The Wollaston Beach Horror

I know I haven't written anything new in two weeks or so, but it turns out nothing worth writing about happened in that span. Yeah, that's the ticket. I suppose I could have mentioned that a string of 70 degree days was broken by what I can only assume was Sean Connery's weather-altering machine. Nothing else short of an enormous Ally Sheedy shaking her dandruff-ridden head down upon us could explain the freak snowfall last Tuesday night. At least it was gone the next day, and today it's supposed to get to 85 degrees, if it hasn't already.

I guess I could have written about the all-day Halo 2 game on Saturday. I've been to a few of these now, usually at Nick's friend Eric's place; a run-down old house, like the one in Fight Club. There isn't a wall, floor or ceiling in the place that doesn't have at least one hole in it, and it seems as if the only thing holding the building together is the thick layer of filth that's grown over the years. The last time I was there, they actually had a large piece of cardboard in place of a wall. It's the best place ever. The walls are lined with movie posters, Simpsons, and Clerks figures, and all kinds of crazy crap. Not to mention the obscenely expensive entertainment center and computer he's got set up in his room. Much nicer than the old TV in the room I was in, with a hole where the speaker is supposed to be.

But that's not where we went Saturday. Instead, we drove to Brian's house in Watertown. Brian is another guy Nick knows from Best Buy. This place is a million times nicer, but like the Fight Club house, there are posters and action figures all over the place. The moulding above the kitchen door has a Twinkie the Kid figure standing next to a Michael Myers figure. Brian is living the American Dream.

In order to have a decent eight-man game, you need four TVs (as well as four Xboxes and four copies of the game), with two people playing on each one. So two people brought their own TVs with them. Not little portable ones, either; these things each had at least 29" screens. Brian had a projector connected to his Xbox in his room, so his screen was pretty much his entire wall. I would think that having a large screen would make a shooting game easier, but I wouldn't know, since I was playing on the smallest TV there. It probably didn't make much difference, since I was the only one who didn't own an Xbox. It was also my first time playing Halo 2, so most of the levels were unfamiliar to me. Needless to say, I died a lot. Of course, I died a lot in the original Halo as well, which is why I use "Target" for my character in both games. One of the other guys used "AIDS" as his name, so when he shot you the screen says "You have been killed by AIDS." He later changed his name to "having unsafe sex". But I'm always Target, since all I do is get shot. At least Halo 2 has the option of creating an emblem for you character. Mine was a bullseye.

But today I'm going to write about last night's five dollar movie, The Amityville Horror. Most of the horror movies that have come out recently haven't been remotely scary, which is surprising, since I'm such a huge weenie. But this one really creeped me out. Jose wasn't impressed and laughed through the whole movie, but screw him. If any of the stuff in the movie happened to him, his underwear would look like a burrito. Unless violent masturbation wards off ghosts, in which case he has nothing to worry about. There's a lot of people getting grabbed from behind in this movie, and I HATE that! I don't like when people do that to me, regardless of whether they're alive or dead. I guess when dead people do it I hate it a little bit more, but you get the point. And I don't care what anyone says, creepy little ghost kids are just plain scary. I've lived in my apartment for almost a year now, and I'm still not completely comfortable there. Who knows what happened there before we moved in? Actually, I guess Rich, the landlord knows, since he lives across the hall. But I still get the creeps thinking about the evil spirit thing that tried to kill me a bunch of times, even if it did turn out to be a sleep disorder. Maybe that's just what they want me to think.
Anyway, back to the movie. That Van Wilder guy is all jacked in this movie, and he forgot to shave off his beard from Blade: Trinity. I've never seen the original Amitiyville, but supposedly it's based on a true story (snopes.com says otherwise.) My question is, why is it that in movies, when people see weird things that shouldn't be happening, they go in for a closer look instead of running as far away in the other direction as humanly possible? "Hey, what's that creepy, demonic voice coming from the basement? I guess I'll go down and check it out. Do deed doo..." If they were weenies like me, they'd just run away and spare their friends and family the humiliation of getting flayed by the living dead.

You know what's even scarier though? We have a new Pope. One that was in the Hitler Freaking Youth. But it's okay, it was against his will. Forgive me if the only thing I find optimistic about his Papacy is that he's nearly 80.