Days of Future Passed Part 4 - Adventures in Vomit

Halfway through the first semester of college and my buddy Steve was well on his way to flunking out. He’d pretty much stopped going to classes, and was spending most days hanging around the dorm smoking dope and listening to Jethro Tull albums with a group of guys who were also on their way to flunking out. Steve wasn’t cut out for college. He really missed his girlfriend Wanda back home. I met her once when she came up for a visit and she was nice and really really hot. One night I could hear Steve talking to her on the pay phone in the hall, and it was clear things were not going well. After a few minutes of yelling, I heard the phone slam and Steve barged into my room, his face bright red.

“Dude, ya got any money?”

As luck would have it, a letter had come from my mom that morning and in it was a crisp $20 bill, which, back then, a guy could live on for a couple weeks.

“Yeah, I’m like loaded man, gotta twenty, what cha need?”

Steve needed to go home and talk to his girlfriend because she was “flakin’ out”, so on Friday after my classes we got on a Greyhound bus and about two hours later we were in beautiful Newport News, Va.


It was a town populated largely by shipyard wielders and active military. Steve’s dad met us at the bus station and, for a dad, he was a pretty cool guy. He was a civilian but worked at Fort Eustis, and he told a very funny joke about Eustis being an acronym for Even Uncle Sam Thinks It Sucks.



We drove directly to Menchville High, where Steve’s younger brother was playing in a basketball game. Steve tried to call Wanda from a payphone in the lobby, but got no answer. Thinking she might be at the game, we wandered through the deafening gymnasium as Steve looked around, under and over the massive crowd hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

Eventually, we found our way back to Steve’s family just as the game was starting. I met Steve’s mom, who had driven his brother to the gym earlier that evening. She was very nice, but you could tell she felt that Newport News and its lousy basketball games were very much beneath her.

Menchville's opponent had apparently never played basketball before and after just a few minutes the home team had a big lead, and it was clear the rest of the game would just be a formality. Steve asked his mom for her car keys, saying we were starving and he had promised to take me to Dino’s, a local pizza joint he was always raving about. She complied, and handed over the keys, plus a crisp twenty of her own. Between us we now had almost 40 bucks and VW full of gas…the world was ours for the taking.

Steve tried to call Wanda again, and this time her mom answered and told Steve that Wanda had gone to Nags Head for the weekend with some of her friends, and would probably not be back until Sunday night. No, she did not know the number where they were staying.

Steve almost had a moment of uncoolness when he slammed down the phone, but quickly composed himself and we did what young men in crisis usually do, we went and crammed pizza and beer down our necks.



Dino’s disc lived up to the boffo advance billing, its gleaming pepperonis swimming in a sea of garlic and gooey cheese, and we dined aggressively. Afterwards, we cruised Warwick Boulevard for awhile, rubbing our bloated bellies and belching as loudly and grossly as possible.

We passed a drive-in theatre, probably one of the last in Virginia, and its poorly lit roadside marquee proclaimed the current offering to be “Th Exerest”. Clearly there were issues with vandalism or spelling or possibly both, but Steve’s dark mood immediately brightened.

“Dude, have you ever seen that??”

I intimated that no I hadn’t seen it, but had heard a lot about it

“Oh man, ya just gotta!!”

Steve quickly executed a near perfect Bat Turn across 4 lanes of traffic and a moment later we were at the window of the crumbling ticket shack, where he gladly forked over the exorbitant Dollar-a-Car admission. As we slowly drove over the crunching gravel searching for the optimum parking space, the opening credits glared from the enormous bulkhead of a screen.


I knew a little about “The Exorcist”. It was some sort of monster movie, and I loved those. I told Steve about how I used to watch them early Saturday mornings out of Channel 5 in Raleigh. Frankenstein, Wolfman, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, all that stuff. Seen ‘em all. Old hat.

“You ain’t seen shit Dude” was his pithy response.

So there was cute, angelic little Regan and her movie star mom.



Regan starts acting strange, the docs take a look



Then, Holy Freakin Shit







The Exorcist was not just a monster movie. No, it was something much darker and much more terrifying than that. It was the embodiment of foulest evil, all the more hideous because it seemed so profoundly real. I knew nothing of the art of filmmaking back then, but as I consider it now after over 20 years experience in the business, what William Friedkin and his team achieved with this movie was extraordinary. Special effects then were basically limited to make-up tricks and piano wire, yet they made it work, They made your skin crawl and your pulse race and, in my case, bolt from the passenger seat of a VW and bump your head on the roof.

