Do You Want To See Something Really Scary?

My twelve-year old nephew has been asking me a lot about scary movies.  I think there is a little man peeking out and since at that age only sex and violence are really forbidden, it’s easy to venture into a horror films which at twelve you understand… sex, maybe not.  He looked at the cover of my Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and commented, “That guy’s wearing a tie… and he’s fat,” at which point my brother told him, “You want to know why he’s so fat?”

I explained to him that he’s a lot more sophisticated than I was at twelve.  The previews for movies are scarier than a lot of movies I grew up with.  Gene Siskel used to say comedy is like love in that you either get it or you don’t.  You can explain a joke to me the same way you can explain why you love your wife and that won’t make the joke any funnier or make me love your wife.  Horror isn’t much different.  Everybody is scared of something different and some people close their eyes and go to sleep.  Other people close there eyes and see things.

With Halloween nearing, I decided I’d pick out ten horror movie suggestions for anyone interested.  If you’re a movie nerd or a gore hound, today you’re on the wrong blog.  I’m not telling you anything you don’t know.  These aren’t my favorite horror films.  These aren’t the best horror movies ever made or even the important ones.  These are the ones I like that you probably haven’t seen because people don’t talk about them as much as they should.  Anybody can slap The Shining (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) on a list and I guarantee on Halloween weekend neither will be at the Blockbuster.  Also keep in mind I am assuming you’re all adults.  Don’t email me with your, “that movies wasn’t scary” bullshit.  You’re grown people.  You shouldn’t be scared of movies in the first place.

If you’re counting, the list includes one remake, one sequel, three adaptations and six good old fashioned original ideas (one of which has been remade but you can’t win them all).

That being said, here we go.

In The Mouth of Madness (1994)
Sam Neill is an insurance investigator hired to locate a missing horror novelist whose latest novel is so scary people who actually complete it are driven insane.  I consider it the best Stephen King movie never made (with a little HP Lovecraft for flavor).  It’s directed by John Carpenter who also has his name all over Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), Escape From New York (1981), The Thing (1982), Starman (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and it would do you no harm to watch all of them.  This was the last movie he made that I liked and he hasn’t made a movie since 2001.

Best Tagline:  “Lived any good books lately?”

The Others (2001)
Nicole Kidman is the mother of two children who suffer from light sensitivity and must always be kept in the dark.  Strange things start happening and she questions whether they are being tormented by ghosts or if she’s gone insane.  I’m a big fan of well done haunted house movies and before The Others, I’d say the last good ones would have been The Shining (1980) and Poltergeist (1982).

Best Scene:  The reveal.  You’re going to think you know where it’s going… you’ll be wrong.

Black Christmas (1974)
Christmas Eve and a sorority is tormented by a prank caller.  It’s weird to see the word “Christmas” in a Halloween list. Halloween (1978) gets a lot of credit for creating the slasher genre with the masked killer and the completely shocking first person POV kill.  Whatever.  All that stuff appears in Halloween four years earlier.  Truth be told, Halloween was originally intended as a sequel to Black Christmas with their idea to have rotating killers at holidays.  This movie has the absolute creepiest phone calls ever and I’ll watch anything with Olivia Hussey in it.  Make sure you don’t get the 2006 remake which eschews all the tension and makes it into a slasher movie.  Ironically, director Bob Clark was also responsible for A Christmas Story (1984)… so much for pigeon-holing.

Best Shot:  The shot of the eyeball from the door… you’ll know it when you see it.

The Mist (2008)
Giant monsters attack a supermarket.  Trust me on this one.  Very reminiscent of my favorite book, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, where the situation isn’t as much of the problem as the people it happens to.  That and Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Green Mile (1999)) should be the only person allowed to direct Stephen King adaptations.

Best Scene:  The finale.  Nerve-wrenching, horrible and we’d all wish we had the guts to do the same thing.  It’s not in the novella and (which has no definitive ending) because King said the movie ending never crossed his mind and he wished he though of it.

