“Vampires, Zombies and Husbands”


    Can you spare a few minutes listening to me talk about movies and TV programs? Few people I talk with watch TV or go to the movies. I can understand that. Movie tickets cost too much and the price of a bag of popcorn would send 18 Canadians to the Olympics. Perhaps an exaggeration.

    Many people don’t watch TV so they can feel superior to the rest of us who do. –  “No, I don’t watch TV, ‘cause I’m so much better than you.” – That’s just the way I hear it.

    Truth is, you can learn a bunch of important stuff from movies and TV programs. Take the movie Kay and I saw last week. We spent $13 on tickets and $12 on a medium popcorn and soda. That’s $25 to learn one of the most fascinating things in history.

    Hey, I’ve taught history. History and I go way back. Yet, I completely missed the part about Abraham Lincoln hunting vampires. I must’ve cut class on the day it was mentioned. Fortunately, we were not tested over the vampire part. I could pass the test now. Let me tell you, Abe Lincoln kicked some serious vampire rear.

    I never dreamed vampires would become as popular as they have. The first one I ever knew was played by Bela Lugosi. Just not that frightening to me. And, to be honest, I thought he was pretty much the only one out there. Oh, he had a couple of female vampires that followed him around, but they were pretty much thrown in to attract the older guys. Girl vampires? Give me a break.

    Lugosi wasn’t even all that strong. His big power was hypnosis… and biting. He bit a lot. If he couldn’t control your mind, I think you could beat the daylights out of him.

    Today’s vampires are kick-in-the-rear tough. They’re fast, strong as all get out, and some of ‘em can turn invisible. And, there are millions of them. There may actually be as many vampires as zombies, and there are a lot of zombies.

    Unless you watch TV and movies you don’t realize that zombies have become fast and really aggressive. They don’t take a shot to the head well, but they’re some tough walking stuff. Smart even.

    But, it’s all pretty much lost on me. Unless Abe Lincoln, The Bee Gees or one of the founding fathers is involved, I count myself among the few disinterested in vampires and zombies.

    What I’m into now are the investigative murder shows on TV. You know, “Dateline”, “Unusual Suspects”, “48 Hours”, “The New Detectives”, “On the Case with Paula Zahn”… Those of you who see TV time as a waste are really missing out on a lot of sneaky stuff that goes around.

One thing I’ve picked up on is the fact that husbands kill their wives a lot. If you find the body of a married woman, the first thing you do is arrest the husband. I don’t care if he was in another country at the time of the killing, the guy did it.

It’s almost the same with wives. If a husband dies “mysteriously” it’s either his wife or girlfriend who did it. But, in defense of the wives, I’ve gotta say that there are a lot of husbands out there who need a serious whomping.

These shows are so informative. If you watch enough of ‘em it will ruin you for jury duty. – “I just don’t think there’s enough evidence that points to the defendant.” – “Did you miss the part where they said he was THE HUSBAND?”

The one thing that really irritates me about these shows is that many stories could be told in ten minutes, yet they drag ‘em out for the whole hour. At times they’ll even make the lame story into a two-parter.

They manage to do this by rehashing everything they’ve told you after each commercial. If you have to actually sit through the commercials and the retelling of the same set of facts every ten minutes, your life span will be shortened two weeks for each episode you watch. You’d be better off smoking four packs a day.

There are so many other movies and TV programs I would like to share with you. So many things we few who waste our time and money going to the movies and watching TV have learned over the years.

Sure there are other ways to entertain oneself. Reading comes to mind. I enjoy a good read… but it’s so slow. And, I can’t read and eat popcorn. It’s way too distracting. The reading. I’m pretty serious about my popcorn.

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mhayter@rooftopwriter.com