How's your Halloween so far?

TRICK OR TREAT

Happy Halloween folks. Sweet dreams!

Halloween, 1967

Here's my entry for the Big Wicked Online Pageant. I had a few childhood costumes to choose from, but I went with one from October 1967. I think you'll see why:

















I have never mentioned this before, but for several years before the birth of my younger brothers, my parents were circus people. This was taken at a stop in Port Washington, NY.

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Sick

It started Saturday afternoon. I didn't know what was wrong, but I knew something wasn't right. Kind of a dull, queasy feeling.

We had a party to go to Saturday night, and as of 9:30 am that morning we didn't have a costume. We've talked about going as Gomez and Morticia for years now, but haven't done it. Likewise Elvis and Priscilla. So, like I was saying, the day of the party arrived without us having any idea of what to go as. For a while we looked toward a helpful post from Grant Miller Media and considered going as victims of the new depression, with sandwich boards and a cup full of pencils for sale.

I found a list of last-minute costume ideas, and one of them was mummy. It involved buying a set of neutral long underwear and a bunch of bandages, then soaking the bandages in tea or coffee to stain them. MizBubs, girl genius, saw this and promptly announced that if I went as a mummy, she'd go as the archaeologist who dug me up. She also mentioned that it would be easier and cheaper to buy gauze and some burlap at a fabric store. Off we went, and by 1pm we had all our stuff. It ended up like this:

The party was a blast, but I felt worse and worse. I took some pleasure in the fact that, when I stood very still against a wall, or sat down in the room where the beer cooler was, and someone walked in, they'd get startled when I moved. I got mistaken for a decoration a few times. It would've been more fun if there had been small children to scare.

MizBubs had to drive me home, and by the time I unraveled myself I was spent. The effort of cutting myself out of my costume left me with a fierce headache. I hit the pillow by 11:30 and was out.

Pie

Even when you're kind of blue, and a little bit down, there's always pie. Pie can be better than a stiff drink.

I turned on the TV the other night, and John McCain was yelling at me. "GROW THE PIE", he demanded. Well, I may not be a McCain supporter, but I definitely consider myself pro-pie. So tonight MizBubs peeled up the last of the Honey Crisp apples from southern Michigan, and we grew ourselves a pie.


Compound apple crumb pie



Ingredients:

1 pie crust of your choosing (Both my mom and MizBubs have made absolutely brilliant, flaky, melt-in-your-mouth pie crusts in the past, but tonight I used one of those rolled Pillsbury crusts.)

5 apples, peeled and cut into eight slices each
1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 chopped pecans (Unbelievably, I forgot to add pecans to the pie you see pictured above. It was a delicious, and yet sadly incomplete, pie.)

• Preheat oven to 450
• Place crust in pie pan
• Slice apples and arrange in pie crust
• Pour the 1/2 cup sugar/cinnamon mix evenly over the apples in the crust
• Mix 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup flour, 1 tsp cinnamon in a mixing bowl. Use a pastry blender to mix in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. This will be your topping.
  
• Mix the chopped pecans into the topping. Spread the topping over the apples.
• Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake for about 40-45 minutes until it's dark and bubbly.
• Enjoy your pie.

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While I'm at it, this is as good a time as any to remind everyone about the Big Wicked Online Pageant over at A Cup of Coffey (Coffey goes great with pie!)

On Monday evening, post a picture of yourself as a kid in your adorable/scary/unfortunate/dorky Halloween costume on your blog, and email Beth with your link. If you can't find a picture of yourself as a kid, pick something suitably mortifying from your more recent past and post that. The pageant is being co-hosted by yours truly and Florida expert Dale.

All the cool kids are doing it. My favorite procrastinating noir writer Cormac chipped in with an early contribution just to help everyone get in the spirit.

It's going to be very scary!

The Big Wicked Online Pageant.

Way back in ought-six, when I was new to all this, I was introduced to a swell group o' bloggers by the lovely Melinda June. Soon after that, the fabulous Beth of A Cup of Coffey, and silken-voiced Canadian Dale co-hosted the Little Miss Sunshine Online Pageant.

It was a roaring success. About 30 participants dug up old pictures of themselves from 3rd or 4th grade and posted them. And, for the record, may I say that in those brainy-cool glasses and knee socks Ms. Beth was anything but a "nottie" as she puts it. My studious and groovy self would've chased her like crazy.

I digress.

The reason I'm telling y'all about this is that Beth and Dale have graciously agreed to co-host a little something I thought up in a fit of whiskey-lubricated nostalgia:

The Big Wicked Online Pageant.

Go click on that link, like now, and read about it and enter. Here's the rules:

• Scan a photo from your Halloween past.

