Blogger says this is my 100th post since I started this blog. Seems like it should be more, but I did have several for years before this one.

I’ve posted a couple “what-ifs” before and this is something like that. Today I would like to share a little insight into why I am, as some would say, slightly disturbed or “weird”.

There is this movie that will come to mind every once-in-a-while that I used to watch as a kid and I can never remember the name of it, which drives me crazy. The most of what I could remember was that it involved a boy who had body parts in a freezer that he made into a woman, yet it wasn’t a horror/slasher movie. Yesterday I was thinking of it again, and decided to post on a couple forums to see if someone else knew what it was (I’d asked friends in the past, but it hadn’t rang any bells with anyone, except my sister, who also couldn’t remember the name). Within minutes of posting on the IMDB boards I had my answer: Frankenhooker!

Frankenhooker is about a medical school drop-out whose fiance gets in a lawnmower accident. He was able to save her head, but no other parts. So he “collects” body parts from hookers to rebuild her.

Here’s a trailer:

I watched this when I was 7, 7! Which got me to thinking, and I’ve thought about it before, about all of the weird things my sister and I were allowed to watch as a kid. I know I talked about watching Killer Klowns from Outer Space and It before. We could pretty much pick anything off the shelf at the video store when we were with our aunt and it would be okay. Little Monsters and Drop Dead Fred were two of our favorites. Now, when you just think of those movies it doesn’t seem like anything wrong, you think “there wasn’t anything bad in those”, and Little Monsters is only rated PG; however, if you watch them now, it’s like “what were my parents thinking?” I can’t see letting my elementary school-aged kids watch most of the movies I watched at that age, mostly because of language and sexual innuendos, but there is the just plain weird factor also.
There were plenty of other weird, crazy movies we watched too, and we were given free reign over the TV at our grandparents house, which had HBO. I wonder if our mom (no need to include dad in the whole “caring” thing, I know that answer) just didn’t care or maybe she thought we wouldn’t “get it” so it didn’t matter? She admits she used the TV as a babysitter, but when we rented movies with our aunt, she even watched them with us.

I just wonder what we would be like today if our movie/TV watching had been filtered. I think it’s beyond reasonable for people who grew up watching the kinds of things we did, to be at least slightly disturbed.

Oh, and to throw another twist in the plot: We weren’t allowed to watch the Simpsons, and were forced to fast forward though “that scene” in Earth Girls are Easy. Some parenting.

I’m sure most people have heard about Michael Glatze, a gay-rights leader, coming out as straight recently. But maybe you haven’t read his story on WorldNetDaily, he talks about working for magazines aimed at young gay Americans, the 16 years of his life he spent as a gay man, and how forming a relationship with God showed him the truth.
On speaking out on the gay-rights movement he says:

If I could take back some of the things I said, I would. Now I know that homosexuality is lust and pornography wrapped into one. I’ll never let anybody try to convince me otherwise, no matter how slick their tongues or how sad their story. I have seen it. I know the truth.

Full article here, it’s worth the read, really.

In lighter news, a dozen 7-Elevens across the nation have been converted to Kwik-E-Marts to promote The Simpsons Movie. dhepnar has some nice pictures from the one in Canada on Flickr, I especially like the “Thank you for loitering…” sign. A list of the altered stores can be found here. I really want to go to one, but the closest is 6 hours away. They are supposed to have special snack foods and Squishees (which I’m sure is just a regular ol’ Slurpee in a different cup, unfortunately) at all 7-Eleven locations though. Actually, I don’t even know where the nearest 7-Eleven is, I can’t even find one near me on the locator on the site.

Edit: If you go here, this flickr user has collected links to photo sets from all the different Kwik-E-Marts. And there is also a Kwik-E-Mart group on Flickr (though it only has 24 members).

Often times I’ll say something nerdy, or someone else will say something nerdy, then someone will mention watching Bill Nye. I never watched Bill Nye, and I explain that my brain’s growth is owed to another science guy. But seeing as I can never remember the name of the show, it’s always “the guy with the hair, and it had the girl, and the giant rat.” Even when someone does happen to know what I’m talking about, they don’t remember the name of the show.

Well today, I turned on the TV to play some Wii and, low and behold, there is the guy with the hair, the rat, and the girl! It is Beakman’s World, and it’s now syndicated on the CW. Though both shows started in 1993, it seems like I had been watching Beakman’s World for years before ever seeing Bill Nye, which caused me to see Bill Nye as a copy cat, beside the fact that he wasn’t nearly as entertaining. As a 10 year old I found him way too corporate.

Interesting side-fact: All three actresses that played Beakman’s sidekicks have had pretty active careers since the show, but Beakman (Paul Zaloom) has not. My favorite was Josie, played by Alanna Ubach.

On a similar note, I was watching Jimmy Neutron while eating lunch (nothing comes on on Saturdays, and besides I like Jimmy Neutron), and saw a commercial for a new Nick show called “Welcome To Wayside”. It’s based on the Wayside books like Sideways Stories from Wayside School, which was one of my favorites growing up; I don’t know how many times I read it. I wonder if the show will capture the true essence of the books, I doubt I’ll watch it to find out.