SCARY MOVIES

I can't, I won't, I refuse to see them. I blink away the ads.

Except maybe ... well, I love John Landis, especially his "Blues Brothers" movie ...

"Shh ... The Octopus" -- who in the world took me to see it. Was it one of my sisters or Ann, the live-in maid who'd become part of our family? How old was I? It scared me. I had nightmares about it for a long time.

What would happen to me if I were a child now? Would I have the comic book vision of art? Or would te murder-death-news be shaping me and my imagination.

Current ads, sales pitches -- (the ads that immediately turn me OFF) -- seem to have been created by young, raw, murder-death-comic book minds. The humor that is meant to be ha ha, isn't funny--not to me. It's crude, toilet-bathroom-snickering.

Wait a minute, haven't ads always been annoying? Yes.
Aren't they more amusing, more interesting, and less stiff nowadays? Yes.

Maybe what's wrong with the current ads is the repetition? Yes.

What does this have to do with "Shh, The Octopus?" Everything!

The movies we see --the big hits, the money-making, record breakers are explosions, crashes, killings, murders, suicides, hideous bloodletting, unending horrors suspensefully arranged, to keep us yearning for the next shocking event, and the next.

And television shows -- briefer versions of the same thing -- are larded, with murder-death, and comic book bang! splat! visions, hammering in that snickering toilet-paper point of view. They're telling you and me to crumple it up, quickly wipe yourself, and aim it -- shoot it into the basket like a Michael Jordan, and wowy --you've won those extra points for yourself.

(Excuse the image -- I guess the toilet scenes in the hit shows are corrupting me.)

"Shh ...The Octopus" did infect me, corrupt me. Early on, creatively, in ballet, and in writing I wanted to shock, show uniquely ugly forbidden things. I outgrew it. I figure the current crop of ad creators, and screen writers, film directors, will outgrow their jobs (at an earlier age than I did, because younger folks, with all this sex stuff in the air, are growing up faster and faster).

And the guys who make oodles of money from these blockbusters, and ads will pretty soon be hiring the newest youngest generation. And they ... well ...with global warming, stock market crashes, economic disasters, lying-cheating-unfaithful governors ...

Okay, we might have newer worser visions for a little while longer, but their children, and the children of the children ... their visions ...

Hey babies read at 2 -- toddlers learn facts of life at 5 -- working at 7, 8, and 9 -- their ads, their movies might be fine! We'll laugh at clowns, applaud the puppies...rappers can rap/sing "roses are red and violets are blue" ... Hey, why not ... sweetness and light could be hot ...

What goes around always comes around ... And older folks who grew up on yucky ugly stuff could always pop in a CD, and see the "Blues Brothers" one more time, and secretly love John Landis.