Halloween is this Sunday and I am totally unprepared. We get a shit-ton of kids coming to the house (well over 100) and good lord if they don't all want something for free. The cats hate this night almost as much as they hate the 4th of July. No, the cats don't hate America and your freedoms, they hate fireworks and our doorbell. Luckily, the Trick or Treaters ringing the doorbell doesn't happen every night for an entire month like the fireworks do. Fuck you ineffective Chapter 148, Sec 9, General Laws Board of Fire Prevention Regulations, Massachusetts Fire Safety Code, 527 CMR 2.00. You are a joke law with zero teeth.
What was I talking about? Oh yea, Halloween and all the crazy spooky shit that goes along with it. I may have mentioned a few times that I don't do scary movies. I do not care for them. They can scare me and I find this unpleasant. I do not enjoy seeing gore or zombies or what have you. I am not good at keeping my girly shrieks at bay and I have found that using my hands to shield my eyes does not prevent the horrible sounds from getting to my brain. And this is where the sounds will put images that may very well be worse than anything the movie is presenting.
I remember scaring myself into thinking that I saw a ghost in my bedroom (after my grandmother on my mom's side died. She was the first dead person I had ever seen). I had pulled the covers up and jammed myself up against the wall next to my bed so that if the ghost bumped into the bed (?), it wouldn't brush up against me. So there I was all wrapped up and protected when the thought occurred to me that, "Wait, I can still hear things." Ghosts make that spooky sound right? I would still be able to hear that and I'd have a heart attack and die at 10 years old. That thought messed me up and I proceeded to jam a pillow onto my head to block out sound. Luckily I did not pass out from lack of oxygen or overheat and explode (I normally require lots of ventilation).
With Halloween so close, everywhere I look and every news or entertainment outfit has something that could potentially freak me out. "Top 10 Horror Movie Scenes!" shouts one article with a large picture of that fucking Exorcist kid front and center. "No fucking thanks," I say and click over to another site. "50 Scariest Movies!" proclaims the caption under yet another shot of Linda Fucking Blair snarling at me. Jesus fuck. I just want to read about the economy or something totally not scary like that (wink! it's sarcasm folks! zoinks!).
I can trace my aversion to the horror and/or scary movie genre back to 1975 when at the far too fucking young age of 5, my parents took me to see a little film called Jaws. Are you kidding me? That's messed up. When that severed head in the sunken boat clonked into frame, I'm pretty sure I had a stroke. From that day on their movie viewing choices were suspect. I remember my mom announcing one Saturday morning that "We're all going to the Granada Theater to see a movie today." Lovely, and what movie would that be, dear mother of mine? "We're going to go see Young Frankenstein." I balked because although she promised me that it was a comedy and I'd like it, this was the same woman who said I should watch Psycho with her one night when I couldn't sleep. Wow. And yes, I would watch the Creature Double Feature on Channel 56 nearly every Saturday. But that was mainly movies with dudes in cheap rubber suits. However there was one that stuck with me. The Brain That Wouldn't Die scared the bejeezus outta me.
If you'd like a quick gauge of my level of jumpiness I can provide it. As a kid I was frightened by an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. Yep. And not just by little Richie's horrible acting either (I can remember even as a little kid thinking "Wow, that kid is a really shitty actor. Why does he yell all his lines? Couldn't they just fire the little fuck and get someone who's good at this?"). I was freaked out by how freaked out Dick Van Dyke was. When he came home at the end of the show and they started coming after him from the other rooms? I lost my little mind. Morey Amsterdam's bugged out eyes coming out of the bedroom was terrifying. Seriously. Even when Laura comes cascading out of the closet on a wave of walnuts I was scared (at the 19:20 mark on this video).
So this past weekend I went on to Netflix and searched for that episode to see if it would elicit the same reaction now that I'm all grown up and (presumably) less skittish. I found it and streamed it off my PS3 (so cool being able to do that. I love technology). It is basically a spoof of a Twilight Zone episode and I was totally enjoying watching it. Then, that scene came up...yep, still spooked me. Maybe I'm just afraid of Morey Amsterdam? Lesson learned. No scary movies or even pseudo scary 49-year-old family television shows. Yea, I'm a real man alright.
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