Another Pointless Friday Post

[Yours truly and Moose in '88.]

It's Friday again and I'm just thinking about the film version of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, a novel by author and total nutjob Yukio Mishima. I think I was probably 12 years old when my parents rented this 1976 film (or it turned up on cable) and they totally kicked me out of the room when the demented kids in the film decide to kill and dissect a cat. Because I was a stealthy ninja at the time, I decided to pull a fast one on my folks and hover in the hallway leading to my room and watch the scene.

Now I didn't really want to see an animal killed onscreen even if it was staged but my curiosity was overwhelming. Because I was as inconspicuous as a mountain lion with Tourette's syndrome, my dad yelled from the couch, "If you're going to be a sneak just get out here and watch the damned thing!" So I come out sulking like a moron just in time to see the very vague and blurry cat surgery scene. I think what my parents were really disturbed about was these kids trying to prove that through 'objectivity' that they were capable of anything. Having seen this, I thought it was a great idea so I went out and killed every house pet in the neighborhood.

Okay fine, I was disturbed too. These English schoolboys killing a cat and Kris Kristofferson reminded me of Lord of the Flies and how when the chips are down, kids suck. At the time I was creeped out because I figured that all the shitty bullies at school were going to be the first ones to turn into soulless cannibal dicks when society crumbled. Obviously I know now that anyone can crack under similar pressure and that everyone has the potential for evil inside them somewhere.

Which obviously leads me to Headbangers Ball. Wait, what? You see, I wasn't exactly forbidden from watching this ragtag metal video show but if my dad caught me up after Saturday Night Live had ended, he'd give me shit. So I would pretend to be tired and go to my room (WHERE THERE WAS NO CABLE!) until I thought my folks were asleep. They I'd sneak out, turn the TV on, put the volume at the lowest possible volume and bask in the metal goodness. This was at the time when hair metal was at war with death metal and thrash for supremacy of HB so it wasn't easy to sit through the whole show. Of course, I always got caught and never got to watch the whole show anyway. My dad would always come storming in with the "what the hell are you watching?" bit and that would be that.





And now I'm thinking of one of the strangest double features I ever accidentally had. Had I not stayed up way, way past my bedtime, I would have never experienced the joys of Deadly Friend and Surf Nazis Must Die on good old cable TV. Watching horror at 2AM and eating Easy Cheese right out of the can... This was pretty much the most amazing night of my life. When I finally revisited these two flicks years later, I found out how awful they are. In defense of Surf Nazis Must Die, at least it was meant to be bad. Deadly Friend has no such excuse. (Though it does have one spectacular death scene.)





So what does any of this mean? I don't know. My parents were kind enough to give me their old VCR back then so I could rent Hellraiser and The Brood to watch alone in the privacy of my own room. Yet they were totally brainwashed by all the bad press heavy metal was getting at the time and were convinced their son was at risk. When I was a full blown metalhead a few years later and my folks were accusing me of smoking dope, I tried to explain to them that I just had bad taste in music and fashion. Good thing they never snapped and sent me off to boarding school in England, that's where the true evil lies.

Have a good weekend, y'all.