WHEN:8:00 am EST on February 23rd, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on a Teletraan 1

COMPANY: None

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: I am still sick, and woke up early.

THOUGHTS:

This week I was still feeling slightly like a little kid. This translated to me missing my old Saturday morning cartoons. I loved my Saturday morning cartoons. The Adventures of Sam and Max: Freelance Police, Spider-Man: The Animated Series, The Tick, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot, X-Men, Extreme Ghostbusters, and, of course, The Real Ghostbusters, to name a few of my favorites. Yes, I did like Extreme Ghostbusters, and I will eventually get into that later this year.

Can’t wait.

Watching the movie is still fun and I have not gotten tired of it yet. Not like Truman. I now realize that Truman is much like Newman from Seinfeld. So, if nothing, I can almost make a reference to that show. I have not noticed that I have been thinking about Ghostbusters until I saw the Super Bowl… and then saw this.

Gozer lives.

WHEN:6:40pm EST on February 16th, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on a Teletraan 1

COMPANY: None

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: I am sick, so I have taken a night-time cough and sleep aid.

REACTIONS OF NOTE:

I was laughing throughout the movie, too many times to mention. I have decided to skip over this section this week. If I did not, there would be a list that would have more than sixty bullet points.

THOUGHTS:

I just want to start this off by saying that I do not recommend, condone, or suggest that anyone take any sort of medicine without needing to or without the recommendation from a physician. Abuse of medication, of any kind, is not a joking matter. Please talk to your doctor before taking any medication that you are unsure of, or if you have any questions. That being said, Ghostbusters is awesome on a night-time cold and sleep medicine. (This was my one-time personal experience and is not typical of any night-time cough and sleep medication.)

I have been sick for a couple days and have not been able to sleep well. As such, I have turned to a night-time cough and sleep aid for help. The only problem with this was that I had yet to watch Ghostbusters this week. Realizing this, I manned up, poured a cup of tea, and tried to get through the next 107 minutes.

I won’t do what you tell me.

WHEN:8:00pm EST on February 9th, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on a Phillips Tube TV

COMPANY: The whole of my immediate family

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: Relaxed. I am drinking a Coke imported from Mexico, because it was in a glass bottle.

REACTIONS OF NOTE:

• This was the first movie in a long time that I have watched with my mother where I was not asked what was going on or what was going to happen… often.
• My sister and mother were not sure if the courtroom scene was in this movie.
• It is kind of weird to watch a movie that other people have seen almost as many times as I have.
• It is also weird to watch a movie that other people can quote.

THOUGHTS:

The other day I was thinking about how awesome and diverse all of the ghosts that appear in The Real Ghostbusters are. A lot of them are creepy, yet still pretty damn interesting to look at. I decided that this week I was going to see of I could draw any parallels between the cartoon and the movie that inspired it. The only problem was that I didn’t really see any ghosts in Ghostbusters. You would think that a movie called Ghostbusters would be overflowing with ghosts, but it isn’t.

There are a total of four ghosts in the whole movie. The Librarian ghost, Slimer, the ghost that pops out of the subway, and the taxi cab zombie ghost. That’s it. There is one ghost that is in the movie that isn’t even real. Ray has a dream about an oral encounter with a ghost, but that was a dream and doesn’t count. Ray’s dream ghost is also the most human-looking ghost. They librarian ghost was human-looking, until he turned into a British person.

Poor dental hygiene.

WHEN:8:00pm EST on February 2nd, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on Tobor, I am using headphones to better listen to the audio.

COMPANY: None.

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: Relaxed, I am drinking a Coke imported from Mexico, because it was in a glass bottle.

REACTIONS OF NOTE:

• Ghostbusters has some great sound clips.

