Monday, August 11, 2014

Brain Bleach on Aisle Five, Please! (And a confetti cannon moment)

The other day, it went like this:

Arizona (perusing one of his online fishing forums): Do you know this guy? There's a joke I'm not getting. (shows me the following picture): 


Me: Hmm. I dunno. One of the dudes from Duck Dynasty, sans beard? (pauses) Or, ha ha, one of the guys from Deliverance, maybe? We could do a Google image search.

Arizona: You can do that?

(We all have our little skills. Mine is the ability to find most anything on Google within a relatively short period of time. I'm sure the average six-year-old could kick my ass, but as far as Arizona is concerned, I'm a black belt in Google-Fu.)

Me: Sure. You just do this ... and this ... and ... What do you know? It *is* one of the guys from Deliverance. Yikes. I saw the movie once, back in high school. Guess it left a mark.

And when I say 'in high school,' I mean it. History class, last period, junior or senior year. The prof sent around a permission slip, asking our parents to sign off on us seeing it, and opt-outs were sent off to study hall. Then, for three afternoons running, we watched Deliverance. And after that last chunk, we all walked out of the classroom, shaking our heads and muttering the late-80s version of WTF?

There wasn't any in-class discussion before or after, no sense of what we were supposed to take away. It wasn't the first movie we had seen in class, but the others had been war movies-- 1776The Red Badge of Courage, The Great Escape ... They had at least related to what we were studying at the time. 

But Deliverance? What were we supposed to take from that? Be wary of banjos? (Prior to seeing the movie, I had a worn Earl Scruggs tape that I loved to death, rewinding the banjo duel over and over again. After the movie? Less so.) Don't go camping? Or, if you do go camping, watch out that your party doesn't undergo a breakdown of its mini-society? Don't wander off into the woods? Unclear. But whatever the message, something clearly stuck, because twenty-some years later, I had that search image stuck firmly in my head, and it brought with it a creeping sense of 'someone is watching you from the bushes.'

Yikes! Brain bleach on aisle five, please, because clearly that left more of a mark than I realized! So how about you? What movie left a horrifying-funny mental mark on you? Did Jaws forever ruin you for swimming off Cape Cod? Did It make you a coulrophobe (someone who's afraid of clowns)? Share, please, and make me feel better!

And, in the meantime, a confetti cannon! (Jess tries and fails to put an animated cartoon confetti cannon here. Please imagine one.)




Harvest at Mustang Ridge spent a chunk of last week in Amazon's top 10 for Western Romances, and cracked the top 100 for Hot New Releases in Contemporary Romance! Woo! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to those of you who purchased Krista and Wyatt's story. And for those of you who are still on the fence, now is a great time to dip you boots into the world of Mustang Ridge! It even had a price drop today! (Okay, from $5.99 to $5.97, but still ... LOL.) 

Click on the book cover for the Amazon link, or click here for an excerpt :) And THANK YOU!


10 comments:

  1. Haha that is such a great question! Mine doesn't come from a movie. It's from Bones. Booth went out and bought new toothbrushes for him and his at-the-time girlfriend Hannah because Bones told him what happens when you flush the toilet with the seat still up...sooo now every time the business is done the seat is put down ROFL!

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    1. LOLOL! Okay, that's an awesome one. (Jess moves toothbrush holder to opposite side of the sink.) And love me some Booth. (Wasn't so fond of Hannah, but she's long gone now!)

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  2. Nightmare on Elm street. I went with a friend to a double feature of #1 and #2. I slept with the lights on for a week. And I slept badly.

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    1. LOLOL! Okay, I did the same thing with The Fog (the original). I was at a sleepover, we were supposed to be watching Black Beauty ... I was terrified that lepers would come crawling out of the fog for years after that.

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  3. Mine weren't from movies so much. Sure I was scared of King Kong and the monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. But I saw those at home, and could leave the room!
    What scared me were the serial killers of the 70s: Son of Sam, Zodiac, Gacy, etc. Those were REAL. Worst was the Bishop murders in 1976 - an entire family! I slept in my parents' bed for a week.

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    1. Eeek! Yes, that's worth some major heebie jeebies. For the same reason (though fictionalize), Criminal Minds is one of the few shows that will sometimes creep me out so much that I have to turn it off. It's super scary to think that there are people out there who think like that ... (she says as she toddles off to work on a romantic suspense about weaponized viruses, seeing the irony.)

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  4. Answering late in the day....
    Yes, Jaws messed up swimming in water I can't see in for THE REST OF MY LIFE. A babysitter, who was just a platinum standard to babysitting *sarcasm*, let me and my sister watch Jaws when I was about 5 years old. A month later, we take our family vacation...... to FLORIDA. I remember being terrified that my dad was going to get eaten by a shark. Way to go babysitter!
    Other than that, it wasn't a movie, but did you ever watch that show Unsolved Mysteries? I used to watch that when at night when I was home alone. Not a smart decision. It would always creep me out. I would go check to make sure the doors were locked and the window shades were drawn. Even if the case happened in Washington state, and I was in Arkansas, I thought, "Maybe that guy is in the back yard right. now. And he's watching me watch him on the TV. And he's going to break in a kill me just so there's one less person on his case."
    Yup. I'm weird. It's okay. I like my weirdness.

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    1. LOLOL on the babysitter! I was talking to a nanny friend recently, who confessed to having made a bad call with the Lion King. Whoops! And that's nothing compared to Jaws!

      OMG on the Unsolved Mysteries and everything of that ilk. I can totally freak myself out with that stuff. *Wait. What was that noise? Did you hear that? Was that movement outside?*

      Yeah, an active inner monolog can be a b*tch ;)

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. (Nothing to see here. Just mis-aimed my response to Julie C. ;)

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