Kickass Halloween Cards

My wife and my mother recently got together to make a bunch of Halloween cards. These haven't been sent yet but I have to share at least one because there's a whole table full of them sitting next to me and I can't stand it anymore. Here's one of my favorites:


I love how the crow (raven?) on the left appears to be inspecting the leaf.

Trust me when I say they look even better in person. There are close to 40 of these cards and each one is different. Pretty awesome.

I Love This

Love Letters

I found this via StumbleUpon (my favorite internet gadget thingy ever).

This is such a strikingly brilliant and vulnerable thing to me. The way it works is that this person wrote hundreds of love letters addressing people in her life and then shared them with strangers. She ("Asia") wrote the letters, mailed the letters to strangers with the message glued to the outside of the envelope so anyone could read them along the way and then posted them online for the rest of us to read. The letters are color-coded depending on who they were written to: a crush, a former lover, a family member and so on.

I love this because it makes me think of a dream I've had for a while now to hide bits of poetry in the woods somewhere in the hopes that someone would find them. Anonymously, you know? Just little secret messages to whoever comes along. I would love to find something like that myself.

Prince of Darkness

This arrived today via Amazon:

Not that my fanboyish obsession with the man needs any further encouragement or anything...

I'm two chapters in and it's fantastic. The book comprises a series of interviews between 1997 and 2001. There's a lot of neat behind-the-scenes stuff about the movies I've loved all these years.

It's also very interesting to see how creative people who actually get things done...well, get things done. Motivation, perseverance, drive and inspiration are fascinating subjects.

I'll be sure to share more when I've actually finished it (which could be a while--I'm bad about finishing books).

Dead Man's Hand

"Tragic Royalty" Playing Cards by Bicycle. I found these while kicking around in Target on my lunch break. Oddly, they were in the Halloween candy aisle.

Something about the thought of Halloween playing cards compelled me to buy them even though I've never been much of a player. I tried poker once and did okay but that was a long time ago and something tells me it only went as well as it did because I was up against family. Anyway, I had to have them and now my wife wants me to pick up two more decks tomorrow.

The face cards are great:

It's good to be the king, apparently.

The outside of the package reads "Cards glow under blacklight". And so they do.

Magnificent.

Go fish?

Pseudopod

When I got an iPod one of the first things I did was scour iTunes for anything and everything related to horror. After weeding out all the crap I was left with a few real standouts. Top among those elite few is Pseudopod.

Simply put, Pseudopod delivers amazing horror fiction: a weekly supply of wretched little fixes for all of us sick souls out there jonesing for wickedness. My commute to and from work wouldn't be the same without it, and so I'm passing the word on to you. If you're looking for a good podcast to feed your inner Michael, Jason, Pinhead, Leatherface or what have you, this is the one.

Don't say I never gave you anything.

A Performance of John Carpenter's Themes

This is pretty badass. This guy decided to recreate a few of Carpenter's better-known movie themes in his home studio (which, incidentally, makes me want to sit down and cry):



Pretty impressive stuff. You can check out his blog here.

Why I Do It

It's making the monsters I both dreaded and wished were waiting beyond the hedges when I was young enough to trick-or-treat.

It's the hours surrounded by paint, glue, paper mache, sticks, wires, tape and sketches.

It's the clippings of found horrors pinned up for inspiration.

It's the dark music slithering through the air with the scent of clove and cinnamon candles and the smoke of incense.

It's the mounting anticipation as the sun drops a little sooner each day and the cold begins to rob the crickets of their inspiration and the garage door can stay open a little later because there are no more uninvited guests bouncing obsessively off the fluorescent tubes of the workbench.

It's about the family and friends who are excited to hear what I'm up to and want to be a part of it, offering their help, advice, time and effort.

It's about the kindred spirits found along the way: the folks who inspire and encourage you to go 'even bigger next year' every year simply by following their own inspiration and sharing it.

It's the reactions. All of them. The kids and the parents. The appreciation and the concerned expressions and hasty retreats.

It's about creating (re-creating?) an experience that will inspire some kid to do the same thing with their own yard some day.

The "Why We Haunt" page of the Grim Hollow website got me thinking about this.

I'm working on a new site for Halloween, horror and all that good stuff. I don't want to say much more than that right now but I'm pretty excited about it. There'll be more news as the big day approaches.

Cheers.