My colleague, Casey Lyons, told me about this trailer for an upcoming horror movie set in Kansas City. The plot is familiar. An idealistic couple played by Nikki and Dennis Dupont move here only to have their dreams destroyed and sink into despair and mediocrity. Happy Halloween, folks!
Over at the Woot! blog, they've got a mixtape made up of YouTube videos for Halloween. It's "a bunch of really cool songs with monsters in them which never ever get played on the radio."
More than just "Monster Mash," there's tunes from Oingo Boingo and the Guess Who. Never thought I'd see those acts next to each other, but there you go. Enjoy this version of "Monster Mash" as done by Bad Manners, and have a happy Halloween.
Sure, you could go as a zombie (played-out), a sexy [insert profession here] (not as empowering as you think), or dude without a costume, but what's the use? You're just fooling yourself into thinking anyone will care or think anything other than "that person is amazingly lame."
Save yourself. Go as the manliest man who ever was a man, the late, great, Fred Blassie -- star of Andy Kaufman's My Breakfast With Blassie, popular recording artist famed for "Pencil Neck Geek," and NWA Georgia Heavyweight Champion.
The mask pictured above came included in his EP, Blassie, King of Men.
Instructions For UsePlace on face. Leave home, roam the streets, scare small children, terrorize your friends and neighbors. Make Loud snorting and grunting sounds, beat your chest, etc. Return home, remove mask.
Assembly
Mount on thick paper or cardboard if possible. CUT ALONG black perimeter lines to achieve oval head shape. CUT OUT eye viewing holes below eyes on mask. ATTACH elastic band or string to left & right ear-holes.
The final battle of the dishes for Halloween candy is a test of Brach's new line of alternative candy corn flavors -- Caramel Candy Corn and Chocolate Caramel Candy Corn. In one sense, this follows up our sampling of caramel apple candy corn just a few weeks ago -- it's taken that long for to forget what a bad idea that was.
But, we're here again to see whether any of the other flavors are worth adding to the annual ritual of buying candy corn, gorging on it for several weeks and then not craving it until the following October.
Caramel Candy Corn (unexpected ingredient: milk)
The top half of the triangle is orange, close to traditional candy corn, while the bottom half is a light brown. The smell is the same as that of individually wrapped caramels or even Werther's.
It's hard to imagine that
there was a time when Americans didn't know what to do with oil -- or that it was just 150 years ago. But when oil was discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859, one oil-based product was "advertised as a cure for coughs, colds, and rheumatism." A
Pittsburgh entrepreneur sold Rock-Oil, 'grease
that could be burned to provide light."
Refining technologies
advanced quickly, though, and the rest his history. As writer Steve Weinberg tells it:
When the Civil War ended, thousands of soldiers made their way to the oil region, lured by rumors of lucrative employment and get-rich opportunities. War profits had made numerous oil-field entrepreneurs wealthy, and merchants such as Cleveland's [John D.] Rockefeller had grown flush with cash. ... Many of the veterans had lived elsewhere before the war but felt no desire to return to their family farms. They arrived in the unfamiliar oil region wearing tattered military uniforms, with all their possessions in a knapsack except for the rifle slung over a shoulder.At the time, one journalist marveled
that, from his train window, "the derricks seemed like a thick metal
forest."
Watching this great human and economic drama unfold from her hometown not far away was a young
girl named Ida M. Tarbell.
Writing for McClure's magazine three decades later, Tarbell would expose the unethical practices
of Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company -- and forever influence the way America does business.
In Taking on the Trust: How Ida Tarbell Brought Down John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, newly released in paperback (W.W. Norton & Company, 304 pages, $17.95), Weinberg reminds us why it still matters.
A vampire doctor is central to the plot of Twilight and now life is imitating art as Dr. C.W. Smith-Burton offers the self-published The Vampire's Guide to Good Cooking. The chiropractor/erotica author released her recipe collection in September 2008 and at first glance it would seem to fit right into the current vampire craze.
The cover depicts an uncorked bottle and a chalice filled to the rim with a vibrant, red substance that could be blood or wine, hinting at a ghoulish or macabre effort inside. However, those preconceptions are thrown aside by the introduction, which suggests that you might have to rethink vampires and what they cook:
Forget all the suppositions surrounding vampires. They have a choice. Many choose to imbibe the richness of classical cuisine rather than the blood meal. Many are day walkers. Garlic is a natural antibiotic and when you're immortal the most natural way to eradicate bacteria is ingest the natural. Unless of course you're a vampire doctor.After the introduction, the book moves into a collection of 47 recipes, most of which come with suggested wines. It reads like a conventional cookbook with small asides and homespun advice. It's most successful when Smith-Burton is talking about her family, such as in an advisory to remove the giblets from turkey unless you want to have a beautiful centerpiece on Thanksgiving.
| Some servers love to dress up ... I wasn't one of them |
One thing I would not do was wear a costume on Halloween. My theory was this: The customers didn't give a damn, and who the hell wanted to run back and forth from the kitchen wearing Dracula's cape or God only knows what? Halloween night could be horrific enough without adding insult to injury.
Over the years, a
few patrons stopped in for dinner before attending costume parties. Back when I worked at a vegetarian restaurant, there was
the man carrying a bloodied fake hand who thought it would be hilarious
if he left it in the middle of the lettuce bowl on the salad bar. The
sticky fake "blood" got over everything and the owner kicked out the
jokester after we had to toss the contents
of giant bowl of iceberg lettuce in the trash.
The worst times, though, were when Halloween fell on a full moon. Whenever that happened, there was a
strong likelihood that the restaurant could be filled with real-life zombies, bloodsuckers, aliens, ghouls -- and cheapskates!
Ingredient opened its fourth location on Monday at 1111 Main Street, in the downtown space formerly occupied by the Mango Room.
The fast-casual restaurant's concept is defined in the "formulate satisfaction" slogan from the sign: In addition to an expansive menu of salads, sandwiches, soups and pizza, Ingredient offers salads and pizzas made-to-order from a bevy of options.
Kansas City, Missouri's tax-increment financing (TIF) program gets criticized for enriching developers. TIF's defenders point to projects like the "Glover plan," which, in addition to delivering a Costco and a Home Depot, provided money for midtown homeowners to fix up their property.
Housing programs have become a popular add-on to various TIF plans. The TIF plan featured in this week's Martin column has made grants to residents in the Southmoreland neighborhood.
Eighty-nine homeowners in Southmoreland have taken part in the program. An additional $585,000 will become available. "I'm a big proponent of these housing programs," says Kate Corwin, a Southmoreland resident who serves on a committee that advises the TIF plan. "I think they're great."
To be sure, it's nice to see regular folks benefiting a program that developers and attorneys have used to trim their business cards in gold leaf. The community benefits, as well, because the money helps homeowners keep their exteriors looking nice.
But are TIF housing programs really fair?
What a happy day for the American!
Debbie gold out!
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