was this in the movie? i have no memory of most of it. By the way: For you friends who were around back when this took place, you got the better story-- this is a lame recollection.

My sister recently went to Disney World (the one in Florida, which I remember now, thanks to Lindsay). She returned with gifts, because she's good like that. I got a shirt, CD holder, pens, and car-antennae ball. They were all from the same movie: The Nightmare Before Christmas. Since my life is being sucked out of me by the a metaphoric vacuum that is Wilkes-Barre, PA, and nothing ever happens, I have no new stories to tell you, so I'll share the past. I don't know if I told my sister this story, so I don't know if the gifts were a slight joke, or if she just remembered my appreciation for Burton.

So I was a freshman when I started college, like most people are. I didn't know anyone here and, more often, I preferred wallowing in self-pity over joining the lacrosse kids across the hall for excursions. I was living with Tim Hoy, who was cooking crack and trafficking black market body parts. Things could only get worse, right? Well one night some girl busts into the room. They encouraged us to keep our doors open so people would feel welcomed, but you don't really wanna welcome everyone all the time. You learned that eventually. So this girl busts into the room in a gown with a friend. I'm watching TV on my bed. Cut to the chase, Drunk Girl ends up sleeping on part of me. It was awkward.

Friend comes back, takes Drunk Girl away. Next day, friend returns. I have my nintendo now, and it's really doing a number to keep my attention. I love Super Mario Bros. 3, so I'm kickin' ass in it. Now friend (1) and new friend (2) come in and decide to play. So they have my nintendo. I'm coping. Friend 1 leaves and Friend 2 is still there. She dies because I guess she sucked at Super Mario Bros. 3. I did not. I took Friend 1's turn... several times. The game is beaten now (thanks to me, for the record), and Friend 2 is marveling at my gaming abilities. Ladies and gentlemen, it's 2001 and I'm mastering nintendo. I have no gaming abilities. Being a lonely bastard, I took her up on an invitation to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas the next night.

I've liked Tim Burton for a long time. Of course there's the glorious Batman, the beautifully accurate Edward Scissorhands, the humorous Frankenweenie, and the rest, like Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks!, and Beetle Juice-- all of which I enjoyed. I like him. He's a sicko with a brilliant eye. And the biggest drawback to his entire career was Planet of the Apes, which I saw with Laura Longo, who I was missing terribly at the time of this story. Needless to say, most kids my age were introduced to Burton through the animated A Nightmare Before Christmas, and I hadn't seen it. I had to take my chance-- for the appreciation of cinema! Seriously, too. (PS-- Ed Wood is a total masterpiece.)

I go over to watch the movie and her roommate is getting ready to go out. Roommate wants no distractions, so we go to watch the movie in the lounge. I was relieved. Mind you, as easy as it is to love the tubby funny kid, he never gets the girl, so I was relieved that we were in a public area and that I wouldn't have to worry about anything-- I'd never dealt with a girl before. I enjoyed the movie, until she turned it off. I was in disarray. She left to go back to the room. It was empty. She wanted to move back there. We go in, she pops in the movie, to continue, and then the roommate comes back from the shower in her towel. I'm professional-- I grew up with mom and sister-- I'm not fainting at a woman in a towel. But we have to move again. Back in the lounge, I'm having a terrible time. If you like movies, then you don't like to have them broken up by shit like this.

We end up back in the room to finish off the movie. Now, you enter the mind of Pete Phillips. First note: Dave Matthews Band and Blink 182 posters, alongside Linkin Park, if I remember correctly. By this moment I'd had my musical revolution into independent music. These people were trash. And so I sit on the roommate's bed to watch the movie. Then I'm informed that this won't fly with the roomie, who I bet could care less. I move over to her bed. I'm sitting with my legs off the bed, because that's how you sit on a stranger's bed. She tells me, in "silly-goose" fashion, that I'd have to sit with my legs on the bed. I back up, sitting parallel to the pillows, with my legs on the bed and my feet dangling off. I'm informed that she won't be able to see through me, and that sitting length-wise on the bed was the only answer.

So I'm pinned between her and a wall, trying to enjoy my cinematic experience without and sudden moves. I don't remember much of the movie. It was too much. Linkin Park? Are you for real?! Who likes them? And moreover? Who actually admits to liking them?! The movie ends, but now I'm faced with the escape, which didn't happen. She starts another movie. Ben Stiller's in it, but I'd never heard of it. It was her favorite. It was a piss-poor favorite. It was a mediocre movie that would be lost in the sea of mediocre movies released every year. I don't know what it was called. That movie ends and I get to leave. This is because King's has a visitation policy. It says that boys are allowed in the girls dorm until 2:00 AM on Fridays and Saturdays, midnight for the rest of the week. A lot of people think that's bogus, but I was appreciating it at this point. I'm cramped from remaining tight and motionless for four hours, without going to the bathroom, mind you.

Days went on and things got severely uncomfortable, so I played the avoidance game hard. I managed to avert danger for quite some time. The relationship between Tim and I was even strengthened a bit when he would berate the girl when she came by, trying make her not want to come back, and thereby seal the room as my fortress. And for a slight resolution, I will say that I think the girl's doing just fine for herself and that's great. I met more friends and forgot about the lonely days of freshman year (until now, when all my friends moved away to get jobs or go to grad school), but sometimes it's still fun to look back on what was and how I still have no real idea how The Nightmare Before Christmas ended. Maybe some other time, huh?