Archive for the holiday Category

AWESOME-tober-fest 2013 starts tomorrow!

Posted in Halloween, holiday, Jones Soda, soda with tags , , , , , , , on September 30, 2013 by Paxton

Awesometoberfest banner

Well, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: ZOMBIES!! officially begins tomorrow. You can expect an article every weekday throughout the month of October.  I’m excited for Halloween this year, I think I have a lot of good, fun articles for you so I hope you enjoy it.  As you can see, I’ve already decorated for the season!

Today, as sort of a pre-game show, I thought I’d look at a few of the Halloween retail items I’ve found lurking in the local store. Some interesting stuff.

Jones Halloween Soda 2013
First and foremost, Jones has returned this year after an absence with more Halloween sodas.  The flavors this year are Blood Orange, Red Licorice, Caramel Apple and Candy Corn.  Two of these flavors I’ve already had in the past.  If we look back at AWESOME-tober-fest 2008 I reviewed the Candy Corn flavor.  I don’t think I liked it.  I believe I said it tasted like “…spoiled maple syrup poured through a dirty sweat sock…”  I tasted the Caramel Apple the year before in an article about oddly flavored sodas like Dr Brown’s Cel-Ray and Canfield’s Diet Chocolate Fudge.  I believe I said that flavor tasted like “…sun tan lotion mixed with burnt maple syrup…”  So, Jones isn’t necessarily hitting it out of the park with these so far.  Blood Orange is a tangier orange flavored soda and red licorice is way too sweet and thick to be described as anything but “sugar coma inducing”.  So while I love the effort and the packaging, Jones, I’m not loving the execution.

Halloween Big League Chew
Big League Chew is one of my childhood favorites. And I love this Halloween themed packaging.  Howlin’ Original and Gruesome Grape flavors aren’t new or formulated for the holiday, but I like the Halloweeny makeover.  I believe there’s another one with a vampire/Dracula character, but I couldn’t find it.

Kool-Aid Ghoul Aid Jammers
Ghoul-Aid has been around since the 80s. Usually only offered in certain markets and usually only around Halloween. I have some of the original mixes but it seems the flavor is making a resurgence. You can find single packets on shelves again and now Kool-Aid Jammers have their own Scary Blackberry flavor.  I was so excited to finally find this.  I’ll be sucking these things down all month.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013 is coming.

Posted in Halloween, holiday with tags , , , on September 11, 2013 by Paxton

WTF, guys?! We are already almost half way through September. How did that happen? I welcomed my daughter into this world back in December and next thing I know I’m prepping for my son’s third birthday with my daughter’s FIRST birthday coming up fast. The hell?!

So, my annual Halloween celebration is creeping up on me like an undead ghoul looking to take a tasty chomp out of my backside. Behind the scenes I’m trying to get everything written. I have over half of next month’s articles written, at the very least in first draft form. I think I only need to do the last week and a half of articles. But I’ve sort of taken longer than I should have doing those.

Anyway, I don’t know if I’ve announced it here, but the topic for AWESOME-toberfest 2013 is ZOMBIES. Here’s the banner.

Awesometoberfest 2013 banner

I’ve already done vampires, werewoves and the Frankenstein monster, so zombies seemed the next logical step.

And here’s a sneak peak at the creepy header I’ll use starting October 1st.

zombies_header

I had previously posted an image of my notes for this year which should have given you guys an idea of the types of zombie media I’ll be covering. Books, movies, TV shows and comics featuring such genre luminaries as HP Lovecraft, George Romero, John Russo, Robert Kirkman, the Smurfs…..wait, wha-?! Yep, the Smurfs. I can’t wait to show you guys that one.

So stay tuned, starting October 1st, I’ll begin daily updates for my AWESOME-tober-fest 2013 celebration.

6 Vintage holiday newspaper ads for non-holiday movies

Posted in Back to the Future, Christmas, holiday, movies, Star Wars with tags , , , , , , , on December 24, 2012 by Paxton

Cavalcade Gazette

Merry Christmas Eve!  Tomorrow is Christmas, let’s celebrate by looking at some awesomely vintage Christmas movie advertisements.

