Get 'Em While They're Hot!

Saw this display in front of my local Schnuck's grocery today. It's currently July 30th, so what better time to stock up on your artificial Jack-O'-Lanterns? 

Better buy 'em while you can— there're only ninety three shopping days left till Halloween!

Admittedly I've never purchased a resin pumpkin before, but $25 each ($30 for the taller ones!) seems a bit steep.

Sign Of "Things" To Come!

This past weekend I had my annual viewing of John Carpenter's Halloween. As always, every time I see it, I notice a few things I've not seen before.

First of all, the movie premiered in 1978. That means it's 39 years old this year. THIRTY NINE! How the hell is that even possible? I can remember sitting in the theater watching it first run!

Secondly, as a graphic designer, I'm always aware of fonts and kerning and such. Halloween uses the ITC Serif Gothic Black font. It's not bad, but I think I'd have come up with a hand-made, "scary" looking font instead of just using a store-bought one. 

The kerning (aka spacing between letters) is also a bit off. There's way too much space on either side of the "A" and too much between the two "Es." But other than that it's perfect!

One thing I noticed this time— at one point in the movie, main character and Final Girl Laurie Strode watches TV with Tommy Doyle, the kid she's babysitting.

The movie they're watching on the luxurious 19" picture tube TV is 1951's The Thing From Another World.

Apparently that was an omen, because a few years later (in 1982), Carpenter remade The Thing! Cool!

Make Halloween Scary Again!

John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween is a classic of modern horror, and the granddaddy of all slasher films. All horror fans worth their salt know that Michael Myers' iconic, emotionless blank face was created from a modified William Shatner-as-Captain Kirk mask that was painted white.

A couple days ago I saw this on the interwebs— a cheap, poorly sculpted and constructed mask of rotted human pumpkin Donald Trump. I'm actually not sure which is more frightening and disturbing— this hideous mask or the real thing. The mask definitely has better hair, I'll give it that.

Anyhow, it occurred to me that with just a little bit of modification, such as painting it white...

...this Trump mask would make a reasonable facsimile of the original Michael Myers one! You know, just in case Hollywood wants to remake Halloween yet again, and the Shatner mask is no longer available.

"This mask is a tremendous mask, it's the best mask money can buy. Its much better and more handsome than the Crooked Hilary mask, and it's gonna be yuge. Let's make Halloween scary again!"

Curious!

OK, I know I said I was done with Halloween posts, but here's one more before I really do shut up about it until next year. 

Last month Google launched a new website called Frightgeist, which serves the incredibly necessary function of telling you what Halloween costume is the most popular in your particular area.

Thank the gods the internet is finally being used for something useful!

According to Frightgeist, the most popular costume in my home town of Evansville, Indiana is (or I guess, was)... Curious George.

(cue chirping crickets)
Not surprisingly, I didn't see a single person loping around in a Curious George costume last month. Nor have I ever seen anyone dressed as him at any point in my life.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this website was constructed and/or sponsored by the heirs of author Margaret Rey.

Wotta Waste!

Here's one last Halloween post before I stop talking about it until next year. Last week I was strolling through my local Target store, and noticed their huge selection of Halloween-themed greeting cards. Did I say huge? I meant vast.

All I can say is why?

Who the hell sends out Halloween cards? I certainly don't, and I can't remember ever getting one in the mail, ever. Am I the oddball here? Does everyone else sit down and address their Halloween cards every October 1st? Somehow I doubt it. 

I could maybe imagine some clingy, needy mother sending out Halloween cards to her ungrateful kids in a desperate attempt at guilting them into a phone call or text, but even that's a stretch.

This is obviously a manufactured need on the part of Hallmark and all the other card companies. They no doubt analyzed their sales charts and noticed that profits took an alarming dive every October. So they started pumping out Halloween cards, hoping the public would see them and think they're supposed to buy and send them to one another, even though no one in their right mind would ever do such a thing.

