Guys and fire...and VCRs

This last weekend, my friend, S, had a movie night with a couple friends and his roommates. When I arrived S and his roommates were trying to start a fire in their fireplace. Not too big of a deal, right? Wrong. They were using condensed logs, which were not wanting to blaze in open flame. They looked like logs with a lit match in the middle. That's it. So, to get the fire going, they decided to use their super old vacuum to blow air on it. Boy, did it blow. Smoke and ashes were flying EVERYWHERE. I was tempted to pull out my phone and start filming because I was anticipating a disaster. Well, it wasn't quite a disaster, but four of the smoke detectors in the apartment went off, including the one at the opposite end of the apartment. They opened the doors and windows, and the smoke just flooded out of the apartment. I went outside to help a friend find the place, and I saw this giant cloud of smoke coming from the window. But that's not all. Little did I know that back inside the apartment another fire was starting, but not in the fireplace...on the stove. They were making homemade popcorn and something caught fire. Luckily, they were able to put it out fairly easily even though it was bigger than the one in the fireplace. The fireplace fire ended up looking like a smoke bomb going off in the logs.

Things started to seem normal after all of this, and it was time to start the movie. Well, they had an incredibly old VCR, so S bought some 80's VHS movies from D.I. Our options were great. We had Ferris Beuller's Day Off, The Last Starfighter, The Burbs, and another that I don't remember. The winner was The Last Starfighter. We stuck it in and were ready to laugh our heads off when it decided not to start. S and a roommate tried for 10 or so minutes to get it going, but with no success. The VCR was dead. I happened to have one, so I ran back home and grabbed it. When I got back, they were still trying to get the VHS out of the VCR. There were two things that worried me about this: (1) they were using knives instead of tools even though they had tools. (2) they hadn't unplugged the VCR yet. Dear goodness! All we needed was electrocution on top of the fires. They unplugged it, grabbed some tools and 20 minutes later the VHS was successfully removed. Their VCR could never be used again, but that's not the point. The point is that we were finally able to watch the movie. Yea! And we got some great laughs out of it.

Lesson: Some guys should never be allowed near fire or VCRs...unless you're searching for a good laugh.