LEGO Halloween III Minifigures

I made these figures as a tribute to Halloween III: Season Of The Witch. It's not even a very good movie, but there are a bunch of little things I love about it. For example, the three masks.



Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. 
Happy Happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock.

Halloween Mood Table 2014

I've had this set up for a while, but finally got around to photographing it. Since becoming a boring, stupid adult, the Halloween Mood Table has been one of my favorite traditions. Here's this year's, illuminated mostly by the blue glow of my television.



There are still purple string lights and of course speakers underneath for Halloween music. Aside from my anatomically correct werewolf hiding in the shadows beside the ghost, I switched it up this year with the action figure choices. The ghost is actually a candle holder my family has had for decades. My sister and I dug it out of the attic.

LEGO Minecraft Pumpkin Mosaic

My town in Minecraft has two scarecrows that I made out of pumpkins, torches, and fence posts. One of them is named Pumpkin Escobar, and the other is Samuel L. Jack-O-Lantern.

To show my love for Minecraft pumpkins, I got out my LEGO Mosaic set and my orange bricks to make this.

All Hallows' Eve is over. So I built this LEGO vignette.

It was inspired by another vignette I saw recently created by a friend of a friend. It featured the two of them and another friend drinking tea in their living room.

Happy Halloween!

The sister came to visit. I gave her the Hello Kitty Halloween cookie house I got her, but she's going to save it for next year since I got it to her so late in the season. I really love that she's dressed as Dracula, of all the things they could have picked.



We had a graveyard dessert my mom made.



One of the marshmallow ghosts had amazing hair.



My sister thinks he looks like Conan O'Brien.

LEGO Skeleton Bunny Minifigure

I made this creepy minifigure. He's a glow-in-the-dark skeleton in a bunny suit. He kind of looks like Frank the rabbit from Donnie Darko.

I went to a Halloween party over the weekend.

My friend and I went as purgers. I'm the one in the stylish cardigan.



Don't worry, we were polite.

Monster Cereal Treats!

In 2011 we made some cereal treats to bring to a Halloween party. We used Count Chocula, Boo Berry, and Frankenberry cereals. Cereal treats use marshmallows and those cereals have little marshmallows in them, so the idea just seemed natural. They're much more festive than regular Rice Krispies treats. It's also fun cutting up the cereal boxes to make the little signs.



This has kind of become our thing now. Last year we even made Lucky Charms treats to bring to a St. Patrick's Day party. Unfortunately I neglected to get a photo.

This year we were going to a Halloween party again, and it just so happened to be the year that saw the return of classic monster cereals Frute Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy, so we made treats out of those! I also bought a bag of pumpkin spice marshmallows, so we made a batch of pumpkin spice Rice Krispies treats. Although I normally love pumpkin spice anything, I wasn't really a fan of these for some reason. The cherry flavored Frute Brute treats and orange cream flavored Yummy Mummy treats were wonderful though. The colors of all the treats this year were pretty autumny.

LEGO Daniel is dressed up as a pirate for Halloween!

And he used his cutlass to carve that pumpkin into a Jack-O-Lantern!

Ghost Halloween mini paper lanterns.

I know I really talked up those Jack-O-Lantern Halloween mini paper lanterns last year, but as cool as they are, after having all of them up for a short time, I realized the ghost ones are clearly better. The black paper looks surprisingly great lit up, I like the little ghosts, and it's a bit difficult to get the faces on the Jack-O-Lantern ones to line up how you want them. There are ghosts on every side of the ghost ones though, so you don't have to worry at all about how they line up.

Ghost Halloween mini paper lanterns for the win!

Halloween Mood Table 2013

I wasn't sure Matt from Dinosaur Dracula was going to put together or post about a Halloween mood table this year, but I'm really glad he did. It has become an important tradition for me, even though I have only been doing it for a few years. So last night while listening to music that I consider to be seasonal and sipping apple cider, I put my Halloween mood table together as well.



Not a lot has changed. Same scarf and table I always use. There are speakers under the table again, so I can plug in my iPod anytime and blast the aforementioned music. This was probably the most exciting improvement last year, and it's still just as exciting. Trick Or Treat, Chickadee.

The werewolf figure is back weirding everyone out (or turning them on) with his tight, unbuttoned shorts.

Behind the werewolf is a half-eaten bag of Starburst candy corn. I really dislike regular candy corn, but it's such an iconic Halloween candy that I always feel like I'm missing out. This year, Starburst gave me another chance! I was afraid I still wouldn't like them, but they're not bad. But that's probably obvious from the fact that I ate half of them before October even started.

