Sleeping with the tv off - a case study

 Wgbw, I know I just promised to try and stay away from the self-reflective posts, but this is sort of related since I often fall asleep to scary movies so bear with me.

I've chronicled my journey with sleeping with the tv on and off and thought I'd keep you posted about it. 

9/17/12: I've determined I might have to start sleeping with the tv off. 

To those of you know me, this is unbelievable. For years I have slept with the TV on. The whole reason the couchbread is so popular is because of the gigantic TV in front of it.  It used to be a deal breaker with girls. It was never anything personal, but if you couldn't sleep with the tv on I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Even the whole 'let's put the sleep timer' thing never made much sense to me.

I mostly trace this back to my childhood. I grew up sleeping with the tv on. Whenever I went to stay at someone's house I could never sleep. Now, being 26 years old, I still can't sleep with the tv off when I'm not in my own bread.

Lately though it's been giving me problems. For the last 4 months I've been waking up every 3-4 hours, checking the clock, and then immediately falling back asleep. Part of the reason I can fall back asleep so easily is that I've seen every episode of the hit tv show Friends 2539 times so when I wake up and it's on the TV I don't tune in too much. I didn't read too much into at first, but then it was a nightly ritual. After doing some research I found out that it can screw with your blood pressure, your ability to make sound life choices, and can cause over the top nightmares. Now I've never believed in the whole 'sleeping with the tv on leads to depression' argument because I'm generally happier when I wake up and the TV is on and more depressed when I realized someone has shut it off.  But the rest of this kind of spooked me. I've had high blood pressure off and on, make poor decisions (well rarely), and have creepy nightmares on the reg.

After realizing that I'm probably the only person I know who has (or even wants) to sleep with the TV on, I've decided I'm going to start shutting it off when I get drowsy. We'll see how this goes.

9/24/12: What a dumb idea that was

Well, after a day or two of that experiment, I've determined that I'm never shutting off the TV again. Ever.

After an hour of being restless I'd eventually fall asleep but then wake up every 3 hours. And when I woke up I'd just lay there confused, wondering why the TV was off.  "Did the power go out? Did Bricker sneak in here to play a cruel prank on me? Am I not at the Cone?"

I've also figured out that there could be other culprits. My mattress pad is old, my beds not pushed up against the wall anymore, and it's no longer summer (story for another post).

Now of course I'll have to figure out the other problems associated with sleeping with the TV on at a later date (i.e. settling down with someone, our energy bill, etc.), but for now I think I'll keep tuning in. 

The Cube

1) I watched this after realizing they had repped it in The Cabin in the Woods.I do think that I am a pretty big horror movie geek, but I still always have a hard time getting behind these 'cult horror' movies. But I'm trying to get better at it so I tuned into this.

2) I thought the acting was all pretty mediocre. Nobody really seemed believable and didn't seem too shocked that these people kept getting killed off in this random cube that they woke up in.

3) It also seemed like this was an earlier setup of all of the Saw movies. It's just these people all waking up in this crazy metal cube and having no idea how they got there. This must've been a solid plot idea in 1997.

4) My problem is that there's no explanation for the cube. I realized this when trying to tag the post. It's not really a haunted house, no one knows if they were set up by a killer or what's going on. They never figure out how they got in there, who put them in there, or where the one guy that gets away at the end is going. Maybe that's why it's supposed to be appealing, but I'm not really digging it. Like in life (lol) I think things need closure and this movie just ends with too many questions unanswered.

D+

Episodes Season 2

1) I can't believe how long ago it was that I reviewed the first season. I was pretty wild about it and it just picked up as the season went on. This season was almost completely backwards. The first few eps were so tight then it just went downhill from there.

2) They transitioned well to everybody getting used to the breakup. And I never would've guessed about the Matt/Boss's wife thing.

3) And obvi it was tight because Matt is just so wholly inappropriate in all of his jokes and the way the British guy reacts to them is always clutch.

4) The biggest problem with the season is just the redundant plots that get boring. I mean, we get the show isn't doing well. And that the two British people can't reconcile. And that the boss isn't going to leave his wife. But it just happens every episode and only partially gets resolved in the finale. I had to shut off like 3 of the eps as they were going on it got so bad.

:(

C+

The Breakfast Club

1) Pretty solid movie. I'm not wild about all of the emotional moments that tend to take over these movies but it was good.

2) I don't really understand why everyone could get so emotional during the day. I mean, I get the stir crazy thing. I've been sitting in my room for the better part of the last 4 months watching mediocre horror movies. It screws with your head. But I think all of them end up crying at some point during the day. And they drop all these emotional bombs on each other. Just seems sort of odd.

3) For example, I don't think I would fit in here. Never having had detention (yeah buddy) I can't say for sure, but I imagine I'd probably just try to nap or read some of the magazines or something. Maybe try to talk to Emilio Estevez about wrestling or something, but besides that I can't imagine this is too hard.

4) Rumor was that it was shot at GBN but I have no idea having never been in the GBN library. Oh- how tight was it that the wrestler was named Andrew? Pretty tight.

B

Rocky IV

In the spirit of America (yesterday), I figured I review one of the best Rocky movies: this one lol.

1) It's one of my favorite Rocky movies because it's not as long as the rest lol. And he's fighting for America which is tight.

2) It's pretty unbelievable that the guy gets TKO'd for real at the beginning of the movie. Seems like Las Vegas has had enough experience with boxing fights that they could prevent that from happening.  

