First off, for the three of you out there who actually give two s***s, I want to apologize for my extended absence. If someone ever asks you to marry them, my advice to you is one word: elope. Seeing as I didn’t do that, the Den of Sin had to take a little hiatus. But, now that everything is over and under control the Den of Sin is once again in full swing, tormenting our friends with wonderful cinema detritus from all over the world.
However, before I get into all that, there is one night in particular that I have been dying to write about. Although it was some time ago, it was one of the better Den of Sin nights to happen during that hectic period and one that I’ve really wanted to share with the rest of you. When we first started doing Den of Sin nights, I was still very much into playing super-hostess, and the idea of having an event style party really appealed to me (okay, I guess I see why I didn’t elope). Something that would be more than just movie night, but still hold true to what the Den of Sin was all about. So it was decided that we should have a Christmas party and I would try to unearth the best, craziest bits of Christmas crap available on video and DVD. Lord knows there are lots of options.
That first year wasn’t quiet the success I had hoped it would be as the video which I had planned on basing the evening around had not been returned to the video store on time by its previous renter. Had we known in advance we could have made other arrangements, but we had put all of our eggs in one basket, gambled, and lost. My boyfriend I’m sure was secretly happy as he was quite fearful of my selection, but we pulled through, played a good round of Cheap-A*s Secret Santa and everyone left happy.
Last year however, I had a hook-up. The piece de resistance was in my hot little hands and this was going to be the best Xmassacre yet. Yes, you know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about “The Star Wars Holiday Special”. For those of you not familiar with the special, I suggest you read Phil Hall’s excellent Bootleg Files article on it right away. However, like even Mr. Hall admits, it cannot even bring you close to the experience of actually sitting all the way through it.
Being that this was a bigger, better Xmassacre (as all sequels should be), there was even more munchy goodness, including mulled wine, so you can understand if I was a little disappointed that only 10 people had shown up to start with. Sure they’d all brought something for Cheap-A*s Secret Santa (just like regular Secret Santa except you deliberately spend as little as possible for comedic effect). There were some stellar wrapping jobs, including a plastic Sears bag covered in glitter stickers, a green garbage bag with a bow on it and my boyfriend’s very special wrapping job involving some old bills and a Nutrigrain bar wrapper.
To start with I decided to put on the “Barrier Kult” skate video that a friend of mine had passed me. This is the next level of skating. Not that I know anything about skateboarding, but anything that can combine Black Metal, Satanic movies and sk8ting is okay in my books. The Barrier Kult, from what I have learned, is a very mysterious organization of masked or hooded skaters who only skate concrete barriers. For extra disorientation I decided to leave the Xmas music on over the audio, which seemed to really disturb some people. My sister was rather upset at the lack of “Evilspeak” clips and I gave up explaining to people why the members of the Ba.Ku. only skate barriers, but most people got into it and I may have even managed to convert our friend Tim who expressed doubts about his chosen Xtreme Sport (mountain biking, if you must know). Trevor on the other hand, said the film merely gave him the desire to wear a ski mask.
Next up was the “Invader Zim” Christmas special, which includes the best Christmas sing-a-long ever. We had 12 people when it started, but once we got to “boots of doom!!” we had a good 16 – 18 people shoved into our little apartment. After that we watched the similarly themed episode of “Futurama”, but since no one new showed up during this time, we decided to really get the party started.
The fun started right during the montage at the opening where they show you clips of all the exciting things you are about to see. And Bea Arthur.
Tim: “Is that Harrison Ford?”
Me: “Yes.”
Tim: “Jesus.”
Xmas in summer continues in part two of ENTER THE DEN OF SIN: XMASSACRE>>>
