One Hundred Miles of Lesson

when it comes to Halloween, one needs to be flexible.

16. I will listen to David Bowie's Outside.
    Not a hard task for me to do for me

This Upcoming Halloween.

The thirty-one days of October is really my second favorite time of year. Talk about a communal event. No one gets the day off of work. The pretense of having to go to church is totally not there. Kids even get to be in on the joke wearing costumes of their own. Folks get a vague premonition that a holiday really makes no sense outside of being a party. It's people deciding to do what they want when they want. 
Yes it's dark and moody, but at least folks don't have to carry their own crosses to preset places of death or celebrate child birth in barns. And the costumes aren't as creepy as a dude in red velvet wanting kids to sit on his lap for prizes or a walking rabbit hiding discolored eggs in shrubbery. Despite Charles Schultz's best effort, not one single para-religious entity must be appeased to make Halloween and the days leading to it a time of fun.

Last year I was concerned about all the movies that I wanted to watch. This year I am mixing things up a bit. Here's my list of celebratory activities:

15. Read "Batman: Haunted Gotham." It's a little tough, the comic is really hammy.
14. Play along with whatever in the World Ben Lathrop's werewolf thing is. over at his blog
13. Watch some Casper, the Friendly Ghost, Wendy, the Witch, and Hotstuff cartoons.
12. Re-watch the Scooby Doo movies from the early Aughts.
11. Play Betrayal At the House On the Hill.
10. Write a major Crawlspace event specially for the season.
9. Check out Troll 2.
8. Finally visit one of the big haunted houses that own abandoned strip malls these days.
7. Find the movie about Count Down, Dracula's son, the one with Ringo Starr as Merlin in it.
6. Read "The Devil And Daniel Webster."
5. Watch any new IFC "After Midnight" or of the new Hammer Horror flicks that I come across.
4. Re-watch The Fearless Vampire Killers. It'll be nice to see how it sounds in English finally.
3. Listen to a radio theater episode of the Shadow.
2. Watch an old Hammer Horror flick with Peter Cushing and Christoper Lee in it.

and...
Hand out candy on Halloween night, after I get home from work.

Time Travelers, Familiar Strange New Worlds, And Zombies

Magic: the Gathering and Pokimon players have learned how to make their own sandwiches or just order out. I think the Buffy The Vampire Slayer die-hards are about on their third kid right about now. Babylon Five and Deep Space Nine deep ones have had to start teaching remedial math instead of working towards their professorship in IT at various colleges throughout the modern world.  And they're all just about to ready to meet me at the bar to speak of olden times and the "Classics" of fantastic culture, err media. 

Mostly listening to Dr Who in its eighth season since the 2005 comeback, the format and messaging is killing the franchise. Plainly put Peter Garibaldi could be a wonderful Doctor. Instead of the fresh start that was promised at the end of the ump-teenth Matt Smith farewell, what we're getting is tepid rehash of plots done much better decades before, with some daleks voice modulation and Tardis sounds thrown in. The supporting characters are not new, designed for Moffet/Davies-induced coma victims, that think only people below 42 can be sexual unless it's a police procedure TV show.  Leads me to a riddle,
Q: When does future technology masquerading as the paranormal get old?
A: When do we get Shaun Dexter?
Really is this BBC show really just neo-Victorian social retardation conditioning these days?

Dusk To Dawn has been re-written as something more akin to a García Márquez novel than a Quentin Tarantino indulgence. Whenever Netflix notices that episode four or five is messed up, I speak more on it.

Z Nation re-affirms why like I like The Asylum studios, err production company. While I haven't watched movies like Sharknado and its sequel, I am happy they are out there and still being made. This not only funds unheard of movies, like say, AE Apocalypse Earth, it brings in enough interest to fund a show about zombies that isn't about bad southern accents from classically trained actors. For all of its promises to be about just shooting zombies, I found the pilot full of little post-apocalyptic infra-structure tidbits to merit the tag word "sci-fi" not "soap." AND the show was fun to watch (ZOMBIE TODDLER!!!), not moving nor contemplative.

Maybe one day, I should talk about the "classic" stuff that I like.