i'm kael's ghost

This kid comes up to the counter: he's in the 15-17 range. totally stoned. wearing his ballcap sideways, huge puffy jacket, jeans hanging below his ass, Nike sneakers, giant fake diamond earring.... Him: "Hey." Me: "Hi." Him: "Where are the Rob Zombie movies? Are they all together?" Me: "Which one are you looking for? They're alphabetized." (I start heading around the counter so I can grab whatever movie he wants.) Him: "Uh... anything except "Devil's Rejects"....... or "House of 1000 Corpses"....." I stop. Me: "So you're looking for 'Halloween'?" Him: blank stare Me: "There's only 3 movies... you're looking for 'Halloween'?" He keeps rambling here, but I'm not listening... I'm looking for the movie. I hand him the movie and walk away.

Part one: my life as a film student. During my junior year, while I was hacking away at my degree, my soon-to-be-plan sponsor approached me during an intermission at a play: (here's my abbreviated version of the conversation) "Want to teach a class with me?" "Sure. what's the class on?" "Violence in film." We decided that we'd each choose a certain number of movies to show, plus a few extras, and then John would handle the writing portion (being the writing instructor). So we set about selecting movies. I will now jump ahead in this fascinating story to the part where John picks a little-known-German film called " Funny Games ."  He had just seen it recently and - if I remember correctly - it was so striking a film it had "inspired" him to teach this "film violence" class. I go out and rent the movie... it's brilliant. It's the most brutal bits of " A Clockwork Orange " ...