#this screenshot of louis is the gift that just keeps on giving

[glitteringpoet1685]

Mfw I am reading the book where I have seen multiple people say that Lestat will kiss his own mother, tongue and all, and Lestat does in fact snog his own mother:

[betterdaysareatoenailaway]

Random Review #3: Sleepwalkers (1992) and “Sleep Walk” (1959)

I. Sleepwalkers (1992) I couldn’t sleep last night so I started watching a trashy B-movie penned by Stephen King specifically for the screen called Sleepwalkers (1992). Simply put, the film is an unmitigated disaster. A piece of shit. But it didn’t need to be. That’s what’s so annoying about it. By 1992 King was a grizzled veteran of the silver screen, with more adaptations under his belt than any other author of his cohort. Puzo had the Godfather films (1972 and 1974, respectively), sure, but nothing else. Leonard Gardner had Fat City (1972), a movie I love, but Gardner got sucked into the Hollywood scene of cocaine and hot tub parties and never published another novel, focusing instead on screenplays for shitty TV shows like NYPD Blue. After Demon Seed (1977), a movie I have seen and disliked, nobody would touch Dean Koontz’s stuff with a ten foot pole, which is too bad because The Voice of the Night, a 1980 novel about two young pals, one of whom is a psychopath trying to convince the other to help him commit murder, would make a terrific movie. But Koontz’s adaptations have been uniformly awful. The made-for-TV film starring John C McGinley, 1997′s Intensity, is especially bad. There are exceptions, but Stephen King has been lucky enough to avoid the fate of his peers. Big name directors have tackled his work, from Stanley Kubrick to Brian De Palma. King even does a decent job of acting in Pet Semetary (1989), in his own Maximum Overdrive (1986) and in George Romero’s Creepshow (1982), where he plays a yokel named Jordy Verril who gets infected by a meteorite that causes green weeds to grow all over his body. Many have criticized King’s over-the-top performance in that flick, but for me King perfectly nails the campy and comical tone that Romero was going for. The dissolves in Creepshow literally come right off the pages of comics, so people expecting a subtle Ordinary People-style turn from King had clearly walked into the wrong theatre. Undoubtedly Creepshow succeeds at what it set out to do. I’m not sure Sleepwalkers succeeds though, unless the film’s goal was to get me to like cats even more than I already do. But I already love cats a great deal. Here’s my cat Cookie watching me edit this very blog post. 

And here’s one of my other cats, Church, named after the cat that reanimates and creeps out Louis and Ellie in Pet Sematary. Photo by @ScareAlex.

SPOILER ALERT: Do not keep reading if you plan on watching Sleepwalkers and want to find out for yourself what happens.

Stephen King saw many of his novels get adapted in the late 1970s and 80s: Carrie, The Shining, Firestarter, Christine, Cujo, and the movie that spawned the 1950s nostalgia industrial complex, Stand By Me, but Sleepwalkers was the first time he wrote a script specifically for the screen rather than adapting a novel that already existed. Maybe that’s why it’s so fucking bad. Stephen King is a novelist, gifted with a novelist’s rich imagination. He’s prone to giving backstories to even the most peripheral characters - think of Joe Chamber’s alcoholic neighbour Gary Pervier in the novel Cujo, who King follows for an unbelievable number of pages as the man stumbles drunkenly around his house spouting his catch phrase “I don’t give a shit,” drills a hole through his phone book so he can hang it from a string beside his phone, complains about his hemorrhoids getting “as big as golfballs” (I’m not joking), and just generally acts like an asshole until a rabid Cujo bounds over, rips his throat out, and he bleeds to death. In the novel Pervier’s death takes more than a few pages, but it makes for fun reading. You hate the man so fucking much that watching him die feels oddly satisfying. In the movie, though, his death occurs pretty quickly, and in a darkened hallway, so it’s hard to see what’s going on aside from Gary’s foot trembling. And Pervier’s “I don’t give a shit” makes sense when he’s drilling a hole in the phone book, not when he’s about to be savagely attacked by a rabid St Bernard. There’s just less room for back story in movies. In a medium that demands pruning and chiseling and the “less is more” dictum, King’s writing takes a marked turn for the worse. King is a prose maximalist, who freely admits to “writing to outrageous lengths” in his novels, listing It, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers as particularly egregious examples of literary logorrhea. He is not especially equipped to write concisely. This weakness is most apparent in Sleepwalkers’ dialogue, which sounds like it was supposed to be snappy and smart, like something Aaron Sorkin would write, but instead comes off like an even worse Tango & Cash, all bad jokes and shitty puns. More on those bad jokes later. First, the plot.

