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.
We sure did rip through the first week of October, didn’t we? Holy Hannah! I am working on a shitload of beer reviews as well as other projects to boast VeggiemacabreTV and brother, business is a boomin’. I find the work thing and life thing to be a bit of a compromising situation though, so while I want to do it all I can only do it some. But I promise it will be great. I hope.
Here is me rambling in my work clothes and trying to give some new insight with this thing I call a hobby. Be well and see you in a sec!
I have amazing memories as a kid, strolling the aisles of Kmart looking for the perfect costume or Halloween decor. It was the king of the super store back then and if you wanted to dress as Chewbacca or E.T. there was no better one-stop-shop than the well recognized large red K. But like any strong racehorse, eventually there is a faster more sleek horse that will do it better, more elaborate and in this case, far more Halloweenie and make the racehorse look like the smelly pony that gives all the kids at the party a rash. This is how I compare Kmart to Party City. But in all fairness, you can’t by a toaster at Party City. Let’s take a look at the faster horse first. This is Part City. GET DOWN!!!
Here we are and don’t they all look the same. I don’t know about you but I am never too excited about Party City. You can find them in most all large strip malls that include a Ross, Target and Babies-R-Us so if you are like me and may get stuck on a shopping excursion, this is the time of the year that Party City can save ass. In April…shoot me.
Great Nell Carter’s Ghost! This is how you do Halloween! The smell of rubber and latex permeates the air as the musical score of the moment is a cheesy 1990’s Nightmare On Elm Street rap. It wasn’t blaring loud like a Hot Topic but I could definitely tell it was about Nightmare On Elm Street by the Fresh Prince style lyrics, “…burned up like a weenie and his name was Fred.” This is something to be blogged about!
With so many different Halloween items all thrust together in a couple aisles, it’s easy to have it turn into a casserole of nonsense but it blends really nice. You have the gore with the gore, the zombies with the zombies and the cutesy with the cutesy without having to search through mounds of severed heads and viscera just to find a bunny in a pumpkin.
Zombies are still a huge hit I guess. The store is about 3/4 zombie while the rest is fog machines and plastic axes. It amazes me how desensitized zombies have made young kids. I saw a mother holding her, I guess, three-year-old and asking her if she wanted the zombie window cover or the ghosts. The zombie window cover was this:
Cute! Her arm is almost chewed off
Well, I guess that is the way kids are these days with there Iboxes and there Xphones. Had I seen that on someones window as a kid I would have skipped the house and gone right to therapy. Long over are the days when Tim Curry blended in with his green screen asking if anyone has seen his tambourine.
"Mr. Lucas, this is an ARF Troooper. It's also dog talk."
For the kids and adults who would rather just pick out an already manufactured costume, Party City is renown for having about three hundred different themes and characters. This one caught my attention because as a kid who grew up in the eighties and absolutely hate the direction George Lucas took Star Wars, I couldn’t help notice this kid’s costume of an Imperial..ARF Trooper? What the hell is that? Are they the K-9 unit of the universe? God, I just don’t know the world anymore. Luckily they still sell these:
Ah the oldie and goodie. It’s nice to see the old masks are still a seller here and above all else, the villains like Jason, Pinhead, the weird Motel Hell pig mask and Mike Myers are among the most popular. I especially love Chucky with his mullet. To cost justify one of these, though, a kid at age twelve will have to be Freddy until he is twenty-seven.
Well, leaving Party City you have to dodge a swipe by the new Freddy. To be honest, he’s no Englund but I kind of like him. The movie made me a believer that a new generation of kids need to die in their sleep. Especially the ones who are responsible for Twilite and hipster apparel.
Now that we have seen a brief part of Party City’s Halloween presentation, lets take a look at the girl who still wears her high school letter jacket to the bar…Kmart.
Right away I knew Kmart was not the place to be by the mostly vacant parking lot on a Saturday afternoon. It is almost sad in a way because on my way in there were three employees smoking around the coin-operated rodeo duck and the sound of a rolling soda can blowing through empty lanes of the lot. This was the sign of a department store put out in the pasture.
