2010 Spooktacular Lineup

Spooktacular #5 - The Manitou
the best thing about being in wv is that i get to celebrate the spooktacular with a bunch of old friends.
like pimple face pete.
who actually never had a bad complexion; in fact, on several occasions his skin has been described as “luminous.”
by me.
but im a fan of alliteration and i called him pimple face so much that everyone, even him, remembers him as having terrible acne.
its like that old saying: “when legend becomes fact, its probably because youve needled someone about their imaginary faults so much that its become an all consuming neurosis.”
i havent seen pete for a while, but i bet hes feeling pretty high and mighty with his engineering degree and job.
time to bring him down a few pegs.
so when the magical native american midget devil jumps out of the womans neck, ill say something like, “you better watch out pete, looks like youve got a whole tribe a-brewin there.”
god, ive missed you guys.

Spooktacular #4 - Child's Play
i have to admit: i prefer the sequels, but this movies got great chucky effects and an even greater message.
its all about the perils of single motherhood and the importance of traditional family values.
see, kids need positive male role models, and if they dont have that then theyll start listening to any murderous puppet with a deep voice and an assertive personality.
thats why its important for women to stay married to their kids dad.
unless the dad is a murderous puppet with a deep voice and an assertive personality.
which apparently is a bigger problem than you might expect.

Spooktacular #3 - Dead Silence
some people have asked me why none of the saw movies have featured in my spooktacular lineups and its a great question.
but heres another brain teaser.
how would you react in the following situation:
someone has led you to believe that youre going to be treated to a five course meal at a fancy restaurant.
you get there and the first course is amazing.
the second dish is delicious, even better than the first.
then the third course comes and its a big mac.
and the chef is all like, “yeah sorry about that. i got bored looking for fancy ingredients and recipes, so i figured id just give you the popular thing that everyone else is having.”
the saw series has been going strong as long as this blog, but unlike this blog, saws are for sheeple.
every halloween hollywoods all like, “hey america, howd you like to see a cancer patient with a puppet force feed some anorexic girl pig feces in order to teach her a valuable lesson?”
to which america responds, “baaahhh!”
dont get me wrong, like the big mac saw has its place in the world, but if im looking for something real savory from the guys behind saw, ill pop in dead silence.
i wish dead silence 7 in 3d was coming out this year.
jigsaw might be an iconic character, but he cant hold a candle to donnie wahlbergs constantly shaving cop.
dont let anyone spoil the terrifying twist!

Spooktacular #2 - Signs
ive heard a lot of intellectual types whining about how great it would be if america had a better train system.
its ironic, because they seem to be getting by just fine riding the “m. night shamylan hater express.”
seriously, nowadays everybody wants to dogpile on this guy for the same reason i think he needs to keep making movies: he isnt afriad to keep the christ in "genocidal alien invasion of earth."
and it can be easy to forget because its kind of an anagram.
seriously, its there.
youve just got to really be looking for it.

Spooktacular #1 - Street Trash
to be a spooktacular #1, youve got to bring something special to the table, and street trash sprays neon-colored special all over your face.
this film is amazing.
the depth of the characters, the intricacy of the story, the richness of the urban environment.
its downright dickensian.
i imagine.
i mean, i havent actually read anything by dickens, mostly because his books are long and boring.
so actually, street trash is a lot better than anything dickens wrote.
and im sorry, but there arent nearly enough melting hobos in a tale of two cities for it to be considered street trashian.

originally posted: ... today.
happy halloween

Sixth Anniversary - Frank's Back

did you hear about those chilean miners?
how theyre all fine?
thats nice.
seriously, because... you know... it doesnt always work out that hot.
...
ok look.
technically i signed a non-disclosure agreement but i figure if anyones still visiting this blog they deserve an honest explanation of where ive been for the past 10+ months.
but its a long story, so youll have to bear with me:

So over the winter break, I got an amazing opportunity to do an internship with my personal hero: the Jebediah Langford.
For those of you who don’t know, Langford used to be one of the big dogs in West Virginian coal mining.
Back in the day he could have mined the tops off of the Mountains of Madness, and Cthulhu would have been all like:

“WTF Langford, my madness mountains... wait seriously, coal for that cheap?! That’s amazing, those prices are in-sane!”

The Great Old Ones are suckers for a good deal.
Of course, that all came to an end when two union reps were found brutally bludgeoned to death in his breakfast nook.
He was never convicted of anything but he sort of gracefully bowed out of the mining game after that.
Mining’s loss turned out to be public television and radio’s gain, because Langford started doing shows about the mining industry. I remember when I was a kid, curling up with some hot coco and listening to Langford’s soothing voice telling stories and weighing in on issues of the day. I’ve put up a clip of one of his classic bits, I hope it can give some indication of the guy’s magic.

Anyway, I was working crew on his TV show, doing odd jobs, and one day Langford pulled me aside and asked me what I was doing with my life and what my plans were.
Then he dropped the bombshell:
For the past few years he’d been running a mining operation off the books. It wasn’t union (classic Langford) but it paid super well because the conditions were so dangerous.
So I was like: “Jack pot!”
See, my parents were under the impression that, after four years, I was about to graduate from MNU. Which would have been hard... because I was still undeclared.
I had sat down with an adviser and they told me that the degree plan I was closest to completing was a BA in Brazilian-Asian Women’s Studies.
And I would still have 7/8ths of the program to complete.
Anyway, this was a golden opportunity for me to ditch that train wreck, so I dropped out of school and signed up with Langford’s crew.