Sleepwalkers is about a boy named Charles and his mother Mary who travel around the United States killing and feeding off the lifeforce of various unfortunate people (if this sounds a little like The True Knot in Doctor Sleep, you’re not wrong. But self-plagiarism is not a crime). Charles and Mary are shapeshifting werewolf-type creatures called werecats, a species with its very own Wikipedia page. Wikipedia confers legitimacy dont’cha know, so lets assume werecats are real beings. According to said page, a werecat, “also written in a hyphenated form as were-cat) is an analogy to ‘werewolf’ for a feline therianthropic creature.” I’m gonna spell it with the hyphen from now on because “werecats” just looks like a typo. Okay? Okay.

Oddly enough, the were-cats in Sleepwalkers are terrified of cats. Actual cats. For the were-cats, cute kittens = kryptonite. When they see a cat or cats plural, this happens to them:

^ That is literally a scene from the movie. Charles is speeding when a cop pulls alongside him and bellows at him to pull over. Ever the rebel, Charles flips the cop the finger. But the cop has a cat named Clovis in his car, and when the cat pops up to have a look at the kid (see below), Charles shapeshifts first into a younger boy, then into whatever the fuck that is in the above screenshot.

Now, the were-cats aversion to normal cats is confusing because one would assume a were-cat to be a more evolved (or perhaps devolved?) version of the typical house kitty. The fact that these were-cats are bipedal alone suggests an advantage over our furry four-legged friends, no? Kinda like if humans were afraid of fucking gorillas. Wait...we are scared of gorillas. And chimpanzees. And all apes really. Okay, maybe the conceit of the film isn’t so silly after all. The film itself, however, is about as silly as a bad horror movie can get. When the policeman gets back to precinct and describes the incident above (”his face turned into a blur”) he is roundly ridiculed because in movies involving the supernatural nobody believes in the supernatural until it confronts them. It’s the law, sorry. Things don’t end well for the cop. Or for the guy who gets murdered when the mom stabs him with...an ear of corn. Yes, an ear of corn. Somehow, the mother is able to jam corn on the cob through a man’s body, without crushing the vegetable or turning it into yellow mash. It’s pretty amazing. Here is a sample of dialog from that scene: Cop About To Die On The Phone to Precinct: There’s blood everywhere! *STAB* Murderous Mother: No vegetables, no dessert. That is actually a line in the movie. “No vegetables, no dessert.” It’s no “let off some steam, Bennett” but it’s close. Told ya I’d get back to the bad jokes. See, Mary and Charles are new in town and therefore seeking to ingratiate themselves by killing everyone who suspects them of being weird, all while avoiding cats as best they can. At one point Charles yanks a man’s hand off and tells him to "keep [his] hands to [him]self," giving the man back his severed bloody hand. Later on Charles starts dating a girl who will gradually - and I do mean gradually - come to realize her boyfriend is not a real person but in fact a were-cat. Eventually our spunky young protagonist - Madchen Amick, who fans of Twin Peaks will recognize as Shelly - and a team of cats led by the adorable Clovis- kill the were-cat shapeshifting things and the sleepy small town (which is named Travis for some reason) goes back to normal, albeit with a slightly diminished population. For those keeping score, that’s Human/Cat Alliance 1, Shapeshifting Were-cats 0. It is clear triumph for the felis catus/people team! Unless we’re going by kill count, in which case it is closer to Human/Cat Alliance 2, Were-cats 26. I arrived at this figure through my own notes but also through a helpful video that takes a comprehensive and complete “carnage count” of all kills in Sleepwalkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmt-DroK6uA

II. Santo & Johnny “Sleep Walk” (1959) Because Sleepwalkers is decidedly not known for its good acting or its well-written screenplay, it is perhaps best known for its liberal and sometimes contrapuntal use of Santo & Johnny’s classic steel guitar song “Sleep Walk,” possibly the most famous (and therefore best) instrumental of the 20th century. Some might say “Sleep Walk” is tied for the #1 spot with “Green Onions” by Booker T & the M.G.’s and/or “Wipe Out” by The Surfaris, but I disagree. The Santo & Johnny song is #1 because of its incalculable influence on all subsequent popular music. 

