"Wanna See Something Scary?"

I had the opportunity this weekend to see John Carpenter's "Halloween" for the first time. My friend insisted this 1978 classic would scare the crap out of me. I had a little crap to spare, so I settled on the couch and got ready to scream.

And you guys? No.

I did not scream. It is a classic, but the problem is all the classics have been deconstructed on shows like "Buffy" and movies like "Scream." And there's no return from deconstruction; my innocence is gone.

That is not to say Team Babette ain't never scared. We offer you a list of our irrational fears:

EEK! ZOMBIES! Sure, they're slow-moving and dim-witted, but they keep coming and coming. You can shoot 'em up, but you'll eventually run out of ammo. You can be smart, but, again, they keep coming and coming. And they eat brains. I need my brains.

ACK! BUGS THAT CRAWL INSIDE YOUR BODY AND LAY EGGS THAT HATCH! Stephanie knows it's an urban myth. She gets that. However, the very idea of that happening is freaky.

EEP! BILLS! I have a recurring nightmare that I'll forget to send in my credit card bills. Then Discover agents will come and bust my kneecaps. I need my kneecaps.

LOOK OUT! BODY HAIR AND SOAP GUNK IN THE TUB! Being inconsiderate can be horrifying, especially when your roommates leave their body junk in the bathtub. Imagine--getting on your knees and scrubbing at the hardened flakes of dirt trapped in the microscopic crevices in the bathtub. What if got under your nails? And what if it contained something... alive... that laid eggs?

OH, NO! DENTISTS! "...be a dentist!/You have a talent for causing things pain./I'm your dentist!/And people pay me to be inhumane/I'm your dentist!/And I enjoy the career that I picked/ I'm your dentist!/And I get off on the pain I inflict!" (Orrin Scrivello, "Little Shop of Horrors," 1986)

DON'T LOOK NOW! CRAZED, DRUNKEN HOMELESS PEOPLE REEKING OF URINE! ...wait, what?
Me: Are you afraid of New York?
Stephanie: Some aspects of it. Not all of it.

GROSS! RATS! There's something about their tails. And the way they spread bubonic plague. But it's mostly those pink, disgusting, wriggling, rodent-y tails that make me want to vomit. That "Ben" video by Michael Jackson still gives me nightmares.

AAAH! GHOSTS AND STUFF THAT STALKS YOU FOR NO REASON, AND YOU CAN'T STOP IT, EVEN IF YOU BURY THE BODY AND SEAL ALL YOUR DOORS! Deadly fog? My sister posed a very pertinent question during our last phone conversation: How do you stop fog? It's fog. She's right. And in movies like "The Grudge" and "The Ring," it is isn't enough for a protagonist to find the source of the ghosts' anguish. Oh, no. They're pissed because they're dead, and if you can't un-dead-ify them, then they're a-gonna kill you. Sorry.

GRAB YOUR WEAPON! GAUCHOS! I hate those stupid non-pants.

Hope you're not too scared now to go out there and have a Happy Halloween. Beware zombies, rats, and gauchos...

Mmmm...Mac and Cheese

Once, in a North Carolina used bookstore, I bought The Satanic Verses purely for the shock value. And while I read it, I carried it around and made sure that everyone could see the title. Later on, my brother read it and I’m pretty sure it was for the exact same reason.

Of course, it turned out to be a really good book. A salad book. Both tasty and nutritious.

[Other salad books: Pride and Prejudice, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The House of the Spirits, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, Jane Eyre, Hamlet]

Some books are cough syrup. Moby Dick. Anna Karenina. These are books that are so good for you that you have to force them down. Of course, you can see their value. You love to discuss them. But they’re not the sort of books you just curl up with. (I mean, without falling asleep next to them. Not that it’s happened to me.)

[Other cough syrup: War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Daniel Deronda, Tender Buttons, Possession, A Farewell to Arms, King Lear]

The kind of book you curl up with on a rainy day, or read with improbable attention on the subway, or stay up all night to finish is mac and cheese. It’s no salad, but it fills your stomach with the warm fullness of comfort food. It’s Anne of Green Gables. If you’re Sam, it’s Gone with the Wind.

