T hursday, November 4, 2010, 8:30 AM
I t is a beautiful fall morning in Oxford. The early sun is making everything glow with a golden light. Looking into our front yard, I see birds and squirrels going about their business in the trees. In the distance I hear the whistle of an approaching train joining the sound of chirping birds. I take the last swallow of my morning coffee and look around the living room:
T he Fat Bastard, also known as Thor, jumps up from his place on the couch and runs across the room, his big, orange and white belly swaying under him and causing Eloise to go into hyper alert mode. Stiff legged with her radio antenna like ears unfurled, she approaches the window, scanning the street for any signs of potential threat.
T he only thing she notices is that Thor has abandoned his place on the couch, which she promptly takes. Her ears twitch occasionally as cars and people pass our house, but she remains asleep.
L ast night I watched Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects (2005) , his sequel to 2003's The House of a 1000 Corpses . I saw The House of a 1000 Corpses and was not impressed with it, so I felt no urgency to watch the newer film. One thing that I did know about it was the Lynard Skynard song Free Bird was effectively used in the last gun fight. Since Free Bird was taking up space in my head last night as an ear worm, I decided to look for the film and watch it.
T o my frustration the only copy of the film I could get was a German dubbed version. Fortunately I was able to find English subtitles, but they was out of sync with the movie. The subtitles were about a minute behind the movie. Since the plot was pretty straightforward and didn’t require have much in the way of narration, it was easy enough to follow. The story is pretty simple; the bloodthirsty, sadistic killers from House of a Thousand Corpses are fugitives from the law. That’s about it.
O n the plus side, the soundtrack was pretty cool, featuring great classic rock. Especially breathtaking was the final sequence, Free Bird playing on the soundtrack as the screen is filled with a montage of shots featuring the wide open spaces of Texas.
B ut there is plenty to not like about this movie. Two of the things that I had the biggest problem was #1 there is no clear insight into who these people are. Captain Spaulding, played with great zeal by Sid Haig, is the leader of this clan of misfits. He is the only one that has regular contact with outside society. He even has a job, granted he is an extremely creepy clown, and a girlfriend. The rest of the Firefly family are barely human and exhibit a psychotic rage that violence is their chief form of interaction with outsiders. The violence and sadism is so over the top that I quickly found myself desensitized to it.
My other big point for not liking this movie is the overt misogyny of the film. Why does every member of the Firefly Clan, including the two women, target females? Is it because they look better naked? I was surprised at how quickly I became inured to the site of yet another pair of blood splattered breasts.
I can’t say I would recommend this movie; its steady display of overt acts of violence quickly becomes boring and uninteresting. That was definitely 2 hours of my life I will never get back.
The waiting area at physical therapy is very small and if there’s more than one are two other people there, I feel like I’m in everyone’s way with my chair. I sat and the waiting room at physical therapy today for 15 minutes. Today there were four people in there, so I just parked my chair in the hallway and looked into the waiting room. There was a big, balding guy in gray sweats and what looked like brand new white New Balance sneakers sitting on the left side of the room , reading a Time magazine.
Directly in front of me was another, older guy in work clothes, talking animatedly on his cell phone. He wore ankle high, sweat stained work boots, faded khaki pants. The blue-collar of his shirt had been washed until it was nearly white. Underneath his baseball cap his broad nose supported thick glasses with wire rims and tinted lenses. When he spoke into his cell phone, he moved his body in a secret rhythm, dancing by himself in his chair. First he would nod his head from left to right, then whichever hand was holding the phone, that shoulder would jump up and down. he would jerk his body once and then his feet would stamp, one at time, on the floor. When listening his body was statue still, but as soon as he opened his mouth the solitary dancing began again.
It’s easy to tell who is there for therapy from those who are there to pick up patients; we patients arrive wearing our work out clothes. The other two occupants were one of each. The one closest to me was wearing red and white sweats, clearly there for her thrashing; the other woman had the look of a mother waiting for her child to finish before taking him back to school or returning home with them.
After such a clear and sunny start this morning, skies are now gray and dropping rain. And once again my pets is have taken up a sleeping positions around me.
8:52 PM
I am a lifelong fan of horror movies and this past October I immersed myself in them. I watched old horror films, from the 1932 White Zombie to a slew of recent remakes of classic horror films such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm Street, Dawn of the Dead,and Halloween, and some new original films like Jennifer's Body, Trick 'r Treat and House of the Devil.
