Octoberific Day

Some days you just can’t help but recognize them for what they are. The chill in the air with no humidity, a brilliant blue sky that looks almost black the higher up you stare; how can one possibly be expected to work on a days like these? So, that’s exactly why I blew it off to have an adventure. And I highly recommend you do the same before the calendar flips to November.

It seems to happen like clockwork this time of the year. I warned everyone in the office months ago that during late September and October I will be throttling back on projects and travel but the opposite transpired. So far in the past three weeks I’ve been handed two multimillion dollar account opportunities and acquired them both, thrusting me into more than 60 hours of intense work that leaves me at night nursing a glass of wine while staring blankly at a computer screen. The drafts of Halloween posts number in the twenties but they are without wit or charm. It reads like a dull salesman with a bad back who is forced to enjoy a bouncy castle then told to write whimsically about it. The result is rushed, without heart and if excellent writers like J.W. Ocker and Matt Caracappa have taught me anything it is quality over quantity wins every time.

I needed this day to put myself and the Halloween Hell Show back on track. Between the massive workload and the unexpected hurricane, October is zipping by in a blur and the show has had serious neglect. If there was any hope in doing so a physical action was needed because in many ways, physical motion leads to a positive mental emotion. It’s science, man.

First: The music. My choice to get into the perfect Halloween mood is absolutely the Halloween Pandora station. For what ever reason, it seems to have been contoured to exactly what I like. A bit of oldies, a bit of the 80’s, some soundtrack classics and even some spooky jazz. I get up early and crank it up.

Second: Fill the crock pot up! If the mood of the season needs to hit on all notes, the house has to smell right and there is nothing better than long slow cooking to accomplish that. My go-to choice is always pot roast. I believe I have perfected this one from years of watching The Food Network. Taking recipes from various chefs and putting in a little of my own additions (hot peppers), it’s hard to argue with this one. Also, I learned the use of corn starch for gravy. I am growing up! This recipe and crock pot speed will engulf your home with the best fall smell imaginable and combined with $50 Yankee candles, it’s an olfactory orgy of Halloween.

Third: Grab a friend and seek out the most sincere roadside pumpkin patch. This one is a biggie. Seeing how I don’t have many friends who can take off on a workday afternoon, I had to enlist my dogs. Summer seemed the most eager and while the others would be happy to adventure with me, she is the one I could count on to not puke in my new car.

I have been reconnoitering the area so I knew of a few pumpkin patches to visit but there was one in particular that demanded my visit. It was the perfect blend of nostalgia and country making every picture look like an airline travel magazine spread. The day was getting later and the shadows grew long in the orange light. Summer was trying to take in all the excitement as best as she knew how but after some frustrating photo attempts, the strain was too much and she succumb to what a lab puppy must do. She jumped into the apple bin spilling about forty-plus apples. Cost: $37.40.

All-in-all, it was a nice trip to the pumpkin patch with a girl who still needs to grow out of her impulsion. I now have more apples than I know what to do with so it looks like my neighbor will have plenty for pies. I’ll just skip the fact they were paw selected.

Forth: Get Halloween junk food! After the trip to the pumpkin patch I decided I needed some other items and definitely fall beer if I was to cap off the day properly. Perhaps some firewood for the outdoor fire pit as well? I left the car running with Marylin Manson covering Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas songs on the radio while Summer was in timeout for her apple episode.

I don’t know what happened but I was on such a Halloween-High I passed by the Halloween junk food display and went mad. We all go a little mad at times, right? I began shoveling in everything that had a witch, was orange and black, gummy or chocolate, both evil and benign. I must have looked like I was on a grocery store game show and the clock was ticking. The last time I went this carefree in a grocery aisle was when I ate a death wing challenge and emptied half the anti-acid shelf.

Before we went home we stopped at my favorite little beer bar which happens to be dog friendly. Still a little wary of Summer’s puppy-like impulsion, her lead was a little shorter. The people there are always so charming and the fact Halloween 4 was on the TV, the decorations were displayed with heart, it was clearly the perfect last stop of the afternoon.

When we got home from an afternoon of fall scenes and adventure, the house smelled like heaven. I unloaded the haul and started the backyard fire while sipping on a fall IPA. I made the conscious effort to stop and listen to the breeze blowing leaves from the trees, the crackle of the fire and kids off in the distance playing outside. The dim orange glow illuminated the yard and I started to truly embrace this time of the year. I needed this.

