Tag Archives: fridge

Reconnecting

Distractions, Personal Bits
Here Be Dave

Here Be Dave

In the fall of 1981 I met Dave while doing props for a community youth theatre show. A few of us went over to his house for lunch on a break between rehearsals and while I was chewing away on a sandwich, Dave concocted a 2-second blood pack of ketchup and a ziplock bag, behind an open fridge door. He tried to throw at me as a joke and it didn’t work so he resorted to exploding it across his chest. Dave was obsessed with horror movies, you see. Not sure what happened, but when the prank failed miserably, I thought his cunning was a thing to be reckoned with.

Dave was one of two friends I did acid with for the first time. And was the reason I will never be 100% welcome back into his house by his mother. She’s convinced I shoved the tab into Dave’s pure and vestal mouth, when it was Dave who upped the ante with pot and a few drinks at his sister’s house while we waited for the drug to kick in. And kick in it did. When the acid refused to recede from our reality, Dave called his Dad to come get him before he “died”. What ensued was a comedy of sorts, seen through the fog of teenage drama, heightened by LSD: Police were going to be called; one friend’s career in the RCMP was going to be ruined; my mom would find out and I would cease to exist with one glare.

Things sorted themselves out when Dave’s older sister stepped in and told his mom that time will bring Dave down (he had tread a groove in his bedroom carpet walking off the acid) and that everyone should just calm down.

As you’ve probably guessed, Dave was the fearless one in our circle of friends. He would try anything if it meant getting a reaction from anyone.

And fearless he is. He has a wife and two kids and a house in the Beaches and is now sporting a huge CSI/Grisham-style beard because “it pisses everyone off”. Glad we were able to reconnect!

Weather Meme

General

From Electronic Replicant, who says I can remix at will:

How do you cope with hot weather?
Suck it up. Sweat it out!

When does the heat make you most crazy?
When people forget themselves and impose their sweaty meat space presence on public transit.

Where do you go to get air conditioning?
Movie theatres, gym, work, my dad’s (but he likes it 2C warmer than tepid.

Your favorite place to sleep in hot weather?
An open tent with a breeze flowing through. Have not been camping once this summer. Soon, we’ll be in Saugatuck MI, though!

Your favorite hot weather food?
Cold fruit. Any kind that has been in the fridge a long time.

Your favorite people to visit in the hot weather?
We’re getting into having ice cream in the gay village at the end of the day and inviting friends or my Dad along. Turns into a “Oh. My. God. Look at HER” bitch session.

Your favorite way to wear your hair in the hot weather?
Uh. Off?

Usual clothing during hot weather?
Work still wants us in casual dress pants, which I think is 100% sexist, because women are allowed to wear skirts. So I’m usually with pants and an untucked short sleeved dress shirt. When I get home: undies. That’s it.

Your favorite hot weather drink?
I still drink tea every morning. I prefer a glass of anything with the glass 100% full of ice.

Is hot weather good for anything?
It reminds us that winter is just as bad/good.

Strange The Strangers

Celebs and Media

The StrangersSaw the trailer for The Strangers last week when we went to see Iron Man. Usually horror movies don’t do anything for me because I grew up on a steady diet of 70s/80s slasher movies. I even took a night course on how to make horror make up and actually got to work on a Bollywood-type movie about East Indian zombies in the water reclamation plant. Or something. We didn’t get to see a script, just one day to make heads into zombies.

I digress. The trailer actually made me jump. Seriously. Okay it had the usual “WHAM! SCREAM! BOOM!” kind of structure but it did find one thing that manages to freak me out every time. The old “being watched by the creep in full sight” shot.

I find if you’re going to scare me it has to be the most cleverest of bait-and-switches (not just “open the fridge, get something, close the fridge…MONSTER behind the open door!!!”) or it has to be subtle. Theres a scene in the trailer that has the female lead standing alone in a large room, no sound. From behind, through a darkened doorway, enters a masked figure. And they just stand there, the woman unaware that someone is at the threshold of the room, staring at her. Here’s some screen grabs:

The reason this freaks me out is probably because I read waaaay too much Edward Gorey as a kid . His drawings of vacant Victorian rooms and random acts of tragedy somehow reminded me of certain rooms we had in the house growing up (see image below, from The Gashlycrumb Tinies). This trailer is the same effect, visually, as sniffing something and having a flood of memories come back to me. I was terrified of the vacant apartment we had on the top floor of the rambling old house I grew up in and I think I only went into it once, clutching my sister’s hand, cutting off the circulation.

Oh yes, I think I’ll see this one!