I had been working about a week when the cave in happened.
It was about another week before we realized that no one was going to come looking for us.
Fortunately my study abroad program in Romania had prepared me for just such an occasion. You know, it’s true what they say: those special programs really do give you a head start in the real world.
I was able to use my experience handling these high stress situations to help set up a little underground mini-society. We had our own laws, economy, and customs, similar but distinct from the above ground American society.
I also knew about how long that would last: a week.
By the time it collapsed I was way ahead of everyone else in stockpiling weapons for the resulting anarchy.
Well, I’ll admit, the society might have lasted a little longer if I hadn’t smashed all the lights and then screamed: “I hope you’ve all said your prayers, because in the next four seconds I’m going to kill every single one of you.”
But if ifs and buts were candy and nuts we’d all have a Merry Christmas.
And there weren’t going to be any Merry Christmases down there.
Besides, the wouldn’t even let me be mayor.
I was stuck being “town barber/gossip.”

Then, about three months later, Langford actually sends some people to dig us out.
It was actually just smart business: the cave in had caused a lot of news people to nose around, and, since the operation wasn’t strictly ‘legal,’ Langford had to deny there had been any mining.
What was he supposed to do? Haul out a bunch of miners that didn’t exist?
No, instead he paid off the miners’ families and decided to wait until we were all dead to excavate the lost equipment to make back some of his investment (classic Langford).
When they did reach us, I was the only one left.
I’d been surviving on....
food.
Anyway, according to the team that found me, I was “more beast than man” at that point.
Did you see The Descent?
I was basically one of the cave gremlins from that.

Langford was super cool about it. I mean, if this was the 80s he probably would have just had me killed.
I mean, my family had already been told I was dead and they had their hush-hush money.
But I guess the intervening years have made Langford a big old softy, because he hired a team of anthropologists and told them I was a wild man from Borneo. He then had them reteach me English and basic social etiquette.
Did you see My Fair Lady?
Imagine if Eliza Dolittle was one of those cave gremlins from The Descent.
That was basically me.

So you’re probably thinking: “Man, that Langford’s a stand up guy.”
It gets better.
So Langford has me over to his estate for a lobster dinner. Now I’m still convinced that, any second, some guy in a pig mask is going to pop out and start strangling me with piano wire while Langford films the whole thing.
You know, to sell it later (classic Langford).
But what does he do instead?
He says, “Frank, what’s something you like?”
So I’m like, “Watching movies.”
Boom!
Langford pulls out a Film Degree from MNU.
He graduated me.
I don’t have to tell you, it meant a lot more coming from a guy like Langford than the president of some stupid college.
Then he’s all like, “How’d you like to leave the state?”
Boom!
Lanford pulls out some GRE scores.
He GRE’d me.
And apparently I did really well.
So I guess I’ll be going to grad school, which is pretty cool.
I mean don’t get me wrong, it sucks that I probably won’t be doing any more coal mining, but as one of Langford’s psychologists pointed out to me even being in a slightly dark room could re-trigger my animal instincts.
Come to think of it that might make watching movies difficult...
Oh well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!

Now technically I shouldn’t be writing about all this stuff, but I cleared it with Langford.
He said no one reads my blog anyway.
Which kind of hurt.
But that’s cool, because I can basically deal with anything at this point.
I just want you guys to know I was always thinking about you!
In fact, my first spoken words were, “Has anyone been maintaining my blog?”
As it turned out, my family had used some of my death money to hire a guy to archive what I’ve written in the past, so hopefully he’ll be all caught up with me before too long.
And the best part about this whole thing?
I’m back in time for Spooktacular... 13?
That sounds good enough.

originally posted: Thursday, October 21, 2010 (getting close)

Christmas Eve Eve

hope everyones ready for christmas!
all those other holidays had their shot, now its time for the big dog to show them how its done.
woof.
i just got back into war a week ago, and ive already received a great present from me to me.
see, i write down a lot of stuff. you know, things. and i write this stuff down on little pieces of paper, and i just put them places and then i forget about them. so when i come home i get to rediscover all the secret messages i left myself.
for instance, the following is an actual note i found that i had written to myself.
im not sure if it was a dream or an idea for a childrens show, but whatever it was i decided to write it down and hide it in a drawer:

the animal kids from franklin are having a magic school bus adventure.
only it isnt ms. frizzle in charge.
its captain planet, and hes trying to teach them about insect life.
so all the kids are shrunk down to the size of insects and captain planet takes them to a river.
so otter starts acting up and is screwing around in the water. i mean, its her nature, but shes asking for trouble.
and she gets it.
a trout eats her.
so now that shit has started to get real, captain planet makes the kids normal sized and bails on them.
thanks a lot.
anyway, the kids are crying by the river, cursing god and asking him to take them instead.
just then, a giant trout jump out of the river and swallows them whole.
but it turns out the trout is just the magic school bus, shaped like a trout.
and who is piloting it?
george w bush.
but hes young and covered in horrible third degree burns.
the kids are all freaked out by him, but he doesnt notice. he just drives his fish bus around the lake, sharing with them life lessons he learned from living too hard.

hope you guys get a present as good as that.
merry christmas.

originally posted: Wednesday, December 23, 2009

PSA

2009 Spooktacular Lineup

Spooktacular #5 - Hostel 2
a good opening spooktacular movie isnt just about the quality of the film, but also the potential it offers to humiliate someone there.
before your spooktacular, youll want to watch this movie and decide which scene is especially disturbing.
then, on the night of the event, youll want to pause when this scene is over and demand: “so, who here has an erection?”
now scan the faces of your guests and decide which one look guiltiest.
call that person out and say that, as this is just supposed to be a fun night for friends to watch movies together, they might prefer to go home and masturbate to footage of contractors being beheaded in iraq.
dont resume the evening until this person has left.
when they do leave, point out to everyone else that you were obviously joking and that that guy must have some serious problems.
depending on the tenacity of the person you have accused, you might not have time to finish hostel 2, or any of the movies, but thats the price you have to be willing to pay.
the downside to this is you will need to rent hostel 2, which will make the people at the video store think youre a pervert.
why hostel 2 you ask? because the advertising of that movie was basically: “all we can guarantee is that women will be humiliated and murdered. $10, please!"