THOUGHTS:

The headphones did not really do anything for me. I think sound technology improved vastly between Ghostbusters (1984) and The Truman Show (1998). Lets be honest, a hell of a lot changes in fourteen years. The sound designers for Truman could add more little touches in the background. They had fancy computers to work with, after all. Don’t forget that Ghostbusters was released two years after Tron was denied any Oscar recognition because “computers were cheating” if you use them to enhance your visual effects.

Cheating, cheating computers.

Thinking about it, Ghostbusters has some big sounds in it. The sound of the beams coming from the proton packs, the traps, and the sounds of Ernie Hudson do not need birds chirping in the background to support them. They stand on their own, and are big dominating sounds. Also, the majority of the movie takes place inside a building of some sort. Street noise would be blocked to some extent, and if you had birds in your building, you would be that bird lady from Home Alone 2.

Susan Boyle has seen better days.

SO FAR…

So the first month is over. I have gone through four viewings in January and I have to say: I feel great. I do not have any of that slow Truman feeling. You will have to excuse the references to last year’s experiment, but I have nothing else to compare this to. The Truman Show could end up as my “red-headed stepchild” of movies. So far Ghostbusters is kicking Truman‘s ass in the “having any sort of effect on my life” department. I really did not think that I would possibly have much to talk about in regards to being mentally affected since I have lived my whole life with this movie as an influence.

I did this experiment last year where I was trying to induce a Truman dream. I listened to music from the movie over and over again as I slept. I didn’t really get anything Truman-related. This year however, and without even trying, I have had a Ghostbusters-influenced dream. I was working on something mechanical, took out a cigarette, and started smoking. The only reason I did this in the dream was to emulate Ray when he is working on Ecto-1. That is it. I dream smoked because Ray looked cool doing it. The Truth people are right. After 26 years of watching Ghostbusters it made me want to smoke… in my dream.

WHEN: 9:15 pm EST on January the 26th, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on Teletraan 1

COMPANY: None

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: This week I have just survived the worst fucking road trip of my life. I am still exhausted from it.

REACTIONS OF NOTE:

• I really needed this.
• I just find it fucking awesome.
• I will admit that I am a giant fan (but not a fanboy) of this movie.
• I needed this.

THOUGHTS:

So this is a story all about how I had a horrible trip driving from Maine to North Carolina for a wedding. In West Philadelphia I hit a surprisingly light bit of traffic, though. So that part was not too bad. First off, though, the back story that goes with all of this: My Lady had a wedding to go to in North Carolina and was returning from the west coast so that she could attend. I had the brilliant idea, since I was her plus one, that I would pick her up from Cape Cod and we would have a merry little drive down together. I was so very, very wrong.

Things started to go bad when I got us turned around in New York. I don’t care to drive through the city proper and was trying to get us across the Tappan Zee Bridge. I have driven to Tennessee and know that this is the smoothest way to transition through New York, and you can’t avoid driving through New York. Canada is not an option. The only problem with that strategy was that I ended up getting us lost. Not very lost, just turned around… for about half an hour. It is okay though, we had plenty of time to get from Cape Cod to North Carolina. We had left at five in the morning. I then proceeded to get us lost in New Jersey when I set the GPS to the “avoid tolls” option. That was a great hour of driving through residential neighborhoods. Ugh.

WHEN: 1:20 pm EST on January the 17th, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on Tobor (my computer)

COMPANY: My Lady Via Skype, though she can’t see the movie.

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: I am refreshed from my breakfast. I am still drinking Earl Grey, hot.

REACTIONS OF NOTE:

• I have always wanted to know how they did the card-catalog-flying-out special effect.
• I laughed at the “I can tell you what the effect is” line.
• Ray gets one of his ears pulled by Venkman in the library, in the second Ghostbusters Venkman pulls on both of his ears in Ray’s book shop.
• I have always wanted to karate chop something out of someone’s hands and yell, “Stop that!”
• I have always wanted to know what Peter and Ray are drinking. I think it is Hot Damn.

