Crimson Summer - Chapter One

by

Tyler Nichols

note: This is the first chapter of a novel I've been writing.  Each chapter follows a different character and is told from their perspective, with each sequential chapter being linear to the story.  This is "comic of age" horror story with a mystery element.  While this selection may not seem overtly horrific or give a good idea of the grand plot, I plan to release other chapters for feedback.  So let me know what you think.

“Chase”

Staring up at the speckled popcorn ceiling, all that seemed to go through Chase's mind were images of bullfrogs being squished up against a gray rock. It wasn't something that he particularly wanted to think about but it was also something he just couldn't get out of his head. The guts smashing up against the rock. The sickening mixture of squish and crunch that followed. The mixture of green and red that, oddly enough, reminded him of Christmas ribbon. It was all so visceral and so unlike anything Chase had seen before; he could vividly remember even the blue shirt, tattered jeans, and white Adidas he had on. He couldn't really remember what the others had on though. He was a narcissist in that way.

The act of Tommy Tuscadero's brother smashing the frog occurred nearly three years ago yet it still seemed to haunt him, especially in the last week or so. It would play through his head on the school bus, in the grocery store, at dinner ­­­-- usually followed by said dinner not being eaten -- and even sometimes during brief moments when jerking off. It's not like he ever wanted that to happen. Half a second would happen to slip in between Kate Upton and Jennifer Lawrence and suddenly that expanded into some of the climax. I have the worst fucking luck, always popped into his head the moment one of these types of things happened. Tommy wiped himself off in shame that night, equating it to accidentally thinking about his mom during climax. Sub sequentially that thought eventually haunted him enough to manifest itself during one of those times, a moment that Chase has long since erased in his memory bank. The frog though? Impossible to forget.

It wasn't that Tommy was a sadistic child . . . or at least he didn't think so. In fact, he was quite the opposite. He couldn't imagine hurting another creature on this earth, especially not one that was so innocent. That was the problem. What had a frog ever done to him? Frogs were always put in a good light when he was grown up. They were busy chatting it up with toads or kissing princesses. What could be so wrong about them? Tommy's brother Jason seemed to have a vendetta against them, judging by the amount of hate he put behind every swing. Maybe a frog touched him in his no-no area, Chase would sometimes chuckle to himself. Accidentally repeating that joke to Tommy resulted in a severe kick in the ass the next time they crossed paths. It didn't take long for Chase to figure out that sometimes he just needed to keep his mouth shut, no matter how funny he thought he was being.

Chase's grasp on the effect of the frog smashing was certainly light. He had seen much worse things on the internet -- and to actual human beings, not just frogs.  They consisted of a man shoving a dildo down his urethra, a person having glass jar break inside their ass, two girls eating and vomiting shit onto each other. Yeah, Chase was like any teenage boy with an internet connection, testing just how far his limits were. And tested he did, yet still nothing affected him more than that damn frog. Even Tommy had no issues with it, which was all the more odd given that he tended to pass out at the sight of blood, let alone the ritualistic slaughtering of a poor amphibian. And yet Chase was the weird one.

No, Chase was as normal as anyone else. Or at least, he considered himself to be. Maybe the kids at school didn't agree but --

"Chase, hurry up, we're not gonna be late because you're busy playing with yourself. Get a move on!" his mother yelled from downstairs, breaking his train of thought. 

Quickly Chase's mind raced, Wait, does she really think I'm jerking off? Chase immediately realized how stupid that sounded. Get your head out of your ass, dumb, dumb. She was making a joke.

"Yeah, I'll be down in a minute," Chase answered after a long and awkward silence.

“Not a minute. Now!" his mom barked through the wall.

Chase jumped off the bed, shaking his head, Jesus mom, be more of a stereotype. He grabbed his bag, something catching his eye from the corner of his room -- a dark blue pouch, small enough to fit a lunch in. Chase shook his head, debating whether or not to bring it or not. It could help him make friends. Or enemies. At least I'll be known as something, Chase thought as he grabbed the small pouch. Taking one last look at his room, the various video game posters and massive gaming computer in the corner, he sighed. Chase was in his room more than he spent time anywhere else (though some of that could easily be attributed to sleep. Either way, he spent a lot of time in there). And he was almost always attached to technology. Now he was going to be without it for two weeks. With a sigh, he shut the door behind them, hauling ass down the hall and down the stairs, just in time to hear his mother shout out, "I swear to god, if you take one more--"

"Mom, relax. I was just talking to Evan. Can I talk to my friends?" he asked with at least a little sincerity, despite the fact that he was lying through his teeth.

