Chris’s Big Halloween 2007 Wrap-Up
Wherein I, with a heavy heart, bid a fond farewell to the 2007 Halloween season, and share with you, Loyal Reader, my deliciously evil plans for Halloween 2008.
I just want to say one thing before I kiss the beautiful thing that was Halloween 2007 goodbye…
I cannot tell you how god damned irritating I find it that all the stores I go to were crammed with cloyingly cheerful Christmas garbage before Halloween was even here. Sure, there's a token Thanksgiving knick-knack here or there, but for the most part all the the wonderful Halloween evil had been replaced with aisle after aisle of red and green hand towels and various plastic Santa Claus figures that make loud noises and do something stupid when you press a button. There should not be a sleigh bell in sight before Linus hits the pumpkin patch on TV.
I have nothing against Christmas. After Halloween, its easily my favorite holiday. But come on, this bullshit of shipping tons and tons of the same holly jolly gold embroidered trash year after year before Halloween has even had a chance to shine needs to stop. October is not the time for snowmen. Unless they're undead snowmen from Hell and they're rampaging around the woods with a machete and an axe trying to eat a sexy teenage girl's eyeballs. Then they're totally kosher. Otherwise, save the jingle bell, ho ho, happy, merry, cinnamon flavored, stocking stuffing X-mas crap for mid-November. October belongs to Halloween.
Last year about this time I told you about the big Halloween superstore that comes around every year that I've never been into. Last year on November 2nd there 
was a sign on the door saying they were CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. Inside was a ton of awesome Halloween stuff, all lit up with nifty flickering fake fire and flashing devil lights, all unreachable, all unbuyable, taunting me.
But I got mine. You see, after I wrote that I started hitting some of the other stores, the big 24 hour consumer mega-warehouses where night owls like myself are rewarded with clearance aisles full of the kind of crap they're too busy to put out during the day. From perfectly fine merchandise in damaged packages to damaged merchandise in no packages at all, my late hours allowed me to scour northern Kentucky and find so much out of season Halloween merchandise for pennies on the dollar that, and I mean this quite literally, people think I'm flat out lying when I tell them how cheap I get stuff. I have so much Halloween decor and goodies that people thought I spent a fortune on my Halloween party, when they were mainly using stuff I'd found 10 months ago and had boxed safely away for the big day. If you plan on going absolutely Halloween batshit crazy like I will in 2008, I'd suggest hitting the late night stores in the wee hours of the morning RIGHT NOW and getting your hands on all the Halloween stuff you can while its dirt cheap. And you'd better get there fast, because if you don't snag that stuff I will.
During last year's Halloween wrap-up I explained that my Halloween lust is such that any product, no matter how flimsy or overpriced, simply has to be wrapped in packaging with lots of spiders and bats to make it seem so much more worth the price to me. I spoke of the down payment on the house I wanted to buy; now the house is mine and I have to think about the mortgage payments. I talked about saving up a little safety money, and another year of unexpected changes in finances has made that impossible. I complained about credit card debt and gas prices… I guess some things never change. I measure my years from Halloween to Halloween, so this is a time for me to look back at how life has gone over the past year. All in all, things are looking good.
I told you last year I was going to try to have a new article every day in October. I made no promises. I wanted to keep it fun for myself this year, and I did. Posting a new article every day is, if I'm going to be honest, a huge endeavor and more or less a complete waste of time. People just don't come by that often. Most folks are used to our wordy-as-hell articles sitting out there for a few days, letting the comments section generate its own steam, then take off with a life of its own. When you've got 30+ comments on an article, you've got a good conversation going. A new article every day just doesn't give that time to happen. And promising a new article every day, with the lengthy stuff that I tend to write, becomes very nearly an unachievable task. I could do it, but it would be a huge pain in my ass and would be no fun for me at all. The hell with that; I'm not going to turn my Halloween into something I won't enjoy. That would ruin the whole point of a Halloween celebration in the first place.
I told you last year that I was doing a lot of work ahead so that when Halloween 2007 rolled around, I'd have the lion's share of the work out of the way. And to my credit, I did. I took in an amazing array of Halloween flavored goodness over the last 11 months, and started a number of what I think are really great articles. Unfortunately, I used almost none of them. For one reason or another, other things kept popping up that I wanted to talk about, so all those articles I worked so hard on are still sitting out there, little lonely ones and zeros, all dressed up like articles and reviews, just waiting for their chance to shine. And although they didn't get a chance to come out for their own trick-or-treating good times this year, next year they will get a chance to do their thing. Really, I swear. Probably.
