Childhood

I just finished watching Poltergeist for the second time in over 25 years. Myself and Poltergeist have a long history. When I was young dad was stationed in Hessich Oldendorf, Germany It was the 80's, dawn of the VHS tape. There was some entrepreneurial folks stationed there that took it upon themselves to start their own video rental shops straight out of there military supplied housing. I can remember that membership cost a couple of donated movies on VHS tapes. Mom donated some rather innocent titles like Swiss Family Robinson and Elephant Man (before I knew who David Lynch was).
Dad was the base commander and along with mom were always being called way for some official function or some boring ball with the local German townsfolk leaving my brother and I with the sitters.
Rob rented Poltergeist one night when mom & dad were away. We had this great VHS player set up in the living room. It had a "remote" control that was a little play/rewind/fast forward/pause control tethered by a cord to the VHS deck. It was cutting edge back them believe me...
So Rob gets this movie and watches it. In it there is a scene where one of the characters has a pretty traumatic experience in which he sees a small cut on his face, starts to peel it and eventually peels most of his face off. Being maybe all of 8 or 9 years old at the time this freaks the crap out of me. Seeing my traumatic reaction to this what is an older brother to do but rewind the thing a dozen times.
I had nightmares for weeks after that. And not just nightmares but well...daymares? I'd see this poor wretch peel his face off in my mind throughout the day sometimes.
This more less started my obsession with special effects make up. One day perusing the base exchange's book store I stumble across Fangoria Magazine. I am amazed to see that it shows make up effects from all sorts of movies and gives some detailed explanations about how it is all done. Some strange therapy, but I come to the realization that it is all fake! And that there is some real art in making the unbelievable believable.
Flash forward 25+ years. I've avoided Poltergeist like the plague for all the years. That face peeling scene still stuck in my mind after all these years. Creeping into my nightmares even though I know it is not real. I see the movie sitting on the shelves in glorious Blu-Ray at my local Best Buy. I finally decided to face my fears and watch the darn thing. I get it home, wait until it is nice and dark outside and pop the disc in.
My oh my, how times have changed. First off I don't remember jack about this movie. The first quarter of the movie I don't even remember. Second...were we really that badly dressed in the 80's? I remember the kitchen chair repositioning themselves... I remember the paranormal crew getting there. Then the guy that decides in the middle of the night to look through the fridge only to find a maggot ridden chicken drumstick and a steak that vomits itself up. Poor chap goes straight to the bathroom to barf a bit. Then it dawns on me that this is the moment I've been waiting for. After 25 years I can finally face my fear of this face peeling.
So the poor chap enters the bathroom and vomits a few times...looks up in the mirror and discovers this small cut on his face and proceeds to peel his face off... Only now I can dissect the scene... Guy enters the bathroom, vomits a bit, cut to the sink, back to the mirror.... holy crap! that appliance looks like sh!t! Suddenly the left half of his face has turn into really poor looking foam latex. You can tell when he presses up on the gag a bit to ooze the blood out the little "wound". Then cut to the sink again. Then back to the mirror to a horribly bad looking "head" with too hands in front of it ripping apart some poorly done foam latex to reveal a stock skeleton skull.
At this point I'm dumb founded by the fact that I was so traumatized by such a crappy gag from so many years ago. My how times have changed. Now I think to myself, Meredith could of done a heck of a lot better job and would have made it much more believable.
I have no idea what I was scared of all those years ago.

Unfortunately, the same experience hasn't been able to cure my fear of creepy clowns...

My Past in Shreds

I've spent the last couple of days shredding my life. No I haven't fallen into a bout of depression or anything. I finally decided to clean up my front bedroom/computer room. I can only stand mess for so long, before I get sick of it and make the time to clean it up.
This front room has been accumulating junk and stacks of old bills and receipts for the past several years. Got bad enough that I could hardly walk into the room, couldn't close the closet door, couldn't see the six foot long couch because it was stacked a foot high with papers.
I'm a bit of a pack rat by genetics. My parents were never very good about throwing things out and the same mentality seems to be in my blood. Never know when you might need this or that. Better keep it 'cause it might come in handy later... and a thousand other excuses...all adds up to a big pile of junk that I can't find anything in even if I did need it.
I finally decided that I could really part with that electric bill from 1998 and the cell phone bill from 2002. Went to Office Depot, bought a few bankers boxes and a large paper shredder and set about to attacking the mess.
It's funny how the littlest things mark times in your life both good and bad. I had a couple of big boxes of stuff from my days in support, old ISA sound cards, 10 base-2 BNC network cards, boxes of 3.5" floppy disks (Win95 on floppy anyone?) and a bunch of other junk that is obsolete.
Digging deeper I find artifacts from my days in college, even deeper I find high school year books. Even found old cassette tapes with "mixes" I'd made as a young skateboarding kid.
I pitched a lot of the junk but pulled out a lot of the stuff that had more meaning like a couple of audio tapes when a couple of my friends and I tried to make a punk band in the basement, photographs and yearbooks. Stuff that has real sentimental value and is irreplaceable.
Then I tried to unearth the couch. Literally buried under a foot deep of old bills and paper is a old brown hide-a-bed couch. Decided to filter out all the bank statements, mortgage statements, and other financial documents and file them away in the bankers boxes all neatly organized. Just in case I get audited I suppose. I feed the rest to the shredder.
Into the shredder go old credit card statements, electric and phone bills...tons of shopping receipts and other crap that doesn't serve a purpose any more. Looking through all these papers stirs up more memories. I can mark the highs and lows through my life just my following my paper trail. Feed it all to the shredder. My past in shreds.
This year marks the first year of my adult life that I'm finally debt free. I've paid off my mortgage and credit cards. My vehicle has been paid off for years. I'm finally saving some money. There is something liberating and refreshing about shredding a bunch of old credit card statements and "payment overdue" notices. Feel a bit like the butterfly emerging from the cocoon. Starting new. Re-born.