Land of the Dead (2005)
Zombies… enough said.  Let me get some things clear.  Love zombies, hate a lot of zombie movies.  George A Romero pretty much wrote the bible on the whole affair with the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) which is a work of genius.  He’s been riding that gravy train ever since.  I think Dawn of the Dead (1978) is one of the most overrated horror films in history.  Day of the Dead (1985) is a ridiculous joke.  Land of the Dead redeems itself understanding zombie films have to be about more than zombies.  They have to be about society (and before someone emails me, a shopping mall is not a metaphor for commercialism, it’s just a location).  With a budget three times larger than that of the previous three films combined, he actually hires actors instead of his drinking buddies and people he found in front of the Home Depot.  It should be noted that Romero doesn’t consider his films sequels as much as movies with the same premise.  No need to feel you have to watch the three previous movies.

Best Cameo:  Actor Simon Pegg and director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) as zombies in a photo booth.

Frailty (2001)
A father hears the voice of God and is given a mission to carry out his will and uses his two boys to help him.  There is a thing in movies that people with religion are quickly revealed to be either hypocrites or kooks (see The Mist).  Let’s just say Frailty doesn’t do that.  And again, small kids never hurt a horror film.  It’s Bill Paxton’s directorial debut and stars Matthew McConaughey when he used to act before he realized he could make a fortune making shitty romantic comedies like Failure To Lose A Ghost Of Girlfriend’s Past… Fool’s Gold.

Best Scene:  The reveal.

Stir of Echoes (1999)
Man, do I hate The Sixth Sense (1999).  All tension.  No plot, no character development and the whole thing hinges on a two minutes twist ending.  It’s like eating a plate full of maggot casserole followed by bananas foster and somehow the dessert makes the rest of the meal better.  It doesn’t.  Kevin Bacon’s son communicates to his imaginary friend and then Bacon begins to have visions of murdered girl in his home.  This is movie The Sixth Sense should have been and being released six weeks later didn’t help it.  Points for being based on a book by Richard Matheson.

Best Scene:  Kevin Bacon getting his shoes.

Near Dark (1987)
This is what happens when you make a very clever vampire movie and then have it released three months after The Lost Boys (1987) with virtually identical premises.  Young girl seduces a boy only to turn him into a vampire where he never quite gets the hang of it.  Where Lost Boys had California hooligans, Near Dark one-ups them with quasi-biker vampires.  Note to readers: Kiefer Sutherland has nothing on Lance Henricksen.  Directed by Kathryn Bigelow who’s also responsible for Point Break (1991), the often forgotten Strange Days (1995) and recent Hurt Locker (2008).  It stars pretty much everybody from Aliens (1986).  I guess Sigourney Weaver doesn’t do horror.  It was on the remake bus until Twilight became a success because the premises were too similar… except Near Dark is good.  No twinkle here.

But don’t think the Near Dark people are above riding someone’s coat tails.

Best Scene:  Bikers picking fights with Vampire Bikers.  Bad move.

The Blob (1988)
In the wake of David Cronenberg’s masterwork The Fly (1986) comes this little gem riding on it’s coattails.  Directed by Chuck Russell and co-written by Frank Darabont before he went the Stephen King route with The Shawkshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999) and The Mist (2008), The Blob is a clever remake and take on a classic and considering there isn’t one computer effect in the film only makes it more impressive.  Nothing more disturbing than a translucent blob that starts clear and becomes more and more pink with chunks of bones after it’s devoured people.  Kevin Dillon is no Steve McQueen… for that matter he’s no Matt Dillon but Shawnee Smith is always adorable so it’s a wash.

Best Scene: Guy getting sucked through a kitchen sink.

The Exorcist III (1990)
The only true sequel on the list.  William Peter Blatty wrote novel and screenplay The Exorcist (1973) was adapted from although it isn’t required to watch this film.  Seventeen years later he wrote and directed the sequel based on his novel, Legion.  George C Scott is a detective tracking The Gemini Killer who is believed to be a man possessed with the demon that once possessed 12 year old Regan MacNeill.  Statues cry blood.  Catatonic old ladies crawl on ceilings.  Fabio appears as an angel and Patrick Ewing as Death.  Seriously, I’m not making this up.

Best Scene:  Nurse in a hallway.  That’s all I’m telling you.

And as a bonus, if you’ve familiar with The Exorcist mythology, you’ll appreciate where I’m standing.  Have a safe and Happy Halloween.

Treats for Tricks

I’m a lazy Trick or Treater.  I always have been.  This is partially because I don’t like candy and partially because when I was a child, Halloween was a fairly kitschy affair.  This involved my mom buying costumes from the K-Mart made from plastic and horrible masks with very little visibility and even less breathing room.  These masks were held in place by what I am fairly confident were defective rubber bands deemed unsuitable for sale and the cheapest staples ever created.

