Want to know what horrible secret fear I hide deep in the darkest recesses of my horror-blackened soul? I’m terrified of anyone touching the area of my leg near my Achilles tendon. Even the thought sends shivers through me and makes my tendons ache with some sort of strange phantom pain…like right now. Just typing this makes me want to wrap my hands around my Achilles heels and rock back and forth while I keen pitifully to myself.

Where does this big heap of personal crazy come from? The 1989 movie Pet Sematary. No kidding. There’s a scene in that movie that depicts a highly traumatic moment involving an Achilles tendon and little Gage Creed and his scalpel, seen in this lovely photo. I’m not saying any more than that because I’m sure you can piece that much together…and I simply can’t talk about it anymore. I’ve got this horrible ache throbbing straight up my legs right now. Not even my trusty Docs are protecting me from this panic.

Have I been toting this around with me for 20 years? I’m afraid so. Yes, the fear has dulled since I first saw this movie. It used to be that I couldn’t even get too close to a bed without jumping up onto the mattress as quickly as I could. You know, to keep away from errant scalpels being wielded by a little dead/undead boy under the bed. Rational? Oh, hell to the no. No more rational than the unshakable anxiety I felt every time I opened a closet door for several weeks after seeing the remake of The Ring. That flash image of the girl in the closet just refused to stay out of my mind whenever that happened. Stupid overactive imagination…

Gage Creed creeped me out for several other reasons, least of which was his Snoopy-like laugh, his “pimpin’ ain’t easy” costume he was in when he appeared to his mom post-resurrection, and that effing phone call he made to his dad after he finished “playing” with his mom and Jud. That child most assuredly wasn’t right. Miko Hughes, the actor who played Gage, also gets additional “creepy horror movie kid” credits for playing Heather Langenkamp’s son in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare.

Pet Sematary is one of those King book-to-movie conversions that I would consider to be a success for the most part. It’s pretty close to the original book, and while it’s quite dated by today’s standards, it’s a nice enough balance of schlocky 80s cheese-horror and good, solid fear. Gage’s moments rank high among the “solid fear” sections, as do the creepy appearances of the jacked-up sister. EEK. Shiver.

It’s also a movie that walks well the fine line between truly horrible reality-anchored events and over-the-top King-style terror (I think that’s one of King’s greatest strengths anyway…how well he can plant some of his worst tales right smack in the center of believable and benign settings and events). As much as I hate the scalpel to the Achilles tendon moment, I have to admit that I have quite the warm, fuzzy spot in my heart for this movie. It’s got some great quotable moments, most from Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall, some good scares, a bit of a moral lesson if you look for it and, for solid geek street cred, a post-Tasha Yar Denise Crosby sporting an oozing eyeball effect toward the end. AND, its theme song was sung by the Ramones! Bonus!

Of course, Hollywood is remaking this movie, slated for a 2010 release. Yippy. Another movie I’m not going to bother seeing. But I’m all for people watching the original…it’s either going to give you a few good scares, or it’s going to make you laugh a whole hell of a lot. Who doesn’t want to watch a movie like that? And to tempt you along, here’s the Ramones video for their song, “Pet Sematary.” Enjoy!

So since it’s the month of Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year, I’ve decided to dedicate all of October’s Flashback Fridays to celebrating some of my favorite scary things. And to kick this special month off, I’m going with my all-time favorite “snappy comeback” horror movie villain: Freddy K.

I love Freddy Krueger. The original A Nightmare on Elm Street remains one of my favorite scary movies and one of Wes Craven’s greatest contributions to the horror genre. I’d even argue that all the Elm Street movies are worth watching at least once, if only for the sheer enjoyment of watching Robert Englund camp it up as our favorite razor-clawed burned baddy. Okay, so you might want to skip Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. When the special guest appearances are Tom and Roseanne Arnold, you know you’re not witnessing great cinema.

Even at the worst moments of the series, Englund’s portrayal of Freddy kept me coming back. I remember the first time I watched the Elm Street series. I’d saved up a couple weeks’ allowance and rented all the current movies at the time, which were 1-5. I watched them all back to back to back…to back to back. Even as cheesy as they were, that’s a little too much Freddy Fright at one time. It was a jumpy evening for me. But it also got me hooked on Krueger.

