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&

No, I'm not dead, despite what my online presence, or lack thereof, may suggest. And speaking of the undead, I'd like to reflect today on a particularly strange series of books about the supernatural. In this case, the strange thing is not the content of the books themselves, but rather the series' origins and evolution. Perhaps the oddest thing about these books is that there are nine books in the series (well, arguably...I'll get to that), yet there is almost no information about them anywhere. Most of the Amazon pages for them have no reviews, and even a Google search reveals little more than used book sales. Isn't it unusual that such a lengthy series seems to have not a smidgen of the dedicated, borderline obsessive fandom afforded even the nichest of long-running franchises? I suppose at this point I should mention the name of this series of books. Don't worry, you probably won't recognize it unless you're one of the six people searching f

In a dark, dark mobile home, there was a dark, dark cupboard... And in that dark, dark cupboard, there was a dark, dark shelf... And on that dark, dark shelf, there was a goofy, rainbow-colored record player... And in that goofy, rainbow-colored record player, there was... THIS RECORD! I've spilled a lot of virtual ink in my numerous online missives about scary stories, particularly Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and its two sequels . But Alvin Schwartz was not the only author to produce collections of scary stories for younger audiences, and he certainly wasn't the first. Maria Leach, for example, had been doing an excellent job laying the groundwork for macabre collections to come in her compendiums of chilling folklore like Whistle in the Graveyard . And then there's this curious little number: 1970's Scholastic release The Haunted House and Other Spooky Poems and Tales . I was introduced to The Haunted House long before I ever read it. In fact,

Sometimes, on an overcast day, when the sun's luminous silhouette struggles mightily to break through the murky clouds and the wind whispers its vague lullaby, I think of my friend and hope that, wherever he may be, he is happy... *** With the recent success of the Pok é mon Go mobile game-such a phenomenon that it has popularized that most base and shameful of activities: walking -the original 151 Pocket Monsters have reentered the popular consciousness with a vengeance. Because of this vengeful reentry, my thoughts of late have turned to my own personal experience with the Pok é mon games of yore, and the untold tragedy of a fallen friend. I first heard of these games through a 1996 issue of Nintendo Power , which at the time was quite fond of  dangling the carrot of Japanese games before ravenous American audiences that would never get to play them. How I longed for Secret of Mana 2 or RPG Maker to hit these shores! Pocket Monsters , while cool-looking, had the air of so

I have to show you something. Look: Do you see that? That is an actual photo from within my living quarters. Some might say it represents a wall of obsolescence, a shrine to the preferred audio format of a bygone era, when physical copies of your music were a thing and mp3s took a full afternoon to download and were probably just virus traps. Others might say, "Wait...THREE different Kris Kross albums?" Yes, I have a lot of CD's. And, like proctologists, there are some great ones, and there are some bad ones. But then there are the ones that defy such simple categorization, and are not so much good or bad as they are baffling and inexplicable. You will find few greater examples of this phenomenon than those contained within what I have dubbed the Celebrity Wing of Joey Marsilio's EXXtreme CD Collection. Gaze upon these works, ye Mighty, and despair! Or at least like scratch your head or something. Hulk Hogan- Hulk Rules & "Macho Man" Randy Sav