Monthly Archives: September 2013
Friday in Gautham Part IV: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
With Friday the 13th‘s premiere in 1980, a sequel followed each year afterward for two years. Friday the 13th Part II came out in 1981 and Part 3 came out in 1982. The filmmakers, seeing how the film was repeating itself like a crazed hamster on its wheel, decided not to rush things for a fourth part. They also decided it was time to end things. This led to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, which was released in 1984 and took the franchise into new territory with careful plotting, intelligent directing, and acting that blew away every other horror film that year.
All right, the only true part in the above paragraph are the titles and the dates, I made up the rest. The truth is, I have no idea why it took two years to make this movie except that, maybe, Paramount was ready to end the franchise with the third movie but figured, “Hey, why not? These things keep making money for us.” However, they may have also had enough of the Jason Voorhees character and may have decided this would be his last outing.
The Final Chapter begins much like the prior two sequels. The first five minutes show what has happened before. Unlike the prior two movies, though, it doesn’t replay the final scene. Instead, it takes “The Legend of Jason” story from Part II and illustrates it with some of the “Best of” the gory scenes, leading us into the end of Part 3. This movie picks up almost immediately after. Jason (Ted White) is on the floor of the barn we left him, ax removed from the head, but only recently. He’s taken to the hospital and turns out to be alive(!) and, well, does what Jason does.
And he does it so well…
The Day
There’s a little bit a new twist in this movie. There’s a family, Mom, daughter, and little boy living in the woods in a log house. They have a dog. There’s a house next door (the only house next door) where the “kids” who will become the main victims will stay, but there’s at least a family unit at play here. Joan Freeman plays Mrs. Jarvis in a fairly realistic way. Considering she’s not given much to do, she does a pretty good job. Kimberly Beck plays Trish Jarvis fairly well. Certainly not the best acting I’ve ever seen, but better than most heroines in this series (though I still think Amy Steel is the best so far). Her little brother, Tommy, is played by Corey Feldman, who turns in a star-making performance. He’s a little boy in this and cute-as-a-button, and he steals the show. This family gives what little heart The Final Chapter has. And it is only a little.
The hunter, Rob Dier, played by Erich Anderson, is also a nice twist to the movie. He’s the brother of a girl killed in Part II and is looking for Jason under the guise of hunting bear. His performance isn’t bad, though fairly thin.
Crispin Glover. Do I need to say more? I will. He’s as bad as everyone else in this movie but the fact that he’s in this movie, a year away from his big role as George McFly, is funny. He also displays some cool dance moves.
Hello? McFly. I’m talkin’ to you…
The gore is upped once again. Tom Savini returns to the series and the gore factor is raised from the prior movie. And while I’m writing about base entertainment, the nudity has returned, too. Woo!
The Night
Will I continue to knock the writing and directing in each of these essays? Probably. It struck me as I sat through this movie that I bet that somewhere, someone can write a good Friday the 13th. At this point, four movies in, I’m not sure. Here’s an interesting idea: Instead of making another Kids In the Woods Get Killed movie, focus on the family unit. The recently divorced Jarvis and her children who happen to be staying in the woods meet young Rob Dier, who’s “hunting bear” but is really looking for his sister’s killer, whom he believes is haunting the woods around Crystal Lake. Have the story unfold as Jason comes back and stalks them, maybe because Dier pesters him. Something like that. Spend time with the characters so the audience cares about them. Yes, yes, it’s breaking the formula, but why not? Instead, there’s a ton of characters that are barely written (though are better written in this movie than the last) and a killer who is somehow able to get around everywhere easily and without much effort. He can get from a kitchen to an eave near a window to a room downstairs to a room upstairs to the house next door to a basement in moments, and somehow finds time to arrange his victims for horrific display at just the right time. Jason is an artist. His canvas is the human body. His medium is fear. But physics don’t apply to him for some reason.
Physics may not apply to him, but he’ll use a door. Sometimes.
Should I mention the acting? I just did. I’ll leave it there.
