The House Has Had All It's Going to Take

I asked Beloved Spouse what I should write about tonight. He thought for a moment and said, "Why don't you write about how the shower is trying to kill me?"

Not just in the movies, people.

It's true. The shower in the master bath has developed a major problem with BelSpouse. I don't know what went on between them. Frankly, I don't want to know. I've seen some of his hygiene rituals that don't involve being safely hidden behind a plastic curtain. It's entirely possible the shower just decided it it wasn't going to be subjected to the trauma any more.

In any event, it all started a week or two ago. BelSpouse was taking a shower, and I was sitting in the family room, reading Kierkegaard and sipping chamomile tea. Or scrolling through TMZ.com while guzzling my fifth cup of coffee. That's not important. What is important is that I heard a yell from the other side of the house. Sort of a "YOWCH."

Yowch.

Drawing on my years of experience as a mother, I ignored it. "Yowch" is a pretty mild interjection, and it wasn't accompanied by the sound of flesh hitting tile. I figured BelSpouse had accidentally pulled out a couple of pubes while soaping his parts, or something of that nature.

Then, a half a minute later, I heard it again. This time it was more of a "YAAAAH."


Yaaaah.

 This was getting interesting.

Just not interesting enough to stop reading about Halle Berry's custody battle.

Eventually I heard the shower turn off and BelSpouse get out. So he was alive. Then he called out to me.

Ms. Baudelaire, come here, I need you.
I can't get this bong to work right.

So I went to the bathroom to see what the deal was. "Come in here," he said gravely. Or as gravely as one can say anything dripping wet with a towel wrapped around oneself. "I want you to feel something."

Great. Now I'm thinking: tumor, cyst, fibroid, welt, scab, any of a dozen nasty things that I was prepared to be sympathetic about without actual physical contact. Or maybe this was just an elaborate come-on that was going to end in some lame joke about his "terrible swelling."


Amiright, ladies?


Instead he took me to the shower, turned on the water, and said - I'm not kidding - "Put your hand on the faucet and see if you get a shock."

What.

Pardon me, old boy, but...dafuq?


Well, you don't get an offer like that every day. Besides, he wasn't dead, which I figured was a point in my favor. So I put my hand under the running water and touched the metal faucet that BelSpouse clearly believed had a good chance of eletrocuting me.

Nothing happened.

He seemed a little disappointed, which I have to admit was kind of insulting. But to be a good sport, I turned the water pressure up, then rested my hand on the faucet. Nope.

"I swear to God, that thing shocked me," BelSpouse said. Again leaving aside the fact that he had just encouraged me to place my hand on what he thought was an electrified plumbing fixture, I tried to be understanding.

"Maybe it was just vibration," I suggested.

He seemed skeptical.

"If there was actually current flowing through the shower, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation," I pointed out.

Finally he had to admit I was right.


I was gracious in victory, as always.

 Except it happened again. According to BelSpouse, it's happened a dozen times or more. It happens almost every time he gets in the shower now. When he touches the faucet or adjusts the shower head, he feels what he swears is a shock.

I use the same shower every single day. (OK, possibly while I was unemployed there were a couple of days I might have passed on showering. If I was going to be a bum, I was going to look and smell the part.)  I have yet to experience anything like a shock. Or a strong vibration. Or any sensation besides getting wet.

I've tried to feel it. I've willed myelf to feel it. I'm either a terrible conductor of electricity, or one of us is crazy. Besides me.


So it can't be me, is what I'm saying.

Or maybe it's just that the house really is trying to kill my husband. In which case I'm getting on the horn with TLC, because there is totally a reality show here. "My Fixtures Are Trying to Kill Me." "Household Vengeance." "Don't Pick Up the Soap, Although You May As Well Because One Way or Another You're Screwed in This Shower."

All I know is, there will no more late-night hot wings for me. I'm doing my best to stay on the bathroom's good side.

You Can Dress Up, But It'll Costume More (See What I Did There?)

It's Halloween, and I got a lotta stuff to do. Children to frighten, adults to creep out, multiple viewings of Young Frankenstein to sit through. So for today's post, here's a quick roundup of awesome Halloween costumes. (Of course, I'm simply grabbing a bottle of vodka and my laptop and going as a dirtbag blogger.)

My personal favorite of the year has been circulating on teh Netz for several weeks now. Hello, Monkey Jesus.

This one is kind of douchey, but you have to give the guy credit for chutzpah (and nicely rendered graphics, too). It's Drunk Guy Makes Out With Hottest Chick At Party YouTube Video.

I don't know what the rest of these costumes look like, but with makeup like this, it doesn't matter. I give you Head Wound Girl and Zipperface Girl.

Speaking of makeup, I love love love this costume because it's simple, beautiful, and artsy. I wish I had thought of Roy Lichtenstein Character.

These Beetlejuice-inspired costumes are completely amazing and ghoulishly adorable.

And I couldn't resist posting this one, because I love me some Bob Ross.

