Cute But Kind of Evil

I remember the thrill of my first horror movie at the age of seven. My babysitter let me stay up late to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV. For a sheltered kid, I had captured the trifecta of awesomeness: no parental guidance, movie I shouldn't be watching, and reveling in the glory of life after 8pm. But as I sat huddled on the couch witnessing hapless teenagers get the life drained out of them, I encountered my first true feeling of terror. This was worse than when Mom took my Barbies away in kindergarten or having to eat tuna casserole for dinner. I'd thus far grown up watching Sesame Street, Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Full House. Power Rangers was considered a little too violent and Rugrats sounded like a show with bad kids. The second I saw that vampire laying across clueless Kristy Swanson's pillows, I left my innocence behind.

It's the same feeling you experience when finding out Santa isn't giving Mickey special dog biscuits to keep him from barking against a velvet-clad intruder bearing toys and craving cookies. You lose that sense of assurance you'd possessed as a wide-eyed kid. Everything isn't always as it seems. At some point, I might have had to stake a vamp.

Terrible a movie as it was (Donald Sutherland WHHHHY?) I refused horror flicks until high school when "The Ring" rolled around and everyone thought it would be a fun Friday night to watch Samara crab-walk her way to death-dealing destruction...from a well...flickering across the television screen of her poor victims. I remembered again why I'd abstained from this genre for so long. My brain just wouldn't let it go. I couldn't stop thinking about how creepy it was and what if it really happened and if that TV went snowy on me I would lose my *&%$. Give me a good thriller or a mystery, now that's legit fun. But coupled with a recent viewing of "The Shining," "The Ring" only compacted an intense desire to leave frightening films in the hands of my better-equipped friends. This would also explain the equally frightening collections of rom coms which until very recently counted "The Wedding Planner" among its numbers.

So I missed watching "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Friday the 13th" until my twenties. "Saw" will never be on my Christmas list. I can't picture turning to John and saying, "You know, honey, I could really go for a double feature of "The Grudge" and "The Omen"...want to grab some popcorn?" No matter how many times my sister tells me to watch "The Amityville Horror" it won't happen. I am just not built to withstand those kinds of movies.

What spurred this walk down memory lane was part of the game John and I are playing: to watch all of our combined DVD's before being allowed to purchase more. And since I'd never had the pleasure of meeting Freddy Kreuger, watching all of John's Elm Street gems was part of the deal. I was curious, not psyched. I knew very well that Freddy was the terror of my elementary school friends' slumber parties. But I also approached it knowing the bulk of this series were made before the true dawn of CGI. So we began a proper horror education.

Here is what I learned:

1. The first one was scary but dated. I jumped, I yelped, I was delightfully engrossed. Also? Call Stacy and Clinton because Freddy is screaming for a new wardrobe. He clearly needs better friends...which he would have if he didn't kill them while they slept. Rude.

2. The second was unnecessarily "adult-teen" homoerotic and boring. That whole scene in the shower? Where's Benson and Stabler when you need them? I believe it does win the award for most violent bird death since "The Birds" though, and that's something.

3. The third was better, so much better, and saw the return of Nancy. She took some acting lessons, got seriously educated, but unfortunately got bigger hair. I enjoyed the cast of teens and the overall lack of actual Freddy screen time even though he offed our original heroine in a badly wall-papered dream room.

4. Blargh. I fell asleep. I didn't like any of the characters. Mercifully, Freddy performed his kindest deed yet by slaying Patricia Arquette's replacement in the first 30 minutes. Water beds are also a lot more dangerous than I originally thought.

5. Yes! Alice is cooler, blonde, and dating Dan the Stud. Her life is awesome. But as the first storied scene of all her buddies gathered for a grad photo splashes across the screen I groan. "Clearly the girl with a Momager is going to die first, shortly followed by the stoned hipster..." Alice lives and so does her unborn child, but Dan the Stud doesn't make Krueger's cut. Freddy is terribly scared of Mother Mary Helena who he affectionately calls "bitch" instead of "Mom." I'm guessing she didn't hand out hugs and smile rainbows during much of his childhood. Column? Win.