I’ve seen all the original series of movies at least five times each, and I own movies 1, 3, and New Nightmare, which I still think was a pretty cool re-imagining of the Freddy Krueger mythology (geek tangent: I also own a replica of Freddy’s glove as well as the Todd McFarlane “Movie Maniacs” figure). I’ve yet to see Freddy vs. Jason though. There’s a bit of a hurdle there, but I’m not sure what it is exactly. Maybe it’s Jason Voorhees. I’ve never really been a big Friday the 13th fan, although I do dig the first one.

As for the upcoming Nightmare on Elm Street remake? It’s already dead to me. Maybe Jackie Earle Haley will do a spectacular job as the new Freddy Krueger, but I don’t care. He’s not Robert Englund…and Robert Englund was the reason that I kept coming back, sequel after sequel after sequel. How else can you explain the endurance and popularity of a character who was burned to death by angry parents for being a child murderer? It was a good deal in part to Englund and his ability to chew scenery to a sloppy pulp and spit it at you with a campy bon mot and a laugh right before he gutted you like a fish.

So GenY can have Haley’s Freddy. I’m sure they’ll love him. Obviously, there truly is no accounting for taste 😉

As for me, I’m sticking with the original. Here’s a little run-down of all the killings Freddy did during his reign over Elm Street, along with some of his snappier accompanying commentary. There are some classics in this bunch, I tell ya. Remember Johnny Depp’s “fountain of blood” death from the first movie? Yumm-o! The one that always makes me cringe is the “puppet master” death from the third movie, while the “cockroach” death from the fourth movie always makes me laugh. All in all, not a bad run.

This one’s going to be even more subjective than usual, denizens. I’d apologize, but I’m really not sorry. In fact, I’m quite elated.

I’ve blogged about Gina Crash before, during my Angry Blogger^TM days. My anger was not focused at Gina Crash…rather at her abrupt disappearance from the D.C. radio scene. See, I thought Gina Crash was the shiznit. SHIZNIT. She started out as a DJ for 99.1-HFS, the local and best alternative station on the planet. This was, of course, back in the day when radio stations were allowed to be unique entities and not the cookie-cutter corporate crapfests they are now. HFS was legendary in the D.C./Baltimore radio scene, and its DJs were effing awesome.

And then there was the ultimate awesome of Gina Crash. I first noticed her on HFS’s “Trancemissions” show. I love trance music, and I credit this show with introducing me to it. Score for DJ Gina.

Then there was “The Morning Crash.”

Let me just get this right out here now: I can’t stand morning radio shows. Same feeling about the afternoon shows. I don’t give a good goddamn about sports talk or Howard Stern-esque humor or shenanigans. The big ticket show here in D.C. is the “Elliot in the Morning” show on DC101. I’d rather have someone shave off my taste buds than have to listen to his show. The one good thing that I can say about Elliot and his ilk is that the dearth of decent morning radio is one of the prime reasons that I switched over to listening to podcasts. That was one of the most life-alteringly awesome decisions I ever made.

However, back on track, there was once “The Morning Crash,” which, as far as I know, remains the only D.C. area morning radio show hosted by a female DJ. I’m not talking about sidekick girls…I’m talking main attraction, center ring kind of deal here. If I’m wrong, please by all means hit that “Contact” button to your left. But I don’t think I am. Gina Crash and her on-air partner-in-crime Allen Scott got me through hours of Beltway driving, both during my college years and my early professional years, when my commute was 2 hours each way on a good day (and they were never “good days”). Together, they were funny and smart and they didn’t have to tell fart jokes or talk about football or be crass or disgusting to keep me laughing and non-homicidal behind the wheel of my car.

HFS went through a massive retooling in the early 00s and “The Morning Crash” was replaced by “The Sports Junkies.” Obviously, I am quite in the minority in regard to my hatred of sports talk and fart jokes. Needless to say, I never listened to the Junkies. Then, on January 12, 2005, HFS was no more. At noon, TPTB pulled the plug on the alternative awesomeness that had literally been the soundtrack to such a huge part of my life.

Gina Crash had disappeared from the D.C. scene prior to the death of HFS, and I was left with nothing but happy memories and a deep sense of Whathafu?

