from depression to obsession to depression

Suggested song to listen to while reading this post: "Butterfly" by Mariah Carey

Well buddy, you have certainly been doing the majority of the blogging for the past....six months. The tables certainly had turned, but my blogging hiatus is finally over. I hadn't posted because I so rarely have anything to say, and when I do have something to talk about, I usually have too much to say, and that keeps me away too. However, keeping with our new "themed" posts, I need to write about our favorite subject, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.

If you were to flash back to June of this year, you would meet a girl unafraid of stumbling across butchered bodies in everyday life, a girl who did not wonder "If I was murdered right now, what would Elliot and Olivia uncover about my life during their investigation?" But after I moved in late June, I got depressed. I felt like a displaced person and I needed a break. Enter Instant Netflix, complete with Seasons 1-7 (they have since posted seasons 8-10 too) of Law and Order: SVU, which I had never seen. Remembering how much you liked it, I figured I'd watch an episode or two and see if I liked it. Cut too November 1st, just over four months later, you would see that same girl, depressed again, but for a very different reason. You see after watching one episode, that girl was so compelled, that she continued to watch, episode after episode, grizzly rape/murder/suicide after grizzly rape/murder/child abduction. And in a little over four months, she had watched her way through the entire series. Over 220 episodes. I am now completely up to date. And here I am, just like everybody else, anxiously waiting for the newest episode to be posted on iTunes. No new case to solve, no rules to bend, no new ADAs to constantly compare to the irreplaceable Alex Cabot. Let me tell you buddy, I don't like this new world. I don't like having some time to kill and not being able to fill that time with Elliot, Olivia, Munch, Finn and Alex. I don't like it one bit.

Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman... Helen?

Hello Reader(s)! I don't know what the response will be to my new goal of blogging about horror movies will be, but since it's the day before Halloween I figure it's a timely topic, whether it becomes a weekly thing or not. So I have decided to compile a list of scary movies for people who want to get in on the holiday spirit, but who don't actually like scary movies. I have a feeling this has been done before... but not by me!

Candyman (1992)
Candyman is a legitimately scary movie that has the potential to appeal to people who are not particularly interested in monster movies. Candyman features a strong script, a fantastic performance by Virginia Madsen, and a haunting score by PHILLIP FUCKING GLASS. Candyman is the story of University of Illinois graduate student Helen Lyle (Madsen) who is writing a thesis about urban legends. When she finds out from her cleaning lady that residents of a housing project attribute a series of murders in their neighborhood to the Candyman, Helen goes in to investigate the deaths. While the issue of a white savior coming in to rescue the helpless black folks is in full play here, Candyman deals with issues of race and class in a more complicated way than you might initially expect. Most of the scares for me came from Tony Todd's creeeeeeeepy voice-overs. There's not a lot of gore here, though there are a few bloody scenes. This movie does a great job of making you wonder if the main character is really seeing the Candyman or if she is just bat shit insane. Candyman is a very well made film, and so I think it is a horror movie for people who are just into movies... Did that sentence make sense or have meaning?

Bloody Mallory (2002)
One of the most entertaining horror comedies I've seen in years, Bloody Mallory is the story of a team of paranormal investigators/demon hunters who work for the French government and are called upon to save the life of a crotchety old Pope. The team consists of Mallory, who got into this work after accidentallyarrying a dddemone should have known he was evil because he had a soul patch), Vena Cava, a transgendered weapons expert with attitude, and Talking Tina, a 12-year-old mute telepath. When the Pope is kidnapped on French soil, the team is sent to a town populated by possessed worshipers of the fallen angel Abaddon to bring him back to safety. This movie also features a succubus with a giant clit on her forehead, which isn't as offensive as it sounds. This movie is completely ridiculous and a lot of fun, but it's not at all scary. Definitely a great movie for people who aren't into being scared to watch on Halloween.

Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2008)
This one is for all our readers who like to think. While the other two movies on this list are both available on Hulu, Otto is still doing the festival circuit, and so it's probably not a realistic Halloween treat for most people. If you do get the chance to see it though, I highly recommend it. I do not even know how to begin explaining the plot of this movie, since it's not really a standard narrative film. The synopsis given on the official website doesn't quite cover everything. Basically, a zombie gets cast in a movie about zombie rights, and the plot is about his experience as a gay zombie and the filmmaker's attempt to finish her masterpiece. The movie explicitly plays with the whole "zombies as a metaphor for political/social change" concept, and does it in a way that most zombie movies do not - it puts Otto in the midst of an existential crisis (I think). A warning; this film is extremely gory.

I would also like to recommendd Dead Snow (or Død snø, 2009) as a horror movie for people who like horror movies. This Norwegian movie about Nazi zombies has it all; blood, guts, sex, and snowmobiles. It is a definite treat for any zombie fan.

Happy Halloween!

Taking things in new and exciting directions!

In light of the fact that someone actually read our blog today (Leen will have more on that later), I thought I should update it!