"I told you, 12:30. The bus leaves at 1:00 and it takes twenty-five minutes to get to Spaulding. So we now have…" his mother angrily checked her watch, ". . . nineteen minutes to get there. And I am not taking you all the way to Camp Watanka. My car can't take that long of a drive.  We're doing the bus for a reason."

"Yeah. . . I know." he said, angrily. Why did his mom always have to state the obvious every time to prove her point? It's not like Chase wasn't fully aware of her reasoning's for not going. She wanted to meet up with that boyfriend of hers. Chase never understood why his mother couldn't just be honest with him. He was in High School; she should have been able to treat him like an adult.

"You better stop acting like such a mopey little brat. How're you ever going to make friends with an attitude like that?" she said harshly. She didn't mean to be so cruel, she was just raised in a very tough and straightforward house. She was raised to take and give no bullshit, a trait she carried onto her parenting. Chase knew this, but he didn't really care.

"Yes, because a smile is gonna do the trick," Chase replied with defeated sarcasm. It's not like Chase hadn't tried to fit in. He had gone through more haircuts and wardrobe changes than he could remember. Yet none of them really fit his personality and everyone seemed to know. The kids at school were like rabid dogs, smelling any sign of weakness. Chase's lack of personal identity made him more than a target: it made him a prisoner. No matter what he did, he was always seen as fake. The reputation seemed to follow him around as well.

Being the new kid was just another aspect of life that Chase had become used to. His mother moved around so much, jumping job to job or boyfriend to boyfriend, it made it hard to even finish out a single school year, let alone make anything resembling a "best friend." Hell, the more years passed by, the more it became harder to make something even close to a "friend."

"You need to just get over your whole fear of new places. This is healthy for you. Helps you meet new people," she said with a southern drawl, not present before.

"Yeah, it's really fucking helped," Chase said, rolling his eyes. Yet another time where his mother would pick up a trait from her boyfriend, just like the time she switched to cigars from cigarettes and ended up sick all night.

"Chase Daniel! Language! I am not your father.  Do not think for one second that you can do that around me," she snorted. Chase shook his head, knowing just how far from the truth that ever could be. His father was far more strict than his mother. Much more strict. It was so bad that he considered his mom to be the lesser of two evils, deciding to live with her instead, a decision that may haunt his older self. Maybe a little guidance would have done him good. Maybe he could have really turned things around. Maybe he'd be going out to parties on the lake with his beautiful girlfriend and loyal best friends. But he couldn’t just live his life in a world of maybes. No matter how much he thought of these things, nothing ever changed. Why would it? For effect there must be cause, and Chase just never seemed to be able to light the candle.

"Look, I just want you to have a good time.  I'm sick of spending all this money to send you places --"

"No," Chase corrected, "You're spending Dad’s money."

"Regardless," She responded, treating the situation as if he wasn't dead on, "There has been a lot of money spent on you in order for you to have fun. So please, I don't want to hear anything from you or from one of your counselors. I won't be picking you up within a day just because you decided to get yourself in trouble. In fact, the number I left with the camp is your Aunt Jeannie's so if you want to leave, you're going to be spending the rest of the time with her, got it?"

Oh god.  Not Aunt Jeannie, Chase thought, shaking his head at the suggestion.

"That's what I thought," His mother said with a pompous attitude, "Just remember this is something that you're going to look back on years from now and wish you could go back to.  Once in a life time.  You'll never forget it."

        Like he could ever forget.  He was going to summer camp.  He had been dreading it for weeks.

        And hoping like hell for no frogs.

END CHAPTER ONE

NEXT CHAPTER: "LIZ"

Must Be Getting Soft

There are many instances that I can recall where I gave my stepmom, Kim, a hard time when it came to depressing movies.  She just hated them.  Didn't matter how great the acting or cinematography was, if it was sad then she didn't see the point.  I, on the other hand, thought that sad endings were the best because they were "real."  And I'd be sure to give her a hard time whenever I saw her watch a cliché romcom with the most stereotypical ending possible.  It just didn't make sense to me.  They were on all accounts "bad movies" from the acting to the directing and especially to the story.  And she knew that and agreed but she watched them anyway.  "Why would anyone ever want to watch something that hits all these happy beats in the worst ways and has a stupid happy ending?"  Kim argued that life was already sad enough, she didn't need that in her movies.  At the time, I didn't really understand the concept.  Now I do.

