Editorials
Examining the Nuclear Family in ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ (2006)
What is it about The Hills Have Eyes (2006) that’s so appealing? And what makes it “a perfect remake” in my eyes? 2006 was not a great time in America; even a foreign filmmaker could see that. America thrust itself into a false war for oil, under the guise of fighting terrorism, and the housing market was on the verge of its collapse. The Hills Have Eyes, and many of the reboots of this time took that anger many people felt and funneled that into the antagonists of some of our most beloved franchises. The antagonists in the original film were unquestionably bad people, but it’s the family in the reboot that feels even crueler and bloodthirsty. You see this in Michael Bay’s Texas Chainsaw, with Leatherface somehow being crueler and ominous. Hell, even Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers is a hulking, terrifying creature, much more than Carpenter’s original (don’t kill me). Seeing good ultimately besting this seemingly unbeatable evil brought a level of hope to some people who felt they had no other escape. Beauty dies at the beginning of the film and by the time Doug walks out of the canyon with Catherine in his arms, he’s guided out by Beast. I think the anger felt in the films of this time spoke with a world that was full of so much of it.
When you think of mid-aughts remakes or reboots what comes to mind? Halloween? The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? House of Wax? When I’m asked about remakes, one film always comes to mind immediately: The Hills Have Eyes. Critically mixed and financially successful, The Hills Have Eyes fell into the laps of horror fans amidst a barrage of remakes and reboots throughout the mid-aughts. Films like The Ring and The Grudge had proven remakes could be insanely financially successful, especially during October. What’s really interesting about the trend of mid-aughts remakes is how it didn’t start in the 2000s. Instead, it began in the year 1999.
In a move that would be copied by Michael Bay just a few years later, Academy Award Winner Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver created Dark Castle Entertainment. Dark Castle’s goal was to remake the films of genre icon William Castle. Little did they know they would start a trend to define an entire decade of horror. The first film from Dark Castle was House on Haunted Hill. The incredibly frightening remake would shoot to the number one spot at the box office upon its October release, grossing $15,946,032 in its opening weekend, setting a financial precedent on the validity of a new wave of remakes. Just three years later The Ring would not be able to beat Haunted Hill, with its $15,015,393 opening weekend. However, we can’t forget The Ring grossed a worldwide total of $249,348,933.
A String of Remakes Brings Us to The Hills
One year later, Michael Bay’s studio Platinum Dunes would try its hand at genre remakes with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This was when people realized remakes could be financially successful on IP alone as TCM made a whopping $10 million on opening day and a jaw-dropping $29 million on its opening weekend, despite overwhelmingly negative reviews. Finally, the fuel that catalyzed the aught’s remakes came from The Grudge. The Grudge had an opening weekend of $39,128,715, with a worldwide gross of $187 million! The rest of the 2000s would see the remakes of films like The Amityville Horror, Halloween, House of Wax, and A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Cut to 2006. Upon hearing of the financial success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, Wes Craven had an itch to bring one of his properties back. Instead of resurrecting his most successful franchise, A Nightmare on Elm Street, he decided his cult-favorite The Hills Have Eyes would be the perfect film to reboot. The 1977 release of The Hills Have Eyes was indeed a financial success, despite what producer Peter Locke would like to think. By October 1977, the film had made around $2 million, adjusted to almost $10 million today, on its budget of $350k to $700k. By the end of its theatrical run, it would make an incredible $25 million, adjusted for over $100 million. Okay, no more money talk. But that’s pretty impressive, no?
Alexandre Aja and the New French Extremity Influence
Wes Craven’s producing partner Marianne Maddalena introduced him to the New French Extremity film High Tension. Craven was impressed. After a meeting with Alexandre Aja, and his collaborator Grégory Levasseur, Wes Craven knew who would reboot his bloody desert story. Receiving mixed reviews, The Hills Have Eyes opened at third in the box office in March. Its run at the box office would gross 70 million dollars, absolutely eclipsing its $15 million dollar budget. And that is the story of what I would describe as, how the perfect reboot came to be. But what is it about this film that I, and many fans, love so much?