Later that evening my buddy called and asked what I was up to and I told him about the kickass autumn day I had including Summer’s assault on an apple bin. But we were not done yet! The new Halloween movie with Jamie Lee Curtis opened that night and I had completely forgot! It was as if Samhain orchestrated this entire day to give back the spirit so many were trying to suck out. I got on Fandango and holy shit, the 10:30 showing looked completely empty.

After dinner and fifteen cowtails (candy not the actual cow’s tail), I waited on Paul to arrive to have a pumpkin beer before heading out to see the new Halloween and end this Octoberific day the best way possible. I blared Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party” from my ridiculous office and probably posted too many embarrassing pictures on social media but I didn’t care. I was going to see Halloween on the big screen for the first time in twenty years with my good friend.

It was the perfect end to the perfect day. Well, perfect is a strong word. There are always people I want to share these days with but if you can’t be around people, a cute lab is the next best thing. I’ll post more on Halloween if not to at least acknowledge the time capsule for the 2018 Halloween Hell Show. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

I challenge you to get out there and have an Octoberific day. Just embrace it all, even if it’s sitting in the park sipping on cider. Don’t let the daily drudge steal this away because that drudge is here all year-long. It can wait.

October 20, 2018 0

Ghosts and Goblins! A Halloween Story

I believe Halloween freaks like myself have that one event, memory or place which is the responsible for our undying love of the season, even into middle-age. For me, it was a book. As far back as I can remember, I loved this book and would take it almost anywhere. In fact, I can recall my parents concern I was become a little obsessed with it and offered almost anything to replace it or at least broaden my horizons. I heard none of it. This book took me to a weird, spooky place and even today, that is where I want to be. This book is Ghosts and Goblins.

For almost thirty years I thought I had lost this book and it slowly drifted from memory until a fateful day when I was exploring my parent’s basement I was reunited with my beloved book. A little used and the cover is missing but still readable. It’s what is on the inside of the book that matters, no?

Ghost and Goblins is a collection of old stories, poems and limericks from various sources but the real magic is the illustrations by Tim Kirk. They were so mesmerizing I don’t even recall reading much of the stories. Except for one. THE one. The story and illustration which terrorized an only child and would pop into mind late at night believing there were ghosts right outside the door. That story was “A Halloween Story” by Margaret Widderman and it solidified my love of October forever.

My good Lord, look at what is happening in this room! These kids have no idea there are demons floating all around them but do seem generally taken with the story. There are jack-o-lanterns lit in the windows and hot chocolate with doughnuts on a plate making an absolutely rad-ass evening of fright. It reminds me of being a kid watching The Exorcist on TV knowing full well that in an hour I would sent to bed scared out of my wits. I don’t know why we do the things we do but that is what makes us the Halloween freaks we are.

“There was Something that howled around the chimney, And Something that rattled on the wall- And it wasn’t wind, the Thing, nor a tick-tock on a string, Nor anything they said it was at all:”.

That stanza of the poem/story used to creep me out. It was like the part in a ghost movie when logic and reason starts departing as the characters begin to accept paranormal activity is afoot. I remember reading this under a blanket with Cheez-it dusted fingers listening closely as the house settled. Was that a ventilation duct expanding or was it Captain Howdy scratching outside the door? At that time, the latter seemed more plausible.

For better or worse, this book shaped my love for Halloween and all things creepy. Still to this day, I love thumbing through these pages getting the same delight I had at age seven. Tim Kirk’s imagination and illustrations make this book such a treasure and I am so grateful to have found it after all these years. I can’t tell you how hard it is to describe a childhood book in your late thirties. “It’s a book with demon ghosts sneaking up on kids eating doughnuts…has a rotting corpse in a tux reading a magazine on the inside cover…”.

The Hell Show continues! Thanks for reading my story about reading. This is typically my favorite week of the season because finally no one gives me the side-eye when I dress in all black and orange. It’s a lonely summer.

