Going ALL THE WAY!

Back when I was in high school and Eric Carmen's song was a hit, "going all the way" became a meme. Maybe it was a meme before and I was just too young to notice.

I have an Eric Carmen album. I liked his version of "That's Rock & Roll". I had a hard time understanding why "Go All the Way" would get airplay. Maybe this was when I was in junior high.

In the locker room, when the other guys were comparing things that don't really need to be compared, some of the guys who were a little precocious would brag about "going all the way" the night before or whenever, and I would think to myself how they had most definitely not gone all the way.

In reality, you haven't gotten to first base with a woman if you're not married to her. You're not to second base if you are not raising whatever children there are together. Third base is watching and helping together as the new generation gets their starts. You haven't gone all the way with her until you've gone home together.

(To that great Home Plate in the Sky, if you didn't get the allusion, and, no, you seekers of quibbles, I don't mean that you have to die at the same moment, I mean you just have to be friends with her when you die.)

I understood that when I was a really, seriously naive teenager.

Why is it that so many people are satisfied, and think that they've gone the distance, when they've just hit a foul ball?

Grind? Rec? Mad dogs?

I get notes from Yahoo Japan, and they regularly send me a newsletter called "GyaO!" ("ROar!", I suppose, is close enough) with news about what's going on in the supposed entertainment industry.

I decided to see what passes as news. They were talking up the movie, Grindhouse. No, wait. They were talking up REC: Quarantine. I had to go looking and I found Grindhouse, instead. Horror movies.

I have to admit, I should have known better, but I looked up Grindhouse at the IMDB or whatever that is.

A couple of questions cross my mind:

Tarantino, was that really necessary?

Oh, never mind. I know, in your view, it probably was. Anything to keep your stuff selling.

Hmm. Zombies. Hydrophobia. Erm, rabies. Infectious diseases.

Why do people deliberately infect themselves?

Do we really want to preview the conditions at the end of the world? Why?

Being inured is not being inoculated. It's not the same thing at all.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's the answer to my question to myself: "Why diid I go look that up?"

I have things I must do and I don't know how. For some reason, I think that numbing my mind will allow me to escape the dilemma, either allow my mind to find the solution or put my higher reasoning to sleep long enough that I can avoid the decision and pretend that the end result was fated all along.

The horror genre is just like rabies. Infectious. And it causes fear of the very things that the soul needs the most.