Every time I see the huge amount of Halloween cards sitting there I get a sick feeling in my stomach. What a complete and utter waste! Think about the tons upon tons of them that go unsold and are sent back to the card company or hauled away to the dump.

Think about all the other things that paper could have been used for. Infinitely more useful things, like newspapers, phone books and Thanksgiving cards!

This Month In Inappropriate, Ill-Advised And Bizarre Halloween Costumes

Well, it's October again, so you know what that means— Homecoming games, raking leaves, and stores full of slutty Halloween costumes. 

Oddly enough, this year I haven't seen any of those temporary Halloween stores that pop up in my city. Last year I passed three of 'em on the way home from work (all within a half mile radius), but this year, nada.  I've always wondered if there's really that much money to be made by these stores. After all, how many Sexy Journeyman Electrician costumes can a person sell? I'd occasionally browse around one or two of these stores, but I never bought anything, ever. Maybe no one else did either. That's probably why they skipped my town this year.

This year the Halloween costume designers have gone all out in their search for innocent subject matter to co-opt and corrupt. No pop culture figure is off limits, no internet meme is too fleeting. Anything and everything MUST be turned into a costume, at all costs. Let's take a look at a few ridiculous examples, shall we?

First up we have the Sexy Pizza Rat costume. You remember Pizza Rat, don't you? He was all the rage on the internet last month, for all of about ten minutes. If that. But that's plenty of time to warrant a costume, right? Be prepared to explain who you're supposed to be if you're gullible enough to buy one of these.

I'll bet a month's pay that this started out as a "Sexy Mouse" costume and the manufacturer hurriedly hot glued a couple of slices of felt pizza to the hips and renamed it in a transparent effort to cash in on an already stale meme.

Next we have Sexy Darth Vader and Sexy Chewbacca costumes, because even Star Wars isn't immune from Slutification.

The Vader one's actually not too bad, although it may just be the way the model's filling it out that's coloring my opinion. I'm baffled by what she's holding in her hand though. Is that giant striped party favor supposed to be a light saber? Also, I find her lack of helmet disturbing.

The Chewbacca one... oy. It's a stretch at best. I'm betting there's probably a yellow one just like this that's labeled Sexy Canary.

Continuing the Star Wars theme, this one is labeled as an Adult Male Darth Vader costume. Nice try. This is nothing more than a onesie. A giant, man-sized onesie. It even comes with a hood instead of a proper helmet and mask! 

Expect to be the laughingstock of the party if you dare to wear this sad looking thing.

This is the Adult Annabelle costume from the mediocre 2014 film of the same name. You remember the heartwarming story of Annabelle, right? The charming haunted doll that tried to kill its owners? No? Well, don't worry, few do.

Now that I think about it, this could also pass as a Joan Crawford costume from Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?

I resent the fact that I have to live in a world where a sh*tty movie like Annabelle warrants its own costume.

Hey look, it's our old video game pal Mario, riding his trusty steed Yoshi!

This costume comes with a bit of backstory. Apparently Mario's parents were militant anti-vaxxers, and refused to inoculate him against polio. Naturally he caught the disease, his legs withered and shrunk, and now he's forced to ride on a dinosaur's back wherever he goes.

As I said, these Halloween costume designers don't overlook anything, not even beloved icons of Americana. This one is oddly labeled Adult Riveting Darling. So you know what that means! Yep, the name Rosie The Riveter must be trademarked!

What better way to celebrate this inspirational symbol of female empowerment than by tarting her up in a pair of hot pants, thigh-high stockings and stiletto heels? We can do it!

This one is labeled Adult Male Groot costume, although you'd be hard pressed to tell that just from looking. 

As you can see, it consists of a half mask (not even a full over-the-head one) and a camouflage hunting shirt. That's it. No gloves, no boots, and worst of all, not even any pants. This is literally the definition of "half-assed."