So what's in store for Halloween 2008? First and foremost, all the shit I didn't get to this year, which, by and large, is exactly the same shit I didn't get to last year. Last year I promised you the following:
- Mrs. X's review of the first Addams Family DVD set
- my review of the Addams Family movies
- a Jack O' Melon.
- Mrs. X's X-Files fanfic
- all-new new pictures of puking pumpkins
- my review of Wrong Turn
- my review of Freddy vs. The Ghostbusters
- my review of Killdozer
- guest columnist DISTURBATRON's Halloween article
- an account of how Sci-Fi Girl and I constructed the perfect haunted gingerbread house
- and my fair and balanced review of the worst fucking movie ever made, ever
To my surprise and embarrassment, I delivered exactly none of those things. To some degree each of them has been worked on, and a couple of the articles are damn near ready for publication, but I just didn't get around to polishing them. And with Mark and Mrs. X supplying great reviews, I didn't have to. Hell, I'm not even sure I'll get to them next year; you never know what other stuff might come up we'll want to talk about. There will almost certainly be more candy reviews, more pumpkins carved by the cast and crew of The Sci-Fi Guys, almost definitely some party pics, and Lucifer knows what else. So stay tuned for the next 11 months worth of sci-fi/fantasy articles and info, keep looking forward to October 1st, and no matter what you do, don't… fall… asleep…
Thanks for celebrating Halloween with us!
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
DanM posted about this on Mrs. X’s “Post-Modern Prometheus” review, but I thought it was worth reposting here on the current page. Apparently The X-Files sequel is not only a verified project, but has been given a release date. Here’s what DanM posted:
Mrs. X and I just got done talking about this. She’s an X-Files nut, and is understandably elated. Although she says its a done deal because she read it in USA Today, I’m going to have to be the Scully here and say that I still refuse to believe this until I see proof with my own eyes. I’ve been burned by press releases before, and I’ll be damned if I’m getting my hopes up again. But do I wish it to be true? I think the poster above says it all.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I BELIEVE!!!!!!!!! I just read the realese date in USA Today so I say it’s offical now. Although I’m a bit nervous about that taking Mulder and Scully’s relationship in unexpected directions. They were left in a very shippy situation which indicated for the most part that they were together. If they go away from that in this movie I will be highly pissed.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
By “unexpected direction,” I wouldn’t be too surprised if that meant they had a kid. A weird little kid who’s messed up in some alien way because of all the experiments that were performed on Scully. That would be pretty sweet.
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Hate to tell ya cheif but they have a kid. His name is William and he was a bit alien moving stuff with his mind and such, that’s why Scully had to give him up for adoption. She had him at the end of Season 8, which I count as the last season. It’s pretty clear to that Mulder is the father. I about cried during the last scene in Existence when Mulder says that they both know the truth and then he leans in and kisses Scully and the camera pulls back as Scully is holding the baby as she is kissing Mulder……truly touching. You can see the whole giving him up for adoption thing in the episode entitled William during season 9. In fact Duchovny directed the episode. And of course in the series finally The Truth Scully tells Mulder that she had to give up their son.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:41 pm
HOLY SHIT!! I had no idea. And I don’t remember anything from the finale about a son. How in the fuck did I miss that?!?!
Sweet Jesus, this could be a fucking AWESOME plot device for the movie. I didn’t know they actually got it on until the finale. I had no idea that there was anything solid between them until that point. MY MIND IS OFFICIALLY BLOWN.
November 5th, 2007 at 8:21 am
And I thank them for this:
November 5th, 2007 at 8:31 am
He isn’t a great actor by any stretch of the imagination yet for some reason I still enjoy his movies. Having said that, with very little knowledge of Black Adam, let alone the Shazam mythos, I can’t say how well I think he’ll perform in this role.
November 5th, 2007 at 11:43 am
I can see him physically in the role. He looks like Black Adam. He looks a bit young for the part, but that can be taken care of with make-up. But I’ve seen him play a Middle Eastern mystical warlord before, and he’s not a good enough actor.
I think part of the problem with many comic book movies is that they just put anyone who looks good into a role. That’s not good enough any more. There are a thousand guys of the appropriate age who could’ve played Magneto, and I mean guys that are really in shape. But can you imagine a better piece of casting than Ian McKellan? He’s a great fucking actor. He made you believe he was an incredibly dangerous man without being musclebound and perfectly toned. We need more of that in movies, and fewer fucking models that are told to repeat lines in the hope they they’ll look and sound good doing it.
I’m not saying he won’t get there eventually. Schwarzenegger was crap in pretty much all of his early roles, but in movies like Predator and True Lies he’s absolutely great. The Rock seems like a nice guy, and I’ve seen him be really, really funny in comedic and self deprecating roles, but I just don’t think he’s a good enough actor to make this work.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Unfortunately, I have to agree. Personally, I think the whole movie will be a flop simply because the character of Captain Marvel is too far removed from the cultural mainstream.
