This New-Fangled Halloween

Halloween is coming - and you know what that means. It's the time of year for book burnings. So, what's going up in flames this year? Harry Potter? Porn? The Ultimate Sudoku Challenge? Nope - this year, it's Bibles.

Come to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect.

These are perversions of God's Word, the King James Bible...

We will also be burning Satan's popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort, Bruce Metzger, Billy Graham Rick Warren Bill Hybels , John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham, Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa, The Pope...

Man. It sure is confusing, trying to keep up with the book-burners these days. But that's not all - if you want to see a true Halloween horror, check out this ministry's website, via this page (scroll down for the link - I'm not linking directly to these nuts). It looks like they licked a piece of candy-corn and wrote it on a puddle of melted crayons.

Since the author freely admits that he cannot read Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, how does he know that the King James Version is the only faithful English rendering of the Bible? Easy! The KJV tells him so! Wow. Such logic makes me weak in the knees.

Speaking of weak knees, apparently they don't make ghosts like they used to.

Ouch! That's awkward. I can see this Halloween shaping up to be just peachy. Therefore, I thought I'd rent The Shining again just to revisit a classic piece of horror by my favorite director. Wow! Was I disappointed!



Give me a break. This movie wasn't really that scary at all! What a rip-off. I don't remember it being so...so heartwarming. So now how is one supposed to have a scary Halloween?



Good old Mary Poppins! Yes, as I recall, it was this movie (and not Alien) that made me jump high enough to stand straight up on my theatre seat backrest.

But seriously folks, you can have a great and spooky Halloween without any television. Just go to hulu.com and check out their huluween specials, or my favorite classic shows: "Night Gallery," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and "Outer Limits." (They also have "Dark Shadows," but it's the 1990s remake, not the original series, which I love - but I have parts of that on DVD.)

When I was very small, I saw part of a TV show that scared the living crap out of me so badly that I had to leave the room - it was worse than the famous third story from "Trilogy of Terror," which I actually could sit through. ("Trilogy of Terror" is not at Hulu, but you can watch it on YouTube.)



This particular program, I remember, had something to do with red, glowing eyes following a man on the street in the dark before attacking him. Then, there was a scene in which a man trapped in a basement watches in helpless terror as a creature with two glowing red eyes reaches its hairy paws into the window to pull the bars open and come in. I remember that, knowing that the show was about to end, I waited outside the room until all the scary noises had died down, then ran in to see the very last scene: a dark puddle of something on the floor, out of which, suddenly, two red eyes opened and glowed.

Not having any idea what the title of this show was, or if it was a TV movie or part of a series, I searched IMDb and Google and YouTube for this show that had terrified me, without any luck, until a few weeks ago I stumbled upon it by pure chance at Hulu! I could not believe that I had finally found that silly show that had made me scream bloody murder! (And no, it didn't have the same effect on me now.)



It was a "Night Gallery" episode, "There Aren't Any More MacBanes," starring a very young and weird Joel Gray, and (coincidence upon coincidence) including a walk-on role by a young Mark Hamill, who was later to cause me so much adolescent-girl-puppy-love-trauma as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Too funny! It's a small Hollywoorld!

This year, the ghosts are not on the television - the ghost is our television! Television is dead. We can rebuild it; we have the technology. The average ghoul who wants more control over her Halloween viewing now has more choices than ever before. Between Netflix, Hulu, and LikeTelevision, along with all the online world news/entertainment channels to be had, and online mp3s of Old Time Radio shows, this promises to shape up to be a happy (and cheap) Halloween after all.

(What's that, you say? "Twilight Zone"? I didn't forget TZ - I have the entire collection on DVD. I don't even need an internet connection - I can watch it whenever I want! Bwahahahahaha! *evil laughter*)

Shimmies to Ed Brayton at Dispatches, and Book Patrol at Seattlepi, and all my ghosts and ghoulies out there.

P.S. Any "Twin Peaks" fans out there? You can watch seasons one and two for free at IMDb.

Halloween Spoiler Shirley Nagel Actually Gave Me an Idea

Though I love Halloween, I've never been big on handing out the candy to the kiddies, but I love to decorate and think of new ideas to celebrate.

One year I had the brainstorm to go to Goodwill, buy a bunch of kids' books (coloring books, science books, picture books, and dinosaurs) that were in good condition, wipe them with a mild bleach solution, put them in a caldron-type pan and slip a note in a scary font in each book ("We thought your kids would enjoy a book this year, from your neighbors at blah, blah"), add a bunch of dracula pencils, pumpkin bubble-blowers, and black cat erasers, and let the kids dig for what they wanted.

Well, don't let anyone tell you that reading is dead (arh, arh) because the little tykes loved it! They didn't need my help. Every kid took one book. The parents thanked us profusely. I got to light candles, eat popcorn, and watch all the Vincent Price movies I could stand. It was a success.
Well, I've been majorly sick this year, for months actually, and was finally put on antibiotics just before this Halloween, so all I could do this year was unscrew the outside bulb and lie down until my headache subsided and I could keep some food down. Ugh. It sucked. (I want to dress as the undead, not feel like them.)

But it didn't suck as much as the Halloween in Grosse Pointe Farms, where some fanatical McCain delegate to the RNC named Shirley Nagel is in real need of an intervention:




Shirley, Sugar (what else can I call you?), you are taking this election wayyyyy too seriously! Holy crap. Then there's the footage of her being interviewed by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog after she denied her fellow delegates their turn at the cabernet trough.


Would this Renaissance woman be able to tell Amantillado from sherry? Somehow I doubt it.


But at least when she gave blood (50 proof?) earlier this year, as she claims, she didn't designate whether it should go to a McCain or an Obama supporter, and all those red-state corpuscles probably contained both cabernet and all the candy corns she saved for herself from the Halloween jar. Ooh! Cab 'n candy! Vampire's delight. Somebody keep Lestat from this mortal.

But her idiocy (not to mention sheer meanness) gave me an idea. Why not teach the kiddies to vote on Halloween?

Voting is one of the things you'd think they'd learn in school, but don't - along with compound interest and how to balance a checkbook. (We had a mock stock exchange in junior high - talk about bedlam. Fun.)

Next year, make up ballots for the kids and tell them to circle their choice and place their ballot in the witches cauldron you have in the yard:

Who would make the best President of Halloween?
a) The Great Pumpkin (Do kids know who this is anymore?)
b) Santa Claus
c) Spiderman
d) Dora the Explorer
e) Frankenstein
f) [Write in your candidate here]


Or whoever/whatever. Then keep a running tally throughout the evening and post the updates on the sign held by the ghost hanging from your tree in the front yard.

If you hand out candy in addition to this, give out candy to everyone (duh!) but hand out "I voted really scary" stickers to those who fill out a ballot. Glow-in-the-dark ones. That'll get the stragglers to register.

That would be fun! That would be a kick. Unlike the brainstorm of Shirley Nagel, who just won an all-expenses-paid, bipartisan house toilet-papering, egg-throwing, and flaming-dog-poop-on-the-stoop party for the entire next year. And well deserved, I must say.

I just don't know how anyone could work compound interest/balancing the checkbook into Halloween, though. Next year, we'll probably just go to a party, as we did last year.

Maybe I'll go as Shirley Nagel.


(Listen, though - If I eventually manage to convince kids to "straighten up your room for Halloween," I expect someone to nominate me for the Nobel Peace Prize. Got that?)