Be My Guest!

I'm not going to do all my usual entries, instead here's what I watched today, starting at midnight last night.

First up: "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!" Do I need to elaborate? I got a rock.

"The Devil and Daniel Mouse." Great memories of watching this Nelvana toon back in the 70s.

 

I seem to recall having a crush on the Jan Mouse. Great tunes and narration by John Sebastian.

"The Flintstones meet Rockula and Frankenstone." Cheesy Flintstones episode with Ted Cassidy as Frankenstone! Lots of cliches and a few laughs. Still lots of fun.

"The Halloween that Almost Wasn't." wasn't very good. But it has a great cast including Judd Hirsch, Mariette Hartley, Henry Gibson, and Jack Riley. On the plus side, it reinforced my origin stories of wearing costumes and All Hallows Day Eve.

"Disney's Halloween Treat." You can watch it on vimeo but you're better off seeing the clips in their entirety. From Wiki:

• "Madam Mim" – The Sword in the Stone (1963)
• "Night on Bald Mountain" sequence – Fantasia (1940)
• Clip of Pluto's Sweater (1949)
• Clip of Mickey's Parrot (1938)
• Donald Duck and the Gorilla (1944) – Donald Duck and his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie
• "Pluto's Judgement" sequence featuring three Pluto cartoons assembled together:
  • Puss Cafe (1950)
  • Cat Nap Pluto (1948)
  • Pluto's Judgement Day (1935)
• "Captain Hook" – Peter Pan (1953)
• "Cruella de Vil" – One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)
• "The Evil Queen" – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
• "Si and Am" – Lady and the Tramp (1955)
• "Ichabod Crane and Headless Horseman" – The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
  

Tough to pick a favourite. Probably Ichabod.

Next up was "The Jetson's Haunted Halloween." which I don't ever recall watching before. I liked it except for their pet, Orbitty. It's probably easy to locate elsewhere, but try here for quick access.

"The New Misadventures of Ichabod Crane." was next. Worth watching if you're hard up for entertainment, otherwise stick with Disney or "Sleepy Hollow" (I plan to show my students Sleepy Hollow this week. They loved it last year, this year's class is less enthusiastic about English.)

I'd finished five beers by then and it was getting late, so I ignored "Witches Night Out" because I watched it last year. ZZZZZZZ

Today, I watched "Gargoyles" that great TV movie with Cornel Wilde from 1972.

And most of "Planet of the Vampires" AND "The House on Haunted Hill" AGAIN.

All of the above is courtesy of a Twitch channel. Just search for Daikaiju TeeVee. Trolls is on right now!

What follows is a friend's video. We were housemates 25 years ago when I lived in Tokyo and worked for NOVA. (NO VAcation!) Nice to see he's made something of himself.

 

It won or was nominated for a ton of awards including the following:

Winner Best Thriller Short - Prague Underground Film Festival April 2023 Winner Best Horror - London International Filmmakers Festival 2022 Winner Best Horror - Florida Shorts Festival 2023 Official Selection - Monster Fest Melbourne 2022 Official Selection - Diabolical Horror Film Festival 2023 Official Selection - LA International Horror Film Festival 2023 Official Selection - A Night of the Horror Festival 2023 Semi-Finalist - Dark Veins Horror Fest 2023 Semi-Finalist - Tokyo Shorts Festival January 2023 Semi-Finalist - Paris International Short Festival November 2022 Semi-Finalist Best Short Horror - San Francsiso Arthouse Short Festival 2023 Best Horror Nominee - Nicomedia Film Awards Winter 2023

I enjoyed it, how about you?

Back to normal entries tomorrow...

Love Me Tendo.

Drove out to Yamagata yesterday in order to enjoy the changing leaves in the rain. (Not as enjoyable as you'd think.) En route, we stopped at HillSide Mall, which in the past has always been a lot of fun. BUT, the discount Toy Store has now become a trading card (mainly Pokemon) outlet. I did pick up a sticker and four cool postcards though.

Hey wait a sec! They're neither stickers nor postcards. Just printed off images on cardstock. I'm beginning to think that this kitsch store is not wholly legit. (Candy Land--still cool place though.)

Here are a few of the decorations around the joint.

Next stop, Otachi (Mandai-clone) in Tendo where I tried to sell some loot. They offered even less of a pittance than expected so I declined to give them a ton of items for peanuts. Therefore, they lost out on forcing me to spend my earnings on a chance to win this.