• Post it on your blog Monday evening, October 28.

• Once you post your photo, e-mail Beth at the address on her navbar. If you can, include the URL to that specific post.

• Beth, our hostess, will post a link to every participant’s blog Tuesday morning by 9 a.m..

I will sit around with Dale, snickering and poking each other in the ribs about how we got the girl to do all the work. And then I'll pat myself on the back for having such a swell idea. Dale will undoubtedly provide some wonderful commentary. (Added 10/14/08--you can see some of that commentary from Dale here.)

So, you go now. Find those old yellowed Polaroids. Show us your best hobo, your best gypsy, your best eyeholes-cut-out-in-a-plain-white-sheet ghost. And if you can't find anything that old, just find the best, most mortifying Jaegermeister and draft-beer Halloween party moment from your more recent past and send that instead. I'm just saying.

If you're good, maybe you'll earn the coveted Sprawling Ramshackle Compound Freak of the Week...

Germany or Florida: Post-Halloween Edition Answers

Time for some answers.

Congratulations to Katy and Doctor Monkey Von Monkerstein for their perfect scores!

I've noticed before that people tend to assign a story to Germany or Florida based on certain assumptions--for instance, stories involving cannibalism = Germany, stories involving tattoos = Florida. Very often this is true, at least anecdotally, and remember that in the bold and ever-expanding science known as narcozoology, anecdotal evidence is the most important kind.

Still, I have to confess. Usually stories contain some cultural clue that has to be withheld in order to make the game more competitive. I've listed the answers to each question in a link to the original news story. I've also listed any clue that, if given, would have clearly revealed the origin of the story.

1) A man was arrested after asking his new online buddy to help him kill someone for the purpose of having sex with the corpse (and no, it's not Wisconsin--there are no trick questions here)
Florida

2) A man passed out drunk on his way home from a Halloween party, in full zombie makeup. He was mistaken for a murder victim and police were called.
Germany
(*The man was passed out on a train. Germans ride trains. Floridians don't ride trains--they walk, or ride the bus, or steal a car.)

3) A child became entangled in his family's spider web decorations and was nearly strangled to death.
Florida


4) A man was caught trying to smuggle two large dildos, hidden in sausages, into Dubai.
Germany
(*Come on--the presence of sausage was a dead giveaway. Likewise, if it had been catfish, you woulda known it was Florida. Interestingly my eldest said that Dubai was the Germany indicator--she didn't picture anyone from Florida flying to Dubai.)

5) A man was arrested for placing his roommate in a headlock and biting off part of his ear.
Florida
(*911 was called by a neighbor who was out walking his pit bull. That is pure Florida there.)

6) Prison guards allowed two female inmates to wed each other in an elaborate ceremony featuring wedding rings fashioned from human hair and dental floss.
Florida
(*The guards were suspended for doing this. According to my eldest, the idea of a lesbian prison wedding sounded kind of like something that might be done in a progressive European nation. The fact that the participating guards were disciplined indicated that it happened here in the USA.)

Germany or Florida: Post Halloween Edition

It's hard to say goodbye to Halloween.

Once again I'm having that post-Halloween letdown. It's made a little easier by the knowledge that we're never more than a few days away from our next scary movie rental, and we can always stop and look at the Dia De Los Muertos stuff in our dining room.

Looking around this morning I saw that Kirby is experiencing those Halloween blues too, aggravated by a loss in her family and the wildfire evacuations and all...stop by and wish her well.

Mob has a horrid little video set to a horrorpunk song "1,000 Corpses", and Kim from A Sunny Thought has some nice stuff here if you don't feel like letting go yet.

There's a dozen things I should be doing, but I'm sitting on my ass swilling coffee, waiting for inspiration to strike.

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A quick round of Germany or Florida, now that's the ticket!

1) A man was arrested after asking his new online buddy to help him kill someone for the purpose of having sex with the corpse (and no, it's not Wisconsin--there are no trick questions here)

2) A man passed out drunk on his way home from a Halloween party, in full zombie makeup. He was mistaken for a murder victim and police were called.

3) A child became entangled in his family's spider web decorations and was nearly strangled to death.

4) A man was caught trying to smuggle two large dildos, hidden in sausages, into Dubai.

5) A man was arrested for placing his roommate in a headlock and biting off part of his ear.

6) Prison guards allowed two female inmates to wed each other in an elaborate ceremony featuring wedding rings fashioned from human hair and dental floss.

Leave your best guesses in the comments. Answers tomorrow.

Now, it's on to Thanksgiving...

Last minute costume idea

My friend Dena sent this, and I think it's a swell last minute costume idea.

