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Dear Shaun,
Every Halloween season my friends watch scary movies every Saturday night. They get together and make or order food, they have some drinks, smoke some weed and have like a five hour hangout watching two scary movies each weekend. I am uncomfortable with scary movies. They are not enjoyable for me. I don’t like the way they make me feel and I just don’t see that as a fun way to spend my weekend. However, I feel left out. I like my friends and feel like I’m on the outskirts within this group every October, and then that can have after effects for months with inside jokes and camaraderie. What do you think I should do? Should I suck it up and feel uncomfortable or should I feel uncomfortable and distant from my group? Any guidance would be wonderful.
-Too Scared to Hang
Dear Too Scared to Hang,
I am with you. Horror movies can be a lot. I still like them, I’m not a loser, but a good one can really mess with you. I won’t name names but I will just say that my brother when he was 20 saw a scary movie and was still living at home. After the movie he asked if he could sleep at the end of our parents’ bed to feel safer. (This is really a test to see if he is still reading this).
One of my big hang ups is all the rules that Scream laid out about horror movies. Don’t have sex or you die, don’t drink or do drugs, and you can’t say, “hello,”“I’ll be right back” or “who’s there?” On the flip side I also don’t like when you throw out all the rules and the bad guy just keeps coming back no matter what happens as with Chucky, Michael Myers, or Art the Clown. Unfair!
One time a very pretentious horror friend told me if I am truly scared by something in a movie it is probably my guilty subconscious gnawing at me. And while I hate this assessment it really kind of checks out! Why do you think Get Out was so popular? Lotta white guilt there folks! But isn’t the point of entertainment to escape your troubles and enter someone else’s world? Why does that world have to be a torture room set up by Jigsaw? Why can’t it be Roger Rabbit’s Toontown?
I suggest that you suggest to your friends watching “bad” horror movies. They can be creepy at points, but usually they are laughable and still very entertaining. Come for the bad acting but stay for the sometimes very impressive practical effects. You could also do a fun thing that has always stuck with me, watch your friends watch the movie. One time I was at a friend’s house and he asked a group of us if we had ever seen Hereditary and we hadn’t. He then sat in a chair next to the TV and watched us watch this very good and terrifying movie.
Finally you should start hosting a Hallmark Holiday movie party every December, and make your friends and maybe even yourself suffer through that. I can tell you that my father used to watch all of them and I really miss hate-watching them with him, while he always anticipates the inevitable (SPOILERS) kiss at the end. You get to watch Lacey Chabert be a journalist, an author, a teacher, a small business owner and so much more. There are rules that are even more strict and not at all inventive but the real point is getting together with your friends. And sometimes that means a sacrifice, just not a virginal one…the rules say they can’t die!!
NEWS
This weekend I’m at The Mendoza Line at the Dugout Cafe. Its a very fun and intimate show, I always look forward to it when I’m booked. You can grab tickets here.
We have some great shows coming up in Worcester that I’m very excited about. On November 8th we have another Hot Dog and then on November 9th we are at Heartland Barber.
Hot Dog is free and you can grab tickets for Heartland Barber here. We also have a couple of big announcements so stay tuned!
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