It seems like no matter how old you are, at the end of August, you always get that itchy feeling that it’s time to go back to school. At least that’s how I feel. And I don’t mean going to college, I’m talking old school – grammar to middle school. And it doesn’t help when they keep playing these commercials to remind you to stock up on school supplies for your kids. The worst offender by far is K-Mart. Their ads are so annoying. And they play them like 50 gajillion times a day, 2 to 3 times during a commercial break. This gets very tedious, especially when you’re watching your soap (which I admit is rather annoying itself, but we are dedicated) and 90210 episodes. The ads feature these awkward pre-teens whisper-shouting to borrow protractors and pencils in class and sporting the “latest” fashions and backpacks. The one that I really hated was when this strange looking boy with a bowl cut tells a goofy girl with braces that he “likes her jeans.” What?! First of all, her jeans are floods! Second of all, no 12 year old boy is going to tell a brace face “I like your jeans.” This is what K-Mart wants you to believe. But believe me, it’s so not happening. And I should know because I had braces when I was 12. And I wasn’t getting compliments from any boys, awkward or cute. Well, at least I didn’t wear floods. Rant over.

I noticed in Jane’s post about the horrendous fashion don’ts in Lost Boys that she forgot to mention our sighting of Max (head vamp by night/video store owner by…night) in our very own downtown Red Bank. We were sitting on a bench outside Restoration Hardware minding our own business when along comes “Max” and several other middle aged people. I said, “Hey, that guy looks like Edward Hermann from Lost Boys!” And he did, at least from the back. He was wearing an oversized, lightweight jacket with enormous shoulder pads in a light color, possibly oatmeal. The pants I don’t remember, but he was definitely wearing some kind of slip-on shoe without socks. Need I say more? I admit the colors of his ensemble were more muted than when he was in Lost Boys, but it is 2006.

Because we want Peep to take over the world, we sell some of our stuff to shops all OVAH.
So, check it out. We had a wholesale order for a bunch of scarves, and here they are, just finished.

Isn’t my bedspread cute?

We also print and cut our own hangtags, mostly because we really enjoy using the paper cutter.

And then we pack everything up all nice and snug and get it ready to be shined up and shipped out all over the world (or shipped out, at any rate).

Aren’t my new sneakers cute?

That’s the kind of super great package you’d get from us if you opened a wholesale account. Want one? Huh? Huh?

Love.

The Lost Boys. Is a terrible movie. It really really blows, and it’s kind of funny, because it’s considered by a lot of people to be really clever. But, it sucks. Which is why it’s no surprise that Sally and I own a copy.
And it’s not like it’s any surprise to anyone that the fashion would be really bad (it was the 80s, after all), but this is a different kind of bad fashion from other 80s movies. See, Molly Ringwald had this awful salmon-colored hospital smock thing over a brown skirt and boots on in The Breakfast Club. And of course, there was Bender’s fifteen layers, and that bandana he tied around his leg. But, that seems like something you would’ve walked into a classroom in 1985 and actually seen people wearing. And, you obviously can’t forget Andie’s just completely heinous prom dress in Pretty in Pink, but that was less about the fact that it was the 80s than it was about the fact that Andie clearly wasn’t a good fashion designer. If you check out the other prom dresses at that prom, with the poofy sleeves, and the miles and miles of emerald green satin, you’ll get a better idea of an 80s prom dress. I had a Barbie paper doll book that my mom got me in probably 1988 and it had Barbie and Ken getting ready for the prom. It was awesome. One of the dresses was like a mermaid costume, but it was a dress! And Ken had two tuxedos – a black one and a white one. And even then, I would not put him in a white tuxedo, because I knew it was cheesy. But, I loved the prom dresses. They were poofy and insane, but … it was 1988. Even when you’re six, you know what cool people wear. And cool people wore poofy prom dresses.
But, see, The Lost Boys wardrobe department was just a whole different kind of awful. And because I just know that there are people out there who are crying foul and angrily shaking their fists at me, all, “The Lost Boys is the best movie EVER and I’ve derived ALL of my fashion sense from Corey Haim!”, I’ve put together a list. Because We Like Lists (Inc.).