3) Obvi my biggest beef with the movie is that the famous Bill Conti song GONNA FLY NOW isn't in it. It's one of the best songs to rep while you need to get motivated to finish your workout and it makes me sad it missed this film. Wikipedia informs me that he was too busy with the tight Karate Kid movies to do this which is fair because all of those movies are top-notch.

B+

Mean Girls

I'm gonna try to get out of the way all of the non-horror movies I've seen recently since the great month of October is almost upon us. (I guess this has a little Halloween stuff in it. They go to that party and her two friends are watching Friday the 13th Part 2
).

1) It's a really solid movie. Pretty funny, original, and was a big motion picture debut for a lot of the people in it.

2) The really crazy part in this movie is that Lindsay Lohan plays the hero of the movie while Rachel McAdams is the evil one. I don't read a lot of gossip magazines (obvi) but I get that LL's gotten herself into a fair share of trouble. But evertime I think of Rachel McAdams I just think of how tight she was in The Notebook.

3) The other crazy thing  I never realized was that this was Amanda Seyfried's  big debut. She's one of my celebrity crushes which I'm sure I've mentioned before (see Jennifer's Body or Letters to Juliet).

4) And how tight was that kid's business card? Math enthusiast/bad ass M.C. Top notch.

Good stuff

A-

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

1) @Stone thought I should review this and that's not a horrible idea. I actually am not a fan of family/feel-good movies generally but this one was pretty good.

2) I know it's a fictional story and all, but it's pretty unbelievable. He has this big factory that sells candy that nobody's ever allowed to inspect? Obvi they don't abide by any safety regulations. Kind of makes you wonder if those oompa loompa people are paid well and stuff.

3) And really the kids are going this apeshit over winning a lifetime supply of candy? I mean, I know kids dig the candy and all,  but it's probably not worth getting this excited about. Back in the day I used to love those nerd ropes until I ate myself sick of them, but don't really think I would've been this nutso about winning a lifetime supply of the stuff.

4) And actually this movie is pretty spooky. That dude who tries to buy off the kids is creepy, the whole factory place gives me the willies, and the fact that there's just all of this scary unchartered territory to conquer gives me the shakes. The newer version of the film actually scares the hell out of me more. Johnny Depp is generally creepy to me but he is just off the charts in that movie.

B-

Buff Boxing

Wgbw, I don't usually tune out of blogging about movies but I occasionally get off the subject (see buff, KU BBall, and UFC). This morning I started watching this awful horror movie that's not even worth the blogs time. So I figured I'd venture off of scary movies for a min and share my recent experience getting back into kick/boxing.

1) Yesterday was the 3rd month anniversary of me getting back into kick/boxing. I've lost around 18 pounds since I've started doing it. I can't say that it's all related to just doing that since I've taken up long walks and I've obvi still been gii at the gym, but I know it's had a pretty big influence on it. I think group training is inevitably better than gii by yourself because it's hard to stop half way through when you're tired because everyone else is still pushing it.

2) It's kind of crazy that I still feel like I struggle with basic combos sometimes. I guess it makes sense that I wrestled for 6 years and was always pretty mediocre at it even though we drilled it all the time. I think I'm constantly getting better but I guess I just thought it would all come together quicker. (FWIW I could still put a whooping on Hardy, just not a lot of people who train at the gym lol.)

3) I'm a real big fan because it also forces you to work on your core/legs which I usually never have any motivation to do. It's also boosted my endurance when I run and engage in *other* activities requiring cardiovascular endurance. The only trouble with it is that I feel like I'm overtraining sometimes when I lift a bunch of weights in the morning and have to box at night. I'm still trying to tackle that problem.

4) Anytime I've taken someone there with me they always think it's pretty tight. If any locals want to check it out I highly recommend it.

#teamswoll

Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

1) It's better than I remembered but that's not saying much. Of all of the 80s horror sequel movies (this, Halloween and Friday the 13th), the Nightmare series is by far the worst. This movie isn't horrible but it's definitely the movie that starts the downward trend for the whole Nightmare series.

2) I guess it starts off in a similar manner as the other ones which is solid. The problem is the goofy ass ways that they start TKOing Freddy. I tried rewinding this to figure out exactly how that girl beats him up and I'm still not sure I understand it. She like shows Freddy that he's actually been possessing all of these other kids and so he just collapses on himself?

3) And how does she start accumulating all of the other kids powers? This also begs the question that if this can defeat Freddy (at least until the next movie) why don't they always do this in future movies?

4) It's also disheartening to realize that if eventually I ever become good at boxing that Freddy could still just put a whooping on me.  

C+

The Haunting (1999)

Sorry bw, I was going to post this much earlier in tha week but I passed tha bar(!!) and am just getting around to it now.

1) It took me a while to sit through it, but it was actually one of those movies that got better the more I powered through it. Liam Neeson tricks these people with sleeping problems to come stay over a this creepy place to see if they can eventually just believe that the place is super scary.

2) Then it got kind of goofy. One of the chicks realizes she is the daughter of one of the wives of the dudes who killed all of these kids so that they could stay in tha house for eternity with him.  So she decides that she just wants to never leave the place so she can reconnect with these people or something.

3) Little kids always spook me out so I guess that part was pretty freaky. And when the chick sees the person hang themselves it was scary. I think it kind of reminded me of that creepy ass scene in The Omen when the babysitter decides to jump off tha house in front of all of those kids.

4) It had a pretty star studded cast. CZJ, Liam Neeson and Owen Wilson all had much larger roles in some more popular movies. Surprised they all got together for this one.

C