Creature Feature

See this? LOL This is me and Darc watching one of his horror movies together. It’s a perfect illustration of why he mostly watches horror movies by himself. 😀

While he was on vacation this past several days, I made sure he got to watch a lot of movies.  He loves them!  Somehow, watching the creepy, scary stuff relaxes him.  Me, I jump through the ceiling – which is half his entertainment, I’m sure.  :roll:  I guess it takes his mind off day-to-day stuff in a way that other movies can’t.  Maybe it’s the analysis factor.  We just can’t watch movies – we have to dissect them, figure out the plot, try to guess the “whodunit” part, all that kind of stuff.  But he doesn’t seem to do that with horror movies.  I suppose, when it’s a werewolf movie, there’s simply not a lot of guesswork involved, not a lot of plot, so his brain can just veg for a while. 

Hopefully he’s nice and relaxed as he heads back to work today.  He got a ton of movies in, this vacation.  Me, I realized I need to dust the cobwebs off my ceiling.

Do you like to watch horror movies? 

Happy New Year!

Image Clipped from Creepurtainment – Cheezburger

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Whensday

Apparently there’s been a bit of a buzz recently with the re-release of the Titanic movie.  I’ve seen a few articles around that talk about how so many of the people who saw the movie didn’t realize it was an actual event.  Major *facepalm* right?  LOL  I never saw the movie but I did read about the Titanic in history class.

But it reminded me of something that happened way back in the olden days, the 90s. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but when I was a teen, we all listened to that crazy rock and roll music.  Led Zeppelin, The Who, AC/DC, the Stones, Aerosmith, The Doors, et al.  Some grew out of it and some of us will keep listening to it until they pry our tapes out of our cold, dead fingers.  Rock on!  *ahem* 

Anyway, when The Doors movie came out, I insisted on seeing it.  I don’t remember a whole lot from it, but I do recall thinking that Val Kilmer did an amazing job as Jim Morrison, who died when I was a little girl, like 1971, about 20 years before the movie was made. 

As we were coming out of the theater, there was a line of people waiting to go in, and the lines were moving next to each other, just like auto traffic.  The kid in front of us saw a friend of his who was in the line going in to see the movie.  They yelled greetings to each other, and the kid in the “enter” line asked, “Hey dude, how was it?  Is it any good?” 

The kid in front of me replied, “Oh yeah, it was great, but just so you know, the guy dies at the end.”

“Aw man!  He dies?  Why’d you have to go and ruin it for me, dude!  I paid to see this and you just spoiled the end!”  And he gave his buddy a playful punch on the arm as the line moved past. 

I laughed all the way to the car.  I laughed all the way home.  I still laugh when I think about it!   Twenty years of giggles for the price of a movie ticket.  Not a bad deal!  LOL

The Doors–People Are Strange

Whensday

I cracked up when I first saw this picture, and posted it on FaceBook.  It brings up a very special family memory for me.  The story behind the giggle is kind of cute though but first I wanted to give some background.

I don’t do horror very well.  As a little kid, my sister would terrorize me by making me watch Dark Shadows, after which I could be found cowering under the bed.

As a teen, I came of age in the Halloween, and Friday the 13th era, which became popular date films.  I almost walked out of The Boogeyman but my date convinced me not to.  I remember perhaps 1 scene from each of those, the rest of the time spent hiding behind my hands.  I would have walked out on My Bloody Valentine but was a guest at someone else’s home and didn’t want to look childish.  So you can see, horror and I never mixed well. 

And then, then I married a horror writer.  Proof that the Lord does indeed have an interesting sense of humor! 

To his credit, the only horror movie Darc ever really strongly encouraged me to watch was The Exorcist.  We caught the 30th anniversary release.  Afterward, I could only wonder what all the fuss was about.

Eventually I realized that what I really loathe is what I’ve come to call “gorror,” that cross between horror and outright, gratuitous gore.  I hate the gory stuff, the bloody, slashing, stabbing, gooey, icky, red yuck.  But suspense I can handle okay.