Life is fucking sad.  People die and don't get to magically come back due to mysterious circumstances.  People go missing without a trace and their families are never given an ounce of closure.  Karma does not exist.  Good guys do not always get the bad guys and bad guys don't always go punished.  Life sucks.  So why would I want to focus on anything but the good?  I want to see a movie about a cancer patient overcoming their terminal illness.  I want to see a movie where they find the missing person and arrest the sonuvabitch who abducted them.  Hell, I don't WANT to see a good guy catch a bad guy, I NEED to see it.

I rarely watch anything that isn't comedy-related nowadays.  I've always had a love for comedy (with a recent obsession with stand-up) as it's just been my "go-to" for something to put on when I need something to fall asleep to, write to, or just mindlessly watch.  I become too invested in dramas and they effect my life too much.  The Red Wedding?  That shit wrecked me for days.  Felt like I had lost a relative.  Hell, I have a difficult time nowadays when it comes to watching any film drama.  Just the other day I put on Short Term 12 and had to shut it off during the first scene that even hinted at something bad going on.  I just couldn't handle it.  Kim was right, life is depressing enough.  Why would I use my escape as just another look at someone else's unhappiness?

Spoilers for Edge of Tomorrow

As a matter of fact, I recently had the ending of Tom Cruise's latest film, Edge of Tomorrow, spoiled for me via facebook.  At first I was a little annoyed that a key aspect was ruined for me.  "Oh hey, it's a super happy ending. Don't worry though, I'm not giving details so it's not a spoiler."  Fuck you, asshole.  Anyhoo, I saw the film despite that and I couldn't help but keep thinking "I'm so glad that this has a happy ending.  These characters have been put through fucking hell.  I don't want to see a sad ending."  And that was the moment I realized I was not even close to the same movie fan I once was.  I'm used to constantly rooting for the sadder ending.  Hell, in the horror genre, the sadder the better.

Does this mean that I won't ever appreciate a fantastically executed sad ending?  Of course not.  Se7en is still one of my favorite movies ever and The Mist is fucking brilliant.  Don't worry, I still like sad endings but I think the main difference is that I'll actually be rooting for the happy ending nowadays.  I'll be rooting for the survivor girl in whatever slasher I'm watching to make it to the end without the killer coming back.  I'll be hoping that Seth Rogen can totally land whichever out-of-his-league actress is involved with him in Apatow's latest.  Because I've realized that rooting for the sad ending isn't campaigning for artistic merit or wanting a real representation of life.  It's fucked up.

I think it's really just about growing up.  When I was in high school, watching a dark depressing film on something related outside to schooling, I could have an outsiders perspective.  As soon as films start taking you back to bad memories PTSD-style, then it's usually the time that they become harder to watch.  I know that's how it has been for me and while I haven't lost an appreciation for what I liked before, it could easily affect my viewing of anything else in the future.  Change in perspectives happen, I'm just not sure with me how much it's "I love happy endings" vs. "I hate sad endings" because neither is true.  However, if you make me really feel for your character and make them a deep, dimensional person, then yeah, like in life, I'm gonna root for the happy ending for them.  Because everyone deserves that.  And I'm not an asshole.

Or at least I try not to be.

Swayed Back By Nothing New

I used to play video games a lot when I was in high school.  Like, a fucking lot.  Some days I'd be putting 8 hours into a video game all the while going to school and having a social life.  Thankfully my social life transferred over into gaming.  Most of my best friends had Xbox Live and we'd voice chat on there for hours while we played.  It was just a part of growing up and being kids.  As you may remember, I recently wrote a blog post about my falling out of love with video games and so, after several suggestions from readers, I decided to see if it was just a phase, if I had finally "grown up" or if I just hate having fun. 

Someone suggested that I seek out games/genres that I had never really played before -- this meant J-RPG's and post-N64 Nintendo.  I tried some out and thought that all was lost because of my growing hatred while the controller was in my hand.  In fact, I think that I hated video games a little more after playing some of the newer Zelda and Final Fantasy games.  So I wanted to go an entirely different route -- revisit some of the older games that I sunk weeks and weeks, months and months, what felt like years and years into.  

