Halloween

Saturday night, I went to a haunted house. Cue the anticipation...I bet you can't wait to hear about this. Chris and I went to The Cutting Edge haunted house in Fort Worth. For those of you who drive in Fort Worth on a regular basis, it's the one that you can see off I-30; the one with the big monster on the roof. It's not a great part of town, but luckily there were a bunch of police officers out guarding the parking lots. It made us feel safe leaving the car unattended. So this being my first visit to a haunted house, I had no idea what to expect. I was shocked to learn that the people who pay to go to the haunted house are generally scarier than the people who work in the haunted house. There were some real weirdo's out there. As we were walking to the ticket counter, we passed a doorway with a ton of bubbles and people running out of them soaked. I commented to Chris how stupid they were to be getting all wet like that when it was so chili outside, especially the girls who were dressed like it was the middle of the summer. I guess it's very important to look cute when you go to a haunted house, even if that means wearing a halter top, a short skirt and sandals on a chili October-almost-November night. I'll have to remember this if I go back next year. Anyways, don't forget my comment about the bubbles.

The haunted house itself was pretty cheesy. It's basically a series of dark hallways and spinning tunnels interrupted by low-lit rooms decorated with scary scenes, like a trashed out laboratory or a tornado stricken house. The spinning tunnels were actually pretty cool. For those of you who don't know, there's a bridge that goes through this tunnel that spins around. At each end of the tunnel are mirrors. It sounds silly, but it actually messes with your sense of balance a lot, to the point where it feels like you would fall over if it weren't for the chain railing to hold onto. Of course the railing is not made out something solid, but rather a shaky chain. After walking through the tunnel, you stay pretty dizzy for a few minutes, which can make navigating the dark hallways even more difficult. At one point the hallways opened up into a large empty room that was full of fog and lit only by a strobe light. The objective was to find the exit, which was pretty tricky since the atmosphere was so disorienting. Of course, the whole thing was littered with people in costumes trying to scare you. My personal favorites were all the people with chainsaws! Real chainsaws, only the chain was disengaged. They were actually pretty annoying, and smelly. There were also a lot of guys in all black with painted faces that would hide in corners and then jump out at you. Chris and I were startled a few times at first. About half-way through I started getting real offensive. I was constantly looking for scary guys hiding in corners. When I would see one lurking in the corner, I would shake my finger at them and yell something like, "I see you," like I was teaching them a lesson or something. Sometimes though, they took this finger-shaking as an invitation to get right in my face. Of course, that would incite more finger-shaking and words like, "Shame on you." At one point, the tunnels opened up into a maze. They told us the only way out was to find the door that said "this is it." Of course we never found the door, although we sure tried. I personally think there was no door, but that it was actually a maze with nothing more than dead ends.

The whole haunted house took about an hour to go through. At the end there were two exits, one that said "no foam" and one that said "foam." Chris, being the brave and adventurous man that he is, grabbed my arm without any hesitation and dragged me into the foam exit. Ahhh...now I understood why they half-naked girls were running around soaked in bubbles! Their equally brave and adventurous boyfriends had dragged them through the foam exit. The whole thing looked like an I Love Lucy stunt gone really wrong. The exit was a bubble-tunnel. It looked like someone had filled a whole room with the dish-soap bubbles. At first I was fine because there was a tunnel of air that you could walk through, but the tunnel got smaller and smaller until it was gone. Then all I could see was bubbles, in front of me, behind me, beside me and above me. That's when I freaked out. At that point I lost all sense of direction and decided I was going to be suffocated by bubbles. Panic quickly ensued. I could hear Chris yelling at me to get behind him, which I later learned would have been a good idea because I could have walked in the vacuum of air he created as he walked. But of course I was too freaked out to think clearly. I had one goal, and that was to run out of there as fast as possible so as to get out before I ran out of air. Obviously I made it out, and obviously I may have over-reacted, but it was pretty scary at the time. I really thought I was going to suffocate. It was the first time I have really felt Closter phobic. Chris found it all very amusing...which I chose to ignore. The whole visit was a very interesting experience. I'm not sure I would do it again, just because it was a little expensive, but if I ever go again I will be sure to avoid any exits that involve foam. That was not cool.

Get Real

Chris, Ashley, Fred and I left the lake just after sunset and went to the movies at the theater in Cleburne. Now I don't have anything against the Cleburne Theater-it's cheap -but there's a reason a matinee is only $2 and an evening show is only $4. When we got in line to buy our tickets, the first thing we noticed was the burning popcorn. Mmmm...I love the smell of burnt popcorn. Luckily, we got into our theater before the smell really spread too much. The theater was packed...packed full of kids...kids with no parents. Most of the audience was around 14 or 15 years old, although some of the 14 year olds were accompanied by a slew of younger kids, younger siblings I assume. In retrospect, the audience demographics explain why the parking lot was so empty. As we left the theater after the movie (I'll get to the actual movie in a minute) I made a comment that we were the only ones that didn't have to go outside and call our parents to come pick us up. Anyways, some of these kids must not get much "alone time," i.e. freedom from parental supervision, because they decided to not even watch the movie. Instead they just made out the whole time. That may be cool in an empty theater...but in a theater where a stranger is sitting right next to you? All I can say is poor Fred. On second thought though, making out would have been better than watching the movie. What did we see.? On what great piece of cinematic magic did we spend our hard-earned dollars? Why none other than the acclaimed film "Fog." Okay, well I doubt it has any acclamations, other than those yelled out by our audience members. Yes, that's right, one group of under-aged audience members had a running dialogue with the movie. Impossible you say? Oh no, it can be done. Let me give you just one an example. There is one incredibly not-scary scene where a lady is fried to death. As the camera pans to her smoking skeleton lying on the kitchen floor, one boy yelled out something like "oh chicken, fried chicken." The movie itself was really bad, although it got a lot better after Chris went to tell the theater staff that the film was out of focus and there was a constant buzzing noise. There was one scene in the movie where a guy wrongly-suspected of causing the mysterious deaths is in the hospital. There are police men guarding his door so he can't get out. But of course the large, unlocked window was not guarded. As the scene opens it shows the window wide open and the suspect's hospital bed empty. The police officer, using his remarkable investigational skills, deduces that the window was used as an escape route. Duh!!! Pretty funny actually. That it was more funny than scary is pretty bad, seeing as it was supposed to be scary. Although, maybe I was too old to be scared. The majority of our audience seemed to be scared...as evidenced by their loud, frequent screams. Either that or else the minority that was scared was really loud. Either way, I have never been to a movie where people screamed like that. It was pretty comical. Their screams were not loud enough however to bother Fred as he slept slumped over in his seat. In the end, we were soldiers. We stayed for the whole movie. We bobbed our heads around the antsy group of kids in front of us who had to play musical seats every 15 minutes. We saw all the scary scenes and even learned the motivation behind the fog's murderous acts. The plot amounted to nothing more than some angry ghosts afflicted with leprosy. As we left the theater we couldn't help but laugh as we dodged the trash and popcorn that littered the floor. Most of all, we were thankful that we were past the age where this was a typical Saturday night.

Bottom line: Don't watch "Fog" unless you have the right audience to keep you entertained, because the movie certainly won't.

Pics from my Month Abroad

Paris

Rome

Venice

Barcelona

Glen Rose State Park