Gateway to the West

So I guess I am wondering if it is really a gateway to the west if you just stop in St. Louis. Don't you have to continue on to at least Kansas City for it to be considered the gateway to the west? Maybe I am just overthinking it. Anywho, I find myself at the USDLA awards in St. Louis and even though the weather is terrible and overcast, the view from the ceremony is just outstanding (However this view would make it a gateway to the east).

Regardless, I ended up having to drive here due to the time constraints of my schedule and the lateness of the ceremony, which actually led to a nice Griswold-esque trek that included a soundtrack that I loaded up for the trip, complete with Holiday Road from the movie. After listening to that song five times I realized that without the movie or someone there with you to enjoy it, the song actually sucks. Oh well, another moment that just did not deliver compared to how I had built it up in my mind.

So after that little segue, I should probably get to the point of this entry. I encountered many parts of the interstate on my westward journey that only had two lanes in the westbound direction. This is infuriating to anyone that is traveling more than an hour in any one sitting. I am not sure what it is but whenever I need to travel anywhere, all the looky-loos come out of the woodwork and decide they need to be in the left-hand lane. Then throw in a nice thunderstorm and some heavy downpours and you end up with "Freeze-Dried Idiots"... just add water. I just don't get it... I don't have a problem if you do not like to drive in the rain, or if your vision does not accommodate the driving required to maneuver while you are driving in the rain, but please do not make everyone else that IS still comfortable driving in the weather pay for your uneasiness by staying in the left lane. MOVE OVER. I wish that all phones came equipped with a built-in emergency phone that had the phone number of your license plate so that you could prank call those morons while you are driving behind them.

I have talked to many people that say they prefer to drive in the left lane because they do not like to get stuck behind people, but while in the left lane they go below the speed limit. What I do not get is why police officers do not give those people more tickets. Those people are causing bigger hazards on the road than people speeding. Disrupting the flow of traffic due to slow driving is ridiculous. On that note, I also think that it should be illegal for semi-trucks to drive in the left lane when there are only two lanes of traffic.

I guess the real solution would be to make sure that every interstate has at least three lanes of same-direction traffic on each side of the median. One can dream.

Los Angeles, here I come

After a long hiatus i have reloaded the blog writing app back onto my iPhone. I really got into this last year and got way too busy to keep up with it. I am hoping that having the app on my iPhone will help me get back into it.

I will be in Los Angeles the week of May 18th. The company is having us come out for training for one of our new products. Last time I was out there we had a really good time. I am sure it will be fun but most of the week this time is gong to be set aside for training.

On a different note I am going to try and take Jacob paintballing this weekend for his 11th birthday party. I have to call the splatter park to find out if 11 is too young. I hope not because he is pretty excited about it.

Anywho, that is all for now. Just trying to make it through this crappy spring weather so that I can enjoy the new patio furniture in the backyard. If all goes well, I'll be eating outside this Friday.

Ahh, she earned it!

I guess she wore herself out the other day.

Ahhh... To Be a Dog

The real question is "If you could do this would you ever leave the house?" I mean obviously you would have to go out to get groceries and essentials, but seriously.

I think the real reason my dog is doing this is because she was just licking me and she wanted to get the taste out of her mouth.

Great Scene from Spies Like Us...

In getting ready for the Holiday season ahead, I am going to dust off the Checy Chase classic Christmas Vacation, and to get in the mood, I watched a littl Spies Like Us. I miss these days of Chevy Chase

Good Times...

I love the movie Old School, and a friend of mine just sent me this clip...

In-N-Out, Went In Then Out

Wow, talk about a heart attack waiting to happen. On my way to the airport from Los Angeles, I had to make the obligatory journey to the ever famous In-N-Out Burger. Not knowing all the special codes to ordering at In-N-Out I was lucky to have an insider there who knew all the special handshakes, and told me to order "Animal Style". Not knowing what this meant, I worried I was about to be taken into the back room where a banjo would be playing while a red ball is shoved into my mouth with someone in the background saying "Bring out the Gimp". So assuming that only happens in the movies, I boldly ordered Animal Style and crossed my fingers, and subconsciously clinched my butt cheeks.

