I love Halloween. I love the costumes, I love the candy, and I love that a holiday based on the dead is nationally accepted as a children's holiday. Knowing all this, one would assume that I love answering the door for the little trick-or-treaters that appear every year. That would be where one is wrong.

The reason? My trick-or-treat banter is horrible.

The costumed children knock on the door, I open said door, and they hold out their square pumpkins (or what have you). At this point, everyone involved knows the endgame of this scenario -- to get candy. It really doesn't matter what I say as long as candy is gotten. I understand this. The problem is that I freeze and I don't want to be that house that the kids reluctantly go up to because the guy who lives there shoves a bowl of candy in their faces, grunts, and then shuts the door on them.

Advice I've had in the past is to comment on their costumes or say simple things like "Happy Halloween." First off, I don't want to get a costume wrong. "Are you Wolverine?" "No! I'm a princess!" Second, I want it to be genuine.

If only I could write genuine comments down on cue cards and stick them on the back of the candy bowl or have somebody on the sidewalk hold them up as needed. This year, it's my turn to take Logan around to get candy so I have a whole year to think up some genuine, canned phrases that I can memorize and recite at will. Maybe I'll do some practice runs throughout the year with random people that knock on our door. "Ooo...that's a scary costume. Are you an encyclopedia salesman?" "No! I'm a princess!"

We first saw Dave Gorman on his BBC special, "Are You Dave Gorman?" The premise of the show was the result of a drunken bet. He said he could find at least 54 other Dave Gormans in the world. Thus began his global quest to meet, photograph, and catalog other Dave Gormans. Pure genius.

Mr. Gorman now does a segment for "The Daily Show" called "Poll Smoking." While looking for past segments on YouTube, we stumbled upon a Gorman BBC special we hadn't seen. It's "Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment." Again, pure genius.

We decided that the absolute best part about Dave is his use of graphs. Whether it's the MPDG (miles per Dave Gorman) graph from "Are You Dave Gorman?" or the Happiness graph in the "Important Astrology Experiment" or even the bar graph he used on "The Daily Show" (below) to represent that the majority of pollsters prefer pie charts. The guy knows his graphs.

After finally watching "Ju-on," we were remarking on how similar the movie was to "Ringu." The biggest reason was that one of the main creep factors in the movie was Kayako, a white-faced woman with long locks of unkempt black hair that hung in her eyes. If you've seen one of the many versions of "Ringu," then you know that Sadako/Samara was also of the same disturbing ilk.

After a rambling journey through Wikipedia, I found out why. Apparently, these characters are both based on the same ghost legend in Japan -- the onryo (怨霊). Basically, the [almost always female] figure is "a Japanese ghost who is able to return to the physical world in order to seek vengeance." The look was popularized in early kabuki theater.

I wonder if the onryo character is to Japan as the vampire, the werewolf, and the Frankenstein's monster are to Western culture. If so, I wonder, if the Japanese celebrated Halloween in the same way we do, if people would be greeted at the door by a lot of little girls dressed as onryos. I'd probably scream and slam the door on them before they got to the "or" of "trick or treat."

Here it is. The post that has kept all my faithful readers on tenterhooks. It's the track listing to this year's Halloween mix CD.

Helloween Mix '06

1. Danny Elfman - This Is Halloween
2. Los Straitjackets - The Munsters Theme
3. The Ramones - Pet Cemetary
4. The Misfits - Halloween II
5. Horrorpops - Ghouls
6. Eat Your Heart Out - Skeleton Dance
7. Dead Kennedys - Halloween
8. The Meteors - Michael Myers
9. Nerf Herder - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Theme
10. L7 - Pretend We're Dead
11. Radiskull & Devil Doll - Very Bad
12. Reverend Horton Heat - The Halloween Dance
13. Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
14. The Raveonettes - Attack of the Ghost Riders
15. Echo and the Bunnymen - The Killing Moon
16. The Blasters - Dark Night
17. Burt Bacharach - The Blob
18. Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hell
19. Franz Ferdinand - Shopping For Blood
20. White Zombie - I'm Your Boogie Man
21. Ministry - Everyday (Is Halloween)
22. Electric Hellfire Club - Halloween theme
23. Coil - Hellraiser theme

Special thanks to Brandon who gave me some great song ideas, although I used none of them.

Because of all our TiVo'd shows, our active social life, and (oh, yeah) our really active two year-old, movie watching has become a rare, nay, freak occurrence. A while ago we downgraded our Netflix account from 3 movies-at-a-time to 1 movie-at-a-time. It's cheaper and we don't go through movies as quickly as we used to.

Unfortunately, "DOOM" was returned to Netflix at the end of August. It is now the middle of October and we still haven't watched our next movie, "Ju-on." Why? Because one has to be in just the right mood to watch a foreign horror film. Meanwhile, we're paying Netflix about $10/month for the privilege of storing one of their movies. This is not cost effective.

It seems to be counter-intuitive but to make our movie budget more cost effective, it looks like we need to pay more money each month and have a choice of 2 movies at any given time. If that doesn't work, we'll bump it up to 3 movies-at-a-time. Soon, we'll hit that sweet spot; that cost-effective balance between quality movies watched and amount of money paid.

Regardless, the month of October should put us in just the right mood to get the pants scared off of us by crazy, cat-screeching, Japanese ghost kids.

Door To Nowhere
From the Echo-7 flickr collection.

October -- it's a good month. Multi-colored leaves swirling in the air, candy corn, kids walking around in their Halloween costumes (several weeks before the beloved holiday), and horror movies. Bad horror movies. The kind of horror movies filmed on a budget that rivals the caterer's assistant on normal movie sets. The kind of horror movies whose plots are so ridiculous and the acting so laughable that they take on a whole other level of enjoyment.

It's a hard balance to hit. Some try too hard and some take themselves too seriously. Recently we caught "House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim" on TV. The first one was pretty dumb. This sequel, on the other hand, reaches a new level of craptastic movie-making that I can't help but smile thinking about it.

Originally subtitled "No Guts, No Glory," this flick starts out with a little "Re-Animator" homage, but it all goes horribly wrong and zombies start attacking a campus of jocks and sorority girls. The special forces zombie-fighting team of crack commandos is sent in to fix the problem. Of course, the team is made up of only the best C-list celebrities. Those actors and actresses whose names most people don't know. That guy from "Eureka," that girl from "Cleopatra 2525," that guy from "Miss Congeniality," and the list goes on.

There's something about a good bad horror movie that just puts a smile on my face. Maybe it's my history with MST3K, maybe it's the DIY quality of movie-making, or maybe it's because they're so damn funny.

The first league season of Portland's very own roller derby team, the Rose City Rollers, has officially come to a close.

The Heathers/GNR grudge match (Heathers were only defeated once the whole season and it was by GNR in the last bout) went down to the final jam. The Betties/High Rollers match-up didn't prove quite as much of a nail biter. The High Rollers were down by quite a bit, but in the last couple minutes they decided to overload the penalty box with as many illegal moves as possible. With a few full-body tackles too many, the only skaters left on the track at the end were Betties. Good watchin'.

Here's how the teams stacked up after the sold-out championship bout:




In the end, this non-profit alternative sports league entertained many, many fans, supported various charities, and had fun in the process. I can't wait until next season. Until then, the All-Star team will hit the road. Too bad they don't show that stuff on ESPN8 (the Ocho). Now that's a Portland team I can root for.