Month: September 2013

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Be Better

Christmas will be here soon, and a lot of you forgot my birthday. I’m just sayin’… do the right thing.

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Chris reviews The Great Gatsby

Ten minutes into The Great Gatsby and I’m done. The filmmakers don’t need me to be impressed. They’re impressed with themselves enough for both of us.

Also, this CGI looks like shit. Effects are supposed to be special, not special ed.

I’ve only ever walked out on one movie in my life, Moulin Rouge, and I left for the same reason I turned this one off: instead of making a good movie, they tried to convince me they’d made a good movie. It was forced and off-putting, and ultimately intolerable.

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Halloween 2013

The best damn Halloween treat, hands down. I wait all year for these. When I sense they’re going to be gone soon, I stockpile a minimum of 10 boxes to last me through the year. I have one on Christmas Day. I have one on my birthday. I carefully ration them for when I need them. They are important. And I absolutely, positively DO NOT SHARE.

Spice cake cookie with pumpkin jelly filling. Folded and cut to look like a jack o’ lantern. Oh my fucking GOD.

My stash. This must last me ’til next October. Ten boxes, eight per box, gives me eighty Pumpkin Delights. It’s about eleven months ’til next October, which means I can eat seven per month, with three surplus for discretionary enjoyment (I always have one on my birthday and Christmas).

AWW, FUCK YEAH! My super favoritest cereal in the whole wide world! I wait for it EVERY DAMN YEAR! And this Halloween, much to my surprise, General Mills is releasing all of their Monster Cereals in old school boxes at Target. And by all of them I mean ALL of them. That’s right…

Frute Brute lives!! Picked this up at Kroger. Anyone who has been to my Halloween Bash knows that the updated Monster Cereals boxes get a place of honor on my mantel every year. This year I get to add Frute Brute to the mix. And his hair is perfect.

The old school Frute Brute box from Target. The real deal from the 70s and early 80s will run you HUNDREDS of dollars. Halloween collectors don’t play. But I picked this up for a cool $2.50, so I’m okay with not having a 100% authentic box from a cereal that died when I was eight. I’m not at all a fan of cherry, but I’ve gotta say this stuff is pretty good. The cherry scent really hits you when you’re filling the bowl, which had me worried. But it’s flavor surprisingly mild and pleasant.

Halloween Crunch is made by Quaker Oats, not General Mills, so it’s technically not one of the Monster Cereals. I give a fuck. I buy a box every year. The Cap’n is the only cereal mascot ballsy enough to put the name Halloween right there in the title (he does the same at Christmas, too). The box is arguably more Halloween themed than anything General Mills puts out, plus this stuff is better than regualr Cap’n Crunch because the rounded ghost shapes cause less mouth damage. And beleive the hype: the orange ghosts really do turn green in milk, turning the milk green and changing the bowl into something youd’ve seen on Double Dare back in the day. This stuff is great.

I literally never thought I’d get a chance to try these old school flavors, and I guess technically I still haven’t. Both Frute Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy were, as I understand it, Trix-like cereals which were flavored with multiple fruits. But I’m cool with the change. I can buy Trix if I want it. What I can’t buy is anything CLOSE to this good. It’s orange creme flavored. Essentially a bowl full of crunchy Push-Pop. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Frute Brute go away. I mean, it’s fucking cherry. But Fruity Yummy Mummy is damn good, and I can’t think of another cereal like it. I hope this will stick around for a few years at least. This stuff is WONDERFUL.

Look at how cute that is! This was originally discontinued in 1993, and I seem to kind of remember it, but I don’t think I ever had any. Until today. The best day EVER.

Old school!

They were out of the Count’s retro box. Had to go back for it yesterday. Collection complete!

Every year I buy one big thing for Halloween. Not financially big. Physically big. Voluminous. Massive.

I wuvs my new punkin’!

Tasty!

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Never

Something occurs to me. How many of mankind’s truly great, immortal achievements have suffered catastrophic failure? 100%. Pyramids crumbled during construction. Centurions were slaughtered by the thousands trying to build roads. Astronauts burned alive on the launch pad. And at each turn, small, petty people of low character, reveling in the failure of others shouted, “You see? It cannot be done. Stop trying.” And the pyramids and roads that still stand thousands of years later, like the flag that still stands on the Moon, were put there by people wise enough and strong enough to choose faith in themselves and the future over fear of failure and the unknown. People who looked their naysayers in the eye and said, “Never.”

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Ghost

Wandered the old high school today. Don’t know what I was looking for, but I didn’t find it. Thought it might be nostalgic, but the fog of memory and the physicality of change have severed whatever remaining connection I had there. It was less like reminiscence and more like intrusion. Just one more place I can’t go back to. Just one more place I no longer belong.

It occurred to me that this is what getting old is. Knowing the lay of land that no longer exists, having expertise in rules of life that no longer apply. Knowing with absolute clarity every stair and corner of buildings that now bear no resemblance to what you once knew. Living with a head and heart full of facts that are no longer facts. Bearing the weight of knowledge once precise and vital, now irrelevant in an alien environment in which you have outlived your utility. There’s a word for this. Obsolescence. I’ve had tastes of it before today, but never has it been brought to bear so strongly. And it seems clear that this is just a fraction of what’s to come. From here out, the space beyond just gets darker.