My Top 5 Emotionally Scarring Childhood Movies

Yyyyyyyeah...so I kind of opened a Pandora's box of emotions yesterday with that whole Charlotte's Web rant, didn't I? Sorry about that. (Sorr about the bag...of emotions? Nope. Damnit. I'm horrible at this game and will never be as good as Chris, which is infuriating because I'm technically the one responsible for its creation.) Although, you have to admit, it's kind of nice to know we were all traumatized together, right?? Right. So I say we keep picking that emotional scab until we bleed to death or ask the homely co-worker in the cubicle next to us for a hug, shall we?! I present to you now, my Top 5 Emotionally Scarring Childhood Movies!

5.) The Lion King

THE STAMPEDE, YOU GUYS. The Stampede. Johnathan Taylor Thomas killed James Earl Jones. Way to go, asshole. If I were Tim Allen, I'd be shitting hammers right now. Or back in 1994, technically. And looking back, "shitting bricks" probably would have sufficed. If you consider bricks to be tools. Which after a lot of soul searching, I've decided I do. I don't really know why I insist on writing these posts at 3:45 in the morning. ANYWAY, although I was probably around 10 when my parents bought this movie, I to this day have never watched it on VHS without fast-forwarding through the scene where Mufasa dies. And you know what? That's a point of pride. I was old enough to take control of my destinty and chose not to subject myself to Disney's cheap torture. Unlike with...

4.) The Fox and the Hound

FRIENDS NEVER SAY GOODBYE! And Goonies never say die! Ah, the sage life advice of woodland creatures and Sean Astin. On a scale of one to soul-raping, I'd say The Fox and the Hound song, "Goodbye May Seem Forever", is a forced fingerblasting. The song on its own might be depressing, but what makes it really emotionally scarring is that we're forced to listen to it as the Widow Tweed abandons Tod in the forest. You know, after his mother was tragically killed by a hunter, thereby making him an orphan. (Down two mother figures in one movie? You, Mr. Disney, were a Nazi.) This scene is also uniquely cruel in that it taps into the pain of both being left behind and being the one forced to leave. "And now I find—we're both alone [...] But in my heart is a memory, and there you'll always be." Not to mention that foxes, animated or otherwise, are just god damn adorable. Wanna see something truly horrifying?

"Oh, hey best friend!"

"This feels like a lot of emotions for a woman who I know for a fact isn't raggin'..."

"Dinger."

"This feels premature..."

"So...so I'll just follow you, or did you wanna meet back up at the house or...?"

"You are aware that there was a recent death in the family, right? I kind of feel like I shouldn't be alone right now."

"K, well I'll just be slicing wrists in the forest if you need me..."

HORRIFYING.

3.) The Land Before Time

Now why did I think this movie was so traumatic again? Hmm...uhhh...OH, I KNOW! Because Little Foot's mom dies directly in front of him after promising that she'll always be with him, even if he can't see her. "What do you mean, 'if I can't see you'? I can always see you! Mother?...MOTHER??" Christ. I saw this at a friend's house, was immediately traumatized, and vowed to never watch it again. Then one day, by a cruel twist of fate, my elementary school randomly combined the AM and PM kindergarden classes, plopped us down in a room, popped in The Land Before Time and shut the door. I was like, "OOOF. Shit's about to get real." I can still feel my throat burning as I looked around the classroom, desperately trying to concentrate on anything but the TV because I was too embarrassed to cry in front of everyone. Looking back, I'm honestly baffled why they would ever play that movie for us in a group setting. I'm going to become a kindergarten teacher and force my students to watch The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas in front of their peers. Why? Two words: character building.

2.) Dumbo

Look, I spent a large part of last night on the phone with my mom harassing at her to sing the "mother-related torch song" from Dumbo to me. Am I proud? No. Will I call back and ask her to do it again later this afternoon? Probably. It's also worth noting that during said call, my mom made the excellent point that whereas Fern from Charlotte's Web was a bitch because she became a fast, dirty whore who abandoned Wilbur to explore a world of boys and partial-birth abortions, Christopher Robin callously abandoned Winnie the Pooh when he went off to school and left all of his toys behind. This enraged me in a way that makes me somewhat uncomfortable to look back on, and in the heat of my anger, I googled "Christopher Robin is an asshole" and found this Facebook group:

It's appropriately called, "Christopher Robin is an asshole", and the description is:

"Pooh thinks you're his best friend, but do you ever take the time to hang out with him. I don't think so. Pooh's always trying to find you, and going to look for you. Stop being such a dick and give Pooh the respect he deserves you cock."