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Halo: Reach.  Dear god do I love these games.  I really thought that I was just completely done with FPS' and that the genre had lost its appeal to me.  Not the case at all, if anything this has made me realize that it's the games themselves, not the type of game which has been turning me off.  Halo and COD4 are both FUN games, either epitomizing the series or the starting point for something new.  I'm sure I put more hours into Halo 2 and Halo 3 but I can't exactly play 2 online and 3 is in a deep, dark place in Michigan known as under my bed.  So Reach it was.  Now I'm sure that a lot of it is nostalgia.  I'm an extremely nostalgic person, sometimes to a fault, so this hits all the right notes.  The maps in both of these games are etched so hard into my memory that I can close my eyes and walk perfectly around them.  It's that bad.  So the cards were stacked in gamings favor for this and I must say, I think I may have been won back.

The recent announcement of Halo: The Master Chief Collection and the rumored Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Collection and Gears of War Collection show that my hobby of gaming just may continue, but not in the way it did before.  These are the same games I've played before, just with some updated graphics and, sometimes, a new engine.  But that's really the point in my enjoyment of it.  I don't want to have to learn an entirely new game and maps.  If I did that, I wouldn't be playing a franchise game like either of these.  It's kind of sad, I remember my dad using the same reasoning for not wanting to play video games whenever I'd try to prod him into a game of Madden.  "It's too much work, I can't invest the time to be good."  At the time I just saw it as an old-person-response (my dad was like 35 at the time.  That's old to young me) and moved on.  Now I get it.

I've actually had several discussions with friends recently about the state of gaming.  I seem to be the only one not upset about the fact that all these games are being remade for Next-Gen.  They all claim that they want new content, not another remake.  Maybe if original content hadn't disappointed me so much for the past few years, then maybe I'd share their sentiment.  But unfortunately the state of gaming is sad one.  Games are constantly being released broken just because developers are able to release patches for them and so a release date is not the ultimate quality control for them.  Except it is to this gamer.  I'm sick of broken games being released just to make a deadline.  As soon as it trickled into my beloved Mass Effect series, I knew we were in for trouble.  Then the debacle known as Battlefield 4 happened and here we are -- hesitant at every release.  Will it be broken?  Will I even be able to play on Day One (*ahem*Titanfall).

The lying going on in the videogame industry is worse than ever.  E3 seems to just be an opportunity to promise original content that never ends up delivering.  I quite enjoy the recently released Watchdogs and it's one of my favorite games for Xbox One.  However, the graphics are not even a sliver of what we were promised when the game was first announced.  Hell, we were treated to "gameplay video" that looked like it was the future of gaming.  Cut to release and it looks about on par with Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V.  And yeah, in case you weren't aware, that was for LAST generation.  It's made it so I don't believe anything going on at E3.  The only thing I can trust is an update to my favorite from the past.  Kind of sad.

I suppose I'm just retreating into what's familiar due to the fact that I have no faith in original content.  I've been disappointed too many times.  I'm the type of person that learns from experience and as of this point in my life, I know that if it's not coming from Rockstar, then chances are 50/50 that it's going to suck. These upcoming remakes are not just that.  It's not like they're replacing voice actors and changing what we once knew.  This is a remastering of what I consider to be some of my favorite games of all time.  And they couldn't have come at a more pivotal times.  Who knows, given a little more time, I may have been forced to grow up.

As if.

Sunshine and Popcorn

Given that I'm single (sigh), slightly introvert (sigher), and 2000 miles from home (sigh...est?), my desire to do comforting things is usually pretty high.  Few things are as comforting to me, especially in the summer, as going to the movies for some popcorn fun.  There are few better feelings for me than exiting a cold, dark theater out into a bright, warm, beautiful summer day.  So when summer comes around, I try and spend a decent amount of time taking in the visual orgasm known as the Summer Blockbuster.

