I remember the first time I saw the video for “Thriller.” I was in elementary school the year it came out and my school was having a fall festival. There were games set up in the parking lot, easy games that cost a quarter a piece to play. You won tickets that could be redeemed for various prices–plastic rings and stickers.

In the second grade classroom, a room with the shades drawn and the lights out, a television and VCR were set up to screen the “Thriller” video. It cost twenty tickets to see it. I saved up all of the tickets I won all day long just so I could see it. It took a really long time because I wasn’t very good at anything and there is a chance that I was given some tickets by older children who saw me weeping.

I watched the video in that dark classroom by myself because it was late in the day and everyone else who’d wanted to see it had already done so. Our school was really old and in the winter when they turned on the heat, the pipes knocked, a sound which the teachers assured us was caused by the ghost of the woman the school was named after.

Perhaps the video for “Thriller” seems quaint and silly now, but alone in that dark room, the distant voices of classmates and parents in the hallways fading as everyone left, I was utterly terrified and completely rapt. To this day when I hear the song, even Vincent Price’s hammy monologue, I get goosebumps and remember the wonderful feeling of being young and believing in that which we cannot see.

When I left the fair to walk home and looked up and down the mostly empty streets of my little hometown, I know for certain that the world was a strange place.

Wrong! I am a rotting corpse.

I see. Thank you. I was unaware that there was any kind other than “snapback.” How do you get that one kind to fit your head if you have an usually large or small noggin?

This is why I am happy that Youtube didn’t exist when I was this age. And why I am happy that my parents didn’t have a green screen in the living room. And why I am happy I didn’t have friends or any sort of peer group.

From the Wikipedia Entry for Rainer Werner Fassbinder:

The 2011 Gathering of Juggalos Infomercial (2011)

Returning to his explorations of Michigan history, Fassbinder finally realized his dream of adapting Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel “The 2011 Gathering of Juggalos Infomercial” in 2011. A monumental TV series running more than 13 hours, with a two-hour coda released in the U.S. as a 15-hour feature, it became his crowning achievement. It was the culmination of the director’s inter-related themes of love, life, and power.

The Infomercial centers on Vanilla Ice, a former convict and minor pimp, who tries to stay out of trouble but is dragged down by crime, poverty and the duplicity of those around him. His best friend, Sugar Slam, makes him lose an arm and murders Ice’s prostitute girlfriend, Coolio. The love triangle of Ice, Slam and Coolio is staged against the rising tide of the Tea Party in Michigan. The film emphasized the sadomasochist relationship between Ice and Coolio stressing its homoerotic nature.

FRUIT GUSHERS FOR ALL!

STATELY, PLUMP Tracy Morgan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

–Why don’t Catholics eat meat on Fridays? I’ll tell you why: It’s because the Pope owns Long John Silver’s.

ENHANCE!

Once, Gabe was babysitting for this family. He’d put the two kids to sleep and was settling into watch his “227″ VHS compilation when the phone rang. He answered it and a voice said, “The show was sort of ‘Meh.’”

Gabe gasped in horror and slammed the phone down. He tried to watch his tape, but was disturbed.

After a while, the phone rang again. Tentatively, he answered it and the voice said again, “The show was ‘Meh.’”

At this point, Gabe woke the children up, because he was scared, and then called the police. The cops told him that they would trace the call the next time it happened.

Finally, after a few minutes the telephone rang again. “The show was ‘Meh.’” He hung up, soul full of terror. Then the phone rang again. It was the police.

“Get out,” they said. “The call is Lizzing from INSIDE THE HOUSE.”

Uh oh, all of the world’s religions are in trouble!

The Videogum South party last night was out of control.

First we all at at McAlister’s and ate soup and then we walked to a coffeeshop and read for a while and then after that we took a bath, but the tub was too full and some waster spilled on the floor. Finally, at like 10:47, we all fell asleep listening to “Siamese Dream” (Amazon had it on sale for $5.00!).

GOOD TIMES!

I believe the blind item said “A List.” Try again.

It isn’t the Earth that is large and round and mysterious so much as it is the Internet that is large and round and mysterious.