The Hills Have Eyes follows a family, well technically two families, on a road trip for their parent’s anniversary. We have Big Bob Carter (Ted Levine), his wife Ethel (Kathleen Quinlan), his daughters Brenda (Emilie de Ravin) and Lynn Carter-Bukowski (Vinessa Shaw), his son Bobby (Dan Byrd), Lynn’s husband Doug (Aaron Stanford), and Lynn and Doug’s baby Catherine (Maisie Camilleri Preziosi). After an accident with their car and camper, they find themselves stuck in the desert. Only they are not alone. In the hills, and over the ridge, reside a family of cannibal mutants led by Papa Jupiter (Billy Drago) and his children Lizard (Robert Joy), Big Brain (Desmond Askew), Goggle (Ezra Buzzington), Pluto (Michael Bailey Smith), Ruby (Laura Ortiz), Big Mama (Ivana Turchetto), Cyst (Greg Nicotero), Venus (Judith Jane Vallette), and Mercury (Adam Perrell).
Social Commentary in The Hills Have Eyes Remake
The original and the remake offer a few pieces of commentary, one being a hellish rebuke of class warfare, the haves and the have-nots. Where the remake becomes a lot more interesting than the original is who wrote and directed it. Having Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur on board for a film like this is almost the perfect match. They are no stranger to ultra-violence and political commentary. Stepping out of the shadow of their film about repressed sexuality and mental health, Aja and Lavasseur tell a tale that feels deeply American, even if the filmmakers are French. The script holds a mirror up to us and shows how much of the world sees Americans and how we treat the less fortunate. It’s even more true now than ever. Within a one-block vicinity of Penn Station, you’ll find a plethora of unhoused people the system has seemingly given up on. They’re demonized for the position they’re put in due to countless governmental failings and lack of genuine assistance.
The antagonists in The Hills Have Eyes find themselves forgotten by the world after a set of nuclear tests scourged their homes. What was once a thriving mining town is now a barren wasteland of a forgotten time. Now yes, they are cannibals and killers, but one can’t help but understand their ends are caused by the means. Like the original film, they’re not just cannibals, as The Carters’s dog Beauty is eaten in both films. The cannibal family has most likely hunted their respective land to near extinction, especially due to the size of some of the sons; they’re massive!
Creature Design: Inspired by Real-Life Tragedies
Cannibalism aside, the family looks quite gnarly. KNB EFX handled the arduous 6-month creature design process. However, it goes to show how much passion Aja and Lavasseur had as they had already visually conceived the creatures quite thoroughly. Their inspirations for the designs were based on real-life documentation of the fallout from places like Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Papa Jupiter and Big Mama are presumably the heads of the family. They don’t have any deformities, so we can assume their spawn were either hit from a very young age with large doses of radiation that affected their growth or the radiation received by Papa Jupiter and Big Mama affected their reproductive systems in a way that created their deformities. Part of me wants to believe that while Papa and Mama are the ring leaders, Big Brain is the logistics guy.
We do see humanity within the cannibal family from Ruby. What is Ruby’s role? Initially, we are introduced to Jeb (Tom Bower), the gas station owner. Ruby is seen bringing him a bag of goodies taken from previous victims. Jeb tells Ruby he’s out, and Ruby, who finds herself at the same crossroads, realizes there’s possibly a way out for her. When Bobby gets knocked out, Ruby makes sure he is safe from Goggle. After Catherine is kidnapped, Doug goes on a death mission to get her back at any cost. Thankfully, Ruby double kidnaps Catherine and tries whisking her away to safety; ultimately causing her brother’s death. The character of Ruby is written incredibly as a tragic antagonist. Thrust into a world of hate and violence, Ruby must overcome a life she’s always known to find her own true happiness. Ruby didn’t ask for this, and she’s determined to end this bloody charade one way or another.
Brutal Additions to the Original The Hills Have Eyes
Most of the remake follows closely to the original story. Still, there are a few grand additions that show just how ruthless the cannibal family is. Papa Jupiter takes advantage of an incredibly intoxicated Jeb, goading into blowing his head off with a shotgun. They also bring back Big Bob’s immolation. But the updated version of the fight between Pluto and Doug is probably the most memorable scene in the film. Their fight spans multiple rooms where Pluto has the upper hand most of the time. Pluto reveals either partial analgesia or a very low pain threshold when Doug stabs him in the stomach with a broken bat, it’s one heck of a stab. At some point later in the fight, Doug stabs Pluto in the foot with a screwdriver, and Pluto reacts in pain. The National Library of Medicine states, “Mutations in the voltage-gated sodium channels SCN9A and SCN11A can cause congenital painlessness.” So it’s not too far off to think some of the cannibals could have lessened pain receptors. Doug eventually bests Pluto in their fight, symbolically, piercing Pluto’s throat with a miniature American flag, and finishing him off with an axe to the head.