The LEGO minifigures are back, including last year's LEGO Dinosaur Dracula. But hold on, a new horrifying minifigure moved into Table Town. A glow in the dark ghost! It's such a classic figure, and it's from one of my favorite sets when I was a kid, Black Monarch's Ghost.



One obvious new addition is the adorable paper lantern. I actually got that last year late in the Halloween season and neglected to post about it. My sister bought three of them from a dollar store, kept one, and gave the other two to our cousin and me. Lantern buddies!



My sister's is the jack-o-lantern, our cousin's is the ghost, and of course mine is Frankenstein's monster.

Another new addition is two scented candles in jars that the same cousin mentioned above gave me. They're merchandise from the very Halloweeny movie The Nightmate Before Christmas, and each candle has different art on its label, which is very cool. The scents are Mountain Berry and Black Cherry.

"Halloween" by Glass Candy

Happy Halloween!

Apparently last year I forgot I had a blog for several months and didn't post this song, so I'm posting it this year instead.

The song was written by Johnny Jewel's band Glass Candy as an homage to the classic John Carpenter movie, Halloween. It's perfect for Halloween mixes, and for Halloween party playlists. The video for the song was directed by Alberto Rossini.



To read the lyrics or download the song, go to Johnny Jewel's SoundCloud.

Werewolf Balls redux: Giving the people what they want.

I posted an entry on April 4th, 2011 where I wrote a little bit about an anatomically correct werewolf figure I found at a toy store. The figure was so detailed, with not much left to the imagination. You could clearly see the shapeshifter's shaft and bollocks bulging in its tight and torn blue shorts. Composing that sentence made me feel like I was writing a romance novel. Stephenie Meyer has got nothing on me.

About a year after originally posting the story I started noticing that my blog was getting a lot of page views from people searching on Google for phrases like "werewolf balls", "werewolf testicles", "anatomically correct werewolf", and my personal favorite, "what do werewolf balls look like". I've been seeing these phrases in my blog stats pretty regularly ever since then too. Maybe it has something to do with the popularity of Twilight. It all seems rather strange to me, but who am I to judge? These werewolf testicle enthusiasts probably don't do anyone any harm, right? So what do I care if they're into lycanthrope genitalia?

When I first wrote about this wolfman and his fantastical 'nads, I had no idea there was such a rabid fan base. That and also mostly the fact that my fellow shoppers and I didn't have a camera kept me from posting photographic evidence of this creature's bulge. When I started getting so many hits from people specifically seeking werewolf balls, I had the urge to give the people what they want. I was planning to make another post with photographs, but every time I went back to the store with my camera, they didn't have the werewolf toy. I had done some internet research and found out the company that makes the figures is Papo.

In my research I found some wonderful things. There were no specific mentions of the detailed anatomy of the figure, but there were sentences so funny that it's very possible the people who wrote them are in on the joke. For example, on one site there was a warning about the toy that said, "Choke Hazard - Contains Small Parts". Reading that had me laughing for several minutes straight. On the Toys "Я" Us website, I found a review of the figure that said, "I hope that Toys "Я" Us makes more products like this and makes them in other sizes as well, because I like werewolves in all sizes. Meaning small, medium, and large." I bet you do, buddy. I also found out how god damn expensive these figures are. In that original blog entry I called the werewolf toy cheap, and I guess I just assumed they were because they seemed like the kind of action figures poor kids get. These figures don't even have any articulation! I found several pictures of the figure, balls and all, but I really wanted to post my own photos, so I kept bringing my camera every time I went to the mall, hoping they'd restocked the werewolf figures. After so many visits to the mall without ever seeing another figure I was starting to wonder if the store had gotten complaints about the werewolf and stopped selling it.

Well, finally the other day I was at the mall, with my camera in tow, and on the shelf of loose Papo figures, there was a lone lycanthrope, junk and all. Rather than just taking photos of it and parting ways forever, I actually purchased it, adopting this bally werewolf to take home and raise as my very own. Besides just kind of wanting to own it after all we'd been through together, this way I could take my time during the photo shoot. I feel like I owe good photos to these people who pay visits to my blog over and over again looking for the goods. This is my gift to you, weirdos. I hope you appreciate it.

I hadn't noticed before that the blue shorts were unbuttoned. Maybe they changed the mold since I originally saw it. What a strange toy.

And now for the sexy close-up shot you all came to see...

The werewolf figure is now at home on my Halloween mood table.

