It’s H-day, baby!! All Hallow’s Day. Halloween. Sam Hain Day. Black and Orange. Spooky Time. Creepy Crawlies. Dress up like a nutball and drink yourself into a blind stupor and wind up disoriented and bleeding on the back porch of some stranger’s house…with no pants (you have no pants, not the stranger, who may or may not have pants). I love Halloween!
Want to see my costume for today? Here it is:
Welcome to AWESOME-tober-fest Week 5!!! I revealed yesterday that there will be an article a day starting yesterday, so here’s today’s installment. FYI…I got sick yesterday afternoon. So I want you to know the Herculean effort it took to get this article out. That’s the kind of sacrifice I do for you, my readers.
Today, I want to talk about the the keystone topic I’ve wanted to talk about all month. It’s a series of books I remember vividly from elementary school. I finally acquired copies of the first six books in the series late last year. It was late enough that I didn’t really get a chance to talk about them last Halloween. However, now I’ve had a year to look at them so let’s take a stroll down memory lane at the Crestwood House Monster Series.
I have a very vivid memory of checking these books out from the HW Gwin Elementary school library. The vibrant orange color of the cover and the cool monster subjects made them a popular choice amongst my friends. Each book focused on a monster or creature from a movie or series of movies. The first six books included Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man, King Kong, Godzilla and Mad Scientists. Most were published in the late ’70s and early ’80s. As you can see, they are also the inspiration for my blog header this Halloween.
Okay, we’ve hit the home stretch. Halloween is on Friday. In honor of the final three day slide into All Hallows Eve (and the final days of AWESOME-tober-fest) I’ve decided to do an article a day. Yes, you heard me right. AN. ARTICLE. A. DAY. Did I just blow your f%*@ing mind? I’ll just pause a sec for you to recover your faculties…
…so, we good? Okay, like I said, today, tomorrow and Friday are all going to have articles to finish off the home stretch of this year’s AWESOME-tober-fest!!!!! I’m excited, I hope you are too.
Having said that, today is going to be a cheat. Today I’m going the lazy blogger’s route and list a bunch of other blogs! Yay! Seriously, I wanted to acknowledge a bunch of other blogs that are also going through their own version of the AWESOME-tober-fest. It’s a huge network of blogs having one giant Halloween Countdown. Many of these blogs have linked to me and many I myself visit on a daily basis. They are all kick-ass blogs that have some really good content for you to check out. So much Halloween stuff it’ll drive you batty (how about that appropriately Halloween-y adjective? Yes, it was bad ass. Thank you).
Here are the other blogs in this giant blogosphere-wide Halloween Countdown. Check out a few of them if you have the time and get ready for a new article tomorrow.
Azathoth’s Abode on the Plateau of Leng: The Dungeon
All Eyes and Ears
Armagideon Time
The Armchair Chef
Art by Bubba Shelby
Branded in the 80s
Cavalcade of Awesome
Comic Coverage
Cool-Mo-Dee
Creepy Los Angeles
Dave Lowe Design!
Digital Meltd0wn Music Blogroll
Digital Meltd0wn
Diversions of the Groovy Kind
Distinctly Jamaican Sounds
Dr. K’s 100-Page Super Spectacular
Dr. Squid’s Smorgasbord of Terror!
Drunken Severed Head
Frankensteinia
Franklin Mint Blog
Geek Orthodox
Geektarded
Gothtober
Halloween Addict
Halloween in the Time of Cholera
The Hallowe’en Tree
Harvey’s Midnight Hour
The Holiday Queen
Houses of Wax
The Horrors of it All
Horror Host Graveyard
Idle Minds Inc.
