New Moon by the Numbers

I did not attend the midnight showing of The Twilight Saga: New Moon by choice. I went to support my bestie's burgeoning addiction. And to be amazed at the ridiculous crowd, of course.

As we've all figured out by now, Twilight midnight fans are not Harry Potter midnight fans. The latter are characterized by costumes (I may or may not have brought a wand to Half-Blood Prince), geekery, and an overall aura of joy. The former are rabid, shrieking banshees that tend to fall into the 11-17 and 34-49 age ranges.

(Yes, banshees can get rabies. Because I say so.)

It was actually quite fun to chuckle with Braids. The crowd (minus us, obviously) cheered for approximately 30 seconds when:

The screen started playing that AMC First Look thing.

The previews started.

The Summit logo appeared.

A moon appeared.

And when the title slowly appeared over said moon? They just completely lost their shit. This was not just applause, as you would hear at an HP screening. This was Beatles-level mania. As Braids pointed out: "What, were they surprised? 'Oh damn, you guys, I thought this was going to be 2012, what a crazy random happenstance!'"

And now, a few numbers I kept track of during the actual movie:

Number of times everyone screamed when Lautner appeared shirtless: FOUR. Okay, dude is ripped and totally hot (and also...17; I feel like a goddamn perv, since he's only a year older than my little brother), but after his torso appears once, do we really need to greet subsequent reappearances with a shriek-fest? We do? Fine.

Number of times I had to stifle a guffaw at an inappropriate moment: Six, I believe. Maybe it's because I never saw the first installment of The Sparkling in the theater, but I find the sparkle effect (which has its own theme music) to be just balls-out hilarious. I just cannot take any on-screen action seriously when it's happening. Of course, there wasn't really a whole lot of action (figuratively, in terms of plot), but still.

Number of people I saw asleep in the theater: One. Some woman sitting on the other side of Braids. See above re: general lack of plot which could lead to narcolepsy-inducing boredom, but I still find it faintly absurd that this woman went through all the trouble of going to see a rabid-fan-filled midnight screening and didn't think to drink some coffee beforehand.

Number of times Braids and I said "O I c wut u did thar": Two. Once at the Meadow of Death and...I can't remember the other one.

Number of times I "awwww"d at Billy Burke's sweet and funny Charlie Swan: Four. Charlie is now my favorite. Billy Burke, please do more things that I'll see.

Number of "AAAAH WHAT NOOOOO" screams at movie's end: Too many to count. Braids and I, on the other hand, laughed and high-fived, because how awesome was that?

Amount of money this motherfucker will make this weekend: I don't even want to know.

On Wet Paint

First off, let me just say that I love Sesame Street. I think it is the greatest educational program on television, and I hope it never goes off the air. My earliest memory comes from an earthquake when I was three years old; the clearest part of that memory is the Sesame Street t-shirt I was wearing at the time.

However.

There was one clip that never failed to terrify me as a child. It was a music video called "Wet Paint."



My terror whenever this segment appeared onscreen supplied my parents (and, later on, my siblings) with endless amusement. "It's just paint, Munchkin!" my father would say while I burrowed my head in his shoulder and cried.

I was too young to articulate exactly what it was about this that freaked me out so very badly. And one would think that, now that I've reached the ripe old age of 22, I would no longer be able to describe those feelings, since there's no way it could freak me out now.

But it does.

You guys, it freaks me out so bad.

I saw the clip on Hulu as I was enjoying a trip down memory lane (a.k.a. the Sesame Street Hulu page) and laughed. "Oh man, this used to give me nightmares." I clicked on it, eager to prove to myself just how much I've grown up.

My flesh immediately began crawling.

So now, I will attempt to make you all see why, exactly, this gives me the creepy-crawlies. (Side note: Remember Creepy Crawlers? I always wanted that set.)

First, the beat and melody to this song are bone-chilling. One of the beat-makers sounds like someone stepping into quicksand, and we all know what happens to people who step into quicksand. The melody does not indicate the happy fun times painting that the lyrics seem to want to indicate.

Furthermore, the lyrics do not actually indicate happy fun times with paint. There's lots of throwing imagery ("you slosh it all around," "slather it and slop it") and unpleasant words like "gushy," "smelly," "slippy," "sloppy," and "gloppy," which I associate with that horrible fudge monster in Candyland (a game I never liked, incidentally). And I also have to be careful not to drop it on the cold, cold ground? Like the ground that my corpse will soon be in?

But worst of all is the actual imagery. The way the paint plops down the wall in the background, like multi-hued blood; the way the video's title creepily drips down the screen. The be-galosh'd-legs (that look as though they are not attached to any sort of body) slipping around on a ton of paint on the cold, cold ground. And all throughout, occasional sprays and splotches cover the camera lens, blotting out the singers, culminating in an absolutely horrifying orgy of paint that completely covers the lens.

Go ahead and laugh, if you like. But now I know that some fears never die...Including that of wet paint.