The blatant disregard for life is another theme in these movies. Not just by the killer but also by the filmmakers. They just don’t give a damn about the horror of the violence they portray. I know, it sounds hypocritical of me to say this yet praise the gore, but it’s true. It’s scary how popular these films were (and still are) despite this. I’m not saying I’m above watching this shit, I’m obviously not, but I feel like I should mention it somewhere.
Saturday the 14th
The second movie introduced Jason as the killer. The third movie introduced the hockey mask. This movie makes Jason almost superhuman. He keeps getting lethal blows and coming back. Yet, the writers and such are still saying Jason is a man, a crazy man, true, but a man.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, according to Wikipedia, was a huge hit and spawned, of course, a fifth movie. I’ll also note that seven months later, the far superior A Nightmare on Elm Street was released. This would become very important for this franchise.
Aaww! Look at cute lil Corey Feld–Boo!
Friday in Gautham Part III: Friday the 13th Part 3 (1982)
Like its predecessor, Friday the 13th Part 3 begins with the last five or so minutes of the previous movie. Unlike its predecessor, it reinvents the ending just a tad, which leads us to the third part of this ever-growing saga. Director Steve Miner returns to the franchise with his second–and final–effort. Being the third film in as many years, they had to pull out all the stops, so they made this movie in 3D! Makes sense, right? Part 3. Part 3D. Get it? Great, huh? And, because they wanted to really get the audience, they crafted the best script yet and hired the best actors the series had seen until this point.
All right, I’m lying. The extent of their efforts was in the 3D department. Oh! And the gore. This movie is gorier than its predecessors. Anyway, even though you can pretty much guess what I’m going to say by reading my last entry, let’s get into this.
The Day
I’ll give the filmmakers a little credit. They try a little to differentiate these movies. The first movie took place at Camp Crystal Lake. The second one happened at some other camp. This one takes place at a cabin/barn/house on the lake. The last two films featured blondes as the heroines, this one has a brunette. So at least it’s not happening at the same place…just the same lake. I’ll put this in the positive section, along with–
The gore. I know, this is base entertainment, at best, but like being happy with the nudity in the prior film, the gore in this one was upped. According to my sources (Wikipedia), most of the death scenes were edited down because they were too gory and the movie almost received an X-rating. Why the Blu-Ray I watched didn’t have it unedited is beyond me, but it didn’t.
I wonder if she knew that being hired onto this movie would mean…hanging around.
The 3D shots. I had the option to watch the movie in 3D. I didn’t. Why? Because I thought it would be more fun watching the way things came at the screen for no real reason, and I was right. It’s silly and it’s fun. Handles to pitchforks, yo-yos, popcorn, prongs from pitchforks, and eyeballs all come toward the screen, along with other things. Whee! F-U-N!
The origin of the hockey mask is told here. According to my sources (again, Wikipedia) the hockey mask was used because it was around. They wanted to change Jason’s mask from a sack to a mask and 3D effect supervisor was a hockey fan who happened to have gear with him. The director loved it and they made masks for Jason. Little did they know that the hockey mask would become his iconic look.
Oh, and Jason (Richard Brooker) runs some more. That’s good. He’s almost scary.
See? Jason is scary. Almost.
The Night
This cast is the worst cast yet. There is so little distinction between the victims that it’s puzzling. There’s the girl who owns the house, the pregnant girl, her boyfriend–who walks on his hands, the hippie guy, his girlfriend, the fat kid with the Jewfro and a penchant for doing the exact wrong thing at the exact wrong time, the Latina girl, and the main girl’s boyfriend. There are other victims, too, including a three-person-biker gang: a tall, bald black guy, a black woman, and a white dude with a dagger earring and cigarette hanging from his maw. There might be more, I can’t remember. This movie killed too many brain cells. The extent of their characterizations is exactly what you just read. Nothing is followed up and no one really comes off the screen despite the 3D (see what I did there?). These people exist only to get killed. And unlike the second movie, which at least killed the original movie’s heroine within the first fifteen minutes, the second movie’s heroine is mentioned in a news report at the beginning of the movie as being transported to a local hospital. Which reminds me, there are two people who die in that scene–an inept shopkeeper and his shrieking-stereotyped wife. Ugh, the stereotypes.