I-Mockery
John Rozum.com
Magic Carpet Burn
Mark Harvey’s World
Mike Segretto
Monsters and More
Monster Crazy
Monster Memories
Monster Rally
Monsterama
Monsters and More
Moongem Comics
Mostly Ghostly
Mother Firefly’s Faster Pussycats
Music From the Monster Movies 1950-69
Music You (Possibly) Won’t Hear Anywhere Else
Musty TV
Neato Coolville
Needcoffee
Negative Pleasure
Nostalgia Factory
A Nostalgic Halloween
Oh the Horror
Orange and Black
Para Abnormal
Plaid Stallions
Plastic Pumpkins
Pumpkin Hollow
Pumpkinrot
Random Acts of Geekery
The Retropolitan
Sailormoms
The Sexy Armpit
Skull a Day
Sweet Skulls
13 Visions
Tales to Astonish
Tikiranch Hallows
Trixie’s Treats
Universal Horror Sounds
Valhella
Vinnie Ratolle’s Records
Weird Hollow
Wonderful Wonderblog
X Entertainment
Welcome to AWESOME-tober-fest Week 4. For those that are just joining us, AWESOME-tober-fest is my countdown to Halloween which includes spooky articles each week covering things like scary books/movies, candy, etc. I’ll discuss these things each week until we finally reach “H-Day” as I like to call it (or Halloween, for the layman). Since we are celebrating in October, and this is the Cavalcade of Awesome, the name of this countdown is AWESOME-tober-fest. If you missed any of the first three weeks, here’s a handy dandy list:
Week 1: I review gallons of Halloween sodas
Week 2: Some of my favorite scary movies
Week 3: I Survive Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights
All caught up? Good, let’s get started with today’s topic; Cracked Magazine’s Monster Party.
I was going through an old chest of mine in the garage a week or so ago and found my old stash of Mad Magazines. Along with all my Mad mags, there was also a huge stash of Cracked magazines. Talk about hitting the mother lode. I loved reading Mad and Cracked magazine when I was a kid. I would wait each month to buy the copy and read it endlessly until the new issues came out. I even bought the Super Specials and Collector’s Editions which only reprinted material I already owned, but I didn’t care. I loved the spoofs, parodies and humor of my Mad and Cracked magazines. I saved every issue I bought of these magazines and stored them carefully in this chest when I was about 13 and it was left there until I opened it a few weeks ago. I had found my own personal Arc of the Covenant.
.jpeg)
Welcome to Week 3 of AWESOME-tober-fest!!! Hope you’ve enjoyed the first two weeks so far. I started off week 1 talking about creepy Halloween sodas. Then, on week 2, I discussed a few of my favorite scary movies. What’s on deck for this week? Well, as teased to you at the end of last week’s article, Steph and I took the plunge and went to our first Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights this past weekend. Universal Studios theme parks hold this event annually and this year marked the 18th year they have done it. I’ve been wanting to go since we moved down to Jacksonville but we never did and thanks to some cheap, discounted tickets at work, we were able to do it this year. 
In case you didn’t know, ever since around 1990, during the Halloween season, Universal Studios closes its doors (along with Islands of Adventure) around 5:30 – 6pm and clears out all the people. Universal then sets up the scare zones and haunted houses and opens the doors again for people who bought Halloween Horror Nights tickets (yes, it’s a separate ticket). There are as many as 8 haunted houses that are setup in various parts of the park as well as what are called scare zones. In these scare zones are park employees who dress up in scary costumes and follow around patrons trying to creep them out or scare them. Like the haunted houses, each scare zone has a different theme, usually based around what haunted house is near it. Halloween Horror Nights usually has an overall theme each year, too. Last year, with Freddy, Jason and Leatherface it was called the Carnival of Carnage. The year before that they did a “best of” theme with all the best haunted houses and scare zones from the years prior. This year, the overall theme was Bloody Mary; which included famous myths, legends and fairy tales. Bloody Mary is the spririt that would appear to you in a mirror if you said her name 3 times. She’s in the picture below on the right.
It’s a pretty cool theme if you ask me and I was very excited to see what Universal did with it. So, after work on Friday, the wife and I took off for Orlando and our scary Halloween adventure. Continue reading
Nerd Lunch articles
Cavalcade of Awesome 