Now, there are a few exemptions. Michael and Sam’s mother, for example. I mean, she did wear a whole bunch of shapeless, floor-length sack dress type deals, but it wasn’t so over-the-top that it would be considered worse than the worst.
Also exempt is Michael. I mean, he pretty much wore a grey t-shirt and a pair of jeans (un-embellished, un-ripped, and only slightly unflattering in their totally taperedness) for the whole movie. Even passable by today’s standards. Of course, there were the constantly crooked and slightly feminine sunglasses:

(more…)

Wednesday night, we watched The Skulls, which is just beyond awesome. PLUS, we watched this little making-of feature where the director went on and on about how great he thought Josh Jackson did every day, but he kind of danced around Paul Walker’s performance in this way that a high school drama teacher would – he doesn’t want to lie, but he doesn’t want to hurt feelings. Because Paul Walker got a ton of pretty, but no brains to speak of.
Then last night, we watched the finale of I Wanna Be a SoapStar 3, which was so unbelievably disappointing that it actually makes me glad for once that we watch All My Children and not One Life to Live. And we watched Whistler, which … who cares if neither of us is even close to being a teenager? We want to know how Beck died!
But, then we got right back into awful movie that you can’t even watch twice mode tonight. Really, because this movie happened to be coming on when we came downstairs and neither of us wanted to have to pick out anything else. So, part three of my three-part all-written-at-the-same-time post…
#3. Friday night. The Devil’s Child
Was it a made-for-tv movie? A direct-to-video? No idea. And, admittedly, we missed the first ten minutes, so we’re a bit fuzzy on some parts. But, I don’t know if they necessarily would’ve been cleared up with the beginning of the movie. I’m willing to bet we would’ve been just as confused.
Anyway, Kim Delany was pushed off a roof or something when she was 12. And her mother (played by Grace Zabriskie, who’s better known to you as Susan’s mother on Seinfeld, AND the mean-spirited “you’re gonna have a heart attack if you use heavy cream” woman from The Glow) is sort of snuck up on by the devil, who looks JUST LIKE Greg from Dharma and Greg and is wearing a big hooded robe. And he makes a pact with her and he saves her daughter’s life.
Okay, now here’s where I’m confused. Because Grace Zabriskie totally looks like a hooker, down to the shiny, straight-haried, blunt-bang-ed, black wig. And I seem to remember her wearing vinyl. And I don’t know if she had anything to do with the girl being pushed (like, if she was out turning tricks when she could’ve been keeping this girl from hanging out on the roof of a building?), but when we came into the movie, she was in the church begging God to be merciful and not punish her daughter for her sins. But, the sin could just be making a pact with the devil. I don’t know.
Anyway, (the flashbacks, by the way, showed her falling, like, ten stories, and the only injury she got resulted in an inability to have kids – but I guess the devil could bring you back to life if you fell out of an airplane, huh?) Kim Delaney is now a successful(?) photographer who wears a lot of leather pants which, no matter how in shape Kim Delaney is, look AWFUL on her. Then again, it might just be the fact that this movie was made in 1997 and the look was still way-high-waisted.
