Halloween on the Ancient Internet: Part 1!
Welcome to the first edition of Halloween on the Ancient Internet!
I spent way too many hours poring over the Internet Archive, searching for spooky gold. It was a huge reminder of how much the internet has evolved over the last 25 years. In the late ‘90s and very early 2000s, there was a simplicity that seems downright primeval by today’s standards. Even so, there was a sincerity in that simplicity, when nobody was trying to “go viral.”
Halloween being “big online” is nothing new. Even decades ago, the internet was helping to redefine Halloween as a whole-ass season rather than just a few scattered October days. I know this for a fact, because I was there!
In this series, I’ll be showing off snippets from old websites that have some tie to the Halloween season, no matter how loose. We’ll do five quick hits per article, starting with those below!
Halloween H20!
(September 1999)
Halloween H20 is young enough to have had an official site, yet old enough for that site to have only been slightly more complicated than the average GeoCities page.
At the time, official movie sites were rarely “destinations.” Some were — Godzilla ‘98 sure had a big push — but they more often felt like glorified EPKs. Regardless, on an internet that was still forming, even the smaller sites were a blast. If you were “very online” at the time — and far fewer people were — you felt like such an insider, gobbling up those director interviews and 640×480 desktop backgrounds.
There wasn’t much to Halloween H20’s official site, though they did sneak in a screensaver and a few super tiny video clips. Retconned canonicity aside, I adore this movie, and I loved digging up this little lost part of its history. Read More…
Dino Drac’s Spicy Sweet Potato Fries!
If you’re gonna survive the 2020 Halloween season, you’ll need to make your own fun. Many of the things we formerly relied on will be closed, or altered to the point of pointlessness. It’s a DIY-or-die situation.
Here’s an idea: Cook spooky stuff! Buy one of those overpriced recipe mags from Stop & Shop’s impulse section, make some mummy hot dogs, and see where life takes you. I’ve done that sort of thing plenty of times, and it’s never failed to make the Halloween season feel like the Halloween season.
I’ll start you off with an easy one. Here’s my recipe for spicy sweet potato fries, because sweet potatoes are autumnal at heart, and appropriately orange.
Some of you aren’t big on sweet potatoes. I’m not, either. I came out of the womb cursing sweet potatoes, and was of legal drinking age by the time I could eat a forkful without complaint. If you’re not quite ready to jump in the pool but are maybe okay with dipping in your toes, these fries are perfect. Read More…
The 2020 Halloween Countdown BEGINS NOW!
This year is garbage, so over the next two months, I’m gonna do my best to bring you several smiles and maybe some of those wax lips with the vampire teeth. They taste like the perfume version of bubble gum, have you noticed?
What I’m saying is…
Welcome to Dinosaur Dracula’s 2020 Halloween Countdown.
THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS! (WATCH ON YOUTUBE)
MADD MATT RETURNS! (WATCH ON YOUTUBE)
I’ll be adding spooky treats to Dino Drac all season long, from articles about haunted TV commercials to videos about haunted candy, to other things about other haunted things. Let’s kick things off with the two vids embedded above — the traditional Countdown kickoff music video, and a look at Madd Matt’s latest bag of Halloween junk. (Things get pretty weird in both videos, honestly.)
The videos are why most of you are here, but don’t go! I have more to show you! Read More…
The Halloween Countdown Returns on 8/29!
Psst! We’re exactly one week away:
Dino Drac’s 2020 Halloween Countdown begins Saturday, 8/29 at 9PM.
It’s gonna be a strange season, but I’ll do my part to add some joy to it. Get set for all sorts of spooky things, from junk food to toys to old commercials and beyond. I have such sights to show you! Read More…