Another new addition to the table is Cadbury Screme Eggs, and I'm very happy to add them to my Halloween experience this year.

Minecraft Halloween

I decorated my Minecraft house for Halloween!

I'm really looking forward to some Halloween fun in the new Pretty Scary Update. Witches, bats, pumpkin pies... Should be a great time!

Halloween mini paper lanterns.

I'm a big fan of paper lanterns. I love them. If I was a member of the Green Lantern Corps, my power battery would be a paper lantern. And all the other Green Lanterns would be jealous of me.

I have several paper lanterns, and there's one special one I'll write about sometime in the future. This post isn't for that lantern. This post is for Halloween mini paper lanterns, which I purchased at fiVe BEL°W.

One set with ghosts on them, and one that looks like Jack-O-Lanterns.

I love the ghost ones. I didn't know what to expect them to look like when lit up, but they look cool. The black paper looks great.

The Jack-O-Lantern ones are really special though. Paper lanterns and Jack-O-Lanterns are amazing ideas by themselves. Whoever put them together may have been a little less original and done something seemingly obvious, but they struck gold. Beautiful Halloween gold. These mini ones also throw Christmas lights into the mix, making them like some kind of supergroup. Halloween mini paper lanterns are essentially the Crosby, Stills & Nash of decorative lighting.

Let's take a look at some Halloween costumes.

I'm probably not wearing a costume this year as there aren't any parties planned and I don't have any good costume ideas this year anyway. I have been looking at costumes in stores though, and have taken pictures of a few that I'd like to share.

"Sexy" Halloween costumes seem to have gotten more and more popular over the years. I went to Spirit recently, and while they had many "sexy" costumes for women, these two stuck out to me:

Sexy Edward Scissorhands and Sexy Betelgeuse. I think they should complete the series with a Sexy Jack Skellington.

Hmm, you know, I have the DVD of Beetlejuice and an Edward Scissorhands action figure on my Halloween mood table.

Also at spirit, I found this Incredible Hulk child's costume.

It doesn't indicate it anywhere in writing on the package, but I think it's actually a sleepy child Hulk. Look at that ferocious yawn. You wouldn't like him when he's sleepy. Sleepy child hulk costume includes ripped purple pajama pants and for some reason a mohawk. I guess I see children with mohawks quite often these days though.

The final costume was found at a flea market.

It's an old Ben Cooper costume of the moustached Masters Of The Universe character Man-At-Arms. It's perfect if you love Masters Of The Universe and if you love getting your eyeballs sliced up by sharp plastic. Only one of those is true about me.

Halloween Mood Table 2012

Happy October! It's the 1st of the month, and I set up my Halloween mood table today. I got the idea from X-Entertainment several years back and last year was my first experience setting up my own. The Halloween mood table was also the post today on Dinosaur Dracula, the spiritual successor to X-Entertainment, which is in the middle of its first Halloween Countdown. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of a Halloween mood table, you can read about it there.

My table this year is a big improvement over last year's, and I imagine it will continue to get more awesome every year as I develop and hone my mood table skills. I again used the coffee table that I regularly have in my room, so during the Halloween season I am without a regular coffee table. As I'm sure you can see, it's clearly worth the temporary sacrifice.

I had the collectable LEGO minifigures on the table last year, but this year the Dracula is a Dinosaur Dracula. The Halloween takeout containers housed prizes I won for my GERTY costume 2 years ago, and I thought the containers were cool. Mmm, blog continuity...

There's a stack of season-appropriate DVD's, a skull candle holder, and Batman: Haunted Knight. I know Krang and Edward Scissorhands don't have anything to do with Halloween, but I knew they wanted to be in on the fun, and I think they fit right in. Pumpkin Pie and Spookylicious Pop-Tarts complete the ensemble. Oh, and there's the purple lights and the table cloth, which is actually a fancy scarf of mine.

A pretty special addition to the table this year is a pair of old computer speakers hidden underneath, which can be easily plugged into my iPod to play Halloween music like "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo,  "Halloween" by Glass Candy, and the All Hallow's EP by AFI.

UPDATE: Check out this entry to see a few more additions to the table.

Dinosaur Dracula's Halloween Countdown

I wrote about the X-Entertainment Halloween Countdown two years ago. This past summer, the creator of X-Entertainment, Matt, launched a new website called Dinosaur Dracula. It's basically the spiritual successor to X-Entertainment, but is clearly an improvement due to the recently hatched vampiric Tyrannosaurus rex (I love that I know how to spell that without having to look it up or even think about it) that the site has for a mascot.

