Halloween. . . 1998-style!

Who needs trick-or-treating when you have TV?
On
October 07, 2009


Halloween is, and forever shall be, my favorite holiday, for a plethora of reasons.

I suppose the holiday I actually celebrate is something of an inverted Halloween of sorts; while most people spend the totality of October 31 pretending to be something they are not, I feel as if Reformation Day (look it up) is the only day of the calendar year in which I truly feel, well, me.

I mean, really, is Halloween time not the greatest point of the year? The weather is comfortable, football and hockey are back on TV, horror movies are abundant in presentation, and dear lord, the FREE candy and soda. So you have Night of the Creeps on television at 4:30 in the afternoon, an entire bag of Reeces on your work desk, and half of the females on the planet are dressed up like Goth-flavored tramps? Verily, if I ruled the world, EVERY DAY would be Halloween.

To this day, the ensuing date gets me giddy as a school girl. Some weekends, I will simply drive around aimlessly, hoping to find one of those fly by night Halloween specialty stores that sell gruesome props and esoteric costumes that the big box mart retailers would probably get sued for hanging on store shelves. I typically loathe traversing to huge name department stores, but around the third week of October, I surreptitiously creep my way through the aisles of corporatized America and marvel at the beautiful displays before me. Where else are you going to see a no frills DVD copy of the first Friday The 13th sandwiched between an aerosol can of orange whipped cream and an 89 cent packet of blood capsules? Exactly, and that is why Halloween time rules all.


What I will be DOING this Halloween. Well, that, or homework.

Come to think of it, I do not believe that I have ever experienced a bad Halloween, per se, and in many ways, each singular All Hallows Eve in my existence has, in some way, shape or form, proven itself to be an accurate representation of my temporal being. Much like Jack Skellington, my life is, virtually, divvied into particular Halloweens, and my individualistic progression can be viewed in each autumnal transpiration. You know, the more I dwell on it, I actually DO have a lot in common with the main character from A Nightmare Before Christmas; We have the same initials, we are both emaciated figures, we are both jaded with our lots in life and we are both owned by evil heartless conglomerates. . .


Fact.

. . . but I digress, and quite wildly. I am not quite sure what my Halloween plans for this season are to encompass, but I am rather certain that it will include, in some manifestation, copious amounts of alcohol, the strings of Italian techno rock outfit Goblin, and hopefully, a make out session or two with an inebriated dame that kind of looks like whats-her-name from NCIS while Monster Mash plays in the background on an endless loop. Man, I love that song, and in the most non-ironic of connotations imaginable.


Bobby Boris Pickett sez: The Monster Mash didnt just write itself, you know. . .

That being said, whilst this ensuing All Hallows Eve will more than likely encompass a rare social outing for my purposes, my Halloweens have not always been comprised of sordid soirees and party-going mayhem. In fact, there was a time in which my Halloween celebrations were limited to a party of one, and you know what? I STILL had a blast. If I may, I would like to travel back in time, to a magical epoch in which the World Trade Center was still standing, Sega was still making non crappy games and people had, what do you call those things? Oh yeah, jobs.

So how about coming along with me, to relieve my Halloween. . . 1998-style!




October 31, 1998
4:35 P.M.


Ooo. . . scary! No, wait, I mean the OPPOSITE of scary.

My mom pulls into the drug store parking lot, as the strings of Ozzy Osbourne and Bark at the Moon soon fade away into nothingness. At the time, I was just getting into the heavier stuff of the epoch, but for the most part, my musical tastes were limited to whatever was playing on the radio and the occasional compilation CD that somehow filtered its way down to me.

Remember, this was WAY before the proliferation of online file sharing, so if you wanted to hear about an awesome new band, it was either via word of mouth or nothing it all. Since I lived in a fairly small hamlet, our only source for musical offerings was the local Mega-Mart, and since they edited their compact discs, it was pretty much a lost cause to scour through the racks for decent, heavy tunes. For the longest time, I just bought CDs depending on how demonic and awesome the front cover looked, and via that methodology, I ended up picking up my first Pantera, Iron Maiden and Hatebreed albums. It also led me to purchasing lackadaisical crap from MXPX, Grand Funk Railroad and even, dear heavens, JACKYL, so yeah, it was very much what I would call a flawed system.


