It's a Sign

Every time I sit down to watch a horror flick that references the Beast or the Antichrist, a major argument erupts in my head making it difficult to enjoy the film. The source of my contention began many years ago when I worked at a local deli in a grocery store. The cold and hot cases in the deli contained a bevy of foods from potato salad to fried chicken. It was here, while transitioning from childhood to adulthood that my young and impressionable mind absorbed inconspicuous amounts of information about the world which would later lead to a life of incoherent and belligerent self-babble.

How can a deli alter one’s view and enjoyment of a horror flick? At the deli, the number 666 was the code I used to weigh and price the Jell-O for customers on the food scale. I’m not sure if the deli manager was having fun when she programmed the food scale but I cannot gaze upon this number without thinking of greenish, two week old, gelatinous ooze covered in a white slimy film that sold for $1.49 per pound. I suppose the white slimy film was whip cream but really, it could have been anything…

666 is the sign of the Beast? Only if the Beast is a bland blob of greenish sludge sitting in a plastic salad bowl near the macaroni and three bean salad. If I wanted to look at something that resembled something beast-like, all I had to do was let my eyes wander over to the deli meat section and take a gander at the gray head cheese ominously sitting between the provolone and the smoked ham.

“But head cheese is the best!” I hear you cry. Yes, I’ve heard a few people extol the delectable elements of this cold cut but I never could muster the strength to eat it. For one thing, it doesn’t smell very appetizing. I also had trouble with the sound of head cheese – oh, it makes a sound…invariably someone would request a pound of the stuff to be sliced so that he or she could actually buy it. The thinly sliced grayish gelatin would slide down the blade of the meat slicer and fall into a pile on the wax paper below making a cold, “blop” sound. Thankfully it required a different code to calculate and print a UPC label.

We sold more Jell-O than head cheese so perhaps the Jell-O won the coin toss to use 666. So, as I gaze upon the Beast lunging across the room toward some shrieking woman in the horror film, I can’t help wondering if he is fresh and if he is raspberry flavored. If he is, it would be a welcomed and long awaited change.

I've never seen this movie and I probably won't:


Headcheese! Almost available!



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