Is it Christmas yet? Halloween decorations down by the end of the weekend. Then, happiness!

It’s Halloween! I challenge you to make the most of it! Go trick-or-treating! Go trunk-or-treating! Bob for apples! Watch the Elm Street series in its entirety! Sacrifice owls! The weather here is perfect: Gloomy, grey and inoffensively chilly. I haven’t checked the forecast, but judging by the wind and [...]

HALLOWEEN IS HERE! Well, almost. Technically, it’s just Mischief Night and an excuse to drink skunked Heineken while Tales From The Darkside spins softly in my DVD player. But we’re so close to Halloween, you can taste it. Actually, by the time most of you read this, it will be Halloween. And [...]

Great Pumpkin was on tonight, and for the first time in about ten years, I missed it. Well, I caught enough to notice that ABC took some liberties and made Charlie Brown do some heavy lifting promo work during the commercial breaks — wtf was that all about? Missed all the good parts, [...]

Wow, what a score! We visited our local “Halloween City” last night, which is sort of like a lower-rent Spirit in a much vaster space. Taking the place of a former Circuit City, it was an enormous warehouse full of costumes, decorations and totally random, awesome shit. Unlike the Spirit stores, where everything is [...]

I haven’t posted anything for a week, and in that time, the retail world has all but completely moved away from Halloween and onto Christmas. Not unexpected, but still infuriating. I like Christmastime a thousand times more than Halloween, but I don’t want to see it in October. In many stores, the Halloween sections [...]

Sorry for the lack of updates for the past few days — been busy with things that are much less fun than Halloween Cheetos and animatronic slashers. To keep things lively between now and the next post (which will be tomorrow, even if it kills me), how about a quicky spooky survey? For you commenters: [...]

We’re supposed to be getting some kind of crazy, legendarily destructive storm tonight. I’ll settle for regular rain and thunder, but I’m hoping for worse. Nothing screams Halloween like lightning and power outages. And exposed viscera. Got another Halloween cocktail to tell you about — the Tootsie Roll Martini! I don’t know [...]

Very sad to hear that Cap’n Lou Albano died. Some of will remember Albano as the insane pro-wrestling manager with rubber bands all over his face, and others for his stint as you-know-who on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. In remembrance, here’s an old article I wrote about SMBSS. Incredibly, it’s [...]

You know you’re in for a special post when I draw up a custom introductory image! The New York Aquarium in Brooklyn (which I actually reviewed long ago, if you dare to track down the article), ain’t the first place I’d name as a Halloween hot spot, but lo and behold, they’re giving it a shot. The [...]

Today I will regale you with tales of Doritos and color-changing cars. It’s exactly how you wanted to spend the weekend. I’m not sure if it’s possible for me to love this any more than I do right now. Maybe if it blew me. Frito-Lay always spends October marketing its mini-sized snack bag [...]

I normally try to space out my posts a little bit more, so the number of comments on each entry goes up and makes X-E appear more popular than it actually is. But, I think you’ve waited long enough for this. Finally…it’s time: If you’ll recall, X-E readers were invited to take part in our first [...]

I’m thrilled that we’re almost in the middle of October, and I’m still managing to find new Halloween stuff. Years of doing these Countdowns has taught me that Halloween’s “premiere” month is September. By the time we get to late October, we’re usually wading through piles of red stockings and candy canes to [...]

Hooray for Halloween nights! That slight chill! The sounds of crickets who refuse to admit that they’re out of season! Dagger-shaped clouds bathed in moonlight! Ahhh, the only thing missing is the knowledge that I can enjoy it all night and then sleep until 3 PM. Would Halloween nights be [...]

I decided to be social this weekend, hence, no posts. Remedy: New post now. I: succinct. By the very late ’80s, a mix of goofy one-liners, pop songs and Nintendo references turned Freddy Krueger into something, dare we say, child-friendly. And it showed in the merchandise. Nearly every horror icon has been [...]

I’ve been reading Halloween cocktail recipes for years, and since drinking heavily was most certainly in the cards after the week I’ve had, it seemed like a good time to stop reading and start making. I found the recipe over at this site. I wish it had a cool name like “Agent Orange” or “Sunshine [...]

Oof. This hasn’t been my favorite week. I want to turn this week into a person and beat it up. All of your Spooky Die-O-Rama entries have been received, and they are amazing. Seriously, WOW. I’ll be working on choosing winners and showing off everyone’s entries this weekend. Thanks so much [...]

My love/hate relationship with spiders is legendary. I must have at least three dozen books about spiders, ranging from grade school picture books to five-pound encyclopedias. I read about them constantly, and they fascinate me. And yet, I’m an arachnophobe. Not one of those especially crazy arachnophobes who belt out operatic high notes [...]

We visited our local Halloween Spirit store tonight, where the strobe lights were a’goin and the overpriced disembodied latex heads were a’flowin. Picked up a few things worth writing about — but we’ll save those for another day. In the same lot as Spirit was a Rite-Aid, and since pharmacies can be good places to [...]

Ah, finally got a nice little batch of Spooky Die-O-Rama entries stockpiled. Some really good ones in there! As a reminder, you have until Saturday night to get your finished entries in. (Well, a picture of your finished entry. Or a link to a picture of your finished entry. You [...]