Winner of the coveted Jswifts Least Favorite Place On Earth Award, years 1994-1997

Oh, my memories of the Eckerd. For some reason, I spent a disproportionate amount of my youth navigating the aisles of the quaint and cozy retailer. Most people stop by the pharmacy maybe once every three or four months. We dropped by once every three or four WEEKS. Maybe my mother had a furtive addiction to cough syrup she was veiling from the rest of us, I am not sure. All I know is, damn, did we go to the Eckerd a lot.

And yes, I know that the official title of the outlet is the possessive singular, it is just that we were, apparently, too lazy to throw in that apostrophe and additional s.

For the life of me, I have no idea why anyone would require a shopping cart at a pharmacy, but they were provided, and sure enough, my progenitor always pulled one from the cart corral and loaded her steel carriage with lawn care aides and hair products. Does anybody else find it, uh, weird that a drug store ALSO sells garden hoses and Slip and Slides? Anyone?

Whilst my mother stockpiled hair dye and Metamucil into her iron cast buggy, I sought the safe refuge of the magazine rack, which, as luck would have it, was stationed DIRECTLY cattycorner to the seasonal display section. After flipping through a months old copy of Mad Magazine and some pro wrestling rags, I decided to snake my way through the audio cassette rack and lollipop holder and envision what obscure paraphernalia the housing had on sale for the holiday. By the 31st, I believe it is safe to state that all of the stuff worth buying has already been snatched up.

Yes, the racks are virtually barren. I really see no need to purchase midnight black nail polish or glow in the dark radioactive lip gloss, so I focus my glare upon the oddball miscellany that remains on the shelving.


Unfortunately, you will have to provide your OWN fat girl that rides the bus. . .

Let us see, there are some glow tubes, which at 4.99 American, are incredibly overpriced. There is a gigantic rubber bat, the kind that makes a loud squeaking sound whenever you squeeze it, pathetically hanging from the metallic trellis of the aisle, almost as if shouting Yes, I do suck, please, never ever buy me. Yeah, there really is not much use for either of those. As I lugubriously stroll through the vacant vestibules, I recall a fat girl on my bus offering to take me out to see the newfangled Chucky movie tonight. Jeez, with all of this non activity, maybe I should have?

Never mind, TEMPORARY HAIR DYE AND MONSTER FX MAKE UP CACHE UNCOVERED!


What approximately 20 percent of my annual earnings was invested in for the 1998 fiscal year

Seriously, I would buy this stuff in bulk, sometimes dropping as much as twenty bucks on a sole purchase. Whereas I would feel guilty on splurging on other purchases of the ilk, this was different, as there was no other time in the year that I had access to purple hair coloring agents or latex zombie skin kits. To me, this was smart consumerism: Let us say that one wished to make a horror home movie in April, or dye his or her coif algae green in July. Well, unless you stocked up in October, such is verily an impossibility for the concomitant twelve year old. Seriously, I believe such pre-teen fiscal planning proves my theoretical economic superiority to Jim Cramer already.

Of course, since this is Halloween, it is a requisite to stock up on the caffeine, and caffeine does not get more caffeinated than Jolt Cola. This edifice was virtually the only place in town that still had the soda on sale, and I always looked forward to chugging its saccharine, nerve-rattling syrupy goodness. Heaven knows, I was going to require its services for tonights endeavoring. . .

October 31, 1998
6:15 P.M.


Not pictured: the heart attack you have after drinking it

I arrive home, and after lugging my mothers EIGHT bags of purchases from a freaking drug store, I quickly situate myself in front of the television set, still slurping upon my Jolt Cola as if brandishing a sacrosanct life-giving artifact that would kill me if my lips departed from it for more than two minutes at any given interval. I have about two hours until anything good comes on, so how about we do some channel flipping?

