"Hey kids, what time is it?!"
"IT'S NEW LOGO TIME!!!!"
That's RIGHT!
Just in time for the start of the season, and thanks to the wonderful Mr. Tom Whalen, HalloweenAddict.com has a brand spankin' new logo.
Not familiar with Tom's work? Well you should be because he's a talented guy who has dabbled in the horror genre on more than one occasion.
I first stumbled on Tom's fantastic The Shining poster while surfing the web and then discovered his website Strongstuff.netHERE. After seeing poster after poster and drawing after drawing of everything from the Universal monsters, to the franchise serial killers, to video game characters, comics and more I knew he was the man for the job.
Complete with a graveyard, jack o' lantern, zombie hand, skull, a haunted house and bats, it's got everything a Halloween Addict such as my self could ask for. His work speaks for itself and THIS Halloween Addict can't thank him enough.
As of today, Alice Cooper is keeping Halloween alive.
Literally.
Hitting iTunes TODAY is Alice Cooper's brand new single "Keepin' Halloween Alive."
That's right. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee you, too, can feed The Father of Shock Rock (or is he "The Grandfather of Shock Rock"...?).
This guy really knows how to nail it.
The release is right before the start of October.
Right after the beginning of Fall.
The ad (left) is made to look like a crappy Don Post or Collegeville boxed vinyl costume.
The thumbnail (below) for the single is orange and black and makes it look like an Alice Cooper jack o' lantern.
He released it on 9/29/9 which gives it a subliminal, upside-down 666. (Ok I might be reaching with that one...)
This guy knows how to give fans of Halloween exactly what they want and when they want it.
How's the music? The song is typical Cooper-fare so if you know and like his canon of work, you're going to like this too. Per the Press Release from AliceCooper.com:
"Alice delivers the song with the garage-punk snarl he is best known for, ensuring that it will soon be a Halloween classic. “At home my family all gathers around an old spooky tree decorated with skulls and bones in the living room, and we exchange gifts,” says Cooper. “It’s our holiday. We even all have matching black-and-orange Halloween sweaters! I wanted a theme song for people like me, and for us Halloween never ends. In the chorus I say, ‘I’m keepin’ Halloween alive, baby, 3–6–5’... and I mean it!”
Do I really think his family gathers around the "old spooky tree" and "exchange gifts?"
No.
But who cares, it's NEW HALLOWEEN MUSIC FROM ALICE FREAKIN' COOPER!
I've been off and on with Alice for a long time. I got on board back with "School's Out" but didn't buy my first Alice album until "Constrictor."
Why?
Because it tied into Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives and featured the song "He's Back (The Man Behind the Mask)."
I love songs with parentheticals.
UPDATED!
Just found THIS mock-PSA by the man himself, Mr. Alice Cooper.
Ahhhhh nothing like an amusing mix of self-referential parody, viral video and promotion.
Here's my question: Where the hell did that goat picture come from???
Enjoy:
Let's set the wayback machine to 1964. You're looking for some Halloween Tricks to play on your friends except... you have no friends. The internet is still 20 some-odd years from being invented and implemented.
But if I DID I would slap this awesome Bat Weathervane on top of it on the first day of Fall and probably leave it there through Thanksgiving.
(Mainly because I wouldn't want to get the ladder out and climb precariously out on the roof the day after Halloween.)
Handcrafted of weatherproof, rust-free, recycled aluminum, this eerie garden vane is ready to haunt future generations! Bat in crescent moon hangs by wire and swings in the breeze. Bats/ornament, directionals (in the spookiest font), and 5' stake included. Formidably fashioned in Michigan.
Dear Copywriter: I don't know if it's the "spookiest font"... I mean... Helvetica can be pretty terrifying under the right circumstances.
So please, all you home and barnowners out there, buy this and let me know how it looks. I really want one but it would look a bit weird jutting out from the side of my apartment obscured by my Direct TV dish.
Sure the economy is in the toilet right now but why not have something to smile about whenever you whip out that check book?
HALLOWEEN CHECKS.
You'll be surprised to find out that your options are limited, but there are a few out there.