It has one sole member: its founder, Bob Lowe, of Madison, Wisconsin. Mr. Lowe, if this Facebook group was your subtle way of proposing marriage to me—YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!

1.) The Chipmunk Adventure

UH, remember this fucking movie?!!?!?! Laura and I watched a fair bit of it last night on youtube and I'm going to go ahead and make a bold statement: this movie has stood the test of time, if not gotten better since 1987. Is one of its songs currently my ringtone? No. But give me a few hours and it will be. Because the soundtrack is absurdly awesome. ALTHOUGH, can we talk about the musical number, "Getting Lucky"?

First and foremost, The Chipettes were 100% sold into sex slavery. BOOM—there it is. Second, I know this has become one of the most cliché sentences in the American lexicon, but Britney: you look like a whore. Finally, upon closer inspection, this song is grossly innaproprite:

Verse 1:

Honey, you're a sweet thing 

and you look so fine

all I ever wanted

is to make you mine

Chorus:

Give me

a clue

tell me what I need to do

to get lucky with you

Verse 2:

Boy I really love you

with my heart and soul

honey won't you take me

where I want to go

Chorus:

Give me 

a clue

tell me what I need to do 

to get lucky with you

Hook:

Getting lucky

hmmm getting lucky

is what's its really all about

getting lucky

hmmm getting lucky

its something I can't do without

Verse 3:

Honey I've been waiting

waiting patiently

let me unlock you're heart boy

I think I got the key

To get lucky with you

Right. Now I could analyze this song, the whorish outfits, the fact that in order for the girls to acquire diamonds and cash, they have to tame phallic snakes and "get lucky" with you, boy, and interpret what all of this says about our society, but at the end of the day, the four-year-old girl inside me and the 25-year-old woman that is me really just wants to strut around my apartment in a spangly, spangly Arabian Princess outfit and croon to a baby penguin. So there's that.

Speaking of crooning to baby penguins—"My Mother". That song crushes my soul every single time. You'll note, actually, that pretty much all of the movies in my traumatic Top 5 deal with mother/parent abandonment. One might assume that perhaps I have parental abandonment issues, right? "Where might that have come from?", you may be asking yourself. WELL SIT RIGHT DOWN AND LET ME TELL YOU A TALE. A TALE OF ABANDONMENT AND LUXERY VACATIONS.

On my sixth birthday, my parents abandoned me to go on vacation to Monte Carlo for two weeks. Yeah. I know. TWO WEEKS. On my birthday. (#uppermiddleclassproblems) And during those two weeks, I was shuffled back and forth between my aunt, my grandparents, and our freaky Evangelical Christian neighbors. ON MY BIRTHDAY. To say the least, I did not handle this well. If we're going to get specific, I went on a hunger strike and locked myself in my room for a few days. This has since become a staple McBlogger family inside joke. "HA HA, remember that time we went on vacation and old Meg freaked out and went on a hunger strike?? What a weirdo." Oh, I'm sorry—I was six-fucking-years old! My parents left me on my birthday! And I had to spend it with freaky Christians who wouldn't let me read my Simpsons comic books because they were "blasphemous" and "disrespected Christmas"! I was miserable and have never felt so alone in my entire life. And that pain has since been, and continues to be, a huge joke to my family. For example, I was out to dinner with my parents last week and told them that I wouldn't be in town this year for my birthday because I'll be in Charlotte for a friend's wedding. This opened up the door to a whole slew of "UH-OH! You won't be here for your birthday?? Looks like we all better go on a hunger strike! BAHAHA!" jokes. Assholes. 

Now, I know I only got a three on my A.P. Psychology exam and my current occupation is "Executive Fart Joke Broker", but I can't help but think that maybe part of the reason I was so hesitant to be separated from my parents for a long time at the tender age of six-years-old was because I had been conditioned from an early age to think that, oh, you know, they were going to DROP DEAD at any given moment, whether at the hands of hunters, wildebeests, circus workers, earthquakes, the ice age, tar pits, volcanic eruptions, evolution or a Sharptooth attack. Frankly, I can see why I didn't like those odds! So, fueled by this breakthrough and desperate for a little compassion, I tried to broach the topic with my mom again last night. This was the resulting conversation:

Me: I think I have abandonment issues.