Spooktacular #4 - Candyman
im on the record as a fan of candyman 2: farwell to the flesh, but ive also got to give props to the original.
if i said to you that a strange black man would appear in your house tonight, youd be understandably upset.
if i said it would be a magical black man, youd probably chill out because youre imagining morgan freeman making mint juleps out of thin air while teaching you valuable lessons about tolerance.
thats why candyman is so effective.
its the classic bait and switch.
you stroll in looking for a distinguished gentleman and find a hook handed slaves ghost with a penchant for white women.
welcome to danger town! population- oh.
youre already dead.
but not before you peed yourself.
by the way, in case you were wondering, my feelings on candyman 3: day of the dead are… mixed.
i think i would have preferred it if it were its own thing, but it doesnt measure up to the artisitic standards of the other candymans.
candymen?

Spooktacular #3 - A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
ive got to brag, i totally shamed some film student with this one.
i told him that i was going to show the horror movie with the most famous shower scene in cinema and he was all like, “oh yeah, psycho is a great halloween movie!”
are you kidding me?
im as big a vince vaughn fan as the next guy but i barely even remember that thing.
no i was talking about nightmare on elm street 2, which features a leather bar frequenting gym coach getting the treatment from freddy in the shower.
this is a movie with a message that im surprised slipped under the hollywood liberal radar.
its all about how homosexuality is like having the ghost of a claw handed child molestor inside of you.
feel free to use this for your youth groups movie night too.

Spooktacular #2 - Grizzly
some people just dont get scary. for example, a friend of mine suggested i show jaws at my spooktacular.
last time i checked, kansas was a pretty definitively landlocked state.
have you ever thought about the logistics and planning necessary for jaws to be a threat?
first of all, its off season, so youd want to wait over half a year before the weather was pleasant enough to be devoured.
then youd have to get some friends together to split the driving time and gas money, and youd still probably want to book a hotel room.
then theres all the stuff youll want for a trip to the realm where jaws holds dominion – swimsuits, towels, sunscreen, buckets for seashells, light reading… the list goes on and on.
i imagine myself being really psyched about the idea of the trip, but quickly losing interest and finally just watching jaws do his thing on shark week.
by the time you get to the beach youve done so much work you might as well crawl into jaws mouth and move it up and down on your torso.
given the state of the puppet, you actually might be called upon to do that.
plus he was killed by the guy from all that jazz.
come on.
but heres a question: do you live on land? are you edible?
then grizzly is something you should seriously worry about.
priorties, people. thats what terror is all about.

Spooktacular #1 - Drag Me to Hell
not since face/off has a movie so thoroughly delivered on its title.
this movie is all about a young woman and her attempts to avoid a demon whose goal is the above.
spoiler alert: she fails.
also, this movie shines a harsh light on a group that has been given a free ride for way too long: gypsies.
seriously, im pretty sure the only contribution the make to society is to occasionally curse people who dont have time for their bullshit.
thanks gypsies. way to pull your weight.
admittedly, this movie might loose something if it isnt seen in a big theater full of people screaming stuff at the screen like, “bitch, he gonna drag you to hell!” but its still a really fun movie and this years #1 spooktacular film.

Spooktacular XV

you know, there have always been pretenders to the throne.
guys who are all like, “oh, you call it a spooktacular too? maybe its just not that clever a play on words.”
or maybe i shouldnt live in a glass house.
seriously, one guy had the gall to come up to me and whine that i was forcing our mutual friends to choose between spooktaculars and that i should move mine.
he was all, “but ive been throwing spooktaculars since i was in high school! its my thing! couldnt you just have a dia de los muertos taco and movie night?”
…
its a tribute to the civilizing forces of our society that i didnt slap him in his dirty little whore mouth.
dia de los muertos isnt a halloween substitute.
its just proof that mexicans are cowards.
they see our scary movies and our spider webs in store windows and our children dressed like transformers and theyre terrified.
so, in a vain effort to make themselves feel better, they make skeletons gay.
you know how they say that guys who drive big cars have small penises?
if you dress symbols of death like theyre in a mariachi band, youre not proving anything except that you cant take it.
and since high school?
please.
sorry buddy, this event isnt moving.
everyone needs get ready for the blistering experiment in psychology that is the hank young memorial spooktacular XV!

originally posted: Monday, October 26, 2009

Labor Day

it feels good to have a day off after i spent the whole summer working.
well thats not true.
i spent the beginning of my summer lying in a drug-induced coma while my parents periodically poured beef broth into my mangled and swollen mouth to keep my body from eating itself.
just for comparisons sake, last summer at that time i was in europe.
then after that i had my internship, but ill tell you guys about that later.
i dont want to do anything today.
the only thing ive done was go on wikipedia to read the labor day article.
apparently it all came about because there were these big strikes going on and the military killed some of the workers.
so congress gave them monday off.
thats the greatest idea ever.
the workers were probably all like: “do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men, it is the music of a people – wait what? three-day weekend?! badass! theyre gonna need someone else to man the barricades because me and the family are taking the jet ski out on the lake! later!”
only they didnt have jet skis back then, so they were probably taking their horse drawn dirigibles out on the lake.
that probably didnt go so hot.
still you could probably weasel yourself a whole week after that!
ive missed you guys.
more soon.