I’m not saying “Wipe Out” didn't inspire a million imitators, both contemporaneously and even decades later…for example here’s a surf rock instrumental from 1999 called “Giant Cow" by a Toronto band called The Urban Surf Kings. The video was one of the first to be animated using Flash (and it shows):

So there are no shortage of surf rock bands, even now, decades after its emergence from the shores of California to the jukeboxes of Middle America. My old band Sleep for the Nightlife used to regularly play Rancho Relaxo with a surf rock band called the Dildonics, who I liked a great deal. There's even a Danish surf rock band called Baby Woodrose, whose debut album is a favourite of mine. They apparently compete for the title of Denmark’s biggest surf pop band with a group called The Setting Son. When a country that has no surfing culture and no beaches has multiple surf rock bands, it is safe to say the genre has attained international reach. As far as I can tell, there aren’t many bands out there playing Booker T & the M.G.’s inspired instrumental rock. Link Wray’s “Rumble” was released four years before “Green Onions.” But the influence of Santo and Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” is so ubiquitous as to be almost immeasurable. The reason for this is the sheer popularity of the song’s chord progression. If Santo and Johnny hadn’t written it first, somebody else would have, simply because the progression is so beautiful and easy on the ears and resolvable in a satisfying way. Have a listen to “Sleep Walk” first and then let’s check out some songs it directly inspired. 

The chords are C, A minor, F and G. Minor variations sometimes reverse the last two chords, but if it begins with C to A minor, you can bet it’s following the “Sleep Walk” formula, almost as if musicians influenced by the song are in the titular trance. When it comes to playing guitar, Tom Waits once said “your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they’ve been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don’t explore; you only play what is confident and pleasing.” Not only is it comforting to play and/or hear what we already know, studies have shown that our brains actively resist new music, because it takes work to understand the new information and assimilate it into a pattern we are cogent of. It isn’t until the brain recognizes the pattern that it gives us a dopamine rush. I’m not much for Pitchfork anymore, but a recent article they posted does a fine job of discussing this phenomenon in greater detail.

Led Zeppelin’s “D’Yer Maker” uses the “Sleep Walk” riff prominently, anchored by John Bonham and John Paul Jones’ white-boy reggae beat: 

Here it is again with Del Shannon’s classic “Little Town Flirt.” I love Shannon’s falsetto at the end when he goes “you better run and hide now bo-o-oy.”

The Beatles “Happiness is a Warm Gun” uses the Sleep Walk progression, though not for the whole song. It goes into the progression at the bridge at 1:34: 

Tumblr won’t let me embed any more videos, so you’ll to travel to another tab to hear these songs, but Neil Young gets in on the act with his overlooked classic “Winterlong:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV6r66n3TFI On their 1996 EP Interstate 8 Modest Mouse pay direct homage by singing over their own rendition of the original Santo & Johnny version, right down to the weeping steel guitar part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT_PwXjCqqs The vocals are typical wispy whispered indie rock vocals, but I think they work, particularly the two different voices. They titled their version “Sleepwalking (Couples Only Dance Prom Night).”

Dwight Yoakam’s “Thousand Miles From Nowhere” makes cinematic use of it. This song plays over the credits of one of my all-time favourite movies, 1993′s Red Rock West feat. Nicolas Cage, Lara Flynn Boyle, Dennis Hopper, and J.T. Walsh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu3ypuKq8WE

“39″ is my favourite Queen song. I guess now I know why. It uses my fav chord progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8kGMfXaFU 

Blink 182 scored their first hit “Dammit” with a minor variation on the Sleep Walk chord progression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT0g16_LQaQ

Midwest beer drinkin bar rockers Connections scored a shoulda-been-a-hit with the fist-pumping “Beat the Sky:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSNRq0n_WYA You’d be hard pressed to find a weaker lead singer than this guy (save for me, natch), but they make it work. This one’s an anthem.