Hey, remember back when TNT knew crappy movies instead of Drama? Well, after about five minutes of viewing Dracula: Dead and Loving It, I can firmly attest to the fact that not ALL nostalgia is of the good variety. I am about as huge as a Leslie Nielson and Mel Brooks fan as one is likely to come across, but this movies is just turd-tastic with TWO capital Ts. When the funniest moment in a movie stems from a character mispronouncing the word scheduling, you know the producer has hit the nadir of his respective career.


How apt is it that this movie quite literally sucks?

Ugh, I am bored to the point of being practically petrified already. In the dour interim, I elect to flip through a few old copies of Wizard and Toyfare, you know, before it was cool to be a comic book nerd. I find the back cover of an antediluvian edition of Entertainment Weekly, and I gulp down my last taste of super soda and decide to hit the candy dish before those free loading trick or treaters gobble up all of the good stuff. I suppose that is perhaps the ONLY positive of living in such bucolic isolation; fewer trick or treaters equates more chocolate coated comestibles for number one.


Theyre GHOULISCIOUS! (and may also give you diabetes)

Yes, yes, all of the tried and true standards are here, such as the peanut butter cups and the cinnamon flavored fireballs. Those were always the two go-to snacks in the translucent ocher dish, which made me wonder why the candy-coated powers that be never made a cinnamon-chocolate amalgamation. They could have called it a Volcano Bar or something, but I suppose that is just money left on the table by Hershey.

One of the great things about Halloween was the fact that it was perchance the only time of the year one envisioned certain candies on the store shelves. Sure, NOBODY has nor ever will enjoy candy corn or circus peanuts, but show me a human being that does not enjoy wolfing down a peanut butter flavored cookie shaped like Frankenstein and I will show you a soulless abomination. Dude, how can you NOT love peeling a tin foil Dracula caricature and chomping the head off a raspberry and milk chocolate vampire? Assuredly, one cannot, and this is further scientific elucidation as to why Halloween is probably the best thing ever.


WELL worth losing a foot for.

October 31, 1998
7:45 P.M.

You know what the official emblem of the dysfunctional home is? A television remote control with duct tape wrapped around the exposed backside to keep the batteries from falling out. If you grow up with such a relic in your household, I quantify you as being my brethren.

Whilst channel surfing, I stumble upon a Beavis and Butt-head Halloween special, already half-way concluded. Of course, I adored the television program, as did my matriarchal forerunner, even though she had the unfortunate tendency to erroneously call the show Beaver and Butt Hole.


Huh, huh. This site is called Junk.

This was a pretty good episode, with the dumb ass duo sneaking onto a ranch because they misread prosecuted as being validation of prostitutes on the premise. After an always appreciative appearance by the Great Cornholio (whom the ends up being squashed by a cow), Butt-Head and a zombified farmer decide to disembowel Beavis with a chainsaw, as the show cuts to black as cartoon crimson flies over the screen. I hit the Picture-In-Picture option on my TV, and as Dracula: Dead and Sucking It comes to conclusion, I catch a bumper for tonights TRUE festivities. Unlatching a Dr. Pepper, I hit the BACK button on my oblong device and am quickly transported back to Turner Network Television.

October 31, 1998
8:01 P.M.

Each and every weekend, I looked forward to this. My first introduction to the domain of satire, the form that will inevitably lead to my chosen career path in life, was not via the works of Juvenal or Horatio, or even my great, great, great, great, great grand uncle once removed Jonathan, but rather, vis-à-vis THIS MAN.


The literal definition of The MAN

From the age of eleven to fourteen, Joe Bob Briggs was my unparalleled hero. There was just something about his smarmy, fake-redneck veneer that my uneducated brain somehow picked up upon, nothing the sociocultural value of his dissecting of such fare as Troll and Trancers 2 that, at that point in time, was just a seed of smart assery that was only slightly beginning to blossom.