Halloween is getting closer. We dress up ourselves, our pets... why not our gadgets? I mean... don't they want candy too?
Well now you can with the Demon Glow-in-the-Dark Silicone case for iPhone 3G and 3GS.
As you've heard me mention many times before on Halloween Addict: Glow-in-the-Dark things are cool. Child-like glee rises up in me every time I realize a product glows in the dark. This exuberance goes all the way back to my Weeble Haunted House complete with Glow-in-the-dark ghost. (Don't know what I'm talking about? Click HERE.)
Complete with horns and fangs, this case gets extra spooky points* (*Spooky points are redeemable nowhere.) for providing the illusion of eating the iPhone no matter which way you set it down.
Face up: it looks like he bit off more than he could chew.
Face down: -burp- Smile.
If the glow thing isn't your thing (though I can't imagine why) you can go traditional Halloween orange or five other colors.
Available for under $20 at various locations like HERE at ideal-case.com.
Those of you who fired up your Google Search page this morning were met with a new "Google Doodle." The image was of a UFO over rural houses while three-legged saucer creatures walked in the background.
This was the "reveal" to a first Google Doodle that appeared back in early September. Featuring a UFO flying over a Google-word crop circle, the picture sparked a flurry of surmising and code crackers trying to figure out what the mysterious logo meant.
Today, the link to the doodle, takes you to a search for "H.G. Wells." And a little digging uncovers that today is the classic science-fiction writer's birthday.
So how does all this relate to Halloween?
I'm glad you asked. I would have rambled forever.
Well, one of Wells' best known works is the sci-fi masterpiece War of the Worlds.
On the night before Halloween (Bam! See?), October 30th 1938, Writer/Director/Actor Orson Welles (no relation) and his Mercury Theatre Company staged an adaptation of the Wells (no relation) classic (no relation) LIVE on CBS radio.
As the company staged it as a live news program reporting on the events of a martian landing, many took the info to be real and the broadcast incited a panic for those who missed the disclaimer of the entertainment program.
You can read more about how the whole situation played out HERE on strangehorizons.com and you can get the classic broadcast to listen to many places on the internet like HERE.
I've never really given up my quest to find Mountain Dew Pitch Black.
I'm well aware Pepsi doesn't make it anymore.
I guess I look at it like those guys who hunt the Loch Ness Monster. They still believe. They've dragged the entire loch with a fleet of boats towing state-of-the-art sonar and found nothing. But, yet, they still believe they'll find it.
This post should have gone up last Sunday, but I was having technical difficulties. Begin post now...
Hi my name is Steve and I'm a Halloween Addict.
"Hiiiiii Steeeeeve."
It's been ... well I fell off the wagon today.
I know it's still early, but I made some of my first purchases of the 2009 Halloween Season.
There was a time where I would try and wait until October 1st...
While surfing the net, looking for more rare Halloween material to fill the posts of Ye Olde Halloween Addict, I found this cool poster for Killdozer's show in Baltimore, MD from October 31, 2008 on THIS site.
I don't know what it is about bands wanting to play shows on Halloween. I'm sure it's great if you're not into costume parties, monster movie marathons and scarfing down candy corn. Though I will complement Killdozer for clearly embracing the holiday complete with a smiling jack o' lantern, orange and black color-scheme and "Free shot" if you "come in costume."
I guess it shouldn't be surprising for a band to embrace Halloween that took its name from a 1974 ABC Made-for-TV movie about a killer bulldozer.
Wait, what now?
You heard me: A TV movie about a killer bulldozer.
A "killdozer."
Don't believe me?
Check it out HERE on Wikipedia, HERE on the IMDB, or just watch the whole thing on YouTube HERE. Starring Robert Urich, it looks positively craptacular... and therefore wonderful in its badness.
It's not available on video here in the states, so don't feel bad about watching a fuzzy VHS of the Universal feature for free on the internets. This is your conscience talking, by the way.
If it WERE on DVD, it'd make a fine part of your "Evil Vehicle" movie marathon featuring such gems as The Car, Maximum Overdrive (a personal favorite) and Duel.
