Essential Halloween Viewing

Fiona strikes a Halloween pose and helps me choose some "Essential Halloween Viewing":

1. Halloween - It goes without saying that if no other scary movie is watched during the last weeks of October that this should be the one. A little dated, but still creepy. You can also play drinking games to it - everytime Jamie Lee Curtis' friend says "totally", or you can "take a vodka drink/take a whiskey drink" everytime Michael Myers "gets knocked down, but he gets up again!"

2. Pumpkinhead - Okay, bad title but really cool movie. Lance Hendrickson (Frank Black, Bishop) tries to stop a giant, 10-foot tall monstrosity, created of course by mankind themselves. The filming is eerie and the story line is better than you'd expect based on the title.

3. Evil Dead II - Just watched it again yesterday and Bruce Campbell is at his second-best, (next to "Army of Darkness" - the sequel). Ash and his girlfriend out in a cabin in the remote woods come across the book "The Necronomicon" and become entangled with resurrected demons that unleash all kinds of bad mojo. Scary and funny at the same time.

4. Dracula/Frankenstein/The Mummy - The classics and essential to set the Halloween mood.

5. Scream - Any or all three. Mixing scares, comedy and good plot twists.

Happy Halloween!!

"You Wanted The Best And You Got The Best...!"

Thursday Oct 26th at 8 pm, Regal Cinema will be showing "Kiss Live - Cobo Hall Detroit, 1976".

Hmmm...maybe I'll go and re-enact a little scene from when I was an usher at the theaters in the 80's. We were showing one of the Star Trek movies and of course all the Trekkies were out in full force. I remember pretty much just keeping my head down and tearing tickets mumbling "thank you" as they all strolled by, whispering and giggling in Klingon.

All the sudden I see a hand but no ticket. I look up a little higher and see a Spock doll dancing on top of the ticket box, it's owner masterfully manipulating him in a sort of Irish jig/polka/breakdance. Entertaining as that surely was, imagine my surprise when the doll actually spoke to me, saying in a high-pitched, very un-Spock-like voice "I don't need a ticket, I'm in the movie!". This of course brought the house down for the Trekkies, all of them chortling and clutching their sides in an effort to control the spasms. The joke was on me, the outsider.

The puppet master actually did have a ticket, and I let Spock ride this time. Wonder what type of reaction I'd get with the Ace Frehley doll? Ahh, forget it. The face paint will be good enough.

"Rock and Roll!!!!!"

Amazing Storm Behaviour

Being that Buffalo is no stranger to winter storms, (even surprise ones) I still have to shake my head everytime we have one because you see the same ridiculous patterns of behaviour each time. Here are some gems I've managed to glean while being subjected to non-stop coverage of this disaster. In fact, that's my first one:

- Non-stop coverage of the storm. Today, Channel 2 was back to covering the aftermath of this "unprecidented storm" 24/7, - 3 DAYS AFTER IT HAPPENED, bumping all other programming. I thought the point of calling it "news" was to report when something "new" happened? Speaking of what new is going on:

- What is new in the world? Did N. Korea blow anything else up? Any other Republicans under investigation this weekend? Is Jennifer Aniston still single?

- The complaints about how long it's taking to get power restored. Granted most people the news has interviewed seem to be patient, but I love the lady who personally called the Mayor, leaving "several messages" with no answer yet. Let us know what he says when he gets back to you! 250,000 people without power but Sophie Przylezewkevitski is "getting upset".

- The lady who called Ch. 2 Friday afternoon to see if the Galleria Mall was open. As I was walking around taking pictures, she was probably one of many I saw...

- Ignoring the driving ban. Where the heck are you people trying to go? Everything is closed! You know it's bad when they simply say "The city is closed." That's right, the WHOLE city! Most I saw were driving along, chatting on their phones, rubber-necking the debris.

- Saturday's 1/2 mile lines for gas. Again, where are you going? And why sir are you telling the news that you've got less than an eighth of a tank of gas, but you've been in line for 45 MINUTES?? Tip of the day: All the gas probably won't get used up this weekend by people's generators. That brings up...

- Running generators in the house. OMG, what are you thinking? I mean, it's not funny cause some people have already died from carbon monoxide poisoning but really...think people. The damn thing is as loud as a Harley and it runs on gas! You probably don't want it next to your bed.

- Finally, what I refer to as "The Dairy Farmer Conspiracy". That's the mad dash to grab as much eggs, bread and milk as possible the next day. In case the storm returns again that night perhaps? Eat a lot of fried egg sandwiches while snowed in people?

I think the aftermath can be as trying to some of us as the storm itself.

Friday the 13th Snow pics pt. 2

Friday the 13th Snow Pics pt. 1

Wow! My street:

Snow already??!!

Wow, it's not even Halloween and we've had our first snowfall of the year! Sure enough, it just happened to hit at it's worst during rush hour. Not much accumulation, but still sloppy going. The 198 turned into a parking lot for a stretch but overall, not too bad. What's usually a 20 minute commute took 40. One of the benefits of living in a city with a steadily declining population!

Attention Music Downloaders!

I wonder if all the songs are in Russian? :)

Trade news: (from an online trade publication and The Moscow Times)

Trade Representative Susan Schwab has singled out Russian music site www.allofmp3.com as a key stumbling block to Russia's ascension to the WTO. The site's owners, however, say that they are having the last laugh.

He said the site was signing up thousands of new clients after the US criticism. Schwab said Russia must shut down the site, which Washington considers to be one of the world's largest sources of pirated music, to get the US' blessing to enter the world trade body.

Set up by a handful of programmers in 2000, the site now has 5.5 million subscribers and is signing up 5,000 new users daily - the programmers created the site for their own use and had never expected it to become very popular. The site charges $0.15 to $0.30 per song compared to about $1 per song on most music industry-sanctioned sites, including Apple's iTunes store.

Bunnies in Movies - recommended site!

For a quick laugh, and you only need 30 seconds, check out this site for Angry Alien Productions. It features 30 second re-enactments of popular movies with bunnies as the stars.

Okay, I know what your saying - "Bunnies and movies Jeff? How can that POSSIBLY work??!!" Seriously, it does. I mean, not having seen "Broke Back Mountain", now I finally know what all the fuss was about!

Personal favs - "The Exorcist" and "Jaws".