Well, here it is. The first of five beer review videos featuring the Dundee Seasonal Craft Beer Pack. I didn’t plan on reviewing another seasonal pack but I couldn’t pass this one up. Why not you say? Because this beer holds a certain nostalgic place in my heart. You see, this was the first seasonal pack I reviewed some five years ago when I inadvertently started a tradition of drinking beer for the reason of celebrating Halloween and carving random items like peppers, pineapples and Triscuit boxes. So, I figured I needed to try each one in a video that is far too long, most likely redundant and you can watch me get progressively more intoxicated. But it isn’t just beer that I will be discussing. During these reviews I will talk about Halloween shows, movies, memories and other topics that I really want you to become involved in. Watch these and tell me about your Halloween favorites in either the comments below or on the site where is says “SAY HI”.
Oh, and I know “Friend’s” on the site is wrong. But it won’t let me change it. It’s a Wix error, not mine. I swear!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this next week of bonus videos that will be both on here and over in the video section of Veggiemacabre.TV. Be well my friends.
Man, a lot has been happening over here at VeggieMacabre.TV and the fun is far from over. If you care to check it out you’ll see there are a few changes but the Halloween theme is still the main focus until November first. I’ll be focusing on the annual beer reviews, spooky road trips, various video nonsense and pretty much anything that doesn’t reflect my age. And if you couldn’t tell that from visiting, then I am an astronaut who has an affinity for fine chinchilla-skin socks that I raise on a farm in the South Hamptons. Whatever.
As you can see a few menu items have changed including a “Say Hi Here” page and you really should say hi there. Seriously, say hi there and like it on Facebook. A lot.
Also I have changed the article page and turned it into an interactive book with links to various articles from today and years past. I fully intend to make this the War and Peace of the web. War and Peace if Tolstoy was into beer, horror and running. I don’t think he was, was he? Anyway, this is pretty cool and not too difficult to browse.
Tomorrow is when I rock the FIFTH annual Fall Beer Review. If I had a kid when I started these he/she would be talking and not shitting his/herself anymore. Stay tuned and wang-chung.
In the Fall of 1987 I was an absolute little shit. A unconsoling, blubbering, ashole-ish child that pleaded night and day to his hard-working father who was merely trying to keep the family fed and sheltered for an inevitable “beneath the bed” toy. From the beginning of September to the second week of October, Dad held out until the four millionth “gimme gimme gimme, I need I need” was too much and he caved. He caved over a twenty-dollar Freddy Kruger glove. An item that was worth not even two dollars but that was no matter. In my mind this glove needed to be worn by me during all hours of the day and not just Halloween night.
You see, I never planned an entire Fred Krueger costume for that Halloween. All I wanted was the glove. And where can one find that particular costume accessory? Why Eddie’s Trick And Costume Shop in Marietta Georgia of course, the mecca of Halloween. Recently I came back to see if this home of the macabre was still operating as I remembered it, some twenty-four years ago.
The center to the city of Marietta is an unclosed square made up of 5 parts antique shops, 2 parts restaurants, and a dash of nostalgic glory that is Eddie’s Trick Shop. Today, of course, it has lost a bit of its luster due to the fact that half the store is dedicated to ballerina and dance apparel but the magic of the trick shop is still a focal point.
I know, I know…the picture is blurry. And it kills me that the most important shot of the post is screwed up but it’s all I got. So let’s pretend and just take my word for it, there is amazing stuff all over. Okay? We cool?
There are a few glass cases around Eddie’s that hold all sorts of wonder from severed limbs to novelty dollars with Obama’s face on them to fake dog shit to fake puke. Hell, they even had…
Yup, liquid ASS. “The worst smell since the famous stink bomb” and only $5.95! The part, however, that was the real seller was the promise that there are thousands of uses. Thousands, eh? Why do I really want to see the Shamwow/Slap Chop guy pitch this?