More often than not, the movies showcased on his platform, entitled Monster Vision, of course, were god awful movies made even more god awful due to cable censoring. I mean, if you are going to ask me to sit through Orca, at least give me the benefit of SEEING Bo Derek get her leg chomped off by a sperm whale. I mean, really, that is all a twelve year old has to live for circa 1998. Periodically, half way decent flicks like Phantasm II and Its Alive, were shown, but for the most part, you had to make due with Batteries Not Included and Strays, which only made the stinging commentary that MORE enjoyable.

Anyway, I stayed tuned regardless, just because Briggs satirical insight and commentary made me chuckle, ponder and inspired me to continue my own writings. In a lot of ways, the influence of JBB on my particular methodology of penning is perchance more profound than the works of legitimate authors like Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn, so if one day I make it in the world of mass publishing, we all know which beer sipping pseudo-Red State liberal to thank for getting me into the field.


A more integral part of the 90s than NAFTA, IMHO

Anyhoo, tonight was no ordinary edition of Monster Vision. Oh, no. This was an all night, dusk to dawn Jason marathon, and my sole goal for the eve was to get through all of it without succumbing to the sandman and his unwanted reverie dust. This was not just a night of television viewing, this was a no-holds-barred gauntlet, and I definitely came prepared, with enough Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper and coffee to ensure that I develop a heart condition ten years down the road. Relaxation? Hell no, this is a cinematic challenging of my manhood!

Ah, the original Friday The 13th: in the own verbiage of lead actress Betsy Palmer, what a piece of shish.

Now, I am something of a Friday The 13th apologist, as I have adamantly defended the series from detractors that state that the franchise is mindless, misogynistic rubbish. I have always likened the franchise to ones favorite fast food eatery, stating that the entire film lineage is but a cinematic, high speed hamburger. Yeah, it is not the most refined taste in the world, and yes, it really is not healthy for you either, but it is simple, filling greasy goodness, nonetheless. Sometimes, in a world glutted with the pretentious and overstated, rehash is refreshing.

The Friday films never claimed to be anything other than what they were, and the only time the series truly effed up was when the producers tried to alter the tried and true horny-kids-go-into-the-woods-but-they-do-not-come-out formula. That is the paradox of the Jason movie; critics hate the series for refusing to change things up, but when things are altered, the critics hate them EVEN more.


The film that swept the 1980 Academy Awards. Or didnt.

I suppose the first film is the most innocuous of the franchise. I am sure that the producers had no idea that the fruits of their labor would balloon into the horror version of Burger King, and in that, this is, decisively, the least Friday the 13th-feeling of all of the Friday the 13th movies. At certain points, the movie feels like a documentary presentation, with all of the wide angle zooms and close-ups shots. And really, what is with all of this exposition and talking? THERE IS NO ROOM IN JASON MOVIES FOR PLOT, PEOPLE. Less chatter, more splatter, I say.

So, yeah, I cannot proclaim much adulation for the series starting point, although you have to admit that the ending IS pretty awesome. Unfortunately this is the cable version, so we get a VERY truncated climactic fight. As I finish of my first two sodas in the 12 pack, we are one Jason movie down, with four more to go before November first.


Huh, how come all home school moms seem to wear the same sweater?
October 31, 1998
10:01 P.M.

As Joe Bob runs down the drive in totals (a scrolling list of the finer points of the ensuing film, which includes pivotal plot points such as body count and breast exposure), I realize that HOLY CRAP, I am missing the South Park Halloween special. Since I dozed off before its initial premiere the Wednesday before, I simply HAD to forego the first thirty of the second Friday movie to scope this one out.

South Park, of course, was HUGE circa 1998, and this episode was the talk of the school yard for weeks on end. It was also a show that one had to furtively watch, as it was essentially, number one on the list of verboten shows at EVERYBODYS household. There was something about sneakily viewing the show, with the sound turned all the way down to the point of just BARELY being audible, that I think made the program all the more enjoyable.


South Park, before being bought out by the GOP

Anyway, this is the South Park I CHOOSE to remember, a show dedicated to the mutual weirdness of middle school existence in rural nothingness as opposed to the non-stop Republican bull crap the program has transmogrified into at the present. No polemics, no political agendas, just a simple, funny story about a goldfish from an alternate reality that kills people. That and, you have to love the fact that the episode was filmed in Spooky Vision (which simply entails a head shot of Barbara Streisand positioned at the corners of the television screen).