[Other mac and cheese: Wuthering Heights, Pinocchio, The God of Small Things, Rebecca, Othello]

Then there's dessert. Dessert books are the kind of thing you read to reward yourself for choking down a little cough syrup. Genre books like fantasy or mystery. Funny essays. America: the Book. Fairy tales.

[Other desserts: Naked, Men at Arms, Naked Pictures of Famous People, The Eye of the World, Final Exam, Twelfth Night]

And then there are Cheetos. The books you won’t read anywhere but your bedroom because you can’t believe you actually read them and you definitely don’t want anyone else to know. I once saw a woman on the subway, old enough to be my grandmother, reading a Harlequin romance novel, The Australian’s Love Child or some such, and I marveled at her guts, to read a Cheeto out in public. They’re Cheetos because there’s no nutrition involved. You kind of crave it at first, rush in with guilty pleasure. About halfway through, however, you wake up a little and feel kind of sick.

[Other cheetos: Jared's Love Child, Cosmo magazine, Desperation, City of (a novelization of the TV show Angel), The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet]

I guess I’ve always marveled at people who can stick to a diet. People who read cough syrup like it’s mac and cheese. I am forever expending my days in starchy comfort or rich desserts with the occasional cob salad or cough syrup thrown in when I feel ambitious. (I’m not even going to mention the Cheetos Sam has force-fed me. Pregnancy-genre romance novels indeed! [Force-fed? You begged me!--Sam])

But rationalization is two thirds of being human. So, I like to think I’m an omnivorous reader, a champion of culture in all its tastier forms.

That's Right

Team Babette is proud to announce:

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

And by $0.00, they mean PRICELESS.

Net Google Value

Admit it. You Google yourself.

There's no shame in it. Seeing your name in print never gets old. Realizing a person on the other side of the planet could find you just like that? Well, that just tingles.

When I entered "Samantha Simpson" into the Google search box today, I found a gallery of paintings by an artist of the same name. Another Samantha Simpson won the Blackademy Award for being Most Outrageous, while yet another Samantha Simpson, age 5, enjoys corn on the cob with her family.

Then I found my Blogger profile and a few colunns I'd written for my college newspaper. Now, this does not make me an Internet celebrity. The beauty of being Googleable is that you don't have to overextend yourself to do something worthy of observation on the Web. Do you go to school? Do you have a job? Do you go to church? Do you post angry letters on Rush Limbaugh's website? Well, then, your name just might drudge up some results on Google.

I'll admit this. I Google strangers and celebrities. Trey Parker is super-Googleable, way more Googleable than your average animator, and I suppose that happens when the series you created with your best friend scores high ratings on Comedy Central for nine years and counting.

Since I have a crush of Beatle-mania proportions on Trey Parker, I decided to Google that woman he plans to marry. I figured she would be one or all of the following things:

1) Miss Pageant Winner, 1985-2004
2) a forensic scientist
3) a folk singer
4) winner of the blackberry pie-eating contests in both Alabama and Arkansas
5) a novelist
6) a fashion designer
7) a papparazzo
8) President of the NRA
9) the oldest Brownie Scout on record
10) Kevin Federline's other baby mama--no, no, his OTHER other baby mama
11) a time traveler
12) the stunt person for 75% of Hollywood actors--male and female.

If she were any of these things, then I would deem her worthy of Trey Parker's affection (read: marginally more interesting than yours truly).

I braced myself; I Googled. And you know what she is? Well, first she "escorts," then she is "girlfriend of," and now she's "engaged to" Trey Parker. Weak. Perhaps she materialized from the ether or something cool like that, but I'm being catty here. Again I say, weak.

I asked myself how I would feel if I were identified only by my relationship to my celebrity boyfriend. And after I stopped daydreaming about having a celebrity boyfriend, I decided I wouldn't feel so great about that at all. Sure, all identities are relational. We all belong to someone. We have to.

Except on Google. Your name should be able to stand alone in that bold, arial font--a testament to your minor accomplishments. Even five-year-old Samantha Simpson gets props for managing that cob.

Kerouac Pushover

I’ve thought about this—
kept notes—
and I’m cold.

I’ve become a real estate agent
for high-rise office buildings—
riding up elevators with a confident
smile arcing out over the length of the city.