Of course we had to take a look at the 2011 Halloween mask aisle that hasn’t really ever changed since the 1970’s and I love that oh so much. Sure, the masks look a bit more realistic but it is comforting to know that kids can still gaze at the display just as they did in ’78. Perhaps less risk of lead paint inhalation and sudden combustion. There were a lot more people who smoked back then, you know?
The glove/hands of a costume seem to be a bit more eccentric than I remember. They are 8 times the size of the mask so me being the bum I am, I have to ask, how does one hold a beer? This trivial dilemma is lost on a 12-year-old I know but seriously, that is something to take into account. Moving on.
Another big innovation to the Halloween craft of dress-up is the anatomical or medically accurate, I should say, scars and wounds that today’s kids can inflict on themselves. “Slashed Trachea” is one of those kits I can’t recall. Let’s see…I had fake blood, vampire teeth, witch warts and maybe pale zombie completion but a slashed trachea? I wonder if they have ocular contusion kit? I guess that would be just a black eye. I’ll stick with the masks.
Some people find beauty in a sunset. Some in the innocent wonder of a child’s eyes. Some people find it in a bond between people who are in love. Me? I find it in a plastic skeleton rock band. And that is why I want to be your president for the United States of America. If this was in my house it would be in the kitchen.
I will leave you with the ol’ cliché’ rabbit in the hat trick. Sure Eddie’s Trick Shop lost a few steps over the years and I really don’t know if that is the shop or me? Perhaps Eddie has not changed but seeing this as a man rather than a boy makes it a tad less wondrous. I would imagine that to be true but I also think Halloween was a bigger deal back in the eighties. It’s hard to tell the difference between our adult mind and the memories as a child. I think that is why I always come back to these places. I never want those to fade.
Wait a minute….I wonder. They couldn’t possibly still carry it could they?
Starting out this year’s season of all things macabre, I figured I will write a review or a recap, if you will, of three shows that I distinctly remember getting a case of the heebs over. (heebs- feeling the need to shower after witnessing an event that did not make one physically dirty) I used to love staying up past the surgeon general’s recommended bedtime and filling those late hours with nonsensical television until either there was a disapproving knock at the bedroom door from what I am sure was tattling flicker of luminescence leaking under the said door or Rhonda Sheer’s bubbly personality of USA’s “Up All Night” was replaced by a commercial for a turkey-jerky dehydrator. But of all the nonsensical TV that gave me an allergy to books, there are a couple shows that still manages to stick with me, especially as we creep towards September and October. Let us take a look at a few, shall we?
Tales From the Crypt was a staple of my teen years and while most of the shows were a HBO platform for many actors to get their feet wet directing without any real reprisals from a critic committee because let’s face it, horror isn’t a critic’s forte, it did produce some of the best casted and fun TV still today and every so often this show would hit a home run in the creep department.
The episode “The New Arrival” starring David Warner and Zelda Rubenstein was a really dark, claustrophobic, disturbing and down right pee-pants oppressing story that left you wanting nothing more than to never chew grape gum or trust anyone shorter than 4 feet.*pours coffee on the floor out of respect for the late Zelda*
David Warner plays a corrupt and arrogant child psychologist that preys on over protective mothers who spoil children with behavioral issues only to boost his failing radio channel. So in his plan to save his ratings he decides to air a live session at a fan’s house who calls his station. Little does he know that it is Zelda Rubenstein calling him with a case that is most likely not in any text-book or case study he has read before.
When he gets to the house of the caller to begin his radio show he sees how controlling Zelda is and the problematic child is running a terror through the house and is very illusive. Right from the beginning the audience can feel that something is far from routine about this behavioral case. From the screams of the child to the walls caked in grape bubble gum, this reeks of “get the hell out of the house”. And then we meet the kid.
Where does one even begin to state the things wrong here? Ok, I am not going to go through the entire episode because I’ll post the climactic part below and it would seem redundant for you to watch what I just wrote about so I will just express my feelings.