The writers (I use the term loosely) provide a script that is not so much story as graphically violent scenes attached with minimal story. In true Friday the 13th fashion, things are left unexplained. We never know what happens to the camp in the second movie and the main heroine in this movie (played by Dana Kimmell) has survived a Jason attack two years earlier. He attacked her and she passed out, to wake up later in her bed, unharmed. Huh? Why? Who knows? In this world, loose ends abound and the filmmakers don’t care because they know their audience: kids out for a good time and a few laughs. There’s a hippie guy who seems to be too old to hang out with the others. Why? Because. Why doesn’t Jason replace his sack until he finds the hockey mask from Jewfro? Oh, who cares?
Originality abounds…
The nudity. Or, rather, the lack thereof. Maybe things were getting tough in 1982, but there’s so little nudity that it’s a step backward. Prudish Americans.
Jason. In Part II, Jason is almost scary. He’s dressed like a farmer with a sack on his head, but he runs and is kinda creepy. In this movie, he’s larger, he’s lost his hair, and he’s…well…less scary. Not that he was really scary in the second movie, but was almost scary. In this one, he still runs, he still feels pain, but he takes a much harder beating. The makeup is pretty terrible, too.
Personality….
Saturday the 14th
By 1982, people knew what they were getting in a Friday the 13th movie: young people being picked off one by one by a killer with nearly supernatural strength. I imagine seeing it in the theater in 1982, with your friends, and wearing silly 3D glasses is the optimal way to watch this movie. Check brain at door and have fun. This third installment could’ve ended things and just let sleeping hockey-masked killers lie. But, of course, that wasn’t going to happen….
Boo!?
Friday in Gautham Part II: Friday the 13th Part II (1981)
One of the things that’s great about sequels is that the premise has been set up so the action can begin at once. It’s one of the reasons why The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight work so well. The characters are re-introduced in clever ways and we get right into the story. Friday the 13th Part II doesn’t even get that right. Released a year after its predecessor and featuring a new writer and director, the audience is given a recap of the previous movie in the first five minutes. It only gets moderately better from there.
I first saw the movie in my early-teens, I was probably around fourteen or fifteen when it showed up on Cinemax, and I was surprised by how different Jason Voorhees was to the monster I’d watched in later installments in the franchise, for this is the installment where Jason (Warrington Gillette) becomes the monster, which in itself is historic to horror geeks like me. Hell, Drew Barrymore died because she didn’t know this! Because you know the story, I’ll get right into my ten cents of opinions.
The Day
Amy Steel as Ginny. She’s likeable, pretty, and somewhat realistic. She’s got a strength about her that radiates from the screen. A few of the other campers are also not too badly drawn, and I’d mention their names except that I never learned them. And we’ll get to that later. But Steel is pretty good even though I wish she were onscreen even more.
She can stick me anyti– Um…er…heh.
The nudity. Let’s face it, there are two reasons to watch a Friday the 13th movie: sex and violence. The first movie was much tamer on both counts than what I remembered. This one ups the nudity. I know, it’s very base of me to say such a thing but let’s not beat around the bush (no pun intended), these movies are base and when I watch them, I want to see me some boobies. This movie delivers…at least a little bit.
Jason’s introduction is also not bad. As a matter of fact, he’s almost scary. Jason’s outfit in this movie is biballs, a flannel shirt, and a sack on his head. He’s not a supernatural entity here so much as a madman running through the woods. Running. Jason Voorhees runs in this movie. He chases people, and tackles them, and is generally quite energetic.
Run, Jason, run!
The music by Harry Manfredini is also really good. Better, I think, than the first movie’s music. He takes the whole Psycho-meets-Jaws thing to a new level.