So when the MiniNess was about 4, Darc picked up a copy of Alien, one of his all time favorite horror movies, and wanted to watch it during family movie time.  I was a bit dubious.  The kids were kind of little for that, I thought.  But we put it in figuring we could stop it if they seemed like they were getting scared.  During the first “facehugger” scene, the scene where the creature leaps onto John Hurt’s face and attaches itself, which startled me since it was the first time I’d ever seen it myself, I heard the little gasps come out of the kids.  Oh here we go! I thought, they’re going to freak out and have nightmares and I shouldn’t have let them see this and …

“Can we watch it again, Daddy?  Can you back up so we can see it again?  That was so cool!”

This is my 4 year old?  My sweet, precious, baby girl?  She wants to see it again?!

“That’s my girl!” exclaimed the proud daddy. 

She couldn’t handle the sight of the vacuum at the time, that sent her screaming to her bed to hide under the covers, but the facehugger in Alien was definitely not a problem.

Yep, that’s not thunder you hear, those are heavenly guffaws. 

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The End

Guess what?  It’s done!  The writing project my husband has been working on these many months is done!  Finis!  Over!  Finished!  The END!  Woooo! 

I was a little surprised to discover today, going back through some older files, that he started writing on this subject for the other series this publisher puts out, way back in Sept of last year.  Ten whole months ago!  So 3 mos on that project, then revisions and going over the proofs, then on the heels of that one going to print, getting the project for this other series they have and doing the same subject for this one for another 3 months, and wow, that’s a long time to be working on saying the same thing in 2 different ways! 

But he did it!  He banged it out over the holiday weekend and even managed to bring it in before deadline.  So, he’s done writing, and I’m done editing and doing the clean-up and uploading and researching stuff.  Not that my job was nearly as much “heavy lifting” as his was, but I helped some.   

No more deadlines!  At least for awhile.  I don’t know if he’ll take any more projects since he really wants to breathe for a bit and focus on his fiction work.  I couldn’t be happier about that.  And it was soooooo much fun to watch a movie on Monday and not feel that pressure to get back to working on the project.  We ended up watching something called The Broken.  It was really quite good.  I don’t know if it’s listed as horror or thriller, but there wasn’t any real gore to speak of.  You know how in Psycho you see the blood go down the drain?  Would you consider that gore?  If that was a 1, this movie might be a 2 or 3.  But the tension build-up was done very well.  Even my daughter said, “Why do they play the scary music but then nothing happens?”  I’d just been thinking the same thing and had to laugh at her perceptiveness for picking that up at 5.  Watch out, she’s a future movie critic in the making!  LOL

While our town didn’t have fireworks again for the 3rd year in a row, the local amusement park DID.  And they rocked.  So the kids and I were able to run out when we heard them start up and watch them from the parking lot here.  It was awesome.  Man I adore fireworks!  Especially Independence Day fireworks. 

Did I mention?  I think I tweeted but I don’t think I posted it here – the MiniNess lost her 1st tooth over the weekend.  She was so excited!  Daddy plucked a dollar out of his wallet and handed it to her.  She’s clueless about what money is.  For now.   

So now the holiday and its long weekend is over and the book is done and life can go back to normal now.  Back to housework and school, back to eating right and working out and all that fun stuff. 

And how was your weekend?

 

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Watching

Morgan, over at House of Eratosthenes had a post the other day that kind of made me laugh.  Go check it out!  I’ll wait. 

MEN’S MOVIE REVIEW

Not only is this all I need when a film comes out, but if I was a film critic this is pretty much all I’d provide. Guess I better keep the day job…

Yeah, the casting, who got an award for what, who’s directing, who’s hoping this is their big comeback vehicle — just kindly skip it all. Fill in the appropriate check marks, below, and that’s good enough for me. That’s more than good enough for me.

via House of Eratosthenes.

I was thinking of Darc and how he likes to watch movies, and how I like to watch movies, which sometimes is more like how a guy watches movies.  Don’t get me wrong, I still do the occasional “chick flick” but I won’t do “Rom-Coms” or comedies in general anymore.  I even snub romances now, for the most part.

I thought of WIGSF and Bob, and I think the linked checklist would be awesome for them and their movie marathon thing they do with their friends. 

It’s a fortunate thing if I can remember if I’ve even seen a movie.  I don’t know why, but generally, when I see a movie, it goes in one eye, gains speed, and goes out the other.  One time I was searching through a playlist way back when we had cable and came across a movie I thought had potential.  I asked Darc, “This looks good,  how about this one?”