Thank goodness for the stalking capabilities of teh Interwebz!

Gina ended up back in her hometown of Philadelphia, where she’s been making the rounds through various hard rock stations that play to Philly and suburbs of New Jersey. Right now she’s the afternoon DJ at Philly’s hard rock station WWYY-FM 107, “The Bone.” I listened to her today while at work…first time I’ve heard her since probably 2002. She’s doing the afternoon DJ routine, which is far more limited than her days as a morning show host…but it was still awesome to hear her once more. Plus, her playlist was mint, with Aerosmith, Ozzy, Foo Fighters, GnR, Zeppelin, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, STP, Alice in Chains…see? Mint.

I’m sure I’ll listen to her again, but it’ll be with the same sad smile I had today, remembering “The Morning Crash” and “Trancemissions”…Weasel, Neci, Bob Waugh, Graeme, Paula, Pogo…HFStival, Nutcracker…all of it wrapped around some of the greatest alternative tunes to hit the airwaves. If that station was still around, it’d be kicking the Jonas Brothers’ asses all over the place. And I’d be loving every minute.

If Gina Crash ever stumbles upon this post, I hope it lets her know how awesome she and her fellow HFS DJs were, and how D.C. radio just hasn’t been the same since…

I was originally going to do this on amusement parks in general. Then I realized, I actually hate amusement parks. The food is mediocre and over-priced. The games are cheesy (but the prizes are sometimes nice). And there are tons of people.

I hate people.

But…I love roller coasters. LOVE roller coasters. You know the dorks who stand in line even longer than everyone else so they can ride in the first car? I’m one of them.

Of course, I haven’t been one of “them” in a very long time. I used to go to King’s Dominion a minimum of 10 times every summer. I was a season pass cardholder. Some summers, I went either every weekend or every other weekend. My BFF and her mom were just as addicted as me (yes, this would be my friend and her mother of the “sleepover” flashback).

I don’t really know how to explain the addiction. There’s just something unbelievable about that free-fall feeling. I love the flip-flopping, the heart racing, the breathlessness of it all. I’m also the one who stares out the plane window each time we take off (conversely, I hate driving across bridges; if I went to a psychiatrist, they’d have a field day with me, fo’ sho’).

The very first coaster I ever rode was King’s Dominion’s Grizzly. It’s one of only three wooden coasters at the park, and it is a bear of a ride (just humor me and laugh). I was 7 years old and had gone to the park for the first time with my parents and my mother’s oldest sister and her family. I was barely tall enough to get onto the ride, but they let me on with my aunt. I remember the first couple of hills and the tunnel…and that’s about it. I don’t know whether I blacked out or simply slammed my eyes shut and blocked the rest from my memory. All I do know is that when my dad wanted me to go on the next ride with him, I started to cry at the thought of having to ride another coaster. So I haven’t always been a fan 😉 Obviously, I quickly got over that fear.

Here’s a video of riding in the front seat of the Grizzly. It gets quite jittery, so if you get motion sick easily, you might want to skip this one. But this video also gives you a nice view of the Hurler, a Wayne’s World-themed wooden coaster that’s pretty shweet, the Xtreme SkyFlyer, which is a metal arch from which you can bungee swing (very awesome but costs extra), and the park’s mini-Eiffel Tower.

My favorite modern roller coaster at King’s Dominion is the Volcano. This is a linear induction-launched inverted steel coaster. All that mouthful means is that this coaster is able to launch instantaneously at a rate of 70 mph. The “inverted” part means that your upper body is harnessed and your feet are dangling. Oh, and when the Volcano launches you up, it shoots you through a ring of fire and immediately flips you so, like Steven Tyler sings, “your feet are flying up in the air,” to bring you down from your upward trajectory. Tell me that doesn’t sound awesome?

Here’s a video of riding in the front car of the Volcano. Again, it’s jittery. The part that this video misses is that great moment of antici…pation right at the beginning of the ride. The train slowly leaves the station toward a bend in the track. The moment the last car turns this bend, the trains shoots out at its full 70 mph. From the front car, that wait seems interminable, but the adrenaline rush when it happens is worth the price of admission each and every time.