This one's called Sexy Seahorse. Since male seahorses are the ones who actually give birth, you'll really confuse your fellow party goers if you show up wearing this! "It's a sexy girl, but... but the boy seahorse does the thing with the babies and the oy, my pupick!"

Looking forward to the inevitable Sexy Sea Cucumber and Sexy Geoduck costumes next year (Google them to fully appreciate that joke)!

Sigh... Here we have Sexy Olive Oyl, which once again not only proves that there's no character these designers won't debase and corrupt, but that they have absolutely no understanding of the source material.

Olive is supposed to be a skinny, sexless beanpole. Slutifying her is about as pointless as making a Sexy Donald Trump costume!

Jesus Jetskiing Christ, it's a Sexy Donald Trump costume! I just lost the will to live.

I'm warning you all right now— taking a repellent and repulsive figure like Trump, gender flipping him and trying to make the sorry result sexy is going to tear a hole in the fabric of spacetime and destroy our universe. Mark my words!

This costume is labeled Sexy Hungry Werewolf. Honestly I'm having trouble seeing anything lycanthropic about it. I guess the ears, gloves and tail make it a werewolf?

I'm also astonished to find that stiletto Carhartt work boots are apparently a thing.

I have a feeling they probably sell this exact costume sans the fur and call it Sexy Hillbilly so they can rake in double the money from one outfit.

And lastly, only nine months (at least!) too late, it's the Sexy What Color Is This Dress costume! Yes, the internet meme that mildly entertained you for a few minutes almost a year ago is now available for you to wear.

Expect shouting matches and fistfights to erupt at any party you attend in this fetching little number!

It Came From The Cineplex: It Follows

It Follows was written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. 

The film is a slow-burning throwback to 1980s horror films, reminiscent of John Carpenter's Halloween, with a dash of A Nightmare On Elm Street thrown in for good measure. Like many 80s horror films, it's a thinly disguised parable on the evils of promiscuity and STDs.

The central idea of a monster that relentlessly pursues you no matter where go taps into deep primal fears that we all have. In fact the director himself said he based the "It" entity on a recurring nightmare he had as a child.

It's also a very low budget affair, made for just $2 million dollars! Most movies spend more than that on their craft service these days! 

The entire film is a marvel of low budget movie making. There are no big name stars in the cast. It was filmed in the economically depressed remains of Detroit, which I have to imagine is pretty cheap these days. There are no special effects to speak of, and little or no prosthetic makeup. And because the titular "It" of the film assumes the appearance of any person, there was no need for an elaborate rubber monster suit or CGI.

Despite all that, it's an effective little chiller. Sometimes having no money is a good thing, as it forces the filmmakers to be more creative.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:

The film opens as a young woman, clad in a perfectly reasonable ensemble of underwear and high heels, flees something that apparently only she can see. The next morning she's found brutally murdered, her limbs twisted into impossible positions.

A few days later, Jay, a young woman with a confusingly masculine name, goes to a movie with her boyfriend Hugh. Inside the theater Hugh spots a woman in a yellow dress walking toward him and abruptly tells Jay they have to leave immediately. Jay doesn't see anyone.

On their next date, Jay has sex with Hugh in his car. When they're finished, he chloroforms her and she wakes up tied to a wheelchair under an overpass. Hugh calmly explains he's being followed by some unrelenting, murderous entity, and has now passed the curse onto Jay through sex, which absolutely isn't a metaphor for STDs. 

As a result of this, Jay will now be pursued by "It," which can only be seen by those with the curse. "It" can take the form of anyone it chooses, and will follow her at a brisk walking pace until it catches and kills her. At that point the curse will revert to Hugh. Just then Jay sees a naked woman walking toward her, which she assumes must be "It." Hugh hurriedly drives her home and dumps her in front of her house.

Jay contacts the police, but they can find no sign of Hugh, who apparently lied about his name and address. Jay returns to school and sees an old woman in a hospital gown walking toward her. She returns home, and her gang, consisting of her sister Kelly and friends Paul and Yara, agree to stay over and protect her. During the night "It" returns, in the form of yet another naked and bloodied woman. Jay flees to a nearby playground.