It didn’t help that in my head, I dreamed I would actually look like Batman.  Instead I looked like this.

Of course that isn’t me because as crafty as my mom is she isn’t good enough to make me into a 1976 white kid in shitty Batman suit but you get the idea.  I had that exact same plastic bullshit suit

I can deal with not having boots and instead my own white Keds sneakers or a utility belt that doesn’t hold anything.  What I couldn’t deal with was the Bat-emblem on my forehead and the words BATMAN written across my chest.

All that being said, I still passed on the Superman costume because it had a mask.

Hey dipshit, Superman doesn’t wear a mask.  Clark Kent is the real persona.  Superman is the mask.  Sheesh, I’m six and surrounded by morons.

This all ends in marching house-to-house only to have the costume tear a block away while periodically going back home and dumping my candy on the living room carpet and picking out the stuff we liked and tossing the rest into a container so my mom could give that cheap crap to other unsuspecting kids.

Enjoy your black licorice… suckers.

I’m not very elaborate with my costume choices (and by that I mean downright lazy).  I once went to a Halloween party as Charlie Brown in khaki shorts and yellow shirt with the zig-zag pattern.  I have a South Park Chef costume which is literally a red shirt, an apron and a chef hat.  I supposed to paint on a beard but that is a little too close to blackface for my liking.  When Natalee had a Halloween party I dressed as a surgeon because hospital scrubs are amazingly comfortable.

I don’t like cute baby costumes.  I think I should be able to dress them as insane asylum escapees, crack whores and other tasteless things.

Babies are cute all year round.

This is the one day I should be allowed to do completely inappropriate (but legal) things to babies and nobody can say shit.

That costume is six different kinds of awesome and the look on that baby’s face says, “Sigourney Weaver can suck it… Gorillas In The Mist my ass, this is my house!”  Babies aren’t little people to me as much as they are very cool props.

Which brings me to costumes.  Look at this kid…

This kid can’t act for shit.  You’re the Beezlebub… Prince of Darkness… Lord Satan.  You have to sell it like this kid.

He just looks diabolical like he’d offer someone a million dollars to push a button knowing someone, somewhere will die.  Then there is this kid who is just in it for the paycheck.  Like he’s just saying, “Moo… what the hell do you want from me?”

I think of how great the costumes are today with the cloth capes and padded muscles and it makes me sick I walked around in a Hefty bag.  You know you can be Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow from GI Joe?  And still there is some kid who will end up like this…

You know, you’ll have the rest of your life to deliver packages wearing shorts… you can’t indulge the Optimus Prime fantasy forever.  Even if your dad was a UPS delivery guy he should want his kids to want more than he did.

I always felt that Halloween was an excuse for men to dress in drag (every party has one) and women to dress as whores.  I don’t know when exactly being a Hooters waitress was a prerequisite for Halloween but it’s pretty much a standard now.

You want to know why we have a problem with people sneaking across the borders… here you go.  I’d be sneaking across the border, too.  America… where ladies drink free.

This next one is one of my favorites.  I picture Barack Obama flanked by Victoria’s Secret Service… how cool would that be.  I’m curious where she keeps her gun.

I think the homophobes that fight to keep “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are afraid this is going to be the Marine uniform… only worn by a dude with a faux hawk names Kian.  Heels and all.

Here is something I find interesting.  Taking established properties and forcing them to be something they shouldn’t.  I’ve read a lot of comics.  Ironically, the store we went to didn’t have a male Flash costume (all three Flashes have been men) but they did have this.  I would think heels and a skirt wouldn’t be wise running at one hundred and fifty miles an hour.

True story… when Christini Ricci did Addams Family Values when she was thirteen, they taped her over-developed breasts back to make her look younger. I guess that would be to prevent this from happening.

Then there is this Britney Spears Ghostbuster uniform.  I like that she doesn’t have a Proton Accelerator.  I am assuming she catches ghosts with her “Come Hither” smoky eyes.

And another one that leaves me puzzled… Mrs Krueger… because nothing says Happy Halloween like dressing up like a sexy demonic child molester.  I like the detail of the slashes across the belly.  Not sure who would be slashing her since she has the claws.  Maybe she has trouble getting dressed.

