Weekend Gone Good

-- Wherein the Intrepid Dukes Delivered



'They' is a movie I'm willing to bet no one on the planet owns, whether on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, film-strip, or otherwise. It lives on however via Netflix where this last weekend its 2.1 stars were sufficiently convincing to get a group of 22 assorted individuals to agree to watch it. I was one of these individuals and I, like everyone else, wasn't wowed. When the highlight of a movie is Zach's spectacular mocking commentary, it's hard to be.11.Which reminds me, if Siskel hasn't found a new running mate yet, someone tell him Zron is the next best thing.
I bring it up because it was the closest thing to a downer on an otherwise perfect weekend.2                                                                                                                                                       2. Though the viewing was consensual, you'll forgive the fact that we nevertheless felt as though some crime had been committed against us.

The man Ricky was the party responsible for the party. A fine gentleman with an affinity for spending weekends in haunted locations, Ricky deserves the credit for bringing singles, marrieds and others to a place called the School House Inn in Lund, Idaho. Its main draw is its proximity to Lava Hot Springs, but the school has ghosts so that's fun too. I'm guessing the haunting is a result of students being locked in the just-like-it-sounds stairwell-to-nowhere? I hope that's the case anyway, as nothing else I could come up with seems even remotely as creepy.

Personally the closest I came to being haunted was when the double-doors next to our room -- nicknamed the Murder Room if you were curious -- decided to open of their own accord. That and the time vigilante-Coombsy choked me out during Murder in the Dark. So all in all I consider myself a recipient of good fortune as far as the ghoul front is concerned. Then, it was November.

Basketball played two ways -- water and normal --  reinforced how far a fall from grace my shooting stroke has experienced. It's hard to remember when I was a kid and could use the uglier-than-ugly cross-bow technique to go around the world in minimal attempts. Now a days it's hook shot or bust, and that shot is sadly more bust than boom. Didn't matter though -- playing ball was still the funnest part of the funnest weekend I've had in some time. (For the record my Mario Wii skills aren't worth writing a blog home about either.)

I'd been waiting a good year or more to hit up a hot tub of any kind so the lava springs were just what the Duke ordered. There was one oddity: for some reason there's a phone booth with no phone at the hot springs and a bandanna-ed, terrorist-look-a-like was sitting in it with a gallon of a green-orange liquid. Was it a bomb base? Windshield wiper fluid? I haven't the foggiest. I wanted to tell him I was hip to the terror scene, that I was in the know having done a presentation on the industry once, but I don't speak (insert racist guess at a stereotypical Middle Eastern language). Even without making contact we survived so no complaints here.

In fact, no complaints there either, where 'there' equals every other part of the weekend -- with one exception. Admittedly contrary to what I wrote just two paragraphs ago I realize I probably would've enjoyed a haunting and the petrification that comes with it: shivering spine, flickering lights, independent shadows. I mean, it's been a while since the Paranormal viewing of Fall 2010. 

Bummed though I may be, there's still a chance post-visit thanks to the carmelita pan we brought home carrying something we didn't know about: a knife from the School House Inn; a knife that may have been used to cut apples during lunch time or younglings' throats during disobedient time. Whether a relic of days gone by or students gone bye-bye, I have in my possession an item that does not belong to me. And while I don't know if any ghosts care about the cutlery or have the gas money to make the 2-hour trip to come haunt me for it, I'm sure Ricky will. Those school house owners were prettttttty intense about the deposit.