Every summer there's a movie that underperforms at the box-office and doesn't deserve it.  Scott Pilgrim fell under this category and the hurt is still fresh.  The latest film to join this is a little unexpected given its star but it still managed to become a big flop.  Edge of Tomorrow does not deserve the box-office it has received.  The shitload of money Transformers 4 will make this weekend?  Yeah, that robot masturbation contest is going to be raking in the cash and proving to studios that all we as an audience need is big explosions, pretty girls, and a simple (possibly invisible) plot.  Edge of Tomorrow on the other hand boasts one of the best action movie scripts ever produced.  Is the movie one of the greatest of all time?  I don't know about that, but the script itself is pure genius.  Any level-headed writer can tell you that adding a time travel element is a recipe for plot holes and problems yet this movie handles it with aplomb.

Another film that handles time travel really well is X-Men: Days of Future Past.  They treat the time travel simply enough that it never becomes overthought and overdone.  It's basic and to the point: whoever goes into the past, whatever they change won't be changed until they leave the past and thus allowing the event to occur.  Confusing?  Yeah, I can't explain time travel for shit.  But see, that's the point, these elements are really difficult to describe and get across and yet these films manage it.  Still, that's not what we're talking about here.  That's just one element.  This isn't a (time) travel blog, so let's get on with something not so complicated.

It wouldn't feel like hyperbole to say that 22 Jump Street is the best comedy sequel of all time.  Before this film, I didn't really even examine the history of comedy sequels outside of a minor footnote.  Really though, what comedic sequel has come out that wasn't a disappointment?  Anchorman 2?  Hangover 2? Ghostbusters 2?  All have varying degrees of success in being quality followups but rarely will you hear anyone say they live up to the first.  Even if someone really likes the film they'll still follow it with "Yeah, but its not as good as the first."  22 Jump Street is as good, if not better than the first and that is rare feat.  It embraces everything that made the first one great and everything that makes most sequels suck.  The common act of rehashing the plot of its successful predecessor is any easy route but also one not taken here.  Hell, they take all of what we're expecting and turns it on its head in a way that makes it interact with the plot itself.  Its self-aware but not to a damning degree.

Later today I have plans to see Godzilla -- a giant monster film where naysayers are complaining about the lack of character development.  That's the type of giant monster film I can get behind.  You may be saying "But Tyler, how can you forgive a film like this but still condemn Bay's Transformers movies for the same thing?"  My simple answer to you is this: plot.  Bay goes to inordinate heights in order to try and explain things in the Transformers movies, giving reason behind the impossible.  This is stupid.  We've just spent a third of the movie being told through various government mumbo jumbo just how these Transformers are real and how it affects us via foreign relations and technological advances.  This is where I just go "Fornicate you, Michael Bay."  You are making a film about giant robots.  Unless you're Guillermo Del Toro and have proven that your action film warrants 2 hours, make it 90 minutes of action and cut the government nonsense.  It doesn't add a sense of realism and get the audience more involved, it's just filler that makes the one-dimensional characters stand out even more.

Disconnection from a Former Love

As I write this there are at least one hundred games at my reach.  Whether it's my Xbox 360, Xbox One, or the massive number of Steam games on my computer, I have access to just about any kind of game that one could possibly want to play.  Yet I have no desire to play them.  I can put any game in and enjoy it for several minutes but I quickly become bored and want to do something else.  Even times that I'm feeling nostalgic and want to go play a quick online game of Halo, I can barely make it through a match without wanting to quit.

Am I getting too old?  I've always been told, and witnessed for myself, that many things we love as children/teenagers start to fade away the older we get.  I was always in the camp of "I'll be playing video games until I die!"  Yet nowadays I can't really spend a day playing video games without it feeling like a massive waste.  Oh so I defeated thirteen levels, brought my character up 5000 xp, and unlocked eight achievements?  Uh... cool?  My brain immediately puts on display -- like a cruel slideshow -- the various activities I could have been doing instead that would have ACTUALLY been productive: writing a screenplay, reading a book, working out, sending out more applications.  I mean, hey, I could have been researching protein synthesis and working out the formulas in order to find the most efficient way to replace torn muscle fibers.  Do I know anything about this subject?  Not even in the slightest, but I could have been learning about it rather than getting my KDR from 1.4 to 1.5.  Fucking lazy, Tyler.