The Night
Alice’s return. Adrienne King returns as Alice in the first ten minutes or so of the movie. She’s having nightmares about the events of the first flick (that helps the audience know what’s gone down until this point) and wakes up. Ms. King is likeable but she’s not a great actress. Her return is generally better than most of the lines she delivered in the first movie. And then she’s killed with an icepick. In her home. In the city. With an icepick. How come so many people die from icepicks in movies? I’ve never even seen an icepick in real life. But anyway, she’s killed and that’s the end of Alice. So, aside from her memories from the first movie that helps set the audience up for this one, what’s the point? According to the well of information known as Wikipedia, Adrienne King was stalked by an obsessed fan of the first movie and only agreed to make this movie if her time was short. Why appear at all? Besides money? Why have her at all? Anyway, it doesn’t work and it makes the ending of the first movie tragic.
Alice doesn’t live here–or anywhere–anymore.
Characterization. Get used to this being in my reviews of these movies, methinks. Who are these people? Why should we care about them? I’ll give that the filmmakers of both movies used likeable actors who did their best to give the characters some kind of personalities, but I never really cared about any of them. Not enough to remember their names anyway. There was the guy running the camp, his girlfriend (Ginny–who I looked up to get Amy Steel’s name), the weird guy with red hair and electronic games, the wheelchair guy, the girl-who-likes-wheelchair guy, the frizzy-haired-big-boobed girl, her boyfriend–the blond guy with the hat and the truck, the work-out girl with the dog (who gets nekkid), the smarmy lothario who’s trying to get her…and I think that’s it. These characters mean so much to the filmmakers that the weird guy with red hair actually disappears from the movie. Which leads to–
The story. This movie does not take place at Camp Crystal Lake but at another camp on the same lake, five years later. Two camps sharing a lake? Does that happen? Well, in this part of Jersey it does. I don’t remember the name of the camp and it doesn’t matter, any more than the names of the characters matter. The only purpose of the camp is to make it like the first movie but more believable (???). After all, what’re the chances that a serial killer would go to the same camp?
Not only does the story not make sense, but the direction and editing also has major flaws. After a night at a bar, Ginny and her boyfriend come back to the camp to find everyone dead. Jason attacks the boyfriend but chases Ginny. There’s some cool, intense moments hear, but then she gets away and runs through the woods. We dissolve to the full moon, dissolve back on Ginny running, then dissolve to the full moon. She seems to have run to Camp Crystal Lake, yet when Jason is in the place where she’s hiding, she comes up with the chainsaw she was using earlier in the movie to cut wood, which means she didn’t run out there. Which means…what? She was running in a circle? The boyfriend comes back in Jason’s little hut to help her “defeat” him. They go back to the camp to find the little doggie that we believed was dead because we saw the remains of the same kind of dog earlier (Shi-Tzus run rampant in the woods of Jersey). Then Jason, sans sack, crashes through the window and attacks Ginny. The camera holds the shot and fades out. Only to snap back to Ginny being loaded into the back of an ambulance, asking after her boyfriend. What happened? Why isn’t she dead? And in all of this, what happened to the weird guy with the red hair they left at the bar? Or the other campers at the bar, too? And why does the movie take place five years later? How come so many sequels take place five years later? Don’t filmmakers know that styles and technology change in five years?
All these questions are giving me a headache!
There’s a lot that’s taken for granted in this movie, stuff the characters seem to know yet shouldn’t. At least, the audience wasn’t made aware of them in the first movie. The Legend of Jason, let’s call it. The legend went that Jason Voorhees didn’t really die in the Crystal Lake but lived in the woods surrounding it. When Mrs. Voorhees is killed, he witnesses it and decides to kill everyone because of it. We’re told this legend around the campfire, which is cool, except…how come no one in the first movie knew of the legend? How come the crazy old man on the bicycle didn’t mention it when he was telling those original campers about how Camp Crystal Lake would lead to their doom? And how come Pamela Voorhees didn’t know about the legend that featured her son? And if Jason loved his mother so much, how come he lived in the woods, hiding, and not with Mother?
Saturday the 14th
Overall, the movie is a fun popcorn slasher flick, but it’s little more than that. There are too many questions and holes in logic. More so than its predecessor, it feels like a very cynical movie. The cynicism of the filmmakers to give its audience what is essentially the same movie with different faces, the lack of attention to detail, or the lack of any real thought makes Friday the 13th Part II a basically forgettable movie. But it did well in 1981 and meant that a sequel would follow.
Boo!