And then there is this Alice In Wonderland.  Adorable.  Get used to that skirt..

… it ain’t gonna get any longer.

We Interrupt This Program

I was watching Everybody Loves Raymond in the evening when in the middle of a scene the image froze.  I looked up from my leftovers and immediately thought this is going to be thirty minute conversation with the Cox Cable monkeys about this shitty DVR people keep telling me is as good as Tivo and if by that they mean Dane Cook is as good as George Carlin, they’d be right… but they aren’t.

Right as I am about to go for my phone, comedian Bill Engvall walks out across the screen and says, “Hey, sorry to interrupt your show but I wanted to let you know my sitcom starts this Wednesday at 9:00p.”

Then that hillbilly pulls a remote and unpauses my show and exits stage left.

What the hell was that?  Are they fucking kidding me?  Superstation my ass.  What are those TBS assholes trying to pull?

I had grown accustomed to the in-show advertising which never bothered me.  You know, the ones where a little tag pops up and tells you:

You’re watching Friends.  Next up… King Of Queens.

Fine.  Maybe I didn’t know what I was watching or I am one of those insane people who don’t know how to use the Info button on their remote.  Maybe you’re my mom and you just have cable with no magic box to give you lots of information and what else will be on tonight and you rely on that insipid TV Guide channel with the talking heads that are always yattering on about Survivor and American Idol.

This small text graphic gave way to full motion people, Kyra Sedgwick glowering at me to confess things that aren’t her business or Tony Shaloub bumbling around the forty six inches of my Sony avoiding the edges like it’s a gas station bathroom in Caracas.

Hey Jim, what’s the difference between that reminder and that dude from Damages telling you when their show is on?

I’ll tell you.  The first bit of information is relevant because King Of Queens is coming on next.  It’s a heads up.  The TV equivalent of a sticky note.  It’s like the sign on the interstate that says your exit is in two miles so you might want to stop signing Tom Petty’s American Girl and pay attention.

The other is a gaudy billboard.  A shitty LED billboard that is just painful to look at taking up a third of my screen reminding me I can get fireworks in one hundred and fifty miles from Pedro at South of the Border, or in this case, Tyler Perry’s House of Payne.

More and more I notice I’m being sold stuff.  I think it’s become worse in the last ten years or so.  Natalee and I were at Universal and about a half dozen people stopped us to fill out credit card applications.  This is worse than telemarketers because I can hang up on telemarketers (I don’t, but I can and that’s another blog).  I expect them to try and get me to by Spiderman drink cups or King King messenger bags because that’s their gig.  It’s a theme park… but credit card apps?

I paid seventy bucks to be here.  The last thing I am going to do is get another credit card so I can lose more money to stupid interest rates at ShitiBank.  Why don’t you just have some dude with an open suitcase on a stand luring me into a Three Card Monty game?

And here is another thing that ought to be a law.  I am sure there is some kind of requirement that credits have to be shown or disclaimers read.  You should have to do them where a normal human being can understand them otherwise, what’s the point?  Reading car disclaimers like an ADHD auctioneer on crack makes no sense.  And the genius who figured out they can take the end credits of a show and crush them down to the bottom fifth of the screen and run them ten times faster while they show the opening to the next show on the top four fifths of the screen should be dragged out into the street and throttled.

A few years ago I was watching TV and saw this:

Now I am going to explain to you what you just saw.  I am watching a commercial in a commercial.  Sure, that happens every time someone sells a Disney Hannah Montana Happy Meal but pay close attention.  It’s a D-List superhero getting his taxes done.

Jackson Hewett Rep: So what have you got for us?

Marketing Ass-Snack: There is a new comic book movie coming out with Nicolas Cage called Ghost Rider.  We make a commercial with Ghost Rider getting his taxes done by Jackson Hewett.

Jackson Hewett Rep:  What’s Ghost Rider?

Marketing Ass-Snack:  It’s a comic where a guy sells his soul to Satan and becomes a leather-clad biker with a flaming skull for a head.  And what do kids like more than demonic superheroes and doing their taxes?

Jackson Hewett Rep:  You’re right.  We’re in!