Considering the full arsenal of computer image manipulation available, would a filmmaker today be able to redo this film and make it even more disturbing and deeply horrifying? At the risk of sounding like an old coot: I doubt it. I doubt it very much. And to the rare credit of Hollywood, so far no one has tried. And I hope they never do.

We drove back to Steve’s in a stunned silence and he finally admitted that this was the third time he had seen it. I asked him was if it was as scary the third time around.

“No”, he said, “It’s scarier”

We slept late the next day. His mom plied us with waffles and eggs and we sat around for a while visiting with his folks. I had to admire Steve’s mastery of evasion. Every time the subject of school work came up, he dodged and weaved and deflected and changed the subject until none of us really knew what the hell we were talking about anymore. Steve then asked his Dad to take us to the bus station, because we both had to get back and “study”. You could tell Dad didn’t buy it for a second, but Mom seemed to be relieved so she dropped us off at the depot. As a goodbye, she slipped us our own individual twenty spots, and in sort order we were on the next Richmond-bound grimy Greyhound.

We got back in time to catch a ride to Charlottesville with Steve’s stoner buddies. It was Saturday night, which meant all the frat houses on Rugby Road would be in full oblivion party mode.


Those rich kids at UVA really knew how to have fun. The street was crammed with thousands of students, possessed not by demons but by the sweet insanity of youth. We were aimlessly milling about, dancing and flirting, as a dozen amateur rock bands attempted “Sweet Home Alabama.” And while there was some projectile vomiting, it was due to Purple Passion and keg beer, not the influence of Beelzebub.

Days of Future Passed Part 4 - Adventures in Vomit

Halfway through the first semester of college and my buddy Steve was well on his way to flunking out. He’d pretty much stopped going to classes, and was spending most days hanging around the dorm smoking dope and listening to Jethro Tull albums with a group of guys who were also on their way to flunking out. Steve wasn’t cut out for college. He really missed his girlfriend Wanda back home. I met her once when she came up for a visit and she was nice and really really hot. One night I could hear Steve talking to her on the pay phone in the hall, and it was clear things were not going well. After a few minutes of yelling, I heard the phone slam and Steve barged into my room, his face bright red.

“Dude, ya got any money?”

As luck would have it, a letter had come from my mom that morning and in it was a crisp $20 bill, which, back then, a guy could live on for a couple weeks.

“Yeah, I’m like loaded man, gotta twenty, what cha need?”

Steve needed to go home and talk to his girlfriend because she was “flakin’ out”, so on Friday after my classes we got on a Greyhound bus and about two hours later we were in beautiful Newport News, Va.


It was a town populated largely by shipyard wielders and active military. Steve’s dad met us at the bus station and, for a dad, he was a pretty cool guy. He was a civilian but worked at Fort Eustis, and he told a very funny joke about Eustis being an acronym for Even Uncle Sam Thinks It Sucks.



We drove directly to Menchville High, where Steve’s younger brother was playing in a basketball game. Steve tried to call Wanda from a payphone in the lobby, but got no answer. Thinking she might be at the game, we wandered through the deafening gymnasium as Steve looked around, under and over the massive crowd hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

Eventually, we found our way back to Steve’s family just as the game was starting. I met Steve’s mom, who had driven his brother to the gym earlier that evening. She was very nice, but you could tell she felt that Newport News and its lousy basketball games were very much beneath her.

Menchville's opponent had apparently never played basketball before and after just a few minutes the home team had a big lead, and it was clear the rest of the game would just be a formality. Steve asked his mom for her car keys, saying we were starving and he had promised to take me to Dino’s, a local pizza joint he was always raving about. She complied, and handed over the keys, plus a crisp twenty of her own. Between us we now had almost 40 bucks and VW full of gas…the world was ours for the taking.

Steve tried to call Wanda again, and this time her mom answered and told Steve that Wanda had gone to Nags Head for the weekend with some of her friends, and would probably not be back until Sunday night. No, she did not know the number where they were staying.

Steve almost had a moment of uncoolness when he slammed down the phone, but quickly composed himself and we did what young men in crisis usually do, we went and crammed pizza and beer down our necks.



Dino’s disc lived up to the boffo advance billing, its gleaming pepperonis swimming in a sea of garlic and gooey cheese, and we dined aggressively. Afterwards, we cruised Warwick Boulevard for awhile, rubbing our bloated bellies and belching as loudly and grossly as possible.

We passed a drive-in theatre, probably one of the last in Virginia, and its poorly lit roadside marquee proclaimed the current offering to be “Th Exerest”. Clearly there were issues with vandalism or spelling or possibly both, but Steve’s dark mood immediately brightened.

“Dude, have you ever seen that??”