Friday in Gautham Part I: Friday the 13th (1980)
The story goes that Sean S. Cunningham, producer of low budget movies (mostly horror, including Wes Craven’s first movie, The Last House on the Left) had an idea for a movie called Friday the 13th. He had no story, no characters, nothing else in mind except for the title. So he went to a graphic designer and had an ad designed with the title smashing through glass. The kicker was the tagline: The most terrifying film ever made. Then he placed the ad in Variety. The feedback was immediate. People–teenagers and young adults, mostly–wanted to see this movie.
Victor Miller wrote the story and Cunningham took on directing as well as producing. You know the story already: After being closed for 20 years because of murders, Camp Crystal Lake is being reopened as a place for inner-city youth to experience nature. A group of young people join Steve Christy in preparing for the reopening. Someone attacks and murders them one-by-one until the lone survivor, Alice, wins. There is a shock ending and an implication that a sequel could be made.
The Day
There is a gradual build-up to this first film. Miller and Cunningham start off with a young couple being murdered in 1958, but then allow some time for the characters to arrive at Crystal Lake and hang out before the killings really start up. There is the sense that they actually want the audience to know the characters.
Peter Brouwer as Steve Christy is pretty good, though he is hardly in the movie. He’s the “old man” of the group, in his mid-to-late-twenties, yet is young enough to have a thing for Alice (Adrienne King). There’s an implied romance there that is never developed.
Betsy Palmer is priceless as Mrs. Pamela Voorhees. Her arrival at the end of the movie is sudden but you instantly like her, and then fear her when she goes nutty. Her revelation that she’s the killer and her motive, the drowning death of her son Jason, is well done for a melodramatic scene. It looks as though she’s having a blast playing the crazed killer.
And you thought your Mom was nutty!
Tom Savini’s makeup is another thing that’s always fun to watch. His makeup never really feels polished yet is always believable. His strength as a makeup/special effects guy is in the roughness of the final product and helps the movie achieve a shock-value that the other early slasher movies lacked.
The music by Harry Manfredini is also really good. It’s very Psycho-meets-Jaws in its execution and sound. When the famous Friday music begins, you know to hang on to your armrest.
The overall feel of the movie isn’t serious. Sean S. Cunningham wasn’t trying to create a horror masterpiece, but rather was trying to make a fun, scary movie. Obviously inspired by John Carpenter’s Halloween, he moves away from his work with Wes Craven to something meant to sell a shitload of tickets, barrels of popcorn, and make kids scream and laugh. And it does. More than 30 years later it’s like opening a time capsule, but it’s fun.
And the last good thing about this movie is Kevin Bacon. He does a good job in this movie. Hell, all of the “kids” do a good job in this movie, but it’s Kevin fuckin’ Bacon! And this is where the passage of 33 years really counts. To see someone who has become more than just a really good actor but an icon in an early role like this is fun. It’s like seeing Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street, however, there’s a major difference between the two. I’ll get to that later.
Hey, Kevin! Care for a glass of wa–? Oh. Never mind.
The Night
The characterization is crap. With the exception of Mrs. Voorhees, none of the other characters have a history. The only “kid” who seems to have lived at all before this is Annie (Robbi Morgan) whom we first meet hiking into a small town on her way to Crystal Lake. She is thumbing her way there and gives a little insight into her life. There is an attempt at giving Steve Christy and Alice a little bit of characterization but it never really gets off the ground. Whether it was Victor Miller’s writing or Sean Cunningham’s lack of caring is for the individual viewer to decide. I think it’s a combination of both. Considering the slower build-up to the killer’s spree, this is a shame.
Because of weak characterization, the acting never really gets off the ground. As I said before, all the “kids” do a decent job, and I’ve already acknowledged Brouwer and Palmer (and Bacon) but for the most part the kids are given very little to do. They are caricatures more than people. Alice is the nice, smart one who Steve wants but may want Bill (Harry Crosby) instead. Jack (Bacon) and Marcie (Jeannine Taylor) are boyfriend and girlfriend and go to the camp with their friend Ned (Mark Nelson), who is a bit of a jokester who takes things too far. Brenda (Laurie Bartram) is a little risqué but…not…? And to try to go any further is impossible, because that’s all these people are. They’re played adequately enough, but there’s no meat. They’re given nothing to really do but go through the movie and, well, die.
