SCARY Links of CREEPY Interest

Welcome to what is effectively the Year Without a Halloween.  Stupid pandemic.  I'm determined to keep the spooky season alive even if I can't pass out candy or keep a running tally of what costumes I see most often, always a fun pop-culture barometer.  Here are some mostly Halloweeny (or not) links for you.

*  Boundless Realms - I don't think I've met a single foolish mortal, Disney Park geek or otherwise, who doesn't adore the Haunted Mansion.  Foxx, of the fantastic Passport to Dreams website, has just written a gorgeous book on the Mansion and it is a must-have. 

* Staying in the Disney Parks world, the always excellent Defunctland released a fantastic documentary about the original EPCOT plans.

* You're Wrong About is my new podcast obsession that goes over historical events, famous figures, and urban myths that, it turns out, we got all wrong.  It's fascinating, if not exactly light listening.  Get ready to scream in anger at various decibels at least once.

* If you need some cuteness after that, I suggest Kyra Kupetsky's creepy-cute "Chickn Nuggit" short-shorts.

* No stupid pandemic is going to stop the guys at Sludge Central from doing their annual Halloween special.

* I am so, so happy that people are starting to rediscover "Michael Jackson's Halloween", if only because it proves I didn't hallucinate all those years ago.  Have a podcast and a video essay.

*You want more Michael Jackson Halloween specials and putting "Thriller" on an infinite loop isn't enough?  Channel KRT just reminded the world of the truly insane "Ghosts" which is... a thing... that exists...

* "Into the Spiderverse" is that rare movie that gets better and better every time I watch it and the latest Film Critic Hulk documentary goes into a deep dive as to why. 

* Saturday morning and weekday morning cartoons are coming back thanks to MeTV, who will be airing blocks of classic theatrical cartoons starting in January.  Consider this your early DVR alert.

* For the first time in decades, the Peanuts holiday specials are not airing on broadcast TV, which is even more upsetting than it looks on the surface according to Emily VanDerWerff's report.

* Spectember is well in the past but I'd be remiss if I didn't share Alphynix's fantastic series of spec creatures and the history of Speculative Biology.

* "Eli Roth's History of Horror" is back for another season and I'd be very happy if we got to do this every year please and thank you.

* And if that wet your appetite for horror movie docs, I also love The Kill Count, which, while it is exactly what it sounds like, is also a surprisingly good kind of a Cliff Notes of gory horror for wimps.

* As far as horror movies of a different sort, Xiran did an excellent tweetmenary of the "Mulan" remake, effectively saving us all thirty dollars.

* The Halloween Jukebox is back!  Without a shuffle feature, sadly, but with 250 songs for your Halloween!

* Finally, Glen Keane has a new movie out and he sat down for an interview to talk about it, "Tangled", "Treasure Planet", and more.

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Art of the week!  A little Fairy Dragon.

Everything is Hell so Let's Watch "Saturday's the Place" From 1984!

Well, it sure has been a while hasn't it?

You might have guessed, given the wait between Blog posts, that your germphobe Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder suffering buddy Trish hasn't been having a very fun time during the pandemic.  And, you're right.   The past few months have been surreal.  Back in the beginning, when people were taking Covid-19 more seriously, almost everyone suddenly agreed, "Always have disinfectant spray or wipes. Use them to sanitize everything in your home and clean everything that comes into your home because your home is your Safe Place. Avoid public transportation and above all Wash. Your. Hands!!!"  

And there I was, already deep in the middle of a sustained anxiety attack for everyone I care about and incidentally also myself, thinking, “Normal people DON’T do these things?"

Because if I have to fill the bird feeders or ride the subway, my entire day centers around that because for me it is a Whole Thing.  My home is my Sanctum Santorum of Sanitary, so after such activities, I must go through a thorough dermatopic purification (hot shower) before entering.  Everything is a potential danger you must prevent somehow or Bad Things Will Happen and it Will Be Your Fault.  

What I'm saying is, in the early days of the pandemic, what people were freaking out about was my "normal."  (I and a few others were very quietly hoping that maybe, just maybe, OCD people would get a bit more sympathy from all this.  Or at least that most folks would start going over your phones with a wet wipe when you charge it at night because I honestly still can’t get over the fact that most of you apparently wouldn’t normally do that?!?)

But I don't want to dwell on that right now.  For the first blog post in ages, I want to post something silly and upbeat instead.  

And so, let me share the ridiculous 1984 CBS Saturday Morning Preview show!  I talked a little bit about these programs way WAY back in the Archaen Eon of my Blog, and I'm surprised I've never revisited them since.  After all, if there are things I love to write about here, two big ones are 1) Animation and 2) Unintentionally Hilarious Vintage TV Specials. 

 

So here's the preview special for the... honestly pretty bleak lineup for CBS in 1984.  The highlights were "Dungeons and Dragons" (better than I remembered), the then-brand-new "Muppet Babies" (not as good as I remembered), and Looney Tune and Charlie Brown anthologies series.  Lowlights include about a half-dozen cartoons based on arcade games.  Mediocre-lights are the "Shirt Tales" and "Get-Along Gang".  The IDKWTF-light is a live-action show I completely forgot about, kind of a precursor to "Pee-Wee's Playhouse", made by Sid and Marty Krofft, and starring Richard Pryor.  (When I need to tell a kid what the 90's were like, I usually tell them, "Monks had a double-Platinum hit record."  From now on, when I need to tell kids what the 80's were like, I shall tell them, "Richard Pryor hosted a children's show.")  

What's really interesting about this special, the reason I want to share it, is the "plot".  Janet from "Three's Company" is a reporter who hates hates hates cartoons but must write about how they are made.  And so Henry from "Too Close For Comfort" is going to show her.  What follows is more delightfully strange than you'd expect, but hey we get to see the cast of "Muppet Babies"!

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Art of the Day!  And now, totally botanically accurate humor.