Weird dynamic for this story, but let’s roll on. This story took place on Christmas Eve one night in the mid 1990s. I was a kid – couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years old. But, so young that I thought, “these things are only supposed to happen around Halloween.”

For years, my mom and dad hosted my dad’s side of the family out at the house for Christmas Eve. We’d have a big dinner, open presents, and then all my cousins and I would sit around eagerly chatting about Santa Claus and all the wonderful goodies he was going to bring us.

That year, my grandma bought me one of those cushions that folded out into a little bed. They were all the rage that year, and I absolutely loved it. So much so that I decided I was going to sleep on it! I’d be downstairs in the living room, but that was okay because I had an Uncle who was in town staying with us. He was sleeping on the couch, as I was on the floor by the Christmas tree.

We dozed off, but in the middle of the night, I woke up. It was Christmas Eve after all. I was having trouble sleeping. I rolled over to make sure my Uncle was still there. It was incredibly dark, but the moonlight was trickling in through the living room windows, and I saw someone sitting on the love seat.

“That’s weird,” I thought. Uncle Gary went to sleep on the couch. But, again, it was so dark, I couldn’t really see too well. I finally said, “Uncle Gary, what are you doing?” He was a Vietnam vet that came back struggling with the experience. He was prone to do “different” things at times, but I wanted to make sure he was okay. Awfully weird to just get up and sit staring into nothingness in the middle of the night, right?

Well, Uncle Gary raised up from under a sea of blankets on the couch, just where he initially went to bed. The love seat was occupied by a figure I didn’t recognize, nor did I care to. Uncle Gary said, “what’s wrong Stoney?”

Being a kid, I didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of my Uncle Gary, so I said, “nothing – bad dreams.” I rolled back over, pulled all the blankets up over my head, and eventually fell asleep. But, I remember sweating it out for what felt like an eternity.

To this day, I can vividly remember the scene, but I like to think it was just the imagination of a kid running wild. But, who knows for sure, right?

Image courtesy of Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

If you can find that sweet spot between creative ingredients and ease of execution, that’s the kind of recipe I’m looking for on a week night at dinner time. That’s why I gravitated towards Simple: Over 100 Recipes in 60 Minutes or Less when I saw it on a shelf in the bargain section of my Books-A-Million here in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. For around $10 or (sue me – I didn’t keep the receipt) so, I knew I had to buy this celebration of simplicity.

My favorite thing to do with a new cookbook when I get home with it is to sit and give it a full run-through from start to finish. I’m not necessarily looking to explore the intricacies of each and every recipe – I’m just looking for standouts…the recipes that I want to try first. This spaghetti with zucchini and pesto recipe immediately stood out – five ingredients…two steps…with all of that flavor? It can’t be possible, right?!?! Well, it is not only possible, it is damn good.

This recipe is actually the cover photo for this book. I wasn’t planning on writing about it when I made the dish, so I didn’t snap any photos of it at dinner time. But, I packed it up meal prep style for lunches throughout the week and as I ate on that spaghetti in the ensuing days, I couldn’t stop thinking about the mastery of the simple concept. That’s when I decided this needed to be a feature here on the SoBros Recipe Book. So, you don’t get a photo of my handiwork, but at least you have the book cover to go off of. Now, let’s get to the recipe.

That really is all there is to it! Nice and easy….simple as can be, and it yields enough to have leftovers for a few days afterwards. It instantly became one of my favorite new recipes and joined the regular week night rotation. You can use the store bought pesto like I did, or you can follow the recipe for the homemade stuff in this book. I’d like to try that out some time, but didn’t have the time to on the first go ’round. I also added a little riff on this recipe by grilling up some chicken breasts, seasoning them in Trader Joe’s Green Goddess seasoning and smoked paprika, then dicing them up and putting them atop the bowl. It also wouldn’t hurt to pour a little bit of alfredo sauce on top either just to give the dish a little added richness.