I also love the Volcano for sentimental reasons. The exterior of the ride has actually been at the park almost since it opened in 1975. It used to house three rides: Haunted River, which was a log flume ride, Smurf Mountain, which was a kiddy ride that would slowly meander through different animatronic scenes of Smurfs at work, at play, and being tormented by Gargamel and Azrael, and the Time Shaft, which sounds dirty but was actually a rotor “flat ride” in which you all entered the circular room, and stood against the wall. The door would shut, the room would start to spin, forcing everyone against the wall with the centrifugal force, and then the floor would drop down about 4 feet. I loved the Time Shaft and was heart-broken when they removed it. But Volcano helped soothe the ache.

Hmm. I guess I should have called this flashback “King’s Dominion.” I’ve only ridden coasters here and at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Busch Gardens was fun, but since I’ve only been once, I don’t really have a good impression of those rides. My only regret is that Drachen Fire was closed when I finally went here…and then a year later it was dismantled. If you don’t know the history of Drachen Fire, check it out in Wikipedia. Talk about a big effing disappointment to that park.

Looks like King’s Dominion has added several new rides since the last time I was there. I haven’t been since probably summer of 2000. Truth is, the grossness of the people became a greater turn-off than the joy I always experienced on the roller coasters. People spat while on the rides or in the sky cars that ran from one side of the park to the other (the park actually removed the sky cars because of how many people spitting and dumping drinks on people below). The crowds grew increasingly rude and aggressive, and then metal detectors appeared at the entrances. That was around the time that I decided I hate people way more than I love roller coasters.

Still, I do miss that feeling. Maybe next summer I’ll take a trip right when the park opens for weekday use. Maybe I can sneak in before the grossness arrives and recapture some of that free-fall fun I used to have when I was a pup.

Yes, this is about sleepovers…and yes, that is a bottle of Dimetapp. Don’t worry, denizens. I promise it will all come together soon enough.

Weren’t sleepovers awesome? Especially when they were at other people’s houses? Especially when they were supervised by parents who were way more lenient than your own parents?

[Tangentially, didn’t sleepovers absolutely suck when they were with friends who had

No, I’m not referring to the Agatha Christie play. I’m not that old. I’m referring, instead, to that awesomest of awesome board games.

I was originally going to do this entry on a variety of board games. I used to have a nice little collection, including several from the series of board games based on video game classics, such as Donkey Kong, Pac-man, and Frogger. Of course, I had Hungry, Hungry Hippos, but that’s a game that I daresay most formerly fat kids hate in a very special way. I also had a Clue knockoff called Mystery Mansion as well as Uncle Wiggly and classics like Life, Parcheesi, and Monopoly.

The problem, though, is that I hate board games. I was an only child and, after the two families nearby with children my age moved away when I was 11, I was pretty much left to my own devices. I played a game every now and then with my parents, but it’s not quite the same as playing with someone your own age. So the board games sat in my closet or under my bed, providing shade for the dust bunnies while I retreated into my internal imaginary worlds.

But Mouse Trap was different. This was the one game I pulled out on a regular basis, not to play it but because I wanted to build it. Truth be told, I never once actually played the game. But I wore the board out, piecing together the trap. Maybe this game is the root of my lifelong love of building things and taking things apart. Who knows? All I know is that I could spend hours just tinkering with all the pieces, figuring out the “how” of it all. No wonder Velma Dinkley was always my favorite Mystery Inc. member 😉

While looking for a photo of the version of the game that I remembered, I came across the following video of people building a life-sized version of the Mouse Trap for a charity event. Could this be any more awesome? Also, check out the hat that the guy at around the 57-second mark is wearing: That’s what the little mice looked like in my version of the game! Good times 🙂

Was there any joy comparable to picking out your cereal based solely on which one had the best prize inside? This was, of course, long before the days of Nutrition Facts panels that droned on about sodium levels and fiber content (and, of course, long before we would care about these things).

Who cared that the cereal was filled with enough sugar to possibly quadruple your blood sugar levels? It’s the one that had the ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever cheesy piece of plastic crap you simply HAD TO HAVE but now couldn’t remember what it was if your life depended on it) inside! And, of course, the instant you got home, it was absolutely imperative to rip open the box and cram your little hands into the bag of cereal until you dug out the prize inside (or maybe that was just me). Between you and me, wasn’t the end result of all that anticipation usually about as much of a letdown as Ralphie’s Ovaltine revelation?