6. I don't like this. They moved the story from Cali to O-Hi-O and we are introduced to our purported hero in a Wizard of Oz like crashdown. His name escapes me, as does any logic of the story. I woke up in time to see Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold making a hilarious cameo before I fell back asleep. We'll be finishing this up tomorrow. Verdict? Undecided.

"The Nightmare" series is admittedly not that scary...not in the sense of other horror fare gracing our movie screens in this age of advanced computer animation and children reared on information overload. But it's a step in the right direction as far as my horror-tolerance is concerned. John and I realized one of the most interesting things a franchise could do would be to make a movie or show where the townsfolk legitimately tried to figure out why so many teenagers kept dying in weird, gruesome, and often bizarre ways (I'm looking at you Elm Street, Buffy, Supernatural, and even General Hospital). For now, though, a thank you to Freddy Kreuger. I bet that's the first time anyone has ever put that phrase your way.

Strangers with Candy

Have a safe and happy Halloween

It's difficult to avoid falling in to the habit of referring to myself as "dad" when it comes to our dog, Maddie.  I'm not sure what doing so satisfies in me, or anyone, psychologically but I do know if feels natural to do.  Of course I never really wanted any of this being a dog person but that too came naturally.

I was walking Maddie the other day when we crossed paths with an over-exuberant dog enthusiast, and stranger.  After coming at the poor dog way too familiarly for a new person in her world, the woman asked if she could give Maddie a cookie.  I hesitantly said "yes" thinking on why it would be considered rude to deny a stranger the opportunity to feed my dog while it would be totally within reason to deny that same stranger the chance to feed my child.  Why should the trust change?

Now I don't think this woman had any harmful intent, but these are the irrational things we start to believe as we grow to love someone and feel the need to protect them.  I watched intently as the woman reached in to her bag full of random papers and objects that had no discernible association with one another.  In there along with everything else were, not surprisingly, dog treats.  Who knows why she carried dog treats in her backpack.

My worried suspicion was that she lugged them around so that when she saw a dog she could seize the opportunity to feed it one of her arsenic-laced treats and rid the world of another nuisance.  As she held the treat out to Maddie my mind flashed to images from a movie I can't remember the name of (bonus points if someone reading can help me out with this) where a man is asked to show someone his papers and as he reaches to do so he conceals a sharp object under the papers.  The man then stabs the other man in the neck.

Thankfully, Maddie did not take the treat and thus spared me from picturing any more gruesome, illogical imaginings on how the whole situation would play out.  In spite of all this accusatory, distrustful thinking about this woman I still felt bad that Maddie did not take the treat--highly unusual behavior for her.  Maddie did not take the treat when I tried to give it to her.  In fact, she did not even take the treat when we were out of sight from the woman.

My little girl knows not to take candy from strangers and I could not be a prouder papa.


What I've Learned
October 9th: The Cowboys were the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 10th: The LA Rams were truly the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 11th: Steven Spielberg was to direct Cape Fear while Martin Scorsese directed Schindler's List.
October 12th: Nothing that I can remember.
October 13th: You can't donate blood when you have a cold.
October 14th: A Glasgow Grin is something Scottish criminals do that leaves their victims with scars like the Joker's from The Dark Knight.
October 15th: Britain's current Queen Elizabeth is not . 22nd:a direct descendant of Queen Elizabeth I.
October 16th: The St Louis Cardinals farm system is located in Florida (explained to me by my six-year-old nephew).
Oct. 17th: The circle by our house is called Pinehurst Circle, not Chevy Chase Circle nor Connecticut Circle.
Oct. 18th: Stephen King has a new book coming out.
Oct. 19th: 72% of black children are born to unwed mothers compared to 29% of whites children.
Oct. 20th: The food with the highest ANDI score is kale.
Oct. 21th: Muamar Gaddafi was killed by Libyan rebels.
Oct. 22nd: At the age of 25 Scott Hall killed a man when he was a bouncer in 1983.

