Happy Hal­loween, every­one! Hope you all have a safe and spooky evening filled with tiny gob­lins, minute witches, short gyp­sies and Harry Potter.

Grow­ing up I’d have to say the char­ac­ter that encom­passes Hal­loween for me was none other than Freddy Krueger. To pre­vent Freddy from enter­ing my dreams when I was younger I actu­ally “befriended” him and thought this would remove me instantly from his list.

At night I’d brush my teeth and dis­cuss the day’s events with Freddy as if he were a school chum. Look­ing back I can’t fig­ure out who was creepier. Freddy or me? Hav­ing watched sev­eral of the Night­mare movies in recent times my opin­ion on the series has dra­mat­i­cally changed. As a kid I never picked up on the com­edy and thought Freddy to be creepy rather than a come­dian. His one-liners and occas­sional punch­lines light­ened up the rather grue­some content.

In related news, my buddy in the blog­ging world robot­johnny has posted a great Hal­loween list appro­pri­ately titled, Child­hood Frights. Check it out and if you feel like it add a cou­ple to the list. 

Tonights Jaime Kennedy Exper­i­ment where Jaime is depicted as a coun­try music per­former singing the National Anthem is one of the fun­ni­est bits I’ve seen on his show so far.

For those of you who didn’t watch it, Jaime Kennedy sang a typ­i­cal ren­di­tion of the National Anthem. How­ever, after the first verse he added and made up numer­ous oth­ers. The run­ning time on the National Anthem resulted in 6 min­utes and 49 sec­onds worth of musi­cal agony. 

Believe it or not ‘The Pink Ele­phant’ hal­lu­ci­na­tion sequence in Disney’s Dumbo movie has been rated 90^th in Retrocrush’s 100 Scari­est Movie Moments.

Retro­crush explains that the Pink Ele­phant hal­lu­ci­na­tion is “an unlikely scary movie can­di­date, many folks still can’t shake the trip out fear from the famous alco­hol induced “Pink Ele­phants on Parade” tripout sequence from Dumbo. Not to be con­fused with the “Honey Over­dose Hef­falumps and Woo­zles” flash­back from Win­nie The Pooh, decades later.”

Get your spook on.
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From illuminatedlatern.com:

“In 1984, really at the height of the Amer­i­can ninja craze, inde­pen­dent comic book writ­ers and artists Kevin East­man and Peter Laird came up with an idea for a spoof of the new type of dark, gritty comics that had been the lat­est trend — comics such as Dare­devil, in which the blind avenger was fight­ing off a ninja clan called “The Hand,” and fac­ing Elek­tra, a ninja assas­sin. They wrote and self pub­lished their comic book, called Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles, about exactly what the title says, and that’s pretty much when all hell broke loose. It became a run­away suc­cess, prompt­ing four re-printings of the first issue by the time the sec­ond one came out. I still remem­ber the excite­ment sur­round­ing the comic at that time.

Stores couldn’t keep it in stock. I man­aged to pick up the sec­ond print­ing of the first issue and the first print­ing of the sec­ond issue, then watched in amaze­ment as the value of both of them shot through the roof. I held on to them, think­ing that, as time went on, they would be more and more valu­able. The comics were dark, bloody, but a lit­tle funny, as well. If noth­ing else, they were unique. Or at least, they were unique at first. But almost imme­di­ately, other inde­pen­dent comics jumped on the band­wagon, and had some suc­cess rid­ing their coat­tails. Comics like Ado­les­cent Radioac­tive Black Belt Hamp­sters and Cold Blooded Chameleon Commandoes.

But there was only so far such a par­ody could go, and by the eighth issue, I was pretty bored with the whole thing. The knock-offs faded away, and it seemed that TMNT would do the same. My comic books, once val­ued in the mid-fifties to one hun­dred dol­lars each, could now barely com­mand ten. But where the orig­i­nal con­cept fiz­zled, the over­all idea, about four ninja tur­tles, blos­somed. With just a lit­tle re-tooling, a lighter tone, some more fun added to the sto­ries, the Tur­tles went on to kids car­toon fame. The licens­ing dol­lars started pour­ing in for cre­ators East­man and Laird, for action fig­ures, bed­spreads, hats, T-shirts, cos­tumes, books, and every­thing else under the sun.

