"There's a real danger in doing a sequel. There are some benefits, but that all hinges on how well you execute. Quite frankly, most sequels don't execute well."*

   I’ve been pretty bored this summer, because my friends all have jobs (and now I do, too! But more about that later), and a bunch of them also have children (so they want to hang out up to 7:30 p.m.) and a few of them have vacation money (so they’re gone) and so it leaves me with a lot of time to myself. I shouldn’t say that. I’m not really by myself, because my family is usually home. But after they go to bed around 8:15 p.m., I’m by myself. And there’s only so much Frasier you can watch on Netflix (263 episodes—seen all of them 5 or 6 times, so NO there is never so much Frasier, it would appear) or stats homework you can do in advance. (More on stats later, too. Actually, here’s all you need to know about stats: it’s terrible and I suck at it.)

   So, I’ve thought a lot of thoughts. And most of them aren’t too useful. But some of my more frequent thoughts have to do with ideas for sequels to movies. I’d like to share some with you now.

1.  Father of the Bride III: Who’s Baby is This? Okay, so remember how at the end of Father of the Bride II, Steve Martin and Diane Keaton have a baby (miraculously, it would seem, since they were both in their 50’s at the time) on the same night that their daughter has a baby? And then the daughter moves to another city? What if they accidentally switched babies? Okay, so I know that one was a boy, and one was a girl, but it would easily take a few hours to figure that out and lots of good movies happen in 3-hour time frames. It could combine the hijinks of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles with the hilarity of Look Who’s Talking. Granted, Look Who’s Talking blew (if I recall correctly, and I think I do), but this could be that extra element that makes it pop. And I don’t think I’d let the babies talk, because that’s creepy. I essentially want the feeling of Father of the Bride sandwiched into the plotline of Planes, Trains and Automobiles or basically any other road movie. Right?

Steve Martin in a new, hilarious comedy?

2.  Seventeen Candles. Okay, so now it’s a few minutes after Sam blows out the candles on her birthday cake and she and Jake Ryan have kissed. Then what? I’d really like to see them go to high school the next day and navigate the shit storm that is guaranteed to ensue when people find out Jake Ryan and Samantha Baker are dating. What? Okay and then, about 3 months later, he’ll go off to trade school and they’ll break up and she’ll be just another loser teen again. Unless she somehow manages to maintain some clout for having once dated a senior that no longer attends John Hughes High. (Hmmmm…this is mostly a curiosity of mine because I’m so super obsessed with 80’s movies and John Hughes’ movies in particular.)

3.  Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stoned. What if, like 20 years later, Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger’s kids all turned up at Hogwarts and were total douche-bag stoners? I love that idea. You know how good behavior always skips a generation? So instead of trying to ward of the great evils of the world, they were just learning spells to keep them out of getting suspended for smoking weed and having sex? It’s a thought. Not a brilliant one, but a thought.

The child of Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger. Hogwarts Class of 2030.

4.  Greasier. And wouldn’t it be interesting if, in Grease, Rizzo really was pregnant with Kenickie’s baby? And then, after Sandy and Danny FLEW AWAY in what one can only guess was Kenickie’s car (untied plot line, for sure; if I were Kenickie, I’d be pissed.), they had to move in together and raise a family just like Ricky and Lucy Ricardo? Rizzo learning how to cook. Kenickie learning how to do anything. At all. Both of them singing about it until they got to their late 20’s, grew ugly and fat and just didn’t give a shit anymore. Okay, now I feel sad…

   I have other ideas. I always thought West Side Story should end with Maria committing suicide. It was based on Romeo and Juliet, so let’s keep it Shakespeare. And I was always confused about the ending of Annie. Did Daddy Warbucks adopt all the orphans, or just invite them over for that big party? Their lives after the fact were sure to be a big let-down. As was Miss Hannigan’s, despite her elephant ride and flirtation with Punjab. So maybe there could be a continuing story of Miss Hannigan?