originally posted: Monday, September 07, 2009

Pre-op

hope everybody had a good memorial day. mine was ok, though i did end up having to go see my grandpa to pay tribute to his service.
i managed to get away pretty early though. he doesnt get around so well anymore and he wanted me to go out and get him some milk. so i went out and never came back.
he called the house later and was so glad i was alive he didnt yell at me or anything.
freebie!
so with all the free time that left me i decided to give my wisdom teeth a final hurrah by gnawing on hard things.
im having surgery today to get them taken out and im looking forward to being done with it.
since people found out i was having the operation, my inbox has been flooded with articles about all the things that can go wrong with surgery in general.
you know, stuff about the chances of dying from anesthesia and cases where people were put to sleep but could still feel everything, only they couldnt scream or let anyone know or anything.
not that i havent been given some good advice.
a friend recommended that i use a permanent marker to write "wisdom teeth" over and over all over my body, because sometimes the doctors forget what they were supposed to remove and amputate a leg or something.
im planning on spending the rest of my time before the surgery taking photos of my face expressing various emotions, just in case the doctors destroy my facial nerves and my face becomes a blank mask (it happens!)
i figure if that happens i can print the photos out and carry them around, then i can hold them over my real face whenever i want to express emotion.
which would actually be a great indie movie.
that photo-face guy could fall in love with some spacey karaoke enthusiast who lives with her widowed father, who spends his days reenacting wwii battles with toy soldiers in his basement.
that would win the shit out of sundance

originally posted: Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Teabag

yes, i did go to my local tea party.
partly it was so i could be a part of history, partly it was because i hadnt done that days reading for my sociology of thai transsexuals class (not as interesting as the course catalog made it sound).
the last thing i need at 9:30 in the morning is professor jungrungreangkit giving me the stink eye.
the whole thing made me feel really good. i dont want the $4 the man took out of my phone interviewer paycheck lining the pockets of some wall street fat cat.
still, it would have been nice if more people had paid attention to us.
i was hoping that the media would come out and interview me about why i was there, and the significance of my native american garb.
it also would have been cool if the police had come out and shot me with a rubber bullet. then i could have shown people the bruise while explaining why i was there, and the significance of my native american garb.
as it was, there was a lot of down time. fortunately some guy dressed as superman (he explained it, and it made a lot of sense at the time but ive forgotten the reason) had brought his iphone and we spent a lot of time looking at youtube videos.
how did barnyard commandos get canceled?
did those guys ever do anything else, because if the answer is yes i want to see it!
he also showed me his twitter.
he twitters about all kinds of stuff, like “showing a guy my twitter =-)” which sounds pretty gay, but is also pretty awesome.
so ive decided to start up a twitter. its the next logical step in my expansion of the frank berry franchise.
shaq has one. p diddy has one. why not me?
and maybe ill update it more often than once every two months.
maybe.

originally posted: Sunday, April 19, 2009

'Friday the 13th' (bad mood)

i cant believe it: im not excited about the newest friday the 13th.
ive been looking forward to a new friday the 13th every friday the 13th since the last friday the 13th when they had a friday the 13th.
but this one is apparently just jason in the woods killing teenagers.
now dont get me wrong, thats what i loved about these movies in the first place. but news flash hollywood: you cant go home again.
we already had that movie. it was called friday the 13th 2 and it was great.
but since then, everyone has brought something fresh to the mix.
even when they made him into a zombie in 6, the people who made 7 knew they couldnt just rest on their laurels. they had to make him a zombie fighting a psychic.
they sent him to space, and now hes just a dude in the woods again?
you cant go from space to boring! thats not how it works!
mostly im mad because it feels like i wasted all that time writing my friday the 13th screenplay.
heres what i was thinking: hes in space, right?
thats established. thats done.
so theyve got all this fancy technology in space, right?
so they trick jason into going into a time machine and BAM! hes in the middle ages.
i dont want to give too much away, but amazing happens.
heres an excerpt:

EXT. MIDDLE AGES – NIGHT

PEASANT #45 and LADY PEASANT #76 are behind the MUTTON SHOP, tonguing down like there’s no tomorrow (which there isn’t, but they don’t know that yet, and neither does the audience).

LADY PEASANT #76
What if my ye’ olde man hears us?

PEASANT #45
Your father can’t hear anything over the roar of his plague.

That MUSIC starts playing, you know the one, the one that means JASON’S around. At this point, BLACK PEOPLE will probably start yelling things at the screen like: “RUN BITCH!” The PEASANTS can’t hear, and they just keep going at it.

JASON emerges, wearing BLOODY KNIGHT ARMOR and carrying a BLOODY SWORD. He CLEAVES PEASANT #45 IN HALF!

LADY PEASANT #76 starts SCREAMING. She ISN’T WEARING A SHIRT (she was never wearing a shirt, I just forgot to mention that until now). Her BREASTS are covered in LIQUIFIED PEASANT #45. Things don’t look good.

DRAGON comes up behind her and EATS most of HER.

JASON throws up his arms as if to say: “Dude, Dragon, I was totally about to kill her!” DRAGON shimmies and shakes as if to say: “Sorry Jason, but she looked good enough to eat.” JASON and DRAGON laugh/roar, high five. (Note: A lot of JASON and DRAGON’s scenes together will rely on EXPRESSIVE EYE ACTING and PHOTOREALISTIC CGI EYE ACTING. It will be THE DIRECTOR’S JOB to deal with that – Peter Jackson?).

thats right, my friday the 13th would have jason teaming up with a dragon.
but i guess well just have to wait 20 more years for the remake to take us to a point where Friday the 13th Part 11: A Retarded Sociopathic Zombie in King Arthur’s Court makes sense.