THOUGHTS:

I was reminded of something this week. I used to work at a summer camp. Well, it was more like a day camp but we called it a summer camp. In the afternoon we normally went to a public pool and let the kids go nuts. If it was raining, though, the pool would not open and we would find a movie to watch instead. The only bad thing about this was the fact that we were limited to movies rated below PG-13. Now, I do not know how many PG or G movies any of you have watched lately. Most of them suck near as much as Battlefield Earth and feature a talking animal of some sort. By the way, if you want an easy test to see if someone is mentally competent to take care of themselves, have them watch Marmaduke. If they enjoy it, commit them.

Marmaduke: not even once.

I wanted to force the kids to sit through something from my childhood. This was mostly to avoid suicidal thoughts, but also to show these kids what a real childhood is. I was elated when I discovered that Ghostbusters actually fits the PG guidelines that we were required to stick to. Little did I know that this means nothing. Ghostbusters came out in ’84, which was when the rating system used by the MPAA was going through a change. Temple of Doom was a PG movie, and apparently that pissed off some parents enough for the MPAA to restructure the rating system. It happened again in ’86 and then again in ’90. It has not changed since; fun bit of trivia.

On the next rainy day, I brought in Ghostbusters and we watched it. All I have to say about kids today is that programing like The Wiggles and The Fresh Beat Band must have pussified them. Most of the kids were scared of Slimer. Motherfucking Slimer! The character that the shitty run of The Real Ghostbusters was based around (more on that later). I did also have a kid say that this movie might be the type of movie he was not allowed to see. That was right before Dr. Stantz has a dream… yeah.

The thing I was forced to admit to my to myself was that this movie was a very sexual movie, if not totally about sex. This might explain a bit about me and my view of sexuality. I will have to admit that there is a lot of sex in the movie.

WHEN: 9:00 PM EST on January the 11th, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on Teletraan 1

COMPANY: None

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STATE: I am a little tired, I think I had a touch of the flu. I could not even keep down water last night and feel like the floor of a taxi cab. (That is an Egon line.)

REACTIONS OF NOTE:

Honestly, I do not know if this section will be getting much use this year. I am not surprised by this movie at all, really. I have watched it too many times, and every time I find myself trying to look for things in the background I tell myself that this is not what we do to Ghostbusters, and that it is too early in the year for this.

• John is definitely the Egon of our group.
• Becca is Winston. Only because she has just shown up and no one really knows her that well yet.
• I love this movie. Even though I feel like crap, this is the movie equivalent of chicken soup and a comfy blanket.
• Winston does not get the last line of the movie. “I love this town!” is the last line before the credits, but Lewis Tully is the only character to get audible lines when the end credits start rolling.

WHEN : 5:28 PM EST on January the 5th, 2013

WHERE: Number 1

FORMAT: DVD on Teletraan 1

PRE-VIEWING:

Ghostbusters is a movie that I have watched well over one hundred times. As a result, I think that I will deviate slightly on the format for summing up my feelings for it on this first viewing. Before I had popped the disk in, I was feeling slightly off. I felt like Ghostbusters is not the movie I should be watching, I should be watching the boring movie. The one that has Ed Harris coming along three-fourths of the way through to tell me that there is actually good acting in here and that it will all be over soon. After getting over not watching Truman,  I remembered all of the good times I have had with Ghostbusters. I know the last time I had watched it was the last week of August. It was the first movie that My Lady and I had sat down and watched together as a couple.

I also noticed that I have a Stay-Puft key chain, four Ghostbuster shirts, a Ghostbuster costume, inflatable Proton Pack, a hard plastic Proton Pack from when I was little, a mini replica poster with the original tag line “They’re here to save the world,” the firehouse play-set, the Ecto-1 car that goes with it, Janine’s toy VW bug that half turns into a praying mantis, the first season of The Real Ghostbusters, and two Hot Wheels Ecto-1 cars. One of those Hot Wheels is a USB drive. I have a lot of Ghostbuster shit.

I pull it all off, though.