This episode also include one of my favorite throw away one liners in the shows history, in which a pet store owner responds to the question of whether or not he built his shop on Indian burial ground by riposting with: No, I just dug up their graves, pissed on them, and buried them upside down. That one was definitely a soda through the nose moment if there ever was one.

Time to flip back to the second Friday movie, which I would say is probably the most satiating of all of the Jason films. So many great scenes, so many fond memories; unfortunately, this IS the cable iteration, so unfortunately, I am not allotted the ability to soak up the sheer bliss that is watching a mongoloid in a burlap sack send a guy in a wheelchair tumbling down a flight of stairs to his demise. Sigh.


Just keep in mind that the Americans with Disabilities Acts wasnt passed until 1990. . .

October 31, 1998
11:03 P.M.

Damn, we are out of chocolate comestibles? I think there is one or two marshmallow bats left, but those create some sort of gastrointestinal chain reaction in ones stomach when mixed with citrus soda that provides less then enviable results. Gawping down at a mushy werewolf cookie, I decide to rummage for snacks LATER on in the eve.


Absolutely PERFECT for popping your new TVs cherry!

All right, time to work out that Picture in Picture mechanism on the newfangled, 48 inch screen television. Sure, it may have cost me my college savings fund, but believe you me, there are few things in being that are as glorious as watching the 1997 straight-to-video horror anti-classic Uncle Sam on a four foot projection tube. What was really weird was that, somehow, a moth managed to sneak its way inside the set, so sometimes, you could be watching football and all of a sudden a 30 foot insect would emerge from the playing field. That one was always a fun trick to play on house guests, I assure you.


KISS. . . lending their names and likenesses to shoddy merchandise? GET OUT OF HERE!

For my money, the single greatest one-off Halloween special EVER was the nights Mad TV presentation, which featured Robert Englund as a guest star. As it turns out, somebody is killing off the cast of the show, one by one, and at the end of the day, it is up to KISS (Knights In Satan Service, Rock On!) to save the cast from the TRUE killer. . .


CHUMOAN!

. . . yeah, I know, that joke would be a whole lot funnier SIX months ago, but still, come on!

So anyway, I am flip flopping betwixt a hillbilly mass murderer and the Will Sasso impersonation of Kenny Rogers, which to me, is just about the funniest thing ever displayed on mainstream network television. Which do I pick? Oh, tough call, tough call. . . and, uh-oh, the marshmallow and Mountain Dew coalescence is beginning to gurgle in my innards. Which one do I pick? Neither, as I jet it straight to the bathroom instead.

November 1, 1998
12:05 A.M.

Midnight: the witching hour. With my intestines freed from clutter, I find myself simultaneously catching the opening riff of Friday The 13th Part 3 AND that one episode of Tales From The Crypt in which werewolves try to eat everybody at a resort, including the guy that played Carl Winslow. Man, the PIP is such a great advent, is it not?


Clearly the FACE of horror, is it not?

As it turns out, the follow up episode of Tales From the Crypt is the one about Christopher Reeves killing people for cheap meat at his restaurant, which is one of my favorites from the series. Once again, a difficult choice is to be made: Do I opt for the scene in which that fat guy gets assaulted by bikers at the mini mart, or do I watch Superman eat people? Decisions, decisions.

I am down to just six sodas now. There are three movies left, so if I split two per movie, I SHOULD be able to make it until sunup. Maybe.

November 1, 1998
1:03 A.M.

Uh oh, my first yawn of the night. I need some stimulation, some exercise, something. As Jason dons his trademark goalie mask for the first time, I begin to do some channel surfing on the smaller screen, as I crack open yet another citrus cola. Reluctantly, I masticate that final cookie, and for the first time that evening, I am beginning to doubt my own ability to stay up until dawn.

Hey, it is that one comedy show on BET, which is virtually the only time I have EVER watched the channel. My question is this: If it is Black Entertainment Television, then how come a white guy is allowed to do stand up on the network? The mind, it boggles. . .