It's odd though, I don't consider gaming to be a productive hobby anymore yet replace that with reading a book and I suddenly see it as having merit.  For me, reading a book for four hours is more psychologically satisfying that playing a video game yet, what is their main difference?  Both are forms of entertainment meant to invoke an emotional response.  So why do I consider one to be a higher form of art than the other?  I think that it's mostly due to age.  Video games are looked down upon in society as being a youth-driven hobby and thus a time waster.  Books on the other hand are for those wanting to put their imagination to the test and become more knowledgeable.  But wait, can't each train of thought be applied to either?

Sure, when the average person looks at a video game, they see nothing more than a way to escape reality.  There is nothing of merit being learned, it is all an escape.  In books you'll be taught various things that will get you through life, but video games?  Time waster.  Except maybe that's not the case.  There was a story of an adolescent driving a vehicle in order to get his sick grandmother(?) to the hospital.  And you know what?  He made it there safely and potentially saved his grandmothers life.  You know what experience he drew from in order to accomplish the task of moving of multi-ton hunk of metal several miles?  Grand Theft Auto V.  No, he didn't think of that time where Kerouac describes starting up the vehicle and driving off down the road with a stick shift, he went to the many hours of driving experience he had virtually.  His grandmother is alive and well because he decided to invest some time into San Andreas.  Time waster?  I think ole grandma might disagree.

It's not all about the perception of it being a time-waster that has quelled my gaming desire though.  I can obviously see the advantages, as stated by the previous paragraph, but I also think something else factors in:  I'm just not as good as others nowadays.  Back when I gamed all the time, I could pick up nearly any game and be good at it.  I was consistently the best Halo or Call of Duty player amongst my high school and college friends which is good, because I hate being bad at something.  I have a winners attitude -- thank you, Dad -- which also means I'm a sore loser -- again, thank you, Dad.  So now when I come into a game that I haven't played in ages, I don't immediately pick up where I left off, I'm not in the gaming mindset and that means everyone is better than me.  They're in high school and this is the escape they have going for them.  They don't have to worry about anything other than their KDR.  I just can't seem to invest in something that feels so trivial thus making me a half-hearted player that gets killed a lot.  A lot.

Now this is not an entry stating the end of my relationship with video games.  Not the case.  I still quite enjoy them and when a good one comes along, I can lose hours in it.  Any form of entertainment can be viewed as art and I'm more than willing to sit down and appreciate an artists hard work.  But I also recognize that I am a grown man and maybe moreso than getting all of the achievements in Watch Dogs, I need to find a job that allows me to pay for a hefty mortgage, vacations, a nice car, and children.  Priorities change, but that doesn't mean I need to entirely drop any form of my previous self.  He liked video games as a stress reliever, so why can't I as well?  Sometimes it's nice to go back and revisit.

Just remember that getting headshots may not be as easy now.

We Use Swear Words

If you follow me on twitter then you probably know that I just started a web series. What's that? You don't follow me on twitter? You found my blog by mistake?  Well...that's rude to tell me that. I think you may be overly aggressive.

Anyway, I started a podcast with my friend Dom Coccaro. Let me get this out of the way: yes, he is my sidekick. I give him the intro just to make him feel better. He really needs it. Poor Dom. Boring supporting characters aside, the podcast is about Dom and myself discussing films, television, music, wrestling, the holocaust, sports, Shelley Winters, the act of podcasting itself, favorite interests, what we ate for breakfast, the color of our bowel movements, and really that's all. Only those subjects.

Having been inspired by various podcasts we both listen to (and I've blogged about here and here), I decided it was finally worth taking the plunge into a field I briefly had my foot in, in high school -- podcasting. I'd always wanted to do it and I knew my wheelchair bound, sassy acquaintance Dom would be more than up for it, so we got it around (when I say we I mean Dom came up with the name and I did everything else. Fuckin Dom...) and here we are today.  Two episodes published, two more recorded and ready to go.  

All dead seriousness aside, I'm really looking forward to continuing this series. Having stimulating conversation every week is enough for me to keep it going but the response so far has been wonderful.  I've received a lot of good feedback and people seem to like it.  Hoping to continue improving it We're up on iTunes and podbean and are planning to spam it around the Internet shortly after our database fills up a little more.  Below are the first two episodes.  Give them a listen and let me know what you think.

