And the dead crawl back to their graves....

I had to try and pop in just before the last day of the Halloween season. I doubt I'll have any time to blog here tomorrow. So I'm taking advantage of this time now to wish everybody out there in the world wide web a very.....






Here's the counts for this year. Pretty much the same as last year.....

Pumpkins Carved: 2

Halloween Parties Attended: 3

Haunted Attractions Visited: 5

Name Them: Glacier Rock Farms: The Dark, Morgan Manor, Morgan's Torment, Fin & Feather Haunted Trail and Terror on Rural Street.

Seasonal Fall Beers Tasted: 7

Name Them: Samuel Adams Octoberfest, Tyranena Octoberfest, Haaker Schore Oktoberfest, Lakefront Brewery's Oktoberfest, Lakefront Brewery's Pumpkin Ale, Harvest Moon's Pumpkin Ale, Dogfish Head Punk Pumpkin Ale (the best yet!).

Call of Cthulhu games attended: 2

Type O Negative Concerts Attended: 1

Number of Yard Haunts Spotted (really decent ones!): 5

I also have to give a major shout out to Iris Von Beaverhousen and Roberto DelAmorte for their truly spooky Halloween festivus they threw this past Saturday. There was a graveyard, a floating ghost, and inflatable haunted house, hidden pirates treasure, a plethora of food and tasty brews, a mad scientist's laboratory, a ghoul who'd watch you pee and the whole nine yards. A very wonderful evening was had by all!!! Thanks again, for the great time!!!!

And that's it for Zangz's Blog of Geekdom's Halloween shenanigans. The dead have only 26 more hours to swallow the livings' souls. So they better get crackin', pronto!

Have a Happy and safe Halloween!

Zangz.

The Dead have Returned....

I have to tell ya, this week has been one heck of a nard-lick of a week. Talk about some serious ball-bustin' work I had to do. Usually the week before the last weekend before Halloween is one of anticipation and good times. This week was all about work. And it's still not over 'cause I have to drag my sorry, exhausted behind into work again tomorrow morning. Only for a few hours, but still... it's a frackin' Saturday for the love of Jebus (inside joke on that slang term).

On top of the frustrating work week I had I just found out my favorite beer emporium, Murray's Wine and Liquor, is shutting down at the end of next week. It's mostly due to greedy land lords who want to get rid of what they consider "riff raff" so they can put up high rent condos in the area. They boosted the rent to 3 times what it had been. Frackin' dren heads!!! This was not your run of the mill liquor store. This place was a beer drinkers dream with loads of imports and micro brews that were hard to find. The staff was all about customer service and were always incredibly helpful. Why do all good things disappear due to greedy people?

But, there is at least one thing to look forward to! Iris Von Beaverhousen and her man-servant, Roberto Del Amorte, will be throwing a Halloween costume soiree tomorrow night that myself, Mad Mario and his lovely wife Hope will all be attending. I'm hoping that this will cheer up my spirits a bit (pun intended, not a great pun, but still intended).


Last Saturday my favorite band, Type O Negative came back into town on their Halloween leg of their Dead Again tour. They pretty much changed most of their set and I have to say this was one of their best shows yet! It seems that when they tour during the Halloween season, they're always in top form and outdo their usual tours.

Opening for them was local boys Lockjaw, who were pretty decent but not anything entirely new. Then came Finnish theatrical - horror rockers, Lordi. These guys were a trip. They were kind of like GWAR with the whole big costume and make up stuff. The lead vocalist looked like the bastard child of Gene Simmons and Orson Wells. Each member of the band was in full prosthetic make-up. The guitarist was a mummy, the keyboardist was a vampiress, the drummer, a demon and the base player was some sort of Skelletor like warrior. They had a lot of schtick with set pieces that involved the lead vocalist chewing on human body parts, spraying the audience in fake blood with a chainsaw-like contraption and the lead vocalist's cape rising up to be bat wings. They also had a bunch of grave stones on the stage with a back drop of a haunted castle. An impressive and fun band. I just wish the audience were more into them. But, it was Type O's crowd, after all.

