Garfield’s Halloween Adventure
First, thanks for making the first week of Dino Drac’s 2016 Halloween Countdown a smash success. Well actually I have no idea if it was a smash success. But it felt okay.
And thanks for being a part of Dino Drac’s After Dark’s first week, too! The survey responses have been tremendous. They’re now my favorite things to read on my phone when I’m hiding under blankets in total darkness. Sometimes you manage to spook me.
I’m very excited about next week’s run of goodies, which should/will include a new video, the next podcast and maybe one of those heavy hitter topics that I’m realllllly trying to portion out slowly. Stay tuned. You have to.
Get ready to watch Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, which is suddenly available on YouTube on many different accounts. (Not sure what that’s about. Maybe Jim Davis worked out a profit sharing agreement. Or maybe these uploads aren’t long for the world.)
One thing I’ve learned about Garfield’s Halloween Adventure? It’s a super hard sell for people who didn’t grow up watching it. I can’t deny that nostalgia plays a part. Halloween certainly had more than two animated TV specials, but the two that people my age remember most are Charlie Brown’s and Garfield’s. Nothing else comes close.
It debuted in 1985 and returned annually for years, though admittedly for nowhere near as many years as It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which still gets played today. I was six years old when the special began its run, and would grow to consider no Halloween season complete until I’d heard Garfield sing the “Scaredy Cat” song.
It’s ironic that I get so much mileage out of the Halloween season as an adult, because I definitely didn’t as a kid. Back then, it was like five scattered days of fun, tops. There was the day you got your costume. The day you carved your pumpkin. Mischief Night, if you were old and stupid enough. And finally Halloween itself.
Somewhere in the middle of them was the day (night, actually) that you got to watch Halloween specials on television. Cartoons, in prime time! It was one of the season’s biggest events, and the season didn’t have many of them.
So thanks, Garfield. You gave weight to my Halloween seasons back when I needed the assists. In return, I will never stop watching your silly special. Or telling other people to watch it. Demanding, really.
In the comments, talk about your favorite Halloween specials, Halloween sitcom episodes, and/or Halloween made-for-television movies. Which did you love? Which became parts of your annual traditions? Which do you wish you’d gotten to see more than just once?
Local Legends!
Tonight’s survey was based on suggestions from readers Rae and Jingo. Thanks, guys!
In the comments, let’s share stories about our own LOCAL LEGENDS.
Every town has their own ghost stories, or rumors about that one madman, or places that nobody is supposed to go.
From the past or present, what are some of yours?
(Apologies in advance if you’re heard this story before. I seem to tell it an awful lot.)
On Staten Island, the “satanic panic” craze was in full effect during the ‘80s. (Ever see that Cropsey documentary? Yeah.)
For kids my age, this amounted to parents warning us to stay out of certain wooded areas, because that was where “the satanists” lived. In reality, there were very good reasons to stay out of those woods, because back when Staten Island was less crowded, it wasn’t out of the question to run into drug addicts or makeshift sex dens. None of those folks were likely to sacrifice you to dark gods, but they weren’t exactly good company for eight-year-olds, either.
But were there actually satanists? Consistently? To this day, I have no idea. I can tell you that even in the areas where me and my friends were allowed to explore, we’d find all sorts of spooky shit, from pentagrams spray-painted onto rocks to bundles of discarded clothes.
The thought of finding a bunch of black-clad devil worshippers may have given us pause, but at the same time, it motivated us to explore the woods even further than we normally would. We felt like little detectives, trying to solve cases that most likely didn’t exist.
In retrospect, my best guess is that — as strange as it sounds — it was just easier for parents to say “stay out of the woods because there are satanists” than “stay out of the woods because there are people getting high and boinking.”
Still, I gotta admit, this was all so weirdly fascinating to me as a kid. Just the idea that while normal society was doing its normal things in its normal places, the dungeon of fuckin’ doom was drinking rat blood fifty feet away.
What were some of your local legends? The scary ones, I mean!
September is here!
I may begin celebrating in August, but September 1st marks the true start of the Halloween season. Yes yes yes!
I implore you not to waste it. The next two months will fly by at unbelievable speeds!
In fact, to make sure you don’t waste it, tonight’s survey is more of a challenge:
In the comments, make a list of the fun things you REALLY WANNA DO this Halloween season. Maybe putting it to paper (well, sort of) will help motivate you!
I’ll start!
1) Go on a trashy haunted hayride in Jersey.
These are usually connected to pumpkin patches, but the real action doesn’t start until sunset. As with its tomatoes, Jersey’s hayrides are incomparable. Shop around long enough, and you’ll find the most blessedly bootleg hayride, where you’ll travel down iffy dirt roads surrounded by dangerous people, unafraid of the lurking vampires but nonetheless fearful for your life.
2) Put up at least six more videos between now and the Countdown’s finale.
I know that’s technically a “work” to-do, but running the Countdown is how I celebrate the season. I always mean to do more videos than I end up with, because time flies when you’re trying to put up new content every single weekday. I’d actually like to get more than six in the can, but let’s start there.
3) See at least two horror movies in theaters before Halloween.
This should be easy enough, since I already have my ticket for Blair Witch. Not sure what’ll be #2, though I’ve heard enough about Don’t Breathe to know that I’m interested.
4) Go to one “special” Halloween event.
Not just a pumpkin patch and not just some random store, but an actual EVENT, be it a party at some sketchy bar, or a walkthrough at some temporarily macabre museum… whatever. Just something that must be planned for and booked in advance. I want me and the lady to have something halfway big to look forward to, sure, but I’m also just fishing for an excuse to book at a room at a two star hotel.
Your turn!
What are some of the things that NEED TO HAPPEN for your season-long celebration to be a success? Make some plans — and some vows — in the comments!
Halloween, I love you.
A L I E N S.
Tonight’s subject: ALIENS.
To get you in the mood, here’s a rip of an old Sightings video, which is absolutely perfect right down to the boldly plain “Feature Presentation” intro. Remember that one?
(Paramount used to slap it on EVERYTHING. It got to the point where I’d hum that little theme all day long.)
Sightings was awesome. While never managing the production value or eerie ambiance of Unsolved Mysteries (which Sightings was clearly built to resemble), it had the advantage of dealing with spooky stuff 100% of the time. No “Lost Loves” segments, here!
Often enough, the show favored entertainment over legitimacy, allowing people who were so obviously lying to tell their stories, and sometimes even crafting reenactments of their tales. As a kid, I ate it up.
I didn’t grow up only half-believing these stories. I was all-in. I may have approached ghost and monster stuff with some skepticism, but I absolutely believed in UFOs, and can hardly remember even one alien story that I didn’t take at face value.
Even if I’ve since been forced to confront the very real possibility that most of them were bullshit, I still love extraterrestrial exposés. At any given time, we have six or seven of them on our DVR. They’re great for those nights when we want something spooky, but never screaming.
So, tonight’s questions:
1) Do you (or did you) believe that people have seen, been in contact with, or even been abducted by aliens?
2) Any childhood memories of the space alien craze? How did it affect you? (Me personally, I’ll never forget the time I let my imagination get carried away and actually called 911 to report a sighting of what I now realize was just a helicopter.)
3) Did any particular alien story/movie/whatever really “shake your foundation” way back when? (I still can’t deal with the flashback scene from Fire in the Sky, for instance.)
Answer one or all, or just run with the topic of aliens and talk about whatever!