In the old familiar groove of work
and play and dull girls, I am
the smirking floor wax
of slapstick pratfalls.

I have lofted the bed and it hurts
my feet to sleep it.
Things will fall.
Or be picketed or closed off
for constructions or parade routes.

Above the wet night,
the pavement twinkles or perhaps
winks at me. I can’t
keep up with everything.
These are the unfortunate
days of the ten o’clock bedtime.

Jack Kerouac is staring at me
and just letting me know that he
disapproves of my bourgeois concerns.
Well, you know what Jack?
I am all the drug-free silk satin
and steel this city needs and you
haven’t cracked a less introspective smile
in all the years since I’ve known you.
So go.

Eat your apple pie a la mode
and leave me to my watery rice
and deep abiding love of the 17th floor.
Sneakers will make their way back
into the picture. And soon.
I just have to deal with all my professional
envy right away.

I’m living in a place where fluorescents
fall like stars for me to wish upon
and all I can think to want is a minimizing bra.

PSA--How to Make a Mix CD

We know what you're thinking: Team Babette still listens to CDs? Is it 1845 already? Don't they have iPods?

To that I say, "Yo' mama." And then I say, "An iPod shuffle--the iPod of the people--cannot capture the intimacy of a well-crafted mix CD." I should I know. I have an advanced degree in the Science of CD Mixage. Really.

I teach by example--and for free. You're welcome. Now, here is a playlist I created for Stephanie for Christmas 2004:

I AM ELEANOR RIGBY
1. Green Bird - composer, Yoko Kanno
2. Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles
3. Galaxy Bounce - The Chemical Brothers
4. Save Me - Aimee Mann
5. Watch T.V. - Rasputina
6. Dance Like This - Wyclef Jean
7. Mother Mother - Tracy Bonham
8. Fett's Vette's - MC Chris
9. Baby, I Need Your Lovin' - The Four Tops
10. King of the Road - Roger Miller
11. Bad Girl - DJ Rap
12. Deep in the Sweet Water - Rasputina
13. I'm Beginning to See the Light - Bobby Darrin
14. Pin - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
15. I See You - Groove Armada
16. (I Know) I'm Losing You - The Temptations
17. Warning Sign - Coldplay
18. Eleanor Rigby - Aretha Franklin
19. Girls' School - Rasputina

A mix CD ultimately tells a story. I would call this an existential mix, and I announce that fact with the opener, "Green Bird." The opening song should always set the tone. I like short songs for openers, usually something from a television soundtrack. Other opening favorites are the theme from Buffy, DVDA's "Now You're a Man," and Rasputina's "Yellow Fever."

The second song articulates the ideas implicit in the opening ditty. It doesn't get more existential than "Eleanor Rigby." The second song should be instantly recognizable. Nobody can miss those string arrangements. Now, take a moment to check out the last two songs on the mix. Dig that symmetry. The soul, first-person version of the Beatles song reinforces the theme of the CD. "Girls' School," the capper, mirrors "Green Bird" in that both songs begin with the letter "G."

Oh, I'm not crazy. It's science.

Songs 3-5 form a cluster that trace the existential crisis from the universe to the domestic space in front of the television. The desperate plea for help, "Save Me," is wedged between those two locations. The cluster begs the question, "How can we locate the self in time and space?"

Songs 6-15 create the soup of the mix. The soup has to be rich. Four dance/pop songs spice this portion of the playlist. These are juxtaposed against other desperate pleas to family ("Mother, Mother"), to the ocean ("Deep in the Sweet Water"), and to lovers ("Baby, I Need Your Lovin'"). However, there are occasional assertions of (feminist) authority ("Pin" and "Bad Girl") and jazzy rhapsodies on the good in life ("King of the Road" and "I'm Beginning to See the Light"). After all, the way is dark, but there's no reason to be such a downer about it.

Coming to the end of a mix can be disheartening. I put in two warnings ("(I Know) I'm Losing You" and "Warning Sign") to alert the listener the end is near. In the Temptations song, parting is imminent. By the time, you get to Coldplay (s)he is already missed.

I named it, decorated the jewel case, and sent it on its existential way to Milledgeville. Merry Christmas, Stephanie.

And that's how it's done. Shuffle that on your iPod, kiddies.