I did get a 9-tailed Kitsune* for my friend, Mr. Fox.

Normally, I would have picked up these Jumping Chinese Ghosts. But there were only three available, not the set.

Oh well, their loss. 

The next Mandai (Otachi) in Yamagata, had a pretty nice Halloween display. This gal is dispensing candies to little ones who won at UFO Catcher.

We decided to check out one more place, a Book-Off that we've never been to before. 

On the way there, it was slow going, so I had plenty of time to take photos of this Love Hotel.

The Hard-Off was very old school with lots of cheap and not so cheap items. On spec, I picked up this coffin for two bucks. No idea of its contents although its original retail price was close to 30 bucks.

 

It's a pair of Twisted Wonderland Towels.

At the Book-off across the street in an Aeon Mall, I found this Bat-Man.

Much to my surprise, they had a fairly inexpensive large pumpkin for sale. Details on that later...

I did pick up some nice Snoopy socks.

*Speaking of 9-tailed Kitsune, It just happens to be the Yokai of the day!

These powerful Yokai can be nasty or auspicious. It's best to stay on their good side.

Have I shown these already? I need to search through a few boxes for more Venoms.

Before bed, I just crashed and watched some Halloween specials I'd never seen. Such as Mad Mad Mad Monsters, fairly lame Rankin/Bass production.

Then The Flintstones New Neighbours (1980). Not bad, though I preferred the Gruesomes.

To top off the night, I watched a clip show of spooky Bugs toons. Bugs Bunny's Howl-een (1977). The clips were badly edited and the narrative between each clip was meh. Still, any Bugs is good Bugs.

Finally, I'll leave you with Garage Sale Finds, the kind of blog that showcases some eerie items one might find at a Garage Sale (or Mandai or Book-Off).

Later tonight, I'll show off the pumpkin I carved. Hopefully it'll photograph better in the dark, right now I'm not getting any correct guesses.

Return of the Rat Fink.

Now I'm not saying that Andy is a Rat Fink, nor is Alex one, but there was a Rat Fink present during Friday night's wild rumpus.

I just happen to have purchased a couple of RF stickers a few weeks ago.

Andy is on the left, Alex on the right and K-2S0 on the far right.

We had pizza and beer (lots) and spent the second melee at Dragon Diner. There we managed to swing in Andy's return (One Night Only!) and celebrate Alex's FIFTIETH birthday! At the next party, we went to a little hole in the wall place that is almost NEVER open, only this time it was. Great music but only one gal to share amongst the patrons. Needless to say, she went home with the dj. I did manage to get a dance in, alas it was with a dumbstruck dude. At least he let me lead.

I forgot Alex's present* at home but did manage to give Andy a gift. A Nightmarish fanny pack. (Thanks to Loot Fright Crate.)

Not much else to report, except a snap of a pic of a special at a coffee shop.

Thanks to all those festivities, I didn't get around to posting anything about it on Saturday. I was a tad bleary-eyed. Just when I wanted to post something, I got distracted by a Mad Mad Mad Monster special I'd never seen.

Then a Flintstones' special! The reason I was impressed by this is that the art was done by Mushi Production who worked on Osama Tezuka's works such as Atomu and Princess Knight.

After that, I went to bed.

I'll end with a quick Ukiyoe fish pic (Tametomo?). Forgive me if I've shown this before.

When I get a chance, I'll tell you about today when I delivered Alex's present to him.

Happy Anniversary To Me!

I don't pat myself on the back as much as I should, so here goes. Pat Pat Pat.
As of today, I've been in Japan for 13 years! Woo Hoo!! I never thought I'd make it 13 weeks.

In celebration, I popped into the Mandai in Shiogama to see if there was anything interesting. This particular shop was underwater after the Tsunami and I'm certain all its stock was lost. They've managed to pack it to the rafters full of Otaku-stuff.

I didn't get much. A fairly rare Pepsiman where he meets the Mad Scientist, a Chewbacca carrying a dismantled C-3PO, a Tinkerbell. These items cost me a buck. There were hundreds more caps that I would have gone through but there were hung on a wall with only a rickety ladder to stand upon and allow me to view them. Next time I'll bring binoculars.

A Scarecrow Bearbrick, The Count and a prehistoric bird from one of the old Godzilla movies (if anyone can identify it, I'd appreciate it.)

Here is the Table of Contents and Part 1 of Chapter 1, 妖怪の特ちょう, Yokai Characteristics.

A few more pages tomorrow...