Conundrum of all Conundrums

Here I sit with an episode of my new favorite TV show, Maron, on the DVR ready to watch it.  Only there's one problem:  I can't find the remote to save my life.  The past few days have been a daily struggle of cleaning and looking under random things in order to find this piece of machinery that I can't seem to live without.  But I've had absolutely no luck.  I've looked under the couch, in the couch, in my room, under the TV, in the studio, even in the bathroom and still nothing.  It has up and vanished and I feel ill-equipped because of it.  And this is the second time.

Take Sunday night for example,  it was the night of a WWE paperview but also a brand new episode of Game of Thrones.  Being that I treat WWE like a real sport, in that I don't like watching after it's already aired live, as usual (except for when Breaking Bad was on) I chose Rasslin over my Sunday night show.  However, after the paperview was done, I was ready to catch up on the latest adventures in Westeros.  I even had two options for viewing it, I could watch it on the DVR or On Demand.  But oh wait, no remote.  "Tyler," you're saying "don't you have an TV you can control with your voice?"  Why yes, you, I absolutely do and you know how much that helps me?  None.

I can turn on the TV, turn it off, change the channel and go to whatever meaningless apps I want but I can't access the DVR which holds my TV shows on it.  It's almost like I'm being blackmailed by my own remote.  Did I not pay enough attention to you?  Are you jealous of how much you're being neglected in favor of just using voice commands?  Is this how you're taking it out on me?  Am I directly talking to a remote on my blog?

Now, I'm not going to act like I'm a person who doesn't use the internet to facilitate the procuring of certain media items but dammit, I don't want to have to torrent if I don't have to!  But you know what I had to do to watch Game of Thrones, even though I had it on my DVR, had it On Demand, and had access to it through HBO Go through my Xbox?  I still had to torrent that sonuvabitch.  Not having the remote took care of the first two but then HBO Go wouldn't work because Comcast kept having an error everytime I tried to access it.

I had legal means to watch Game of Thrones the night of airing but they were not working.  And social media is a bitch.  I had to resort to illegal torrenting just to be able to watch the episode.  Are they still getting points for me DVRing it?  Yes.  Did I try many different routes in order to watch it legally?  Of course.  Yet if I were to be dumb enough to leave the torrent open and seed out on an unsecure server, I could potentially be sued by HBO.  All because I lost my remote and am impatient.

I really need to go outside more.

Don't Read If You Haven't Seen Game of Thrones S4

Is that title clear enough?  Just in case it's not....

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN SEASON 4 OF GAME OF THRONES!!!!!

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, I'll be the first to say that last nights episode fucked me up.  Coming from someone who has read the book, it's hard to still be shocked when something happens since obviously I already knew about it.  Not the case with this battle.  If anything the fact that I knew what was going to transpire just made it worse.  There was only one problem: apparently I had forgotten the exact manner of death.  For some reason something in my mind kept saying that the Mountain cuts Oberyn down with his broadsword but instead what happened is something I've been playing in my head all day.

Now, I would consider myself pretty well-versed in the world of gore and make-up effects.  I've been seriously into horror films since a young age so I was long desensitized to violence.  With that said, much like the Red Wedding last season, I found myself becoming physically ill when the episode had wrapped.  Not only had one of my favorite characters bitten the dust but it was done in such a way that it literally upset my stomach.  Seeing The Mountain first shoves his fingers into The Viper's eyes, then full on smash his head between his hands... wow.  That wide shot of the two bodies laying next to each other, Oberyn's head just a pulpy mess, it's stomach churning.

I can't help but think of all the people that not only hadn't read the books but also those that can't handle violence well.  If my own reaction is anything to go off of, this is a scene that should be sticking with them for YEARS to come.  The brutality of it, the shocking twist near the end, and really just everything that's built up to this moment.  We've seen The Mountain in action and know how dangerous he is.  No one else even seems close to him in skill yet here comes Oberyn and he completely controls the entire bout until the end.  But his cockiness gets the best of him and he loses it all.  His screams and that crunch will go down as one of the most pivotal and shocking moments of the series.

The pure fact that the implications of the fight, with Tyrion now set to be executed, seems to be lost amongst the actual fight itself.  That just shows how good this scene is; you're not left worried about Tyrion, you're left thinking "Holy shit, Oberyn just got fucking slaughtered in the worst possible way."  But now as it settles in and we all sit back and think about how Tyrion, aka everyone's favorite character, is now going to be executed, the final two episodes shall have a feeling of tension unmatched which, after The Red Wedding, is saying a hell of a lot.