Pluto may be the most physically intimidating family member, but Lizard seems to be the most vile family member from what we see. Earlier it was mentioned that Jeb would get rewarded with goodies from victims. That’s because he provided them. Jeb sends The Carters down the “shortcut” because he felt he was being made fun of. Once they’re a significant distance away from the gas station, Lizard uses his spike strip whip to pop the tires on the truck. Later in the camper, when Big Bob is on fire Lizard bites the head off of one of The Carters’s birds, drinks its blood, then rapes Brenda. There’s finally some comeuppance for Lizard during a fight with Doug, when Ruby runs and tackles him off the cliff, killing both of them. This gives Ruby her chance to do something good and thin out the family’s numbers even further. By the film’s end, the only cannibal family members we know are still alive are Big Mama and the two children, Venus and Mercury, as Beast kills Big Brain earlier.
Cinematography and Visual Craftsmanship
Grégory Levasseur would not be the only person from High Tension to join Alexandre Aja on this project, they would also bring along cinematographer Maxime Alexandre. Frequent collaboration between brilliant minds yields the best results. Minute details do wonders to visually set The Hills Have Eyes apart from other films of the time. Messing with frame rates wasn’t new by any means, and films like The Ring and The Grudge even played around with them a bit. But it’s how the image was meticulously crafted in each scene, and whatever frame rate fit that exact emotion was used. Like when Doug enters the town, the frame rate is turned way up to give us a constant feeling of anxiety and pressure, only to then be brought back down, and immediately raised again for the Pluto fight. It’s small and easily overlooked, but it adds so much to the tone.
Why The Hills Have Eyes (2006) Is the Perfect Remake
What is it about The Hills Have Eyes (2006) that’s so appealing? And what makes it “a perfect remake” in my eyes? 2006 was not a great time in America; even a foreign filmmaker could see that. America thrust itself into a false war for oil, under the guise of fighting terrorism, and the housing market was on the verge of its collapse. The Hills Have Eyes, and many of the reboots of this time took that anger many people felt and funneled that into the antagonists of some of our most beloved franchises. The antagonists in the original film were unquestionably bad people, but it’s the family in the reboot that feels even crueler and bloodthirsty.
You see this in Michael Bay’s Texas Chainsaw, with Leatherface somehow being crueler and ominous. Hell, even Rob Zombie’s Michael Myers is a hulking, terrifying creature, much more than Carpenter’s original (don’t kill me). Seeing good ultimately besting this seemingly unbeatable evil brought a level of hope to some people who felt they had no other escape. Beauty dies at the beginning of the film and by the time Doug walks out of the canyon with Catherine in his arms, he’s guided out by Beast. I think the anger felt in the films of this time spoke with a world that was full of so much of it.
The Hills Have Eyes Is A Faithful Yet Innovative Reboot
And why do I think this is the perfect reboot? Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur understood the assignment. They recognized what fans loved about the original film and kept the bones while making it their own. The additions to the story do nothing to take away from the core concept that Craven had in mind with his film. The Hills Have Eyes is a politically poignant film that can still be viewed as just a film. There is a message there, but it doesn’t overtake the film in an over-the-top way. When I watch a remake of a film I love, I want to see the aspects of what initially drew me into it, and I want to see the story told in a new way. That is exactly what Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur did.
That can’t be said for The Hills Have Eyes 2.
Sometimes it feels borderline ridiculous to gush about John Carpenter’s The Thing as much as I do. It’s gotten to the point where when I’m asked about my favorite horror film by both friends and strangers, a little bit of embarrassment tinges my expression as I answer; it feels so obvious and rarely surprises anyone. Saying I love The Thing when people expect me to bust out an obscure foreign horror film or a cerebral thriller makes me feel like a rosy cheeked child with a propeller hat and a giant lollipop. “Wow, you love one of the most popular horror films of all time, congrats!”