Matthew Lillard (I know) is her assistant with facial hair that – Sally pegged it – looked totally fake. And he’s in love with her, with no problem admitting it. But, he’s, you know, Matthew Lillard and he’s goofy and kind of an idiot and she has no interest in him other than her friend/assistant. And I don’t know if this was supposed to be so in the movie, but there’s a ten-year age difference between them. So, I don’t know if M.Lillard was supposed to be older than he was, or Kim was supposed to be younger, or what. But, that doesn’t even matter.
Anyway, when we started watching, as I said, Kim’s mother was at the church. And she died. Probably from the devil! Kim’s all sad, but not really, because they didn’t really get along all that well, I guess, except that Kim was living on practically nothing because she was giving her mother a bunch of money to help her along. But, then inexplicably Kim’s mother turns out to have had hundreds of thousands of dollars, which she left half of to Kim and half of to the Catholic church. Kim’s dumbfounded for about twenty seconds, and then she’s kind of over it, but never once questions where all this money came from.
Then, she’s out and she runs into this guy who I guess had something to do with a magazine and finagled his way into a job that had been promised to her(?) and then a car turns itself on and rolls its way down the hill towards Kim and the guy, who are arguing in the middle of the street. The devil shows up without his robe and hood and pulls her to safety right before the car kills the guy she was fighting with. At the funeral, she finds out that the magazine wants her to have the job back.
Then, Kim’s friend, who wears these GIANT silky flowy outfits and is married to a much older man, tells her that there’s an opening in her building and convinces Kim to move in. It’s big and more than she thought she could ever afford. And she takes it. As she’s moving in, the devil arrives at her door (still in regular clothes) and acts totally creepy, but Kim’s all into him knowing way more about her than he should and just happening to live across the hall from her, so she wanders over there that night and knocks on the door. He pulls her inside and starts dancing with her to this loud terrible music – and he’s a hideous dancer with one move and he looks like he’s going to kill her, but she totally loves it.
He comes over the next night for an indoor picnic (lame). Matthew Lillard shows up and gets upset that there’s another guy there, he leaves and spends the whole night looking up the guy’s name for some background information on him. But, Alexander Rotha doesn’t exist. He should’ve googled “the devil.”
Back at the apartment, the devil and Kim sleep together and he tells her that he’s a visiting theology professor at the college. And then this dog that barked at the devil (’cause animals always smell evil) jumps through a window and kills himself. And Kim Delaney is interested for, like, a second, and then she goes back to taking her cheesy photos.
The next night, she goes to see the devil’s class and take pictures of him. And it’s awesome because it’s a big lecture hall and it’s a Wednesday night class, so everyone taking it is probably tired as hell and just wants to get dinner and go home, but they’re stuck there listening to this lecture, and then Kim shows up with her loud clicky camera and leans all into this girl’s space to take pictures of the devil. And the girl keeps turning around and giving her that “shut UP!” look.