With the help of her friends and John Bender-esque neighbor Greg, they're able to track down Hugh, whose real name is Jeff. He tells them he got the curse from a one night stand, which again absolutely isn't a metaphor for unsafe sex. Greg takes Jay and the gang to his family's lake house to hide from "It." While there, Greg teaches Jay how to use a gun. As everyone relaxes at the lake house, "It" catches up to Jay and begins attacking her. Paul hits it with a chair, proving that even though it's invisible, it has a solid form. Jay manages to shoot "It," but it continues its pursuit. Jay flees in Greg's car and crashes into a tree ten seconds later.

Jay wakes in the hospital, surrounded by her friends. Greg gallantly offers to sleep with her so she'll pass the curse onto him, as he says he doesn't believe in it (surrrre that's why). Later after Jay is released from the hospital, she sees what appears to be Greg breaking into his own home. She realizes she's seeing "It," and tries to warn Greg, but is too late. "It" takes the form of his mother and kills him.

Paul, who's harbored a long-time crush on Jay, offers to sleep with her next in order to save her, but she refuses, not wanting to pass the deadly curse onto another friend. They then come up with a foolproof plan. They set a trap in a curiously well-maintained abandoned indoor pool, lining the edges with plugged in appliances, hoping to electrocute "It" in the water. Jay enters the pool, serving as bait.

"It" arrives, taking the form of Jay's (dead?) father. "It" refuses to enter the water though, instead throwing the plugged in appliances at her with deadly accuracy. Kelly throws a blanket over "It," giving it form long enough for Paul to shoot it in the head, knocking it into the pool. "It" then grabs Jay and attempts to pull her under. She manages to escape as Paul shoots it in the head again, seemingly killing it for good.

Days later Jay and Paul finally have sex. Paul then drives to a seedy part of town, where he sees two prostitutes on the corner, implying he passes the curse onto one of them. Nice guy, that Paul.

As the film ends, Jay and Paul walk down the street hand in hand, as someone behind them may or may not be following them. The End... Or IS IT?????

Thoughts:

• The film takes place in a strange parallel universe with no clear-cut time frame. The characters drive older model cars, dress in a variety of styles and watch black and white shows on 19" picture tube TVs. Yet somehow Jay's friend Yara has a bizarre Kindle-type device shaped like a sea shell.

I'm assuming this timelessness was deliberate, in order to give the film a surreal, dreamlike quality. Either that or the director honestly has no idea what year this is.

• The rules of the It curse could have been spelled out a bit more clearly. As near as I can tell, if a cursed person has sex with you, the curse is then passed on to you. "It" then follows you at a moderate pace until it catches and kills you. The only way to throw "It" off your trail is to pass on the curse to someone else. However, if "It" kills that person, then you move back up to the front of the line and it'll be after you again. At least I think that's how it works.

• As mentioned earlier, the "It" curse is a pretty blatant metaphor for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. It's an interesting, if unpleasant, direction to go, and probably more compelling than the usual psycho killer angle.

• After Hugh/Jeff has sex with Jay for the first time, he knocks her out with chloroform and ties her to a wheelchair, then proceeds to tell her the rules of the curse.

Was all that really necessary? Couldn't he have just told her about the curse while they were sitting in the car together? It all seemed a bit too theatrical, and I'm betting the only reason they had Hugh/Jeff knock her out was to make it seem like he was the killer for a few minutes.

• At least Hugh/Jeff was considerate enough to warn Jay that he'd passed the curse to her, which is more than she did for her various victims.

• Sometimes "It" takes the form of an innocuous stranger, but other times it appears as various bloodied and mutilated corpses. I'm assuming these latter forms represent its previous victims?

