by Ashleigh Ide

When I was 10 my mom was like “So, I’m all done with this family.” And my sister and dad and I were confused but said “Well Jeeze. Ok Mom, whatever the hell you want.” And the three of us went on to spend a lot more time together. We’d play catch outside, eat microwaveable food, and WATCH all sorts of MOVIES.

Here are some movies we rented over and over again on the weekends that worked out well for us:

Real Genius

Cool dudes were my idols at this time and Val Kilmer as Chris Knight sat atop Dude Mountain crowned with wheaty and irreverent hair, donned in tight t-shirts stretched across pre-Iceman pecks, flaunting a cynical humor I, an eleven-year old girl, tried to emulate which made Dad laugh but my friends walk away saying, “what is UP with you?” It had a great soundtrack, goofballs on the spectrum, not too much sex to embarrass me OR my dad, a dreamy asshole villain, and shit-talkin’ BRAINS.

The State on MTV

I taped every episode of that goddamn show and though obviously not a movie, Dad watched hours of these tapes with me taking a particular liking to Doug and Louie. You can just see it, can’t you? “I’m outta heeeeeereeeee” and “I wanna dip my balls in it” are easy bons mots for dads who love Caddy Shack to ‘get’. Then my sister had the audacity to tape over a few episodes with the Kerri Strug brouhaha of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and things were never the same around the house ever again.

Groundhog Day

Ghostbusters was huge in the house pre-divorce and it wasn’t that we decided to stop watching it at Dad’s bachelor pad, but as Bill Murray movies go, this was more apropos of our new sitch: endless winter, loveless relationships, Pennsylvania. No, I’m kidding, we weren’t that depressed?

Here are a couple movies we watched a lot but really shouldn’t have:

Bye Bye Love

AKA, The Divorced Life With Dads. The fuck were we thinking??? Also flat-out terrible but I don’t think anyone wanted to say anything.

Liar Liar

This is a delightful movie with a surprisingly nefarious ending. The good-looking parents get back together? Replace The Claw with The Fat Fucking Middle-Finger. Though not nearly, no, not in a trillion years as bad as The Story Of Us.