Mom: I understand why you would, sweetheart.

Me: Wait...you do?

Mom: Well of course! All your friends are leaving and it must be very upsetting!

Me: Oh, no no no—what I meant to say was, I think you gave me abandonment issues.

Mom: Oh, Jesus Christ. I gave you abandonment issues because of one birthday in Europe? You wait until I die! That'll make me missing your birthday in Europe seem like a day at the beach—which it was, by the way.

And then she burst into uncontrollable laughter. 

...I wish I had studied slightly harder in A.P. Psych. Now if you need me, I'll be in the fetal position somewhere not eating.

What a Shitshow

Before we get to Chris' post—T.G.I. HAGMAN!!!1

As of 12:13am on June 25, 2010, Larry Hagman is...alive! Just let it all wash over you.

----------------------------

To Torrey, the Tulane grad who commented on my post the other day: I have a frighteningly blurry memory of hitting on someone named Torrey/Tori/Tor-E at the 2004 Beaux Arts Ball. If that was you, I AM SO SORRY, it was an open bar and I was 19. Hopefully it wasn’t you and we can still be friends. If it was you… I was real drunk, so you didn’t miss much.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome my dad to our readership! He started reading a couple of weeks ago and proceeded to send me an email with the subject line “Meg” about how funny he thinks Meg is. What he doesn’t know is that I tell Meg funny things Dad says and she thinks he’s funny. It’s all very Parent Trap. I talked to Dad recently and he said something about how “it’s all funny, but as a parent occasionally it’s more information than I particularly…” so I’ve devised a code for everyone’s comfort: if the first few sentences contain any of the phrases “rim job,” “tampon cannon,” “fecal vomit,” or “scrotal catastrophe,” the rest of the post will be vulgar. I will also announce at the beginning of each post referencing any drug or alcohol experiences I may or may not have had (totally did have) that it’s a Drama in Real Life! Post.

I resent Meg’s trying to fob off the weird onto me during the ash discussion. I fully intended to blog about that same conversation but Meg, having the blog password and all, was faster. If she wants to risk grandparental scolding from beyond the grave, so be it, but I’m not trusting her with my ashes. At this point, I don’t even trust her to have me cremated. She’d probably just drag me into the yard and throw a tarp over me, or surreptitiously put me in Evie’s litterbox and hope I went out with the next scoop. So, for my loyal fans, both of you, here is what you must do with my ashes: If Adrien Brody is still alive and reasonably pleasant to look at, rub my ashes onto his nude body. If not, sneak my ashes into Snake and Jake’s in New Orleans on Dollar Schlitz Night and divide them equally between the ashtrays and the sofa cushions. This will be easy, because every night is dollar beer night.

So… diarrhea. I think it’s hilarious. Here’s my algebra:

(Feces x Desperation) + Embarrassment = LOL!!!1

I told Meg I planned to try to write a diarrhea post and she said, “Oh, I had diarrhea yesterday!” It’s the great equalizer! Not everyone gets drunk and goes home with someone who turns out to have one ball (TAMPON CANNON, DAD!) or drinks so much they vomit twin streams of pre-bottled rum and coke out their nose their first day in New Zealand (scrotal catastrophe!), but everyone has diarrhea. Screw hearing a child’s laughter or falling in love for the first time; the true universal human experience is taking the stairs at a gallop and throwing an elderly man to the floor in a race to get to the toilet in time. Fistfuls of Immodium at the bus station.

So, in the interests of opening up and building a closer relationship with my readers, here is my best personal diarrhea story. Picture it. New Orleans, February 2010. A young graduate student travels to his favorite city to watch their team play in the Super Bowl. A kindly stewardess offers him a chicken roll on the plane. He eats it, not knowing it is RIFE with contagion.

So, I get to New Orleans and all is great. Celebrations, whatever. The game isn’t for a couple of days. The next day, we all go out to get Po-Boys, when the Feeling strikes me. The Po-Boy place does not have a toilet, forcing me to caaaaaaarefully jog two blocks to a coffeeshop, buy some juice, and proceed to… you know. I assume it’s just travel disarray and go on about my day.

