More Seasonal Media
I've been putting this off due to my frustration with the new Amazon Associates set up. If I want to have pictures of the media I need to download the images then upload to photo bucket and then code the link. At some point in the future I may add a few media picture links on the side bar but for the time being I'm going to stick with the simple text link either to the products or to a search results of the author's name. I know no one really cares about the details so I'll get on with the good stuff.
Halloween, for me at least, isn't Halloween without It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. When they made that cartoon and the Christmas Special they had some excellent voice casting. As I've grown up watching these cartoons, whenever I see Peanuts in the Newspaper or perhaps in collection, those voices always play in my head. I like the mysticism of the Great Pumpkin and the pumpkin patch too. The idea of sitting out somewhere on an October night waiting for something occult has stuck with me. Ever been out in a corn patch or a graveyard at night. You just expect something strange an terrible to occur.
The name, "Jim Nightshade," will forever be with me not because I read the Ray Bradbury's novel, "Something Wicked This Way Comes," but because I saw theDisney Movie (Dark and Nightshade, Nightshade and Dark!) and as Disney movies go it has my vote for best of all time. It is scary with out blood and gore all over the place and without making you want to scream or cry in terror. It was my first experience with the October People. Chellee also talked about the movie recently in this post. She links to a site that gives a professional summary (as opposed to my emotional generalizations).
Of course if we want Classic American Halloween tales one cannot over look Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
(I linked the cheaper multi story book as opposed to the more expensive single story volume. If the story is public domain you can always find a cheap version). The headless horseman has been used over and over again since. He's a scooby doo staple. This is an archetype of horror and it is a short story.
Finally there is Edgar Allen Poe. Still so much a part of American Culture that the simpsons based one of their Halloween episodes on The Raven (It's a poetry volume). His were the first detective / horror short stories. Who can forget the guilt ridden / terrified narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart (Link to a short story collection). Who didn't have to read at least one of his stories in grades school. And wasn't it allways saved for October."
I'll try to put one more of these together before the Holiday arrives but the stories and media may be a little more esoteric.
More Laters
Halloween, for me at least, isn't Halloween without It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. When they made that cartoon and the Christmas Special they had some excellent voice casting. As I've grown up watching these cartoons, whenever I see Peanuts in the Newspaper or perhaps in collection, those voices always play in my head. I like the mysticism of the Great Pumpkin and the pumpkin patch too. The idea of sitting out somewhere on an October night waiting for something occult has stuck with me. Ever been out in a corn patch or a graveyard at night. You just expect something strange an terrible to occur.
The name, "Jim Nightshade," will forever be with me not because I read the Ray Bradbury's novel, "Something Wicked This Way Comes," but because I saw theDisney Movie (Dark and Nightshade, Nightshade and Dark!) and as Disney movies go it has my vote for best of all time. It is scary with out blood and gore all over the place and without making you want to scream or cry in terror. It was my first experience with the October People. Chellee also talked about the movie recently in this post. She links to a site that gives a professional summary (as opposed to my emotional generalizations).
Of course if we want Classic American Halloween tales one cannot over look Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
(I linked the cheaper multi story book as opposed to the more expensive single story volume. If the story is public domain you can always find a cheap version). The headless horseman has been used over and over again since. He's a scooby doo staple. This is an archetype of horror and it is a short story.
Finally there is Edgar Allen Poe. Still so much a part of American Culture that the simpsons based one of their Halloween episodes on The Raven (It's a poetry volume). His were the first detective / horror short stories. Who can forget the guilt ridden / terrified narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart (Link to a short story collection). Who didn't have to read at least one of his stories in grades school. And wasn't it allways saved for October."
I'll try to put one more of these together before the Holiday arrives but the stories and media may be a little more esoteric.
More Laters
posted by Rich Rosenthal II at 2:54 AM
4 Comments:
I love that music from the Great Pumpkin. That and the thought of going trick-or-treating. But then the Tylenol scare and the Halloween candy scare and the "let's go to the mall and trick-or-treat" attitude really screwed up Halloween.
I miss the old Halloween. The school could throw a Halloween Carnival and didn't have to call it a Fall Festival. The kids could wear costumes during school and have a contest, but now that happens during some reading week, Dress as Your Favorite Book Character, or some crap. Trick-or-treating wasn't treated as some dangerous sport you need a helmet for. People didn't complain that Halloween was all about Satan and other such obviously wrong statements.
I still love Halloween, I just miss it sometimes.
Chellee -- I hadn't thought of it that way. As I dont have children My halloween experiences are still those of my childhood so I still picture kids walking about in costumes with heavy jackets under or over them. I still picture teenagers walking around in jeans and t-shirts and trick or treating though they are too cool to dress up.
Cleolove -- I spent about twenty minutes this morning checking out the statue pictures. I'm glda someone did a lucy statue with her doctors booth.
Wheelson -- now I have to go look up the third one though I know I saw it listed when I made the links. Dang memory.
This blog is funny, I will continue to watch it and maybe become one of the minions, I love the meta blog posts, I want more and more. Give me more.
I think you have too many directory links.
Do you think?
I may have gone overboard on the directory links. Its the egomaniac in me that says the more directories I'm listed in the more minions I will have. And not all of em are directory linkes I should organize it I suppose. I don't know if I can bring myself to purge.
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