This episode touched on a few nightmare nerves of mine. The fact that all the creepy shit happens during the afternoon is a big one. Some people have a certain witching hour and mine was always 4 o’clock. I think it is the way the sun is dimming or the fact that 90% of all horror movies happen at night so when bad stuff happens when Judge Judy is on TV, I just don’t feel right about it. The wallpaper in the house also made me itch. The house had a very dark feeling about it and the wallpaper from the 1940’s didn’t help.
I know those two creeps aren’t creepy to most others but that is what I hung on to. Call me weird but…okay, call me weird. Please watch this. You will see why this episode stands out the most.
Tales From the Darkside was an amazing show that was pretty corny in retrospect but an absolute humdinger when it came to adolescent entertainment of the 1980’s. When I think about Saturday nights as a nine-year-old the theme to Tales From the Darkside is usually the anthem. Back then these 20 minute stories would cause me to sink deep in the covers, never wanting to peer out the window for fear there would be another set of peepers peering back. I lucked out watching this show in an era when kids would be scared over something that makes five-year-olds today laugh.
Of the hundreds of tales, I think the early episode called “Case of the Stubborns” was not just my favorite but also the most unsettling. Along with an amazing cast like a very young Christian Slater, Eddie Backren, Bill McCutcheon and Barbera Eda-Young, this famous story is about an old man who is too set in his ways to realize he died. When every one begs and pleads for him to come to terms with his own mortality he merely scoffs at their insensate nagging all the while….decomposing. It really is awesome.
After Slater’s character seeks advice from the neighborhood witch he returns home to try once more to lay his already deceased grandfather to rest. Only with a sneeze that blew off Grandpa Titus’s nose did he finally realize that perhaps, he was actually dead.
There are so many reasons to love this episode and while I wish it was an original story from the show, it is not. I remember reading “A Case of the Stubborns” as a child growing up in the south. It’s just nice to know Hollywood didn’t muck it up. I will say, the first scene when Grandpa Titus walks down stairs, I would have put my breakfast down my pants because it was going to end up there anyway.
Who wants to be disturbed? I do! I do! Well, for the final segment of the first real kick off of the 10 week count down, I present to you a gift; these three Tim Currys. In another Tales From the Crypt episode, “Death of Some Salesman”, Tim plays all but one role and is even given an Emmy for his performance.
Ed Bagely Jr plays a corrupt traveling salesman who preys on naive customers thinking they are buying what really is an imaginary cemetery plot. He does pretty well too until he happens upon the home of Ma, Pa and Winona Bracket, all played by the infamous Tim Curry. He thinks he knows who they are but he has no idea what they do. They collect salesmen. (As a sales person myself, this speaks to me more now that in it did back in the day)
I love this episode for so many reasons I can’t even narrow it down to just three. All I know is that Tim Curry manages to do what he does best and that is make you squirm. Especially the god-awful sex scene between Winona-Tim and Ed Bagely. Man, that must have been an awkward shoot! Enjoy this magnificent clip!
There was a shorter clip of just the weird sex scene that I was going to post but the guy who made it was videotaping it from his TV with severe asthma. A tad distracting.
Well I hope you enjoyed these three classics in B Television. Whether you can identify with them or not they really are fun. And if you are going to destroy your vision, waste your life or rot your brain, shouldn’t it be a little fun?
This was a very happy moment for me in my many years as a blogger and new webmaster. I can’t tell you how awesome it is to connect as a long time fan of a page and see that you are somehow apart of it. And oddly enough hurt the members that I spend several hours of web-observance watching. Brain, I mean Brian, is the creator of Review the World TV, Go!, The BroCave, and other such entertaining web-programs all viewed on Review the World.com. If you have been here before, you know about this very site. Over the past year we have worked on a couple things very loosely but not until recently have we really been able to connect and bring you the joint amazing-ness of….
A collective RtW star cast: Hot Sauce Challenge! Watch and be amazed.
Thanks for letting me be a part of this, Brian. Thank you to Tim, Paul, Jessie, Steve and Adam. You guys rocked this and I can’t wait for another fun review to come.
Casserole of Disaster 