Deal 'Em Again

2008-09-18 - 12:43 p.m.

Yesterday, Brin finished all her packing while I was at work. Today Brin is going to cut my hair after today's Angels game.

We're hunkering at home before we have to go outside.

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Okay. Scary stuff is our topic. There are a couple spoilers in the following entry. You've been warned.

Got to thinking about horror, and things that are really scary. No, not anything political. I'm talking about movies and TV.

Now, I'm not a fan of the horror genre. I'm not real big on being scared. But I loved the Tales from the Crypt TV series (as well as the original comics) and the TV series of Friday the 13th. Now, some of the TFTC stories focused on the supernatural - the walking dead, inanimate objects that were alive, and such.

But those weren't the stories that really got to me. The ones that got to me were the realistic ones.

Let me 'splain. In the second season of TFTC, there's an episode called "Cutting Cards". It concerns two gamblers (played by Lance Henriksen and Kevin Tighe) who both think they're the best. In fact, they've taken large pots from each other over the years. They hate each other's guts so much they agree to a bet - loser gets out of town forever.

They roll dice for it - both get double sixes. They agree to Russian roulette. The tension builds as the gun clicks on the empty cylinders, one at a time. It gets down to the last one - the one with the bullet - and the bullet is a dud.

So they agree on "chop poker" - five-card draw, loser loses a body part if he loses a hand. The episode ends with both men in a hospital as limbless torsos - playing checkers. Neither one wants to give up. They are so driven to beat each other that they are reduced to moving checkers with a wad of gum attached to their noses.

Or the third season ep "Split Second", where a barmaid marries a lumberjack and cheats on him with another (she's suffering from "terminal boredom" at the lumber camp). The married guy (played by Brion James) beats the younger man so badly that the younger man loses his sight. The other lumberjacks (who liked the kid and knew what the wife was up to) teach the kid how to use a chainsaw...but the big logs he's practicing on are hollowed out and the husband and wife are inside.

Now, to me...those two stories scared me far more than the ones with the supernatural elements because those two could actually happen. The walking dead and the vampires and the mummies and the "unkillable killer"...those tend to rely on what Stephen King called the "gotcha". They leap out and go BOO, and then they kill with copious amounts of blood and gore. But to me, what's even more frightening is what driven, obsessed, must-win-at-any-cost people could do - especially to innocents - in their quest to win.

If you want to see what I'm talking about, here's part one of "Cutting Cards" (follow the links on the page to get to the next segment of the story).

This is absolutely NSFW. You have been warned. Management assumes no liability for loss of job, loss of lunch, or loss of sleep.

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And over here at SciFi.com is a list of seven horror movie cliches that always show up.

Note the one about the full moon. That one is on the money.

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Okay, ONE political item that's scary:

There's a rumor going around (discussed here) that Barack Obama may be planning to dump Biden for...

...get ready...

...Hillary Clinton.

Let the scariness begin!

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Okay. The Angels game has started. Papa John's will arrive soon. Then Brin goes to the airport.

Be seeing you.

requiel - 2008-09-18 22:52:51 - http://requiel.diaryland.com
Can Obama do that? Has there ever been a presidential candidate that has switched his vice for another right before the election? That seems so strange to me.

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Dave - 2008-09-22 19:15:46 -
George McGovern did it - and got his head handed to him.

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