Top 5 Holidays

I'm currently watching Nightmare Before Christmas, as per my usual Halloween and Christmas tradition, and it got me to thinking about the holidays (aside from them being upon on us). I thought a holidays post would be a nice change from all of my movie-related ones and decided to put this up! Enjoy!

5. Easter: I'm not the most religious person out there, but I do love going to church on Easter! Guess why?..... If you guessed the little bits of bread they serve, you're right! In church, they usually kind of recreate the last supper by passing out the body (the bread) and blood (grape juice) of Christ, and as far as I'm concerned, they can keep the grape juice. I'll go to church once a year, and it's on Easter for that bread.
Now, I do love the colors and the lilies, and I enjoy setting up Easter egg hunts for my youngest brother, but that bread kind of does it for me. I don't know, once you live with entitled toddlers, they kind of suck the fun out of any holiday concerning gifts or candy, so I don't jump up and down in excitement over it much anymore.

4. Father's Day: As an out-and-proud daddy's girl, any excuse I get to celebrate my father, I absolutely love. It's an excuse for me to attempt to buy or make him something and peruse through the cards and cry over all of the sweet messages. I wish people made a bigger deal out of it aside from sales on tools or grills, but I sure celebrate it like Christmas on the inside.

3. Halloween: I'm sure this confuses some people, especially those who knew about my emo/goth stage in junior high (I'm not proud of it). Halloween isn't my number one, or at least two? As much as I love finding cool costumes and dressing up, I'm getting really sick of it as an adult. I can't go trick-or-treating, I can't drive in streets full of children, and Halloween got so much attention in the mid-2000's that I got sick of it early on. I like passing out candy and costume-shopping, but once I find a year-round costume store, well...
One of the perks of Halloween, however, is that it's NMBC season! People are putting out their Jack Skellington merchandise and I'm not the only weirdo squealing over skeletons, rag-dolls, and ghost dogs.

2. Thanksgiving: FOOD!! Yep, that's my main reason. I feel like it's an over-looked holiday, especially when it's smack between the interactive Halloween and the gifty Christmas, but guys, we get to eat!! A lot!! And the food is so GOOD, especially in the South! We'll put the most random food in and it's just fabulous!
Turkey Day for me isn't about Native Americans or pilgrims, or good will, just good food and good company. As much as they drive me crazy sometimes, it is nice to see my family come over for Thanksgiving and just catch up. And pass around my Christmas list. And eat the food they brought.
Yeah, food.

1. Christmas: The end-all, be-all best holiday, and not just for the gifts! I love the spirit of Christmas, the music, the stories (religious and non), and the feeling of just making everyone I love happy! I get excited in August for this day! I miss decorating the house and the tree for Christmas, and seeing my great-grandmothers. Because I live in Texas, we only get snow when we don't need it, but we used to regularly get snow flurries, which adds to the jolliness.
I'll be honest, I love the gifts. I love searching and picking out the perfect stuff for my friends and family, and I love seeing what they thought to give me, even if it's something off my list. My entire life, I wanted to be Santa when I grew up, and I still do.

Top 5 Scariest Figures That Made Me Lose Sleep

October's almost over and I've been meaning to post a couple of scary-themed Top 5's, but I'm lazy. Like, really lazy. Plus, I don't like thinking of things that scare me. But I thought 'For the good of the blog' and got to work.
This Top 5 is going to be about the Top 5 stars of some of my worst nightmares. My fears weren't Freddy, Jason, or Leatherface, but contagious things. Things that would torture me emotionally and leave me alive to deal with the aftermath. Figures that would lay eggs in my mind so every time I closed my eyes, I would see them. Maybe they would kill me later, but these jerks would play with their food first. Some of them made it a group effort to terrify me and some worked alone, but either way, all of them have stolen a piece of my soul that I can never get back. Little Mahbu will never be the same.

Honorable Mention: Samara Morgan from the Ring. I first saw The Ring when I was 11 and at my mother's house out in the country. At night. almost a mile from our nearest neighbors. Tartarus no. The scariest thing for me was probably the infamous cursed tape, because the images on it.....just Ra no. Bleh. Anyway, the second movie gave me enough closure to get over it, but even now I'll look at my tv and wonder...

