Day: October 3, 2008

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Hellraiser’

October is back, and that can mean only thing-let the horror movies return! As always, we’ll be covering one of my favorite movie genres of all time this month. We start up with a classic MCT, but the relevance isn’t old. Hellraiser is a classic story in horror film. Watch it and enjoy.

Frank Cotton is a jaded individual. Having perused the world over, he visits a Middle Eastern cafe to meet his contact who agrees to sell him a very particular kind of box. Returning to his family home, he sets up a makeshift camp in one upstairs room and sets about solving the riddle of the box, which eventually opens to let him experience the very limits of pain through supernatural means. Not long after, Frank’s brother Larry arrives to stay at the house with his second wife Julia, but she’s not keen until she finds evidence of Frank’s presence – she previously had an affair with him, and her marriage is leaving her feeling claustrophobic. What she doesn’t know is that Frank will soon be returning to her life in a big way…and the end results of that will be messy, to say the least.

Written by the director Clive Barker, and based on his novella, Hellraiser felt as if something fresh had arrived on the tired horror scene of the eighties with its deadly serious approach and elaborate special effects which served the story rather than the other way around. But seeing it now, it’s clear it was still part of the horror cycle it once appeared to have broken away from: its effects represent a showcase for talented makeup personnel with a flair for gore, it features a young, female heroine who could have easily walked off the set of any Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th installment, and it has a cunning villain – or in this case, set of villains – who started a franchise.

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You Missed It: Isn’t one of them gay? edition

It is time once again to close out another week. As a heads up, You Missed It will not be appearing next Friday because one of The Guys is getting married and I will be in attendance. I won’t tell you which one, but he writes Take It From Snee (sorry fellas, he’s taken). In any case, if you were busy deliberating in the latest O.J. Simpson case, odds are you missed it.

Creepy Old Guys on the Block
If you are like most children of the 1980s, you were a big fan of New Kids On The Block. If you are like most of society in general, you were perfectly content to relegate them to the pages of embarrassing pop history. Not so fast, most people. NKOTB is back, and there are a lot of women in their 30s and late 20s who want to see them. Because of this, Donnie, Danny, Joey, Jordan and Jonathan combined forces to reform the Megazord their old group and seem to be doing well for themselves. This means we are just five short years away from the return of O-town.

Delaware vs. Alaska: Rivalry renewed
In the battle of the people used as political tools to widen their running mate’s attraction, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Joe Biden debated publicly Thursday night. Biden came out swinging against the McCain campaign but not Palin herself, attacking the Republican nominee’s stances on everything from the economy to Iraq. Meanwhile, Palin stated she was just happy to be let out of the soundproof room she’s been locked in for weeks.

The other white meat
After failing once in the U.S. House of Representatives, both houses on Congress passed a newer, “sweetened” version of the bailout bill. The new bill has stuff that makes it more attractive to the lawmakers who voted against it last time, like, namely, pork. Wall Street will no doubt be happy to see the bailout, and bird ethusiasts will likely be happy with the millions of dollars earmarked to study woodpecker mating habits.

Today in filthy bathrooms

Apparently a lot of people are worried about the cleanliness of public toilets, some even worried about sitting on the seat. They’re even rating dumpsheds online like they’re pissing in college professors. (That’s another web site.)

This is just a friendly SG Reminder: what do you think you’re leaving in there? Bathrooms are tile enclosures for depositing human waste. Your poo-poo. Your pee-pee.

You know why bathrooms are disgusting? Because you use them. And us. But we’re a different story.

So, next time you’re in a public toilet, how about just getting the job done? Believe us, the rest of the bar more than makes up for that place where you crap in a chair.

In democratic America, video tapes you

In a story more meta than anything written by Grant Morrison, two former Neiman Marcus security employees who were paid to secretly videotape customers as they shopped are now suing their bosses for secretly videotaping them … as they had relations in the security office. Relations of the biblical manner. Whoopsidoodle. Of course, the story does ask the question of how could they have possibly guessed that someone would be watching them?

Public servants will kick your ass for asking questions

It’s no secret that politics can get ugly sometimes. People can be downright nasty to each other when they disagree on something so passionately. In the U.S., we have a gentleman’s agreement that our politicians won’t hit people who challenge them.

However, that’s not true for every country. In Bangkok, a candidate for governor got mad at a journalist interviewing him and elbowed and kicked him. Why? Because that’s the kind of hard-hitting answer the reporter was probably looking for in the first place.

“What I did was a petty crime and I am happy to pay the fine for elbowing him and kicking him,” Chuvit said at his campaign headquarters next to a park he built and gave to the public.

There you have it. Don’t you want someone who’s not afraid to show how they really feel about a person or an issue?