Chilling Classics Cthursday: COVID (2025)

I thought I might be able to take a dip in the Mill Creek this week but it is not happening, I am sorry to say. I felt a bit better yesterday but I feel a bit worse today, and I know it's only been a couple of days but time has been very amorphous and I now fear I will be trapped in this forever. 

Time has been very amorphous because, you know, quarantine fugue. But it also owes to the fact that I am not engaging in usual home activities: movies, books, games. Besides reading two chapters of a book, literally the only thing I have done is watch Vanderpump Rules.

If you don't know, it's a Real Housewives spinoff that follows the lives of the young folk who work at the West Hollywood restaurant SUR, co-owned by Lisa Vanderpump, formerly of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. It's been airing since 2013. 

I never indulged (though Housewives friends have long told me to) because what care I for the exploits of the young? Besides, knowing there are 11 seasons of it to catch up on is awfully intimidating. Well, something in my brain decided that the time was finally right, and while I am certainly not going to say I'm grateful for catching Covid, I will say that I am grateful to myself for using Covid as an excuse to indulge. It is magnificent.

So when I am not wandering aimlessly around my apartment or ordering more supplies, I am watching VPR. Time has not only been amorphous, it truly no longer has meaning. 

Here is a selfie of me between episodes, calling the grocery store to demand they SEND MORE ONIONS.

"Stacie," you are surely thinking, "We barely tolerate your Real Housewives asides, references, and blather. This tolerance will absolutely not extend to Vanderpump Rules, so please don't start."

Don't worry, I won't! I only mention this at all because check this out, it's relevant, I swear.

So in season 2, Tom Sandoval's band has a ~~big moment~~ opening for Martha Davis and The Motels at Lake Arrowhead, a mountain resort east of Los Angeles. What I was not expecting was this:

1) Yes, their band is called "Pierce the Arrow." No, I don't know what that means.

2) Yes, I took a vertical video of my TV in the moment! Leave me alone, I have Covid.

3) REGGIE BANNISTER??? On my Vanderpump Rules??? Introducing acts at Lake Arrowhead????? 

Well knock me over with a ponytail! 

It's the most random cameo of all time, surely. 

I love Phantasm so much. Like I don't know if I'd put in in my top 20 ever--maybe my top 50? But I do have such feelings for it, mostly because it scared the heccccckkkkk out of me as a youth, so badly that were I to watch it now, I'd probably still be a bit unsettled at least. I don't know how someone watching it for the first time today would feel about it, but for me it'll always be a bit of a nightmare.

Okay that's the update from Plague Central. This has wiped me out, back to the couch...and VPR. Fingers crossed an uncredited Lance Henriksen shows up in the background at SUR as the youths tear into one another over today's betrayal.