Then Maya Rudolph (I KNOW!) answers a question that the devil asks the class about good vs. evil. And she’s speaking in this creepy, whispery, lispy voice, so I don’t know what that’s all about. And he starts off a conversation with her in the normal professory kind of way. Then he asks her if she thinks sex is evil, and everyone giggles, and Maya Rudolph seems uncomfortable, but she’s having fun, so she keeps answering his questions. Then he totally busts out with, “How about your affair with Professor Johnson last year? Was that evil? How ’bout the fact that he has kids and a wife? You still think you’re not evil?” And the whole class is stunned and Kim Delaney looks PISSED and Maya Rudolph gets all teary and then leaves the class.
So, now she doesn’t want to see the devil anymore. Meanwhile, Matthew Lillard meets Ivana Milicevic at a bar and she REALLY looks like a drag queen thanks to this horrible wig. They go back to his apartment and she rubs herself all over these creepy manequins he has there. Then the next day, Kim is all pissed because he didn’t show up for work, she goes looking for him, and finds him tied to his bed, DEAD! But, she saw Ivana Milicevic, who she says looked JUST LIKE the devil, like … Compare for yourselves: Ivana vs. Greg from Dharma and Greg. Come on, now. They could’ve gotten a less good looking woman to play the female version of the devil if they really wanted to get that point across.
Anyway, so, it’s another death, Kim’s being bombarded by phone calls from the devil, and she wants none of it. Then, she starts to feel sick and goes to the doctor, who tells her that, miraculously, she’s pregnant! It’s the devil’s, obviously, and as Kim has been slowly going back to her Catholic roots, she’s realizing that something totally weird is going on ever since this devil guy showed up. Plus, she knows that something was up with her mother and that the family priest KNOWS what it is. But, when she goes to the church to talk to him, he totally jumps through a stained glass window to kill himself. ‘Cause, you know, the devil’s spawn was approaching. So, now he’s gone. And Kim has finally realized that her mother’s big secret was that she made a pact with the devil to have a baby through Kim if her life was spared following her accident.
She has the baby, her loose-clothed friend helps her deliver it, and then she wakes up to find out that the friend had made a pact with the devil, too! What? This really came out of nowhere. Apparantly, the friend’s pact was created so that she could marry a rich old guy and get this fabulous life filled with yard upon yard of silky Golden Girls inspired garments. But, I think that her end of the pact was also to get Kim to go through with having the baby of the devil? I think? I’m not sure.
So, Kim gets this quick as anything explanation from her friend who goes, “Are you okay? I’ll go make us some tea. But, you’re gonna have to give your baby up to the devil, okay? But, he said that you can have more, so, that’s something.” Then she walks away, and Kim goes, “I’d like some chamomile.” And I thought she was seriously okay with this, because there were only about two minutes left in the movie. But, then she knocked the friend out, grabbed the baby, ran to the church, and got him baptised amidst all this paper flying around. ‘Cause see, the devil was standing outside the church, in his robe (which seemed unnecessary), and he was trying to prevent the baptism. But, flying paper? A little wind? He probably could’ve had the church start crumbling, or set something on fire. Something that would’ve made the priest and Kim want to flee the building so that he could grab his baby and run. He just didn’t try very hard.
So, the baby was baptised. And that was the end of the movie.
Definitely the worst of the three, and it has the biggest unresolved question: so, after everything blew over, was she still gonna be friends with that woman who sold her out to marry a rich guy? I’d like to know.