The MADDEST doctor of them all!

Whilst in ennui, I do some channel flipping to remain active, spending a good fifteen minutes or so watching The Box. Now, when I say The Box, I do not mean an oblique, generalized reference to the television unit, but rather a short-lived MTV alternative that, GASP! Actually played music videos! In this day and age? I AM AGHAST.

So yeah, the whole Box deal was kind of a compromised deal. Yeah, you get real music videos, but at the same time, it is wholly viewer designated. Per, a little string of parallel to the bottom of the screen, and if one calls the precise digits, then he or she has her selected video played, at the cost of about 99 cents American.

So I suffer through two Usher videos, and the gods above drop me a crumb, as just when I needed physical stimulation of an utmost urgent order, what video is played next?

SPACE LORD, MOTHER, MOTHER!


Pretty much the best band ever. Yep, ever.

Man, 1998 was a weird time, as evident by the fact that Chucky movies were playing at the Cineplex, professional wrestling was viewed during prime time hours and the notion that MONSTER freaking MAGNET had a radio hit that summer. I still say that Monster Magnet is among the top ten flat out, straight-up, no-gimmicks-needed rock bands in the world, and man, is it ever a treat to hear them get to adulation they deserve from the main stream (yeah, all three months of it, anyway. . .)

I flip back to the all night Monster Vision marathon, just in time to see that one guy get his eyeballs squeezed out by Jason. I will just come out and say it: man, have 3D effects in movies come a long way since 1982.


SOOO lifelike, no?

November 1, 1998
2:04 A.M.

So the third Jason movie wraps up, and I get super excited because my personal favorite entry, the fourth installment, is coming up and next and. . . what the hell? You mean Ted Turner could not fish out the money to score the rights to a Friday the 13th movie? The guy has nineteen cable channels and practically has a limited partnership with Coca Cola for the totality of Atlanta, but he is too cheap to dole out the pocket change for a one night showing of an archaic slasher film? Sheesh, no wonder Jane left him. . .


What do you mean we cant get the cable rights to Friday The 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter? Thats it, Im selling the Braves in protest!

All right, I decide to skip over the first few minutes of Friday the 13th Part 5 in favor of some more channel surfing. Checking my soda cache, I am down to just TWO colas now, which does NOT bode well for my chances of making it to the glorious six a.m. epoch.

Anyway, I land upon my local Fox affiliate, and I will be much damned if I do not see an episode of Extreme Championship Wrestling. For those of you not in the know, ECW (as the faithful called it), was the greatest promotion in the history of North American scuffling, a renegade league that eschewed technique and corporate interest in favor of Japanese ultra-violence, grunge rock video packages, storylines with philosophical, adult themes and mayhap even the oddball forty five minute match up or two. Tonights episode is all about hawking the upcoming November 2 Remember PPV, which as it turns out, was headlined by none other than Jake the Snake Roberts, whom by 1998, kind of looked like this. . .


Jake Roberts, professional athlete.

Yeah, not exactly, something you would want to have to kiss goodnight, is it? In a lot of ways, the commercials during the show were mayhap even better than the actual wrestling. There was this one specialty tee shirt locale that was the only place in a fifty mile radius that actually sold hockey jerseys, so I very much longed for a pilgrimage to its sacrosanct, Mike Modano lined hallways. And then there were the 1-900 commercials, which featured a pyramid of skanky blondes singing the line - - Pick up the phone! - - ad nausem while some two bit crooner in the background tried to cajole the listener into some 4.99 a minute phone loving. And all I can say about that one is EWWWW.

November 1, 1998
3:05 A.M.

I elect to watch the first five minutes of some local hillbilly wrestling federations show, and as a character with the wholly unique moniker of Hardcore Hell cuts a stammering promo about his opponent being about twenty permutations of the term son of a bitch, I decide, for the first time in history, that maybe the fifth Jason movie is perchance the lesser of two evils.


Not bad for a poster that was designed in two minutes. Good work, ad agency!

