Whine and Cheese

After getting the grocery shopping done and a couple of loads of laundry out of the way, I was debating on what to watch. I've been looking through a lot of my Christmas-themed horror flicks and decided to watch "Black Christmas" (1974) again.



There are so many things I love about this movie, but I'd say a great deal of it involves the setting - the early 1970's. As I'm watching the movie tonight, I decided to jot down some things that clearly identify the time setting of the movie.

• Smoking. Several characters smoke, which you don't see in movies very often anymore. In fact, a close eye sees ashtrays in offices and auditoriums.


• Posters. The decorations on the walls of the girls' rooms give away the time frame. Some of them are very cool and I would love to see them come back.


• Wallpaper. Like the posters, the wallpaper is very telling, very elaborate graphic patterns you would have seen on album covers of the period or the Electric Company.


• Rotary telephones. One of the big parts of the movie is the phone calls made to the sorority sisters from the killer. The sorority house only has telephones downstairs for the sisters, so people do have to "run" for the phone, unlike today where the phone is cordless and in your pocket. The rotary dials dates it even more, as there are now whole generations of people who have never made a phone call using them.


• Phone numbers. Probably the best gag in the whole movie is the use of a word to describe the exchange of a phone number. Barb (Margot Kidder) gives the phone number of the sorority house to a bumbling and naive desk sergeant as "Fellatio 2-0880," explaining to him that it's a new exchange "F-E" (This is actually a blooper in the movie as the number is later given/seen as a different number). Now I was born on the cusp of the exchanges no longer being described this way, so I never had to make a call giving one. An exchange, that is... not fellatio.


• Cars. They're boats essentially.


• The fashions. The clothes the ladies wear aren't as dated as they could look vintage today, but the hairstyles I think give the 70's away, including those on the guys. One white guy has an afro while another has hair that looks like a shag.

I was born in early 1973 so I don't recall the early 70's at all, but vaguely recall the later part of the decade mostly. If reincarnation is real, I often wonder if my past life was in this time frame, considering my admiration for the time period.

While I love the advantages of having all the technology we have today, and will have even more in the future, life certainly does seem a little simpler back then. Maybe that is also one of the appealing parts.

If anyone wants to watch the movie, it's posted, in full, on You Tube. The new remake comes out this Friday. I'm going to try my best to judge it on its own merits and not draw comparisons repeatedly to my favorite. I admit, I'm looking forward to it.

Last night, I had tried to find tickets for the 2018 "Halloween" sequel, as I'd been looking forward to the movie for months. Every theater was packed with just a speckled number of seats in showings all evening. I hate crowded theaters, so I decided to pass until the next day.

So this morning, I'd gotten up especially early for a Saturday, went to the gym to run my 3.2 miles on the treadmill, lusted after this tall hottie that I am sure plays in my softball league in the locker room, then home to shower and change and head to the theater. I went to the 9:45 AM showing at the local Rave.

It wasn't packed, but I was surprised how well attended it was at this hour. No real spoilers for the movie, but I will say that it did not disappoint. The movie is pretty deep in a strange way. Jamie Lee Curtis plays the adult Laurie Strode, a woman in her late 50's whose life has been severely damaged by that Halloween night in 1978. There are some great scenes where you can see she has been wound tight and fearful every day since that night. She's not a shining light, full of hope. She drinks, she's anti-social, and people, including her family, believe that she's crazy. Until the night when Michael escapes again.

It's wonderfully rated R, so there's no watering down of the language and gore, which I think is necessary to tell this story.

The audience wasn't perfect sadly. There was one large, special needs kid who had no volume control. Why the parents would bring a kid to such a movie is beyond me. Still, it didn't ruin the flick for me for a change.

Well, a handful of us moviebears went to see "The Nun" tonight as planned. The movie is not terrible, but it's not overly great either. It was fun, with some decent scares.

What annoyed the $#!+ out of me was this one woman and three kids behind us who did everything to disrupt the movie. The kids took turns running and stomping down the steps and back up again several times during the flick. Then the one girl would stage whisper to the older girl, who seemed to be too young to be the mom of these brats. Then one of the boys kept trying to creep out the girl who replied "Stop it" to him repeatedly. I tried shushing them, but it fell on the deafest of ears. They were not so loud to disrupt the whole theater when they spoke, but those of us closest to them.

I should have gotten up to get the ushers, but then I have to miss part of the movie myself. Ideally, I should have done that, but it's been my experience that they will behave while the usher arrives, only to resume after the usher leaves.

When the movie was over, I loudly proclaims that some people shouldn't come the movies when they don't know how to behave. Normally, I get a look from them, but I got nothing, so when we exited the theater, I just told them flat out that they ruined the movie for us. I literally told them that if you don't know how to behave in a movie to stay home.

