When it comes to movies, the Lovely Mrs. Smith and I are prone to confirmation-hearing-like debates that end in about the same way current confirmation hearings are going: namely, I can fuss and fume and filibuster all day, but she's still going to get what she wants.
Which is fine, for the most part (the dead horse that is "The Ya Ya Sisterhood" having been appropriately and thoroughly beaten). I'm pretty easy to please, as long as there are peanut M&M's involved. And, over time, I've perfected the art of sleeping while sitting up without snoring or drooling. And people say they never use anything they learned in college.
So, whatever makes her happy makes me happy. And, thankfully, when it comes to films we share one critical trait: we hate scary movies.
Now, as far as the Lovely Mrs. Smith is concerned, this is somewhat an extension of her general disinterest in anything remotely frightening. For instance, she's afraid of the dark. So much so that we have had serious "debates" about how quickly I turn off the light after she's already in bed. Apparently I wasn't allowing time for the proper locating of sheets just below her nose, the only true safeguard against the monsters who have been living underneath all of her beds since childhood.
I mean, you'd think by now they'd have gotten her.
Me? I adhere to the theory there's nothing in the dark that isn't there in the light. At least, until I slam my shin on an end table that I know was located 4 inches to the right. What typically follows is sure to keep the monsters safely under the bed.
So there's no emotional reason for me not to like scary movies. And I'm not enough of a film buff to get too upset with the fact that they're generally the dumbest things on celluloid since security video of me trying to ride a hoverboard. I mean, you're by yourself in a dark house on a stormy night. If you hear a strange noise, do you (A) head for a diner where you eat pancakes until dawn, or (B) strip down to your underwear and go hunt for the noise, armed with a flashlight with unreliable batteries?
Bottom line is I don't like scary movies because I don't need to be scared. Or, because my life is already scary enough that I don't need to go to the movies to get another dose.
See, the point of scary movies is, basically, to scare you blankless (you're smart people, you can fill in the blank). But when you're a parent and a homeowner, "scared blankless isn't what you go to the movies to get. It's your default setting.
Creepy noise in the attic scare you? Try the phone ringing at 2 o'clock in the morning when your kid's away at college. Why be terrified by TV shows about zombies coming for us when you can switch over to the news and see the real live, breathing humans with the same idea?
In the last year, my garage door has broken, the back fence started collapsing, the water heater quit and flooded most of downstairs and someone pushed the refrigerator against the ice maker nozzle, flooding the rest.
So any spectral creatures who want to show up behind me in a mirror? Yeah, boo. Got it. Now, here's a mop. Also, the dogs have been outside for most of the week, so someone is going to have to pooper scoop the backyard. And a ghostly "whooooo" to you, too.
Any spirits who want to start moving things around and making stuff disappear are going to have to race a certain teenage resident of the place who makes the edible stuff vanish pretty quickly and contend with the fact that anything else that's missing I'm just going to figure I lost.
That flickering light? It either means our house is sitting on top of an ancient Indian burial ground or the idiot dog is sitting on top of the power cord again.
Look, I tend to exaggerate a bit (ya think?). But the reality is, well, reality is a heck of a lot scarier to me than anything a lot of makeup artists and CGI experts can come up with. So, while the good outweighs the bad significantly, I don't need to pay to see the fake bad.
Or a "chick flick" featuring a lot of women with bad fake Southern accents. Yeah, I just can't let that go.
Commentary on 02/03/2017