed rest than watching the boob tube? Scariest Places on Earth is a smorgasbord of horror show talent wrapped up in one guilty pleasure package. Like a trashy movie burrito, if you will.

First, Linda Blair slinks out of the shadows of a gothic set to introduce the segment with as many Creepshow-esque puns as the writers could sneak in there. Then, Zelda Rubinstein of Poltergeist fame provides the voice-over history for the spooky location of the episode. To top it all off, Alan Robson shows up to scare the bejeesus out of the credulous American family who are there to spend the night in the haunted mansion. It's like The House on Haunted Hill with scaredy-cat-cam.

They always send the biggest scaredy-cat deep within the bowels of the mansion, alone. Then, the bravest family member is sent way the heck out on the house's grounds, also alone. This is so that when the spooked family member finally has a screaming breakdown, Braveheart has to go on a quest to catch up with the other family members who are stumbling in Spooky's general direction. The whole thing becomes a montage of shaking, yelling faces, which is way more entertaining than it has any right to be, considering the lavish production values have been shrunk down to close-ups of poorly-lit, non-union performers. But never fear! For Alan Robson will soon be back to scare the family one more time into wondering if a ghost will follow them home, and then Linda Blair will deliver the punny coda.

Some people like chicken soup with crackers. I like trashy movies and b TV.

But I hear neon bright clothes are coming back.

The cover of this DVD doesn't do this movie justice. Far from being desaturated, Electric Boogaloo is a candy-coated love letter to Eighties sartorial choices. You only see clothes that bright in anime anymore.

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo catches up with Turbo, Ozone and Special K (whose nickname is conveniently never explained) who are still breakdancing (natch), but this time with the goal of saving their community center (the go-to plot for Eighties youth market films).

The reason this movie holds a special place in my heart is for the delirious dance sequences, especially the one that takes place when all of Turbo's friends visit him in the hospital. The laws of physics and all common sense are gleefully suspended whenever the cast starts dancing. Nurses abandon their posts to kick up their heels, and people in traction start jumping out of bed. I breakdance in your general direction and hallelujah, you are HEALED! But the best part -- the absolute treat -- is when the hugely pregnant mothers dance out of the maternity ward and start high-kicking down the hall, carrying their bellies in front of them like basketballs. Awesome! They really don't make movies like this anymore. Now I'm feeling all nostalgic. I do hope some of these fashions are really coming back. I miss my jellies.

Mimic 2 - 2001

This sequel to the late 90's killer cockroach classic brings back a bit player in the lead role, which is always a good move when creating trashy movie nirvana. Remy, a CDC entomologist in the first flick, is now a teacher in a school building that is on the verge of being condemned. Why she chose to leave the CDC for a high school teaching job is never even mentioned, much less explained, so points for avoiding the usual type of inner conflict torturing a heroine in a trashy horror movie. No, Remy's inner conflict is more of an outer conflict, and it has to do with her love life rather than her career. She just can't seem to find a man she can depend on. Could be because someone keeps killing them and cutting off their faces. Just a theory.

Maybe the bombastic police detective (Bruno Campos) who investigates the killings will have better survival odds. Speaking of whom, watch for the scene where he tells a colleague to "pick up that desk." Funniest 'appeal for an open mind' trick I have ever seen in any movie, ever.

Okay, so this one's not trashy.

I like good movies, too. And sometimes, even really good movies have supremely silly moments in them.

The Uninvited (1944) is a fantastically atmospheric ghost story about a pair of siblings who purchase an estate near the sea for a price that really should have made them wonder, and about the young woman who can't stay away from the place even after it proves hazardous to her health. This one was made when Hollywood had to rely primarily on creating a mood to scare the bejesus out of people, and this film succeeds admirably at doing just that.

But there is one moment that had an opposite effect on me (spoiler).

It's an emotionally charged moment in which our hero (Ray Milland) confronts the specter. He hollers, "From now on, this house is for the living!" And then? He throws a lit candelabra at a pair of very old wooden doors. He's just lucky ectoplasm puts out fires, is all I'm sayin'.