originally posted: Friday, February 13, 2009

Obama

so i just had my first day of classes.
which is pretty good considering that school started over a week ago.
when i went to class, all my professors tried to get up in my grill but i just lied and told them i had been in washington attending obamas inauguration.
i finished up my story about how amazing it was by saying, “its like bob dylan said: the times,” then i paused dramatically, “they are a changin.”
then the professor smiled and nodded slightly as if to say, “yeah… i guess they are.”
and then, as though i had read his mind, i quietly said, “yeah.”
i plan on using the same line to explain why i wont be in class the day of any speech obama gives.
i know what youre probably thinking. youre probably all, ‘frank, isnt it overly optimistic to put so much faith in one man?’
no worries. even if obama sucks, the same line will work with slight alteration.
ill just say, “its like bob dylan said,” then ill look down at the ground, “the times, they are a ch- ”
ill stop there, like im too upset to speak, and just when it seems like i wont be able to continue ill bravely rally and find the strength to finish the lyrics: “they are a changin.”
then the professor will smile and nod, but in a sad way, and ill say: “yeah.”
i cant wait till i get a chance to reelect him!
obama 2012
... oh wait, i forgot

originally posted: Friday, January 23, 2009

New Years

i cant believe i slept through new years.
i was so excited about the prospect of staying up until midnight that i couldnt get to sleep the night before.
the good news is that i finished reading my grandpas erotic novel.
theres surprisingly little about lesbians in there.
most of it is the two main male characters sitting around, smoking, and talking about the pressing issues of the day. things like whether men should be allowed to grow beards if they work in an office.
they decide they shouldnt.
unless the man works on a pirate ship.
anyway, i still managed to make my list of resolutions.
heres what you can expect me to be working on in the new year:
1) use my head start on the chinese to my full advantage. the chinese are about five months late celebrating the new year. god knows why. im guessing theres some sort of myth involving a dragon that "explains" it. anyway im going to make something while the sun shines and i advise you to do the same. unless youre chinese. in which case pop another pack of pringles and wait for the year of the whatever.
2) beat death at his own game. that one explains itself.
3) and… um… finish watching the first season of the tudors on dvd. i know that sounds like a cop out resolution, but that show really speaks to me. if i was an english king, id totally be henry viii. i wouldnt be afraid to sex/sass it up when needs be. my court would be all: "diplomatic crisis!" and id be all: "arm wrestling!" and id win, cause im guessing most medieval brits havent seen over the top once, let alone 10 times.

originally posted: Thursday, January 01, 2009

Merry Christmas

i know it seems late, but my family didnt celebrate until today.
my little brothers birthday is today and my parents realized a long time ago that they could save a lot of money on presents if they just combined it with christmas.
in order to keep my brother happy weve had to tell him that we all wait till today to have our birthdays too.
i go along with it because ive always loved our secret birthdays.
we send my brother out to a movie, draw the curtains, and have a great time!
this year, however, i have to applaud the sheer audacity of my parents.
due to concerns over the economy, they decided to save even more money by making their only gift to my brother be reuniting him with grandpa.
grandpa hasnt been welcome in our house since he took out my brothers eye with his belt buckle.
it was an accident.
i was away at college so i dont know the full story.
i think grandpa was trying to show him a magic trick or teach him a lesson.
or teach him a lesson about magic.
apparently my brother likes to hold a grudge, because he didnt seem to like his present much.
he hid in the hall closet and made a loud screeching sound until grandpa left.
in order to teach him another lesson, my grandpa gave me his present: a series of soft core lesbian erotica my grandpa wrote in the 50s, back when he was a young, slightly disgruntled veteran.
i didnt even know they had lesbians back then!

originally posted: Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Wrap Up

i would have written my post-election coverage sooner but ive just been so mad.
what the hell guys?
i thought we agreed on huckabee.
and dont even act like you voted for him, cause i know how many votes he got: one.
ill give you the benefit of a doubt and just assume you were as confused by the ballot as i was.
there were, like, a million other things we were apparently supposed to vote on, and i didnt know anything about any of them.
i just wrote in huckabee for all of those as well.
even the propositions.
i figured he had to win something, but it doesnt look like that worked out any better than my other plan.
i would say, “better luck next election,” but thats 2012 and well probably be too busy worrying about quetzalcoatl swallowing the world whole to think much about the elections.
although i bet obama will try and have a last minute sit down negotiation with the feathered serpent. without any preconditions.

originally posted: Friday, November 21, 2008

Vote

first of all, thanks to everyone who showed up for my spooktacular!
im just sorry i couldnt let any of you in.
who would have guessed that virtually everyone i know would dress as the joker for halloween? in fact, the only guy who wasnt the joker was smelly dan, who was batman.
partly because of my insistence on calling him by his nickname, smelly dan and i have never been close.
i think our evening together just drove us farther apart.
it started off weird because i jokingly suggested we should play wrestle. which quickly became a real wrestling match.
i ended up picking him up and body slamming him onto a coffee table, which knocked the wind out of him and broke the table.
after he was feeling a little better, we started watching the movies.
that went okay, until he said frogs was boring.
i waited about 10 minutes so hed think there was no problem, then i punched him as hard as i could in the ear.
that was pretty much the end of the evening for smelly dan.
anyway, im glad he at least made it through wicker man, because thats an important movie to see during this election year.
basically, its a dramatization of what will happen to america if obama becomes president.
first theyll take “under god” out of the pledge of allegiance, then everyone will be dancing around the maypole and setting me on fire.
i dont like using this blog as a political platform, but i encourage you all to do what im going to do: write in huckabee.
together we can make america great.

originally posted: Monday, November 03, 2008

2008 Spooktacular Lineup

Spooktacular #5 - The Wicker Man
“oh la-de-da! im a self-satisfied smart ass college student. whats this? a remake of the wicker man? that sounds like it will make a great term paper! tootley tum tee tum.”
(2 hours later)
“oh no! neil labute has made a film that deals with gender relations in a way more insightful and terrifying than any of my pretentious papers for my class “emily bronte and colonialism.” this cant be! i know, ill use the editing software on my mac to take random scenes out of context and make the movie look silly. now no one will take the wicker man remake seriously. ho ho, what a lark! wait till i show the boys in “the jewish diaspora in the works of marcel proust” this!”
the gigs up.
dont listen to the hype: this movies great and ill be spreading the word at this years spooktacular.