   Most of the reason I wrote all of the above had to do with my general malaise and/or boredom over the last few weeks. Please don’t judge too harshly…I know it’s all crap. I have a job now, so maybe I can start writing about that soon. I can tell you about how I faced my ultimate nemesis (not a Shider, it would appear, SHOCKINGLY) and came out the other side. Or about what it means to live with your parents when you’re 30. There’s a whole lot of things I could share, but I have trouble finding writing spaces here in Omaha. A lame excuse, I know. BUT…

1. I have run a 14 minute mile on 2 occasions.

2. I have run for 34 minutes in a row.

AND

3. I have killed several terrifying insects, including several silverfish and the newly famous (to me) Nebraska Red Spider, which is HORRIFYING. (I made my dad clean them up post-smashing. Baby steps.)

Not sure if this heinous picture does this spider justice. It's terrible. And terrifying.

   I will write about the job in the next few days, if I can manage to find a tidy corner.

   Sweet dreams.

*Donnie Wahlberg. Of New Kids on the Block fame. Clearly, the man knows of which he speaks.

"What the hell are you driving here?" "We had a small fire last night, but we caught it in the nick of time." "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" "Funny enough, I was just talking to my friend about that. Our speedometer has melted and as a result it's very hard to see with any degree of accuracy exactly how fast we were going."*

   I regret the decision to write about Planes, Trains and Automobiles in my last post. For those who haven’t seen it because they care nothing about culture or the world in which they live, it is a movie about a man (Neal/Steve Martin) who is attempting to get home to Chicago from a work trip in New York in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. In New York he stumbles upon Del (John Candy) a shower ring salesman who inadvertently poops all over every attempt Neal makes to get home. The two wind up traveling together on planes, trains (though I honestly don’t remember a train part—but I’m sure it’s in there) and also in automobiles. And it’s rough. It takes days. And Del is a slobbish buffoon who makes life hell for Neal, who doesn’t really have the holiday spirit (Thanksgiving holiday spirit, not Christmas) in his heart to begin with. But then it stops being funny and gets sad and I can’t stand it. Intrigued? Because you probably should be.

Neal and Del have an accident. (Photo)

   I regret my decision to bring this movie up because I’m pretty sure I planes, trains and automobiles-ed myself by even mentioning it. It’s like saying Candy Man three times or mentioning the name Macbeth in a theatre. It’s bad luck and/or certain death. I’m Irish, was raised Catholic, and spent the first 28 years of my life in theatres so it’s okay for me to be superstitious to a decidedly ridiculous degree. I have no choice in the matter and can't do anything about it, anyway. Just ask my Tarot deck and my Ouija Board.

   The shit started with a phone call around 12:30 on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. It was Primetime Shuttle calling to inform me that my shuttle would be arriving at 1:05 pm instead of 1:20. That was surprising in and of itself because I’d scheduled the ride for 1:50. So despite being butt-naked and just out of the shower (you're welcome for that imagery) I had to bust ass to get ready on time and having done that, I sat on the couch and turned on My Best Friend’s Wedding to pass the 5 minutes until the shuttle arrived. At 1:25, I called Primetime Shuttle and said, “Hey, not to be a pest, but where the fuck are you? I’m already to the part where Cameron Diaz sings karaoke.” And they said don’t worry, the driver will be there at 1:35. Then the driver called at 1:45 and said he was 5 minutes away. So I went outside and waited and he showed up at 2:10. (He also took a truly asinine way to the airport and had trouble realizing he was driving a conversion van and not a Camaro and nearly killed us about 8 times. Whatever.)

Traveling image: Best part of Thanksgiving. I walked with my family at Neale Woods. Omaha skyline in the background. Traveling on foot seems to be the best mode of transit for me, across-the-board.

   So then I got on a plane to Las Vegas and sat there for four hours due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control. I really don’t know why the flight was delayed so long. They never told me. But the Las Vegas airport is an especially depressing place and flights never leave on time from there, so I don’t know why I keep going back. Oh yeah, and I had to spend my eating money on tampons because…well, for obvious reasons, and the tampons cost way more than normal tampons and they were embarrassing to buy in a way they never are when I buy them at Target.