So we went to the movie theater, and I shat myself. We were casually walking along, excited about seeing the movie, and THERE IT WAS. No warning or anything, just straight-up shat myself.

If the Super Bowl had not been the next day, I would have just killed myself. I would have died at home and my friends there, unlike MEG, might at least have rolled my corpse into the lake. However, I had a game to watch.

I realize I just might be able to class this one through. I ran to the bathroom and… you can imagine what I had to do. The only really awkward part was throwing my underpants away in the big trash can, but her I had an ace in the hole: I was in New Orleans. In any other city in the world, throwing your underwear away in a Megaplex bathroom is cause for alarm, even hostility from passersby. In New Orleans – hell, everyone’s had those days. You’re more likely to get a sadly sympathetic smile and a murmured, “Lord, I had a day like that last week…” It takes more than feces-streaked boxer-briefs to stand out in New Orleans.

So THANK GOD, the movie was sold out and we left. I peeled off the two closest friends of mine in the group and told them I had something important and private to tell them. They are a pair of Cajun siblings whom I’ll call Butter Legs and Smashbone and two of my favorite people in the world. Since they already knew I was gay they must have thought I had cancer. They very kindly took me home with only minor giggling, although I had to make them postpone a trip to the liquor store until they dropped me off. My exact words were “Guys, I don’t want to be all ‘I have diarrhea’ about this, but…”

So, I spent a night shivering and feverish on the couch watching “Mad Men” with our host’s belligerent girlfriend. I was sick enough that I couldn’t completely tell her apart from the show, so I’m not completely sure if there’s a really critical pre-school teacher on the show or not. I do feel sorry for a pre-school teacher who doesn’t pity people who have Had Accidents because she has a short career in front of her.

I got up in the morning to giggles. “Chris. Chris, do you feel better? Chris. We bought you Chinese food.” Specifically, they had brought me a Pu Pu platter.

“Chris?”

“Butter Legs?”

“Remember during the playoffs when you said that if the Saints went to the Super Bowl you’d shit yourself?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re at the Super Bowl?”

“Yes.”

“And you shat yourself!”

“Yes.”

Premonitions do run in my mother’s family, and somehow it seems oddly appropriate that mine should specifically be attuned to bowel movements. So, the rest is history and the Saints won. Now, every time Butter Legs has diarrhea, she texts me because “it reminds her of me.” This is funnier if you realize that Butter Legs is small, very pretty, and generally a fairly demure Southern lady. She makes pepper jelly with her aunt, always writes thank-you notes, and uses diarrhea as a reminder to stay close to friends.

So, if any of you still had me on a pedestal and thought I was glamorous, rest assured: I put my pants on one leg at a time, and then I shit them.

Help control the pet population. Have your white trash spayed or neutered.

[Quick note from Meg: Not to break the fourth-wall or anything, but I'd like to share with you the email Tulane Chris sent me with his post for today:

I almost asked you to see if you thought this post was too coarse, and then I read your post about suicide and asking readers for recreational drugs.

HAH! It's funny because it's true. Ok, sorry, I'm done now. Back to Chris!]

Being friends with Meg is stressful because she’s so funny. Having an attractive friend sucks, but at least you can claim to fall back on your personality. Meg has a much better personality than I do, so I have to fall back on my SAT scores. (Those of you who were at the bar meet-up will remember me as the person behind Meg to the left, wearing a sandwich board that read “750 Verbal, 720 Math.”) I was reading Meg’s archives at work the other day – because Thursday is “File Your Own Damn Paperwork Day” – and I found her post about having to clean up blood with post-its at work. The wackiest thing that ever happened to me at my current job was when one of my co-workers gave me a Xeroxed Reader’s Digest vocabulary quiz and I got a perfect score, and so I put it on the fridge and everyone thought I was an asshole. (They were right, but they based it on the wrong evidence.)

She’s not even a bitch about it. If she were, I could just hate her in the face and be done with it, but she’s all gracious and says things like, “Oh, thank you for saying I’m funny. You’re funny too, and I mean that” and then makes a joke about a Llama Adoption Robot that kills the room. Sharing friends with her is like being her parasitic twin. She gets to be the funny one, and I get to be the one Bawbawa Wawtews says is “so brave to keep going on with his one kidney and control only over a vestigial flipper.”