OH, important safety tip: NEVER go swimming in Hong Kong Harbor:
November 5th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Q, you can take the Halloween banner down now, please. When this causes the entire site to destroy itself, just let me know. Then when you fix it, let me know again. Not that I can help or anything, I just like to be in the loop.
I don’t think you guys realize what Q goes through with that banner up there. I don’t know why, and apparently he doesn’t either, but getting that damn banner to act right is the biggest pain in the ass. I dread asking Q to change it, and I’m certain that he dreads it, too.
You’d think it would be no big deal. Its just a picture, right? Wrong. Changing that banner is like playing Jenga, and the banner is one of the blocks on the bottom. One false move and the whole thing falls down. Only instead of being harmless wooden blocks, they’re razor sharp samurai swords pointing straight down, dangling over newborn babies by hair thin threads. Also, the babies are highly explosive and nestled between easily broken pieces of life support equipment that is keeping your loved ones alive. And circling all around are rabid dingoes. You’ve always got to watch out for the dingoes…
My point is its a sensitive, bitchy process that is much more of a chore than it should be. So a big thanks to Q for getting it done for us time and again. I owe you another shot of 151, chief. Thanks for keeping us up and running.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Dude, how fucked up must your country be if your fucking salt water has tuberculosis? Sweet jesus, that’s crazy.
November 5th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
This made my day. The Japanese are so polite. They’re like little Canadians; they will tolerate absolutely anything with a minimum of fuss.
Here’s something extra special, “re: Your Brains” by Jonathan Coulton:
“All we wanna do is eat your brains. We’re not unreasonable; I mean, no one’s gonna eat your eyes.”
November 7th, 2007 at 10:38 am
This is for Mark and Q.
T H E T O P 5 L I S T
We match you across 29 dimensions of humor.
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November 6, 2007
NOTE FROM CHRIS:
“Harry Potter” author J. K. Rowling said at
a book signing that Albus Dumbledore, the
head of the famed Hogwarts School, is gay.
What other secrets might her characters be keeping?
The Top 14 Big Secrets of Harry Potter Characters
14> Harry earns spending money by selling Hermione’s panties on eBay.
13> Nobby has starred in several dragon-skin flicks under the name Rex Lizardtamer.
12> Dumbledore’s love-hate, life-and-death, soul-ripping torment was but a trifle when compared to Fluffy’s former crush on Michael Vick.
11> Mrs. Weasley sometimes needs to use the Memberus Rigido spell on Mr. Weasley.
10> Dobby? Straight!
9> Ollivander once got fired from a scoutmaster job for his creepy habit of “taking wand inventory.”
8> Let’s just say that a certain someone’s nickname in seventh year was “HerBIone.”
7> “The boy who lived” is actually short for “The boy who lived with a ball gag in his mouth during the summer breaks.”
6> Draco Malfoy once invited Ron Weasley to “slither in.”
5> A careful study of the spellbooks shows at least two spells that aren’t just English words with “us” tacked onto the end of them.
4> Neville, armed with his Nimbong 2000, was an avid purveyor of the “herbology dark arts.”
3> That’s a drunken Hermione sporting a wand and little else in “Wizards Gone Wild IV.”
2> Detention with McGonagall gets a lot more interesting when she skips the cat shtick and takes the form of Monica Bellucci.
Secret of Harry Potter Characters…
1> Hagrid once ate a baby.
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The Runner Up and Honorable Mention submissions for today’s list
“Wiznos” and “Sordid Asshats”
are in our ClubTop5 version, along with much, MUCH more!
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Rumination of the Day
I was reading this guy’s palm and saw he was clearly going to die soon. I was stuck with an ethical dilemma: On one hand, I could kill him then and save him the pain of a possible slow death, but on the other hand, is there enough money on him to justify the bother?
(Donovan Leigh)
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Selected from 83 submissions from 30 contributors.
Today’s Top 5 List authors are:
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Danny Gallagher, McKinney, TX — 1 (19th #1)
Joseph Moore, Concord, CA — 2 (Hall of Famer)
Jim Rosenberg, Greensboro, NC — 3 (Hall of Famer)
Curtis Stoddard, Cedar Hills, UT — 3
Brad Simanek, Cedar Rapids, IA — 4, 8, 10 (Hat trick!/HoF)
Steve Huntington, San Jose, CA — 5
Bill Muse, Seattle, WA — 6 (Hall of Famer)
Lori Petterson, Fairfax, VA — 7
Larry Hollister, Concord, CA — 9 (Hall of Famer)
Brad Hamer, Austin, TX — 11
Carl Knorr, Devo City, OH — 12 (Hall of Famer)
Dave Goudsward, Lake Worth, FL — 13, 14
Donald Junter, New Haven, CT — Banner Tag
Chris White, Studio City, CA — List owner/editor
Buju Banton, Kingston, Jamaica — Ambience
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November 7th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Jesus, its been quiet here for the last couple of days. Too quiet. Guess there's only one thing to do. Its time for a…
SCI-FI GUYS SUPER AWESOME OUT OF THE BLUE IMAGE GALLERY!
