A Look Back at October, part 2

Traveling over the last few weeks I’ve discovered a brand new pet peeve. This is something that has always irritated me, but it’s become an obsessive hatred lately: Automatic restrooms. Toilets that flush automatically, sinks that come on if you wave your hands, paper towels that dispense if you wave your hands. No levers, no handles. And, usually, no results. When was it determined that the average restroom visitor doesn’t possess the same co-ordination as a hamster? Hamsters are frequently rewarded with food pellets if they push a lever. Yet we must rely on the toilet noticing that we’ve left before it will flush. And these toilets rarely pay attention. Once upon a time, there was a tiny black button on the wall you could push to remind the toilet of its function. These, too, have disappeared via some restroom evolution. I’m told it’s more sanitary. That visitors rarely flush or wash anyway. That it’s more economical. Whatever. All I know is I go into any public restroom and I’m waving and swaying and doing everything but what I actually came in to do. (And nothing responds, of course, causing my neuroses to make me feel like I don’t have a soul.) Why do I have to succumb to St. Vitus Dance just to get a bathroom to recognize that I’m there?

…Anyway… While Rock ‘n Shock didn’t put us into a new tax bracket, it did provide us with some brand new and valuable contacts. We came back with new assignments, prospective opportunities, and a couple of new friends. So the magic triangle of shows remains:

______CONTACTS_____

FUN_______________MONEY

As long as you get two out of three, it should be considered a good show. The magic would be all three, but that’s only been Wasteland so far this year (although Fango Chicago ran a close second…)

Returning home was spent in recovery. It was a long trip and I start to feel long trips long before we even take them these days. I spent the following few days whipping up a “clean” version of Splatter Movie for our world premiere screening at the Hundred Acres Manor. I wanted to have a cut minus the sex and profanity, in case we got families in attendance. At this point, early in the week, we still weren’t sure if we were going to have an outdoor screening or not, so I wanted to have bases covered. The resulting cut was only ten minutes shorter, including an alternate cut of Debbie’s big scene in the film which has a completely different tag in the full-length feature (but this “clean” cut will be available on the DVD). This “clean” cut also has beeped-out swearing, including one scene between Jeff Waltrowski and Bill Hahner that was largely improv’d on set to lampoon the sailor’s mouths most grips have on set. With all the beeps, the dialogue sounds like we’re signaling ships at sea via morse code.

As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered. Since we couldn’t get any of the papers or radio stations to even mention this screening—despite the fact that the Manor advertises in the majority of these outlets—the bulk of our audience was made up of cast and crew and a few really cool supporters (thanks to Dave, Tara, Brittney, the McCrae family, Adam D., Mario, his mom, dad and grandma, and the gentleman we didn’t know for all the back-up!). We screened the film in the private house on the Manor’s property using our cobbled-together equipment, and it turned out to be a nice set-up, despite some technical difficulties. First we used a disk that had some compression issues. So we popped that and started over. Then the extension cord got kicked out of the wall midway through, so that caused an abrupt intermission. I had, of course, forgotten our grip kit, so no tape was on hand (nor was there an extension cord—I needed to borrow that from the Manor folks). Hey, I can’t remember everything, can I? Ah, shaddap.

And despite the uncompletedness of the film—misplaced music cues and sound effects—it seemed to go over real well with everyone. Especially with Eric Molinaris and his effects crew, who I’d suspected would be the harshest judges. But they were thrilled with the way their work had been cut, so I will deem this movie to be a success, though I have a lot of work ahead of me. Still need to re-record the off-screen interview dialogue (which will be done with a special guest voice), matte a couple of “movie-in-the-movie” scenes, finish the foley, prod Jeff into finishing the music, write up a contract for the “Special End Credits Song Donated by a Really Cool and High Profile Artist”, pop in the finished effects shots provided by Patrick Desmond and con Rich Conant into cleaning up the audio for me (including all the scenes where people are walking on gravel and it sounds like I have the microphone submerged in a bowl of cereal). Oddly enough, that’s not a lot of work, though. Just time-consuming.

