Sunday, September 6, 2009

Tales From The Past - Part 1

I know what you're thinking - "Ooh. Part 1? As in there might be a part 2? Or even 3?! My excitement cannot be contained, and Dan hasn't even told me what he's writing about! Joy of joys - my life is now complete!"

Man you guys are easy to read.

Over the course of many years of writing - both for college classes/assignments, as well as for pure entertainment on my part (and for those who read it I hope) I've come to the conclusion that I am a storyteller.

Story-tell-er [stawr-ee-tel-er]
-noun

1. A person who tells or writes anecdotes.

2. A person who tells more or less trivial falsehoods; fibber.

3. A person who tells stories. Obviously. I mean, come ON man.

4. Dan Cross.

-see related nouns [Daniel Cross], [Amazing Talent], [Man Whatta Cool Guy], and [Oh Man If I Was A Woman I Would Totally Want To Meet Dan Based Solely On His Bizarre Writing Style And Almost-Schizophrenic-Sense-Of-Humor].

So, I tell stories. Stories, that in one way or another, OCCURRED in my life. ...and occur they did. Oh man did they ever.

Here is a story that occurred in my life a few years ago when I was living with my awesome roommate, Lance.

As is usual with my stories, I need a little back-story.

(Cracks knuckles)

Here we go.

Lance and I both worked at LOWE's Home Improvement (TM) at the time, and our shifts usually started at 5:00 AM, so we needed to wake up around 4:00 AM or so to be ready for work.

I am proud to say that I am a raging insomniac, so sleep doesn't like me very much. But she started it.

I like to think that sometime in my past, Sleep walked by me while I was sitting on the couch watching a movie, and she innocently asked, "Hey, Dan? Do these jeans make my incorporeal butt look big?"

-To which I (must have) replied, "...No? Not........entirely?"

She must have taken it personally. She must have sworn incorporeal vengeance on my head. She must have vowed to never let me sleep again.

Sometimes when I'm staring at my ceiling at night, I yell, "I didn't REMEMBER THAT!" just for kicks.

It has yet to work.

So, (really) long story short, sleep hates me. (She did look fat, by the way.)

Back to the story: Lance and I would deprive ourselves of sleep (me more by consequence than choice) and we would do all sorts of crazy stuff late at night - though cooking pasta and watching a random horror movie was top of the list.

There was a Blockbuster about 6 minutes away from our apartment, and we would go there almost every night and peruse the horror section for anything that looked remotely interesting.

It was one fateful night that Lance and I walked into that store, because there was one movie and one movie alone that we were to watch.

We stumbled upon the movie on the rack, and literally began to cry because we were laughing so hard.

The movie is called "The GingerDead Man."

I'll let that sink in for a moment.

Sounds terribly awesome, and/or awesomely terrible, doesn't it?

It stars Gary Busey as The GingerDead Man, and Some-Random-Teenagers who star as the teenagers who get killed.

Now I attribute my insomnia and dulled-senses to renting this movie. Lance? He has no excuse.

As I took it up to the counter, the employee scanned it in and laughed. He swiveled the monitor over to me, and explained that despite being in their store for 7 years, I was the first person - ever - to rent this movie.

That was kind of scary.

Anyway, we took it home, and made some spaghetti. We invited Liz (Lance's girlfriend) over, and we settled in to watch.

Run-On-Sentence-Synopsis Time!

The scene opens on a cafe where people are eating and all of a sudden Gary Busey bursts in and starts shooting the place up and man is he not picky about the whole thing I mean he shoots anyone including a waitress carrying a bunch of drinks which fall to the ground in slow motion.

So Gary continues to push tables over and make a huge mess when a random civilian shoots him in the stomach and he keels over and says - and I am by no means making this up - "I'll get you. I'll have my revenge. Even if it is from beyond the grave."

Who says that?

...Gary Busey, I guess.