September 23, 2018 4

Halloween Must Go On

Hey there! So, if you follow me on social media you may have heard about my recent run-in with the ghost of Issac Newton. Last week I was negotiating what I thought was a pretty easy obstacle at the top of a few stairs and didn’t quite make the very last few inches resulting in a pretty big crash. I managed to fall, not down, but over about six steps, knee first onto the pavement, shattering my left patella (kneecap). It was one of those injuries that you immediately know you have done something really terrible. The muscles stop working, the body goes numb and the breath is sucked out of you all at once and you basically go into damage assessment mode. At least I do, anyway. It has been a number of years since I have been injured to this degree but back then I basically had a mental checklist like a T-100 Terminator of everything that is working and not working. It’s nice to know I still have that emergency mental rational thought available. It helps to not have a panic attack like the old lady on the bathroom floor demonstrating why a “Life Alert” bracelet is so important.

I ain’t gonna lie to you guys, this sucks. It sucks to be in this much pain from simply sneezing or having to give yourself a pep-talk to just get out of a car. There is no cast since it is basically the shield for the joint so it is exposed to any accidental bumps causing an involuntary Wookie sound or two. Worse, finding yourself on a downhill speed-hobble with crutches because no one is ever good on crutches. There is no doubt surgery is on the way but until this leg’s swelling calms down and the travels finally wrap, I have to push it off a little while. It all just kinda sucks.

I am bound and determined not to waste this year’s Halloween Hell Show on a late-in-the-season catastrophe especially after all the cool travels and exciting finds I lived through this season. I mean, some of the places I was able to visit were insane and I have to take you there. To let this slide off into the “Further” because of work and a shattered knee cap would be criminal. It has actually bothered me way more than a normal person should be bothered since all 10 people who read this probably don’t care anyway. My buddy Matt from the site Dinosaur Dracula coined the phrase years ago, “Time wants to chop off my dick and feed it to Minutes the dog”. It is true that Time is no friend to any of us so that is why we must do everything NOW, because Minutes is always begging for more.

I have no doubt that this injury will be nothing more than a positive experience. Injuries have two directions with a person especially the older they get. They can either cripple you or make you stronger. They can make you timid and weak or light a fire in you to double down and spring you back into action like a little memo from the Universe saying “Hey, we noticed you have been too complacent, recently. Here is a challenge to grow.” Challenge accepted.

Now on with the show.

This year I was able to visit Japan, different states in the US and the Halloween Queen of Queens, Scotland. The gratitude I have for just being in these geographical locations, touching the stone of a 1,000 year old structure or talking with locals over a pint of beer, can’t be properly expressed in words. The best I can do is share this with you through video and stories because I want this to be preserved forever. I make it a point to make friends anywhere I travel and I made some pretty amazing ones this year. I kept repeating “how lucky am I” this entire season and that feeling still hasn’t diminished one ounce.

Today I am taking you to the famous Glenfriars Kirkland Cemetery in Edinburgh, Scotland. This old cemetery has a past so dark and evil, it has to be seen to be believed. I first take you there in the day time and then (after I missed my train back to Aberdeen) back at midnight while I walked alone in what is said to be the most haunted cemetery in the world! I am kinda weird like that.

Keep an eye out later this morning for this one and this afternoon we tone it down as I talk about little people in Halloween shows. I’ll explain later.

October 25, 2017 1

Electricity and Crystal Pepsi Both Suck

It is 2016 and I am still doing this dance. That slow waltz, yapping about horror films, weird travels, crappy food and silly observations of life. I have had huge aspirations here with not-so-hot results. I know, the Halloween Show fizzled and Christmas was just a disaster. I even tried to do a thirteen day give-away and truth be told, only half the winners have gotten their winnings still and its halfway through January. They will but I managed to drag this gift thing out long enough that I should just put “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” on the box.

So what’s up? Everything going well? Did you see that Dustin Diamond (Screech) had to report to jail for stabbing some guy in a bar? It seems that dude had some pent-up aggression from being portrayed as a goof for ten years. What were we talking about again?

So, things have been changing for the better over here in VeggieMacabre land. Work damn near killed me but dawn has broken. My career can be described like…imagine you are a professional juggler. You can juggle anything; bowling balls, tennis rackets, chainsaws, knives…anything! Now, imagine you are performing and you are mid-juggle and ask an audience member to toss something into the items you are currently juggling. One person tosses in a soda fountain drink. That is how these past few months have been. Expected to do the impossible because people are fucking dicks.