Needless to say I did not wake up in a back alley with a sore backside and the smell of ether on my breath, so it was a win from that perspective. I am never disappointed when that does not happen, so my trip to the airport was rather uneventful. If you have never experienced Animal Style before from In-N-Out Burger, I highly recommend that you pick one up if you have the means. I just don't recommend that you do it right before you get on a 5 hour flight. Poor planning on my part. So as I am boarding the plane, I feel the notorious stomach gurgle that tells me everything in my digestive track instantly became liquefied and is going to need an emergency evacuation within the next half hour. Problem is, the first leg of my flight home was a two and a half hour flight. I do not know about you, but dropping a dos (Spanish for poop) in an airline toilet is not my idea of a good time, for me or the other passengers.

So fresh out of Depends, I decided to fight the good fight and do the male version of Kegel exercises contracting and relaxing the sphincter muscle so as not to leave an unwrapped present on the airplane seat. Let me just tell you, that a two and a half hour flight is already long, but a two and a half hour flight when you are on the brink of having a blowout so intense that it could spark the FAA to permanently ground the plane is even longer. The good news is that I made it to the Dallas Fort Worth Airport with a little time to spare, and the bad news is I think the bathroom attendant can forget about mom for a while, because he has something new to talk about with his therapist.

Day Ten: It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

So I thought I would zig when you thought I would zag, and by the suggestion of a friend of mine from work, I decided to mix it up a little and go family-style with my last review of the 10 Days of Horror. There is something charming about It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Maybe it is the background elevator music, or the poorly drawn backgrounds, or the fact that Charlie Brown gets shit on at every turn.

I am not sure the reason, but I have been watching this every Halloween ever since I was a kid, back when it was on CBS every year, and then on DVD for the last few years.

There is so much to love about this show that I am not going to go through it all here, but I will touch on a few of the things that stand out to me every time I watch this. For one, this episode includes a brief glimpse at the Snoopy vs. Red Baron rivalry that I have loved ever since the Royal Guardsman song that I used to listen to back on my record player from when I was a kid. I loved that song so much that I ruined the record that I had by listening to it over and over again. I used to sit on the top bunk of my bunk beds and pretend that I was Snoopy going after the Red Baron. I would play the song on my record player, and hop up onto the top bunk of my bed, and when the song was over, I would start it all over again. I also love the multiple-eyed ghost costume of Charlie Brown that has become so iconic for peanuts, there is the "pull the ball away from Chuck as he tries to kick it" hoax that appears in almost every episode of Peanuts. I love the pitter-patter sound of the kids when they run, and the "excitement" audio track of all the kids talking at once.

There are not many cartoons made like this today, and I am not referring to the artistry, but more for the story and the non-pc nature of the series. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of cheese on this biscuit, but it does not prevent me from falling in love with this show every year when I watch it. If you could not tel from the review, I highly recommend watching this one.

So concludes my 10 Days of Horror... or I guess 9 Days of Horror, and one day of Halloween nostalgia. See you next year.

Day Nine: The Blair Witch Project

I will be the first to admit that I totally got wrapped up in the hype of this movie leading up to its release. In my opinion this movie had some of the best marketing to ever accompany a movie. I think the biggest problem with this movie is the people that did not get into the web hype that built up before the movie was released in the theatres.



The thing is, the movie was presented to people as a real-life story of three documentarians that went off in the woods in search of footage of the Blair Witch of Burkittsville, Maryland. A web-site was launched way before the movie was released, to stir up interest in the movie. The web-site had "unedited" video content to show some incidents and interviews of people that came into contact at some point with the people making the documentary. The website also contained tons of information on the mythology of the Blair Witch, and the history of the "real-life" accounts and police reports that led to the mythology. I knew soooo many people that bought into the chance that this may be a true story. The only mistake that the movie-makers made, in my opinion, was to have the actors and actress playing the documentarians make an appearance on the David Letterman show a day or two before the movie released.