When we got to the front of the theater I went up to the customer service counter and loudly complained. When the woman with the three kids, I literally pointed straight at them and told the service rep that it was that group "right there!" I'm not above public shaming.

The group tried not to make eye contact. I told the rep that I realize it was pointless at this point, but begged the obvious teenager to send more ushers around. As we were leaving, a manager showed up, and I swear she was probably 21, who gave me and the one guy who stuck around free passes.

It doesn't make up for the experience, but I don't know what else I can do.

Tonight, after my workout and dinner, I settled on the couch to pencil more pages of Issue #25 of "Grizzly and The Bear Patrol." It's been fairly slow going, mainly because of everything else I have had to do this summer, which has sucked away my energy. I'm still training the temporary replacements for my coworker on maternity leave. It makes me very reticent to take time off and my vacation time is piling up, so I might need to burn some soon.

Tonight's DVD was "The Boy," a movie that I saw in the theater with friends, but missed out the climax of the film due to a very full, very sore bladder. It was nice to actually see the whole movie. It's not the best flick in the world, but I think it gets better after a repeated viewing.

For the last scenes of the movie, I put the comic book pages away and started a sketch that turned into the below -- The Bear Collector, who is probably my favorite of all the villains I've created. I'll be back at it tomorrow night I think.

It's been a really busy few days, mostly good and a hint of bad.

• I took Friday off so I could jaunt down to Corbin to see my sister and my mom. Mom seems to have adjusted well to the nursing home. She has moments where she's not happy there, but others she where she's enjoying the company of the other ladies. My sister and I had a bitch-fest about my twin who hasn't visited Mom since Christmas. He lives in town, less than ten minutes from Mom, yet he does not want to visit. I'm not sure what his issues are, but I foresee me having it out with him soon over his behavior.



• Saturday was my drive home. It was relatively uneventful. I got back to spend a few hours cleaning the house in anticipation of the arrival of Steve (rootbeer1).



• Steve and I hung out for a few days, eating Skyline Chili multiple times and enjoying Graeter's Ice Cream. We did see "A Quiet Place" which was really good for a horror movie. We both agreed that sadly there was not enough shirtlessness on the part of bearded lead actor/director John Krasinski.



• I was back in the office today and swamped. In the middle of the day, my sister texted me that the nursing home had sent Mom to the hospital, thinking that she's had another stroke. She had stopped talking and responding to people. The doctors believe that she's had a "mini-stroke," but I asked my sis if she though Mom had contracted another UTI, which caused a lot of her issues last year. They sent her back to the nursing home, as the doctors said that there wasn't anything else they could do. However, they did find out... she has another UTI. Hopefully, they can treat it and Mom will get closer to normal.



• Tonight, I'm just exhausted, so it is just TV, watching the season finale of "Schitt's Creek" and reruns of "The Bionic Woman." I'm already looking forward to the weekend.



• Lastly, but not least, happy birthday hugs to the somewhat invisible xianjessen ;)

It's been a fairly active weekend, so here's a summary of everything that went on:

• Friday I called the cable company and set up a repair visit. They could have done it over the weekend, but I have to take Wednesday off, so I scheduled it for then. And the repair will be free believe it or not. I still plan on giving the installer company a good chewing out. While it isn't costing me anything, the annoyance of being without cable in my bedroom for nearly two weeks has sucked



• Saturday was a Cincinnati MovieBears outing to see "IT." It was a beautiful night and it was good see the guys. Everyone seemed to enjoy the movie, which I've now seen twice. I imagine that clowns will be a popular this Halloween.



• Brian (cincycub) brought me a wonderful gift. While he was at Market Days this year, he bought me three issues of "How to Kill A Superhero," by Pablo Greene, autographed to me. According to the author's website, www.howtokillasuperhero.net, the novels tell the story of Roland, a young man who is changed forever by an occult book that grants its reader dangerous but seductive superpowers. It involves some superheroic bondage, which is very enticing. I was so thrilled with them, I hugged Brian twice. I look forward to reading them. The author is very much into superheroes, spandex, and singlets. I can relate :)



• Sunday was mostly home stuff. I mowed the yard (by removing the boot and wearing the ankle guard), did laundry, and finished a retirement cartoon for a co-worker. It did wear me out a bit.



• Tonight is the series finale of "The Strain." I'm curious to see how our heroes defeat the Strigoi (the vampires). It's been a very interesting show, with some cute leads. After the last season where Zach set off a nuke and gave the vampires reign over the world, I'm kind hoping he gets offed. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to watch it.



• My next doctor's appointment is Wednesday. I sincerely hope I'm done with the boot. I need to get back into working out, as my lower body and mid-section are seriously out of shape.

I bought a horror movie four-pack DVD the other day. The set contains the original "Children of the Corn," "Creepshow 2," "House," and "C.H.U.D." All of them are movies from my childhood, so I had to get it.