Pick up a copy of Simple: Over 100 Recipes in 60 Minutes or Less at your local Books-A-Million bargain section like I did, or order it on Amazon today!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

Grady Hendrix had been all over my algorithm by the time I decided to give one of his books a shot last October. As many of you know, I’m one of the cheapest bastards in Nashville, Tennessee. The kick I needed to actually pick up one of his novels came when I was perusing the shelves of our favorite local used bookstore, Harper’s Books, on the square in lovely historic Lebanon, Tennessee. A brand new hardback cover of How to Sell a Haunted House was listed at just $11. Remembering I had a $10 store credit, I ended up spending a whopping one U.S. dollar and some change. It was settled. This was going to be the book that kicked off my 2025 spooky season reading campaign. 

Courtesy of Goodreads:

When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.

Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.

But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them…

The things I loved the most about this book had very little to do with the horror of it all. I’m a sucker for themes that deal with generational trauma, and that was one of the messages most well-received. This book is masquerading as a horror novel, when really, the story symbolizes the jeopardy we put ourselves in the longer we ignore our problems and continue to try and push through. Things have a weird way of forcing their way out, and we see that in this story.

But, the story also sparked some interesting reflections on the concept of returning to your roots…how home is still home regardless of how much things have changed…that you can still step right back into your childhood in the right spots. Home is also represented as a sort of anchor, holding down your growth as a person. In this is story, it ends up being sort of cathartic that it’s at home where Louise finally tries to settle the score. I enjoyed the brother-sister dynamic at the heart of this story, and found both characters to be interesting in the sense that I swayed back and forth between feeling empathy for them and thinking, “yeah, a lot of y’all’s shit…ya brought on yourself.”

However, the frights never really reach a fever pitch and the moments of terror come few and far between in this one. I’ve jokingly called it “horror for housewives” because it is such a dramatic story (in a good way). But, I do think this is genuinely a good place to start as an introduction to the horror genre. I was hoping for something a little more intense. What I got was a far richer story than anticipated, but one that didn’t exactly keep me awake at night. It felt rather tame in the actual horror department. That said, it’s a breeze to read. I think it took me just a handful of sittings to get through it, and that’s a testament to Hendrix’s ability to get that story to really flow. I’ll be checking out more of his work as time marches on.

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

Brandon and Our Buddy Brett get into a deep SPOILER-FILLED discussion about the polarizing Tom Cruise flick, Digger, on this episode of The Vick’s Flicks Podcast. 

Nobody get at mad at me – I told y’all there were spoilers in it!

Keep up with all of our work covering the world of movies on Nashville Movie Dispatch. Listen to The Vick’s Flicks Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you take in your podcasts! Just search for ‘Nashville Movie Dispatch’ and you’ll find us. Or, just smash the play button on the embed below!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

Pour up a Claustrophobic Cocktail and join McCash as he ventures deep into the caves alongside Brandon and Stoney. We’re kicking off Spooky Season today, drinking with… The Descent.

“The Claustrophobic Cocktail”

Ingredients:

• 1.5 oz dark rum
• 0.5 oz blackberry liqueur
• 0.5 oz fresh lime juice
• 1/4 oz simple syrup
• 2 dashes aromatic bitters
• 1/4 oz red wine float (for that “blood in the water” effect)
• Optional: tiny pinch of activated charcoal if you have some

Instructions:

1. Add rum, blackberry liqueur, lime juice, simple syrup, and bitters to a shaker with ice.
2. Shake until cold and slightly aggressive
3. Strain into a rocks glass over a large ice cube.
4. Slowly float the red wine on top (pour over the back of a spoon).
5. If using charcoal, stir lightly for a shadowy, cave-black look.

Keep up with all of our work covering the world of movies on Nashville Movie Dispatch. Listen Drinking With… on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you take in your podcasts! Just search for ‘Drinking With…’ and you’ll find us. Or, just smash the play button on the embed below!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.