He was going to be Batman, and then he was going to be the Lone Ranger, and he even considered being the Man in the Yellow Hat, but his mother was pregnant, and the idea of waiting a year so that his sister could be George was brilliant, so out went the Man in the Yellow Hat, and out went Batman and the Lone Ranger, and one week before Halloween, he asked to be Max.

1. Don’t apologize for nervously vomiting on your date. This is to be expected, so a simple “pardon me” will do.

2. Don’t start a savage attack of any PBS or NPR show, one is bound to be a favorite of your date. Saying something like, “Dr. Who is stupid” will usually result in tears and possibly an at-table suicide attempt.

Do bears shit in the woods?

Sometimes. Scientists have searched for many years for an ursine latrine but have found it as elusive as an elephant’s graveyard. Their best guess—based on the idea that living things ingest food as well as expel waste, and old episodes of Gentle Ben—is that bears have a highly developed bladder that permits them, like Wal-Mart employees, to wait extremely long periods before going to the bathroom.

I have food poisoning.
My car broke down.
My brother messed up the printer.
I didn’t read the story.
I didn’t get the story.
I hated the story.

I was a little worried about seeing this as I had not see the first nine installments, but my video store rental clerk (last store in the entire region with actual videocassettes!) assured me that this one stands on its own merits. I didn’t check the box to see if this was a foreign film, albeit dubbed into English, but I suspect that might account for some of the oddities. The film starts in media res, with Dracula already attacking an unidentified woman—erm, well when I say “attacking” the vampire is not going for the traditional neck, but rather explicitly biting away in her nether regions instead.