For those of you who do not follow every move I make with the fervency of a religious zealot, I made my latest post for WFMU’s Beware of The Blog yesterday. It is an exploration of the idea that is Mystery Drives, and a recent example of an epic Mystery Drive. For those of you who enjoy trips without purpose or travel stories, you should read it. Leave a comment if you want too. I think that’s how the proprietors of the blog know whether or not you’re a popular contributor.
Also, there is a new poll here at Swan Fungus, for which you can place a vote, and potentially win an exciting prize if you are a registered Swan Fungus user. If you are a registered user and have not received word yet that you are a contest winner, that simply means that you have not won. This week’s giveaway item is a shiny new car! Just kidding, it’s a hand-signed (by my mom!) glossy 8″x10″ photo of me. It’s laminated so you can jerk off to your heart’s content. Ha!
Before this week’s top ten, here’s another fun installment of “The Top Ten Google Searches Referring To This Website!”
10. ashley fuck
09. home inventions by surprise
08. ways for men to become famous
07. gail boobs top chef
06. gold paint porn
05. great bums
04. things to do on rainy nights with your boyfriend
03. human ape sex – (again!? really!?)
02. need fucking! get laid tonight! try for free!
01. womens pretty butt holes
And now for the reason you’re all really here, a new and original Top Ten list. The other night I watched a documentary called Zoo, about men who have sex with horses. And by that I mean the horses have sex with the men. The movie was made because of the people in this little community of horse fuckers died as a result of internal bleeding. I later had a nightmare about the film in which the cast of characters were threatening to kill me because I’d learned their identities. I awoke in a cold sweat, worried that there were horse fuckers trying to kill me. It was the first time since adolescence a film had such an intense impact on me. That said, here’s a list of ten weird movie-related dreams/nightmares I’ve had.
The Top Ten Weird Movie-Related Dreams/Nightmares I’ve Had
10. The Phantom Of The Opera – In 1987 there was a cartoon version of this famous novel/musical that scared the shit out of me. I remember thinking that the phantom was hiding in my closet and he would kill me if he ever got close to me. I remember him now as wearing a red cape and a stupid hat in the scene that scared me the most, and — lo-and-behold — I have found the scary scene on YouTube. Here’s the exact clip of the cartoon that gave me nightmares (the part lodged in my memory starts roughly 20-25 seconds into the clip, and ends with the stupid clown dying). Tell me how you would feel if you were four years old and saw this on TV. Link!
09. The Gate – Another film I accidentally stumbled across as a child was The Gate, a horror film from (surprise!) 1987. A hole to hell forms in the backyard of some stupid kids, and then monsters come out of the hole and try to kill them. Somewhere along the line, the little boy grows eyeballs in the palms of his hands, and I think at one point he stabs the eyeball. Yeah, that image was enough to destroy my fragile four year old psyche. I don’t think I slept for a week after that. I used to dream that my entire body was eyeballs. I don’t think I got over this weird fear/fascination until I saw that episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force where Carl’s entire body is replaced with eyeballs, and he talks about how much pain he’s in walking on his eyeball feet. That made me realize the impractically and stupidity of my childhood nightmares.
08. Field Of Dreams – This is still one of the only movies that can make me cry. As you know, men do not cry, so crying during a movie is a about the biggest faux pas a man can make. To this day, I am convinced that I cry as a result of laughing at a high school friend who told me he always cried at the end of Field Of Dreams. After mocking him to no end, I watched the film and actually started to cry on (as if on cue) during the last scene. Since then I have been cursed to a life of crying whenever this movie is on in the same room as me. I just start crying. Also, for a while I had a recurring dream where cornfields ate my parents. It should come as no surprise to you that upon awakening from the parent-eating cornfield dreams, I was usually crying.
07. The Saint – This isn’t so much about a nightmare as it is about a simple weird movie dream. See, there was a time when I could deliver at least 75-80% of the dialog to this film on cue. My friend Matt and I even started writing the script one day, verbatim. If I was at a friend’s house in high school and this film was on, the two of us could probably recite the entire film. Such a tenacious ability to recall the entire fucking screenplay inevitably lead to weird The Saint-themed dreams. The best ones involved Elizabeth Shue. The worst ones involved Rade Å erbedžija. Much like a dirty hippy’s acid flashbacks, I have The Saint flashbacks whenever I see that guy in a new movie. It happened during Stigmata, it happened during Snatch, EuroTrip, Batman Begins, and Eyes Wide Shut. Ironically, now when I see photos of Val Kilmer the only thoughts I have are, “That poor, fat bastard.” No flashbacks.