Believe it or not, I've actually been thinking a lot lately about what would make me update this thing of beauty a little more regularly. I thought about maybe giving the blog a theme so that I could write about my interests. Then I thought about my interests.

1. Law and Order
2. Horror Movies
3. Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me

I think it's pretty obvious what I have to do. I mean, there are already so many Wait Wait episode recap blogs out there, does the world really need another one?! So I'm thinking about Special Victim Sundays and Freaky Fridays or something like that. What do you think, buddy? Five days of the week to talk about WHATEVER WE WANT and two days of the week that we get to write witty and intellectually stimulating posts about my interests? What does our reader think?

If They Can Do It So Can We: The Movie

I just saw Julie and Julia. Do you think someday, someone will make a movie out of our blog?

I hope we get Michael Bay.

Why We Are Friends

Though Leen and I have had several disagreements over the years, few have been so divisive as the Casey Novak v Alex Cabot debate. For those of you who don't know, Casey and Alex are fictional Assistant District Attorneys who prosecute the cases of the dedicated detectives of the Special Victims Unit on Law and Order, SVU. Alex Cabot served with dedication for nine years before a case involving a Colombian drug lord forced her into the witness protection program. Casey Novak was her replacement, and though Alex was a tough act to follow, Casey was as passionate and committed a public servant as ever worked at the District Attorney's office.

While I am completely head over heals for both of these characers, Leen has, for the past several months, insisted that Casey sucks. I feel that Casey's willingness to risk her career time and time again and to bend the rules in the name of justice make her a better attorney. It also got her disbarred, but that's besides the point. While my friendship with Leen has remained strong throughout the years, her constant comparisons of Casey to Alex, in which Casey always turned up short, touched a nerve. I was Casey Novak for Halloween last year, after all. It felt like Leen was telling me that I was not as badass as Alex Cabot. That all changed tonight, when Leen sent this message:

"Could Casey Novack be any cooler? ONLY if she was Alex Cabot"

You're coming around, Buddy, and I'm glad to see it. You have the right to remain compelled.

Update of the Month

I am going to go ahead and give this post the coveted title of "Update of the Month" in light of the fact that it will most likely be the only update of this month. Blogging is harder than I thought it would be.

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about technology's place in society. Clearly, no one has ever tried to tackle the subject of technology’s role in social interactions, and so you can add “trailblazer” to the list of my many accomplishments. I feel compelled to write this, however, after a drive to the beach with a friend who will remain unnamed. This friend offered to make the 30 minute drive to Irondequoit on the most perfect day for the beach I’ve seen this summer. He offered to go with three of his friends, people he chooses to interact with on a daily basis. However, on the drive there, he pulled out his iPhone at each stoplight to check face book (and other, less family friendly social networking sites) rather than communicating with his passengers. When asked why he felt compelled to do this, he claimed that he would have plenty of time to talk to us at the beach, and he felt no need to chit chat on the ride there. Of course, he was sort of joking when he said that, and after being mocked repeatedly for his iPhone addiction he put the phone down, and whipped out his Speedo.

Technology is great for helping people communicate. A friend who just moved to Maine to work on a farm keeps a blog about her farming experience that enables her to let her whole family know what is going on in her life. My mother is finally learning how to text, and so I’m sure I can look forward to many poorly written sentence fragments from her in the coming weeks. It concerns me, though, that so many people find impersonal interactions on devices like iPhones and Blackberries to be more fulfilling than a conversation with a friend about the woman in the car next to you who was just picking her nose at the red light. Are these people using technology as a way to make up for some kind of social anxiety, as a form of less stressful communication? Or has technology become an unnecessary crutch in the social interactions of people who would be just fine without it?

bootlace, bootleg, bootless, bootlick, bootneck?

Song: "Handle Me" by Robyn
Problem: Potential racial slur
Feelings: Mixed

In the song there is a hard to understand line, that to my ears sounded like "Boot-necked, Hispanic creep." I like to think of myself as being hip with all of the new slang, but boot-necked, was not an expression I was familiar with, which is why I wasn't sure that it was a racial slur. To my knowledge "Hispanic" isn't a slur, and "creep" while not a nice thing to say, doesn't typically apply to one group of people more than another. But for all I knew the combination of innocuous words like Hispanic and creep could become a fatal (and very rude) slur.

After searching urbandictionary.com I found out that boot-necked is an actual thing and it is: Royal Marine (British Special Forces). Known to each other as "Royal" but the rest of the British Forces know them as boot necks. This nickname is derived from them cutting the top from a leather boot and wearing it like a modern neck brace to stop sailors cutting their throat while they guarded officers on board British sailing ships in the days of old. This certainly doesn't have anything to do with Hispanic people.

Finally I caved and searched the various websites that have song lyrics on them. I put it off for a while because they are usually very unreliable. According to three such websites, the line is "Boot licking Nazi creep." In my defense, they blur the Nazi part because apparently you can't sing about fascists without being censored by fascists.


Song: "Handle Me" by Robyn
Problem: Censorship
Feelings: Mixed