As you know, Precocious Daughter's costume this year is Hipster Elmo. But oh how I wish we had thought of the Muppet Martians. Yip-yip-yip.

With perfect timing just a week before the election, here's the Obama Hope Poster.

I want to take moment to remind the youngsters how damn lucky they are to be living in an era where Halloween is undergoing a renaissance of creativity and fun. Today's costumes are elaborate and entertaining pieces of pop art. Whereas if you grew up in the 70s, you had to dress up as Chachi.

Ugh.

Finally, here's the most incredible costume I've seen this year.

What? It came up when I Googled "awesome Halloween costumes," so it must be legit. Don't tell me things are not what they seem on the Internet. You're going to ruin the holiday for me.

Happy Halloween, Drunkards! Be safe, have fun, and most of all, eat candy until you burst. And if someone dressed as a dirtbag blogger comes to your door, remember that they prefer Snickers Peanut Butter Squared.

Katt's Meow

Yesterday I watched the original version of Carrie. You know, the cautionary tale about how you shouldn't bully social outcasts because they might turn out to have telekinesis and burn you the fuck up at senior prom.

Great movie.

Of course, Carrie is also famous for featuring so many talented actors near the beginning of their careers. Sissy Spacek, John Travolta, P.J. Soles, Nancy Allen, Amy Irving, Edie McClurg...and William Katt.

OMG, William Katt in Carrie.

You know you're a child of the 70s when this makes you
feel warm all over.

He's best known for starring in "The Greatest American Hero," a truly cheesy show that ran for several seasons in the 80s. He's also known for being the son of Barabara Hale of "Perry Mason" fame, which - in all fairness to me - was way before my time, OK?

Anyway, William Katt - holy cow. He's 61 years old now. Yikes. On the other hand, he looks like this.

That's not me, but I wish it were.

For the record, Beloved Spouse looks nothing like William Katt. So it's not a type I'm attracted to. It's just him. Because...look.

I'm going to have watch Carrie more often. You know, for the symbolism and social subtext and whatnot.

Meow. Get it?

Rats

Precocious Daughter wants a pet rat. Actually, she wants more than one. They're social creatures, she says.

Which I guess makes the black plague a social disease.

Beloved Spouse and I are on the fence about this. Actually, I'm on the fence. BelSpouse is several hundred yards away from the fence in case any of those damn filthy rats decide to climb over it.

Hi, neighbor! Borrow a cup of feces?

I'm slightly more in favor of the idea than he is, is what I'm saying. PDaughter's cousin had a couple of pet rats for a while, and once I got roped into taking care of them for several days. After I got over my initial revulsion, and as PDaughter is now very fond of pointing out, I bonded with the little critters. They were cute and funny and affectionate, even if they did have beady eyes and sharp little claw-hands and long, naked tails oh God those scaly hairless tails...

What, this thing? Pshaw, you'll get used to it.
And its clammy supple embrace around your neck late at night.

It's hard for even a rational, educated mind to get over the rat's longstanding reputation as voracious, disease-spreading vermin. For my mind it's even harder. Where I come from, rats weren't pets. They weren't cute. And you didn't give them names like "Snickers." So when I think of a rat, I think of something like this:

Only uglier and approximately three feet long.

Whereas PDaughter visualizes something more like this:

It's adorable until he gnaws the head off that teddy bear.

Now, I know intellectually that the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Rattus norvegicus.
From the Latin for "serve with vegetables."

And I know that other than their name and slightly larger size, domestic rats are no different from hamsters or gerbils or any other pet rodent that BelSpouse and I might be more readily amenable to having take up residence mere feet from our daughter's tender flesh. Maybe it's just the name. Maybe the household variety of rat should be called something else, to differentiate it from the disgusting flea-infested pests whose mere presence causes restaurants to close down and housekeepers to get bad reputations.

Something like "gutterbunnies." Or "scuttlepuppies." Or "Manhattan retrievers."

Or rodenticus Jethrotullicus.

I don't know. PDaughter swears she'll save up the money for the rats and their habitat, and she'll take excellent care of them, i.e., not let the cats gobble them up two days after she gets them. Of course, no matter how happy and well cared for they are, the rats will die after a while - maybe a year or two. And then I'll have dead rats in my house and a daughter crying her eyes out over dead rats.

They don't teach you how to handle this stuff in parenting classes.

OK, I've got diapering down.
Now what do I do about dead rats in the kid's bedroom?

On the other hand, they don't scam, don't fight, don't oppress an equal's given rights. So there's that.

According to noted animal behaviorist Edward Vedder.

I don't know. Rats or no rats? We're going to have to sit down and discuss this as a family before making a decision. In the meantime, however, I've noticed that PDaughter is being very nice to me and volunteering to do all sorts of chores in between her pleas for pet rodents.

So this decision may take quite a while to make, is what I'm saying.

Holy 1985, Batman!