   When I arrived in Omaha, it was 1:40 in the morning. Normally Omaha's Epply Airfield stops receiving flights around 11:30. It's two terminals and 2 random dudes running baggage to the carousels. Seriously. So I called my Mom figuring she’d be glad that I’d gotten in 20 minutes earlier than expected, but she didn’t answer the phone. Because she was asleep. Which is totally fair because it was 2 in the goddamn morning. But she kept not answering her cell, so I finally called the home phone and no one answered that either. When she called me back at 2:06 a.m. I was relieved because most of the people were gone…and so were all of the (3) cabs. It wasn’t that big of a deal—she’d set her alarm for another day. And my mom doesn’t regularly keep finding projects to work on til 2 in the morning like I do. I blame it on Las Vegas, but more than that I blame it on the fact that I wrote about Planes, Trains and Automobiles right before I flew home for Thanksgiving. 

An Omaha gas station. Also loosely related to travel.

   Then on Saturday I ate lunch at Runza. If you’re not from Nebraska, there’s a good chance you don’t know what Runza is. Don’t worry about it. It’s kind of embarrassing, but all you need to know is it’s a fast-food place and my best friend Michelle wanted her boyfriend, Danny, to try it since he’s not from Nebraska, god love him. So I met them and ate Runza and then left and promptly backed into a car. Now, I didn’t back into the car going very fast. In fact I was going about .25 miles per hour. But I backed into a parked, empty car and then parked and got out to survey the damage. I circled the damn car and inspected it’s rear-end and saw no damage. While I was doing this, a family inside was watching me and laughing. I thought that was mean. But I saw no damage to the car so I left.

   Well, the highly-amused family of four must’ve been madder than they looked, because I guess they took down my license plate number and four hours later the cops showed up at my parents house looking for my mom.  I asked what they were there for and they said it was for a hit-and-run. And I said, “Oh, that wasn’t my mom. I guess you’re here for me.” And then they said they weren’t going to take me to jail (perhaps only because my mom said, "You officers aren't going to take my little girl to jail, are you?"**), but that they probably should and they gave me a citation and now I have a lawyer and I’m a big-time criminal. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIT A PARKED CAR AND NOT CALL THE POLICE, REGARDLESS OF DAMAGE. Lesson learned. I’m an idiot. Again. Still?

   Did I mention we were on our way out the door for my dad’s birthday dinner? Happy Birthday, Dad! Guess what? I’m still a fuck-up at 30. Thanks for working hard every day so I can go out and raise your insurance rates during one of the 20 days you see me each year. Let's go eat fancy dinner!**

   My lawyer (that feels kind of grown-up to write…in a sad sort of way) says that it’s good that it was 1 in the afternoon at a Runza and not 1 in the morning at a Taco Bell, because the cops had/have no reason to think I was boozing it up and then running away. He says lots of people in Nebraska get drunk and hit cars and then go home and by the time the cops catch up with them they can say they got drunk at home. I was not drunk or drinking, but the whole event made me want to start drinking. And it cast a dark shadow on my favorite week of the year and I still feel really bad all-around. And I didn’t have the heart to write about it until now. I’m remorseful and, as is so often the case with me, full of self-pity.

   And I can’t help but think about scenes in movies like the one in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles where Del falls asleep in the rental car and somehow simultaneously starts a fire and ends up driving into oncoming traffic and they barely escape with their lives. Where’s the gruesome, icky and yet somehow also monotonous aftermath scene in the police station and the follow up scene in the lawyer's office? These events seem funny in the movies, but they really suck a whole lot in real life. And you know what else, they’re embarrassing moments that stick in your brain and run like reel-to-reels for days and days on end.

   Today I flew home to Los Angeles. It was uneventful, thank Shiva. I did however see the following text exchange on the phone of the woman seated next to me:

Incoming: I need drugs. And help.

My seatmate’s reply: Drugs I got. I don’t know about any help.

   Anyway.

   Needless to say, I think I’m pretty much traveled out for this year. Since January I’ve been to Denver, Phoenix, Omaha, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Omaha again, Chicago and now Omaha. It’s a miracle I didn’t relive that entire movie. My luck has officially run out. I’m a grounded eagle. I may never fly again.