So now I share a blog with her, and it’s a whole new level of crisis. Meg has a more interesting life AND tells stories better than I do, so here I sit trying to even FIND a sow’s ear to try to make into a silk purse. I got lucky last week because EVERYONE apparently has some emotion or other about widescreen movies, and so if I haven’t touched hearts, I’ve at least touched nerves.

So, things around the apartment I could

—BREAKING NEWS—

I heard a fight out in the street just now, so we’ll be talking about white trash. You know how some parents have weird hobbies like model trains or swinging? My mother’s was hanging out with white trash. To wit:

When I was about eight, my mother once took an about-to-be-homeless woman in “for a few days” for eight months. “Bev” had an unusual relationship with the Lord. The Lord had gotten her a job as a topless waitress once (“I was pregnant and even breastfed, and I’m 41, but look!” she said as she whipped up her T-shirt. “Still firm!”) and they continued a lively correspondence. Regularly, Bev would go onto the front porch and have a cigarette while staring into space, and then come in and say “I was out having a smoke and talking to God, and do you know what he said?” Invariably, he told her to go ahead and do what she had already decided to do. Bev was an “artist” and custom-painted two and a half cement Virgins for our house. I say “and a half” because she never finished the one she made for me. An attempt to paint over a red dress with yellow had left her with a bloody-looking dress, and an ill-timed distraction while Bev was painting the face left her with a twisted, angry, stroke-victim mouth. This statue stayed in my room for five years, which I think gives me a good all-purpose excuse. Did Mom consider using one of these statues to make a “shrine for travelers” in our front yard? Is the sky blue?

“Hattie” had been raised on Guam by Satanists. She taught water aerobics, which is how she met Mom. Both of her children had spent time in the state mental hospital, and who had to go on play dates with them? Now, I was a really, really weird kid and at any given time had, at best, one friend, so I was fairly lonely, but even I straight-up could not stand these kids. After a few forced playdates and one nightmarish sleepover (“No, pants on, I think. Thanks, though”) they started just showing up at our house all the time. By now Mom had changed her mind and thought they were going to do a school shooting and wanted them to have a COMPLETELY NEUTRAL attitude toward me, so she’d go out and give them weird excuses about why I couldn’t play. Last I heard, one had gone into a home, and the other after MICROWAVING A CAT (who lived, thankfully, since it’s the only sympathetic character in this whole post) went into the Army. This scares me more than a thousand thousand Russian soldiers, probably because “A Thousand Thousand Russian Soldiers” sounds like a low-budget porno. The United Nations needs to close its hole about the damn climate and outlaw lunatics as weapons.

“Vance” sold reptiles, so of course Mom got on him like a hen on a junebug. He sold her a Bearded Dragon (doesn’t that sound like a middle school sex joke, like Cleveland Steamer?) and she’d go out there every so often to buy mealworms or, on one memorable occasion, biker do-rags with a sewn-in change pocket. She bought herself one with skulls on it and called herself “Big Momma Bones,” and wore it to a poetry slam (yes.) She gave me one with dice on it, which, full disclosure, I may or may not have worn to the same poetry slam. Anyway, years later, she ran into that guy again and went out to his house, and someone put meth in her Diet Coke without her looking and she was up for three days. Yes.

“Doris” thought her husband was trying to kill her by leaving rakes in the yard. She divorced him and moved to the country, and for fun she’d get drunk on wine coolers, put on a ballgown and dance around the house. She and Mom were planning to leave on a road trip to the mountains once, and Doris showed up in an evening dress. She had a mail-order degree from Antigua or somewhere, and we’re 90% sure she had sex with her cousin.

Technically, “Ross” wasn’t white trash, but he was a stray Mom picked up. He had been in the Peace Corps in Bingo-Bango-Bongo or somewhere until he had a malaria-provoked nervous breakdown. He lived with us for about six months. This was mostly weird because he was my teacher at the time. If you think you were weird in school, be the Kid Who Lives with the Awkward Teacher. The kid with the glass eye was way, way cooler than me. He also grew up to better looking, but I can gauge distance, so I feel like it’s a draw.