Archie comics started pub­lish­ing a series of TMNT comic books, based on the new look of the car­toon series. By the time Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles: The Movie was released, the cre­ators were mil­lion­aires sev­eral times over. The rest of East­man and Laird’s comic book his­tory plays like penance done for their sin of suc­cess, form­ing their own comic com­pany and pro­mot­ing and print­ing only the high­est qual­ity alter­na­tive and inde­pen­dent writ­ers and artists.“
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Now this is rather odd.

Accord­ing to the IMBD:

“Hol­ly­wood leg­end Mar­lon Brando has told fam­ily and friends he is ready to die, and has writ­ten the script for his own funeral. The 79-year-old has report­edly been prepar­ing for death since being told in Feb­ru­ary he is suf­fer­ing with con­ges­tive heart failure.

Friends say Brando has left instruc­tions on dozens of dic­tated tapes — includ­ing who is not to be invited and the finer points of his will. A source close to the star says, Mar­lon has prob­a­bly put as much atten­tion to detail into his funeral plans as he would learn­ing a movie script.

He hopes Jack Nichol­son will lead mourn­ers and he would also like Michael Jack­son to say a few words. Marlon’s tapes say he wants to be cre­mated and have his ashes sprin­kled among the palm trees of a Tahit­ian island he once owned. He’s got to the stage now where he’s ready to die.” But friends of the star are con­cerned he has lost the will to live. One pal says, “It’s sad to see him so ill. Every­one who loves him fears these are his last days. He’s seek­ing clues as to what comes next.” 

I received my copy of the beau­ti­ful Rust­boy book in the mail today. Accord­ing to the pack­age it was shipped from Bel­gium, which for the moment is bring­ing forth an odd feel­ing of “rich and creamy choco­late” nos­tal­gia. Any­ways, back to the intended sub­ject; Rustboy.

For those few who don’t know, Rust­boy is a project (a CGI ani­mated one at that) cre­ated, pro­duced, ani­mated and devel­oped by one man, the tal­ented Brian Tay­lor. Tay­lor decided to start this project a cou­ple of years ago to see what kind of film-quality he could cre­ate using noth­ing more than his Mac, a shoe­string bud­get and a whop­ping amount of imag­i­na­tion. The result was the cap­ti­vat­ing story of Rust­boy, a slightly rusted robot boy who is ini­tially intrigued with the world around him and even­tu­ally becomes bored and depressed through no fault of his own.

To say the visu­als are excel­lent is not say­ing enough because this so-called “one man” project screams atten­tion because of the vision and imag­i­na­tion that Brian Tay­lor has put into his cre­ation. As it stands the qual­ity of the film looks noth­ing short of Pixar-esque but with one excep­tion. Accord­ing to Brian he wants the film to retain a stop-motion ani­mated look sim­i­lar to the style found in movies like Night­mare Before Christmas.

In fact, Tay­lor explains on his web­site and in the book that one of his great influ­ences is Tim Bur­ton (of Edward Scis­sorhands and Beetle­juice fame). He also men­tions inspi­ra­tion from early Dis­ney films (Pinoc­chio, Cin­derella, Snow White) to older hor­ror movie clas­sics like Franken­stein, The Wolf­man and Drac­ula. It’s also worth men­tion­ing that this film shares many ideas with these inspi­ra­tions and in that respect makes it even more geniune.

Do your­self a favor and sim­ply visit Rustboy.com for more infor­ma­tion about the 25-minute film cur­rently in pro­duc­tion and write Brian an email if you feel obliged, he’ll appre­ci­ate it. 

Uni­ver­sity of Cincin­nati mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sor James Kel­laris has coined the term Ear­worms “for the usu­ally unwel­come songs that get stuck in people’s heads. Since begin­ning his research in 2000, Kel­laris has heard from peo­ple all over the world request­ing help, shar­ing anec­dotes and offer­ing solutions.

“I quickly learned that vir­tu­ally every­body expe­ri­ences ear­worms at one time or another,” he said. “I think because it’s expe­ri­enced pri­vately and not often a topic of con­ver­sa­tion, maybe peo­ple really long for some social com­par­i­son. They want to know if other peo­ple expe­ri­ence what they experience.”

