Hope it’s a good one!
Tag: Halloween
-
The best thing I’ve seen lately
Just in time for Halloween!
-
Best. Party. EVAR!!!!!11!1
C’mon, with a title like that, how could it not be?
“It” being the Halloween party we went to last night. Costumes, booze, food, and friends. And a giant inflatable Scooby Doo. (Yes, it was this same Scooby.) Although this year, perhaps the title of this post should be, “Oh my God, they killed Scooby! Those bastards!”
Yes, that’s right: somebody killed Scooby Doo.
See, when Scooby disappeared from the back deck (where he was leering in the window this year), the assumption was the thing had deflated. Somebody suggested that Scooby had, indeed, been killed, but I thought it was just the running gag. Until Scooby’s giant deflated plastic corpse was discovered lying in a pool of blood with a large knife in the neck.
(I think this Family Guy clip applies here. I’ve been looking for an excuse to link to that.)
I knew I had been beating that dead horse into the ground, but I had no idea it would incite a murderous crime of passion…
That was a good party.
Those bastards!
-
Emoticon pumpkins
Halloween blogging #4
Being a computer geek, I wish I’d thought of this when carving pumpkins this year: carving an emoticon face instead of a traditional jack o’lantern. That’s just cool. The only question would be, which emoticon?The “mean” face, befitting the holiday:
>:-(. Or, perhaps, the squiggly face::-S. Or, just the good old standard::).Something to remember for next year…
-
The Screamstress
Halloween blogging #3
I’ve really been liking what Rhys is doing over on The Screamstress blog. The Top 13 Worst Halloween Costumes posts are funny as hell, and the Top 13 Scariest Horror Movie Moments are—well, I don’t know what exactly, but I’ll just say that wow, this is a girl that knows horror movies like I know… beer, I guess. That’s kind of scary in itself.
:) -
Monsters in classic works of art
Halloween blogging #2
Shamelessly lifted this link from Boing Boing, but it was too cool not to: Worth1000’s monsters/classic artwork photoshopping mashup contest. I’ve done some basic graphics munging here, producing such altered classics as Bayer Heroin, Jedi Master Kermit and the Nebraska State Quarter, but my image manipulation powers pale in comparison to what these guys have pulled off. There’s some serious image kung fu here. It’s brilliant and topical! They’re all really good, but I particularly like the “Scream” painting (which I excerpted) and “The Ring” riff. -
Haunted Bend
Halloween blogging #1
The Fall 2005 issue of Bend Living (no link love, their site sucks and the “current” links point to other articles) has an article titled “Ghost Stories” that explores some of the supposedly haunted places in Bend and Central Oregon. And on the radio last week, they were asking for people to call in to name the haunted places we have around here, so I thought it’d be fun to blog it a bit.
The Bend Living article mentions the Deschutes County Historical Society building, the old Reid School in downtown Bend. Supposedly the ghost of George Brosterhous, who died there in 1914, haunts the place.
The Shadowlands Haunted Place Index for Oregon (which I can thank Rhys for mentioning, if I remember correctly) mentions five for Bend:
The Congress House: This was mentioned on the radio, and is the subject of the only ghost story for Bend found in Ghosts and Strange Critters of Washington and Oregon. According to the Shadowlands site, “there have been a few families that have lived there that have either died or something tragic has happened to them due to living in the cursed house,” which is identified in the ghosts book as the McCann House. I don’t know about cursed; the book simply mentions that sometimes figures are seen in the upper story windows, and gives a short history of it.
The O’Kane Building: Mentioned in the Bend Living article, too. There’s “ghostly smoke, weird lights, footsteps, and voices,” and occasionally a voice that calls out orders in the restaurant.
Old Mt. View Hospital: I’m not sure where this is, the site says it’s now an apartment building next to Drake Park. Floor creaks have been reporting, like someone’s walking around.
The Old Smoke Stacks: They must mean in the Old Mill District, which isn’t relevant anymore since they’re building it out… But it sounds like teenagers would sneak in there at night to see if the place was haunted.
The Pilot Butte Cemetery: Also mentioned in Bend Living. Reports of ghostly blue orbs floating around.
Independently of these sources, I’ve also heard the Lara House Bed and Breakfast is haunted. Ironically enough, it’s located on Congress Avenue… just like the Congress House mentioned above! (Cue cheesy horror music.)
Other places mentioned in the Bend Living article include the Downing Hotel building in downtown Bend, current site of The Grove restaurant, Bronco Billy’s in Sisters (the old Hotel Sisters building), Sunriver Resort’s Great Hall, and the New Redmond Hotel in (you guessed it) Redmond.
Shadowlands mentions Redmond, too. In addition to footsteps, there “have been pictures taken and in the pictures there are clearly orbs in the lobby hall. Feelings of a strange presence in the rooms in the middle of the night. Apparitions of a woman have been reported.”
So, what else have we got around here? Anyone know of any haunted places I didn’t mention?
-
Scooby’s at the front door! (The Halloween party)
Shannon blogged it first, I’m still waiting to see if Simone writes it up (or at least puts up the pictures)… I’m talking about the Halloween party we were all at last night. I hadn’t been to a Halloween party in I-don’t-remember-when, and it’s been even longer since I dressed up. I was a vampire, a classic one (not a goth one) with the black pants, white shirt, black cape, etc.
Everyone dressed up, too, which was very cool—you always have these doubts, “will anyone else be dressed up? Am I gonna be the only one?”—but no, everyone who came was in costume. (Well, except for one guy, near the end.) The best costumes, in my opinion, can be seen here—the freakiest, too. Why the best/freakiest? The one on the right is a woman(!).
I’ll say this—the hosts, Lance and Katherine, go all out for Halloween. Smoke machine, spooky sounds CD, spider candles, dry ice in the drinks, even cool touches that I wouldn’t have thought of like filling gutted pumpkins with dips (and a couple of large ones for the punch—alcoholic and non—with the dry ice dropped into them).
And, of course, a giant, inflatable Scooby Doo at the front door, who kept trying to get in. So that’s gonna be the new tagline, I’m thinking. T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, viral in a “All your base” kind of way. You’re gonna see it everywhere.
Halloween rocks.
-
Halloween Summary
As usual, it was as cold as a witch’s tit last night for Halloween, but at least it wasn’t snowing or anything; last year I wrote that it was in the teens. Fortunately this year it was “only” around 30 degrees.
Ah, but this year we live in a new neighborhood! One that’s filled with houses, unlike our old one that we could hit maybe four or five when trick-or-treating. We took the kids up and down several blocks, amassing a small fortune in candy and revelling in the wonderment of people, before the cold finally drove us home. What’s interesting is that our house sits at the end of a cul-de-sac in the new development, which only has four other houses with people in them… so our doorbell only rang perhaps three times because nobody wanted to wander off the beaten path down the dark street for only one house. So in that respect, it was very much like our old neighborhood.
Whatever, it was still a good Halloween; the best part is watching the kids enjoy it more as they get older and have a better grip of what’s going on. Although my youngest needs to work on his timing: they’d ring the doorbell and he would immediately say “Trick or treat!” before anyone actually opened the door.
And Jake has the best Halloween story. I think I’m most glad I don’t live in his neighborhood
:).