By the way, I am not a professional juggler. I can’t even juggle tissues.

So, I am here to say, I miss this place. I love writing about the dumb things in life and reviewing things no one cares about. It’s a strange hobby but it allows one to live in the moment and share it with someone in Romania. I get a lot of inspiration and if I am being honest, even imitation of other sites and blogs. I guess that is the greatest form of flattery.

So I am going to tell you a little story of my dumb childhood. That is, after all, the foundation of VeggieMacabre. It’s about Crystal Pepsi, Faces of Death and electrocution.

Back in middle school, I hung around the pretty much everyone but I felt more comfortable with the nerds than the athletic types. My friends Ben and Brendan where the two I spent the most time with and during the weekends we would always be at one of our houses. Those days were filled with comic book shops, Street Fighter 2, Blockbuster and any stupid adolescent food a kid could ingest. It was a great time to be thirteen.

This particular long weekend we lucked out and had a snow day. It was a typical snow day in Georgia which meant enough snow to cancel school in the morning but gone by 2:00 in the afternoon. No matter because the three of us were content to indulge in the finer things in a young dork’s life. Like reading Lobo comics, doing a blind fold taste test of Crystal Pepsi vs regular Pepsi and rent movies with suggested parental consent.

That day I found out three things about myself:

Yes, you can actually be disturbed enough from a film that it ruins a weekend
Crystal Pepsi is not good
Electricity is pretty damn scary

We were at Ben’s house for that snowy Friday. He was my British buddy whose Mom was sweet as could be and his father was the size of dumpster and could possibly punch through a fridge. He was a professional rugby play in his youth back in England and you could tell from the fact he only had ONE EAR!. He had only one fucking ear because it was ripped off in a game against Norway back in the late seventies, before protective headwear was made mandatory. Watching him wear glasses was something of great mystery.

That aside, Ben’s father was a jovial man who joked with us kids and no longer a rough and tough rugby player, he was a rough and sweet CPA for some firm in Atlanta. He used to have weird nicknames for us that didn’t really have any meaning rather it just rhymed. For example, my name was “Willy-McBilly” and Brendan was “Brendan My Friendan”. Silly, I know, but at thirteen you just thought it was a normal part of being a kid when interacting with parents.

The three of us always hung out in Ben’s semi-finished basement. It had everything we needed like a TV, a Super Nintendo, a crappy couch and a poker table behind it. Ben’s dad was finishing it bit by bit, doing all the drywall, pluming and electric work himself and it didn’t matter if we were down there, fully engrossed in Diehard, Ben’s dad would be drilling away.

The movie of choice for that day was somewhat taboo back then and was the talk of every recess since I could remember. Every kid with a jerk older brother had been told about this and whether they had seen it for themselves or just by word of mouth, they captured the attention of an entire lunch table. You know the movie. Faces of Death Vol. 1-3.

Faces of Death was a macabre documentary of people being filmed in there last few minutes of life. A morbid fascination to horror loving creeps like us, it was narrated by a coroner named Francis B Gröss, who showed us everything from real autopsies to a parachutist landing in an alligator farm to a real electrocution/execution. It was graphic, grainy and completely disgusting. It made us feel as if there was a dark film covering our skin and the paranoid reflections in our own mortality encompassed our thoughts for possibly the first time in our life. It would be an exaggeration to say this was as far away from a feel-good film as you could get. A better example would be to say White is to Black as Care Bears: The Great Happy Snuggle Nubbles is to Faces of Death.

To be honest, I don’t think we even made it through volume one before we had to turn it off and focus on something that didn’t involve awful people hammering open live monkey heads. It was time to find something more productive. A taste test.

Now I don’t recall how long Crystal Pepsi aka Pepsi Clear had been on the market when we decided to do this blind taste test but I do know I was no stranger to the product. In fact, I remember being very disappointed my first time trying the “uncola”. It had an after taste that seemed almost soapy. Besides Van Halen, I really didn’t care for the drink and didn’t understand why drinking clear soda was such a big buzz. Obviously I was oblivious during the eighties and early nineties because these campaigns with silly color changes were everything to people. (Google “purple ketchup”)

Trying to focus our attention away from the awful deaths of 1978, we laid out the little plastic cups across the poker table and used a rolled up t-shirt for the blind fold. Each of us would take a turn guessing what was regular and what was clear.