Spoon, who have made a career out of deconstructing rock n’ roll, so that their songs sometimes sound needlessly sparse (especially “The Ghost of You Lingers,” which takes minimalism to its most extreme...just a piano being bashed on staccato-style for four minutes), so it should surprise nobody that they re-arrange the Sleep Walk chords on their classic from Gimme Fiction, “I Summon You:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teXA8N3aF9M I love that opening line: remember the weight of the world was a sound that we used to buy? I think songwriter Britt Daniel is talking about buying albums from the likes of Pearl Jam or Smashing Pumpkins, any of those grunge bands with pessimistic worldviews. There are a million more examples. I remember seeing some YouTube video where a trio of gross douchebros keep playing the same progression while singing a bunch of hits over it. I don’t like the smarmy way they do it, making it seem like artists are lazy and deliberately stealing. I don’t think it’s plagiarism to use this progression. And furthermore, tempo and production make all the difference. Take “This Magic Moment” for example. There's a version by Jay & the Americans and one by Ben E King & the Drifters. I’ve never been a fan of those shrieking violins or fiddles that open the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bacBKKgc4Uo The Jay & the Americans version puts the guitar riff way in the forefront, which I like a lot more. The guitar plays the entire progression once before the singing starts and the band joins in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKfASw6qoag

Each version has its own distinctive feel. They are pretty much two different songs. Perhaps the most famous use of the Sleep Walk progression is “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers, which is one of my favourite songs ever. The guy who chose to let Bobby Hatfield sing this one by himself must have kicked himself afterwards when it became a hit, much bigger than "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiyq2xrSI0

What can you say about “Unchained Melody” that hasn’t already been said? God, that miraculously strong vocal, the way the strings (and later on, brass horns) are panned way over to the furthest reaches the left speaker while the drums and guitar are way over in the right, with the singing smack dab in the middle creates a kind of distance and sharp clarity that has never been reproduced in popular music, like seeing the skyscrapers of some distant city after an endless stretch of highway. After listening to “Unchained Melody,” one has to wonder: can that progression ever be improved upon? Can any artist write something more haunting, more beautiful, more uplifting than that? The “need your love” crescendo hits so fucking hard, as both the emotional and the sonic climax of the song, which of course is no accident...the strings descending and crashing like a waterfall of sound, it gets me every fucking time. Legend has it that King George II was so moved by the “Hallelujah” section of Handel’s “Messiah” that he stood up, he couldn't help himself, couldn't believe what he was hearing. I get that feeling with all my favourite songs. "1979." "Unchained Melody." "In The Still of the Night." "Digital Bath." "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" "Interstate." "Liar's Tale." “Gimme Shelter.” The list goes on and on. Music is supposed to move us.

King George II stood because he was moved to do so. Music may be our creation, but it isn't our subordinate. All those sci-fi stories warning about technology growing beyond our control aren’t that far-fetched. Music is our creation but its power lies beyond our control. We are subordinate to music, helpless against its power and might, its urgency and vitality and beauty. There have been many times in my life when I have been so obsessed with a particular song that I pretty much want to live inside of it forever. A house of sound. I remember detoxing from heroin and listening to Grimes “Realiti” on repeat for twelve hours. Detoxing from OxyContin and listening to The Beach Boys “Dont Worry Baby” over and over. Or just being young and listening to “Tonight Tonight” over and over and over, tears streaming from my eyes in that way you cry when you’re a kid because you just feel so much and you don’t know what to do with the intensity of those feelings. It is precisely because we are so moved by music that we keep creating it. And in the act of that creation we are free. There are no limits to that freedom, which is why bands time and time again return to the well-worn Sleep Walk chord progression and try to make something new from it. Back in 2006, soon after buying what was then the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, I found myself playing the album’s closing track over and over. I loved the chorus and I loved the way it collapses into a lo-fi demo at the very end, stripping away the studio sheen and...not to be too punny, showing its bones (the album title is Show Your Bones). Later on I would realize that the song, called “Turn Into,” uses the Sleep Walk chord progression. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exqCFoPiwpk