The traditional pre Type O fan torture before they came on wasn't nearly as grueling as it had been in the years past. The last couple of tours they would play marching band music or Bee Gee's tunes during their set up time. This year was 80's Hair Band Metal power ballads that were played over the speaker system before Type O took the stage.

Once the lights went out, Moonlight Sonata played over the speaker system with sounds of thunder mixed in. This lasted for 5 minutes straight. Jebus, just get your Brooklyn born asses on stage already! Once they got on stage they drove right into it. Here's the set list....

Moonlight Sonata (Intro that lasted a bit too long)
Pain (Not something I would have opened with, but nice to hear, all the same)
Halloween in Heaven (Now this is what I would have opened with!)
Wolf Moon (I loved this! Great to hear!!!)
World Coming Down (Another great one!)
September Sun (Played hauntingly wonderful!)
Christian Woman ( A standard and classic. If they didn't' play this one they'd be shat upon from a great height!)
Gravity (OK, but they seem to play this one to death every tour. I would have implemented Dead Again or I Don't Wanna Be Me rather than something that is slow and overplayed at their shows.)
Kill All The White People (I've heard that his is Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson's favorite tune!)
Black No. 1 (See my remark on Christian Woman... same deal)
Frozen (Something I haven't heard them play live since I first saw them opening for Queensryche 12 years ago. They even had snow machines going off.)
Encore_____________________
Unsuccessfully Cooping with the Natural Beauty of Infidelity (aka: I Know Yer Frellin' Someone Else - A fifteen minute opus that fully exposes the frustration of being cheated upon in no uncertain terms. Every time they play it live it's pure magic!)

Pete (lead vocalist / bassist / main song writer) was dressed in a priest's collar and their back drop was an ancient, dilapidated religious shine in the middle of the woods with a bright green background (the band's color).

It was truly a great show and I'm quite glad I spent the coinage to go see them!

That's it for now. I'm really hoping to pop in here sometime before Halloween to regale you with how the party went. But with work being so out of control... we'll see. If not, have a very wonderful and undead Halloween!!!!!

Zangz.

Not as Spooky Blog as Blogs Past... Sorry.

Sadly, there's not a lot of Halloween goofiness in my schedule this week. But, I did finally score a day off today. The crappy thing was that I woke up with a small head cold that my body has been fighting for the last couple of weeks. I thought I had it beat, but of course, on my day off, it decides to attack.

But as of now, I'm actually feeling quite better and spent the day lazing about playing some video games and watching a movie or two (scroll down for reviews).

While my fellow haunt fans are spending a weekend up north hunting deer and baking cookies out in the spooky woods (where there is pack upon pack of werewolf's!), I'll be enjoying my favorite band, Type O Negative, who are swinging back into town for a special Halloween extension of their Dead Again tour. Apparently, their set list has changed for this leg of the tour and they've changed their stage presence a bit. I'll let you all know how it goes.


As I've said before, I've seen a few more Halloween/Horror movies and will now spout off on what I thought of them, even if you don't give a dren.

1408 - Although I didn't find this movie all that spooky, I did really love the performances of John Cusak and Samuel Jackson in this paranormal thriller. I was also hooked into the story of a paranormal writer (Cusak) who finds himself locked in a horrific hotel room that not only won't let him leave, but also unleashes some serious psychological and physical terror upon his ass. A very good rental!

The Fog (2005 remake) - Why? Why try and tell an already successful, spooky as frack cinematic horror story? The original The Fog had nothing wrong with it in the first place and certainly stands the test of time in this decade by itself. Why try and re-imagine it? Perhaps because Hollywood is running out of ideas. In any case, I found this The Fog just a retelling of what was originally told, but with snazier effects and less creepiness. They've also seemed to take the original plot and characters and just mixed things up a bit. Same story, but events take place at different times. The ending was so friggin' cheesy I had to shake my head in disgust. I won't give it away, but they try and make the character that Jamie Lee Curtis originally played (now played by Maggie Grace) far more involved in the whole story line, so her fate comes off as being just plain goofy and silly rather than heartfelt and romantic as they probably intended. Don't fix what isn't broken!