Meanwhile, while we were hard at work doing a fake marketing test for our own amusement, Ben’s dad was hard at work installing a light switch on the wall approximately ten feet away. A tough guy, knowing how electricity works was mere elementary science and turning off the breaker would be for amateurs or ninnies. He had been finishing out this basement for the better part of the fall and winter so by this time, little things like safety were just annoyances.

It was finally my time to test my senses and see if these taste buds could tell the difference between Crystal Pepsi and boring ol’ regular. With sight removed I raised the first cup to my lips and took a sip. Undeniably , it was Crystal Pepsi. At this point it dawned on me we were really bored and needed to go outside or do something more productive. But, like a good sport, I still had three more tastes to complete. (We did two of each to make sure we just weren’t lucky guessers)

As I took the second sip I smelled something strange, like a battery operated toy that was red-hot from running too long. The hairs on my arm raised and it felt like I could have touched someone and possibly blown a finger off from the charge in my body. I lifted the blindfold and saw both Ben and Brendan looking passed me and I turned around to see Ben’s dad rigid and holding a screwdriver inserted in the switch on the wall.

Almost the instant I looked over at Ben’s dad, he made what I can only describe as a muffled Grandpa Simpson scream and he broke the circuit with a loud *POP*, the electricity went out and he collapsed to the floor.

Holy shit! Right after watching Faces of Death, we saw Ben’s father get electrocuted in real life! We were frozen in shock and looked at him for a second before realizing we needed to do something. But before we could even get to our feet we saw Ben’s dad sit straight up and exclaim, “Bloody dickens! I just shocked me fuckin’ self!”

He looked over at us and to see if we had seen his brush with death and he could tell from the horror on our faces, we saw it all. Never breaking a moment from character, he laughed loudly and fell back on the carpeted floor. It was almost a gesture to reassure us that he was okay and a little sorry for scarring us for life.

After a brief moment of levity, we helped him up and Ben ran up to inform his mom that her husband shocked himself and smelled up the basement. She, obviously, went screaming down the stairs and made a huge scene (rightfully so). I had never heard such a wonderful array of British loving profanity.

Ben’s mom carted him off to the emergency room to get looked over. At 49, you don’t take a shock like that and not at least make sure it didn’t toast your heart. Electricity is a funny thing; a lightning strike could just knock you out while a getting toast out of your toaster with a fork could kill you before you hit the floor. Since that innocent, I don’t mess with it. I don’t even trust myself jumping a car and a few years ago I installed a ceiling fan and texted a friend goodbye before I started.

So, that was my dumb story. I will always link to Crystal Pepsi, Faces of Death and electrocution and with the reintroduction of Crystal Pepsi this June. I hope that doesn’t prelude to more electricity incidences.

I am back! Currently I am snowed in so this whole weekend I will be posting videos of me slowly going insane.

January 22, 2016 3

13 Days Of Christmas

It’s 13 days till Christmas! It’s practically here!

That’s right, you freaks, we are creeping our way down to the day of Christmas when we get loaded on eggnog, open gifts and watch The Christmas Story 12 times in a row and smash the hand of anyone who dares change the channel. (Sorry about last year, Grandma) With the busy life and time of your’s truly and the crash landing of the Halloween Hell Show, I figured committing 13 days is way more doable than an entire month. But don’t fret, we have lots in store and 13 videos too! I can say that with certainty since most are already shot.

OH! I am also doing a few horror gift giveaways to brighten your Christmas season. Each will be different and announced on Twitter so if you don’t follow me, you might want to. Details will follow on the first prize announced tomorrow.

So, get ready for the unholy number of days as we countdown to Christmas day and have the time of our life doing it. Bring it in. I have hugs for you.

Until the official start (late tonight) spread your love of the holiday and checkout Matt’s annual holiday fantasmo over at DinosaurDracula. It’s tradition, mang.

December 12, 2015 0

Category: Life

Octoberific Day

Ghosts and Goblins! A Halloween Story

Halloween Must Go On

Electricity and Crystal Pepsi Both Suck

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