It’s just like, what Waits said, our hands goes to where we are familiar. And so do our ears, which is why jazz often sounds so unpleasant to us upon first listen. Or Captain Beefheart. But it’s worth the effort to discover new stuff, just as it’s worth the effort to try and write it. I recently lamented on this blog that music to me now is more about remembrance than discovery, but I’m still only 35 years old. I’m middle-aged right now (I don’t expect to live past 70, not with the lifestyle I’ve been living). There’s still a whole other half life to find new music and love and leave it for still newer stuff. It’s worth the challenge, that moment of inner resistance we feel when confronted with something new and challenging and strange sounding. The austere demands of adult life, rent and routine, take so much of our time. I still make time for creative pursuits, but I don’t really have much time for discovery, for seeking out new music. But I’ve resolved to start making more time. A few years ago I tried to listen to and like Trout Mask Replica but I couldn’t. I just didn’t get what was going on. It sounded like a bunch of mistakes piled on top of each other. But then a few days ago I was writing while listening to music, as I always do, and YouTube somehow landed on Lick My Decals Off, Baby. I didn’t love what I was hearing but I was intrigued enough to keep going. And now I really like this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMnd9dvb3sA&pbjreload=101 Another example I’ll give is the rare Robert Pollard gem “Prom Is Coming.” The first time I heard this song, it sounded like someone who can’t play guitar messing around, but the more I heard it the more I realized there’s a song there. It’s weird and strange, but it’s there. The lyrics are classic Pollard: Disregard injury and race madly out of the universe by sundown. Pollard obviously has a special place in his heart for this track. He named one of his many record labels Prom Is Coming Records and he titled the Boston Spaceships best-of collection Out of the Universe By Sundown. I don’t know if I’ll ever become a Captain Beefheart megafan but I can hear that the man was doing something very strange and, at times, beautiful. And anyway, why should everything be easy? Aren’t some challenges worth meeting for the experience waiting on the other side of comprehension or acceptance? I try to remember this now whenever I’m first confronted with new music, instead of vetoing it right away. Most of my favourite bands I was initially resistant to when I first heard them. Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Guided by Voices, Spoon, Heavy Times. All bands I didn’t like at first.  I don’t wanna sleepwalk through life, surrounding myself only with things I have already experienced. I need to stay awake. Because soon enough I’ll be asleep forever. We need to try everything we can before the Big Sleep comes to take us back to the great blankness, the terrible question mark that bookends our lives.

[evenstevensranked]

#12: Season 1, Episode 15 - “Heck of a Hanukkah”

After sneaking a peek at -- and accidentally breaking -- all of his family’s Hanukkah presents, Louis gets grounded for the holiday and believes the Stevens tribe would be better if he was never born. He travels through time and space “It's A Wonderful Life” style thanks to the guidance of his great Bubbe Rose, who shows him what a world without Louis Stevens would actually be like. 

First off, I'd like to point out that I own this episode on an official Disney Holiday DVD. So I took that as an opportunity to have HQ screenshots for once!!! :) But, yes. This is the obligatory "Christmas episode" which I’m pretty positive every single TV series has. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like Christmas episodes can tend to be forgettable and generic. This one, however, is such a classic. 

One thing I wanna mention before we dive into this thing: This episode is filmed weirdly. It has a very “soap opera” feel to it? Is it possible that it was shot at 60fps? That’s the only explanation I can think of. It always bothered me that this is the only episode out of all 65 that looks and feels entirely different than the others. I wonder why that is...? That being said, I always had such fond memories of this one.

It opens with Louis snooping around in Ren’s closet for their Hanukkah presents. (“Give it up, Louis. You are never going to find them!”) But, you see... he’s determined to find them because he’s Louis Stevens and this is what he does. 

This leads into a bit where Ren chases Louis into Donnie’s room and Louis “accidentally” (but Shia is obviously doing it purposely) knocks over all of Donnie’s trophies on the way out. THIS BOTHERS ME SO MUCH! What the heck?

He’s literally fine, and then... he just sticks his arm out, lol. Also, are all of the shelves magically connected? Why do those upper shelves collapse when Louis only wrecked the lower one? Questions. 

