My favorite times of the year in SoCal are the fall and winter months! I love waking up to feel that nice chill in the air, although it does make getting
out of bed a little bit harder especially when I’m sleeping naked (let the mental visuals begin)… Another reason is that I LOVE the holiday season. Purely because people are in such a happy mood and the scents of these seasons are incredibly calming, specifically pumpkin spice. Even though we are currently in 
Mercury Retrograde, which is an incredibly stressful/chaotic period that I totally believe in, the smell of a venti skinny peppermint mocha with five shots and no whip cream just turns my frown upside down…or maybe it’s the overwhelming amounts of caffeine I’m ingesting, but either way it’s amazing… Out of all the holidays Thanksgiving has always been my favorite and that’s probably because I can let my inner fat kid come out in all his sweatpants glory and eat all day, judge free – shame free!
Before I can sit back and enjoy my favorite holiday, I must successfully make it through my second favorite holiday: Halloween! Each year, I spend months figuring out what I am going to do and what I am going to dress up as, which ultimately ends up being some kind of animal, a sexy animal obviously… My family always reminds me that I am almost in my 30’s and maybe it’s time to stop acting like a child, but that does not mean I have to be boring and plus I’m an adult child. With Halloween comes scary movies, haunted houses and tons of orange, which I love since I am a Clemson Tiger (we bleed orange)! For some odd reason I love scary movies but when I am watching them I rarely actually watch, meaning my hands are over my eyes about 75% of the time or whenever it’s a dark scene or if there are mirrors and windows in the shot. I think it’s hysterical when my friends scream or jump when they get scared, but the ironic thing is at least they have the balls to watch!
A couple years ago me and a few of my friends wanted to tryout a more “intense” haunted house. I have no idea why I think it’s enjoyable to put myself and my friends through scary/weird s**t…but we decided to tryout: Blackout LA Haunted House, I think it was actually their first year in LA, it started in NY. Anyway, prior to us purchasing our $40 tickets, a review stated the following:
“an intense experience that sounds partly like being hazed in an especially brutal fraternity, partly like some sort of sadomasochistic experience, and partly like a heady amusement or sensual rush.”
For a normal person that would probably turn them off by reading that, but nope we moved forward with our purchase. I mean how bad can it really be especially since it’s “legal” and personally I wanted to show that I’m a “tough” guy and not scared, which I wasn’t really scared but definitely intrigued at this point. After reading the one review, I thought to myself, “why am I interested in doing this?!” Is it because I didn’t have that true fraternity experience in college… Is it because I am obsessed with Rihanna and she is known to be a sexual masochist and since I think her and I are twins then this must be something she would do so SIGN ME UP?! Either way tickets were purchased and time slot reserved.
Let’s fast forward to the actual day of the “experience.” We arrive in Downtown LA and walk up to this dark tall building that was incredibly run down and had a very unhappy looking man standing in front of the door. I, being the man, sent my pretty girl friend to talk to him to see where we need to go, which he just abruptly told us to stand against the wall and wait. We stood there for about 20-30 minutes and kept hearing the “kind” gentleman’s walkie-talkie and hearing screams and loud noises, this is when my stomach began to turn.
It was finally our turn and th
e guy shouts at us to come in, when he opens the door the inside reminded me of something out of the Saw movies, totally creepy. We were instructed to walk up the stairs and after each step the loud noises began to get even louder. Side note, if you know me then you know how noise sensitive I am, so I was definitely tripping out… When we get to the main entrance the loud noise was similar to that of a TV when it has that “snow” picture playing when there is no signal and it’s on maximum volume, it was definitely drowning out anything that was happening around us. We would hear random screams and loud manly shouts which made me jump every time, and we were not even all the way in yet… We get to the check-in table and they give us the instructions and tell us that we have to go through the haunted house ALONE and we have to sign this waiver. Again, at this point don’t you think a normal person would say screw this and leave?! Nope, not us let me just sign my life away it’s all good… They gave us a code word to scream if we want out, but I cannot remember it and I told myself there is no way that I will be using it anyway. We are placed in a single file line in front of this guy who is standing in front of a black tarp blocking the entrance into the haunted house. He stood there and kept shining his flashlight directly in our eyes asking if we are ready, over and over. Every time he moved his flashlight away from my face, I would have all those “white spots” you get from flashes while your eyes are adjusting, basically I could barely see s**t. It is finally my turn and he has the flashlight in my eyes asking me if I am ready, hands me a face mask to put over my mouth and then tells me that once he opens the tarp that I need to just sprint as fast as I can… Yes, that is all the instructions I am given…
He opens the tarp and I am off, I cannot see anything because it is pitch black (hence Blackout) and my eyes are still adjusting from that damn flashlight, but I am focusing on trying to run as fast and as straight as possible. I cannot see if there is anything in front of me, but I just kept telling myself that they wouldn’t make us run into a brick wall. Then all of a sudden a man jumps out and aggressively grabs me and throws me to the next room. I still cannot see anything and all I hear are people yelling commands, then they come to me and start yelling at me to run in place and then grab me and tell me to get on my knees. At this moment that review I read started to come into my mind and make total sense, haha… They proceeded to zip-tie my hands behind my back and put a plastic bag over my head and screamed at me to not move. During this period, my heart is racing, my knees were starting to hurt from just kneeling there and I am trying to control my breathing because I initially went into panic mode when the bag was placed over my head. After about 10-15 minutes of just kneeling there, someone yanks me up and leads me towards the next area, they rip off the bag and cut off the zip-tie, then tell me to get back on my knees and crawl to the next room… I obviously was not in a position to argue, so down I went…
They opened the tarp leading to the next room and I noticed there was stuff scattered all over the floor but couldn’t really tell what it was at first. Once I started crawling I realized I was crawling through piles of opened lubricated condoms that felt as if they have been used, but that cannot be humane, right?!?! In typical “Brett-fashion,” I was trying to strategically crawl through all this without touching anything, but then all of a sudden I am yank up and thrown into the next room. The next room was set up kind of like the movie The Ring, there was a single chair sitting in front of a box TV and then some random girl curled up in the corner. I was forced to sit in the chair and all of a sudden a video started playing on the TV that was so disgusting I did not want to watch. If I remember correctly, it looked like a woman was getting something aggressively removed from her lower private area that was “lodged” up there. I instinctively turned my head, but that girl that was curled up in the corner did not like that and ran over to me and forcefully TOUCHED my face to hold my head in place to watch, if I closed my eyes she started screaming…this was more disturbing then scary for sure.
