Insert "lol" Here

About a week ago, my parents had asked if any of my friends had need of a vacuum cleaner. The only taker was Jamal, since he had just moved into his own place. As I was cleaning the vacuum, I found evidence of how old it was. The settings on the vacuum were LOW, MED, HIGH, and SHAG.

SHAG.

I couldn't help but wonder at the age of the machine. Was this vacuum cleaner new when shag carpeting was getting started? Were my parents given the vacuum as a Wedding Gift? Good gravy, was the vacuum cleaner older than me?

Meh. I'll let Jamal deal with it.

I dropped off the vacuum at his mom's place while he was there "visiting" (which is code for "doing laundry"). I ate pizza with them as they talked about their family and how crazy they all are. Turns out they are as crazy as any family.

Topics of Conversation @ Mama Jamal's: Speeding tickets, kids, choking while multi-tasking, Adventure City, the pros and cons of your child becoming a bully, mysterious friends, pending karaoke, New York, the FDA, etc.

Afterwords, I headed to Cerritos to hang out with Aaron, Amy, and Patrick M. Ever since the debacle of democracy last movie night (RoboCop was awesome though), they felt it was necessary to watch The Thing to even the scales. This, of course, is absolutely true. (Insert "lol" here).

As we sat around chatting, we came to the realization that Amy had seen very few movies. In fact, she had not seen any of the Rocky movies. Granted, you only NEED to see I and IV, but it was a gaping wound in an already tarnished record. (Nothing but love, Ams!) We have now been compiling a lit of Must-Sees to combat this lack of proper education.

The Thing is an example of a "Must-See." Kurt Russel is at his best. The pacing is suffocating. The directing is spot on. The location is beautiful and isolating. And the special effects... These set the bar for other movies for years after. They were scary, intense, intricate, and crafted by ARTISTS. Very few creatures were as disturbing as the Thing. And very few movies captured paranoia as well as this movie did.

So yeah, The Thing wasn't half bad.

-Nate