Love. (#3)

It’s not like this is a different day from the last post, since I’m writing these at the same time. But, it’ll look like we have more posts, huh? I’m so sneaky.
So, the next movie that we watched was just as bad as Poison Ivy 2, but it was bad on the opposite end of the spectrum. There was a plot, which PI2 didn’t have, but it was predictable to the point of insanity. PI2 at least was so ridiculous that you couldn’t figure out what the hell was going to happen next.
#2. Tuesday Night. The Colony
John Ritter is married and has two kids and he lives in LA and he developed this security system that is super sophisticated (for 1995) and his friend and boss gets him a meeting with the owner of this gated community (called The Colony) to install the system in his homes. The meeting goes well and he’s very excited about it and takes his wife to dinner, and they park for no reason on this deserted street outside of a Starbucks and talk about whatever. And then they get carjacked, and when the carjackers drive away, they lay on the street for a real long time. But, it’s a dark street! They could’ve been run over.
They weren’t.
So, they think about moving out of LA to this suburb where John Ritter’s lumpy faced brother-who’s-a-cop lives, which also happens to the be the town of residence of this big gated community. Hal Linden, the man who runs The Colony, decides that J.Ritter has had enough of LA life and wants him to not only install the security systems, but move into one of the houses in this fancy mortgage switching venture that will enable the modestly-incomed Ritter family to afford a giant ugly house in the development. So he’s all excited and he tells his wife and kids by driving them to the house and saying, “We’re gonna live here!” and no one seems to find it creepy that, while they’re wandering around the empty house checking it over, Hal Linden comes out of the shadows of the second floor to say that he’s already installed high tech computer-related stuff in the bedroom for the teenage daughter (who loves computers SO MUCH that she took a two-week grounding rather than have her computer taken away for a week – Sally says I would’ve done the same thing, and Sally is right). Lurker!
Then he tells his mother and brother (who’s been on an episode of every show ever: Family Ties, Fame, Who’s the Boss?, The Golden Girls, Matlock, Full House, Seinfeld, The X-Files, 24, JAG, Star Trek Voyager, CSI… no wonder he looked familiar), who pull the old “I’m happy for you… No, really, I am!” *shifty eyed looks at each other* “As long as you’re happy!” routine.
So they move in, and there’s this giant rule book and J.Ritter is in violation of a million codes the first morning (including inappropriate jogging gear). Then the mother brings the kids to the Colony’s on-site school where June Lockhart lets her know that there is NO parent involvement whatsoever, and the school even goes so far as to lock the doors while school is in session. But, it’s June Lockhart! CELIA MARTIN! Donna Martin’s grandmother who knows that David and Donna belonged together, no matter what Ray or Noah or Joe or the firefighter or the guy who was in the fraternity or the guy who did her website OR the guy who she wanted to be her fit model said about it. She couldn’t be that bad, right?
So, in the span of about a week, here’s what happens with this family: their young son turns into this creepy Hitler youth, he pushes his former best friend into a pool, J.Ritter finds out that they put hidden cameras in the sprinkler systems, the brother informs them that the previous tenents of the house died in a fiery SUSPICIOUS car crash, their neighbor “commits suicide” after flipping out one night and trying to paint his house a different color, Hal Linden tries to convince J.Ritter to stop inviting his brother to the Colony, the daughter finds a mysterious cd that was hidden in the garage, the daughter tries to upgrade cables and is immediately caught and told to stop by the evil head of security, J.Ritter keeps coming up against violations for everything he does, he notices that his plans for the security systems have been changed to include hookups for cameras, he and his wife discover that there is a rule against any public displays of affection including in your house if your neighbors can see you, their dog is kidnapped and given surgery to stop him from barking, a fern they planted is ripped out of the ground, the mother sneaks into the school to find propoganda-like assignments that are turning the son into a snob, the daughter finds out that the disc she found includes a program connected to every hidden camera in every room or every house, their neighbors make fun of their friends, their son is taken from school for “ice cream” by the evil head of security, and Hal Linden gives them a housewarming gift of a sharp mirrored sculpture that they find inappropriate to have in their house with children around.
And during all of this, they’re not oblivious. They know it’s creepy and not for them and they know that they hate it there. AND, the find out that they have no equity because the crazy mortgage-switching scheme was more like a crazy soul-switching scheme and now the family is basically ass-broke and paying rent for the house, which they thought they owned. But, they keep just sighing and going, “Well. This is what we wanted, right?”
How about MOVING OUT?
Anyway, lumpy brother finds out that the recent deaths were definitely performed by the head of security, who juices up a fence to electrocute him when he tries to get into the Colony. He also has this spray can that causes people to pass out and he uses it on the entire family when he discovers that they have the disc that could get the Colony SHUT DOWN. J.Ritter battles EvilHeadofSecurity and Hal Linden, and then knocks EHoS over the balcony onto the sharp sculpture below, killing him. Hal Linden runs out the door straight into a barrage of bullets from his OWN security team who thought he was an intruder.
And then, the next thing you know, the whole family is gathered for a barbecue (with some seriously burned burgers) at this house that the mother had looked at before they moved into the Colony. Like, how is this house still on the market? But, there’s no word on whether the son stopped being a Hitler youth. He’s not even in the last scene.

I don’t even have a good way to conclude this entry, because the movie was that bad.

Love.