OK, so this trailer came out today:



The original Fright Night is one of my favorite movies from the 1980s. You can't beat the 80s for movies that combined cheesiness, heart, and cornball special effects that we all thought were way cool because they were done on COMPUTERS. Radical!

Anyway, Fright Night was a little out-of-nowhere vampire movie from 1985 that you probably saw on video, if you saw it at all. Plot basics: Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale, who now is an Actor in stuff like "Justifed" and "Judging Amy" but who got his start starring in this flick) suspects that his new next-neighbor is a vampire. But no one - not his single mom, not his perky girlfriend, not his insane best friend Evil Ed - believes him. So Charley recruits Peter Vincent, a has-been B-movie star who calls himself "The Vampire Killer" on the local scary-movie show. Peter doesn't believe Charley either - at first. But it turns out Charley is right.

Yada yada, best friend is turned into a vampire, girlfriend almost goes the same route, washed-up actor has to regain his lost confidence, vampire goes bye-bye. I didn't say Fright Night was a good movie. But it was a great movie.

Love the cast. Chris Sarandon played Jerry Dandridge, the vampire. That's right, people: Prince Humperdinck, Jack Skellington, and Jerry Dandridge, all played by Chris Sarandon.


I guess they used a lot of makeup in Nightmare Before Christmas.

Jonathan Stark played his fellow vampire/assistant/boyfriend, Billy Cole. He went on to write for TV shows like "Cheers" and "Ellen," and he created "According to Jim." But I don't hold it against him because he was great in Fright Night.

Stephen Geoffreys played Evil Ed, who stole the damn movie.

"Dinner is in the oven!"

And if you haven't heard much from ol' Stephen Geoffreys in the last 20 years or so, it must be because you don't watch a lot of hardcore gay porn videos, which is how Evil Ed has been making ends meet (sorry, I'm not quite over yesterday's Weiner post, I guess).

And of course, the great and wonderful Roddy McDowall played Peter Vincent.


I know, this is McDowall as Cornelius in
Planet of the Apes, not Peter Vincent
in Fright Night. I like apes.

Amada Bearse (later of "Married...with Children" fame) played girlfriend Amy, showing off a range of looks, from this:

to this:

Go find a copy of the original Fright Night. Seriously. Fun, fun movie, synth-heavy soundtrack, lots of orange contact lenses.

So they're releasing a remake in August. Normally I wouldn't care a bit about a post-Twilight 21st-century update of my beloved Fright Night. First Karate Kid, now this. Ho-hum. Except!

OhmygodDavidTennantisplayingPeterVincent!

And as you can see in the trailer, he wears eyeliner and goes shirtless.

I can honestly say that as much as I adored Roddy McDowall in the part, God rest his soul, the appeal of his Peter Vincent was not smokey eyes and a bare chest. And seriously, I would go see the new Fright Night for David Tennant even if he weren't wearing eyeliner and going shirtless. But holy crap, is that an added incentive or what?


When you look like this AND you played the best
Doctor Who ever, you don't need added incentives.
Still...eyeliner and no shirt, knowhutimean?

David Tennant is an amazing actor. His Hamlet was breathtaking. Nonetheless, I freely admit that I will bring a stack of napkins to the movie theatre to stanch my drooling when he's on screen.

Frankly, I don't have very high hopes for the rest of Fright Night. Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Evil Ed? He was impressive as Red Mist in Kick-Ass, sure. But what are his gay porn credentials, hmmm? Seriously, I'm not sure anyone can top Stephen Geoffreys in this role.

Then there's Anton Yelchin as Charley Brewster. You know, William Ragsdale was not exactly the dramatic glue that held the cast together in the original, so maybe this could work. I've only ever seen Anton Yelchin as Chekov in the Star Trek reboot, and oh hey, he played the kid in Hearts in Atlantis? Eh.

The biggest problem for most of the online movie geeks (where do these people come from?) seems to be the casting of Colin Farrell as Jerry Dandridge. Whatever. My biggest problem is that there doesn't seem to be a Billy Cole in the remake! Are you serious? Billy Cole was the movie! OK, maybe not, but I'm not happy about this. Not at all.


Who's a cute little vampire?

The number-one result of seeing this new trailer is that I now really, really want to see the 1985 version again. And yeah, I really want to see David Tennant as Peter Vincent, too. It's going to be hard to go into the remake with an open mind, but I'm willing to see if I can derive as much innocent, cheesy pleasure from it as I did the original Fright Night. I'm going to try. I really am.

But to quote Jerry Dandridge, "You have to have faaiittthhh for that to work."

Blogathon: Willie Wonka Freakout

Let's get this started. Here's possibly the terrifying scene ever to appear in a children's film: the boat ride from 1971's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I love Gene Wilder, don't you?



There's lots more to come, but for some reason Blogger isn't letting me upload photos right now. Blogger is trying my patience this week. But I will prevail. As Chuck Barris used to say, we'll be right back with more stuff!