Louis keeps running and eventually ends up in the basement. He concludes that the presents must be down there somewhere. They chose to add this weird effect here where Louis’ mind works like a high tech computer, allowing him to scan and successfully know where the presents aren’t just by looking at the potential hiding places:

He doesn’t even TRY to check these places. He just knows. I swear, when I was a kid I genuinely thought this was some plot twist and Louis was actually a cyborg like Cookie from “Ned’s Declassified” this whole time or something. 

Of course, Louis finds the presents in a trunk with the clever message “Louis, please clean out this trunk!” taped to it. Yeah, the reverse psychology alllllmost worked there, but Louis is smarter than that.

Meanwhile, Eileen is cooking dinner upstairs. She’s casually telling Steve, Ren and Donnie the story of Hanukkah for the first time in years while they help her prepare. Since they’re distracted by the tale, Louis manages to smuggle all of the presents out of the basement and sneaks right past his family. I love that they actually wrote the Stevens Family as half Jewish on Eileen's side specifically, though. I mentioned this recently! It totally mirrors Shia’s real life and I think that’s pretty cool. 

Notice Louis hiding behind that pile presents he’s carrying on the far right lol

Having them celebrate the Jewish holiday for the “Christmas” episode is pretty nice too. I think this might’ve been my first exposure to the Jewish faith now that I think about it. Eileen’s little story of Hanukkah works subtly here. It's educational in a non-preachy way, which is an absolute feat in comparison to other Disney shows that hit you over the head with the intended lesson of the day (I’m looking at you, Girl Meets World...)

Louis rushes upstairs to his room where he hides under the covers and RIPS OPEN EVERY SINGLE PRESENT. Okay. I understand and remember the anticipation of the holidays and wanting to know what gifts you’re getting... but to actually OPEN every single one?!?! Like, really Louis? Whatever happened to simply shaking a gift and trying to guess what it is? Honestly. Was he planning on rewrapping all of them?! How? 

Just as Louis finishes opening all the gifts, Steve calls for him and comes walking upstairs wondering what he’s doing up there! Louis panics and tries to stash the gifts somewhere all bundled up in a sheet. His room is a pigsty and his closet is beyond full -- so the only place he can think to put them is OUT THE WINDOW!!! Yeah. The bundle of gifts goes tumbling down the roof and splatters all over the driveway. The entire family march up to his room piiiiised off as they stare out the window at the trashed gifts. 

"Hey! It's not my fault we live in a two-story house! I have always said that I like ranch style!" -- Louis Stevens. One of my favorite quotes ever.

They throw in a line from Steve here “Is this gonna happen again next week when my cousins are here to celebrate Christmas with us?!” simply letting us know that Steve’s side of the family is likely Christian/Catholic... which also mirrors Shia’s real life. Seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is kinda awesome? Not only because they seemingly wrote that around him -- but as someone who’s biracial, I just love to see any sort of blended family represented in TV/Film. 

Eileen grounds Louis for Hanukkah and The Remorse™ seeps in. Louis flops on his bed all depressed with the words of his disappointed family reverberating in his head. They make a point to emotionally pan over to this family photo on his bedside:

THIS IS SO CUTE! We see near-identical photos to this throughout the series, but this one is so happy and genuine looking. Does Ren have Louis in a loveable headlock?! Precious. 

This fades into a MIRROR TALK!!! Yesssss. I think this is the last we ever see of these lovely talks before they mysteriously stopped. :( But, hey! It’s a powerful one to end on! Louis thinks out loud as usual and says that he doesn't belong in the Stevens family -- that they'd be better if he was never born. 

Enter: his Bubbe Rose! (”My Boobie WHAT?!”) The ghost of his great great great great grandmother, played by Donna Pescow in some serious age makeup!! She comes flying through his bedroom window right on cue ready to take him on a ~magical journey.~ There’s a wonderful, perfectly timed Louis Scream here. There’s also a bit where Louis doesn’t believe that she’s a ghost, so she makes herself disappear and Shia presumably ad-libs looking for her between his box spring and mattress. This always cracked me up. 

That scream. You can hear this gif. 