As I went in there were no signs stating it’s the Halloween season like Target. No, I had to wander for a while before eventually finding it. I actually have a video of me doing so. Enjoy.
As you can see, there is less fanfare about the holiday Kmart used to own. Perhaps it’s just this particular Kmart but I really have a sense that this company is circling the drain and forty years from now I will be telling my grandkids that there was time when I used to ride my bike to the Kmart to buy slap-bracelets for five bees. Because that was the style at the time.
As you can see, the licensed Halloween ‘Totally Ghoul” is still putting out everything and anything for this asthmatic contender of a department store. I really like Totally Ghoul too because it is not cheap in design and it is cheap in price. Without breaking myself I can buy enough pumpkin lights to trick a 747 into landing on I-40.
This is proof that “Totally Ghoul” has nothing new in it’s product line for 2011. I remember Matt writing about these years ago and while I find this comforting to see a demon clown from years past, it is also a sign of the times. I don’t know why but I really love that guys tongue and his ability to floss with rope.
But this trip was not all for not! Oh no, it has inspired a new costume idea. Remember that disfigured white tiger in a zoo? Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny too. Imagine if he had a best friend who was a gorilla?
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.
Hey, remember a few weeks ago when I found out there was a couple that built the exact replica of the original Myers House from the 1978 horror classic, Halloween and I took off on a quest to see it? Yeah, I wasn’t too successful at that, was I? Well, through the power of patience, email and taking the thirty seconds to read the website, I was able to score a one on one chat with the very people who constructed and live in the house that resided the Boogieman. The Shape. Micheal Myers.
I meant for this first meet to really be a Q and A but seeing as I am coming back in a few weeks to actually shoot a video while they film a movie there, I thought it to be a tad redundant. Also, about 2.5 minutes before I pulled up a huge tree fell over blocking the driveway so I really didn’t want to hang around too long as yard work sure to commence. But that didn’t diminish the warm hospitality Kenny and Emily showed me as I ogled at the movie brought to life in front of my very eyes.
Obviously I asked about a thousand questions that everyone else has but there were a few facts that were not so much surprising as they were genuinely endearing. You see, it’s not like they built this for the reason to gain notoriety or fame. That couldn’t be further from it. If that was the case why would they build it in no-where North Carolina? No, just a fan who followed a dream and is kind enough to share it with people like myself. And by doing just that, fame and notoriety did follow. This house has been shown on many television networks, featured in numerous magazine articles and Kenny was recently interviewed for the Biography Channel’s documentary, Halloween: Inside Story. Kenny and Emily also host many film productions that are set right there at their home as well as an annual Halloween bash that brings hundreds of people from all over the United States.
Inside the home it only gets better. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is a museum. Kenny has an extensive collection of all things Halloween including rare collectables to personalized movie props that were given to him by the horror music master Rob Zombie. It is impossible to take it all in but his tour was very impressive. I did want to ask him if he ever got tired of the Halloween decor but he beat me to it and said a lot of the decorations only come out around October because he found himself losing a bit of the thrill after a while. I think living in the Myers home and losing the thrill and fun of this season would be a tragedy but he still has it.
As far as the inside decor, the home layout is very similar to the specifications of the original but as Kenny put it, Emily wouldn’t stand for the 1960’s look as we see through the eyes of a six year old killer in a clown mask. Their home is very beautiful and it blends a modern look with some amazing oil paintings of scenes from, you guessed it, Halloween.
All in all this is less of a interview post and more of proof that I have been to the famous NC Myers House like I said I would. I had a wonderful chat with Emily and Kenny and so grateful they shared their home and passion for the quintessential independent horror film, Halloween. I love meeting people who have any passions in life but when they include horror movies, they are automatically best friends. So, to really give Kenny and the Myers House the just deserves, I will wait to film a real interview in a few weeks and make it all…professional looking. It deserves it and you will all be in for a real treat.
Casserole of Disaster 