Sitting in the theatres on the first day it was released, I was surrounded by tons of people, more than half of which believed that this was a true story. I do not want to spend the time in this blog about how people actually believed this was a true story, but still think that was brilliant on the movie-makers part, to know that the population would believe that the story was real.



The movie on its own is only marginally good. It is just some kids walking around the woods getting into arguments and hearing noises at night. It played heavily on the hopes of the website building the premise and the mood, which worked during the initial theatre run of the movie. Watching this movie again, I began to get pulled into the original spectacle that was the Blair Witch. I can imagine that if someone did not get to experience the original website before the movie was released back in 1999, then the movie is probably pretty boring and even irritating up until the movie pick up around 45 minutes in.


I am pretty torn about this movie, mainly because I am now watching it almost ten years after it was released, and a lot of my feelings about this movie are related to that original experience leading up to the theatre release. The movie does play on your emotions. If you have ever been camping, then the thought of getting lost scares the hell out of you. If you have ever heard noises in the middle of the night while camping then you also know how scary that is. The movie on the surface is not very scary until the end, and each character does a pretty good job of being realistic in their meltdowns and paranoia. I find it hard to recommend this movie, unless you have already seen it in its originally intended context with the website supplement.


Click here to view more reviews of The Blair Witch Project

Day Eight: The Lost Boys

So when I was 13, I was introduced to the world of vampires through the movie The Lost Boys. Now, when I was 13, this movie may have been the coolest movie I had seen up to that time. For a boy of that age, it was oozing with coolness and just made you want to become a vampire, even if it meant dealing with longer finger nails, bad breath, and sleeping all day. At the time, it would not have changed the way my summer was passing anyway.

Rewatching the movie has not really changed anything for me. I still think it is simmering in a nice coolness broth that keeps the movie afloat and makes you forget about the absurdity of the story. Besides all the jokes that may surface about the presence of the brothers Corey, this movie cannot help itself, it is just utter coolness.

So if you followed the career of Kieffer Sutherland, you know that he has peaked in popularity two different times in his career, and this movie may have been the apex of his first brush with ultimate badass stature. The second being during his run of 24. Obviously the brothers Corey took a different career path after this movie, both in the wrong direction, but that is another article waiting to be written. One of the things that I like about vampire movies (when they are good vampire movies) is that there is no set mythology when it comes to vampires. There are some pretty standard things: going out in daylight, garlic, stakes to the heart, etc. But even those get changed from story to story (see Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series). So accepting that the mythos changes from movie to movie is a pre-requisite for enjoying a good vampire movie. The Lost Boys follows most of them and they even use them as heavy plot devices throughout the movie, and as part of the story.

I will say that I could probably watch this movie 100 times (and I probably have) and it would still be cool and not get old to me. It is really hard to pinpoint the reasoning behind the movie's draw, but I think that it has something to do with the actors/actresses that play the characters are all good. Jason Patric, Kieffer Sutherland, Corey Haim, Corey Feldman, Dianne West, Jamie Getz, and Edward Hermann at the time was not too large of a cast, but in retrospect turns out to be a great group of actors/actresses that keep the movie grounded.

The movie seems to use a lot of the stereotypical horror movie components: Dark lighting during situations that would most likely be well lit, the kooky older character that ends up knowing more than he lets on (grandpa), the off-balance characters that seem to know too much about the situation to keep the plot moving forward (Frog brothers), and the hot girl that lures the characters into action (Gertz). All-in-all, this movie is deeply enjoyable with a good mix of scares, humor, and connection with the characters. I highly recommend this movie.

