I'm Not There

                                                                                                             The Shape of Water:      (An abused, humanoid fish species can find love with a woman and I can't even get a text back.) After a successful Christmas,  I took a day off work and went to go watch the highly anticipated The Shape of Water .  My interest in this film started over ten years ago when my buddy Guillermo Del Toro was in talks to direct The Creature From the Black Lagoon   remake but then it fell apart. When I first learned about The Shape of Water  my excitement returned and came to think of this as an unofficial Creature re-telling and in a way it could very well be seen that way. At it's core, this movie is about the two simplest human emotions, love and fear.  The fear of loving and hate through the fear prism.  Stepping back, this film is a beautifully emotional love story set in the worst sociopolitical climate this country has faced.  1962, whe

Memorable Christmas Commercials In no apparent order, some of the more memorable Christmas commercials from the 90's.  the best decade to grow up in.                                           Fruity Pebbles Christmas This one for Fruity Pebbles if from the early to mid 90's and it involves part of our favorite modern Stone Age family. Fruity/Cocoa Pebbles commercials always had Fred getting unreasonably mad that Barney was trying to steal a bowl of cereal even though Fred seemed to always have boxes of it. At one point, Barney had to have just simply asked Fred for a bowl of cereal and eventually Fred said no.  Sometimes in my head I wonder how much of a dick Fred was or if Barney was one of those people who always want to leach off of you and never do anything in return.  In any case, Barney impersonates Santa and breaks in to Fred's house only to find Santa and Fred already enjoying a bowl of delicious cereal.  (Nevermind that Santa showed up to

The Most Annoying Christmas Songs For a couple years now, every November we get treated to 24/7 Christmas music from certain stations.  Some think it's too early and some look forward to that day. There's even countdowns until the station switches over to X-mas music.  This year, I was excited but decided not to tune in until after Thanksgiving was over.  As much as I love Christmas songs, there are certain songs which I detest and cannot stand.  I often think of how cool it would be if we could write a list of songs for radio station to never play again ( Living La Vida Loca, Despasito, Don't Stop Believing, Enter the Sandman ) based on their constant rotation.  During Christmastime, there are songs that are just bad, not necessarily because they are played a lot, but because they are boring, tedious or annoying.  I hope I don't upset Jesus, a lot of the songs on this list are about His birth.  I love Jesus but these songs do Him a disservice.  Here's the

Merry Christmas..time season.  Enjoy some 80's goodness!

 The transition between Halloween and Xmas has gone from short to nonexistent from when I was a young child.  It's not that decorations and talk of turkey was prevalent in the days after we finished the candy, but we were not bombarded with red and green imagery while still in October.  It used to be that Black Friday was the thing that substituted Thanksgiving.  Judging by advertisements and media chatter, it seems now we stopped caring as much about Black Friday and are being conditioned to celebrate pre-Xmas in November.  I understand that Xmas sells and businesses want to exploit that idea as well as the feelings Xmas invokes in consumers. Hanukkah also takes place in December and part of it involves gift giving but for some reason, we don't see nearly as much blue and silver as as the red and green. I don't know or have ever heard of anybody that celebrates Kwanzaa.  I don't think Kwanzaa has its own TV special or movie so it too has not yet been properly exploi

This year's Halloween season is sadly complete., I reflect on what it is that makes Halloween so special for some of us.  It has been stated by many lovers of this deliciously dark holiday that Halloween is not just contingent of a single night, but of an entire spooky season.  Depending on your love or ADD, the Halloween season can start the second the Halloween greeting cards hit the shelves at the store, usually August or September. It is during this season where some of us relish in the preparation for the big day.  We strive to consciously and unconsciously recreate the childhood memories and activities that defined Halloween for us.  Activities like watching horror movies, decorating the house or planning spooky outings.  Mos of the pleasure lies in preparing and anticipating that October 31st night. If you ask children what they enjoy most about Halloween you'd be hard pressed to get more than the two big answers. Candy and costumes.  No one can blame kids, getting