If you're a Google user (and who isn't these days) you'll notice that Google is pushing its latest ware that you don't think you want, but ultimately do: iGoogle.
After numerous stubborn attempts to stick with the "Classic" look of Google, I eventually relented and started customizing my iGoogle page.
Well, like a good Halloween Addict, my first stop was the iGoogle Themes and tucked away behind the superheroes, nature-scapes, and abstracts was --low and behold-- iGoogle HALLOWEEN themes.
iGoogle (You ever say "iGoogle" in your head more than 3 times in a row? Starts to sound silly...) currently has over 40 different Halloween-tagged banner "themes" to choose from. They range anywhere from supremely spooky to something that looks like it was made by your grandmother with scotch tape and leftover Print Shop clip art.
I can only imagine that the number of Halloween-specific themes will increase as we get closer and closer to October 31st... not that it matters to a Halloween Addict... I'll be using this best-of-the-bunch Spooky Scarecrow theme for the next 365+ days.
And for those who want to know how to find iGoogle... Just Google it.
Yes, yes, I know: the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland ACTUALLY opened on August 12, 1969...
... but I missed that date.
SO! As this is the 40th Anniversary of the ride, and I AM a Halloween Addict, I can't help but mention the special date on a special date: 9/9/09. (You see, there's 999 ghosts... aw, you'll figure it out...)
And, actually, there is a special "merchandise event" taking place HERE. So, see? The date relates.
Below you'll find an official YouTube behind-the-scenes video that gives a history of the attraction all the way up through its annual Nightmare Before Christmas make-over. It's a fun watch and good to see the kids still enjoying it.
If you really want to see behind the curtain, I can't recommend the fantastic DoomBuggies.com site enough. You'll get blueprints, interviews with cast and crew, photos, legends and more. Learn how the operating crew handles "spills" (i.e. "pukes"), and whether the ride is actually haunted among other fascinating tales.
And, yes, I actually posted this at 9:09 am. Boogy boogy!
It's September and if you're a Halloween Addict like me you're chomping at the bit to break out the decorations and having internal conversations about "How soon CAN I put out my giant Halloween inflatable Exorcist stairs without the neighbors complaining?"
How about starting small by swapping out ho-hum appliances with more sinister versions?
Enter: the computer speaker.
You gotta give the designer of these speakers props for originality.
Not content to just have skulls... or screaming skulls... Design Toscano has two screaming fanged skulls with their skeleton hands straining to keep what's left of their brains back in their eyeless heads.
Your music takes on new voracity whether it be the soundtrack to your favorite horror film, this new "Rock and Roll" that all the kids are talking about or Yanni.
Like the 70s romanced the 50s (American Graffiti, Happy Days), the 2000s (or is it the "aughty-aughts") are romancing the 80s.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, MTV (a product of the 80s itself) is ordering a pilot presentation of a Teen Wolf television series.
The article goes on to say that unlike the 1985 film which starred Michael J. Fox as a teenager who discovers he's a werewolf, this new version:
...will be set in high school, draw from the horror genre to explore werewolf mythology and include a romantic plot line.
Hmmmmmmmm... if I didn't know any better I'd say that sounds a little Twilight-ey to me. I sense a lot more angst coming and less plotlines over getting a keg of beer.
I loved the original Teen Wolf movie. Watching it again, it's not too terribly dated like some 80s comedies. And, frankly, I can't get enough of the "Win In the End" song by Mark Safan.
Will it work? Who knows? I didn't think a little TV show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer would work but look what happened.
"Hey kids, what time is it?!"
I first stumbled on Tom's fantastic The Shining poster while surfing the web and then discovered his website Strongstuff.net HERE. After seeing poster after poster and drawing after drawing of everything from the Universal monsters, to the franchise serial killers, to video game characters, comics and more I knew he was the man for the job.
Complete with a graveyard, jack o' lantern, zombie hand, skull, a haunted house and bats, it's got everything a Halloween Addict such as my self could ask for. His work speaks for itself and THIS Halloween Addict can't thank him enough.
