Mr. Zoom agreed to drive with me to Oxnard so that I could see this giant, cement Santa. Mr. Claus is behind a locked fence but sticking your phone through will get you an unobstucted photo. If someone were to stand in front of Santa, he or she would reach about belt buckle height. I have no idea why he is saluting or if that is some kind of mitten pose.

What better way to spend the day than chasing down a cement Santa that can’t get away?

There is a reason he is here but it is so much more fun when all you know is that there is a giant cement Santa off of the 101 freeway.

I dvr’d a film off of the Turner Ancient Movie channel on Friday night because the description sounded like one of those rather cheesy films that I love to watch on a Saturday afternoon. Plus, this movie was released in 1981 and I reasoned that the hair alone would have to be worth a giggle. There just isn’t much in the horror/batshit genre that I haven’t already seen or at least heard about. This one was completely unknown to me.

Possession, it turns out, isn’t your typical friendly romp through anything this side of the looking glass. This film is like having Piccolo Pete’s for eyeballs and you can’t stop lighting the fuse. It does a fantastic job of keeping you just grounded enough in reality to prevent you from calling it out on its bullshit. It is a magnificent showcase of acting on a scale that I, at least, have never seen out of a leading lady before. All of this may be a side effect of the highly disturbing nature of much of the film on my Amygdala. I don’t know for sure. After doing some post-viewing research, I learned that the claustrophobic shots and intense no cut long sequences were intended to cause the wiggling I experienced while watching it.

This is not to say it is without special effects datedness at times. A welcome distraction here and there.

I also learned that I missed just about everything this film was trying to say. I’m ok with that as I’m not sure I would like me too much if I could have been so unaffected by the shocking scenes that I could immediately read the underlying philosophy tickling my toes.

If you like bonkers cinema and philosophical puzzles, and this film has somehow escaped you, try to find it. I think it may be out of print but it is worth a viewing, if not several viewings.

How do you tell your neighbors that you came home tonight and were stared down by a giant raccoon on their roof? How do you explain that the furry juggernaut took one blink into your flashlight and then Jackie Channed into their chimney, or so you think.

They are nice enough people but they don’t speak a lot of English. We learned this when a storm took out a wooden fence between our properties and the replacement fence turned out to be a 10 foot high cinder block job that nobody saw coming. Nobody. Not even them.

If we tell them about the raccoon, there will likely be some kind of cement grizzly bear statue ricochet.

Also, raccoons are bigger than you think. How come nobody told me this? Did I accidentally build you a 10 foot cement fence?

whiteysplace replied to your post: All Y’All
When is it NOT a really strange time in your life?

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When I’m ….nope, that’s weird too. I’m a flyover state. I’m a weirdo. I’m the gonkers. It started when my mom made me wear those Hee Haw overalls to elementary school.

If you’ve commented or sent me a message lately and I’ve been more silent than usual, it’s not that I’m trying to be aloof or rude. It’s work and life these days. I sometimes throw a post out and don’t get to come back in here for days. Sometimes when visiting I get through maybe three pages of dash, which means I miss a shit-ton of your good stuff.

I wish it was wasn’t so.

But it is.