Have you ever seen the movie Near Dark? It stars Bill Paxton, Adrian Pasdar, Lance Henrikson and that white kid from an old Michael Jackson video (and no, I’m not referring to Michael). It’s about redneck vampires. Anyway, it’s a great film. There’s a scene where the pack is sleeping in a little bungalow in the desert. The cops have found them and have surrounded the place. It’s morning. Paxton opens the door and is instantly scorched by the sunlight. He screams, “Aahhhh!! F–king DAYLIGHT!” The little white kid from the Jackson video starts bawling, “NO PLEASE NOT DAYLIGHT NOO NO NO!!”

Well, to make a short story even longer, the pack decides to start firing through the walls of the room. It turns into this tremendous, fantastic shootout. With each bullet that pops through the wall, a shaft of deadly sunlight spills into the room until, near the end of the gunfight, the room is filled with these amazing, contrasty sunbeams going every which way. It’s beautiful.

This morning on my way to work the sun was coming through a thick-but-broken cover of clouds. It looked exactly like the sunbeams in that Near Dark shootout. I kept looking over my shoulder, worried that I might see a burning man running toward a black van.