Day 13: Friday the 13th!

Well, dear readers, yesterday was Friday the 13th. What talisman did you use to guard yourself from the evils of the day? I carried around one of my lucky duck safety pins. They were given by the staff to each musician and performer of my high school's plays and/or musicals as a good-luck charm; if we had them clipped to an undergarment, we were certain to put on a hell of a show. I've never believed in rabbit's feet or anything gross like that, so a safety pin with a duck on it will have to do.

Actually, I'm really not superstitious. My first family pet was a black cat, so those have never bothered me; every black cat I've ever known has been a total badass. I've walked under ladders and stepped on cracks galore. The one superstition I find myself upholding is that of spilling salt; when I spill salt at work (this happens a lot when one works in a restaurant and busses her own tables), I always toss some over each shoulder to ward off bad luck. It's not necessary to do both, but I can never remember if the salt is supposed to go over the right or left. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Two years ago I celebrated Friday the 13th with my friend Gabby (who you may remember from my California blog) by watching the original Friday the 13th. It was predictable and kind of dumb, but at least I can say I've seen it. I don't plan to watch it again, however.

I have never been a fan of slasher films, and I don't believe I ever will be. I like movies that are scary, not gorey. Give me a classic ghost story over any of the "Saw" films any day, thank you very much. So this year, I celebrated Friday the 13th by gathering my family around the new television and watching Poltergeist. It's an old favorite of my mom's, and my sister had never seen it before. My dad got sucked in, despite his assertion that he's seen it plenty of times.

If you've never seen Poltergeist, it's about a family who experiences the ultimate hell in their own home; it starts out almost playful. Chairs stack themselves up on the table, their daughter slides safely across the kitchen floor as though pulled by a rope. Carol Ann talks to "the tv" people when the tv service goes out for the night (this is 1982) and all you can hear it static. But it turns out that Carol Ann and her brother Robby's closet is a portal to another dimension, into which Carol Ann is sucked and kept captive there by "the beast," who keeps other spirits from crossing over by drawing them to her life force. The more spirits it traps, the more powerful it grows. Not to ruin it for you, but it turns out that the Freeling family home (and those surrounding it) was built on top of a cemetery. The builder took the cheap way out and moved the headstones but left the bodies, thus seriously pissing off some spirits. Who can blame them?

It's a classic tale of ghostly revenge. It gets a bit tacky at times (it would have been much scarier if "the beast" had never appeared on screen, for example) but the effects are pretty good for 1982. And Zelda Rubenstein is fantastic as the medium who figures out the situation; you may know her as the lady with the creepy voice who later narrated "Scariest Places on Earth," a show that terrified me for years. Overall, it's a pretty good time.

By the way, I am SO glad that movie trailers have gotten more exciting.