Make your own Christopher Walken mask.

Parents: please supervise younger children. And watch those scissors.

Happy Halloween, Baby...

I just got home from work, and as anyone who's ever watched The Hitcher or The Terminator knows, a police station late at night is a scary place to be. I was glad to get out of there.

Weird Tales

H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and Robert Bloch (Psycho) all wrote for Weird Tales.

All I can say is, who cares. That cover makes me wish I was a disembodied skull, long as I could get that kind of action.

Hubba.

Meet Tiffany Sutton. Happy Halloween!

Just in time for Halloween, 24 year old Tiffany Sutton, of Tempe, Arizona, pled guilty to aggravated assault and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

And what crime did this sultry, yet disheveled vixen commit?

According to police reports, the victim, 46-year-old Robert McDaniel, agreed to be tied up during sex but became alarmed and asked to be untied when Sutton pulled out a knife and said she liked to drink blood. Sutton then attacked him, slicing his leg, puncturing his arm, shoulder and back and cutting his neck and stomach. When he escaped, she chased him with a pickax.

I found an interesting tidbit in this story from the Arizona Republic (with the wonderful headline "Blood Drinker Gets 10 Years). Sutton claimed that the encounter was consensual:

Sutton told police she made McDaniel sign a book promising not to prosecute her for when the "sex got crazy." "You, Robert McDaniel, swear that no wrong will come to me, Tiffany Lachelle Sutton, due to tonight's events," read the document, provided by the court. "You also pass me all your earthly powers, wealth included."

Drugs and alcohol were involved. The two had smoked methamphetamine, drank a six pack and half a bottle of whiskey.

No word at this time as to the presence of exotic pets in the crime scene.

*Updated on Monday, October 29, 11:10 am

Astute reader Mob points out that Tiffany bears a striking resemblance to the character Marla Singer in the movie Fight Club. I say she looks like the kind of girl who would help you make soap from her mom's liposuction fat, or at least help you steal it from the hospital dumpster:

Strange Stories

See gatorhead woman in bondage! Freak fiddlers! Snake hair woman! Crawling corpse! Cleavage! Cleavage!

Good times my friends. Good times.

Famous Monsters

Now that is one swanky monster. I know I want to go to whatever soirée they're headed to.

Famous Monsters of Filmland was published by James Warren and edited by Forrest J Ackerman.

We can also thank Forrest J Ackerman with creating the very first Vampirella comic. Hubba.



Now for the scaaary part.

Among the many things Forry has done over the years, he was the literary agent for L. Ron Hubbard, back when L. Ron was hustling pulp stories--long before he decided to make real money by inventing a religious cult. He also represented Ed Wood Jr., who wrote outrageous pulp fiction when he wasn't directing classic movies like Glen or Glenda. Forry is also widely credited for having popularized the term "sci-fi".

Anyway, 4SJ is still around. He turns 91 next month. You can visit his website here.


I don't know when my dad started buying me Famous Monsters, but I remember seeing my first ones when I was 4 or 5 years old. The first ones I remember are these two:


What's funny is, my dad disapproved of comic books and Mad Magazine, but had no problem buying these. I carried them around, memorizing monster movie trivia and establishing a life-long love of bad puns. I even got in trouble for bringing them to school and scaring other children with the combination of movie pictures and stories I made up.

Sadly, my once vast collection of Famous Monsters of Filmland is now almost entirely gone. Like the GI Joe stuff I wish I'd taken better care of. We still have two editions, one of which was MizBubs' when she was a kid:

The 1966 Yearbook (Think Simpsons comic book guy: BEST. ISSUE. EVER.)


The 100th Issue, published in 1973.


You can see all the cool covers of every Famous Monsters on this here website.

The Future, The Way It Used To Be: Pre-Halloween Edition

It's no secret I dig the chicks from the future. For those of you uninterested in glamorous space-age cheesecake, check out the ripped abs and futuristic lightning bolt sash on spaceman, there.

I aim to please.

Weird and Occult Miscellany

This might be a good name for future features here at the Compound.

Weird and Occult Miscellany was published by a Brit named Gerald G. Swan. Swan was an enterprising fellow who stockpiled paper before WWII, and was one of the few publishers in Great Britain who was able to keep turning out material when paper was rationed during the war.

15 cent horror stories

Good morning!

Halloween is only 16 days away. Plenty of time to catch up on your Halloween reading.

Halloween is coming

Time to shed your old skin, and get your scary skin on.

Boo!

Swingin' Watusi Action

That's what Halloween needs more of: "Swingin' Watusi Action". And this little decoration I just put up has plenty of that, let me tell you!