March? That was what, three days ago? We’ve been very busy here at Peep central (truthfully busy, actually) and this blog just kept slipping past our blistery little fingers without a chance at being updated. But, we’re back! Back with a vengeance and with not too much interesting to say.
HOWEVER. Sally and I did happen to watch the three worst movies in a row ever the past few nights. And I will be happy to, for lack of a better blog topic, tell you about them now!
#1. Monday. Poison Ivy 2: Lily
I’ve seen Poison Ivy one too many times – pushing me over that “It’s so stupid, I can’t help watching it” level to the creepy “I’m only watching it for the sex scenes” level. But, I PROMISE you that it’s just one of those movies that’s always on HBO and, like many before it (Center Stage, anyone?), I just couldn’t not keep it on. I mean, I don’t know how anyone could watch that movie for the sex scenes anyway, because the idea of Tom Skerritt doing anything with anyone ever is enough to turn my stomach. Okay, I need a minute to erase that one scene after the party from my mind…
Anyway, so I’ve seen the original Poison Ivy a bunch of times, so I have a grasp of the story, and I could have sworn that Ivy died in the end, right? She was in that window where the mother’s room was and she ended up falling out of it onto the driveway below? Well, anyway, in Poison Ivy 2, Alyssa Milano (the name of the actress, but also the name of a phase Sally was in from between 12 and 15 years old – the Alyssa Milano phase had a lot of poofy hair and baggy cuffed pants and a blazer) is this girl from Wisconsin or something who goes to LA to go to art school and experiences all kinds of whatever while she’s there. She moves into this house and meets Jonathan Schaech who kinda digs her but she’s all “I’m from Wisconsin and I’m naive and nervous” and runs away. And then she finds these diaries and clothes and self portraits in her room that belonged to a girl named Ivy. And despite the fact that the naked chick playing Ivy in these 5-second naked-girl-dancing-around sequences is NOT played by Drew Barrymore, I think it was supposed to be Drew Barrymore’s Ivy. But, how could it be? Didn’t she die??
Anyway, she starts reading these diaries and then she totally DOES IT with Jonathan Schaech out in this big sculpture that he’s in the middle of creating out in the yard, but that already has a big bed and candles inside of it. Like, okay. And then there’s this super pervy art professor who doesn’t paint anymore, but she’s all, “I’ll pose naked for you if you start painting again,” and he does. And she’s still sorta with J.Schaech, who’s getting way attached to her even though she’s in her Ivy trance and keeps being all evasive and domineering and weird with him. And then she goes to pose for the professor again, who’s an AWFUL artist, I mean the painting looks NOTHING like Alyssa Milano! But, then she goes to leave his studio and he instantly gets real sweaty and doesn’t want her to leave and there’s a HORRIFYING near-sex scene that ends in someone ringing the doorbell and A.M. saying she should leave and walking out of the building holding her underwear in her hand. Right.
Then other stuff happens and she’s getting more and more pulled into this Ivy business and there’s this scene where the professor tries to (or does? I don’t know, there were a lot of quick cuts) rape her at his house and his daughter sees them and runs out into the street and gets hit by a car, but doesn’t die. And then J.Schaech, who’s her full on boyfriend at this point, seems to see her being raped and, one would imagine, hears her crying and saying no, and when he sees her back at the house (she ran away after the girl got hit by a car) he kind of shakes his head at her and acts like she did something wrong. What? THEN, the professor comes back to rape her again or kill her or something, and they end up in this window and he tries to pull her down with him, but J.Schaech grabs her just in time and Professor Perv falls to his death. Or does he? I mean, is he just gonna come back in Poison Ivy 3 (which I never saw) like he never fell out of a window? Oh, and Alyssa Milano totally loves J.Schaech and happilyeverafter. It was bad. Really bad. Debateable whether it was worse than Poison Ivy (although, the IMDB message board posters would have you believe that Poison Ivy was a quality movie).
And again, creepy pervy people! Not quite as bad as Tom Skerritt, but Professor Perv was pretty nightmare-inducing. Anyway, that’s what we watched as I was finishing up scarves for a wholesale order we got. And it was really embarrassingly awful. Now we’re just hoping that Poison Ivy: The New Seduction with Jamie Presley and that guy who plays Lucky on General Hospital comes on again sometime soon. It was on after Poison Ivy 2, but 4:00 in the morning is not a good time for us to be watching movies.
Y’know?

Love.