It was probably when Jim Carrey had that abortion they released as Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Universal marketed the ass out of it lunch boxes and action figures and video games for a movie that’s about the non-merchandising of Christmas that I realized people just don’t get it.  These are the same people that went out and bought their kids clown fish after Finding Nemo because their kids are too dumb to understand in a film that climaxes with fish trying to escape and aquarium that, “All drains lead to the ocean,” means maybe you should have fish.  Then again, these are the same people make sales in Saint Bernards spike after Beethoven because having a fur covered Buick designed for the tundra in my house seems like a great idea.

Then again, maybe we ask for this.  People will buy anything.  It’s what keeps this douche in whores that he bangs on a large pile of cash and cocaine.

It’s the same logic that think a six inch logo on a Nascar moving at two hundred miles an hour is a good idea.  It’s the reason Snuggies exist, people buy stairs for their dogs and anybody knows who Billy Mays is.  I knew a guy years ago who’s mother was a QVC addict.  One day he turned the television off and as we were leaving I noticed the 1-800 number had burned itself into the screen.

That’s a lot of cosmetic abs for men.

Gross Encounters Of The Third Kind

I am thirty-seven and at this point I don’t “discover” things about myself anymore.  I pretty much figured out who I am and what I am capable of about twenty years ago.

I know who I am because I often create “what if” scenarios for myself.

What would you do if you saw a bag of money fall off an armored truck?

What would you do if your brother called you in the middle of the night to help hide a body?

What would you do if your loved ones are infected by zombies… do you kill them immediately or do you wait for them to turn?

Having watched a few movies in my day, I would like to think in the event of an alien encounter, I would be a mature spokesperson for humankind.  I wouldn’t make any sudden movements or noises and instead try to communicate like I would to anyone who doesn’t speak my language with simple hand gestures and pleasant faces.

Then I saw this and realized I would be wrong.  Completely fucking wrong.

I have seriously overestimated my abilities.

The story goes like this.  These kids were playing in the forest and this creature crawled out from a cave and moved toward them at which point they took rocks and stoned it until it stopped advancing, then beat it to death with sticks and ran home crying to their mothers.

As would I.

Seriously, look at that thing with its slick amphibian skin, beady eyes and thick tongue hanging from what I guess is a snout?  What the fuck?  Be glad I didn’t have a gun and gallon of gasoline because I probably would have shot it until my clip was empty, loaded a new clip, emptied it, and then set it on fire.

Why can’t more aliens look like this?

You know, hot alien chicks that just want to get laid?  Is that so bad?

What I have never understood the movie stereotype of human women cross-breeding with aliens.  In the TV mini-series V: The Final Battle where the girl gets pregnant with a human lizard hybrid.

You banged a lizard dude?  Did you know he was a lizard dude and if not, how the hell did you not know?  And seriously, what kind of back alley Guadalajaran Obstetrician do you have that he didn’t see this in a sonogram? And you thought your dad was angry when he found out you kissed Quantrell Jackson.

I have always found it ironic that all bi-species characters in Star Trek have human mothers and alien fathers which must be some kind of nerd fantasy that women will have sex with anything.  Men, yes, I would totally believe that.

So she’s Vulcan with dark hair, pointed ears and no sense of humor, empathy or emotion of any kind?  But she does have tits and a rockin’ ass?  I’m in.

Why a man would sex a Vulcan is understandable.  We’ll hump a sofa if the cushions are soft enough.  But what a woman, a gender overflowing with emotion, would find appealing about a man devoid of it?  Sell that horseshit to the tourists, I’m not buying.

But human males and Klingon females?  No explanation necessary.  We like it like that.  Pon Farr for the win!

I was watching ET The Extra-Terrestrial a few years ago and remember thinking Elliot is maybe ten.  Gertie is about four.  I expect them to be morons but Michael is the older brother and he’s like sixteen.  He should have enough sense to 1) not know what the hell ET is and 2) it might be diseased.  The same goes for that kid in Gremlins who’s like twenty and when he’s given some animal nobody’s ever seen before and reproduces with water, his solution is let me take it to my middle-school science teacher?  Really?  It reproduces with water!  It’s not a Sea Monkey!  What reproduces with water?  For that matter, what does it drink and how does it keep hydrated?  Cells are made of water, moron!  Even if you kept it out of water what happens when it cries or pees?  None of this makes any sense so you take it your teacher (and I’m going to ignore that you have a relationship with a teacher by all accounts you should stopped communicating with almost a decade ago).  Are there no zoos near Kingston Falls?  At least call a Pet Smart, dumbass.  Hell, I’d have that crated bastard at Animal Kingdom in Orlando in about twenty minutes and if the cops pulled me for speeding I’d tell them I have some weird shit in my trunk and they can ticket me in the Disney World parking lot.

