There are always a few good hours I try to sleep through every morning because they just so happen to make me sick to my stomach. And it’s not just nausea. There's also a wildly oppressive sense of melancholy, too. A few people have told me that it’s completely natural. They say that it has something to do with my actual time of birth. I was apparently born nervous, and on some subconscious level the apprehension of coming into this world has impressed upon my inner clock a residual stink that will always turn my gut. Those reoccurring hours during which I was born are unbearable to me now.
My morning sickness has prevented me from leading any sort of average life. It made school next to impossible, and I’ve never held an average job. Strangely, I can't seem to sleep once the sun is up, so my days usually begin with a sad struggle to cling to shallow sleep. I try to remain unconscious through that strange period of queasy doom. But it’s not easy. Neighborhood boobs clod around loudly on their way to work. Motors rev through obnoxious five-minute warm-ups, even though it’s the middle of fucking Summer and it’s 90 degrees before 8am. Precious darlings caterwaul as they hurl chunks of broken asphalt at one another. Their parents bellow at the tops of their lungs, “shut up!” Meanwhile, some asshole with a leaf blower menaces the path to my front door. So, I sit there, pushing back the vomit with intermittent sips of water while sucking on peppermints, watching “Saved By The Bell” on TBS at a low volume, waiting for the morning to pass.
Just the other day though I was dragged away from this racket by a cop knock. This happens sometimes. I dragged myself out of bed in my boxers, stumbled over several house cats, and threw open the door. A figure stood at the cusp of my inverted “welcome” mat in the pouring rain. His head was cocked uncomfortably, the energy of a serial rapist brewing like a maelstrom behind his aviator frame glasses. It was my mail man. He looks like Dennis Rader, and he hates my fucking guts.
I’m pretty sure he thinks that the high number of packages I receive on a weekly basis have something to do with drugs or child pornography. In fact, sometimes I receive stuff that’s been completely opened. I have no doubt he's the prying type. I wish I could have been there the day he sliced through my media mailer only to find a copy of "Eddie & The Cruisers II: Eddie Lives" inside.
We stand there for several silent moments. I press, impatiently, “Well? Do you have something for me?” His jaw grinds. His gruff answer comes, grudgingly, “No. I just came to tell you… that you have a package in the office.” “
Bewildered, I ask, “I have a package in the office?”
His upper lip quivers with restrained disdain, “Yes.”
Nausea has undercut my usual tolerance, “Alright, let me get this straight. You have a package for me. And you left it at the office, and THEN you came over here to tell me that you have a package for me? That's totally logical, thank you.”
He maintains that suspicious glare for several more seconds. I get tired of waiting for a response, so I slam my door in his face, and trudge back up stairs to grab my pants and boots. What an asshole.
DR. ALIEN! (1989)
Stuart Fratkin is in this movie. Usually, that’s a deal breaker for me. If you’ve seen “Teen Wolf, Too,” then you know who he is, because he was inexplicably cast in the role of Stiles. This is just one of many things that really pissed me off about that movie. First of all, the boxing theme was fucking stupid. Do universities even HAVE a competitive boxing division? It's a possibility, but I've certainly never heard anything about the big upcoming OU vs UT boxing match. I always heard that they were originally going to go with basketball again, but the game scenes in the first film were apparently too much work. So, we wind up with boxing because the filmmakers are lazy assholes. But still, there are so many collegiate sports they could have gone with which require minimal set ups. Why couldn't Teen Wolf have gone out for the swim team? I have these great scenes in my head where the disgruntled pool guy is fishing huge chunks of hair out of the drainage system. Secondly, if you’re going to cast a Mexican as Stiles, then at least include a scene where he gets bit by a radioactive day laborer or something. That's a movie in and of itself right there. They didn't even TRY to explain the Jew-to-Mexican transformation. Actually, I don’t even know if Fratkin is Mexican. He’s probably Polynesian, or some other bullshit. What I do know is, that, you Stuart Fratkin, are no Jerry Levine.
However, there are a number of finer points overshadowing the Fratkin factor. This is a David Decoteau-directed USA Up All Night contender, packed to the gills with recognizable racks, including appearances by Michelle Bauer, Ginger Lynn Allen, Karen Russell, and Linnea Quigley. Best recognized as Mikey from "Parker Lewis Can't Lose," Billy Jayne stars in this Sci-Fi sex comedy as Wesley Littlejohn, a hormonally challenged dork with the odds stacked against any notion of getting laid. But after a mysterious bombshell teacher doses him with an experimental drug, the tide shifts.
EATING RAOUL (1982)
This is a legitimately great dark comedy, written, directed, and starring the late Paul Bartel. The Blands, played by Paul Bartel and Mary Waranov, are a couple of straight-laced squares struggling with their dreams and just barely scraping by while surrounded by sexually liberal neighbors. One night, when a swinger mistakenly enters their apartment, Paul murders the pervert. When the Blands fish a wallet full of cash on the corpse, a scheme that could be the answer to all their problems begins to formulate. Soon, they’re luring swingers to their apartment via personal ads, and bumping them off for their money. And then Raoul comes along.
Cannibalism was a unique subject for comedy at the time this film came out. Years later, "Eating Raoul" remains the best attempt at it so far. In spite of the grim elements, this is a classy film, due largely to the fact that Bartel refrains from delving into overtly gruesome scenery. There is a huge difference between making light of something for the sake of being offensive, and actually making people accept and laugh at something they would otherwise find repulsive. Bartel takes the latter route, and is thus responsible for providing us with a rare example of subversive comedy done correctly.
GHOST TOWN (1988)
This is EASILY one of my favorite horror movies that came out of the great class of 1988. Rarely do the elements of a Charles Band production align to create something that sticks, comprehensively. The concept is fresh, with a contemporary lawman forced to fight sinister spirits of the past in a haunted ghost town. The most pivotal component of this movie is the atmosphere, and it’s absolutely present thanks to director Richard Governer. I'm actually curious as to whether or not Governer is a pseudonym, because I'm frankly surprised that a new director could do such an apt job at creating mood. Stranger still, Governer never went on to do anything else. Fuck what the so-called horror experts say, this is a fine slice of well-done low budget film making.
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