As I was coloring a drawing the other day, I put the "C.H.U.D." DVD in and watched it for the first time since high school. For those unaware of the movie, C.H.U.D. stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller. In NYC, toxic waste stored underground transforms transients into flesh-eating monsters. It's somewhat cheaply made and gory in places, but it's a very standard 1980's horror flick.

What surprised me about the movie is the number of future movie/tv-stars in early non-lead roles, including Patricia Richardson from "Home Improvement," John Goodman from "Roseanne," and the recently-late Jay Thomas from "Mork & Mindy" and "Murphy Brown."

I was thoroughly entertained as usual.

There was a sequel according to IMDB, so I may have to add it to my Netflix queue.

After work on Friday, I hurried to the nearest movie theater to catch a 3D matinee of "Wonder Woman". The character was one of the few highlights of "Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice," so I was eagerly looking forward to seeing her solo movie.

I was surprised that the theater was so sparsely attended, even for a matinee, as it was just me and two other folks. I have to remember that I get off work earlier than most.

The movie was FANTASTIC! Any concerns I had about Gal Gadot getting the role of Diana were quickly dismissed. The story was great, the characters were entertaining, the setting was amazing, etc. The setting of the movie is WWI (hardly a spoiler), which is a bit outside of canon as Wonder Woman started in WWII, but it's forgivable. I loved the action. When Diana whips out her glowing lasso and it flies around the screen, I was almost giddy as it brings a character I adore to life for me.

I will watch it again in the theater, very soon, I think.

Saturday was a relatively dull day. The appliance repairman was supposed to show up early Saturday afternoon, only to show up at 6 PM that night. It does irritate me that I was left to linger about the house waiting for this guy to show, but the time wasn't wasted. I inked a lot of comic book pages that day. And the washer is fixed and fully operational again.

Now it's Sunday night and work will come early again tomorrow. Ugh.

I meant to post this earlier this week when I heard of the news, but things got away from me. I read online that Canadian ginger daddy-bear actor Chris Wiggins had passed away at age 87.


John D. LeMay, Chris Wiggins, and Robey
from "Friday the 13th: The Series"

He's probably best known by most of us as Jack Marshak, the occult expert on "Friday the 13th: The Series" that aired back in the late 1980's. There was one episode where Wiggins was shirtless and the fur was plentiful. He was in his late-50's at the time, but still in great bearish shape.

I also saw him in the 1969 "The Best Damn Fiddler from Calabogie to Kaladar", which won him the Best Actor Canadian Film Award (the Canadian equivalent of an Oscar, now called a Genie award). The movie is pretty good, and also stars a young Margot Kidder in her first feature role. You can watch the full movie online on YouTube and on the National Film Board of Canada website:

http://www.nfb.ca/film/best_damn_fiddler_from_calabogie_to_kaladar/

I'd recently bought a book about Friday the 13th: The Series, which included behind-the-scenes commentary from the actors, but noticed that Wiggins was not included in the interviews. I guessed that his advanced age might have been the reason and I was right. Wiggins passed away on February 19, 2017, from complications from Alzheimer's disease.

I was pretty happy to have the weekend start. Knowing I have several days off certainly did help. It's been a good weekend so far.

• Friday was a Christmas party at a friend's house. I had a great time. I met several new folks and I wish I had gotten last names so I could connect with them again, but I'm sure I'll see them around.



• Saturday was unseasonably warm. I got a break between rain bursts to get a late morning run in. I managed to do a full 3.4 miles, which felt really good. Once it gets really cold, I lose my enthusiasm to go out, but I force myself to do it.



• Saturday afternoon, I went with friends to see "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" at a swank new movie house called Cine-Bistro, where they serve dinner along with the movie. The movie was AMAZING! I'm not giving anything away, but, in my opinion, it is exactly what Episode Three should have been.



• I was invited to another Christmas party after the movie, but the rain was torrential and I just wanted to get home. It was so heavy that it almost doubled my drive home.



• Today, I went out to grab lunch and get the last of my Christmas shopping done. It was just a trip to Bath and Body Works to get some lotion that my mom likes, but it was a zoo. I was the only guy in there and the lines were long. I grabbed three of the lotions and a bath soap from the men's section for me, only to have the cashier tell me that I could get two more for free. After standing in line that long, I didn't want to get out of line to grab them, so I just told her that I didn't need them. She told me it would be cheaper and I still begged off, saying it was worth the money not to have to stand in the line longer. She nicely said that if I told her which ones, she would grab them while I paid for the goods with my credit card. So I got three of my bath soaps too.
  
  But still, this is how I feel about standing in lines during the Christmas season, I'm willing to forgo free stuff to get out. Luckily, I am now DONE!

I hope everyone had a good weekend!