Cereal Killer: A Coffin Table Book

What do you get when you take the sensibilities of Topps' Wacky Packages, mix in the art style of the Power Puff Girls and add a splash of gruesome? You get "Cereal Killers" a great new "coffin table" book from the maniacs at Kreepsville Industries. Their blog gives the following description:

"Kreepsville Industries presents Cereal Killers. A spooky, kooky coffin table cartoon art book that has been in the works since 2006. This creepy, crawly treat features over 70 terrorfying takes on some of your favorite breakfast cereal's, and some original ones by some of the top animation artists and illustrators from today!"

The art is fantastic and you can tell the artists have their tongue firmly planted in their cheeks when designing the various cereal boxes. I've included some of my favorites here, with more to be found on the Kreepsville Industries blog and through their Flickr page.








Unfortunately I could NOT, for the life of me, find a release date for the book so I hope Kreepsville updates their blog with that info soon.
I'd love to have this proudly sitting on my breakfast table.

UPDATED: Midnight Madness: Halloween Plates & Napkins

LoftParty.com has a great set of paper party plates and napkins available.

Entitled "Midnight Madness," the black and orange design has a silhouette of a masked devil and witch dancing amongst paper lanterns adorned with jack o'lanterns and black cats.
Reminiscent of vintage Halloween cards, they're a classy design for your next Halloween party.

Plates come in 10.5" and 8" diameters, and the napkins are available in beverage and lunch sizes.

Keep this snazzy set in mind for your next Halloween party.

UPDATED:  The LoftParty.com link above seems to have died, so I poked around on-line and found the Midnight Madness pattern on some napkins and plates HERE and HERE.

Happy John Carpenter's The Fog Day!

"12 o'clock... The 21st of April..."

Thus ends the prologue ghost story told by John Houseman in John Carpenter's The Fog.
It's a film I grew up on thanks to the regular airings on WPIX Channel 11 in New York.



Though not a perfect film, it scores high in the atmosphere department, has some cheap (but effective) jump scares and features early work by make-up maestro Rob Bottin. If you haven't seen it, be sure to get the John Carpenter version and not the awful remake.

As with all film favorites you get to a point where you've watched them so often you need to hold off and view them on a special occasion.

Well I'm making today: The Fog-Day.

Due to today's date tying into the opening of this film, I'm watching The Fog tonight. Why? Because it blurs the line between artifice and real life and adds a creepy edge to a movie that I can practically recite.

Give it a try with any horror classic you enjoy over and over. Watch Friday the 13th on Friday the 13th for instance. Or Jaws on July 3rd.

Post any ideas you've got in the comments for other ways to tie in your favorite thriller with a day or place.

Happy The Fog-Day.

Scary Apparel: T-Shirt Roundup

I'm a sucker for cool t-shirts. Besides Halloween, it's bordering on another addiction. Check out these horror-themed shirts with links on where to find them. All are limited editions (of course) so although you'll be super-cool if you wear them, you'll be S.O.L. if you miss 'em.


From Ames Bros., it's a cool werewolf transformation shirt that looks like it fell out of the pages of a comic book advertisement. You know the ones... where the guy has x-ray glasses and stares at his hand. Ames Bros. definitely has a pop style that's familiar and quirky enough to stand out from the rest.









For fans of Rob Zombie's Halloween remake, here's a classic image of young Michael Myers' clown mask and kitchen knife. I like it when movie themed shirts forgo the usual film title and poster artwork for a classy image instead. Those that know what the image is from will know you're a Halloween fan... those that don't know the film can still appreciate the creepy imagery.



Lastly from Artcotic it's a t-shirt entitled simply "Hack." I don't know what it means... but it creeps me out. Best of all: this shirt was designed by David Slade.
Who's David Slade?
Why only the director of a little horror movie called "30 Days of Night!"
Speaking of said film: you can also find t-shirts designed by horror comic writer Steve Niles.

Artcotic is a cool little site with unique designers and simple, yet evocative t-shirts. Definitely a site to keep your eye on...

Halloween Recipe: Boo-tastic Bento Box

While trolling the magnificent Flickr, I found this little photo for what the author "beyondthesparkle" calls a "Bootastic Bento Box" and thought it would be a simple recipe for a Halloween themed lunch. I use the word "recipe" when, really, there isn't anything to be cooked.

Looking at the tagged notes on the photo the recipe is quite simple:

• Graham Cracker bones. (These look like Scooby Snack cookies... NOT the ones for dogs).
• Graham cracker creepy crawlies. (Not sure where you can get these.)
• Mummy melon eyes. (Watermelon balls with chocolate chip pupils.)
• Dungeon dust. (Granola with chocolate chips and marshmallow balls.)
• Ghost baloney and cheese sandwich. (The bread and cold cuts are cut with a ghost cookie cutter.)

Put it all in little plastic bento box trays, and poof: spooky lunch. If I had to make one improvement to this little bunch o' treats, it's that I would have sought after black and orange colored bento trays.
File this one away for October.

This American Life - Mapping Halloween Pumpkins

Listening to one of the great podcasts out there, "This American Life," I was excited to find this tiny Halloween gem.

In the podcast of show 110 entitled "Mapping" the show interviewed cartographer Denis Wood who has been making various maps of his neighborhood of Boylan Heights in Raleigh, North Carolina. Denis has made maps of streetlight pools of light, man hole covers, and most importantly to us Halloween Addicts: jack o' lanterns.

It's an ingenious, if obsessive compulsive map: In 1982 he took an individual picture of the lit carved pumpkin on each porch, and posted it on the map at the location of each house. Makes for a creepy picture seeing the glowing faces on the black background.

Check out the This American Life podcast HERE and HERE's a link to the Flickr page of some of the other maps.