Friday, October 16, 2015

Sure, I've got Halloween content at my blog! How much do you need?

"They're like the Blue Angels of dance!"

October is here, and you know what that means. Yep, it's time to clean all of those dead woodchucks out of the crawlspace again and maybe mail a couple to old enemies from high school. But it's also the time of year when people's thoughts turn to ghosts, goblins, witches, and werewolves. Actually, if they're heterosexual men, their thoughts probably turn to women in scanty costumes which make them look like Chechnyan prostitutes, but that's another story. Wherever your thoughts may be turning, Halloween is just a couple of weeks away, and instead of actually getting off my lazy ass (or, to be more accurate, spending more time on my lazy ass) and producing new Halloween-appropriate content for this blog, I thought I'd point out that there is already a metric ton of Halloween content at Dead 2 Rights, more than you'd ever get through in a single lifetime. In the spirit of a greener Planet Earth and a brighter tomorrow, then, I'd like to do some recycling.

JOE'S KICK-ASS HALLOWEEN STUFF THAT HE'S ALREADY WRITTEN

This is delightful, right?
  • Of course, the conversation begins with Joe's Halloween Dictionary, based on an assignment that I did in the third grade. I don't actually have a lot of souvenirs from that era of my life (the mid-1980s), but I did manage to hold onto this little hand-drawn booklet. And one year, I decided to scan each and every page of it for your amusement. Is it delightful? Judge for yourself. 
  • Then there's my, uh, unique interpretation of the definitive movie of the season, John Carpenter's legendary Halloween from 1978. In the article, I posit that there may be more to Donald Pleasance's creepy "Loomis" character than meets the eye. And, hey, if you're into screwy fan theories about classic horror movies, I have more of that. Way more.
  • And then there was the time that I yakked on and on about "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett. It was my blatant attempt at doing a BuzzFeed/Cracked-type listicle. It didn't do a thing, traffic-wise, but it's still a fun read. Theoretically.
  • You can't have Halloween without zombies, and this used to be a zombie blog back in the olden, golden, molden days. In fact, I had an entire series of cartoons about one of the overexposed, undead buggers. If you just want to skip to the better Zomby panels, here is a good place to start. Speaking of classic monsters, a few years ago, I investigated why so many of the great ones seem to have such lousy websites.
  • More recently, I visited two real-world costume shops and countless web sites in my search for celebrity Halloween masks. What I learned was disillusioning, but I reported my findings here nevertheless. And Google is still giving me lots of disturbing ads for disturbing Halloween masks, so I truly do suffer for my art.
Bonkers bonks you out!
  • And what is Halloween without sweet, sweet candy? Pretty lousy, is what. Candy has been a long-time preoccupation of mine on this blog, so I have posts about Bonkers, Summit Bars, Fruit Stripe Gum, Twix, York Peppermint Pattie, and just plain old sugar. In case you're wondering: yes, I am somewhat overweight and have had lots of cavities. Does that information make you happier?
  • It seems almost redundant to point this out, but plenty of articles in the Ed Wood Wednesdays series are Halloween-friendly. Try this one or this one or even this one, which is about how my interest in Edward Davis Wood, Jr. can be traced to a Halloween movie marathon from 1992.

So as you can clearly see, I have hardly been negligent in my coverage of the Eve of All Hallows. There are plenty of articles here which could be described as spooktacular, frightmarish, or even pants-shittingly-scary. Just go searching through the archives. Who knows what will turn up? 'Til we meet again, happy haunting. Whoops, I mean happy hunting. I don't know why I said haunting the first time.