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 cou...

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 o...

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 disservic...

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 pr...

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...

Halloween