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'.

House of the Dead 2 - 2005

Sequel to the stunningly bad House of the Dead, and produced by Sci Fi Original Pictures, this film has something of a trashy movie pedigree. This is also one of those rare sequels that's much better than the original. Of course, that's a relative statement, like saying a pixie stick and potato chip fluffernutter is much healthier on whole wheat than on white. Still, it's gratifying to see the filmmakers just go for broke (because they can). It's not that easy to intentionally make a trashy movie and get the melange just right. Misguided earnestness has to be replaced with snarky self-awareness, but not with too heavy a hand.

House of the Dead 2 follows the nouveau classic "zombies pick off the SWAT team one by one" plot. There are plenty of in-jokes for the dedicated zombie flick fan, but my personal favorite scene makes fun of a romantic actioner trope. (Spoilers).

Fairly early in the film, the hero and heroine are trading bon mots, but they can't just get on with it because they're in denial and on the job; the job in this case being a zombie that needs subduing. The zombie goes splat, and they are both decorated with gore, but they never so much as pause with their verbal foreplay. Even though the zombie's blood is close to their mouths, after it's been established that they could get infected by ingesting it. Can't let anything get in the way of a good zinger.