Since it's early September, any reasonable human being could have expected this... Dinosaur Dracula's Halloween Countdown started recently, and since the site is new, this is its first ever Halloween Countdown. That's something pretty special. It has the renewed energy and magic of the new site, but since there have been so many Halloween Countdowns on X-Entertainment, Matt has had plenty of practice. And you know what they say about practice.

After seeing the Dinosaur Dracula action figure that Matt made in his post about Matchbox Con-Nec-Tors and seeing that he compared the toys to LEGO, I was inspired to make this LEGO version of Dinosaur Dracula.

I combined parts from the Collectable Minifigure Lizard Man and Vampire, and had to find one extra piece to complete it: a black minifigure head to go under the dinosaur mask. Matt mentioned in the Con-Nec-Tors post that despite the fact that one of the figures is an obvious Dracula, they called it a Vampire. Well, you may have noticed that the same goes for that LEGO minifigure. He's called Vampire, but he's obviously Dracula. These toy companies can't fool us.

I hope you enjoyed my LEGO Dinosaur Dracula. I know I enjoy it. Check out Dinosaur Dracula's Halloween Countdown. At this point, you don't have too much catching up to do.

My GERTY Halloween Costume 2010

Every year for the past 3 or so years, my cousin Megan has had a Halloween party. Megan made a theme for this year's party: movie characters. I came up with the ideas for everyone in my family going to the party. My parents were Nurse Ratched and McMurphy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. My sister was Ellen Ripley from Alien. Her costume was really cool. She borrowed a real flight suit, bought an actual Nostromo patch, and she and I (with the help of my dad and his tools) heavily modified an Iron Man 2 Nerf gun to make something resembling Ripley's flamethrower. Since I haven't gotten really into preparing a costume in many many years, I decided to get really into it this year. I had a few ideas, but after I had this idea, I couldn't not do it. I decided to be GERTY from the movie Moon, one of my favorite movies from the past few years.

Growing up, I was really into science fiction and robots. Building a robot or a robot costume out of cardboard seems like a pretty common experience for kids that were into science fiction. Although I remember spending a lot of time making things out of and playing with cardboard boxes when I was a kid, I don't recall ever making a robot. When I thought of the idea to be GERTY, I realized it was my chance to finally have that experience.

I spent several weeks brainstorming how I was going to make the costume, creating plans for it, and acquiring the materials needed. I wanted it to be a little more special than just a cardboard box strapped to my torso, so I decided I needed to make the screen and the camera "eye" light up. The eye part itself is the bottom of a Gatorade bottle, which I thought looked perfect.


Here's my sister and me as Ellen Ripley and GERTY.


Here's a view of just the costume without it strapped to me. I couldn't read one of the post-it notes, so I just amused myself by writing a grocery list with space and moon related items. Freeze-dried ice cream, half-moon cookies, and Tang. Notice the eye is lit up.


Here's a photo better showing that the screen is also lit up. It showed up much better in the dim lighting where the party was.


One of my favorite details on the actual GERTY is his cupholder with the mug. I knew I needed a plastic mug because a regular ceramic mug would be much too heavy and fragile. It seems like I see cheap plastic mugs in stores all the time, but then when I actually needed one, I couldn't find one anywhere. My mom finally found this perfect one at a second-hand shop. I carefully scraped the original logo off, and made a stencil to put the Lunar Industries logo on instead. The mug is held into the cupholder with magnets, so it can easily be taken out of the cupholder, but won't fall out while I'm wandering around the party.

There was a costume contest at the party. Of the three categories, my sister won "Best Overall", and I won "Most Original/Creative" and "Most Effort/Detail".

Annual Halloween Party, Annual Todd

I wrote an entry about being excited about Halloween this year and trying to make it special. My cousin Megan is having her annual family Halloween party on the 30th, and this year I'm actually putting some effort into my costume. I've been working pretty hard on it, and it should be pretty cool, but for now I'm keeping it a secret. Look forward to seeing it though, because after the party (maybe even the day of Halloween) I'll definitely be writing an entry all about it, with photos!

This weekend I'm going over to my good friend Todd's house. I realized the other day that I haven't hungout with him in a year. The last time we hungout was the weekend of the AFI concert last year. In fact, when we hangout this weekend, it will be exactly a year after that concert, as it was on October 16th 2009, and October 16th 2010 is this Saturday. Time goes by really fast.

The NBC Thursday night shows are on tonight. I'm looking forward to the live episode of 30 Rock. Now I'm going to go take a nap until the shows are on. :)