I intimated that no I hadn’t seen it, but had heard a lot about it

“Oh man, ya just gotta!!”

Steve quickly executed a near perfect Bat Turn across 4 lanes of traffic and a moment later we were at the window of the crumbling ticket shack, where he gladly forked over the exorbitant Dollar-a-Car admission. As we slowly drove over the crunching gravel searching for the optimum parking space, the opening credits glared from the enormous bulkhead of a screen.


I knew a little about “The Exorcist”. It was some sort of monster movie, and I loved those. I told Steve about how I used to watch them early Saturday mornings out of Channel 5 in Raleigh. Frankenstein, Wolfman, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, all that stuff. Seen ‘em all. Old hat.

“You ain’t seen shit Dude” was his pithy response.

So there was cute, angelic little Regan and her movie star mom.



Regan starts acting strange, the docs take a look



Then, Holy Freakin Shit







The Exorcist was not just a monster movie. No, it was something much darker and much more terrifying than that. It was the embodiment of foulest evil, all the more hideous because it seemed so profoundly real. I knew nothing of the art of filmmaking back then, but as I consider it now after over 20 years experience in the business, what William Friedkin and his team achieved with this movie was extraordinary. Special effects then were basically limited to make-up tricks and piano wire, yet they made it work, They made your skin crawl and your pulse race and, in my case, bolt from the passenger seat of a VW and bump your head on the roof.

Considering the full arsenal of computer image manipulation available, would a filmmaker today be able to redo this film and make it even more disturbing and deeply horrifying? At the risk of sounding like an old coot: I doubt it. I doubt it very much. And to the rare credit of Hollywood, so far no one has tried. And I hope they never do.

We drove back to Steve’s in a stunned silence and he finally admitted that this was the third time he had seen it. I asked him was if it was as scary the third time around.

“No”, he said, “It’s scarier”

We slept late the next day. His mom plied us with waffles and eggs and we sat around for a while visiting with his folks. I had to admire Steve’s mastery of evasion. Every time the subject of school work came up, he dodged and weaved and deflected and changed the subject until none of us really knew what the hell we were talking about anymore. Steve then asked his Dad to take us to the bus station, because we both had to get back and “study”. You could tell Dad didn’t buy it for a second, but Mom seemed to be relieved so she dropped us off at the depot. As a goodbye, she slipped us our own individual twenty spots, and in sort order we were on the next Richmond-bound grimy Greyhound.

We got back in time to catch a ride to Charlottesville with Steve’s stoner buddies. It was Saturday night, which meant all the frat houses on Rugby Road would be in full oblivion party mode.


Those rich kids at UVA really knew how to have fun. The street was crammed with thousands of students, possessed not by demons but by the sweet insanity of youth. We were aimlessly milling about, dancing and flirting, as a dozen amateur rock bands attempted “Sweet Home Alabama.” And while there was some projectile vomiting, it was due to Purple Passion and keg beer, not the influence of Beelzebub.

Days of Future Passed Part 3

Growing up, I had led a rather sheltered life. I had never traveled more than 200 miles from my home. The most exotic place I'd ever been was Myrtle Beach. To me, Roanoke was a city of electrifying splendor.

I was a farm boy. And after 18 years of cows, chickens, church suppers and weed pulling, I was finally off to college and a life of my own.

On a very humid day, I wandered into a movie theatre, hoping simply to escape the swampy Virginia heat for a couple hours. What I saw that afternoon changed my life:






How ya gonna keep'em down on the farm?

Days of Future Passed Part 3

Growing up, I had led a rather sheltered life. I had never traveled more than 200 miles from my home. The most exotic place I'd ever been was Myrtle Beach. To me, Roanoke was a city of electrifying splendor.

I was a farm boy. And after 18 years of cows, chickens, church suppers and weed pulling, I was finally off to college and a life of my own.

On a very humid day, I wandered into a movie theatre, hoping simply to escape the swampy Virginia heat for a couple hours. What I saw that afternoon changed my life:






How ya gonna keep'em down on the farm?

Days of Future Passed Part 2

For several years, I lived within walking distance of an old Dobie Gillis style neighborhood grocery store that some eccentric but enterprising soul had transformed into a movie theater. They tended to show second run Hollywood hits on weekends, but Monday through Thursday was devoted to a steady diet of Art House fare. This was before the days of Netflix, before the days of cable TV even, so if one wanted to see a movie one actually had to trim one’s ear hair, become somewhat presentable and go out in public.