06. Surviving The Game – I was 11 years old when my father took me to see this R-rated film based on The Most Dangerous Game. I thought it was really awesome, but there was one disturbing violent image that my little heart didn’t know how to handle. There’s a scene when Ice-T rigs some dude’s ATV starter to explode inside the fuel tank, and some guy is left badly burned with legs that…might have been missing? I don’t remember exactly, but it was the first time ever that I saw — what I thought — was a guy with his legs blown off. That image haunted me for a few years until I was a little older, a little wiser, and a little stoned while watching late night shitty Cinemax movies. That’s when I realized that I shouldn’t have had bad dreams about men with no legs. They’re people too. They’re just…different. And the difference is…they…have no…legs.
05. Wolf Creek – One night, entirely too high after a dozen or two bong hits, I thought I’d calm myself down by watching a “bad horror film.” To my surprise, this wasn’t so much a campy turd movie like House Of Wax or Wrong Turn, but a fucked up movie with absolutely no purpose other than you’re sitting there watching really horrible things happen to innocent, good people. If you sit a stoned Evan down in front of Jeepers Creepers, he’s going to laugh the whole way through. If you sit a stoned Evan down in front of Wolf Creek, he’s going to stand up later worried that there’s someone outside the door with cross-hairs trained on his head or nuts. If he’s already a little paranoid before the film starts, he’ll probably think twice about “remembering to turn off all the lights” before he goes upstairs to his room. He might even check the doors downstairs to ensure they’re all locked. He’ll laugh about it in the morning, but until the sun rises he’ll be as frightened as a teenager missing her period for the first time.
04. Pet Sematary – My aunt and uncle showed me this, or maybe they didn’t, when my sister and I were having a sleep-over as kids. It might not have been my aunt and uncle’s, but I remember my sister and I watched it together and neither of us slept that night. Dead things coming back to kill you is an oft-parodied genre, but when you’re five years old and you witness it for the first time as a serious venture, you can pretty much guarantee the next few weeks or months are going to be filled with some bad dreams. It wouldn’t surprise me if our mother put a temporary hold on her children’s sleep-overs after that incident.
03. Zoo – Onto the charts with a bang (literally!), this documentary about men having sex with horses brought me to some very dark places. It simultaneously creeped me out and nauseated. I suppose I wasn’t surprise that the horse fuckers showed up in my dreams that night, but if I’d been able to control the situation I would have been slaying them as deviant sexual perverts, not running for my life. Damn those horse fuckers for making me so upset.
02. The Cropsey Brothers – Not a movie but a fable told around a campfire at overnight camp to a group of receptive young campers. I don’t know how many nights of sleep this story about oversized, ex-psychiatric patient maniacs living in the woods near my camp cost me, but it was more than a handful. Realizing the only way to confront our fear of the Cropsey Brothers was to find them, my bunkmates and I would often venture down the camp’s lake trail in search of the brothers’ cabin. We’d analyze “carvings” on the backs of nearby bunks. It was as close to Stephen King’s IT as you could find in real life. We’d do everything except for sleep, because when you’re young and homicidal maniacs are living in the woods near you, sleep equals death. This was by far the biggest nightmare/bad dream influence on my life, but because it’s not movie related I am not ranking it #1 on this list. By the way, I’m shocked there is only one instance on the entire internet of the term “Cropsey Brothers”. How many people heard that story at camp!
01. IT – Speaking of camp, one of my more sadistic counselors showed my bunkmates and I this film when I was a youngster, and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me. It was the Deadlights, I think. I had nightmares of big bright eyes chasing after me through unknown sewers and caves. I don’t think I slept for a week after I saw IT. Now I see it and I look at it like one might look at Stand By Me or Boyz N The Hood. It’s kinda cheesy and goofy; it’s not nearly the scariest King film adaptation. I think that award goes to…Misery? Yeah, that sounds about right. That’s the only one that genuinely weirds me out these days.
Next week…ten films that gave me boners! Will Zoo be on the list again? Stay tuned!
No, it obviously won’t be on the list. And I doubt that will be my top ten list next Friday. I sure hope I got through all those repeated references to “men having sex with horses” in this post without making a typo and leaving the letter “n” out of the word “men.” I’d have a really hard time explaining that to my family…