His reply?

“We saw that last weekend.” 

… Oh.

I thought I’d keep a running list of movies I’ve seen over on Flixter, much like the Shelfari site, but I never remember to check in there, because I can’t recall anything about recent movies I’ve seen.  With the books at least I can go get it and have it in front of me to fill out the Shelfari info stuff.  With movies I’m at a complete loss.  Gosh, if I ever made it to Jeopardy, it would be on the Special Movie Edition day or something like that, and I’d stand there with my little buzzer thing and a completely blank look.  I’d have to start drooling or something so the audience would think I’d had a stroke, and not just a complete idiot when it comes to movies. 

But I never forget a birthday. 

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Whine

I was browsing the news last night – wow!  How fun!  This new computer Darc got is pretty awesome.  Even though we don’t yet have our own Internet connection, we’re getting decent speeds from the connection we’re able to get.  We’ve gone from “very low” on the old boat anchor, all the way up to “fair” on this one.  I’m dizzy from it!  Plus the screen … oh my gosh I can SEE! 

Re-establishing our own Internet connection has been a big topic of conversation here in the Darc House, and we’re excited at the probability of that happening in the near future.  One bite at a time.  We’ve decided that when we do, we’re going to go with an Internet only package, no TV.  There were several reasons for it, but one of the major ones is family time.  We like spending time together as a family and sitting down to watch the latest episode of some show while the kids go off into their room to play because they’re not interested in “grown-up shows” is not how we want to be.  Plus, we’re really not excited at the prospect of them being glued to Nick Jr or Noggin or whatever the current kids TV station is. 

We do love watching movies however. 

Getting movies from the library has been a boon.  You can’t beat free!  But, it’s also kind of discouraging knowing you’re not going to find anything more recent than maybe 2-3 years old, IF you’re lucky.  So, when we found out that once we have an Internet connection we can stream movies through the Wii, we were all over that.  Netflix was on our list of future additions to the electronic family here.  Plus, we really love being able to watch DVD’s.  We LOVE our pause button while we dissect and talk about the movie we’re watching. 

Then I read this article: Netflix Is Abandoning DVDs, Customers Who Prefer DVDs. 

Can I just say I’m REALLY not happy about this?  I don’t want to stream all my movies, as much as I love the idea of being able to do so.  What if my connection goes down for some reason while we’re in the middle of a movie?  I want the hard copy!  I like the idea of options and I’m not pleased that Netflix wants to remove those options. 

I had Netflix several years ago when they first came out and I loved the service.  Bonus points too because I hated Blockbuster.  Do you know how hard it is to get decent customer service at Blockbuster? 

Now I find myself thinking I’ll go with Blockbuster for my movie rentals when I’m finally able to utilize a service like that.  They do DVD’s AND streaming – although I don’t yet know if they’ll stream through a Wii – but it kind of bites to have to go back to them.  The one I liked is letting me down, before I even had the chance to re-join them!  Back to the freaking drawing board, and here I thought my research was all done.  *sigh*

/whine

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Deep Thoughts

I do have them.  Apparently just not when I want them, like when I want to do a blog post, or think of something to replace the thankfulness posts.  I still haven’t thought of anything there. 

This week I’ve been trying to get back into “the groove.”  December was like a transition period, and I thought by now I’d be ready to go, but it seems that post-holiday thing has me in its grip.  Trying to balance the housework, the homeschool, it should be a snap, right?  Not like I’ve never done this before.  The kids seem to be having a hard time getting used to Daddy being gone during the day too. 

Hopefully it won’t take long for our new routines to kick in.  Life only happens one day at a time, so that’s what we’ll do and before we know it, things will be all in place.  🙂

We’ve watched some fairly current movies this week, having made a trip to Blockbuster in addition to the library.  Finally saw Shutter Island.  Well acted but predictable.  Got kind of heavy-handed with the music and twists in the middle, I thought.  Darc got The Wolfman, which I actually enjoyed!  Big surprise, huh?  It was very well acted and the story was beautifully done.  Also picked up something called After Life.  If you have a chance to get that one, I suggest you pass.  Liam Neeson and Christina Ricci did a great job acting, but the story was pretty much a bomb. 

I love movies.  Good ones anyway.  How about you?  Seen any good ones lately?

  

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