Behold, my first big find of the 2018 Halloween season!

Pumpkin Spice Frosted Flakes are in stores now, and guys, they are good. Maybe even grrrreat.

I’ve never been the biggest pumpkin spice guy, but I like it when it works, and this stuff works. I figured it would, given that pretty much all of the internet reactions have been so positive.

Here’s my video taste test:

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As tasty as the cereal is, it isn’t even the one I was most looking forward to this season. (Reese’s Bats, yo.) As I talk about in the vid, this is a huuuuge year for Halloween cereal in general, with a mix of old favorites and new contenders battling for shelf space. I’m so into it!

Thanks for watching the vid! Read More…

Back in the late ‘90s, I bought my first computer. It was hardly the first computer that I’d messed around on, but it was the first one that was all mine.

I customized the shit out of it. By the time I was through, I don’t think there was a single default sound still in play. I can still hear the Undertaker’s gongs alerting me to new arrivals on my AOL Buddy List. (I hated how the audio dropped out before the reverberations completed.)

Naturally, I chose my own screensaver. Many were auditioned, but in the end, I always came back to the Mystery Screensaver.

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As I recall, the screensaver was part of a theme set for Windows 98. I’m not 100% sure that it hadn’t debuted prior to Windows 98, but that’s where I met it, and judging by what I see online, that’s where almost everyone else met it, too.

It’s my all-time favorite screensaver. You guys can keep your Doom mazes and waterpark pipes. On its face, this was a simple animated mansion with enough spooky elements to create a haunted ambiance. Upon deeper reflection, it was a world of wonder that let you write whole novels in your head.

Beginning with a burst of pipe organs that sounded like the bark of a Jersey shore dark ride, the screensaver would then fall mostly-silent, save for the occasional creaking door or solicitous owl. There were enough noises to make listening a part of the fun, but those noises were still scattered enough to make each one hit you like a jump scare.

The mansion might not have seemed so creepy if it wasn’t situated in the middle of some gothic wooded hell, full of dead trees, fallen leaves, busy bats and pale moonlight. If you remove the house, I’m pretty sure this was where Jade and Smoke played peekaboo in Mortal Kombat II. Read More…

So, here’s something weird. I love Halloween 4 to death, yet the film doesn’t even crack my top 3 from that franchise. I’ve never considered myself nearly the Myers nut that so many of my friends are, but here I am, sweating over whether Halloween 4 beats Halloween H20 or not.

Halloween 4 premiered in 1988, when I was finally old enough to at least be aware of which horror movies were in theaters… even if I rarely had the nerve to actually see them. In a sense, Halloween 4 was “my” Halloween movie — the first one that was still-current when I started paying attention.

I saw it years later, when I was something approximating an adult. I loved the film for many reasons, but this was the biggest: Of all the movies in this franchise, Halloween 4 simply looks the most like the Octobers of my childhood.

This was best exemplified by the drug store sequence. It’s a pretty important scene, where Michael finds his mask and threatens poor little Jamie, all while seventeen subplots converge in the background. If you need a refresher, the whole scene is on YouTube.

“Vincent Drug” was the store, and the filmmakers did such a great job of capturing the spirit a mom-and-pop pharmacy during the Halloween season. Like holy shit, I feel like I’ve BEEN to Vincent Drug. Like I’ve MET Vincent Drug. Like Vincent Drug is a person and not a store, which works nicely considering the name.

Much like the mom-and-pop pharmacies that I grew up near, Vincent Drug spent October littered with Halloween costumes and decorations. Big chain pharmacies went all-in for Halloween too, of course, but they had nothing on the mom-and-pop versions, where the wares were more ragtag and very often fifteen years old.

The longer I studied Vincent Drug, the more I realized that my feelings of familiarity weren’t limited to mere themes. I literally OWNED many of the things in that store, or at least saw them in person.

Below are six real-world spooky treasures hiding inside Vincent Drug: Read More…