Happy rainy Huntington Halloween! You might have already celebrated by going to the Pumpkin House (who knows if it's supposed to be open today though) or today you might be going to the Health Expo (where, one notes breathlessly, there will be a "Germ City station" which "will teach good hand-washing techniques" - that's terrifying!) but the one thing you won't be doing - on Halloween - in Huntington - is going out for some old fashioned trick-or-treating. Why is that? Did you check the Tri-State trick or treat times? It was Thursday! You totally missed it!
To be fair, so did I. I didn't know that the city government could, by some sort of fiat, just say, "No children will be out on Halloween because we've deemed two days before more suitable for some inscrutable reason." What's to keep them from saying, "Thanksgiving on a Thursdays interrupts too many lives. We're moving it to Saturday between the hours of 4 & 7 pm. You're welcome, Huntington!" & what about New Year's? What if the crazy people in charge of this decide there should be two Christmases to up their present count?
It seems weird to me because they love themselves some Halloween in Huntington. Houses all decked out - there are Halloween lights everywhere (orange & black, naturally) in the same way people put up Christmas lights. Why then reschedule a portion of the day? Are they SCARED?
Anyway, if you're like me & would prefer Halloween to happen on the very day when the barriers between the world of the living & the world of the dead are at their weakest, have a happy one tonight. You can certainly listen to the award-winning(*) Halloween Self Help Radio shows at selfhelpradio.net if you need some chills. I also believe there'll be Halloween programming on WMUL, but you'll need to be in Huntington to hear in on the 88.1 frequency. What you can't do in Huntington is, you know, go around & ask for candy. All the candy was gone on Thursday.
(*) Self Help Radio has won no awards.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Awoooooooooo!
That's right, lycanthrope fans, the Self Help Radio show about werewolves is now available for listening this scary Halloween at selfhelpradio.net. It's ninety minutes worth of delights & frights for anyone who's cursed to change into a beast every full moon - & those who love them. Wait till the end before you waste any silver bullets!
I wouldn't be an amateur crypt-keeper if I didn't point out that last year's Halloween show - about witches! - is also available for listening during your Halloween rounds. I hope you're not too terribly tricked this season, so I give you two treats.
(In robot-related news, the third episode of Dickenbock Electronics also aired this morning. It's available on the Self Help Radio website, if you need a shiny, metallic place to be safe from the werewolves.)
Have a Happy Halloween!
I wouldn't be an amateur crypt-keeper if I didn't point out that last year's Halloween show - about witches! - is also available for listening during your Halloween rounds. I hope you're not too terribly tricked this season, so I give you two treats.
(In robot-related news, the third episode of Dickenbock Electronics also aired this morning. It's available on the Self Help Radio website, if you need a shiny, metallic place to be safe from the werewolves.)
Have a Happy Halloween!
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Do You Have A Favorite Werewolf Movie, Gary?
Thank you for asking. Not really. It depends on the age I was when I saw it.
As a child, I loved comic books, & one of the thrills of comic books was crossovers. Yay! Batman is fighting with the Flash! Spider-Man is hanging out with Dr. Strange! The Teen Titans have discovered that the Freedom Fighters need to get back to Earth-X & will help them! The X-Men must team up with the Defenders to battle the Avengers who have been possessed by the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants! Whee!
So you can imagine that, as a child, my favorite werewolf movies were the ones in which the Wolf-Man had to hang out with Frankenstein's monster & Dracula. Oh boy! & when Abbott & Costello got involved, watch out!
As a teen, I remember being totally unimpressed with An American Werewolf In London & also Teen Wolf, which aren't too dissimilar if you think about it. I was, however, scared by The Howling & Wolfen. Those films rocked. They still rock. I stand by that statement even if I haven't seen them in over twenty years(!).
I never saw Jack Nicholson in Wolf - it seemed too, I don't know, made for people who are older, more middle-class than I'll ever be. I should've liked Van Helsing - it was a team-up movie - but the best werewolf film I've seen recently is probably the first Underworld, & not just for Kate whatsername in the tight bodysuit. But there have been a lot of werewolves on the screen recently - in the past three years, I see there's been Blood & Chocolate, The Lycanthrope, Skinwalkers, Benighted, Freeborn, In The Blood, & the ridiculously titled Never Cry Werewolf. I haven't seen any of these. What sort of werewolf fan am I anyway?
One who'll do a show about them tomorrow morning on WMUL - 88.1 on your fm dial! Archived soon after on selfhelpradio.net! That's what sort of werewolf fan I am!
What about you - got a favorite werewolf movie? What is it?
As a child, I loved comic books, & one of the thrills of comic books was crossovers. Yay! Batman is fighting with the Flash! Spider-Man is hanging out with Dr. Strange! The Teen Titans have discovered that the Freedom Fighters need to get back to Earth-X & will help them! The X-Men must team up with the Defenders to battle the Avengers who have been possessed by the Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants! Whee!
So you can imagine that, as a child, my favorite werewolf movies were the ones in which the Wolf-Man had to hang out with Frankenstein's monster & Dracula. Oh boy! & when Abbott & Costello got involved, watch out!