When that was finally over I was led to the next room and told to stand in the corner. In this room, there was a little man that was simulating a rape scene on a mannequin and at this point I’m like “you got to be kidding me!” He then gets up and walks over to me and makes me lay in the bed that he was just on. He walks away once I’ve lied down and then all of a sudden that “mannequin” was NOT a mannequin but a totally naked woman who is on top of me screaming in my face to help her, that legit scared the crap out of me. The little man did not like what was happening so threw me to the next area which initially freaked me out because I have a weird thing with bathrooms and no lights, which was the next room. I had to go into this bathroom where all the lights were off and walk into the back stall. I didn’t know if anyone was in there so I walked in and a totally naked man jumps out and grabs me to get on my knees and tells me I have to save the girl in the next room but need the keys which were in the disgusting looking toilet, aka I had to put my hand in the toilet. It definitely did not help that this man was completely naked and probably 4-6 inches from my face. I finally got the keys out and he shows me how to save the girl and then I will be able to escape the haunted house. All of a sudden it got kind of oddly quiet when I was walking to the next room, once I opened the door I walked into a naked girl chained up and when she saw me she started screaming at me to hurry up before they come back to get her… Honestly, if I was chained up and someone walked in to help me, do you think I would start screaming at the top of my lungs?! At this point I just want to yell at everyone to stop screaming! But with every one of her screams making me more and more nervous my hands were shaking like crazy and I was having trouble getting the key in the hole. Right before I released her this giant man storms into the room screaming at me and yanks me up and throws me out saying to get out of his house! And there I was standing right where I began, sweaty and slightly disturbed.
Overall, there were definitely parts that were scary, but towards the end it was definitely more disturbing. Needless to say, I have checked it off my list and probably will never be doing it again. This year I am thinking of trying out Dark Harbor – The Queen Mary in Long Beach, but we shall see…
-Deuces, BHill
The main issue was the music selection. Taylor Swift wasn’t horrible but very predictable and Ariana Grande did a great mashup of her hits but 
still nothing special. Then it totally went downhill at record speeds when red-headed / boring ass Ed Sheeran hit the stage. Don’t get me wrong, his music is not terrible when played during a cold & rainy day when you need some calm background music to get work done. You DO NOT play his music during the year’s sexiest fashion show, it is NOT runway music. To make matters even worse, he was the singer for the reveal of the ‘Fantasy Bra’ when the two sexiest VS models, Adriana Lima & Alessandra Ambrosio, strutted out. Now, if I was the creative and/or music director for the show and I am planning the best way to showcase two of the most beautiful models in the world, there is no way in hell that I would have them walk out to slow music ESPECIALLY when both of them are known for their fierce runway walks. 
VS was setting up the reveal of the ‘Fantasy Bra’ by highlighting the careers of Adriana & Alessandra and wanting to honor them, both models did not disappoint, they were absolutely flawless but the music was a total buzzkill. When I thought things could not get any worse, they had Hozier come out and perform “Take Me To Church” which I already hated but this performance made me despise the song even more. I just sat there in total disbelief that these were the song choices for a runway show. VS started to make a slight comeback when they had Taylor Swift close out the show with a more upbeat song, but at that point I was just over it. Overall the show was a huge FAIL, in my opinion. Obviously, I will not give up hope that next year will be amazing but until then I will just resort to watching VS fashion shows from previous years, hoping to erase this year’s show from my memory.
It is so predictable and I feel like they tell each model to walk out and half way down the runway blow out a random kiss and then do it again at the end of the runway. It is so overdone and it is now at the point that it looks so cheesy, but again I partially blame the music selection for that since the music did not allow the models to get into their fierce struts which may have prohibited half of the air kisses…maybe.
Endearingly Righteous 