Tag Archives: Halloween

Nightmares

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I have trouble with scary movies. At least certain types of scary movies. They give me nightmares, and I’m the kind of person who, while having a nightmare, climbs out of bed, running around waking up everyone I can find, frantically trying to explain the horrific danger we’re facing and how we have to come up with a plan to deal with the threat now.

I love certain types of scary movie. I could watch the 1931 Dracula, or the ’31 Frankenstein or ’35 Bride of Frankenstein, or the ’32 Mummy over and over and over again. Give me a classic Godzilla any time!

Sometimes while explaining this, I’ve had friends ask how this can be true, when they know I have written some pretty creepy and horrific stuff. Or, as a friend very recently put it, “How can you love Fringe so much? It presents a lot of things far worse than many scary movies you’ve refused to watch!”

Part of the issue is control. If I’m writing the scary stuff, I’m in charge. I can save whoever I want. I can make the bad guy lose when I want and how I want.

To a lesser extent, watching a scary movie (or series) at home on TV or iPad is different in part because I have some control. I can pause or stop the movie when I want. More importantly, if I’m not immersed in the big screen setting without the theatrical sound system it’s easier for me to remember I have control. I’m not trapped in the center of a row of strangers in a dark room. And sometimes just looking away isn’t enough.

There’s also familiarity. Forbidden Planet was one of the first movies to trigger this reaction when I was about five or six years old (it’s the one my Mom still tells stories about), but now, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time. I know how it ends. I know what the monster is and what its limitations are. None of that was true the first time I saw it.

And in Fringe‘s case, there is an additional salvation: there have been very, very, very few scary movies ever made which any character who is even one-tenth as smart as Walter is on the good guys’ side.

Because what’s missing from most nightmares is a hero you’re confident will win the day.

Let the punishment fit the crime

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Three of my best friends have been hosting a Halloween party for about 20 years. They always have a theme to the party, which guides their decorations, party games, and usually their own costumes.

Sitting at the partyMany of us who attend regularly create our costumes based on the theme. For example, the year the theme was Your Worst Nightmare, I came dressed as a gay republican. Not that a gay republican, per se, is my worst nightmare, but me BECOMING one comes pretty close. On the other hand, the year they set Egypt as the theme, Michael and I came dressed as a pair of aliens, carrying a clip board with a work order written in hieroglyphics. So while neither of us believe any of that ancient astronauts nonsense, we are not above using it for a silly costume joke.

This year’s theme was Shakespeare. There were several people there dressed as specific characters from Shakespearean plays, others were in Elizbethan dress, and a number of us were there as jokes.

Michael and I were each dressed in yellow-and-black striped shirts, black pants, silly antennae on our heads, and yellow wings. I wore a lapel button with a large, friendly-looking “2” on it. Michael wore a button with the same friendly-looking “2” except with a red circle and slash through it.

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Two silly menSo I was 2, and he was not-2.

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And we were both bees.

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And it’s hard to get more Shakespearean than having a choice between the 2 Bee and the Not-2 Bee, right?

We were told we would be PUNished for our bad joke costume. We were told our Punishment would almost certainly involve hives. There were many other silly puns flung about, but I have forgotten most.

But we weren’t the only bees there. One of the other guests came as the Neither A Borrower Nor A Lender Bee.

(If I manage to get pics from any of the people who took them, I’ll add them to the post.)

The only part of our costumes that didn’t come together is we didn’t recruit a third person for the silliness, because Michael would then have dressed him in blue suit, fedora, and a flesh-colored featureless face mask, just like the DC Comics character known as The Question.

Because then we would have the 2 Bee, or Not-2 Bee, and that is The Question.