Audio / Video / Other Media

You know, a few years before I started doing the current incarnation of this Halloween section of my site, I did a Halloween section at my old site. I don't remember too much about it, except that I think it had several "rooms," and one of them must've had some Real Audio to listen to. Of course, the one thing that's the same then as now is that Repsacton the ghost was the guide through my little "haunted house." Or whatever it was. But anyway, now I'm thinking I should do a page on this newer site with some music (mp3s nowadays) and some video or whatever other sort of audio/visual fun I can think of....

Audio

Well let's see, some of the music I include here will be familiar and will make sense to you to find on a Halloween page. Let me talk about some other things. You may not know the Flash Girls, but they're awesome, and I think a song about a banshee is sort of Halloweeny, don't you? "Cry Little Sister" is of course from the vampire movie "The Lost Boys." Not sure how Halloweeny "Moondance" is, but I think it's nice and Autumny, at the very least. "Youkai Sesshomaru" is an instrumental theme for the character Sesshomaru from the anime "InuYasha." I think it's rather creepy. Also I'm adding "Bad Things," which is the theme song to the vampire show "True Blood," and also sounds a bit dark, to me. Other than that, I think my choices are reasonably obvious.... If you'd like me to include any other songs here, please let me know.

As for the player I'm using, it's some code I found somewhere, and the first year I used it (2007, I guess), it was embedded in this here page, but I always wanted to find a pop-up player, so you could leave this page while still listening to the music. Well, I didn't find anything. And now in 2008, I've done some more searching, and couldn't find anything I liked (at least nothing free), but it occurred to me to just use the code I started using last year, but put it on a separate page, and pop that up in a new window. Not the most elegant or attractive option, but it's simple, and it works. Maybe someday I'll get a real pop-up player, but for now, at least this is a step up from last year....

Launch Player

Video

In the year 2000, Sci-Fi Channel had an anthology series called "Exposure," which each week would air a few short films, mostly by independent filmmakers. The series lasted into, I dunno, 2001 or 2002. I miss it. Don't recall which year they aired "Graveyard Jamboree," but it was a stop-motion puppetry kind of thing featuring a character called "Mysterious Mose." It was made in 1998, but it was very retro (and very cool), based on a 1930 Dave Fleischer cartoon, in which Mysterious Mose (looking very different from the modern puppet version I first saw) costarred with a slightly poodle-ish girl who would later evolve into Betty Boop. (Yes, the internet has much to teach us. I didn't even know she was supposed to be a poodle and not a human just by watching the video, I had to read that online. Either way... she'll look much better as Betty Boop in later cartoons.) I saw the old "Mysterious Mose" cartoon on YouTube when I was looking for "Graveyard Jamboree." But I like the modern version much better. Anyway, I've embedded them both here, for your viewing pleasure (modern "Jamboree" on the left, old "Mose" on the right). So you can watch them both and decide for yourself which you prefer...

Other than those two vids, I was wondering if I should embed video here, or just link to it, so that this page wouldn't get too long. But actually I think I'd rather embed it... There's something to be said, after all, for atmosphere, and I rather like having video surrounded by a black page like this for Halloween, instead of looking at the plain old YouTube (or other video hosting) site.... Meanwhile, I have to think what else I should even put on this page, whether linked or embedded. In 2006, I made an "Avatar: The Last Airbender" AMV using the Bauhaus song "Bela Lugosi's Dead," which I put on VidiLife (as it was slightly too large for YouTube; but of course, YouTube eventually deleted all Avatar vids, anyway). So I guess I might as well embed that here. But if you know anything about Bauhaus, you'll know it's a long song... The video (which includes a bit of stuff before and after the song) is 10 and a half minutes....

Free Video Hosting

Now here are some songs from my Halloween mixdisc (there were also some in the music section). One time Winnie the Pooh had a nightmare about "Heffalumps and Woozles," so I've always thought of that as a rather Halloweenish song, and in fact I does believe that was one of the real audio songs I had on my old, old Halloween site. But now look, I've found it on YouTube, so you can watch as well as listen! I saw Varttina's song "Aijo" on WorldLink TV, and as they're Finnish, I've no idea what it's about, but it always seemed scary to me, so that's why I put it on my Halloween mixdisc. I managed to find it on YouTube, so you can see if you think the song is scary, too... Alas, I can't embed it, but I can at least provide a link. Also embedded here is the music video for Harry Belafonte's "Day-O" from the movie "Beetlejuice."

And now my duckies, I'll look for videos of songs from a store-bought Halloween CD. Okay, there's "The Time Warp" from "Rocky Horror Picture Show," and YouTube has clips from the movie and from "The Drew Carey Show"...

Hmmm. I think that's really pretty much all I care to look for from those CDs, as far as videos go. So let me think of some other videos of interest... I think I'll start with "The Raven," read by Vincent Price. I always wanted to hear him read this! Keeping in that vein, Vincent Price narrates Tim Burton's short film "Vincent." Then there's "I'm Your Boogie Man" by White Zombie. Doubtless just about any one of their videos would be appropriate for Halloween, but I'm just gonna pick that one to represent the band, mmkay? Then "Horny in a Hearse" by the Nekromantix. I may try to add one or two vids each year, we'll see. Of course sometimes vids will disappear from the site I found them on (usually YouTube), in which case I'll either look for a new copy to put here, or else just remove the vid from this page. Now, in 2008, I've added "Walking on Air" by Kerli.

A friend IM'd me this YouTube clip of a Donald Duck Halloween cartoon. Of course I'd seen it on TV years ago, but it was fun to watch it again. So, I'll include it here, and it leads me to think maybe if there's anyone out there actually looking at this page, you could suggest other vids for me to put here...

Okay, so what else is there? You could read my Halloween TV movie reviews, I mention that alot in my Journal though. Also my scary movie reviews. You could read a comic I made at stripcretor.com in 2004. There's a link to that on the Halloween links page, under "Reading." (In fact, anything under that heading should be reasonably entertaining, and could just as easily be listed here, but whatever. Go. Click. Read. Enjoy.) Oh, and speaking of comics, in 2006 I posted a "Boondocks" comic in my Journal. I might as well stick that here, too, along with a "Tastes Like Chicken" comic from 2008. Also from 2008, I've added a picture a friend e-mailed of jack-o-lanterns, and a "Full Frontal Nerdity" comic. In 2009, another "Tastes Like Chicken" comic:

While I'm at it, maybe I'll just go ahead and take a couple "things I've written" off the front page ans stick links to them here, instead.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year is a song parody I wrote some years ago.
The One That Won't Slow You Down is a story I wrote a long time ago, featuring one of my alternate "personalities," D'Ward von Helsing.