Frank Thompson, �Tim Burton�s Nightmare Before Christmas�
Well, all right! I�ve finished with the old reviews, and everything is in order! No more repeats! No more reruns! Now you get to see how long it actually takes for me to update!
A while back I walked into Hot Topic, the one-stop shopping center for all your sullen early teen subculture needs. I managed to avoid the store like the plague since I first came across it in my sullen early teen subculture days. It was too unsettling to see a T-shirt with an anarchy symbol selling for 14 dollars. Worse was seeing that people actually purchased said anarchy T-shirts. Lately though, it�s been harder to find hair dye with ridiculous colors at any other place, showing that punk is finally dead again. Hooray.
So recently I�ve braved the store, running in and purchasing said funny color hair dye before I could get carded and told that I was simply too old to shop there. But like I said, I was in the mall, looking around and killing time.
What struck me as weird was the Nightmare Before Christmas aisle. Did I say aisle? I meant aisles. Five of them to be exact, with more stuff than you could ever hope to imagine, all featuring the likeness of Jack Skellington and company. Previously, I had only seen people with T-shirts, stickers or patches. As it turns out, you can furnish an entire house with Tim Burton memorabilia. Shower Curtains. Action figures. Marionettes. Tennis shoes. Pajamas. Candles. Sally sewing kits. Zero night lights. The Evil Scientist�s home pregnancy tests.
Look, I knew the film held special place in the hearts of many, even in the hearts of those born after the film had the original release. And I know all about obsessive collecting � all you have to do is look atop of my computer desk to see all the Daredevil crap I�ve obtained. But I had no idea the marketing had gone this far.
I know how the collector mind works. Hell, I have way too many books sitting on my shelves, books I don�t even like but kept out of a point of pride because I finished them. But there�s no way I�m going to pay the outrageous shipping fees to transfer books that I hated in the first place over to the Hawaiian islands, so it�s time to break the collector habit. And this book fits under the collector habit. Sure, there are neat stories and great pictures and drawings, but... well... I have enough stuff to try and bring with me. Let me give an example.
I got a couple of pictures taken of my bedroom. Hello, stalkers! Here are two out of the eight bookcases I have.
I would apologize for not flipping the picture upright except for one thing � that�s actually how I�ve set up my room. I like the eclectic look. It fits with my big fluffy chair that likes to hug me when I sit down and the television that only shows a guy with a turban constantly saying �Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney-ho.� At first I thought he was doing some sort of cheap Cab Calloway imitation, but that�s really all he says. Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney-ho. Every day with the Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney-ho. If he doesn�t knock it off, I�m gonna turn him in to homeland security.
Just to make it easier on your eyes, I�ll flip the picture now that I�ve gone through my shelves. I knew I needed to get rid of books, so I started with the books that I hated, or at the very least knew that I would never open again.
Try harder, Dean. Try much, much harder.
Not to be a shill, but one of the things I�ll have to bring to Hawaii are the boxes upon boxes containing my book and my records, so I�m gonna try to pawn them off on you one more time. The book is worth the price, which is still much cheaper than a standard tome, and I can vouch for the absorbency as the only thing my roommates have used it for is to clean up spills. And while I know that nobody has a record player anymore, these records would make very quirky coaster set, featuring light blue vinyl for the IB records, and standard black for the PTL records, and we all know black goes with anything. C�mon. You�re not going anywhere, are you?