(On top of that, I’m still working on finishing the final sound mix for The Resurrection Game with Scooter McCrae’s new score. I really want to finish this one and have it out by the end of the year. Trying to track down and interview as many people as possible for a new documentary as well, which will be a bear to complete as I’ll have to transfer hours of old VHS and VHS-C to digital… sigh.)

Our screening at the Manor was followed a few days later by “Amy Lynn Best” day at Scarehouse, run by our good friends Scott and Barb Simmons. Dave Cooper accompanied us to take pictures and Tara Frank provided Amy’s make-up. This was also a fun time, and we actually made more money there than in Boston! Amy was set up right at the head of the line so that people waiting to get into the haunt could look at her pics and DVDs, chat with her, etc. More than a few people got all excited to meet the “Movie Lady”.

I do have to say that Scarehouse is a fantastic haunt. We have a lot of friends acting in this maze of a place and it’s doubly unnerving to have the shadows call out your name as you’re wandering around and already creeped out. My good friends Don Bumgarner and Bill Hahner, both of whom can be seen in Splatter Movie, were chief among the willy-givers (although that does sound dirty, doesn’t it?).

Now, at this point, we hadn’t been home for more than a couple of hours to sleep in over a month. The house is starting to crumble like the ruins of Gormenghast, the dogs don’t recognize us, the cats… well, they’re cats, they don’t care one way or another. The horses are fine—they have 50 acres of grass so they don’t even need us.

It hasn’t been all fun and games, though. Or, really, almost at all. Between the traveling, the working, the movies, the magazine, life keeps banging on our door to remind us that there are other things to attend to.

Our oldest cat, Gypsy, has been having trouble walking and I was convinced we’d have to put him down last week. He got a reprieve from the vet who wanted to run more tests, just to make sure he didn’t actually have anything fatal. Spending the whole day at work waiting to get home and take your cat for a quick euthanasia, then discovering no, not now but maybe later, we’ll see… hell on the nerves.

Add to that stress is my grandmother, who has been having multiple heart attacks at her nursing home in Florida. She’s almost 93, suffers from Alzheimer’s… My mother flew down to be with her, also a nervous wreck.

But does any of that keep us down? Hell no! Because who has the time to be depressed or worried? Not when there are so many exciting and new horrors to surmount on a daily basis!

And more on that later…

Of Bachelors and Bachelorettes and the parties they attend

Earlier this year, my good friend and colleague, Mike Haushalter, asked me to be his best man for his wedding. I accepted, of course, but with the stipulation that I not plan the bachelor party. Being married myself, and wanting to remain so, I didn't want to have to arrange for strippers or car pools to nudie bars. Mike assured me that there would be others to take care of this.

This past Friday, our house became the central location for the party, after being notified by the 'others' that funds were too low for strippers and bars were just generally depressing, particularly when the groom is not a heavy drinker. So in lieu of debauchery, we opted for barbecue, bad movies and firearms. Living as far out as we do, we often shoot on our land without fear of police or injuring neighbors. And since hunting season is coming up, the sound of gunfire wouldn't be unusual anyway.

I arrived home after work around 3:00 pm and started to clean the magnificent hovel into inhabitability. Mike and his friend John arrived a little after four and we hiked into the back 20 acres to start setting up targets. I am in possession of an enormous woodpile, so there was lots of lumber to shoot at.

I went back into the house to get a little table to serve as a gun stand when I see Mike and Johnny tearing towards me like their asses were on fire. They were slapping at their heads and flailing their arms. "Bees!" Johnny said as he zipped past me. "Fuck!" and "Motherfuckers!" was all he said beyond that for the next few minutes.

Setting up the targets, pounding stakes into the ground, etc., had disturbed an underground hive. The bees were shooting out of this massive hole beside our burning pit—a black cloud of angry, swarming insects. It resembled something Biblical. Then the swarm formed an arrow, cartoon style, and took off after us.

