Is it just me, or is ‘The Ring’ one of the stupidest, most hyped up pointless movies out there? I watched that last night with a group of friends. We did the whole Horror Movie night – turned the lights off, waited until it was late, and started the movie. Thankfully all of them had seen it before, so I didn’t feel quite as guilty about bursting out in giggles throughout the film. It was just so cliche, expected, and kind of slow.

Of course, it may be might fault; I’m not sure I was really in the mood for it. I was pretty well ticked off at the time. But let’s not get into that… Anyway, I was really expecting it to be good, because the people who were there kept comparing notes on the film, saying how much it gave them the heebies. I’ve heard that from lots of people, but honestly, I just didn’t see it. The director stole tons of tricks from Hitchcock, and it was so blaringly obvious that it distracted me from the movie. You just knew when someone was going to die long before it happened, based on the mock-Hitchcock camera angles. Like when Amber Tamblyn is running up the stairs in the beginning of the film, and the camera cuts to focus on her feet frantically going up the stairs. Come on now!

And then the whole video thing. It didn’t frighten me because it almost seemed like it was trying too hard. It didn’t look real, and yet it didn’t look nightmarish either. It just looked, exactly as that dude in the movie said, like a bad student film. But maybe that’s a matter of how my brain is wired. I think my nightmares are more in tune with Tim Burton rather than Gore Verbinski; just real enough to be familiar, but extended, manipulated, darkened, and unearthly.

Nightmares do play a role in my expectations of the film, I suppose. Two nights before watching ‘The Ring’, I had a dream so disturbing and frightening that when I woke up my heart was pounding and I had to make sure that I was truly awake before I could calm down. All I’ll say is that it involved a whole lot of snakes, mangled faces, and a lake. You work it out, cause I don’t want to think about it.

Because of dreams like that, shaky black and white with a hint of sepiatone videos really don’t give me the heebies. It’s almost like at the end of that famous twilight zone episode about the gremlin on the wing; “Yeah, you wanna see something really scary?” Cause baby, that was nothing compared to what I’ve got in my head all on my own. Sure, that sounds really bad, but still. (That’s why I don’t watch R rated movies – my mind is already messed up, I don’t need anyone else’s help, thank you.) I think that explains why I found The Ring so comical. It was so tame. I felt like it was settling for the gross-out style, rather than any actual meat to the story. It was so slow, and then all of sudden, “BAM! Surprise, this all makes sense now! The end!” Just didn’t work for me.

The night was redeemed, however, when two of the guys stuck around to watch a few more things. We noticed that ‘Army of Darkness’ was going to be on in a little while, so we opted for a break of kitsch classics – we watched two episodes of the original ‘Batman’, intermixed with flipping to ‘Johnny Bravo’ and some college basketball. It was great! After that, we just had a few more minutes so we watched the very end of ‘Halloween 4’. I think those movies are forever lost to me, all because the villain’s name is Michael Myers. Every time I hear that in one of those movies, I can’t help but think, “Like buhttah!”

‘Army of Darkness’, however, was the crowning event of the evening for me. It was really late at night, one of the guys there – The Texan – had never seen it before. But the other guy and I had obviously seen it way too many times, because we knew where every classic quoteable line was and started into fits of giggles whenever it came time for something like, ‘Hail to the King, baby.’ Ah, fun fun fun!

Anyway. Oh yeah, I haven’t mentioned what I did on Thursday. Two guys and I set off for the car dealerships in order to play the Tiffany’s Game. Our first stop was, naturally, the BMW dealership. We drove a new 545i, a 3.0l Z4, and an M3. I really, really love the new 5. It is simply to die for. Like buhttah, even. 🙂 The Z4, as always, was a pleasure. One guy in particular loved that car, and as we drove down the road at 80mph, he’d occasionally just burst into fits of joyous laughter. It was hilarious. The grin on his face throughout the test drive is really a testament to BMW; they know how to have a nice clean good time… at 100mph. I didn’t get to drive the M3 – we got it in a manual transmission because I thought that’s what both of the guys wanted. Turns out only one of the guys wanted to drive a manual, but oh well. I felt kind of bad for the other guy, but he seemed okay about it.

After that we went over to the Ferrari & Maserati dealership and I got to see Todd again. He was very nice – took us out for a ride in a Maserati, showed us around the mechanics shop in the back, let me sit in a bunch of different Maseratis. It was great! Turns out Todd designs all the color combinations for the Maseratis they order in the show room. That man is an absolute genius. He designed on Maserati that was silver on the outside, then had beige and deep gray leather on the inside. That sounded strange to me at first, but believe me, it’s drop dead gorgeous. So unexpectedly wonderful, and yet it just goes so well. I wonder what Todd’s house looks like, I bet his color schemes are to die for.

So that’s my weekend. Today I’ll probably go to Nordie’s and have a facial done. But as for right now, I think I’ll go grab a bagel and see what’s on TV. It’s time to relax and cool down, I think. Still woke up a bit ticked, but I’ll recover.