Oct. 23rd: A 2001 survey suggested that 83% of pet owners refer to themselves as "mommy" or "daddy"

Razor's Edge

Scott Hall, or Razor Ramon as many wrestling fans know him, was always one of my favorite characters.  He was supposedly playing a Scarface knockoff.  Maybe it's my hatred for that movie, but I don't see it that way.  Apparently the persona was supposed to be Cuban, but Ramon just seemed cool.  Nationality was irrelevant as Ramon was "oozing machismo" as the announcers would say.  (I can still hear my dad mimicking that line.)

Scott Hall is still cool as a 53-year-old man who is in a very real life and death battle with alcoholism and drug addiction.  But the E:60 video expose I watched about Hall seems to implicitly suggest that Hall's addiction to wrestling is just as detrimental to his health.  I can understand that completely, I am only a fan and I can't quit the stuff myself.  Imagine what it is like to be on the other side.

Wrestling falls under a lot of scrutiny for the early deaths seen in the business and the fact that there doesn't seem to be a very good system in place to take care of these men and women after they retire.  I don't disagree entirely, but I have some serious issues with the way football players are cast off once they've retired. (More on that someday, perhaps.)  As I get older I see a big problem with wrestling--and the major difference between it and other performance-based professions--is that wrestlers are playing a character but they have to be that character in perpetuity.  There is never a down time for a wrestler and the more real they can be in the ring as a character, not an athlete (though wrestlers are ridiculously underrated or entirely unrecognized as real athletes), the better.

So wrestlers have to pretend all the time and that must be confusing.  Talking about it confuses me.  Thus, an intelligent, insightful man such as Scott Hall isn't sure if he is performing or not.  Is his character now a  man who can't quit the business or the excesses in which the business invites him to partake?  As long as people are still willing to pay to see him (and do exposes on him), I guess it probably is.  He knows he is genuinely dying from the choices he is making, but that's who he has been for a long time.  Is that a character, or is that the person he actually is?

I don't know, but I'm scared for him.  Both as a lover of wrestling and a fan of Razor Ramon as well as someone who does not want to watch Scott Hall, the human being, suffer and hurt those who love him.


What I've Learned
October 9th: The Cowboys were the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 10th: The LA Rams were truly the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 11th: Steven Spielberg was to direct Cape Fear while Martin Scorsese directed Schindler's List.
October 12th: Nothing that I can remember.
October 13th: You can't donate blood when you have a cold.
October 14th: A Glasgow Grin is something Scottish criminals do that leaves their victims with scars like the Joker's from The Dark Knight.
October 15th: Britain's current Queen Elizabeth is not . 22nd:a direct descendant of Queen Elizabeth I.
October 16th: The St Louis Cardinals farm system is located in Florida (explained to me by my six-year-old nephew).
Oct. 17th: The circle by our house is called Pinehurst Circle, not Chevy Chase Circle nor Connecticut Circle.
Oct. 18th: Stephen King has a new book coming out.
Oct. 19th: 72% of black children are born to unwed mothers compared to 29% of whites children.
Oct. 20th: The food with the highest ANDI score is kale.
Oct. 21th: Muamar Gaddafi was killed by Libyan rebels.
Oct. 22nd: At the age of 25 Scott Hall killed a man when he was a bouncer in 1983.   

Schindler's Fear

I actually didn't learn anything of note yesterday.  At least nothing comes to mind.  Kieley will be the first to tell you how rare this is as I basically never stop reading and I am disseminating some nugget of information probably every fifth sentence or so.  Bless her heart, she indulges me through it all, even when I'm reading an article about "South Park" while she's trying to seduce me.  But I digress.

The point is I am always trying to enhance my knowledge by reading everything I can get my hands on.  Thus, for me to go a day without learning something new, even if it is trivial, is a rarity in my world.  That said, I didn't come here to talk about what I didn't learn yesterday.  Instead, I'm here to talk about what I learned on Tuesday.

Apparently, the remake of Cape Fear was supposed to be directed by Steven Spielberg while Schindler's List would have been helmed by Martin Scorsese.  I found this shocking as Schindler's List is such a definitive film for Spielberg in a career full of definitive films.  The movie has always been presented as Spielberg's labor of love, so it seems weird that he wasn't originally attached to it.  Meanwhile, Cape Fear is so Scorsese it's overwhelming.  I'm not going to go down that road right now, though.  We'll save my disdain for Marty for another time.

