Are We There Yet?
November 11-17, 2019
By Jay Edwards
jedwards@dailydata.com
Needing a good scare on All Hallow’s Eve
Backward, turn backward,
O Time, in your flight
Make me a child again
Just for tonight!
~ Elizabeth Akers Allen
There are a few things I have a hard time saying no to. KM’s chicken spaghetti or her Coca-Cola cake come to mind. Or watching an SEC football game between two top ten teams. Or going to scary movies with my daughter, Alexis, which this time of year becomes even more eerily fun. The last one we saw together was, “It Part 2.” She liked it better than me.
Last Halloween night, after KM and I went to mass for All Saints Day at the Cathedral, we headed to Bruno’s for dinner. Following a great meal of Insalata Salad and Chicken Parmigiana, we dropped by Alexis’ house, and enjoyed watching all the trick or treaters moving through the neighborhoods. Alexis’ front porch was full of costumed characters and she was dressed as a cat, from “Cats,” with some great makeup applied by her friend Tad. Her cat, Lucille, was dressed as a nurse, which is Alexis’ profession. There was another girl there who was Elaine from “Seinfeld,” with all the jerky dance moves down. Then there was a guy dressed as a Grizzly Bear, with a pagan village girl as his date. We didn’t know it then, but they were from the scary movie, “Midsommar.”
We left and KM suggested we watch a scary movie. She doesn’t usually go in for them but is more open minded on All Hallow’s Eve. She asked me what I wanted to watch. I usually default to my favorite, “The Exorcist,” which I’ve loved since I saw it at the old Center Theater, downtown, in 1974. But we’d watched it recently, so I tried to think of something else.
We got back to the apartment and were walking down the hallway when we saw our next-door neighbor, John, sitting in front of his door with a bowl of Snickers. We stopped for a visit and he offered up his chocolate, which we gladly took. I rarely turn down chocolate, and never a Snickers. John said he’d had about five kids come by, and the next morning when I went out for my walk, his chair was still there with some candy bars still waiting.
After bidding John goodnight, we went inside, and I tried to come up with a movie. I remembered a poll I took years ago at this paper to see what people’s favorite scary movie was. Our editor, Ashley, chose “Poltergeist.” She told me, “I watched Poltergeist at a very young age (we didn’t know what it was about) and couldn’t go to sleep that night, so that ruined me. You know, crawling steaks on the counter, bodies in the swimming pool, and the pink Jello the little girl had on her when she got out of the TV.”
Our guys in the tech department, David and Marcel didn’t hesitate when asked what their top choices were. (What’s scarier that macros and HTMLs?). David said, “I am going to say those movies that seem like they could actually happen, but you hope they never do. Like “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “The Shining” and “Children of the Corn.”
Marcel, who was from Belgium, chose like I did and picked “The Exorcist.” Little girls puking green pea soup need no interpreter.
But after mulling it over, I thought of the people from Alexis’ party and we ended up watching, “Midsommar.” I was hopeful because it had the same director as “Hereditary,” but it didn’t live up to that expectation. It is pretty wild though and I was never bored. So, next time you need a little fright in your night, check it out. Or, if you want a bigger one, Linda Blair and company are always available.