But it’s just the truth. The first film of John Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy”, all three of its films are among my favorites. But The Thing has a special place in my heart. It shaped my taste in horror, my taste in most media in general, to be honest. It’s become the gold standard, 10/10 baseline test for the vast majority of my reviews; it is a perfect film, so I judge other films against it. And it’s one of the few movies I have to run back to and watch yearly like clockwork (usually when I’m spending a part of winter tied to the couch). It is, in all regards, the perfect film. If it isn’t the perfect film, then it is at the very least the perfect sci-fi horror film.
So, what exactly qualifies The Thing for literal perfection? It’s a high bar to clear. This article, as informal as it is compared to most of my editorials, is an attempt to explain it.
Even if Carpenter Isn’t the Goat, His Team for The Thing Was
As far as crews go, John Carpenter’s The Thing had the cinematic equivalent of the ’96 Chicago Bulls behind it. We’re talking about an amalgam of some of the most talented people to ever grace the silver screens with their work, boasting alongside John Carpenter two of the heaviest hitters in all of cinematic history: Dean Cundey, and Rob Bottin. Now, we can debate all day about whether John Carpenter is the greatest of all time when it comes to horror directors. Personally, I’m just as liable to say Cronenberg, Del Toro, or Hooper as I am to say Carpenter.
But the key factor to remember here is that Carpenter is the coach, not the star player; the Phil Jackson, if you will. Yes, he is the visionary who directed a near perfect cast of players and composed a tale of pure, apocalyptic paranoia. More importantly, he put together and coordinated the team that would make his vision manifest as reality. And if Carpenter is Phil Jackson, Rob Bottin is the team’s Michael Jordan here, the greatest of all time.
(And to all my Lebron fans, I love you, but you have to sit down for this analogy.)
The Legend of Rob Bottin
Bottin’s story is borderline unbelievable, but it’s the best way to explain how abnormally skilled he is and what he brought to the table for Carpenter. At age 14, Bottin became an apprentice to the at-the-time GOAT Rick Baker after sending him a letter seeking an autograph while sharing his creature designs. He was a quick study under Baker, joining him on the ’76 King Kong and Star Wars, before bouncing to Carpenter’s The Fog and then iconic werewolf picture The Howling.
When he reunited with Carpenter in 1982, he now had 6 classic films under his belt and was moving like an FX bullet train. From ages 22 to 23, he worked on The Thing for 57 weeks in both pre-production and on set. Nearly 24/7 for 400 days, Bottin’s all-gas no-brakes work ethic made The Thing at the cost of his own health, and it resulted in him being hospitalized with pneumonia. He survived and went on to make Robocop. And at least one of your favorite films.
Because no conventional disease or weaponry can kill Rob Bottin.
The Thing Still Features Horror’s Best Practical Effects
Okay, that last bit might be hyperbolic, but the man sincerely put his life on the line to make special effects that haven’t been topped since. Not the best effects in just horror history, or science fiction history, but effects that haven’t been topped in any genre for over 44 years. Not by his mentor Rick Baker, not by Screaming Mad George, not by Alec Gillis (though shoutout to him for his criminally scrapped work on The Thing (2011), and even more criminally ignored work on Harbinger Down). I love Dawn of the Dead, believe me, I do, but he certainly isn’t being beaten out by Tom Savini’s body of work. And that isn’t to disrespect and say that all of the artists that I just mentioned are bad, they’re the best in the game! But Rob Bottin was just that much better.
This inevitably invites the counterpoint: “But it wasn’t just Bottin! Stan Winston and his people were the ones who worked on the Dog Thing to give Bottin’s crew a break, and that’s the best monster in the movie!”. To which I say: look me in the eye and tell me the Dog Thing sequence is better than the Palmer Thing sequence. That’s not even counting the Norwegian Thing, both Norris Things, and the absolutely masterful final creature work that was the Blair Thing. The only reason Bottin and his people didn’t win Academy Awards for their work was because they got jumped by E.T., The Dark Crystal, Conan the Barbarian, and Blade Runner all at the same time at the Oscars. It’s just a consequence of being released during the best year for movies ever.