“Gwen,” Bev’s sister-in-law, married a man who thought he was a prophet. “Angelica” “Bernice”I Dream of Jeannie.) “Lana” had very widely spaced teeth that were a) brown and b) not remotely of a uniform length. “Royce” and “Deeann” lived with us one Christmas when it froze and then left with the VCR.

So, again, I’m at the end of a post with no clear closing. I guess the moral is “My Mom Can Probably Out-Weird Meg’s Mom.” I thought the slumming gene had skipped a generation since I’m an elitist loner, and then I got a call from my best friend from high school. She’s marrying an inmate live on the radio next month.

YOUR MOM IS SORR ABOUT THE BAG

Everything Drinking Game Friday needed to know about sex, it learned from IFC.

TGIDGF, babies. Before we gets a boozin', two items of housekeeping:

1.) If you live in Canada and requested stickers, they're going out this afternoon. I'm so sorry for the delay. If it makes you feel any better, I'm aware of how much I suck. It's just I had to physically go to the post office to see how much extra postage I'd need...and it's really hot out...and the post office is all the way in Georgetown...and has odd hours...so then I asked my mom to do it...and she forgot...and I'm still pissed about the War of 1812, so it wasn't like I was going to remind her...but then she remembered, so now we're back in business! (FYI: postage to Canada is 13 extra cents per ounce. You're welcome.)

2.) So far, best placement of a 2birds1blog sticker goes to Alex for outside the National Archeological Museum of Athens in Greece. Ta-dow:

Think you can beat him? Shoot me an email: meg@2birds1blog.com

So I'm hoping someone besides me and Laura will appreciate today's drinking game. A few years ago, Laura and I realized that we both had the same disturbing experience during our formative years with the movie Crash. And I'm not talking about the 2004 Sandra Bullock/Matt Dillon/Don Cheadle/everyone you know Crash, I'm talking about the 1996 James Spader fucked-up-six-ways-to-the-weekend Crash. Laura and I were both exposed to this movie at a faaaaaaaaarrrr too young age via the Independant Film Channel. I watched a lot of IFC as a kid because it showed explicit sex scenes, and that was exciting to me at the time. I never had "The Talk." I had IFC. And it fucked me up good.

There are three movies that specifically disturbed the hell out of me:
1.) Crash
2.) Blue Velvet
3.) This movie that I forget the title of, but was about a scientist trying to put hybrids of animals together but he kills all of the cows in his area and runs out of animals to experiment with, so he takes the family dog and combines it with a goat and his wife walks in and there's this half-Jack Russell Terrier, half-goat stammering around the room in pain and she freaks out and I could fucking vomit just thinking about it.

...It's weird when you're 12 and you actually wish your parents had utilized the V-chip because you know you're never going to be able to erase the memory of a stammering goat/dog.

Allow me to share with you the imdb synopsis for Crash:

Since a road accident left him with serious facial and bodily scarring, a former TV scientist has become obsessed by the marriage of motor-car technology with what he sees as the raw sexuality of car-crash victims. The scientist, along with a crash victim he has recently befriended, sets about performing a series of sexual acts in a variety of motor vehicles, either with other crash victims or with prostitutes whom they contort into the shape of trapped corpses. Ultimately, the scientist craves a suicidal union of blood, semen, and engine coolant, a union with which he becomes dangerously obsessed.

The words semen and engine coolant should never be in the same sentence together. Ever. And movies about semen and engine coolant should never be viewed at the tender and impressionable age of 11. Ever, ever. Consider yourself warned. Without further ado, I give you The Crash Drinking Game.


Rules:
Drink When:
- There's a car crash
- Someone dies
- Someone gets a tattoo
- A famous crash is referenced and/or reenacted (i.e. Jayne Mansfield, Nathaniel West, Grace Kelly, James Dean etc.)
- James Spader and Deboarah Kara Unger have an awkward and frank discussion while having sex
- Someone tries to commit suicide
- Someone is bummed out when said suicide attempt doesn't work
- Someone gets incision-fucked
- "I want really big tits, out to here, so the audience can see 'em get all cut up and crushed on the dashboard."
- You want your childhood back

Shudder, shudder...Welp! Thanks for reading and we'll see you back here Monday morning. Should you be so moved to watch Crash this weekend and need a hug, you can get at us on Twitter, our facebook page or shoot an email. We'll get through it together. Have a great weekend!