Both John and Mike were stung multiple times and John got it the worst. He was also worried because he'd been flailing in the front with a gun strapped to his hip. He feared that one of our neighbors driving by would call the cops. I reminded him that I'd only seen a cop on our mountain once, turning around in our driveway because he'd missed a turn.

The swarm vanished fairly quickly. I trekked up with a can of bug spray to see if anything could be done. The hive was too large and while the anger had vanished, the bees were still pretty active, zipping in and out of the hole. So I simply gathered up the lumber and moved it all a few yards to the right. Mike and John were amazed I was never stung once, but, then again, I wasn't doing anything to piss the bees off.

Safely removed from the plague, we set up our targets again and spread out the arsenal. We had hand guns, revolvers, shot guns, semi-auto rifles and plenty of ammo. Jeff Waltrowski arrived a few minutes after the Great Bee Assault to join us. And lemme tell you, folks—it's my opinion that anyone who is for gun restrictions has never fired a gun before. They're awesome! It'd been almost a year since I fired a gun of any sort (not since the Day of the Deer Execution, anyway) and I thought sure my skills would have rusted to nothing, but it turns out I'm a pretty good shot with a rifle and target pistol. The sad fact remains that, with my Baretta, I'd stand a better chance at hitting an assailant by throwing the gun than by firing, but I did better than I'd anticipated. We blew the old school human paper target to bits, disintegrated a Styrofoam wig head and shot the hell out of a little die-cast tank, not to mention an entire box of clay pigeons. And we did it all with dignity, manliness and proper diction and grooming. The Great Nerd Bachelor Party had begun.

Amy arrived home from work and tried to sneak in with "I'm not here! I'm not crashing!" but John convinced her to come out and shoot his new semi-auto. He came back in a little while later saying, "Mike, never piss off your wife! She's a really good shot." I already knew this, but I appreciate any fair warning these days.

Amy then made us brownies, went back out in search of orange juice (something I'd neglected for our alcohol arsenal), while Mike fired the grill and cooked us all some awesome angus burgers. We imbibed, forgot to toast him entirely, and put on Death Trance, and incoherent action film from the guys who made Versus. An hour in, I was feeling pretty good and impaired, no longer even caring that I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on with the movie. Then Mike said that there was someone banging on my door.

There was. A woman had a Durango blocking our driveway. It had a flat tire and she was completely lost. Wearing a denim mini-skirt and a tube top, this woman was in her late 40s and looked a little like the prostitute from My Name is Earl. I came back in and asked if anyone wanted to help me change a hooker's tire.

Mike was convinced I'd hired her as the stripper and, to be honest, that did seem like a logical explanation but, again, see above. I wasn't handling the "adult entertainment". Nope, she was just a woman with a flat tire. A woman with an enormous car, a broken jack and a spare that was frozen to her chassis due to lack of maintenance. It took all four of us, plus Amy, plus a series of tools, WD-40, two jacks, a few boards, a can of fix-a-flat and an air compressor, and 94 minutes to get this stupid broad back on her way. "This stuff happens to me all the time," she lamented. "I have the worst luck."

"And thanks for spreading it around to us," I thought as my buzz vanished entirely.

John ended up sawing through the cable holding her spare to the underside of her car. It had frayed and was not lowering the way it should. Of course, cutting the cable meant that the tire had only one place to go: straight down onto John's head. The party was a roaring success for him by this point. We all considered just going back into the house, getting the guns, shooting her, hiding the car and having done with it all. (Trust me: we all considered this. We had the firepower after all! Why not make this our own Very Bad Things?) But we were good Samaritans, a fact not lost on this woman. She was highly aware that banging on a door in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night was a really risky move. She was lucky she got the Nerd Bachelor Party and not something much scarier further over the hill. But living that far out on your own without having AAA or knowing anything about your car or even how to change your own tire is just very stupid. Very.