Bubbe Rose is apparently Louis’ grandmother from only 4 generations ago but says that she has 7,000 grandchildren. How does that make any sense at all? lol. SOMEONE must’ve got busy in that family. Anyway... They embark on their journey by flying around the moon a few times and over the city, leaving a trail of rainbow light behind them. No biggie. They pretty much look exactly like the “The More You Know” shooting star:

“AHGHHH! WE’RE FLYIN!!”

They land (very roughly) right outside of Louis’ house. Except, it’s not really Louis’ house anymore. Bubbe Rose explains that they’re in a dimension where he was never born. Once again, Louis doesn’t believe her even though she just took him flying around the moon. He slaps himself in the face to prove that he is in fact born, but Bubbe Rose insists that his family will not be able to see or hear him. Louis thinks it’s a load of malarkey. He sarcastically shouts “Whatever you say! Give my regards to Casper, okay?" as he marches into the house like he owns the place. I absolutely love that Casper line. Oh my god. 

As soon as Louis walks into the dining room, Steve seemingly turns around to greet him with his arms outstretched “SON!” but... well...

Honestly, that’s some great CGI for a 2001 Disney Channel show. Wow!

Turns out they’re actually greeting their alternate son named Curtis (Played by Chris Marquette, who you’ve definitely seen in a zillion other things) and he's the polar opposite of Louis. He’s a perfect student and top-tier athlete... But, there’s one little catch -- he’s a complete and total demon child. And no, not the “Louis Stevens” brand of demon child but literally “The Omen” brand of demon child. He is a nightmare. Curtis tells the family that he was voted “Best All Around Student of All Time” by the school board which is definitely not a real award. Louis feels like a loser and a letdown to his family in comparison. 

Remember that happy family photo they made sure to show us earlier? Well, now we get this alternate dimension Stevens family portrait in contrast: 

Yeah. Not as happy. 

Louis is sitting on the stairs gazing at the portrait when Bubbe Rose randomly appears on his lap. (“AGHHHHH! Can you stop with these landings?!” haha!) At first, Louis thinks his family would be 100x better without him. Like, he actually looks at that portrait and believes that they look so much happier, which is obviously supposed to be a joke lol. He hates what the magical journey has taught him and makes sure Bubbe Rose knows: 

We go on to learn that Louis' absence has somehow thrown off every member of the family and their personalities. Ren's an edgy, messy, wild punk chick with a boyfriend named Spider. Donnie's a "wuss" (Louis' words) whose only accomplishment and prized possession is a tiny trophy he won for a 1st-grade spelling bee (His winning word was "Ride: R-I-D-Silent E,” which he frantically repeats to himself for comfort whenever he feels dumb.) Louis is just sitting in Ren’s room observing this warped iteration of the Stevens family when Curtis walks in and berates Ren and Donnie for talking so loudly while he’s studying. Suddenly, Bubbe Rose discreetly appears and softly kisses Louis on the head, magically making him visible to everyone now. Curtis tells Ren and Donnie to get rid of him and Louis is so confused. Oh, man. It gets hilarious now. 

Ren and Donnie are all like ‘who the hell are you?’ Louis insists “No, you can’t see me I’m invisible” lol. When that doesn’t work, he scrambles to come up with an identity. ("I’m Louis Steve-o-saurus... And I’m a foreign exchange student from Pennsylvania.”) I love how that’s a good enough explanation for Alternate Ren and Donnie. They just accept the fact that this random kid they don’t know appeared out of thin air in their house. Louis says “your brother’s a creep” and that’s all it takes to set off a heart-to-heart convo. 

Punk Ren is actually kinda great. 

They sit down and tell him "You have no idea what it's like to be related to someone who's perfect at everything they do" -- Obviously, this is not true and Louis knows all too well. He relates and explains that you have to "focus on your own good qualities" to deal with it. You can tell that he’s teaching himself the lesson as much as he’s teaching it to them.  

It cuts to Alternate Ren and Donnie heading downstairs to ask Eileen and Steve if they can have a friend come over for Hanukkah dinner. Louis quietly follows them down to the kitchen and interjects “Uh.. Hi, there!” from the doorway. Steve turns around and shouts “WHO.. WHO’S THAT?!?!” so loudly. Tom Virtue is always so extra, I love it. This brings us to one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. Good lord, I love this so much: 

"I mean, I have a family. It's just, we don't... celebrate........ dinner.”