   P.S. Sorry for being such a Debbie Downer.

*An interchange between a State Trooper and Del in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987). 
**Despite my failings as their daughter, my parents are truly amazing, supportive, incredible people who keep loving me and being nice to me anyway. Which I don't think they are legally obliged to do at this point, seeing as I'm well over the age of 18. So my Negative Nancy attitude aside, I think I have to acknowledge that I'm VERY LUCKY INDEED. 

***As a tie on to this more-sane (saner?) train of thought, I'd like to tack on this link to Gabe's recent blog post, which put things Thanksgiving- and other-related into a bit of perspective.

"I've got eyes to see with, ears to hear with (or fly with), arms to hug with, lips to kiss with, someone to adore. How could anybody ask for more? My needs are small, I buy them all at the 5 and 10 cent store. Oh, I've got plenty to be thankful for."*

   You know what the world really needs? More movies about Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving could also use some more songs. I’m really trying to think of songs about Thanksgiving, but aside from “Plenty to Be Thankful For” from Holiday Inn and the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, I’m coming up empty. And it sucks because all the radio stations and department stores stomp right over Thanksgiving and start acting like its Christmas the day after Halloween.

Post-Halloween, pre-Thanksgiving: see? At Em's in Chicago.

   And oh Christmas with it’s terrible songs. (I wrote about that last year so I won’t go into it again.) It’s a travesty because Thanksgiving is AMAZING. It truly is AMAZING. It’s an entire holiday devoted to eating wonderful food and begrudgingly acknowledging your blessings between bites of turkey and pie. All kinds of pie! (Seriously: apple, pumpkin, rhubarb, chocolate, pecan: whatever kind of pie you want, Thanksgiving’s probably got it! Pie!) And after that you take a nap and maybe you wake up and watch football, or maybe you go meet up for drinks with friends who are in town for the holidays just like you. And you don't have to go to Church!

I made these out of pumpkin! Why is it only available for 2 months of the year?

   I did a little research on the Interwebs and came up with a few familiar movie titles, and some not-so-familiar movie titles that will allow me to start celebrating Thanksgiving really hard now that we’re in the final stretch to my favorite holiday of the year. (This is, of course, not including the much-anticipated post-Thanksgiving premiere of Liz and Dick starring my arch-rival Lindsay Lohan.)

   Here’s a familiar one: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987). I’m really fond of this movie, even though it kind of tugs at my heartstrings towards the end, and I don’t like movies that try to make me feel stuff. But I love me some John Hughes, so this gets re-watched every now and then. And now the time is just right. Plus, I love just about every movie John Candy ever made. Steve Martin’s all right in my book, too.

   Here’s a not-so-familiar one: ThanksKilling (Jordan Downey, 2009). Now this movie sounds fascinating. It is described on imdb.com as follows: “A homicidal turkey axes off college kids during Thanksgiving break.” What’s not to like about that premise? It’s high time the turkeys of America got their revenge. And college kids suck, everyone knows that.

   Familiar: Holiday Inn (Mark Sandrich, 1942). Granted, the focus ultimately ends up being on Christmas (largely due to the musical finagling of the decidedly Jewish Irving Berlin: goddamn that song “White Christmas”!), but it is a musical about EVERY holiday and there is that whole delightful musical number where sad, lonely Bing Crosby talks about all the things he has going for him.

   Not-so: Son in Law (Steve Rash, 1993). Remember when Pauly Shore was a movie star? I do, because Encino Man was one of my favorite movies at that time (and I was planning to marry or seriously befriend Brendan Fraser), and also I thought he (Pauly) was wildly talented and seemed very sweet deep, down inside. But this isn't about how I have terrible, near-constantly bad judgment about men. Anyway, this truly raucous, awful film came out during those few short "Pauly Years," and it is vaguely tied to Thanksgiving. So…there’s that.

   Familiar: Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986). This is one of those really awesome Woody Allen movies from the eighties that doesn’t seem to be about anything, and maybe isn’t, but still somehow keeps coming back to the same Thanksgiving celebration at the same house each year and somehow winds up seeming really good and fulfilling. Like turkey and potatoes and PIE! Plus, Dianne Wiest is always amazing. 