This is the biggest problem of the movie. Because we’re never really invested in the characters, we never really give a damn about who lives and who dies. One of the strengths of Halloween, the thing that made it a classic, is that John Carpenter and Debra Hill crafted teenagers who one could relate to and care about, so when the faceless killer goes after them, you give a damn.
Oh, look. Whatserface is dead.
The revelation of the killer at the end is also a misstep. Yes, Betsy Palmer plays Mrs. Voorhees with gusto and has fun in the role, but because she shows up out of nowhere, she’s meaningless to the audience. Miller gives her a throwaway line (“I’m a friend of Steve Christy”) to throw the audience off and make them think she’s safe, but considering they’ve never seen her before it doesn’t matter much. Perhaps if she’d been around throughout, it might have more surprising. Even if she’d been in the town at the beginning, trying to warn Annie off, it would’ve worked. Instead, here’s this nice lady from out of nowhere who must be the killer. (Let’s not go into the question of how she can lift some of these dead bodies and throw them through windows even though they’re larger than she).
Saturday the 14th
Overall, Friday the 13th is a fun movie with no pretensions. Cunningham wanted to make a movie that would sell tickets and popcorn and he did. The film has been picked apart by critics and naysayers since its debut in 1980 (which, being three years old, I wasn’t really aware of). It is not, and never should be, mistaken for a work of art, or even a good movie.
The biggest problem from an adult point-of-view is that it exists only to watch people die in various ways. It’s surprisingly tame considering the later movies and its reputation. There are gory scenes, but the gore is minimal and is cut away from quickly. And there is, surprisingly for a slasher movie, an innocence that comes through. Despite the depravities, it’s somehow a very innocent movie and worth watching now if, for no other reason, only to see it as a popular classic movie, bad as it may be. I had fun.
With the template set, and box office being huge, there was no wonder Paramount wanted a sequel.
Boo!
Friday in Gautham: An Introduction to My Views on Friday the 13th
If you grew up in the 1980s, you know that horror was king. In the bookstores, the horror section featured many books with lurid covers that titillated and frightened those of us curious–and brave–enough to venture into the section. Late night TV was creeping with horror. And in the multiplex, a turf war was going on. Every child of the 1980s had a side. The horror wars had two major figures and you were usually fans of one or the other. These figures were Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger. I fell on Freddy’s side, of course. So it’s with great caution that I have decided to leave my nice home on Elm Street and venture into the woods at Camp Crystal Lake.
I knew of Jason just like everyone else, and over time have caught nearly all of the original movies (the Paramount movies, and the first New Line one). Unlike each A Nightmare on Elm Street movie (or as the lamebrains would call ’em, Freddy Movies), I don’t really remember much of watching the Friday the 13th movies (or the Jason Movies). I know I saw most of them on Cinemax in various marathons, but hardly recall much else, or at least not enough to write about. Even as a 10-to-14-year-old, the movies left me uninspired and unimpressed. Still, they are a part of an era so why not take a look at them in my own, special way?
It’s the emotion of the character that always gets me…
Over the course of a year, I have watched all the Friday the 13th movies. Considering the final Friday the 13th will be in September, I decided this was the appropriate time to begin a series of essays about the movies. I’ve decided that between September 13th and October 31st, I will post these essays right here. Some of these essays will come twice a week.
For fans of the Friday the 13th franchise, please take it easy on me. This will be like a Boston Red Sox fan trying to write about the New York Yankees (or vice versa). Let’s be civil, shall we?
Emotion…
Schedules, Meltdowns, & Burgers, or My Thursday in September
Whoa-ho-ho! What a day, friends! But I’ll get to that in a minute or so.
I’ve decided to attempt to schedule my creative time. I actually decided this months ago, and began really thinking about it a couple of weeks back. Tonight I put pen to calendar and I thought I’d share.
