A Little Vincent Price

It was one of those rare days where the boys and I didn’t even open the car door. Puck was on four straight days of fall break. And lucky for him, he had a big book report to get cracking on.

“That thing is due in one week,” I reminded him, as he groaned about the workload. “Sorry, pal.”

A few hours later and Puck had had it up to here with reading about Colonial ghost mysteries.

“MOM! PLEASE!”

That’s when I happened to notice his homework papers in my stack of things to take care of.

“Wait a second… Oh… Well, kiddo, looks like you’re off the hook. Your book report isn’t due for four weeks.”

“YAY!!!!”

By this time, most of the day was gone. So I let Puck celebrate with the Xbox, then sent the brothers outside for an hour before dinner. They worked up appetites big enough to devour all the burgers and cucumbers, and still want more.

Movie night.

Oxbear was swamped with a hackathon downtown all weekend, so it was Carrie-Bri, her best bud whom she met almost ten years ago on a tour of Egypt, Elmer and Jaya, Rose with a bag of Chipotle for dinner, and Francis. Although Francis was less than thrilled with the idea of Carrie’s paleo coconut cookies. Because, coconut.

As usual, it took about half an hour to decide what we were going to watch. Finally, we settled on Vincent Price in “The House on Haunted Hill”, which quickly turned into the peanut gallery.

The movie reached a peak as the murderess descended the staircase in a nightgown towards the wine vat filled with acid in the basement.

“What… is she… wearing?”

“Is that a leotard?”

“It’s a swimsuit, guys.”

“Yup. It’s a swimsuit.”

“She’s wearing a swimsuit for pajamas.”

As the movie concluded – another Snicketts family classic – Carrie summarized.

“Well, this was actually one of Vincent Price’s better films. Once he got to the 60s and the film with the exploding gold robot bellybuttons, well…”

But I guess we tend to overlook his later-in-life foibles because he was, after all, a loyal St. Louisan.