   Not so: Boogeyman (Ulli Lommel, 1980) is vaguely centered around the Thanksgiving holiday. Without watching this movie again, I can’t tell you much. I think that perhaps the 1980 version that I saw is not the one that takes place at Thanksgiving, and maybe that’s the remake that happened in 2005. I will tell you this: the Boogeyman haunted my childhood. I slept with the closet door firmly closed until 2011, and I will NEVER WATCH THAT MOVIE AGAIN, despite not truly knowing to this day what the fuck a boogeyman even is. But do you want to know the best part about the Boogeyman? It's the definition: “An amorphous, imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into compliant behavior.” And what more is there to be thankful for than the power we adults wield over unsuspecting, ignorant children? Mwah ha ha ha ha! That’s really what Thanksgiving is all about. I guess. What was I even talking about? I think I’ve gotten away from my point…

I made this from pumpkin, too. It's pumpkin soup. So good. Pumpkins for the whole year! Thanksgiving keeps pumpkins alive past Halloween! Thanksgiving is the vegetable's answer to the no-kill animal shelter.

   Some of the Internets tried to say that Pocahontas was a Thanksgiving movie. Yeah, maybe if you love bad music and you really want to feel remorseful about all the shit that went down in the 17^th Century that you can't control and had nothing to do with. I say: move forward. Let’s not remember too hard about the shenanigans that went down at Plymouth Rock and try to focus a bit more on being grateful that we have so much pie to eat. 

*This song is from Holiday Inn and written by Irving Berlin. It's kind of cheeky and not altogether sincere, but it is one of the only Thanksgiving songs that exists. And I'm super grateful for it.  And for Holiday Inn (the movie, not the hotel chain...okay I'm grateful for both. It's Thanksgiving, for chrissakes).

"Am I going to prom or to hell?"*

            I watched one of my favorite movies the other night: Heathers. And I’m not sure how I came to love this morbid, violent, darkly-disturbing-yet-oddly-funny movie in the first place. But I do remember when I came to love it.

The Heathers and Veronica, playing croquet.

            At twelve-years-old I was already an extremely experienced babysitter, and the Jensens—friends of my parents—asked me to sit for two hours with their six-week-old, first-born child.

            So, Scott Jensen picked me up from home (I guess this was before the days when parents only entrusted their kids to 35-year-old college graduates, which is weird, because a 12-year-old can’t invite a boyfriend over and most likely won’t steal your booze and smoke cigarettes in the garage.) and drove me to their beautiful home a mere half-mile from my parents’.

            They were nervous: they’d never been out since little S.J .was born. But I was so expert in my infant handling, that they were soon out the door, leaving a cloud of expensive perfume and aftershave behind them.

            Little Scooter, as I decided he should be called, was nothing but a tiny butterball of sweetness. He was too young to do much of anything other than eat, sleep and poop, and he would grip my finger in his teeny-tiny little hand and I  did everything in my power not to kiss his face off.

            He was sleeping in my arms when I started channel-surfing and came across a teen movie starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater.

            I don’t know why, but I was immediately sucked into this utterly whack-a-doo movie from the beginning. Scooter in my arms, I stared, chin hanging down to my throat, as Veronica and J.D. murdered their classmates and made the murders look like suicides.

            But, three-fourths of the way into the movie, the Jensens came home early.

            “I couldn’t stand to be away from him another minute,” cute Sally Jensen drooled as she took the warm baby from my arms. “We’ll pay you for the whole night, Lacey, we just missed him so much!”

            I got on board with that. It was sweet, even if it was interrupting my viewing.

            I was in the car before Scott even realized we were leaving. I never found it hard to make small talk with adults when I was a kid, so I’m sure I would have normally blabbed his ear off the entire four-minute car ride. But all I could think about was Heathers, and so, like a kid who has to go pee, I sat there mute beside him, wiggling and anxious, and I gave him monosyllabic answers to his polite questions all the way home.

            I busted in the door and ran to the den. The movie was still on. I sat there, entranced.