I’ve spoken before of my love of the newspaper movie section. One of the coolest things about this long lost section of the ever fading newspaper is that the ads would be spruced up for whatever holiday was current. But most especially for Christmas and New Years.

So, let’s take advantage of the fact that it’s Christmas Day and look at some vintage Christmas newspaper advertisements for movies that aren’t actually Christmas movies.

Holiday Hits 1 Holiday Hits 2
Showcase Cinemas Holiday Hits (Dec 16, 1983) – Welcome to “Christmastime at the Movies” in 1983.  A full page of movie ads for Showcase Cinemas featuring their “Holiday Hits of 1983”. Not one of which is a Christmas movie.  And the majority of which aren’t even remotely family movies.  Christine? Scarface? Sudden Impact? DC Cab?  Ok, well, who doesn’t love DC Cab, especially during the holidays?  But Christine and Gorky Park are filled with murder.  Sudden Impact?  Rape and murder.  Scarface? Cocaine and murder.  Yentl?  Barbara Streisand.  Not one of these movies would I take a child  or a family member to.

BTTF2 ad
Back to the Future Part II – From Dec 16, 1989, this ad is a particularly fun variation on the second of the famous Back to the Future posters. They’ve added Santa. I don’t know if this modification exists outside of this ad, but I hope and wish that it does.

Star Wars holiday ad
Star Wars – For the 1977 Christmas season the newspaper ad for Star Wars was modified to include “in character” holiday greetings. I love the sh*t out of this.

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My pitch for a new Rankin-Bass Christmas special

Posted in Christmas, holiday, pop culture, Rankin/Bass, Santa Claus, TV shows with tags , , , , on December 19, 2012 by Paxton

Last week I talked about the Rankin-Bass Santa Claus Trilogy and how those specials are probably my favorite of all the Christmas specials. On Tuesday, the Nerd Lunch podcast cobbled together ideas to create our own Christmas special. However, in preparing for that podcast and picking the characters and plot points I sort of created my own pitch/idea for a fourth Rankin-Bass Santa Claus special to act as a semi-sequel to the Santa Claus Trilogy.

So check out that Santa Claus Trilogy article for a refresher on the first three specials and sit back and let me tell you about my proposed fourth Rankin-Bass Santa Claus special.

It’s many years after the events of A Miser Brothers Christmas.  The elves are working in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole late in the night.  Tinsel, Santa’s head inventor/technician, is working on some advancements to the workshop’s magical systems.  All of a sudden, there’s an explosion in the Workshop and a terrifying man-beast appears in a magical swirl of smoke and sparks.  He roars, “I’M FREE!” and vanishes out of the ruins of the workshop leaving Tinsel staring at the empty spot wondering what just happened.

santa_and_mrs_claus

Tinsel immediately reports what happened to Santa who is equally as baffled as the elf.  Santa consults Winter the wizard about the strange events and Winter’s face falls and he whispers one word.  “Krampus.”

krampus1

Santa asks Winter, “What is a Krampus?”  Winter explains to Santa and the elf that Krampus is a malevolent being that thrives on making people feel sad and miserable.  “He hates Christmas.”, Winter explains, “And he hates you, Santa.”

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Nerd Lunch Episode 66: Creating the ultimate Christmas special

Posted in Christmas, holiday, podcast, pop culture, Rankin/Bass, Santa Claus with tags , , , , , , on December 18, 2012 by Paxton

Nerd Lunch Podcast

Episode 66 of the Nerd Lunch Podcast has stuffed itself down your chimney and is sitting in your stocking. Waiting.

This week we are joined by Mr Michael Digiovanni from The Atomic Geeks for a discussion about Christimas Specials.  Except we aren’t going to actually discuss the specials themselves, we are going to take our favorite characters from our favorite specials and start creating our own Nerd Lunch Christmas special.

Rankin Bass characters
Via RankinBass.com

We each pick a hero, a villain, some henchman, a narrator and a specific plot device (MacGuffin). Then we all talk about and pick the ones we like best and “Frankenstein” those ideas up into our very own Christmas special.  And it turns out pretty f**king awesome.  Give it a listen and see if you don’t agree.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.