In space, no one can hear you caroling

Our breakfast for dinner last night was yummy! Ken was in charge of the eggs, because we like them over easy and I always manage to make them over hard. Ha ha! Bacon, hash browns cooked in bacon grease (as were the eggs), and 8 slices of buttered toast made for a low fat and heart healthy meal...NOT! We don't do that very often, so might as well really enjoy it. Oh, and we had champagne with it. Not mimosas...Ken said, "Why dilute perfectly good champagne with orange juice?" Good point, although on the rare occasion we go out for breakfast (usually when we're on vacation), it is fun to have mimosas! Tonight will be beef vegetable soup.

We got the tree up and decorated. It's good to have that done, because this week I can wrap Ken's presents and get them under the tree. It's always fun to put the ornaments on, because we've gotten each other some fun ones over the years. I'm heavy on the penguins and I Love Lucy ornaments, and Ken has a lot of golf ones. Other fun ones, too, like this one I got for Ken last year.

It's only logical that you should have a happy holiday, Captain. Ken hung this one low on the tree, and he said it looks like Spock is floating in space! Ha! Can anyone else say that they have a Mr. Spock ornament? Yeah, we're cool that way. That's just the way we roll. (That one was for you, Jamie!)

Here's one of my Lucy ones.

When you press a button, it plays a conversation between Lucy and Ricky, in which she tells him that she told her ladies' group that he'd put on a show for their upcoming benefit. You can hear Ricky on the phone, yelling in Spanish, and Lucy says quickly, "Well okay goodbye dear!" Makes me laugh every year!

Last night, we started watching "The Dark Knight," but Ken started snoozing, so we'll watch the rest later. (Give the guy a break--he got up early for a meeting!) I think Christian Bale is an excellent Bruce Wayne/Batman, and "Batman Begins" is my favorite Batman movie. I was very impressed with Heath Ledger's Joker, and I'd say that the posthumous Oscar buzz is warranted. Jack Nicholson played the Joker role mostly for laughs, but Ledger's take on it is much darker and creepier. I liked the darker tone of "Batman Begins," and they continue that in this movie (although we haven't seen the whole thing yet). Batman is one of our most tortured heroes, after all. And my personal favorite, by the way.

I didn't mention that Friday night we watched the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes." Oddly enough, that's a 70's horror movie that I've never seen, so I can't say if the remake compares to the original, but seeing the remake made me want to get it. I suspect that the original was much more shocking at the time (and it was directed by Wes Craven), much like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and the remake struck me as a fairly typical and pedestrian desert mutant movie. (There are so many, you know!) Nothing really unusual about the movie, although the mutants were fairly gross. They became mutants due to nuclear bomb testing in the desert, and I found the test homes and mannequins set up by the government fairly eerie and creepy. Don't worry about seeing it if you aren't a horror movie fan. If you are, it's nothing extraordinary. Watch it with the lights off to optimize what little scare factor there is.

SCORE!

Man, did I ever score big at Circuit City today! I intended to only get 3 movies to flesh out, if you will, our horror movie collection, but they had some great titles! And I promise, I'm done buying movies for a while--we've got plenty to keep us occupied for some time! I even put one back--"Bram Stoker's Dracula." Good, but not one of my absolute favorites.

In addition to the classics "Fright Night" and "Carrie," I got the relatively new "1408," one I haven't seen yet.

They also had the remake of "The Hills Have Eyes" (haven't seen that one yet, either), "Hostel Part II" (the first one was really good and creepy, and this is the unrated version of the sequel...uh oh), "Thirteen Ghosts" (haven't heard much about that remake yet, but it looks intriguing...didn't a fellow Spotter recently write about this movie?), and I was thrilled to find another old classic: Clive Barker's "Hellraiser." I think Ken may not have seen that one, so that's a must-watch soon!

I LOVE Clive Barker's writing--it's some of the most unusual and downright out-there stuff in the past couple of decades. Much of it is more fantasy than horror, but he can ratchet up the Creep-o-meter as well as anyone, and "Hellraiser" is a great example of that. Pinhead and the other Cenobites are the stuff of nightmares. (Personally, I found Chatterbox and Butterball creepier than Pinhead, though.)

What is it with me and horror movies, you ask? Hey, thanks for asking! I'll tell you: I'm not really sure. I know that I've loved them ever since I was a little girl, watching the Creature Feature in our darkened basement. It's something that I have thought about before, because people have wondered how I can watch some of this gruesome stuff. I guess it's because I have a clear delineation in my mind of what is real and what is fake (Much like the "real America" that Palin is speaking about lately, apparently as opposed to...what? Faux America?), and I know that these things aren't real. I think it's the same reason why some of us find roller coasters so horrifyingly exhilarating...you're pushing the envelope, you're taking a risk, it feels as though you might die...but it's all in fun and it's all safe.

Watching a horror movie is like that for me. It's fun to get a little scared, have that rush of adrenaline, imagine how scary it would be to be in such a situation, but you're doing it all from the cozy comfort of your couch. You can turn the light on when it's over. It's an experiment in terror that is controlled by you. The fright is mixed with laughter, because you know it's not real, and you can laugh at yourself because you jumped when someone clamped their hand on your shoulder. (KEN!)

I think that's some fun stuff, and that's why I love creeeeeepy moooooovies. Heh heh heh....