October 1st is tomorrow. However, I’m pumped and excited to kick off AWESOME-tober-fest so I’m doing something unprecedented. I’m going to post this little entry a WHOLE DAY EARLY. WHAT-WHAT?! That’s right, AWESOME-tober-fest is starting a day earlier this year. Have I completely blown your mind? Don’t worry, you can thank me by sending envelopes of cash and/or blank checks from your checkbook. I’ll accept either.
So, this year, AWESOME-tober-fest has a theme. What is that theme? Well, if you look at the new blog header above you can see the theme of this year is Frankenstein. It’s a loose theme, mind you, as I’ll be looking at a other stuff besides just Frankenstein, but I have a lot of Frankenstein themed articles coming. So prepare yourself.
Anyway, like I said, Week 1 of this little yearly dance known as AWESOME-tober-fest is now officially under way. What am I looking at today? Well, even though the overall theme this year is Frankenstein, the mini-theme of this week will be “Supermarket Goodies”. I’ll be looking at cool Halloween items you can find at your local grocer. I did an early scouring of my Targets, Wal-Marts, Walgreen’s, etc in order to find out what Halloween related items are out there already. Most stores have their Halloween sections up and ready, so let’s see some of the cooler items I found.
Halloween Crunch — I found it this year! Wa-Hoo-HA!! If you remember, I couldn’t find this little slice of Heaven last Halloween OR the year before. And I wanted it. BAD. It had become my personal Moby Dick. I had to find this cereal, if only to prove it existed. I could find Christmas Crunch every year but this one kept eluding me. It was like trying to nail Jello to the wall. However, this year, the God of all things spooky and Halloween-y decided to grace my local Wal-Mart with Cap’n Crunch’s annual scary monster cereal. And all was right with the world. The only thing I wish was that the Cap’n himself was dressed as Frankenstein’s monster instead of the mummy, but mostly because my general theme this year is Frankenstein. Not to take anything away from the awesome Mummy Cap’n artwork on the box. I’m just sayin’.
Well, December is upon us. The year is almost over. So, even though stores started putting up Christmas decorations 2 days before Thanksgiving, I waited until December 1 to really start thinking about Christmas. A few weeks ago I decided to read nothing but Christmas books through the end of the year. I thought it might help “jump start” myself into Kris Kringle mode. I picked my festive list of books first before I started reading because I wanted to be prepared and not caught off guard by finishing a few and then having to scramble to find some more. Many are older classics that I never really got around to reading in the first place and one is one I re-read because it was short and I enjoyed it.
It’s Christmas time! I love Christmas time. The decorations, the holiday-only items in the stores and toys. Can’t have Christmas without kick-ass toys. However, I especially love flipping through the TV channels during the holiday season. All of the TV logos are juiced up for the holidays and our old Christmas Special favorites are dusted off and traipsed out in front of us like a former beauty queen, well past her prime. There are plenty to catch. Endless remakes of A Christmas Carol, TV shows centering their activities around Christmas parties, beloved cartoon characters meeting Santa Claus and learning that “to give is better than to receive”. You’ve seen them, you know them. But the undisputed king of television holiday specials has got to be the studios of Rankin-Bass. Rankin-Bass consistently made the most treasured and beloved holiday specials of all time. Their track record is undeniable. Their influence on the holiday is unmistakable. Let’s take a look back at the animation studios of Rankin-Bass and some of their most famous specials; most you’ve no doubt seen dozens of times, but many you probably didn’t realize they created.
Cavalcade of Awesome 