Now of course, SPOILER the fifth Jason movie is not really a Jason movie SPOILER, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, Friday the 13th movies really do not get more polarizing than this one. While I do share quite a bit of venom for its existence, much in the same way that I have had to lessen my disdain for the fifth Rocky movie, time has been somewhat kinder to A New Beginning than perchance one would originally assume. And it DOES contain my all time favorite scene in ANY Friday movie, that being the scene where the Jeri-curled Michael Jackson facsimile (that lives in a trailer with pizza, eggrolls and spaghetti) gets pitch forked in an outhouse while singing the loveliest ballad of all time to his girlfriend on the outside. If I may quote the lyrics, in their totality, - - baby, baby, baby, baby, baby. . . baby. With lyrical Excellency such as that, I would be shivering in my skivvies if I were Prince.

November 1, 1998
4:04 A.M.

One soda left, and my eyelids are crushing my irises. The credits begin to roll on the fifth Jason film, and Joe Bob introduces us to the final film of the marathon, Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives.


More of Joe Bob doing what he does best, RULING.

The gimmick, I suppose, for the marathon was the notion that somebody had broken onto the Monster Vision set and was trying to kill off Joe Bob. Throughout the night, our host becomes more delusional over the killings, as he recounts all of the people that have personally had it out for him for the last twenty years (effectively, an endless series of ex wives and irate mother-in-laws). He even breaks his promise to forego sipping on the Old Milwaukee, and who knows? Maybe he really was tanked on the piss water during filming? Hey, show me a grown man that can sit through Pet Shop without a six pack and I will show you a man sans reproductive glands.

All right, I just have to stay focused. I am out of sodas, and I REALLY feel the necessity to latch my lids. Just focus on the screen, do not lie your head at an angle parallel to the couch cushion, and I should be fine.

I guess this movie is one of the Jason titles that is just kind of mid-range. It is nobodys favorite, but at the same time, it is not anyones most loathed installment either. In my humble assertions, I think it has a definitive set of fine points in its favor, like the Alice Cooper soundtrack and the paintball scene and the more-clever-than-the-norm dialogue (for example, the kids asking one another what they WERE going to be when they grew up) as Jason approaches. It also began to slide the franchise into self-parody stature, and many cinemaphiles (read: nerds) believe that this is the installment that retconned the Jason mythos, turning him from a guy that was really, really hard to kill into being a supernatural zombie that is, fundamentally, unkillable.

Desperate times, desperate measures: I find an errant glass, and I decide to mix the leftover Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew into a final cocktail of overtly saccharine, flattened elixir. Quickly spitting out the horrid coalescence, I no longer have to ponder what liquefied rotten flesh tastes like, for I have sipped upon the horror of Dr. Dew.


Also fact.

All right, we just got to the scene where that guy throws a huge ass boulder into his boat, which of course, allots the finale in which Jason gets shackled and dropped to the bottom of Crystal Lake like a three hundred pound, undead anchor (you know, like a zombie version of Tim Russert ZING!)

Another Monster Vision bumper airs, with Joe Bob informing the viewers at home that this is the thrilling conclusion to the film. Gawping down at my wristwatch, I read the liquid crystal integers of 5:45. Come on, I can make it; I can make it, just fifteen more minutes.


Of course! Why didnt I think of chaining a six foot tall zombified mass murderer to a big ass boulder and dropping it in the lake with him attached? IT ALL MAKES PERFECT SENSE!

As Jason Voorhees has his big dead mug jammed into the whirring blades of an outboard motor, I delicately lie my head upon the grooving of the sofa. Wow, this, is really, really relaxing, and comfortable. I guess it would not hurt to stretch out just a little. Besides, it is not like I would fall into slumber with just MINUTES to go until the end of the marathon. (YAWN) Man, what a ridiculous assertion that would b. . .

November 1, 1998
12:54 P.M.

. . . CRAP!

- -
James Swift is just your typical twenty something college student / office drone. Well, no, not really, but that shouldnt stop you from reading his articles at ksusentinel.com. Go whatever our school nicknames are!
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