            Heathers is a movie about a smart girl, Veronica (Winona), who dumbly winds up a member of the most popular clique in school: The Heathers—three girls, all named Heather, who treat everyone else in school like garbage. Their leader is the most popular Heather: Heather Chandler, whose sadism goes far beyond fucking with the nerds and the fatties. She likes to treat her friends like shit, too.

            When new student J.D. (Christian Slater) arrives at school, he senses that Veronica doesn’t “really like her friends”, and he romances her. But then he eventually tricks her into killing Heather Chandler and making it look like a suicide.

J.D. suggests a cocktail of liquid drainer. Veronica assumes he's joking.

            People don’t think this movie is funny. I think it’s hysterical, but that probably says more about me than it does about the movie.

            There’s this line where J.D. tries to justify blowing up the entire high school, “Society nods it head at any horror the American teenager can think to bring upon itself. People are going to look at the ashes of Westerburg and say, 'Now there is a school that was self-destructive. Not because society didn't care. Because the the school was society!' That's pretty deep, huh?"

            Now, at the time, I thought it was incredibly deep. And this was before Columbine or that heinous shooting at Westroads Mall a few years back. Before 9/11 and before the shooting at Virginia Tech. This was before a gazillion atrocious events that have happened IN THE LAST DECADE that made us all feel really unstable and wonky.

            If you grew up in the eighties, you probably watched a lot of nonsensical movies about how hard it was to be a teenager, how hard it was to be unpopular and how poor you were if you weren’t a millionaire (think about The Lost Boys, Karate Kid or anything John Hughes ever made).

            But this movie was sort of ahead of its time in it’s own dark, independent way. It was the first movie (that I know of) that featured a teenager that felt so unloved that he wanted to blow up his high school, anyway.

            Now, that being said, I thought the movie was funny. I still do. Am I fucked up? Yes, probably I am. But I think teenagers are hilarious. They think their problems are so intense (and at that age, what isn’t intense?), their issues are new issues, and their friends right now are going to be their friends forever.

            But I also think most of those movies made it seem like life was a sort of live-or-die scenario and we were all within a moment of figuring everything out or being destined to die unpopular and unloved. 

Veronica decides to be a hero and save her high school.

            In seventh grade (when I first saw Heathers) I thought it would be really cool to establish a color for myself, along with one for each of my girlfriends (Heather Chandler was red, Heather Duke was green, Heather McNamara was yellow, etc. I now realize that this is the same way gang members think.) I thought it was a movie about teenage angst. I thought it was sort of cool that they were casually bumping off the assholes. 

            And yes, high school is full of assholes, full of hard times and full of intense feelings. But it GETS BETTER, YOU IDIOTS! And the message is that Veronica is the ultimate "cool kid" because she does whatever it takes to save the rest of the assholes. And which one of us would give a shit about anything anyone said to us in high school now? If they were to say, "You are such a pillow case!" to me now, I'd laugh their faces off! (And not just because that would be an incredibly clever film reference.)

            But mostly I keep thinking about the line Veronica writes in her diary, when she’s realized that things have spiraled out-of-control, “I just want my high school to be a nice place.”

            Oh, sweet girl, high school was really hard back then? Try hiding under the table in the library while a psychopath goes on a shooting rampage through your high school hallways! What's happened to teenagers? The eighties really spoiled us, movie-wise, didn't they? Compared to now, the eighties look like a stroll down the Champs-Élysées in the 1840's! Then: weird fashion, occasional beatings from bullies, not having a car. Now: metal detectors, mass beatings that are televised (and yet not stopped), not having a chance of living through senior year. What the what? (To borrow an expression from Liz Lemon.)

            Yeah, high school blows--that's the point. And if your glory days were in high school, I feel a little sorry for you, because, again, HIGH SCHOOL SUCKS. You have no control over anything--your skin, your curfew, your friends, your living situation, blah blah etc..The eighties made it all seem like a beautiful (albeit fucked up) dream.

           To the kids going through it today, I say: hang in there. It (life) gets much, much better.

           

 *Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer in Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1988).