Shop Smart, Shop Pet Smart: A Tale of Evil Dead Ownage

This post is for Paul. It will probably be of minimal interest to most of you, but he requested it and I've got a cheesecake in the oven, so here we are...

I finally had time to run some errands this week and one of said errands was to hit up the grocery store. Within this errand, one of the items on my grocery list was dog food since as of the most recent dinner time, Shasta was plum out of it. Conveniently, Pet Smart shares the parking lot with my grocery store so I hopped on over before the real shopping began so that I could have more food options for my pup. This is where the ownage takes place.

On this particular day, I was wearing my Evil Dead: The Musical shirt, which I procured at a preview performance in New York (at the New World Stages, I believe). Of all of my awesome t-shirts, this one probably gets the most comment, generally along the lines of, "there's an Evil Dead musical?" When I where it at work, I have the same conversation about fifteen times.

After wandering the many aisles of dog food (I should have just stuck with the grocery store. There are simply too many options at Pet Smart, none of which were Shasta's brand*). Having something adequate for Shasta's needs, I met my soon-to-be sparring partner/pile of bones left in my wake: the cash register guy (I didn't catch his name on his tag, but I'm going to imagine it was Chet. He didn't look like a Chet, but after our encounter, he sure seems like a Chet).

The design of my oh-so-popular shirt (without the Time/Life icon or "Cast Recording" text).

"There's an Evil Dead: The Musical?"

"Yeah. Though I don't recommend seeing the touring show because it kind of sucks. I got to see it in New York, and it was awesome." -- I'm not going to act like I don't come off as a pretentious know-it-all during this interaction.

"I don't really see how they could make it into a musical. I mean, it's got the clock scene and the dancing corpse, but that's about it." -- I pretended I knew what he was talking about. Only reflecting upon it now do I think he was trying to pinpoint scenes in the movie that had music. I have no idea what he meant about the clock, though.

"Well, it lovingly pokes fun at the series."

"Yeah, the first one is cool because you can take it seriously or laugh at it. One of my buddies new those guys when they were shooting at Michigan State."

"Well, they may have shot some of it there, but most of the film was shot in a cabin in Tennessee." -- I'm pretty sure that none of it was actually shot at MSU and that the member(s) of the crew who had gone there had already dropped out, but I wouldn't bet money on it. I also refrained from mentioning that the basement scenes were shot in one of the crew's parents' garage in Michigan (I think Raimi's).

"Really? I'll have to ask him. I've never heard that. Are you sure?"

"I'm certain. I've got the Evil Dead Companion to back me up. They shot in Tennessee because they thought it'd be warmer there at that time of year than Michigan. Tennessee ended up having one of it's coldest winters while Michigan had one or its warmest." -- I'm surprised I didn't mention having watched the commentaries for all the movies, plus all related DVD bonus features, plus reading Bruce Campbell's book, plus reading Josh Becker's Evil Dead journal.

With that, there wasn't much else to say. "Chet" mentioned that he loved Army of Darkness and I told him the musical only dealt with the first to since getting into the Army of Darkness stuff would make it a bit too expansive for the stage. I left, knowing that "Chet's" "friend" was an unreliable source and that I had won that day's socialization challenge. Immediately, I tweeted my victory.**

*The neighborhood pet store we usually go to was closed by 6:30 PM, which is when I was out.
**I have a very real fear that someone (say... Keith) is going to read this and correct some tiny or glaring inaccuracy in my assertions.