Anyway, he dies and the poor lady at the cafe whose boyfriend/husband/brother/passing acquaintance was killed looks towards the sky with tears in her eyes. Camera pans back - Title screen.

So many years later she is working at a bakery and for some reason keeps newspaper clippings of her husband/boyfriend/valet driver's murder all over her work space.

I know that if my girlfriend was brutally murdered in front of my eyes I would do my best to remind myself of that fact as often as I could.

Sheesh.

Anyway she looks at the paper clippings and Gary Busey's voice plays in her head - "I'll have my revenge. Even if it is from beyond the grave."

(This blog is getting long so I'll really stream this together.)

So some old lady knocks on the front door and leaves a package which turns out to be gingerbread dough and the lady is Gary Busey's mother or something and she mixed his ashes into the cookie mix which is a horrible thing for a mother to do but I guess if it was his last wish then your hands are sort of tied and then they use the dough for some reason and they guy that works there accidentally cuts his finger on something and drips blood into the cookie dough (ew) and it begins to glow red but they don't notice and continue to bake them which is gross misconduct for a bakery as well as a huge health hazard but nobody cares I guess and so then Gary Busey becomes an evil cookie and tries to murder everyone for some reason that I've yet to figure out.

This needs its own sentence because it is so ridiculous: He is terrorizing these poor people, and he is about 5 inches tall.

I'll repeat that.

He is 5 inches tall and is a cookie.

A cookie.

The whole time the movie was playing I thought that if someone had a dog then this problem would be solved in a few minutes with no murders to speak of. That dog would just eat the hell out of the cookie and problem solved.

...but I'm not as smart at dealing with murderous cookies as I thought.

The guy at the shop eats Gary Busey (I've never written anything like THAT before) and becomes evil because evil-cookie-Gary is possessed and they have to shove the poor guy into the oven and bake him into human-cookies.

Nevermind that Gary was a cookie, so it's already pretty obviously established that being baked in an oven doesn't hurt him. It must be quite pleasant for him actually.


....

This just gets worse and worse.

Here are some lines from the movie:

Some old lady tries to tickle Cookie-Gary even though he is cackling and holding a butcher's knife, and as he cuts her finger off he cries, "Want a ladyfinger?"

When the guy tackles cookie-Busey and eats him, he stands up with cookie blood all over him (ew) and says proudly "Got Milk?" He then turns into a cookie-Busey-zombie four seconds later.

Ugh.

Finally, there is a scene that Lance and I still cannot understand no matter how many times we watch it.

There is a really annoying blond woman who is a stereotypical diva and full-of-herself, so naturally she dies in a movie like this. The way in which she dies is very puzzling though.

See if you can help Lance and I figure this mystery out:

She walks into a room, complains about how much her hair is getting messed up and how much her makeup is running, and she storms out all flustered.

This is what happens:

She walks into a tripwire that a 5-inch cookie somehow set-up, and literally a second later she has a knife buried in her forehead. A really fake looking knife, for that matter.

...How?

  • How did a 5-inch cookie set up a tripwire?
  • How did the tripwire maintain the tension needed to kill someone instantly?
  • How did the knife factor in?
  • How did the knife get any higher than 5-inches from the ground?
  • How did it kill her one second after tripping the wire?
  • Why did Lance and I rent such a horrible movie?
  • Were we really bored as to rent a movie starring Gary Busey called The GingerDead Man?
  • Why, Gary Busey?
  • WHY?
If you can figure this mystery out, please e-mail me at the earliest possible convenience because I am losing sleep over this matter.

(Bad joke.)

The worst part of this whole thing is that after we all watched it, Lance and Liz fell asleep on the couch, and as I was cleaning up our spaghetti my friend Adam showed up at our doorstep, and wanted to see this horrible movie I was telling him about. So we did.

...This may be an achievement for me, or a blemish on my past that I never want to mention again.

However, I can safely say that I am the only person in Lakewood, CO who watched The GingerDead Man.

Twice.

Until next time.

-Dan