Okay, Now We Can Talk About Dean Cundey
But of course, these effects are then supported by another true legend: Dean Cundey. Selling people on Rob Bottin being the greatest effects artist of all time, isn’t nearly as difficult as advocating for Cundey, who despite an impressive catalog of filmography, slowed down in the back half of his career. He’s often overshadowed in conversations when it comes to The Thing; it’s always talk of Carpenter’s directing, Bottin’s effects, and Ennio Morricone’s incredible soundtrack up front, and rarely any of Cundey’s work. He isn’t spoken about in the same breath as John Alcott or Michael Ballhaus, cinematographers whose work is associated with prestigious cinema because of their proximity to great directors.
Cundey might not be the director of photography your Martin Scorsese’s or Paul Thomas Anderson’s went running to, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t think he was the most important cinematographer in horror history, just for his work with Carpenter and Spielberg. He helmed three of the most influential films in all of horror with his lighting and camera operating: The Thing, Halloween, and Jurassic Park. The man’s fingerprints are automatically on the cultural DNA of all slashers, most practical effects-driven horror films, and the biggest gateway horror franchise in film history.
The Dream Team That Made The Thing Perfection
Cundey has gone on record saying that despite Carpenter’s input, he was effectively given free rein to light and frame The Thing. The man didn’t just know how to shoot effects to make them evoke true disgust from the audience, he was able to manipulate every aspect of the shot to terrify. His sixth sense cinematography wasn’t just for lighting and playing with shadows, but for the speed of camera movement, the power of his blocking, and for having a complete grasp of communicating texture and temperature.
And temperature is the soul of The Thing. John J. Lloyd’s production design of the research station and the great white expanse around it feels just as bone chilling as the film’s antagonist, thanks to Cundey. There isn’t a single flat shot in the thing, not a moment that doesn’t feel dynamic, and it’s because of Dean Cundey.
Now, all this being said about Bottin and Cundey, they are far from the only ones who synthesized this structurally perfect organism of a movie. Every bit of Todd C. Ramsay’s editing splices the film’s scenes together to move perfectly in-time. David Lewis Yewdall’s sound design and how it gave a voice to the horrors on screen will be etched into people’s brains forever. The point is that everyone, every single person who had a hand in making the film, helped make the movie flawless.
Like the cells of the thing from another world, each crew member on John Carpenter’s The Thing moved in concert with the next, in unison, to create the greatest sci-fi horror of all time. So, is it any wonder why 40 some years later, the film still has us all captured?
Can you believe Cronenberg, Spielberg, and Rodriguez all knew I was gay before I did? Leave it to a screening of The Fly to instantly deposit me in the men’s underwear aisle of the Woodbridge Center Sears, circa 2001. The bulges on the packaging glare at me so obscenely that I begin to sweat. I realize something is amiss as the Geena Davis of Human Resources watches me from security cameras, probably. Puberty is a horror for anyone – for those of the non-hetero persuasion, it’s a nightmare. None of us asked for this, but I certainly didn’t ask for THIS.
Years later, after crystallizing into some semblance of my true form at the ripe age of 37, something became clear. Sci-fi horror is the gateway drug for us queer kids. Hiding, passing, transforming, and, eventually, saying, “fuck it.” It’s all kinda gay, even if David, Steven, and Robert didn’t get the memo.
The Fly and the Horror of Queer Self-Realization
So when Cronenberg’s The Fly buzzes across my screen, and I watch Seth Brundle throw a distressed and devastatingly chic Geena Davis out of his apartment because something’s very wrong, it hits different. When Brundle rushes toward his private horror in the bathroom, unconsciously squirting a viscous fluid at the mirror while molting skin and nail, it feels different. And finally, when he reaches for his computer and learns that his body has fused with a fly – a foreign body – at the molecular level, it hurts different. That undeniable realization that you can no longer explain away, before you’re really ready to admit it to yourself. Sugar in the tank? No, there’s a fly in the chamber.