As a teen, I remember being totally unimpressed with An American Werewolf In London & also Teen Wolf, which aren't too dissimilar if you think about it. I was, however, scared by The Howling & Wolfen. Those films rocked. They still rock. I stand by that statement even if I haven't seen them in over twenty years(!).
I never saw Jack Nicholson in Wolf - it seemed too, I don't know, made for people who are older, more middle-class than I'll ever be. I should've liked Van Helsing - it was a team-up movie - but the best werewolf film I've seen recently is probably the first Underworld, & not just for Kate whatsername in the tight bodysuit. But there have been a lot of werewolves on the screen recently - in the past three years, I see there's been Blood & Chocolate, The Lycanthrope, Skinwalkers, Benighted, Freeborn, In The Blood, & the ridiculously titled Never Cry Werewolf. I haven't seen any of these. What sort of werewolf fan am I anyway?
One who'll do a show about them tomorrow morning on WMUL - 88.1 on your fm dial! Archived soon after on selfhelpradio.net! That's what sort of werewolf fan I am!
What about you - got a favorite werewolf movie? What is it?
Monday, October 26, 2009
Whither Werewolves?
Each year - as though promised, or, more accurately threatened - it rears its awful, misshapen head - it moves like crippled death, slowly but inexorably making its ghoulish & ghastly way - fueled by Satan's fire or urged on by its own filthy, macabre motivation - dripping sickness & disease, carried along in an ill wind that it seems to generate - moving closer, closer, closer - to your radio! It's the Self Help Radio Halloween show. It's an undead delight, cold, clammy, rising only once a year, then quickly decomposing. Avoid it as if your life depended on it, but miss it at the peril of your immortal soul!
The show has a scabby, uneven history. It chose to appear when Self Help Radio was very young, but was spotty, unfocused, & the next year was haunted by ghosts & spirits of torment. But the year after that, it did not appear - perhaps because the first Tuesday in November would bring horrors unimaginable that the show could simply not measure up to.
But then! It returned in full force! The next year it brought forth vampires, & the year after that monsters! The next year was zombies, & last year, it gathered a fierce coven of witches to its side! This year, it brings werewolves - cursed creatures who must have been living in the cold, wet forests that surround Huntington - or in the backwoods of nearby Kentucky or Virginia or Pennsylvania or Ohio. Evil beasts with a taste for blood!
Sad that Halloween does not fall on a full moon - nor does Self Help Radio. Let the show be a warning, then - of the blood red eyes watching from the darkness, ready to strike when the moon is full & you are at your most vulnerable!
The show has a scabby, uneven history. It chose to appear when Self Help Radio was very young, but was spotty, unfocused, & the next year was haunted by ghosts & spirits of torment. But the year after that, it did not appear - perhaps because the first Tuesday in November would bring horrors unimaginable that the show could simply not measure up to.
But then! It returned in full force! The next year it brought forth vampires, & the year after that monsters! The next year was zombies, & last year, it gathered a fierce coven of witches to its side! This year, it brings werewolves - cursed creatures who must have been living in the cold, wet forests that surround Huntington - or in the backwoods of nearby Kentucky or Virginia or Pennsylvania or Ohio. Evil beasts with a taste for blood!
Sad that Halloween does not fall on a full moon - nor does Self Help Radio. Let the show be a warning, then - of the blood red eyes watching from the darkness, ready to strike when the moon is full & you are at your most vulnerable!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Preface To Werewolves: Shouldn't This Be On A Sunday Instead Of On A Monday?
Hey! Who appointed you lead cop detective of everything this blog-related anyway? Just because the clock turns itself past midnight & then goes Oh look at me I'm a brand new day la de da doesn't mean it stops being that day for people who are unlucky or drunk enough to still be awake past the late twelve o'clock hour. I know, this blog post will say "Monday, October 26" just like my computer does but I am still living in a Sunday, babe, & so you too should be reading this with a Sunday mind. & no, not a religious mind, because religions will take whatever days they can - & have you noticed, they like to take the weekend days? Isn't that convenient? No problems with the bosses that way, right? Anyway. What was I talking about? Oh yeah.
As far as I am concerned, no matter how the gremlins in the computers at blogger.com tag this, this post is totally written on a Sunday. & it's the post that prefaces tomorrow's deep discussion about werewolves which will be the subject of this week's Self Help Radio which is of course this year's Special Halloween Show. & seriously, the folks in West Virginia love their Halloween. They were turning their (small by Texas standards) front yards into mock graveyards at the end of September. They also like scarecrows sitting around hay. Like this one (actual photo taken in my neighborhood I shit you not):
Maybe it will finally put Self Help Radio on the map? Or at least the GPS? We'll see.
Tomorrow. Which is Monday. It is!
As far as I am concerned, no matter how the gremlins in the computers at blogger.com tag this, this post is totally written on a Sunday. & it's the post that prefaces tomorrow's deep discussion about werewolves which will be the subject of this week's Self Help Radio which is of course this year's Special Halloween Show. & seriously, the folks in West Virginia love their Halloween. They were turning their (small by Texas standards) front yards into mock graveyards at the end of September. They also like scarecrows sitting around hay. Like this one (actual photo taken in my neighborhood I shit you not):
Maybe it will finally put Self Help Radio on the map? Or at least the GPS? We'll see.
Tomorrow. Which is Monday. It is!