Spooktacular #4 - Frogs
i have a friend who is taking this year off to “you know… like, find myself… explore… stuff like that.”
i thought that was pretty cool, but all hes done with that time is grow a pony tail and join greenpeace.
now i have to keep pretending i dont know/see him when he asks me if i want to sign a petition to save the earth.
people have always been worried about the environment, and back in the 70s people thought nature was one dropped gum wrapper away from taking us all out.
case in point: frogs, a film about almost every animal except frogs ruining some rich peoples 4th of july party.
cut to almost 40 years later and were all still here to laugh at what fools our parents were to worry about the environment.
im guessing my children will be showing the happening at their spooktaculars.

Spooktacular #3 - King Kong (1976)
this was actually scheduled to be one of the films for 2001s spooktacular, but that was the year that 9/11 happened and it just felt too soon to show a film with a giant monkey crawling all over the world trade center (we will never forget).
im not sure if its still too soon, or if it stopped being too soon a while ago, but im sick of waiting.
ive been sitting on this gem for years and the feelings of my more whiny friends will just have to take a back seat to awesome.
i dont get how this thing fell between the cracks. in some ways, its the best king kong movie.
little handpuppet king kong: old and dumb.
cgi king kong, which you know is really some british character actor in form-fitting lycra: … distracting.
man in a king kong suit: just right.

Spooktacular #2 - Evil Dead
seriously people, this ones a classic.
im not even going to bother doing a write up for you. all im going to say is this:
tree rape.
be there.

Spooktacular #1 - Predator 2
you want to know the definition of unfair? there were four alien movies, and they all suck. there were only two predator films, and they were awesome. then the aliens came in and totally femmed up the predators.
aliens v. predators has a predator teaming up with some human chick to fight their common enemy. as opposed to ripping her spine out of her back and using it like a crazy straw.
thats like a hunter and a deer working together to defeat a bear: its lame and retarded.
im surprised the sex in the city movie didnt have the predators palling around with girls, sipping cosmos, and shopping.
anyway, the real predators went out in a blaze of masculine glory in this amazing film which sees danny glover fighting the space devils with a little help from the human equivalent of a predator: gary busey.
by the way, kudos to gary busey – the first actor to star in two #1 spooktacular films!

Spooktacular '08

so were getting dangerously close to a crisis point with the spooktacular
a lot of my friends have been saying they wont come this year because they want to “go to fun parties,” and not hang out with me in my “room, which smells like mildew by the way, watching lame movies.”
boo.
and not like the ghost boo. boo as in boo.
first: any halloween party that claims to even come close to matching my spooktacular is, at best, massively deluded, and at worst severely retarded and in need of some type of live-in caregiver to keep it from setting fires so it can see the pretty colors.
second: if the smell really bothers you guys, we can crack a window. just ask. im not going to get an attitude about it like smelly dean.
third: lame? oh yeah, the movies i spend a year picking out are lame. i guess im wasting my time. i mean just look at this years blisteringly awesome line up. it cant possibly be that youre scared youll dump yourself in the middle of the party and it will spawn some hilarious/humiliating new nickname.
no, that cant be it.
so dont wuss out.
be there.
as long as youre not dressed like the joker.
im going as the joker. i called it right after i saw the movie and anyone else who dresses as the joker is a poser. seriously, if anyone shows up dressed as the joker i wont let them in.
no exceptions.
why so serious?
because i love halloween.

originally posted: Sunday, October 26, 2008

Alive

its been a while.
romania was great, just so you know.
you always think that foreigners are going to give you all this attitude for being american, but theyre super cool about it.
seriously, you tell them youre american and they get all excited and start shouting things like “madonna! gangsta paradise!”
then they dance around a little.
then they give you free stuff.
its pretty sweet.
i wish i could have spent more time there above ground. and i wish my time below hadnt involved that cave in.
you might have heard about it, apparently it was the third news story down on the yahoo main page for almost half an hour.
i was super thrilled that id taken the time to learn the romanian for: “american citizen! you eat me, you answer to the #1!”
anyway, as i lay in the dark, huddling next to boris for warmth (facebook me dude!), i promised myself that if i ever got out i would live every day to its fullest.
so i made a podcast.
hope you enjoy. and remember: spooktaculars right around the corner!

originally posted: Friday, October 24, 2008

Abroad

i just want to give everyone a heads up: this isnt just any blog entry.
this is an exotic blog entry.
im writing this from romania, where i will be living for the next month during a coal mining study abroad program.
i know a lot of people (like my parents) are all like, “but theres plenty of that to be done in west virginia.”
thats true, but im in college. ive got to experience new things and expand my horizons if i want to be on the cutting edge of coal mining.
its only a matter of time before the industry starts trying to give our jobs to some stupid robots.
when employers are trying to make the decision between me and a robot that can work a lot harder and be crushed in cave ins with no one caring, a study abroad trip on my resume could really give me the edge.
i realize that romania isnt a “sexy” place to do study abroad.
most people like to go to countries like france or germany.
well, what romania lacks in hilarious racial tension, it makes up for in sheer volume of vampires.
anyway, ive only been here for two days and im totally stoked.
i had my orientation yesterday, where they taught me all kinds of useful romanian phrases like “hello,” “please,” “oh my god, the canarys dead. there must be a gas leak! oh god please dont let me die down here… in the dark… all alone,” and “thank you.”