Click here to read reviews of The Lost Boys

Day Seven: Amityville Horror (1979)

So cruising along through day seven of the ten and I am starting to get comfortable again. I think that I am starting to realize that older horror movies do not age well. Maybe it is something about the music, the effects, the 70s style porn hair and clothing, but for some reason to me these older movies just do not age well when it comes to the fright factor. I think there is an exception to this from time to time, in the cases of movies like The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, Psycho, and Suspiria, to name a few.

I decided to watch Amityville Horror to see if this could also be an exception to the rule when it comes to older movies. Now I have not seen the newer version with Ryan Reynolds, so I do not know how well the material and story has done over the years, but the 1979 James Brolin/Margot Kidder version does not hold up well in my opinion. Again, this is my opinion, but I honestly had a hard time not laughing at points in this movie.

Normally, the scariest movies in my opinion are the ones that deal with religion and/or emotional issues. I am not usually frightened by the "chasing you through the woods" or slasher style movies. If there is paranormal involved, and things outside the realm of the normal, that usually has the best chance of getting to me. That being said, this movie does play heavily in the religious/demon realm and yet it did nothing to disturb me in the least. Granted if these types of things were happening to me in real life I would probably need to strap on some Depends.

My problem is not in the fact that these types of things just simply do not happen in real life, because that is part of the attraction in my opinion, but my problem is when the human responses do not seem to be very realistic or authentic based on the events happening. I just don't see some of the reactions occurring the way they do in this movie. I know that I would react completely different than any of the characters in the movie, so if I cannot connect with the characters or the events taking place in the movie, then you can usually count me out.

I am really interested in the newer version of the movie, because I think that the material translates well to being scary in any age, but this version failed to connect with me, and that will make me not recommend this movie to any friends. People I don't like.... maybe.

Click here to read reviews of the original Amityville Horror

Day Six: Shaun of the Dead

I really hate it when people review a horror movie and try and tell you that it is a social commentary about the current times. For example, the movie Dawn of the Dead (the original) is often referred as a social commentary of the time. As taken from Roger Ebert's review of the movie: "Their eventual fates are not as interesting as their behavior in the meantime; there is nothing quite like a plague of zombies to wonderfully focus your attention on what really matters to you. Romero has his own ideas, too, and the shopping center becomes a brilliant setting for a series of comic and satiric situations: Some low humor, some exquisitely sly." I cannot stand this. The movie is a horror movie and is just trying to scare people. It is not social commentary. Okay, I feel better now.

That being said, Shaun of the Dead is a social commentary on the state of the world and the zombie-like way that people go about their daily lives. The movie opens up to Shaun (Simon Pegg) getting ready for his day at work and then progresses through a normal day in the life of Shaun. This includes walking by people on the street on his way to the convenience mart, completely oblivious to his surroundings and others people's presence, as those he passes are likewise completely oblivious to Shaun's presence. It includes a ride on the bus to his work surrounded in the bus by people that are just going through the motions, rather zombie-like. It includes sitting at a local pub with his friends after work surrounded by others that are just hanging around the bar in a daze, again rather zombie-like. It cleverly pokes fun of other horror films along the way, sometimes subtle, and sometimes by crashing the absurdity of horror films over your head in hopes to sever our zombie-like brains from the stem. Even when it is not subtle, it is not as silly or ridiculous as the Scary Movie franchise, and does not lose its credibility in its delivery.

Generally, I am on the fence when it comes to zombie movies. I really like 28 Days Later, but I really hated 28 Weeks Later. I really like the original Dawn of the Dead, but cannot stand Land of the Dead. I think Shaun of the Dead is a clever movie, has some decent horror aspects to it, and is just an overall fun movie to watch. The acting is really good, the pace is perfect for the buildup to the zombie scenes, and the satire is thick, but not too thick to prevent enjoyment of the movie. I highly recommend it whether you like OR loathe zombie movies.

Click here to read reviews of Shaun of the Dead