For me, my ear­worm is the song from Gilligan’s Island or some­times the Wheel of For­tune ren­di­tion of “I’m a Girl Watcher” enti­tled “I’m a Wheel Watcher”.

What are your Ear­worms?
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Any child of the 80s could tell you that Fil­ma­tions’ He-man and the Mas­ters of the Uni­verse was one of the coolest car­toons to grace the tele­vi­sion screen. Next to Bat­man, He-man was my favorite char­ac­ter and this pas­sion led to col­lect­ing sev­eral of the fig­ures includ­ing the “rad” Cas­tle Greyskull.

The basic sto­ry­line of He-man involved the char­ac­ter of Prince Adam (of Eter­nia). His task was to stop any evil plans con­structed by the over­lord Skele­tor. The only way to over­throw the pow­ers of evil was to trans­form into the mus­cle bound hero by wav­ing his sword in the air and shout­ing, “By the power of Greyskull!”.

Char­ac­ters of the series included:

• Man-at-Arms — friend of He-man and mas­ter tactician.
• King Ran­dor and Queen Mar­lena — Prince Adam’s parents.
• Cringer — the timid feline friend of Prince Adam who “By the power of Greyskull” would
  trans­form into the daunt­less Bat­tle Cat.
• Teela — a reli­able female allie of He-man.
• Orko — the float­ing but­terfin­gered char­ac­ter who served as the moral of the cartoon.
• Skele­tor — the evil mas­ter­mind intent on dom­i­nat­ing Cas­tle Greyskull.

From He-Man.org:

“Mattel’s action fig­ure line Mas­ters of the Uni­verse was sell­ing extremely well, and Fil­ma­tion had ani­mated a few early adverts to pro­mote the fig­ures. Look­ing for a way to fur­ther increase the suc­cess of Mas­ters of the Uni­verse they asked Fil­ma­tion to go beyond ani­mat­ing mere toy adverts, and cre­ate sixty-five episodes of what was to become known as He-Man and the Mas­ters of the Universe.

Mat­tel wanted a sim­ple car­toon that adver­tised its action fig­ures and noth­ing more. What they had not counted on was that these episodes would have writ­ers try­ing to prove them­selves, try­ing to break­through into the ani­ma­tion indus­try. Fil­ma­tion was known as being a great place for oppor­tu­ni­ties, thus a lot of great ani­ma­tion writ­ers started out here, Paul Dini, Larry DiT­il­lio, Bob For­ward and J. Michael Straczyn­ski to name a few.

The series had lim­ited ani­ma­tion, thus it relied on its sto­ry­telling and ani­ma­tion direc­tion more than any­thing. The tal­ent at Fil­ma­tion turned He-Man and the Mas­ters of the Uni­verse from a sim­ple action fig­ure advert into one of the most mem­o­rable ani­mated shows ever pro­duced! He-Man and the Mas­ters of the Uni­verse had a total of one hun­dred and thirty ani­mated episodes, two made-for-TV spe­cials and a spin-off series. But that’s another story…” 

Sev­eral peo­ple I know hail the art­work of Thomas Kinkade while oth­ers (includ­ing me) think the Kinkade machine has run its course. Per­son­ally, when I think of great Amer­i­can art I think of Nor­man Rock­well. His paint­ings inspired me to become an artist and best of all included the essence of the human spirit within each stroke.

Accord­ing to The Nor­man Rock­well Museum:

Born in New York City in 1894, Nor­man Rock­well always wanted to be an artist. At age 14, Rock­well enrolled in art classes at the New York School of Art (for­merly the Chase School of Art). Two years later, in 1910, he left high school to study art at the National Acad­emy of Design. He soon trans­ferred to the Art Stu­dents League, where he stud­ied with Thomas Fog­a­rty and George Bridg­man. Fogarty’s instruc­tion in illus­tra­tion pre­pared Rock­well for his first com­mer­cial com­mis­sions. From Bridg­man, Rock­well learned the tech­ni­cal skills on which he relied through­out his long career.

Rock­well found suc­cess early. He painted his first com­mis­sion of four Christ­mas cards before his six­teenth birth­day. While still in his teens, he was hired as art direc­tor of Boys’ Life, the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion of the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica, and began a suc­cess­ful free­lance career illus­trat­ing a vari­ety of young people’s publications.