Things go from 0 to 100 after Louis offers to put their chicken in the oven and accidentally drops it. The entire family starts dying laughing because they never have any sort of fun thanks to overbearing, controlling psycho Curtis. It’s hysterical to me. When he first drops it, the silence that follows cracks me up. Then I laugh even harder when he purposely drops it a second time. It’s so good. I feel like Shia is just going to town with the whole dancing chicken thing. (“IT’S FREESTYLIN’!!!!!”) He goes on to put the chicken on his head and it’s great because the thing is obviously hollow and rubber lol. Can you imagine if a stranger actually did this, though?! That’s what makes it so freaking funny. If a random kid came into my house, dropped my chicken, put his hands all over it and proceeded to put it on his head and dance around after knowing me for a grand total of 30 seconds... I’d call the police so quick.

Curtis sees them having a good time and can’t stand it. He decides to frame Louis for stealing the family’s Hanukkah money. Ugh. Curtis interrupts the chicken train dance Louis is leading (see cover photo) and announces “someone has pilfered the Hanukkah money!” Donnie rejoices (much like in The Even Stevens Movie after they’re told they’ve been shunned lol) and Curtis clarifies “That means it’s STOLEN, PEBBLE-BRAIN!” Which is so mean, but so funny to me. 

The family goes over to the coat rack/table in the hallway where Steve left the envelope of money. Curtis helps him look and immediately “finds it” in Louis’ coat pocket. Wowww. He says “He’s a bad man, Mom,” like a little innocent baby before turning into a possessed devil child behind everyone’s backs. This kid is seriously so evil. 

This dramatic shot is accompanied by sinister music. Actually, dark/disturbing music plays whenever Curtis is on screen. It’s pretty funny.

The family starts interrogating Louis and he explains “I didn’t wanna steal any presents! I just wanted to be with you guys, my family.” And Steve goes OFFFFFF! “WHAT?! You come here and dance with our chicken and suddenly you're family?!" HAHAHAHAHA. Curtis has the phone ready to call the police -- took ‘em long enough! The family surrounds Louis and holds him down. Louis asks for Bubbe Rose to rescue him, but when that doesn’t work he clicks his heels together and chants “There’s no place like home.” Once again, an incredibly solid pop culture reference! It’s not a very original reference to make, but still! This show made a lot of timeless writing decisions and I can’t get over it. Sort of like Ren at the end of “Influenza,” Louis screams at the top of his lungs and wakes up back in the right universe, lol. 

The back-to-normal Stevens family decide that Hanukkah isn’t nearly as fun without Louis and un-ground him. They all head downstairs to light the menorah and sing a traditional song. Yay! It’s heartwarming.

Also like “Influenza,” it turns out that it was all a dream! OR WAS IT....?! Bubbe Rose makes an ACTUAL public appearance that night bearing magically repaired gifts! Whooaaaaaa! She pretends to be some random lady who was jogging by their house and noticed perfectly fine gifts in the trash. The family is shocked that everything is back in mint condition! And just like that, Bubbe Rose disappears and leaves them wondering how in the heck.....?! Bubbe reappears outside the kitchen window and shares a hush-hush lil moment with Louis. Awww. 

And that’s it!

This is such a cute episode. The “It’s A Wonderful Life” trope has been used to death in TV and film, but I really like how it was done here. You can always count on Even Stevens to bring its own unique flavor to anything. It works perfectly here because it organically continues the Louis narrative of him feeling like an outsider in his family. I love to see consistency like that. It also shows just how unique and important Louis really is to his family and their happiness. Although this is a “holiday special” episode, it still manages to feel like regular one to an extent and I love that. It’s a super engaging story full of heart and laughs. That chicken scene tho... Oh man. 

Also! In the end credits, they wrote “Bubbie Rose” with an ie, but I looked it up and the traditional way to spell it is “Bubbe” apparently. So, that’s what I went with! 

This episode’s Redbubble design is of Louis yelling the infamous boobie quote comic book style lol. This actually inadvertently makes a fantastic thank you note/greeting card and is available here. HAHA! I tried to stay true to the show’s color scheme of green/blue/purple as well. 

Thanks for reading!! 

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