It was in the friendly confines of that theatre that I saw my first foreign films, and therefore my first indication that not everywhere in the world was exactly like southern Virginia. People in foreign films didn’t care much about washing their cars, whether the Redskins would make the playoffs or understanding the book of Ephesians in minute detail. They didn’t go deer hunting, listen to car races on the radio (seriously, lots of folks did this) or worry about whether their yards needed mowing.

They did seem to enjoy themselves a lot. They sat down to sumptuous meals that consisted of something other than fried chicken and Pepsi. People ate slowly and talked and laughed and had witty conversations. They went on relaxing and enjoyable vacations. Most families I knew just went to Virginia Beach and ate bologna sandwiches and squabbled.

Characters in foreign films also knew how to be charming, romantic and elegant. Consequently, they had sex more often and with much less effort than my good ol’ boy friends who went out “bird-doggin” women every night. I wasn't sure what "bird-doggin" was, but I did know the women in our neighborhood, and they didn't seem the type that would be easy to bird-dog. Whatever that was.

The romantic aspect alone was enough to peak my interest in learning about European lifestyles, and I became something of a regular at that modest cinema palace. I saw such films as “Amarcord”, “Clair’s Knee”, “Belle Du Jour”, “Weekend”, and, of course, everyone’s naughty fave, the original “Emmanuelle”



The zeitgeist display in “Emmanuelle” was so alien to me that the film may as well have taken place on the planet Saturn. Here you had a group of white people living in a foreign country, Thailand in this case, who weren’t even missionaries! I had been taught that spreading the gospel and military service were the only acceptable reasons for overseas travel.

The women in this film spent their days lazing in the sun, playing tennis, skinny-dipping and having copious sex with strange men and each other. I was dumbfounded. When did they iron? Who shelled their peas? Did they forget about Wednesday night choir practice?



In my mind, this movie defied rational explanation, and it shockingly laid to waste every preconception I had about how adult men and women should conduct themselves. I loved every frame of it.

But, despite it’s strengths, “Emmanuelle” does not get the award for Film Most Uninfluenced By Southern Baptist Thought.

No, that distinction belongs to another cinematic gem, and next time I will tell you all about it.

Days of Future Passed Part 2

For several years, I lived within walking distance of an old Dobie Gillis style neighborhood grocery store that some eccentric but enterprising soul had transformed into a movie theater. They tended to show second run Hollywood hits on weekends, but Monday through Thursday was devoted to a steady diet of Art House fare. This was before the days of Netflix, before the days of cable TV even, so if one wanted to see a movie one actually had to trim one’s ear hair, become somewhat presentable and go out in public.

It was in the friendly confines of that theatre that I saw my first foreign films, and therefore my first indication that not everywhere in the world was exactly like southern Virginia. People in foreign films didn’t care much about washing their cars, whether the Redskins would make the playoffs or understanding the book of Ephesians in minute detail. They didn’t go deer hunting, listen to car races on the radio (seriously, lots of folks did this) or worry about whether their yards needed mowing.

They did seem to enjoy themselves a lot. They sat down to sumptuous meals that consisted of something other than fried chicken and Pepsi. People ate slowly and talked and laughed and had witty conversations. They went on relaxing and enjoyable vacations. Most families I knew just went to Virginia Beach and ate bologna sandwiches and squabbled.

Characters in foreign films also knew how to be charming, romantic and elegant. Consequently, they had sex more often and with much less effort than my good ol’ boy friends who went out “bird-doggin” women every night. I wasn't sure what "bird-doggin" was, but I did know the women in our neighborhood, and they didn't seem the type that would be easy to bird-dog. Whatever that was.

The romantic aspect alone was enough to peak my interest in learning about European lifestyles, and I became something of a regular at that modest cinema palace. I saw such films as “Amarcord”, “Clair’s Knee”, “Belle Du Jour”, “Weekend”, and, of course, everyone’s naughty fave, the original “Emmanuelle”



The zeitgeist display in “Emmanuelle” was so alien to me that the film may as well have taken place on the planet Saturn. Here you had a group of white people living in a foreign country, Thailand in this case, who weren’t even missionaries! I had been taught that spreading the gospel and military service were the only acceptable reasons for overseas travel.

The women in this film spent their days lazing in the sun, playing tennis, skinny-dipping and having copious sex with strange men and each other. I was dumbfounded. When did they iron? Who shelled their peas? Did they forget about Wednesday night choir practice?



In my mind, this movie defied rational explanation, and it shockingly laid to waste every preconception I had about how adult men and women should conduct themselves. I loved every frame of it.

But, despite it’s strengths, “Emmanuelle” does not get the award for Film Most Uninfluenced By Southern Baptist Thought.

No, that distinction belongs to another cinematic gem, and next time I will tell you all about it.