• Nice attention to detail— when Jay and her gang find Hugh/Jeff's flophouse, they break in looking for clues. In his bedroom they see a moldy mattress, a stack of porn magazines... and dozens of wadded up Kleenexes littering the floor. Ew. True to life, but ew.

• Jay and her gang eventually track down Hugh/Jeff at his mom's house (!) and confront him. They then all sit in his back yard drinking sodas, calmly and civilly discussing why he chose to pass a deadly curse on to Jay.

They certainly take this much better than I would have. Even if you ignore the whole curse thing, Hugh/Jeff still chloroformed Jay and dumped her half-naked body in the street in front of her house when he was finished with her. Not to mention the fact that the police are looking for him. Luckily for Hugh/Jeff, neither Jay or anyone in her gang ever think to inform them of his whereabouts.

• I appreciate the film's "slow burn" tone, but I think it may have been a little too slow. At times it comes very close to crossing the line between "thoughtful and deliberate" and "sleep-inducing."

• The soundtrack was very reminiscent of the one in John Carpenter's Halloween, which I'm sure was deliberate.

• I don't need to have every little plot point spelled out for me like I was a mouth-breathing cretin, but there were a few puzzling scenes I thought were a little too vague. Whether these scenes are the result of poor editing or sloppy writing, I can't decide.

For example— at one point Jay drives to the beach to escape "It." She sees a boat full of young guys out in the lake. She stares at them for a few minutes, then walks into the water, peeling off her clothes. We then immediately cut to her driving home, her matted wet hair stuck to her face.

So... I guess we're supposed to infer that she swam out to the boat and had sex with at least one of the guys, to hand off the curse? Or did she chicken out halfway and swim back to shore? Apparently it's none of our concern.

If she did deliberately seduce any of the innocent boat men, essentially condemning them to death, then she's no better than Hugh/Jeff, and comes off as much less sympathetic. 

There's another similarly vague scene at the end of the film. After Jay finally has sex with Paul, we see him slowly drive past a couple of prostitutes. The implication here is he's callously planning to pass the curse onto one of them. Because they're whores, I guess we're not supposed to care that he condemned them to death. Once again we don't know if he actually went through with it or not.

• As the film opens, Jay is floating serenely in her backyard pool. Later when she comes back from her did-she-or-didn't-she boat party, the pool has been severely damaged. We never see it happen, and no one ever says anything about it. I think this was supposed to be yet another metaphor. Jay considers the pool to be a safe haven. Womb-like, even. I'm betting the damaged pool is supposed to visually represent her loss of safety and innocence.

• Jay and her gang's endgame doesn't seem very well thought out. They hope to lure "It" to an abandoned municipal pool using Jay as bait. Once "It" enters the water, they'll toss in a variety of plugged-in electrical appliances in an effort to electrocute the entity.

Whoops! That won't work anymore. Yes, there was a time when you could kill your spouse by throwing a plugged-in toaster into their bathtub, but those days are gone. We now have GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interupter) outlets to protect against just such a thing. When these circuits detect a power surge, they trip the breaker and shut off the juice to the outlet. A swimming pool would most definitely have GFCI outlets around it.

Now that I think about it, this could be a case of the story's vague time period/parallel universe coming into play. Maybe in this world GFCI outlets haven't been invented.

Even if they don't have safety outlets, there's some question as to whether an appliance could electrify the large amount of water in a pool.

• About that pool... it seems awfully well maintained and clean for a supposedly abandoned facility.

• Eventually "It" tracks down Jay at the pool, but refuses to enter the water. Paul has trouble shooting it, since it's invisible to him. Kelly throws a towel over "Its" head, giving Paul something to aim for.

So... if you could throw a towel over "It," that means it had solid form. That also means that we should have been able to see it once it fell into the pool. "It" should have appeared as a man-shaped empty bubble in the pool water, even to non-cursed viewers.

• After "It" is killed, Jay finally has sex with Paul. I get that he's hopelessly in love with Jay, but if I was him, after I saw her so blithely and willingly sleep with three or four other guys in the past few days (even if it was to remove a curse), I think I'd be over her.