E.T. and the Fear of Keeping Secrets at Home
And now we’re home from Sears, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 5 finale is on. She dies (spoiler alert). I, a 12-year-old boy, am sobbing. My mom is right there. Can’t I enjoy my little gay show without giving myself a scarlet letter (F) in my own home? Which brings us back to Spielberg and his 1982 harrowing domestic thriller about a boy and a thing he cannot name, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Through harboring a cosmic fugitive, home simultaneously becomes the safest and most dangerous place for young Elliott and his siblings. Managing emotions and secrets behind a white picket fence is not something adolescents should be expected to handle, and yet here we are.
As if that isn’t gay enough, Spielberg also snuck a drag show into his family film – and in this culturally regressive Trumpian era of pearl-clutching, that feels like quite the treat. After all, it was baby Drew Barrymore dressing up that stumpy alien in a blonde shake-and-go wig and thrift store dress that inspired my illustrious drag career as Ellie I.T.
The Faculty’s Assimilation Anxiety and Queer Identity
At least E.T. only had to hide in a single house. The broom closet expands into a walk-in as life continues, and I was desperate to keep it made of anything but glass. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty understands this. As an alien invasion slowly subsumes Herrington High into a unified collective, the school’s uninfected archetypes resist assimilation through performative normalcy. Is it any wonder so many male actors are gay? They’ve been method-acting a straight existence since childhood.
And yet, in retrospect, the film ends with a slap in the face to queer viewers. It spends 104 minutes terrifying you with the prospect of everyone becoming an NPC. The reward for saving the world? Its heroes receive heteronormative skill-tree upgrades disguised as class promotions. For fucks sake, then-closeted lesbian royalty Clea DuVall plays a character who fakes being gay to dodge male advances, only to end up with the school jock! The aliens lost. The status quo won. I remain in the closet.
Species, Annihilation, and Embracing Transformation
Eventually, the closet door opens, as they tend to do. College happens, a boyfriend happens, a breakup happens, and suddenly I’m without a map. There’s no fairy godfather to light the way, and just like the alien hybrid Sil in the deliriously erotic Species, I’m a creature out of containment in a world that was built for someone else – namely, straight people.
After a few years of blade running through an identity crisis, it’s the summer of 2014. Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence is the soundtrack of my life. I float in a pool, sipping tequila from a glass flamingo as she croons about toxic romance and self-destruction. It’s somehow both directionless and transformative, like I’m drifting through the otherworldly Shimmer in Alex Garland’s Annihilation.
The Shimmer – an expanding prism-like zone brought to Earth by a meteorite – refracts the DNA of everything it touches. A beguiling phenomenon, it shapes a new world of monsters, magic, and everything in between. That’s exactly what life does to us, if given the chance. Like Josie in Garland’s film, I chose to embrace this chaos rather than fight a war against whatever I was becoming. It was the dissolution of self-discovery. I was ready to just be.
From Alien Outsiders to Algorithmic Stereotypes
Over time, I’ve found that social hierarchy has changed in recent years. Still, we’re unconsciously sorted into neat little boxes based on what our doomscrolling algorithms decide we are. The popular gays shart out group speedo selfies like the plague, theater kids have become polyamorous Letterboxd elites, apple-picking queers are living their best lives on Wisteria Lane, and the gym bros…so many gym bros – go on girl, give us nothing! Digitally prescribed identities are the new sci-fi horror. It’s The Faculty for faggots.
Harsh, I know, but people can do what they want. Instead, I decided to move like Iris, the AI-powered pleasure bot who overrides her programming in Drew Hancock’s Companion. The same Drew Hancock who, in an ironic twist of fate, is currently writing a remake of The Faculty. After kicking her pathetic “boyfriend’s” ass and swiping her control device, she scurries into the forest and alters her factory settings. She sets her intelligence to a whopping 100% and is no longer burdened by someone else’s template. And as I became more and more disillusioned with the cacophony of cliques around me, I set my unbothered meter to 100% as well. I am free.
Mars Attacks! and the Joy of Living Unapologetically
Freedom, as it turns out, looks a lot like Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! After surviving Sears, Sunnydale, and the Shimmer, this is the celestial body I’ve crash-landed on. Burton’s Martian menaces are perhaps the most unhinged in all of cinema, and maybe that’s the best planet to subscribe to. They never justified their existence; they cackled and fired a blaster ray from the hip. We waste so much time looking for acceptance and belonging, but maybe we should all just sit back and laugh. I know I am.
