September 17 (jump to October 31)

Um... so, I don't think I've done anything in preparation for Halloween before today. I may have heard some music at some point that I thought might be worth adding to my Halloween page, but if so, I haven't gotten around to it as yet. But anyway... today at Walmart I bought a Tinker Bell suncatcher. And a DVD of the movie "Fun Size," which came out last year but I haven't seen yet. So I'll probably watch that on Halloween. And I got an electric skull candelabra at Rite-Aid. Not something I can scan, of course, and I don't currently have a camera. And in spite of having a ton of Halloween stuff on the store's website, they don't have this, so... I can't show you what it looks like. It's kinda neat, though. Except there's a "try me" button wired into it, which is convenient before you buy the thing, but now that I own it, I wish I could remove the damn thing, but I can't. Ah well, no big deal. And... I guess that's all I have to say, for now.

October 3

Once again I went searching the web for a popup mp3 player to use on my AV page. (I've searched in years past, to no avail.) And I found at least one thing that might work... in some ways I prefer it over what I've been using, but overall I still prefer what I've been using. So I'll stick with that, for now. But I did add a few mp3s to the playlist, today. "Halloween" by Siouxsie and the Banshees, "The Wolf" by Fever Ray (from the soundtrack to Red Riding Hood), and I switched "Lil Red Riding Hood" from the old Sam the Sham version to the Laura Gibson version. In other news, I also picked up some Stella Artois Cidre to try. Not bad at all. Also I started a Halloween commercials page.

October 5

I saw a comic on facebook that I decided to download and stick on my AV page here... but then I decided to move the comics off that page onto a new comics & funny pics page, as well as moving some links from the AV page to the main Halloween page.

October 6

Tonight was the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, but I didn't watch it. I'll get to it in a week or two, when it's online (and closer to Halloween). Same with Bob's Burgers. But I did watch Family Guy and American Dad. The former was kinda creepy, because Peter had a vestigial twin growing out of his neck... but it wasn't at all Halloweeny, and really not significantly creepier than a typical episode. The latter was more Halloweeny, because there was a ghost haunting the Smiths' house... but um, not your typical kind of ghost.... Also tonight is the series premiere of Witches of East End, which I wanted to check out, but then I realized we don't get Lifetime, so I couldn't.

October 8

Started watching the web series Ghost Ghirls. Which would be funny at any time of year, but October is probably the most apropos time for it. Later in the day I watched a new Mickey Mouse cartoon called Ghoul Friend. Then I watched Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

October 16

A few days ago I did some work on my Halloween links page and my Halloween commercials page, but I didn't get around to mentioning it. And tonight I watched the new special Toy Story of Terror, which was good. It was on opposite "Revolution," which I watched on the 17th. It was Halloween in that episode, but that fact was of no importance to the episode, unfortunately. Before the season started, I had read that there would be a Halloween episode, so I'm a bit disappointed.

October 18

There was a "Challoweenukah" episode of "The Neighbors." Then I watched Carrie.

October 19

In the morning, I watched a few eps of Pokemon online. One of them was about ghost pokemon, and it was sandwiched between two eps about Sabrina, who used telekinesis... just like Carrie! So that was kinda scary, I guess. In a totally silly way. At night I watched Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost.

October 20

This morning I watched the Halloween episode of Bob's Burgers from a couple weeks ago. (Yay, Hulu.) Louise and Gene and Tina were planning on going trick-or-treating with some friends, but they get trapped in a box instead. Bob and Linda work on a dragon costume for the kids, not knowing the kids are trapped. A crazy kid who wanted to be Louise's friend torments the kids after finally realizing Louise doesn't like her. It was fun. Then there's the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. It begins with an awesome Halloweenized opening sequence. Then "The Fat in the Hat," which spoofed various Dr. Seuss stories (with some other sight gags thrown in, including V for Vendetta). It was pretty good. The next skit, in which Bart loses his head and it gets surgically attached to Lisa's body, was just sort of okay. The third story had Mr. Burns (or Burnsum) running a 1930s circus & freak show. It was fairly decent, and it had a brief appearance by Kang and Kodos, and the very end was really funny just because it completely took me by surprise.

October 22

Uh, so it was Halloween on tonight's episode of New Girl. That's all there is to say about that.

October 23

This morning I watched last night's episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It was Halloween, a holiday that Charles loves and Amy hates, so he was trying to get her to love it. Meanwhile, Jake made a bet with the captain that he could steal his medal of valor. It was a fun episode.

October 24

Watched last night's South Park (I've missed the last couple episodes). Halloween was mentioned once in passing, and while the plot wasn't at all about Halloween, the episode did have a dark vibe, because it was about a camp that was turning goth kids and vamp kids into emo kids. Supposedly.

