Recommended wine for today’s entry: Today I did some research into Torrontes wines from Argentina, which were listed in a GREAT article in The Wall Street Journal by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, who addressed the issue of taking wine to your host or hostess during the holidays. They labeled Torrontes as, “one of the most charming whites around.” I then turned to Kenswineguide.com and found his first choice in this category to be the 2008 Susana Balbo Crios Torrontes. At about $13 a bottle, he describes this great buy as “pale yellow in color and opens with a tremendously inviting floral like bouquet that you could smell for hours. On the palate, this wine is light bodied, nicely balanced, with citrus and peach like flavors that are quite nice. The finish is dry and refreshing.” Invite me to your house for the holidays and I’ll bring you some!!
I don’t know about you, but I am glad Halloween is over.
I think I finally did it – permanently scarred myself.
No, I didn’t set my non-flame-retardant white trash costume afire; I didn’t dart in front of a swift-moving car while trick-or-treating. It’s not physical. Well, except for where I pulled all the hair off my arm trying to remove my allegedly temporary tattoo.
My scars are mental. I watched WAY too many scary movies in the past three days. And now I am afraid to do ANYTHING.
This includes things like driving down a road at dusk, walking past a hedge higher than three feet tall, visiting a college, trick-or-treating, walking past a dumbwaiter and — and this one is going to be a problem soon — taking a shower.
I also won’t enter a hotel or school with l-o-n-g halls with multiple doors. I won’t babysit. And I sure as hell won’t go to summer camp. Actually, the camp thing may work out OK for me, because I am old and I’m not promiscuous. Teenage blond chicks in bras and undies in a cabin with bunk beds are absolutely dead from the get-go.
I am also terrified of my brother, so it’s good he lives in Atlanta. If he showed up here in a mask, I might soil myself.
Also, I won’t enter my teenage daughter’s bedroom while she’s in there, lest her head be turned backwards and her bed levitating. I also refuse to look at my kids’ scalps.
My daughter and I have been in horror immersion mode. And trust me, with satellite TV, you can find ‘em all — we’ve seen most of the Halloween series, Friday the 13th series, The Shining, The Omen … you name it. Oh, and snippets of the Saw series, but only snippets. You can only watch so much dismemberment.
We love most of them. Even the really stupid ones where the bad guy has multiple bullet wounds, an axe stuck in his face, his intestines are looping along behind him when he walks and one of his eyes is hanging from an optic nerve … but as soon as the pathetic, bedraggled protagonist lets her guard down and drops the knife/gun/knitting needle that was her last line of defense, Bad Guy ALWAYS comes back to life!
It doesn’t how much we scream “HE’S NOT DEAD YET!” (Do not confuse this with Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life … he’s not dead yet either, but he says so himself.)
Bad Guy always, always comes back to life and either shows up working in the Taco Bell drive-through window the next day or in the car behind her in carpool line or … and it’s not really a scary movie unless this happens at least once … standing behind the stupid protagonist after she wipes the steam off the bathroom mirror.
Oh, yeah, I’m REALLY afraid of bathroom mirrors too.
Movies about crazy psychos are so much scarier than science fiction — we hate the science fiction ones. I mean, if an alien busted its way out of my stomach, I’d probably be glad for the sudden weight loss. And big giant bugs? Please, I’ve lived in Texas, and if the two-foot-long cockroaches didn’t freak me out, nothing on a movie screen will effect me.
Psychos, though — really creepy. Here’s a hint for my guy readers: If you want physical contact on a first date, I contend that you should take the chick to a haunted house where they have an insane asylum and the people reaching through the bars to grab at her. Then back to the apartment for a showing of In Cold Blood.
If the girl is not burrowed into your shirt with you by 10 p.m., she is either a crazed psycho herself or you are extraordinarily unappealing.
Anyway, to get over my fears I have thrown myself into happy things like playing Polly Pocket and the harmonica. And, just for awhile, I’m not leaving the house after dark. Or showering.
And we won’t be having any meat for awhile. I mean, the kitchen knives were just asking to be embedded in my chest. The lady at Goodwill was a little confused, but they really had to go.
So good riddance Halloween. Polly Pocket and I are getting excited about Thanksgiving.
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