It Follows is a surreal and unsettling low budget horror thriller that will stick with you long after the credits roll. They might want to tone down the blatant sexual metaphors though. I give it a B.

This Week In Ill-Advised Halloween Costumes: Invisible Pedestrian

It's October, so you know what that means here at Bob Canada's BlogWorld! Dozens of posts pointing out inappropriately sexy and/or dangerous Halloween costumes! Hey, at least I'm consistent.

Amazon is currently selling a selection of bodysuit costumes by a company called Morphsuits. Here we have the new Morphsuits Kid's Costume, which as you can see, is pretty much just plain, all black bodysuit. A light absorbing, black hole of a body suit, that is, that doesn't reflect as much as a photon in the inky darkness. It also features a special velco fastened head-covering hood, completely void of eye holes!

Because when you think Halloween safety, nothing makes more sense than dressing your precious snowflake from head to toe in a jet black, vision-restricting bodysuit and sending him out into the night to awkwardly pick his way down uneven, unfamiliar sidewalks to knock on strangers' doors and beg for candy.

The second I saw this cockamamie thing, I couldn't help but be reminded of one of my favorite Saturday Night Live sketches from the Dawn Of Time. Way back in 1977, Dan Aykroyd appeared as Irwin Mainway, the sleazy president of Mainway Novelties. Mainway sold dozens of dangerous and deadly Halloween costumes to unsuspecting kids, including... the Invisible Pedestrian costume!

It took a few decades, but once again, life imitates art!

Whatever you do though, try not to lie in the street while wearing the Deserted Highway Bodysuit With Deluxe Glow In The Dark Divider Lines.

Let It Go UPDATE!

Previously on Bob Canada's BlogWorld:

Last week I predicted that sometime in the next month, some company somewhere would come out with a Sexy Elsa costume from Disney's bafflingly popular movie Frozen, despite the fact that it's a film targeted to little girls.

Well that didn't take long. The Sexy Halloween Costume Industry did not disappoint, and came through. Boy, did they come through!

Erotic lingerie company Yandy just released not one, but 2, count 'em TWO, Sexy Elsa costumes.

They even made a Sexy Anna costume for girls with less self esteem.

They don't actually call them Sexy Elsa and Anna though, as that would trigger a knock on their door from the Disney Attorney Squadron. They're calling the costumes "Ice Girl" and "Norwegian Maiden," but it's patently obvious who they're supposed to be.

See? Told you I did! I totally called this whole sorry situation.

And god help us, but they're even making a gender-bending Sexy Olaf costume, for those who feel the world isn't disturbing and horrifying enough. 

I suppose we should thank our lucky stars they put the carrot on her nose.

Let It Go!

OK, I haven't seen any Halloween costumes for 2014 yet, mainly because none of those temporary costume stores have popped up yet around here. So I have no idea what kind of costumes are out there.

But I'm officially calling it right now: At some point in the next month there will be a Sexy Elsa costume from Disney's inexplicably super popular hit Frozen. It's pretty much a given. And why not? What little girl wouldn't want to dress as a slutty knockoff version of her favorite super powered heroine?

Myself, I don't know from Frozen. I'm still hoping we get a Sexy Annie Wilkes from Misery.

Overheard At Work: Gun

I work in a typical office, surrounded by many other workers in cubicles. Although I'm grateful to have a job I like, sometimes the vocal din from the surrounding coworkers is a bit overwhelming. Not to mention odd. Thank the gods old and new for headphones and Pandora.

The following is a 100% true actual conversation I Overheard At Work:

Woman: Look at this photo of my son in his Halloween costume. He went as a 1920s gangster!

Man: That's pretty cool. Hey, he's even holding a Tommy gun!

Woman: Yes, well obviously it's a fake gun. 

Whew! That's a relief! Glad to hear she practices good firearm safety and doesn't arm her child with real automatic weapons!