I read this article more than a year ago and thought, I should try something like that. I decided instantly that using an Excel spreadsheet wasn’t an option because I can’t figure out how to use that program (Excel’s templates are what I use, if I use it at all). It took me awhile to figure out what to do. For now, I’m using my desk calendar. I’d already decided that Thursday would be a Must Blog Day, which is when I was putting the Nightmare on Elm Street and Superman essays up. But since July, I’ve been bad about that. So now that I’m back at work/school and have been doing real well working on the novel, I’ve decided to really try out a schedule. I know it will change as I get used to it, but that’s fine. Two weeks are mapped out. We’ll see how this works. If you’re interested, I can give you updates.
This is a nice feeling of accomplishment and, dare I say?, maturity on my part since I had a bit of a meltdown today. I won’t go into it because I know They‘re watching and I don’t want to say the wrong thing or for that thing (right or wrong) to be taken the wrong way (which, in my experience, tends to be how things work), but suffice it to say, ineptitude turned me into my arrogant, prima donna self.
Which makes me think of Dunkin Donuts. I have basically stopped going to Dunkin Donuts in favor of their competitor Honey Dew Donuts. I was sick of the window people (and the counter people) getting things wrong every time I went there. My order is simple: Large hot coffee, extra light, four sugars. Many times, I emphasize extra light. Dunkin Donuts gave it to me light, at best, dark most often. Or without sugar. Or they’d fuck up my sandwich, or my wife’s sandwich (she doesn’t want cheese on her breakfast sandwiches–or any sandwiches for that matter…I know, it’s a major personality flaw but I still love her even though she eats breakfast sandwiches wrong), or her drink.
The final straw was when I went to get a toasted bagel with cream cheese for the teenager. I’d already gotten my coffee elsewhere before I picked her up for school and she asked if I’d get her a bagel. So there was a Dunkin Donuts and I went through the drive-thru.
“Hi. I’ll have a toasted bagel with cream cheese, please.”
I drive up, pay, get the bag, and am pulling around to leave when Courtney says, “Look.”
She pulls out a small package of butter. And there’s no knife to spread it.
So I park, and bring the butter in. The girl at the counter ignores me for a few moments before, “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I say, putting on a smile and faking a pleasant disposition. “I just ordered a bagel and cream cheese at the window and was given butter.” I held up the butter. “I wondered if I could have cream cheese.”
The girl sighs and walks away. A few moments pass. I wait. And wait. And wait. Finally she returns and thrusts the cream cheese at me and turns around to walk away.
“Excuse me.”
She turns and rolls her eyes. “Yes?”
“Could I have a knife to spread this?”
She sucks her teeth and procures a plastic knife that would have a hard time spreading air. She walks away before I can thank her. I’m left with cream cheese and a knife in one hand, butter in the other. I placed the butter in the rack of gift cards.
It’s been months since I’ve gone to a Dunkin Donuts. I’ve been happy.
Except, recently, Honey Dew has been giving me light coffee. I order it extra light.
I’m not asking for much, just aptitude at your job.
Speaking of which, I made these cheeseburgers (hamburgers for Pamela) tonight. Her’s was medium, mine well-done. Cheee-rist! I made a mean burger! Well-done but juicy, two slices of cheese (one on top, one on the bottom), lightly toasted buns.
Yeah. Tonight helped today.
The Next Movie Essay Series Will Be…
The poll way back in July gave me a winner. However, I never got to the watch winning series of movies when I wanted to so I haven’t written the essays yet. That said, there’d been another set of essays I’d already started and am almost finished with, so that’s what I’m going with, especially considering next week’s significant date.
So the next movie series will be:
That’s right! Beginning next Friday the 13th, I’ll be posting my thoughts on the Friday the 13th movie series, or as some refer to them, the Jason movies.
Which I’ll totally admit that nobody voted for this series, but they came back on Netflix (well, most of them) and I began watching them again. As of right now, I only have one more to watch and write about, so the series is pretty much all set. Unlike my previous movie essays, though, some of these will be posted twice a week so I can get them all in by Halloween.
After this, the next series will be, finally, the winner of the poll. Which is…
You’ll have to wait.
Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 