Of course, once we finally got the spare on the car, it too immediately went flat. That's where the compressor and fix-a-flat came in. And the prayer that she'd at least get out of sight before she broke down again.

By the time we finally got rid of her, it was well after 10. John and Amy had to work the next morning; Jeff had an appointment. The party was over. I still don't know how Death Trance ended and we didn't even get to whatever disturbing porn Mike had with him. But, still, all in all, not a bad way to spend an evening.

The next day, the party continued, to an extent. I hooked up with Mike and our friend Matt Gilligan and set out to see Shoot 'em Up, which they'd already seen and loved. Amy and Carolyn, Mike's fiancée, headed over to the Smiling Moose for the bachelorette party. Post-movie plans involved a journey to a local strip club and I'd already decided to skip that—again: see above. Maybe I'm a failure as a man, but I have very little interest in strip clubs. Maybe it is because I'm married and have seen naked women in the past. Or maybe, as was pointed out by my brother-in-law earlier at my mother's birthday party (oh yeah: busy fucking weekend), I have no desire to throw money at a woman who doesn't give a shit about me. Or maybe I just don't want to spend my evening in a depressing cellar with a bunch of desperate, sleazy men watching women making ends meet with a last-resort career. Whatever. I wasn't going.

Shoot 'em Up was disappointing. I was able to deal with the suspension of disbelief when it came to the physics. The hero hit everything he aimed at and a whole bunch of shit he didn't. The villains all dressed identically and couldn't hit him if their guns were pressed against his chest. Laws of thermodynamics, friction, speed, sound and gravity were routinely broken or utterly disregarded. Also fine. No problems here. Video game logic; I dug it. But the movie routinely cheated it's own rules and premise and treated the audience thusly: "You're obviously very stupid for being here in the first place and we're going to treat you as such". There's a plot hole in the center of the film that's just unforgivable, involving a robot baby. It angered me. And, seriously Hollywood, you can't have a pro-gun movie with an anti-gun message. It doesn't work. It doesn't work as irony and it doesn't work as a message. It's asinine. Especially when the man implementing the anti-gun message actually murders someone—with a gun—at the end of his decree!

Of course, this further perplexed Mike and Matt. "You think about these things too much," one said. "It's just meant to be fun," said one or the other. Which also angered me. That's the reason shit continues to be made. I've had this fight with friends my entire life. Just because a movie is meant to be entertaining that doesn't give it the right to be insulting. Not everyone in the audience is an idiot. And no, I won't stop taking things like this seriously. It takes as much effort to do something right—especially on the script level—as it does to do something badly. I have no tolerance for lazy screenwriting.

After the movie, I had Mike drop me off at the Moose. I like that bar and the owner, so I figured I'd have a drink and go find something to do, not wanting to crash the girls' party. I ended up being invited to join. Amy, Carolyn, some work friends of Carolyn's, and our friend Tara (make-up whiz on Professor Jack and the Electric Club) were boozing it up in the bar's upstairs pool room, which they had virtually to themselves. Amy had bought light-up shotglasses with penises in the bottom. And straws with penises on them. And penis candy necklaces and bracelets. Basically, everything that stood as a symbol to oral sex… a practice most women abandon after the honeymoon. They slapped a pin on me that said "Dated the Groom" and we bitched about work and friends. It was a fun time.

And I was able to hang out and drink without feeling (overly) old, as I have lately. Though we were chased out around 1am by a rowdy group who strolled in already drunk. Actually, the group was okay but they were with a little asshole with a faux-hawk who thought it was hysterical that he could scream at the top of his lungs like Fay Wray. Rather than shove a pool cue down his throat, we opted to just split.

And thus ended the pre-wedding festivities. We have the rehearsal dinner this week (which is good because I don't want to make any eating mistakes on the big day) and then the ceremony and reception on Saturday. Not to mention my speech. Considering every other best man's speech I've ever heard deals with how the best man himself is actually more important than the couple, I'm looking forward to it all the more.