However, I will leave you with this thought: what would the "blooper reel" from Schindler's List look like?  Has there ever been a film with a more somber tone?  Did anyone even tell a joke on set?  Or smile?  Something to think about.

What I've Learned this week
October 9th: The Cowboys were the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 10th: The LA Rams were truly the first NFL team to racially integrate.
October 11th: Steven Spielberg was to direct Cape Fear while Martin Scorsese directed Schindler's List.
October 12th: Nothing that I can remember.
October 13th: You can't donate blood when you have a cold.       

I Still Hate the Cowboys

DC during football season is a place of mixed emotions.  The season starts and the Redskins fluke in to some wins and it looks like they can make the playoffs and the city is full of hope.  Then they drop eight straight in the middle of the season and everyone seems so deflated they refuse to even remotely embrace the perennial contenders, and fairly local, Baltimore Ravens.  The Philadelphia Eagles would be a reasonable team to root for as they too are relatively local.  But what I find most troubling about football season in DC is the abundance of Dallas Cowboys fans.

As a boy who was raised to believe the Redskins going 2-0 against the Cowboys could be deemed a perfect season, I saw it surprising to see so many star-clad supporters cheering the Redskins' most hated rivals.  Yesterday, I asked my co-worker why it was so.  My guess was that one is likely to find a number of contrarians who root for their home team's rival.  But my coworker's answer surprised me.  Apparently, he had been told that the Cowboys were the first team to racially integrate.  If that were true, I could finally support them being referred to as "America's Team."

However, being the good journalist I was trained to be, I checked the facts.  What I discovered was far more interesting, allows me to still hate the Cowboys, and leaves me with my initial question still unanswered.  It seems the first team to integrate was actually the Los Angeles (now St. Louis) Rams.  The story is pretty fascinating, so I will let it speak for itself:

In 1939, UCLA had, arguably until as late as 1962, one of the greatest collegiate football players in history, Kenny Washington,^[5] a senior.^[6] Washington, an African American,^[7] was very popular,^[8][9]and his team had garnered national attention in the print media.^[10] After he played in the College All-Star game in August 1940, George Halas asked him not to return to Los Angeles immediately because Halas wanted to sign him to a contract with the Chicago Bears. After a week or so, Washington returned to Los Angeles without an NFL contract.^{[11][12][13][14]} Washington spent the majority of the early 1940s in the Pacific Coast League with the Hollywood Bears, even during World War II, during which he managed to avoid military service, thanks in part to a timely injury that forced him to miss the 1942 season but likely rendered him ineligible for service. Washington, after his injuries were healed, was a rarity in that he was a healthy, available athlete during a time when the NFL was resorting to using partially handicapped players ineligible for service, but received no interest from any NFL teams at the time. In 1946, after the Rams had received approval to move to Los Angeles, members of the African American print media made the Los Angeles Coliseum commission aware the NFL did not have any African American players^[15] and reminded the commission the Coliseum was supported with public funds. Therefore, its commission had to abide by an 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, by not leasing the stadium to a segregated team.^[16] Also, they specifically suggested the Rams should give Washington a tryout. The commission advised the Rams that they would have to integrate the team with at least one African American in order to lease the Coliseum, and the Rams agreed to this condition.^{[11][16][17][18]} Subsequently, the Rams signed Washington on March 21, 1946,^[19][20][21] and racial segregation in the NFL was completely ended. The signing of Washington caused "all hell to break loose" among the owners of the NFL franchises.^[22] The Rams added a second black player, Woody Strode, on May 7, 1946, giving them two black players going into the 1946 season.

Credit to Wikipedia which is not always the most trustworthy Website but is typically accurate as it pertains to sports history.  Not only was this fact checking exercise informative, it also allows me to maintain my unfounded hatred of the Dallas Cowboys.

*Other semi-related things I learned:  

     1. The halfback Peyton Hillis of the Cleveland Browns is currently the only white starting running back in the NFL.

     2. The Baltimore (now Indianapolis Colts) were the first NFL team to have cheerleaders beginning in 1954.