originally posted: Sunday, May 25, 2008

Telephone

so with the summer movie season coming up, ive had to get a job.
i was thinking that i could just leech the ticket price off my parents for each of the big ones, but they recently told me that theyll only give me enough to see each one once.
thats totally unfair.
anyone who has seen the speed racer trailer knows itll take at least three viewings to get all the way through without having a seizure.
what if im flapping around on the floor with a wallet in my mouth and i miss some classic little boy & monkey hijinks?
unfortunately the only place hiring this late into the semester was a telephone survey company.
im not sure if youve ever thought about the dynamics of that job, but it requires you to talk to the kinds of people who take telephone surveys.
like, you have to listen to them.
and immortalize their opinions into a database so that it can one day influence policy and research on the topic theyre yammering about.
weak.
the work would be crazy boring/depressing, but i figured out a little trick to help the shifts fly by!
i just call up people, say that im one of my coworkers, and threaten them.
so if you end up working in a place like this and you see a sign that says "Interview Tip: Don't Say You'll Burn the Respondent's World to the Ground," youre welcome.

originally posted: Sunday, April 27, 2008

Confession

i think i need to come clean about something.
im not a real person.
this whole blog is just one big joke.
that picture on my profile?
i found it doing a google image search for "frank."
i claim to tell it like it is... but the whole thing is a sham.



april fools!
oh my god you should have seen your face!
you were all like: "im not at all surprised by that."
idiot!
you might as well call me captain corelli, cause i played you suckas like a mandolin!

originally posted: Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Competition

hope you had a good easter.
but mostly i hope you remembered last sunday was easter.
i realize a lot of you were probably too busy spraying each other with powdered stupid to notice.
there was some indian festival going on the same day and it totally stole easters thunder here on campus.
that really isnt cool.
what makes it so low is that they targeted easter like that.
if it was christmas, that would be okay.
christmas can hold its own.
but easter, my spell check doesnt even try to automatically capitalize that when im typing this.
coming at easter with loud music, dancing, and multi-colored fun is like mike tyson fighting stephen hawking.
only not as funny.
but no! you enjoy your festival of ruined clothing or whatever its called!
i guess ill just have to make due with the resurrection and the life!

originally posted: Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Book Review: Daddy's Roommate

* / *****


look kid, thats great that your dad has a "roommate."
but would it be asking to much for him to tear his eyes off his gay lover while you lean out over the water?

p.s: do yourself a favor, go to amazon and read the excerpt.


originally posted: Friday, April 01, 2005 (oops)

Co-op

im coming home for spring break and im really looking forward to seeing some of the old gang.
but something happened to me since i last saw you guys that im not exactly proud of.
so i want you to hear it straight from me and not on the street.
im going to be living in a cooperative house next year.
there.
i said it.
in case you dont know, co-ops are where hippies go after a hard day of drum circles, tie-dying, and solving “groovy” mysteries.
and they spring up around college campuses like mold on bread.
i waited to come out about this till i knew for sure i was in, but its been a foregone conclusion for a while now.
youve got to get voted into the house to make sure they dont let in anyone with bad chi, but my interview went great.
i lied and said my name was moonbeam and that i spent last summer on a peyote trip, during which i dreamed a coyote ate my feet, which taught me the importance of renewable energy.
i swear to god: they were crying.
the real question is: why i would want to live there?
because the rents about $4 a month and its right next to campus.
if ive got to plant corn and hand out pamphlets about 9/11 conspiracies to keep from paying my own water and electric, so be it.

originally posted: Saturday, March 08, 2008

Valentine's (NOT)

people who follow this blog are aware that i normally receive a valentines poem from my friend gary every year without fail.
despite the fact that he died over three years ago.
well, all good things must come to an end.
my parents called and told me that war had recently discovered that its cememtary was located on top of an indian burial ground.
apparently gary wasnt the only dead man delighting/terrifying those who once knew him.
so the state sprung from some hotshot shaman to come in and bless the whole place so “the dead could rest in peace.”
well i dont care what fred gwynne says, im going to miss my valentines.
my gay r.a. gave me a spiderman 3 one, but he did that for everyone on the hall.
and mine didnt even make sense!
it had a picture of that butler on it with the words “the blade that pierced his body came from HIS glider.”
it didnt even say valentines on it.
it didnt even have a heart on it.
just that picture and quote.
oh well.
hope you had a good one.

originally posted: Friday, February 15, 2008

Magic Helmet & Commentary

hey! an entry posted less than a month since the last one.
the internet is an amazing place.
and i like to think it just got a little more amazing.
due to popular demand... well, the persistent demand of at least one person, ive finally uploaded my final creativity project from last semester onto youtube.

and once youve had time to digest the subtleties, enjoy my commentary.

originally posted: Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Racism

hope youve been having a restful martin luther king day.
personally, ive been honoring him and his commitment to social change by bringing about radical change to his wikipedia article.
anyway, the only thing that seems to be as popular as not doing anything on mlk day is being a racist.
i was just walking around campus and some guy came up to me and asked me if i wanted to celebrate my aryan heritage.
of course i told him to get lost.
well, actually i went with him at first, but just because i thought we were going to be making scrapbooks or something cool like that.
the second i realized what was happening and i was done eating their free pizza i totally pretended to go to the bathroom and took off.
i fought their hatred with passive aggression.
i guess that makes me kinda like dr. king...
anyway, thats why the racists will never win.
because everyone knows that if they had their way, we would have had to go to class today.
and it was cold and raining.
forget that.

one last thing, i know i dont normally blog on current events (too easy) but i just saw an article titled: “Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary makes last journey”
i thought they had done something awesome like carried his body up a mountain or shot it into space.
but no.
apparently his last journey was just into his grave.
way to disappoint hillary.