My favorite go-to cereal, both for toys and taste, was always Frosted Flakes (Tony the Tiger never steered me wrong!). These lovely trinkets to the right are obviously little Tony baubles. For the life of me, though, I can’t really remember what they’re supposed to do. I know it involved dropping them into an old soda bottle filled with water, but that’s all I can remember right now. Strangely enough, though, I still have six of them.

I guess cereals still have prizes inside, right? Sadly, it’s been a very long time since I walked that far down the cereal aisle at the store (the oatmeal and bran flakes are all right at the beginning of the aisle…I guess they don’t want us old fogies walking too far to get our fiber). I can’t really imagine getting that excited over a hunk of plastic floating around in my Special K, but I might change my tune if they ever advertise something like “Free Dr. Crusher Action Figure in Every Box!”

Now that would be awesome.

I know, this one’s a little weird and probably not for most people, but I loved being a part of the yearbook staff at school. Yes, our yearbooks were just a fraction of the size as those offered to our public school peers, but it was still a blast. It was my first experience at page layout, at getting a chance to come up with my own designs and logos (and then dealing with those designs being changes, switched, altered, edited, scrapped, and all-around bamboozled), at writing copy, and at just playing a part in creating a publication that would be printed and disseminated to an entire organization. At the time, I just looked at all these things as fun ways to spend a few hours after school. Who knew that one day I’d be doing all these things professionally?

I was a member of yearbook staff for three of my four years of senior high school. Two of those years I was assistant editor. I’m still not really sure what that title translated to, but it looked great on my college applications. I also got to play photographer every now and then, which was awesome: playtime with an SLR camera, which was so much cooler than my little point-and-clicker, plus the freedom of getting out of class to attend sporting events that needed photo documenting. Who was always the big winner there? Me!

See that photo at the top of this entry? That’s my old yearbook staff folder. Again, hi, I’m a hoarder. Pleased to meet you. I found this while I was sorting through stuff at my parents’ house a few months ago (see, I told you I took photos that would one day be used for Flashback Friday entries!). I also suspect that this is a photo of artifacts that some readers have probably never seen, like that pica ruler. Really? And hand-drawn page layouts and paste-ups on graph paper? Adobe InDesign sure rang the death knell quite loudly for this entire folder. Even though it wasn’t that long ago since the last time I used these tools (15 years isn’t that long, right?), looking at them now makes me laugh and think, “Did I really use all this stuff? Really? And why the hell do I still have these things? Wasn’t I supposed to return them at the end of the year?”

Tsk, tsk. So if my yearbook teacher ever reads this post, just drop me a line and let me know where you’d like me to return these things. I’ll be sure to mail them off as soon as I can… 😉

Yeah, not only is this a late entry, but it’s also going to be a lame entry. Today, however, was all about a little dose of summer vacation. Remember how wonderful the last day of school was? Remember how awesome you felt on the bus ride home, knowing that the next three months were going to be unencumbered bliss? Remember how boredom settled in after about two weeks?

Boredom? What the hell was that about? I can actually remember uttering the phrase “I’m bored” to my father as he walked past me from another day of work. He would laugh at me and I always found that so irritating. Now I completely get it. I wish I had three months of utter nothingness stretching out before me. Now, in order to take just one day off, I have to do double the work to clear my schedule. Yeah, being an adult is kind of poopy sometimes.

Of course, right after I finish writing this, I’m going to go get frozen yogurt for dinner, so adulthood does have its perks 😉

So, anyway, I hope you all get a chance to totally enjoy this weekend, just like we should have been enjoying our long summer vacations when we were kids. Go run through a sprinkler. Chase after the ice cream truck with a hot handful of quarters. Have a barbecue, fall asleep in a hammock, and end the evening catching fireflies. Or just sit on your butt all weekend, watching television (which, let’s face it, that’s how some of us spent big chunks of our vacations back then anyway). Whatever you do, just have fun. Turn off your CrackBerry. Don’t check your workmail. Leave the cell phone at home. Life is way too short to be a Borg drone. Whatever you end up doing though, I hope the sun is shining brightly wherever you are and that you have a splendiferous weekend!