Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

         I spent about a decade or so of my formative years living in a mobile home park that was, at the time, known as Mobileparks West. Not to be confused with a trailer park (despite my parents frequently referring to it as such), Mobileparks West was a community of manufactured homes in which arson was strangely rampant. We eventually had to abandon our home there when we found that the interior of the walls was largely comprised of toxic mold.      Rather than dwell on some of the sordid elements of the park, such as time I happened upon an active crime scene containing an unfortunate gentleman who was fatally shot in the head on his front porch, let me ruminate on some positive memories from those halcyon, methy days. Specifically, a formative experience that occurred in 1991 at a magical place known as First Mart. First Mart, for those who are unaware (all of you) was a little convenience store at the mouth of the mobile home park, nestled in a tiny strip mall with a hand

The generally accepted rule of trilogies is that the third installment is almost inevitably the weakest. This makes sense: the first installment is bursting with new creativity, the second is able to refine things and boost them to new heights, and by the time part three rolls around, some degree of repetition sets in, and the excitements tends to wear off. Still, there are some advantages to being the third in a series: the groundwork has been laid, there is a certain comfort in the series' familiarity, and there is still plenty of room for improvement and exploration. And so, in this vein, we have Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones . It's definitely the weakest of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series (for reference, see my POWER RANKINGS of the first and second books in the series), but it's still wholly enjoyable. There are some uninspiring elements, to be sure, but the good parts more than make up for it. It's Return of the Jedi . And there&

I've been trying to eat less red meat lately. Not because of its potentially detrimental effect on my health, but because red is the color of Communism, and Lord knows I don't want to get blacklisted. Then again, a friend of mine lives in a Communist country (China), and seems to enjoy the hell out of it, so who am I to judge? I suppose having to use a proxy server to log into Facebook has its own unique charms. Regardless, I was feeling like steak today, and I don't mean the steak they serve at Taco Bell. Not that I want Taco Bell anyway, after the Five Layer Burrito took my digestive system through the Nine Circles of Hell. So I ventured to the grocery store and bought a steak, some salad and a Sapporo Reserve (it was on sale). Upon my return home, I slapped the steak on the old George Foreman Grill-still going strong seven years later-and poured my Sapporo into the only glass that could contain it, the Samuel Adams Octoberfest beer stein that I fought valiantly with B