5. Dren from Splice: Do I really have to explain myself? It shouldn't have been created, it looks creepy as Tartarus, and I don't want to get raped. What I learned from this movie was that humans shouldn't try to play god and I should never be a scientist, nor ever hook up with one.
For those who haven't seen the almost blasphemous 2009 sci-fi/horror film Splice, starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, features the two leads as lovers and genetic engineers who want to take their experiments to the next level and splice human DNA with ones belonging to animals. Of course, it's forbidden, so they do it in secret and raise the little abomination, which they name Dren, to adulthood. Dren somehow manages to seduce Adrien Brody's character, then changes gender, rapes, and possibly impregnates Polley's. No. What's worse is that this creature has a stinger on its tail, can breathe underwater, and has wings. It's like the velociraptors from Jurassic Park decided to upgrade. If I ever see this creature in the woods and it sees me, I'm taking a cyanide pill. I'm not getting out any other way.

4. Simon from Session 9: I guess Simon can't be classified as a ghost, but I still consider this....dude as a haunting entity. Session 9 is about a group of abestos removers who have a closed down mental hospital as a new job and, well, things get weird. One of the guys finds recorded sessions of a girl with split personalities who killed her family on Christmas. He manages to talk to the other personalities and asks them all about a Simon, who none of them want to talk about or wake up. Already, Tartarus no. Back with the other guys, people are going missing, power's going out, and creepy stuff's happening. Eventually, the doctor finally meets Simon in the tapes, and that's when shit got real for me.
Simon is a boss. His voice is sinister, and he somehow manages to convince people to lash out in rage and pain and kill people. No. I'm not okay with any of that. The last thing I'd want is for this deep-voiced manipulator in my head, telling me what to do and who to do it to. He scares the hell out of me, mostly because I don't know who he's chilling in right now and how close they are to me.

3. Bongcheon-Dong Ghost: My cousin showed this creepy Korean comic to me a few months ago and my first thought was 'What is it with Asians scaring everybody senseless?' My second thought was 'JESUS!!!!' I don't like this chick. I don't like her story, how she walks, how her voice sounds, or how her face looks. She's the runner-up for how someone should look when they're haunted, and self-haunted at that. I'm still mad at my cousin.
The story of this woman goes as such: she cheated on her husband and in the divorce, lost custody of her young daughter. She couldn't handle that, so she committed suicide via jumping off her apartment and now walks around the complex, looking a hot, broken mess and harassing people for the whereabouts of her child. This comic documents one particular instance where she accosts a girl on her way home and attacks her when the girl points her in the wrong direction. If I see anyone walking funky in the middle of the night, I'm running into the next building, and I don't care what it is. By the way, that picture? That's the best you're getting from me.

These next two are a tie. Both have mangled my mind and soul beyond recognition that I can't properly rank them. The only thing I can do is give them both the number one spot and watch numerous Disney movies to purge my soul from their grip over my heart.

Saeki family from the Grudge: NO. The family from The Grudge series. Cursed. Murders. Suicide. Resulting hauntings and spread of terror from Japan to the U.S. I can't even......This movie messed me the hell up, and everyone friggin' knows it. And yeah, I know that's Sarah Michelle Geller, but that's the only picture anyone's getting from me.
I feel like I don't have to explain the plot of the movie. Kayako Saeki fell in love with her son's teacher and her husband discovers her love diary, making him snap and kill her and their young son; he either killed himself or was killed by Kayako's curse. This cursed family started out just killing who set foot into their house, but then Sarah Michelle Geller accidentally released them into the open. Now they're in America, snapping necks and scaring people half to death. When they're not haunting my nightmares, that is.

And......