STARRING
Just seeing if you're paying attention…
Click the pics for the super awesome full size images!
November 9th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Hmmm…..
(found on scifi.com)
November 9th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
I wish the press would stop calling this a reboot and/or a "re-imagined" version. Those are bullshit descriptions that display either a complete lack of understanding of the terms being used or the content of the upcoming movie, if not both. Normal news outlets I could forgive; after all, what the fuck do they know about Star Trek? But this is from scifi.com. You'd think they'd hold themselves to a higher reporting standard, especially when it comes to stories concerning the most successful fucking science fiction franchise in history. I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I say that we should expect a little more out of them.
Its not a reboot; J. J. Abrams has said he intends this story to take place within the confines of established Star Trek canon. He said he's doing this specifically out of respect for the millions of fans who love this material and have kept it alive for so long (George Lucas, are you listening?) Its also not re-imagined. The new Battlestar Galactica is re-imagined; probably the single best example of re-imagining any franchise, sci-fi or otherwise, that I have ever seen. But this is still Star Trek. Again, that's J. J. Abrams and writer Roberto Orci, a huge Trek fan, keepin' it real.
According to startrek.com the definition of "re-imagined" is that this will be the first Star Trek movie to have characters from the original series played by new actors. That's not "re-imagining," that's recasting. And its also not true. A lot of people from the original series have been recast over the years.
Mr. Spock is easily the most iconic Star Trek character ever. He's also, according to my research, the most recast Star Trek character ever. Leonard Nimoy, of course, played Spock in the original series, movies 1 though 6, the animated series, as a guest star on The Next Generation, and in the new movie being made right now. But he's not the only one to wear the pointy ears. I'll try to list them in the order they appeared:
Billy Simpson played a young Spock in the animated series 1973 episode "Yesteryear."
In Star Trek III: The Search For Spock the title character was portrayed by six different actors: Carl Steven plays 9 year old Spock, Vadia Potenza plays 13 year old Spock, Stephen Manley plays 17 year old Spock, Joe W. Davis plays 25 year old Spock, voice acting legend Frank Welker plays the off screen vocals of Spock's screams, and Leonard Nimoy finally returns to the role in the end.
In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier the newborn Spock was played by Carey Scott, and in the upcoming movie he will be played by Zachary Quinto. For those of you keeping score, that's a total of nine different actors who have played Spock over the years. This "re-imagining" definition is ridiculous; this movie is hardly the first to recast Spock.
And Spock's not the only one to be recast before now. In the original series episode "Journey To Babel" and in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Spock's human mother, Amanda Grayson, was played by Jane Wyatt. Cynthia Blaise played Amanda in the flashback scene in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Majel Barrett was the voice of Amanda in the animated series. Now Winona Ryder is in the role. I sure hope the wardrobe department has some of those department store security tags, because Winona's been known to steal shit. I'd hate for them to get halfway through filming this movie and suddenly realize all their costumes are gone.
Speaking of theft, here’s Zachary Quinto getting advice from Jimmy Kimmel to steal everything from the set he can get his hands on.
I usually hate to make predictions like this. I’ve burned myself in the past, and I hate the taste of my own foot. But fuck it, here it is: in all honesty, I can’t wait. I think this movie is going to be HUGE. I think this movie is going to be so fucking good that it will pull in fans who would never have admitted to watching Star Trek, let alone paid money to see it. Based on Leonard Nimoy’s comments - who, by the way, is an excellent filmmaker who should have been given the chance to direct more than just the two Trek films he helmed - the script is one of the most solid he’s ever read, and fits in perfectly with Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a hopeful, dangerous, exciting, wonderful, eye-opening future for humanity and our adventures among the stars. I don’t normally let myself get this excited about a movie, because every time that happens I end up getting a Spider-Man 3. But I think this is the Star Trek that will show all the snobby critics, the naysayers who say that Trek is dead, and those simpering, irritating, mindless Lucasfilm Jedi fanboys why we Trekkies have stuck with the series for the last 40 years. I think this film will fucking deliver.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:20 am
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100%, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong.
Chris’s note: You’re god damn right it could be wrong. It IS wrong. Bad spam bot! Bad!