On Saturday night, things were wild here. Husband had a gig and I read about Godzilla until my brain was full.
Then, it was time for the television.
At MAPACA, one of the my co-panelists presented an interesting paper on the Paranormal Activity movies, so they were on my mind.
I really enjoyed the first 2 movies. (I didn’t hate the 3rd and 4th, I just didn’t like them as much as the first ones). Still, I like the way each film in the franchise plays with narrative tropes and comments on the social and technical aspects of image production. manipulation of the gaze, spaces of resistance, power, and other popular culture studies stuff.
Movies 3 & 4 are available on Netflix and thus were easily and immediately available to me.
Most importantly, movies 3 and 4 are spooky but not super-scary.
Unless you’re home alone.
And by “you,” I mean “me.”
One time I scared myself witless after watching an episode of Supernatural that I’d seen at least half a dozen times.
To be fair, I also scared myself witless once watching the Dick Van Dyke Show.
True story.
But back to Saturday…
I chose Paranormal Activity 4, which was more entertaining than I remembered but, as I also remembered, not particularly scary.
Later that night, just as we were falling asleep, there was a loud, strange sound that seemed to emanate from the living room.
It only happened once, so we’ve decided to believe it was some air in the pipes.
(We aren’t concerned about the sounds on the roof. They aren’t in the attic, and even if they were, we know those are just squirrels. Or demons. Or demon squirrels).
We’d never set up video surveillance a la Paranormal Activity. Not because of the potential for disappearing and leaving behind mysterious footage, but because of the potential for disappearing and leaving behind evidence of early morning conversations like the one that happened this morning when my alarm went off.
Instead of hitting snooze, I yelled at it like a petulant teenager. “Shut UP, Godzilla!”
Disdain dripping from his voice, Husband replied, “It’s NOT Godzilla. It’s CHEWBACCA!”
Then I hit the snooze and we both went back to sleep.
He’s right, of course. It’s Chewbacca. It’s always Chewbacca.
I don’t even have a Godzilla alarm. That would be ridiculous.
While I was finishing this post, Husband and I watched that Dick Van Dyke Show episode, “A Ghost of A. Chantz,” on Netflix.
It’s still creepy and fun.
You know, it’s probably technically the first found-footage type horror movie/tv show. Huh.
Here, I found it for you on YouTube!
The Dick Van Dyke Show: “A Ghost of A. Chantz”
At happy hour my friends used argue bitterly about whether you are an underappeciated genius like Karen Russell or whether your blog is a rip off of the Bloggess. After a lot of archives exploration I’ve realized that you were blogging about squirrels, the embarrassing shit you do, and the crazy people you attract YEARS before she even started blogging. When I looked at the dates on your post I realized that their accusations that you plagiarized her book title was bullshit because your post with that title was YEARS before she wrote her book.
Are you trying to get published as a book or anything because I would totally buy anything you published. Please write a book! You need to write a book.
I hope this doesn’t sound crazy or stalkery, I never leave comments on blogs anymore and I kinda got starstruck and writers block when I opened the window.
This has gone completely to my head and I think I need to lay on the floor and hyperventilate for a while before I can say thank you for the kind words.
I should have quoted your comment in my chicken post. I’m going to do that now.
Also, this is still going to my head.
Also, yes, I need to publish a book. I need to hand some drafts over to The Professional Editor Who Inhabits These Comments. I need to do many things.
And now that I’ve recovered a bit I do remember our twitter chat about Karen Russell, so no, this doesn’t sound stalkery. Yet.
whew.
While I’m being a goofball, can I ask how long it takes you to write a post? Like this one. It seems very random but when I re-read it I see how clever the structure is and how you build to the joke. I’d like to blog. I just signed up for tumblr and I’m reading everything I can to inspire myself but I figured I’d take a shot and ask you some questions. Thanks in advance for any advice!
This one I can handle. Yes – start a blog, see what happens!
This post probably took an hour total. At first the alarm clock post and the paranormal activity post were separate but I did like the way to could build the scary movie watching into a joke about the alarm clock. Part of that time was also watching that dick van dyke episode, which I was spending more time watching than I was editing this post. I know that’s not very helpful. It’s pretty variable how long it takes me to write a post.
And with any luck you’ll have wackos like me hanging around waiting for a shout out in the hope of being bigger than Jesus (no longer appearing) or at least Squirrels in the Common Post Tag Cloud.