originally posted: Monday, January 21, 2008

Resolutions '08

hope you had a good christmas.
i always have a nice, relaxing one because i get my shopping out of the way early.
i long ago gave up trying to guess what people actually wanted so i just get everyone i know a copy of 'why black people tend to shout' and the receipt.
its like giving them money, if money was a book about a black person complaining about other black people.
which, for the record, i think it should be.
anyway, its a new year and ive come up with some resolutions for 2008:
1) stopping faking statistics. i always like to expand my friends minds with interesting or offbeat factoids, but i hate doing research, so i usually just make them up. well, i had a close call last year. i was talking about how 'us news and world report' had an article about how 14% of wrestling ends in rape. then this one guy with an actual subscription started going on about how there was no such article. fortunately, i distracted everyone by saying "i thought the only magazine you subscribed to was 'us homosexuality and pictures of men having anal sex.'" still, that was too close for comfort and i might not be so quick witted next time.
2) write my own sci-fi channel original movie. originally, i wanted to try and write a whole script, but thats way too much work. with sci-fi channel movies, you just need to come up with one or two words and youve got a script. case in point: mansquito. im thinking terrordactyl. all ive got to do is write that on a index card, send it to sci-fi, and theyll probably send along a budget and a once respected actor.
3) reach out to inner city youths. now im not sure if olathe has an inner city, but if we do i can bet those kids could always use a lesson in something other than urban violence. and i could always use an uplifting movie about me. maybe i could teach them to write sci-fi channel original movies.
have a good 08.

originally posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2008

German Christmas

first of all, thank you for the concerned emails.
to answer your question: no, i did not succumb to the despair of loneliness and hang myself with my belt.
i was thinking about you during the holidays too.
actually, i found a family to take me in over thanksgiving.
and not just any family, a family with a last name that sounds like a racial slur.
the chinamans. i think its jewish.
theyre good people. they fed me, they gave me a place to sleep, and they let me listen to their recordings of evp.
salt of the earth.
anyway, i just wanted to wish everyone a happy kind of german christmas.
apparently the germans have split up christmas into two parts.
see, they have christmas, which is all about jesus, and then they have today, which is when santa comes.
that way you can still have santa without him stealing jesus thunder.
its a pretty great idea. too bad its a country full of atheists.
its got its own name but i cant remember what it was… something german…
oh wait, i remember now!
happy kristallnacht!

originally posted: Thursday, December 06, 2007

Retrospooktive

oh jeez. its sunday?
i was planning on updating this right after the spooktacular but i guess i must have gone into a light diabetic coma.
i just woke up this morning with five horror movies that are so overdue i should probably just go ahead and keep them and never go back to the video store.
this wouldnt have happened, except i bought like a hundred bags of candy and i ate everything that was left after my friends left.
normally that isnt an issue but this year a lot of people ended up going to some other kids spooktacular.
still, they got what they had coming to them because that guys line up had things like hotel rwanda, the killing fields, and shoah.
thats right
the whole thing.
he wouldnt let anyone leave early “out of respect for the dead.”
and the movies took even longer then they normally would because he kept pausing them and saying “whats really horrifying, is that people can treat each other this way.”
even after the movies were done he made everyone stick around to listen to him read some excerpts from the diary of anne frank.
anne frank might have been able to forgive humanity for the nazis, but i bet she would have been pretty ticked off at that guy for ruining halloween.
and for reading her diary in front of a bunch of people.

originally posted: Sunday, November 11, 2007

2007 Spooktacular Lineup

Spooktacular #5 - Freaks
i know, i know, i promised never to show an old movie.
before color the only thing people thought was scary was the prospect of someone not buying war bonds.
but there are some advantages to movies from the olden days.
for instance, no one objected to depicting the handicapped like this.
a friend of mine dragged me to the disability film festival (yeah, thats a real thing) and this was playing there.
i dont know why, i guess to show that the disabled are just as capable of mutilating attractive women as the rest of us.

Spooktacular #4 - Frankenhooker
ive never seen this movie.
but i dont need to to know its great.
just from the title, i know this is about a zombie hooker. presumably made up of chunks of several dead hookers.
and apparently it involves a tragic lawnmower accident (are there any other kinds?)
mary shelly wishes she could come up with something like this.

Spooktacular #3 - I Spit on Your Grave
(not to be confused with I Spit Chew on Your Grave or I Spit on Your Corpse, I Piss on Your Grave)
so, once frankenhooker is over, i figure i should play something to even things out for the ladies (for real, there will be some there this year).
now i dont "get" feminism, but i have seen this movie like 15 times.
which means i have an unofficial doctorate in womens studies.
which is unfortunately every bit as useless as an official doctorate in womens studies.
the point is, if all feminism was like this, women would have gotten the vote a lot sooner.
abigail adams should have said: "remember the ladies, or they'll chop off your thing and let you bleed out in a tub."
id have listened.

Spooktacular #2 - Wolfen
this past columbus day i was celebrating by wearing my columbus costume when some hippy chick threw red paint on me and screamed, "columbus is murder!"
ill tell you whats murder: ruining a guys columbus costume.
those things arent cheap.
im sure she was talking about the indians and i wish i could invite her to this movie.
if it wasnt for small pox and men like columbus and albert finney, these indians/wolves would have walked all over us and our freedom.
god bless america.
... and halloween.

Spooktacular #1 - Weasels Rip My Flesh
when you think of indie movies, what comes to mind?
long, boring films where nothing happens?
subtitles?
graphic old person on horse sex?
thats a shame because some indie movies are 'weasels rip my flesh.'
well, one of them is.
these guys didnt even have the budget to find out what weasels actually were but that didnt stop them from making one of the best horror movies ever!
theres only one thing you can really object to in this movie.
you see that hot woman on the cover?
well theres a reason shes just a drawing, shes not in this.
in fact, no women are.
its just the directors hairy guy friends.
still, not only is this movie a triumph of the human spirit, its this years #1 spooktacular movie!