What I Learned On My Summer Vacation - JA

Hi, everybody! JA from MNPP here, sharing what the Summer of 2008 brought me.

Even though I could write up a thousand word essay on how Robert Downey Jr. is only bearable while wholly unrecognizable -seriously, y'all - I'll stick to what I (pretend to) know best: The things that go bump in the night. In this case, the hot, sticky Summer night. The horror shows of the Summer of '08, that is. I had to expand the definition of "horror" here and there since proper fright flicks were semi-scarce over these heated months. But scares can come from anywhere, so here's a random assortment of all the things that scared me this Summer.

Let's just get the obvious outta the way: Heath Ledger's Joker. The be-all-end-all for scares probably all year. I've been working on perfecting his magic trick myself at home, but I've already run through an entire box of #2's and I keep missing. Any advice? TIA!


Those jellylike fur-matted things that were extending outward below Tom Cruise's eyeballs in Tropic Thunder. I think... I think they were supposed to be... his limbs? Shudder.

That someone would make a cartoon involving maggots but not make absolutely sure the maggots in question were actually cute, and not creepy dead-eyed flesh-tinted monsters with teeth and tongues. Pixar it ain't.

That those girls are still sharing that pair of pants. That just never seemed very sanitary to me. I mean, I've seen what my friends do in their pants, and... I don't want any of that on me. But then, maybe I just have filthy friends. Hmm.

The way that Lionsgate screwed over Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train. Boycott!

That Chris Carter could take six years to come up with a new X-Files story and the best he could give us was Gay Frankenstein and his two-headed dog.

The Strangers was pretty decent, but they really ruined themselves with that phenomenal trailer that gave away the best scare.

The Teeth Fairies in Hellboy 2. Or that Elemental thing. Or the Angel of Death. Really, where ever Guillermo Del Toro let his freak flag fly with regards to creature design.

That is wasn't a bad dream, but it was actually The Happening.

Break-up via text message. Way harsh. See also: "You're not special."

Like a cockroach always scattering out the light, so went my relationship with Baghead. Every time I saw the trailer I told myself I wanted to see it. And then I forgot. And then I remembered. And then I forgot. But the trailer was one of the legitimately scary things of the Summer. Anyone actually catch the movie?

But the thing that scared me the greatest this Summer, so badly that I refuse to A) post a picture from it here, lest I google it and an image of this horror should appear, and B) even think about seeing the film in which it is contained (and I've sat through some effed up stuff)? Ben Kingsley and Whichever Olsen kissing in The Wackness. The very thought of it makes me question all that is good in the world. That, my friends, is horror.
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