Dark Water - Don't rent this thinking you're going to get a really creepy, spooky horror flick. Sure it involves a ghost and the paranormal, but it leans far more into depressing drama than anything else. I did find myself emotionally invested in Jennifer Connolly's character of a single mother trying to get through a very bitter divorce as she and her daughter movie into a crappy, run down apartment building. Of course the building is haunted to the gills by a ghost that has a fetish for water. Since I got so friggin' invested in this movie, I felt completely hosed at the ending. I won't give it away, but I will say that I felt my whole investment was all for absolutely nothing and I was actually a bit angered by the ending. Don't expect spookiness or a decent ending to the story!


On to less spooky things......

I found out some blurbs of the upcoming (don't hold your breath for it) Star Wars TV show as some juicy tid-bits did filter out over the Internet and airwaves. A lot of entertainment news shows told us what we Star Wars fans already new, that it will not revolve any of the popular characters from the movies. No Skywalkers, no Chewies, no R2s. Perhaps there may be some characters that are distently related to characters of smaller rolls from the films. It will take place between the films, Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope and will explore the growing Galactic Empire. If they can do this a bit grittier than the films with writing that is on par with TV shows like Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Firefly and Farscape, they're sure to have a HUGE hit on their hands!

Another sci-fi franchise that is getting a well deserved re-booting is that of Star Trek. The latest movie that is in the pipeline will introduce us to a young Kirk, Spock and McCoy in their first adventure on the Enterprise together. It's being directed by none other than geek god, J.J. Abrams. So there's a lot of hope for this project! They have Zachary Quinto (Sylar form Heroes) as Spock and Karl Urban ( from LOTR) as McCoy and frellin' Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead / Hot Fuzz) as Scotty!!!. Those are three reasons right there to get excited about this project. The one thing that worries me is who is rumored to be cast as James T. Kirk. Originally, Matt Damon's name was bandied about for the role of the iconic captain of the Starship Enterprise. But, instead it looks like actor Chris Pine may be getting the role. Who the frell is Chris Pine? Good question. When I saw pictures of him, he looks more like a guy who came off of one of those MTV reality soap operas or perhaps a J. Crew ad rather than the manly captain of the Enterprise. If this is true, he'll be in, what I call, a Daniel Craig position. In other words, he'll be filling the role that is seeped in iconic mythos and better fit the part. Craig pulled off Bond beautifully. So here's hoping that Mr. Pine does the same for Kirk.


This is all I have for now. I may just go outside and have a cigar as the season is winding down very soon! So I gotta do some huffing before it gets too cold outside.

Zangz.

More Dead Stuff.....

Wowzers! We're well into the Halloween season and I'm finally getting to posting a new blog. The past couple of weeks have been jammed packed with exhausting work as well as a good dose of Halloween hi jinx! So I'm going to get right into it with a good dose of what I like to call drive-by horror movie reviews. Quick and sweet, here we go....

Dead Birds - A good Civil War era spook story involving a group of bank robbers hiding out in an old haunted plantation house. Lots of blood, lots of spooks. I liked it! It didn't make it to the big screen in wide release, so fellow horror movie fans need to spread the word.

Ginger Snaps 2 - Nowhere as good as the other two Ginger Snaps movies, probably due to the fact that one of the tow integral roles to these movies was missing throughout most of the flick. A big part of these female werewolf movies was the interaction between the two sisters. When one of them is taken out of much of the script, it loses a lot of it's charm. Still a decent enough story. It was ok.

Perfect Creatures - This flick kind of combines the feel of Equilibrium and the Underworld flicks with a small dose of Metropolis thrown in. However it's nowhere as near action packed as the former two. The story takes place in an alternate 1930's where vampires and humans coexist peacefully, until one vampire starts to give into his bestial nature. A real cool idea and premise for a story, but it drags quite a bit. Another decent movie to check out, just don't expect a whole lot.

Boogeyman - There's nothing new to see here. Boring story, boring spook, and nothing we haven't seen done a lot better in other supernatural thrillers. The cheesy CG'd villain was not worth the rental. Pass on this.