October 25

Bought some peanut butter kisses today at the dollar store. Also tonight I watched last year's Halloween episode of The Neighbors. Then the season premiere of Grimm, in which Nick is now a zombie or whatever. Then the series premiere of Dracula, which I didn't like as much as I'd hoped, but it has potential, I guess.

October 26

Read a bunch of Halloween comics in the Neopian Times. That was fun. Later, I watched A Monster in Paris, which wasn't very monsterly, but it was good. Then the series premiere of "Spooksville" on the Hub. Not a great show, but it has potential, perhaps.

October 27

Watched The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, mainly for the part about the Headless Horseman. Also did a little entry for an old special from the 80s, Disney's Halloween Treat. (I should really try to watch that on YouTube sometime, to refresh my memory.) Oh, and there was a thing I saw on facebook, posted by "Writing About Writing." A two-sentence horror story that I added to my comics page. I think it's terribly scary.

October 28

"How I Met Your Mother" couldn't really be expected to do a Halloween episode in this, its final season, considering the entire season takes place during a single weekend. However, I'd like to think at least a vague nod was made to the fact that this episode aired during Halloween week, because there was a plot point about a ghost supposedly haunting Lily's room at the inn. Not much was really done with that plot point, but hey... a ghost was mentioned. That's something.

October 29

I watched Brotherhood of the Wolf, which was only a bit scary in a few parts.

October 30

Today I got a pumpkin pie iced cappuccino from Tim Horton's. It was pretty good. And I got a mixpack of Angry Orchard hard cider with four different flavors, including the standard three and the new one, "Cinnful Apple." I was thinking of just getting a 6-pack of Cinnful Apple, plus a bottle of Apothic Dark wine, but they were out of the 6-packs, and I couldn't afford to get both the 12-pack and the wine, so I'll get the wine some other time. Oh, I also have been looking for Monster cereals for the past couple weeks or so, but I haven't been able to find any. I don't always get them for Halloween, but sometimes I like to. And this year I heard that a couple of old, discontinued varieties were getting a limited re-release. So it would have been nice to try at least one of them, but no luck. *Sigh* So, instead, today I got a knock-off of Apple Jacks called Apple Bobbers, which I'll try tomorrow. I guess apples are Halloweeny enough, and the name puts me in mind of bobbing for apples, which is definitely Halloweeny, and something I haven't done in quite a few years. Of course, I won't be dunking my head in the cereal bowl, or anything... Also today I watched the Geek & Sundry Halloween special, Who Killed Elliott Morgan? It was funny.

OCTOBER 31

This is it, the actual day. I started with a bowl of Apple Bobbers, which were pretty good. Did some FarmVille chores. Checked out the latest Google Doodle, which involved tossing ingredients into a witch's cauldron, but I didn't find the results particularly interesting. Maybe I'm missing something. Anyway... I also watched the last two episodes of Ghost Ghirls. And I read the last canto of The Divine Comedy, and finished the review of it that I started months ago. The rest of the day should mostly be watching DVDs. Which means I need to choose which ones to watch and which order to watch them in. Also I need to force myself not to care about all the TV I'll be missing tonight and have to catch up on later, online. I wish all my shows could just take the night off, air reruns or something. But whatevs. Also, a couple weeks ago I got a bag of caramel apple Werther's, which I've waited until today to try. Not bad. Also there's some jelly pumpkins that have been around the house for a few weeks or so. I've had some now and then, but most of the tub is still there, it seems. And there's some various other candy around.

It took longer than I expected to start watching movies, but I finally did, around 4:30. First up was Fun Size, which was better than I expected. And I had a cup of pumpkin spice tea while I watched that. Next I watched Cry_Wolf, which was okay. While watching that I had the last two bottles of beer from a Blue Moon mixpack I'd gotten a few weeks ago, which I've been saving for tonight. One was a caramel apple beer, one was a pumpkin spice beer. Then I tried a Cinnful Apple cider from Angry Orchard. They were all good. Then watched Jeepers Creepers while drinking more Angry Orchard. And then... I wasn't sure if I'd watch a fourth movie, because it got to be after 1am. But I did anyway. Teen Wolf. And now is 3:40am, definitely should be getting to sleep.

November 2

This being the Saturday of Halloween weekend (even if it is a couple days after the holiday), I watched Frankenweenie. Which was really cool.

November 19

Well, it's been a couple weeks since I've thought much about Halloween (of course), but I finally got me a bottle of Apothic Dark, so I drank it while watching my DVD of Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula. Now I think it's safe to say Halloween is over for the year. Sigh.

November 22

It's never safe to assume. Halloween wasn't over. Because over the last couple of days, I've been working a bit on my specials section, most notably starting a page to list Halloween episodes of TV shows. While I don't review the episodes, I think it's a good list to check out, even if only for the sake of nostalgia. ("Oh yeah, I remember that. Cool.") Of course, there are countless episodes not included on the list, things I've never seen, things I've forgotten, and things I simply don't care to mention. But even so, there are a lot of episodes on the list.