Toby and Katie from Paranormal Activity: The two biggest stars from one of the most profitable horror movie franchises. In the four-part (so far) series, Katie and her younger sister Kristi have been haunted by a demon since their childhood years until adulthood, as revealed by found footage documenting odd happenings throughout the years, as filmed by their stepfather, Katie's boyfriend Micah, and Kristi's husband and stepdaughter. Pretty much what ends up happening is Toby (the demon messing with them) possesses Katie and sends her on a murderous rampage before kidnapping her nephew, Hunter, a.k.a. the firstborn son he was promised by their ancestors. I haven't seen the fourth one yet (nor will I), so I don't know how that one turned out, but the last three pretty much said it all for me.
I don't like the idea of not seeing what's messing with me. I also don't like the idea of DEMONS pulling me out of bed, dragging me down the hallway, and giving off the impression that it's infatuated with me. No. Hell no. All of these movies have moments where I burst into tears and reach for the person next to me. If you can handle it, awesome and I wish I had your gift, but the tag-team of Toby and Katie suplexed my peace of mind and ruined bedtime for me.

That was my Top 5 and hopefully YOU aren't haunted by your own Top 5 this Halloween. Happy Halloween, and much candy to you all!

Top 5 Glee Mashups

I used to be a Gleek, I'll admit it. I stopped watching the show season 4 because it's just falling apart for me, but I'll still listen to the music. Sometimes Ryan Murphy's cash cow makes some really good covers and mashups. Some mashups were absolute genius while others left much to be desired. So I compiled a Top 5 of my favorite mashups from this increasingly less-musical show.

Honorable Mention: Stop! In the Name of Love/Free Your Mind (Season 2): I love, love, LOVE this mashup from season 2, and it led me to En Vogue's "Free Your Mind". Honestly, when those boys get to rocking, they get it right.

5. Unpretty/Pretty (Season 2): I'm not a Rachel Berry fan at all, but I will give her credit for this duet with my Glee-crush Quinn Fabray. Quinn's voice is more delicate, like the tinkling of bells, and Rachel's definitely has more power, so it was a pretty combination on this sad, vulnerable mashup of TLC's "Unpretty" and the popular West Side Story song "I Feel Pretty", which seemed to really expose the insecure turmoil of high school girls, especially for these two. This is probably the one time where I'd say Glee hit the nail right on the head when relating to high school experiences in this "Born This Way" episode.

4. It's My Life/Confessions (Season 1): This mashup of Bon Jovi's "It's My Life" and Usher's ever-popular "Confessions Part II" was fun and perfect for the boy population of the New Directions. My only problem was that it isn't longer! Finn sounded good, and Artie (played by former boybander Kevin McHale) was the right choice for the Usher parts. This song would be perfect with some explosive choreography in the rain. Yes, I went there.

3. Start Me Up/Livin' on a Prayer (Season 2): Glee seems to love pairing Bon Jovi up with everyone they can, seen here with their "Livin' on a Prayer" and the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up". In this episode, the New Directions we having their annual in-club mashup competition, girls vs. boys, and each team had to do songs normally performed by the opposite gender. The boys did the aforementioned "Stop! In the Name of Love/Free Your Mind" number at the end, but the girls threw down the gauntlet with this number. The performance was hot and the vocals were powerful with Mercedes and Rachel on lead vocals. It was hands-down one of the best, and under appreciated, numbers of the season. Those girls were just sexy. Get it, ladies, get it.

2. Thriller/Heads Will Roll (Season 2): THIS was the end all, be all performance in Glee history, and should be the only thing to take into real life from the show. Homecoming half-time shows should take note of this number! The New Directions teamed up with the football team to perform a killer mashup of Michael Jackson's larger than life hit "Thriller" and "Heads Will Roll" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs during their halftime show of their championship game. It's entertaining AND it's catchy. This is an adrenaline pumping song that made me want to put on a helmet and play some damn football after it was over.

1. Rumor Has It/Someone Like You (Season 3): This song did a lot of things for me personally. First, it made me like Santana. Second, it made me like Adele's "Someone Like You". Third, it made me want to ride Ryan Murphy's ass about why Rachel was the star and not the surprisingly vulnerable and talented Santana. Santana was the absolute shining gem of this Adele mashup, both vocally and acting-wise. It was hauntingly beautiful and it showed Santana in an entirely different light. I wanted more from her, both as a vocalist and a character, and the number itself was just fantastically arranged. Well done, Glee, well DONE.