Halloween

Tommy Lee Wallace and Universal meet to discuss continuing the legacy started by John Carpenter’s Halloween. TLW: So I got this idea for a movie right? UNI: Absolutely, Halloween was one of the biggest hits to date, people really seem to like horror movies and being scared, how do you plan to continue and improve this franchise? TLW: Well, we can call it Halloween 3 I guess UNI: So how are you bringing Michael Myers back to life after Halloween 2? TLW: Oh, well he’s going to play a reduced role in this one and we are going to focus more on the public. UNI: Interesting. So this will be from the perspective of Laurie and Dr. Loomis. Did we get Jamie Lee Curtis back? TLW: Haha well this is taking place in a different town with different people. The full title is called: Halloween III Season of the Witch. UNI: So this is about witches now? TLW: Actually, there’s no real witch in the movie, it’s a working title we’re thinking of changing

Ruining Halloween  Halloween is the only traditional holiday where it is accepted and expected for people of all ages to dress up in a costume.  Over the years, some of the men's costumes being sold have become increasingly and objectively weak.  If a witch was to re create men's costumes in her cauldron, she would add some laziness juice mixed with a good amount of  narcissist powder and topped off with a splash unfunny.  To prove this, I browsed Party City's website under the New Men's Costumes section.  Below are the gems that 2017 has produced: Chewbacca       Ripped pajamas with work boots, a man purse and a cheap mask.  If you're going to go through the trouble of wearing that cheap plastic mask, shouldn't the rest of the costume be better quality?  For some reason Chewie really wants you to see he has human hands, hopefully attached to the arms he ripped off of whoever though this was a good costume.   Pikachu Newsflash, onesi

                              Great Halloween Commercials Elvira's for Coors Light Party This commercial premiered when I was in 6th grade so despite what "very special" sitcom episodes told you, I did not care about beer at all. If you look closely, this commercial has it all: monsters, stupid puns, cool music and yes, beer.  Elvira herself has always been a fixture for Halloween promotions whether it be drinks, wacky movies or theme parks.  Speaking of which, she is currently performing her last show at Knott's Scary Farm.  She's so hot.   What makes it great is the attention to detail to the various creatures walking around.  They could have had 4 cheap looking monsters but the fact that it's a congregation of creatures with awesome music really yells "Halloween Party."  Even if there is a random bear and a Ruth Buzzi walking around.  I guarantee that is the last time most of you will hear a Ruth Buzzi reference this year, those of y

McBoo Hoo If you ask any kid that grew up in the United States in the 80's and 90's, an essential Halloween tradition was going to McDonald's during October to get a custom Halloween pail. Usually a Happy Meal would come in the classic cardboard box or a white paper bag (depending on how rough your side of town was).  However, starting in October of 1986 to celebrate Halloween, McDonald's would introduce these beautiful Halloween pails: These guys used the Happy Meal food as guts that you would then pick out and eat, kind of like how a spider sucks up the guts of a fly.  Gross.  Typically Happy Meals would have the promotional toys inside but in this case, the pail was the treat!  If the toys were a skeleton, this would be an exoskeleton.  Spiders have exoskeletons.  Once you finished the food, you had a nice bucket to go trick or treating with and could fill it with candies and/or pennies from cheap houses.   After depriving children from these in 1988,

Halloween Decorations Everybody Had If you grew up in the 80's and 90's you will remember that when houses that decorated for Halloween, it typically wasn't an extravagant ordeal like you see today with intricate lawn ornaments and electronic monsters.  During the month of October, I remember walking home from school and noticing more and more houses get in the spirit and decorate their windows as the month progressed.  That's right, people used to dress up their windows so that spooky decorations would face the outside world and put a smile on  anyone who appreciated the holiday.  Most of the time, these decorations were flat cardboard cutouts with the same image on both sides.  Sometimes you would see a shiny raised plastic decoration that stood out.  However, the most common and (in my opinion) the coolest decorations were not extravagant pieces of art at the time but they evoked the essence of Halloween, usually in the form of monsters and jack-o'-lanterns.