Session-9 - David Caruso heads this impressive ensemble cast that drives this horror thriller. The setting and acting are the foundation of this movie. The viewer is always wondering if this is a tale of ghosts and spooks or of the downward spiral into human madness. A decent enough movie, but don't expect to be too creeped out.

The Grudge 2 - Have you seen the first Grudge flick? Good, then you've also seen this one also. Not much difference. But if you really liked the first one, you'll probably like the second as it's pretty much the same movie. There are some pretty good creepy moments in this one.

Darkness - Another supernatural, haunted house, thriller that doesn't bring anything new to the table. Well shot and well acted, it still doesn't really differentiate itself from other haunted house movies.

On to other spook filled stuff! The last couple of weekends we haunt enthusiasts ventured out and found a few to visit. Here are the reviews...

Glacier Rock Farms, The Dark Side- This one was a haunted mine shaft meets haunted hayride meets haunted trail. We were all really happily surprised at this one. At only $10 a pop we were treated to an hour's worth of haunted delights that may have lacked a bit in pacing and amount of effects, but certainly made up for in fun filled surprises! The Good: The mine shaft (if slightly longer) could have the potential to compete with the more popular haunts! The glowing insects on the hayride were certainly a surprise to my lower extremities. The soundtrack that accompanied the hayride helped with the atmosphere nicely. The Bad: Could have used a lot more scenes. Things were quite barren during the hayride and haunted trail. There was also a major pacing problem after the mine shaft when we had to wait about 20 minutes before the hayride started. But, this little gem of a haunt has a HUGE potential and should be checked out by more haunt fans! Longer bang for your buck also.

Morgan Manor & Morgan's Torment - These are one of the more popular attractions that have a lot of publicity behind them. They're pretty much two haunts in one that you have to pay separately to get into both. Let's start with the good: Excellent actors, excellent sets and excellent effects! Now the bad: Both haunts ($10 each, $20 total) took us only 15 minutes to go through. We were rushed through both of them by the scare-actors. This was a major downfall as there's lots to look at and see throughout the haunts since there's a lot of detail in both. Now if they combined both haunts into one and dropped the price to around $10 to $13 bucks, I don't know if I would have felt quite as jipped.

Fin and Feather's Haunted Woods - Here's another haunt that only cost $10 and still delivered. Though, not much in the length department there was a lot of effort put into this show. The Good: Good actors. Cool pirate ship. Excellent graveyard! The Bad: Clowns. They don't scare, they annoy. Only 15 minutes. Most haunted trails and woods take quite a bit longer to traverse. The Hot: The bartendress who took our tickets. The Creepy: The old drunk at the bar who wanted us to come back after the trail and let him know how we liked it.

Terror on Rural Street - Traditionally we always try to hit this haunt. Last year, after being closed the previous season due to legal drama, it wasn't quite as good as it had been in the past. This year they fully made up for it. This puppy was in full scare swing this year!!! I think this was one of it's best years yet!! The Good: Damn near everything. Among the top of my list, the attic scene, the swamp scene, the actors, the sets and the fact that both of my cohorts got completely soaked in one scene where I made it out slightly moistened. The Bad: Honestly... I got nothin'. This haunt was the one at the top of my list this year. Definitely worth the $10 and 15 minutes to go through.

I think that will be it for haunts this year as next weekend we're taking a bit of a breather from Halloween activities. However, there's a huge Halloween party in the works that will be thrown by my friends Iris Von Beaverhousin and her faithful servant Roberto DelAmorte. Rumors are humming that there may be a special effect or two that is being worked on for the party. I know I've contributed some old fake gravestones I had laying around. This could get interesting.

I already have a costume picked out with a back up costume at the ready should something go ary. I'm going to be a toxic plague victim. I'm hoping no one brings their appetite to the party.

What was that you just asked? What am I listening to right now? Oh, well, It's Nightwish's Dark Passion Play. If you're into Finnish, orchestral, uber-dramatic, epic, Heavy Metal. They're worth checking out!

Hey kids, that's it for this week. I'll check in again before the season's over. Make sure you do something spooky this week.

Zangz.