Sorry about all the bruises but I didn’t know what it was so I hit it a few times with a bat… and a shovel.  Yeah, I can see Gizmo is cute but I don’t know him.  There are lots of things that are pleasant to look at that are baseball bat crazy.

Long story short.  Those kids in Panama lied.  That thing was dead when they found it.  They didn’t see it crawl out of a cave mostly because it would have taken the better half of the afternoon to witness.  It’s a sloth.

Obviously it has something wrong with it since it has no hair but I have seen monkeys with skin diseases that leave them bald and slightly odd to look at.

The point is I learned a little something new about me last week.  That I am just as scared of things I don’t know as anyone else and I have to work on that.  Unless I see something crawl out of a cave that has watched too much Star Trek and don’t see nothing wrong, with a little bump and grind.

Of course if the flip side is this is I am rational and civilized and spend the better part of my afternoon trying to make alien contact with a hairless sloth.

De Evolution Of Man

Natalee left me.  She made her yearly pilgrimage to Berkeley, California to see her sister, Adrienne.  She would be gone for six days and the time leading up to it became unbearable for her.  It wasn’t just vacation… it was vacation in California… with her sister… and a long list of planned activities like touring vineyards and shopping in San Francisco.

I find when Natalee is gone for one or two days I hold it together fairly well.  Three days is pushing it.  Anything over four days and much like Kevin McAllister, I am not responsible for my own actions.

Natalee was gone for six days this time.

I don’t lie to Natalee but there are things I neglect to tell her.  These usually occur in a category I call “Things I Eat When My Wife Isn’t Looking.”  This would be things like a the deep fried bacon-wrapped hot dogs they serve at the Mojo Grill or meals with two starches as a side which inevitably starts an argument where Natalee insists potatoes are not vegetables and retort, “They’re not animal and they’re not mineral.”

I usually lose this fight.

Having taken Friday off, it wasn’t until mid-Saturday morning that I realized I hadn’t been upstairs in my house since sometime Thursday evening.  I’ve slept on the couch two nights in a row probably never getting more than three hours sleep, walking up and watching a movie and then falling asleep again.  I spent an entire day in what I loosely refer to as pajamas.  I didn’t shower.  I didn’t brush my teeth.  I watched movies and played Xbox.

Later that weekend I found myself in the drive-thru at Arby’s ordering four for five dollar Arby-Q sandwiches with the intention I’ll eat two for dinner (at nine o’clock) and two for breakfast in the morning.  I didn’t wake up and scrounge for food like some people… I actually planned that.  When I was in the Publix I looked down at the belt and saw an Italian sub, a box of golden Oreos, a carrot cake, oatmeal chocolate chip ice cream and cookies n cream (in case I didn’t like the oatmeal ice cream).  In my defense, the carrot cake I was taking with me to a dinner I’d been invited to and it was Natalee who taught me even when they insist you bring nothing, you always bring a gift when invited to dinner.

I made a list of things I intended to do but kept pushing it back and like a kid who’d been given a reading list for summer and instead tried to inhale The Crucible the weekend before school starts, I found myself scurrying to get things done.  Not that Natalee would have really cared.  She didn’t have a list of things for me to do.  It was my list.  It was just overestimating my potential and didn’t want her to know I’d spent days doing nothing.

1. Remove wallpaper border from the bathroom.
2. Paint downstairs bathroom.
3. Clean bedroom & office.
4. Organize closet and find DVD cases.
5. Hack your Xbox.
6. Burn DVD backups of wedding photos.
7. Clean bathroom.
8. Make the bed.

By the time my four day weekend ended, at my lowest, I had slept on the couch four nights in a row, eaten a bowl of peanut butter and jelly for lunch (I ran out of bread), showered twice and watched seventeen movies.

Sometime Sunday my sister-in-law Brittany called to make sure I was still alive and she was right to do so.

I forgot how quickly I regress and wonder if I didn’t have the structure of a wife or job, how fast it would be before I was homeless and worse, would I even know when it happened?

In the end I settled on more realistic goals before Natalee came home.

1. Make the bed.

That I can handle.