Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

When I was walking down the street today, I saw this: Now this could mean one of two things: either someone is preparing to burn Tobey Maguire in effigy for that dance scene in Spider-Man 3 (which I liked , suck it, haters), or it's Halloween season again! This is perfect, because it gives me an excuse to drone on at length about one of my favorite things: pumpkin carving! Avid readers of my blog may recall my earlier installment about pumpkin carving pioneers Carve-O-Lantern , as well as the sequel post about their product line expansion. Well, there's still plenty of meat on this bone, so I'm diving into a pumpkin PIE-le of patterny goodness to bring you this retrospective! Carve-O-Lantern (and later, Pumpkin Masters) have released so much material over the decades that I could-and possibly might-write about this stuff forever. So let's go waaaaay back to the early days of the brand to take a look at how their pumpkin carving kits have evolved through time. I&

I have spent the last few weeks tirelessly laboring on a thorough Yelp review for a local Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen. I feel my work is important enough that I would like to share it with my blog readers as well. However, since I know my readers are busy people, I've cut away all the fluff and excerpted the most salient material here. I apologize if some of you find this intensely disturbing. I should have known I was in for a rough time when I pull into the Popeye's parking lot. There are no parking spots within easy walking distance except for a single space directly in front of the restaurant. Now, normally this would be ideal, but the space is clearly marked "20 Minute Parking." So great, now I'm in a race against time! Asking me to divine the future and somehow predict how long I'm going to be at Popeye's is a fool's errand, so right from the beginning I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm going to have to rush my meal and watch

I wrote this many years ago for my Myspace blog. I am reprinting it here since it is not particularly easy to access Myspace blogs these days, and my Scary Stories Power Rankings post has gotten me so much traffic that I feel this is something people may be interested in.    Today I am going to voice a complaint I have held within for several years. That's not entirely true; I have complained about it to others, but it is an obscure and perhaps inconsequential complaint that I doubt anyone remembers. Specifically, I would like to complain about the drop in quality between the audio book version of the first volume of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , and the latter two volumes, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones . Yep, when I said “specifically,” I meant it. It doesn't get any more specific than this, folks. The quality of the books themselves is outstanding; I dare say I wouldn't be the person I am