The Christmas Post That Almost (Not Almost... ACTUALLY) Wasn't...

So yeah... I said I wasn't going to blog during the Christmas season... and I was fine with that... I stuck to it. Then I realized I would have to share all the Christmas stuff I've been saving up for my December posts... when exactly? 

Next year? No thank you. I decided I'd drop this in early January for some unknowable reason.

So here we are. This is where my life choices have led us. 

Here are a couple of piles of Christmas junk I wanted to talk about on my blog. 

First up we have some decorative items. Some pretty neat stuff, right? Let's explore them together...

Just you and I.

First up we have this "Santa on Summer vacation" Pepsi glass. This bad boy is from around 1990, when they were also producing cans with this design on them. Chad over at the Horror Movie BBQ and I have an ongoing, almost competitive, Pepsi glass-spotting fetish that seems to be going on a lot longer than most normal people would find appropriate.

I post this here for him.

I am probably more excited about finding this Sugar Bear Christmas ornament than anything else in this post. This guy was produced back in 1993 and Just. Look. At. Him.

Of all the crap in this post, this was one of the few items that got me to burst out with a loud, "Oh!" in the vicinity of other humans with ears capable of hearing my childish exclamation.

I would not have bought this Lindt Snowman tin if the donated Christmas decorations had not been half off. But they were, so I did. He's fun... and so fancy. Now people will think I'm classy and I buy Lindt. (But between you and I, dear reader, I am in fact completely UN-fancy. I am much more prone to the vulgar world of second-rate CHEAP chocolate than any other... to my utter shame.)

Another ridiculously exciting item in this lot is this boxed Dodger ornament from Oliver and company, from back in 1988. I find myself getting ridiculously enthusiastic about these Disney collectible ornaments. I found a Sebastian the Crab from The Little Mermaid awhile back, and this guy had me almost as excited as that. On a sidenote, I could not BELIEVE that Oliver and Company is actually an older movie than The Little Mermaid. I checked and double checked that fact a few times before I let myself believe it. Why does Oliver and Company feel like it was a 90's movie?

I find myself wishing I had written about this tin Santa ornament/figure/thing earlier in the post. Get that crap out of the way earlier. I mean... I liked it enough to buy it but there's not a lot of material here to work with honestly. So here's this tin Santa ornament/figure/thing. Enjoy!

Now on to the media items. Some books, a comic, and an... 8-track!?!? I don't collect those!?!? Let' dig into this pile.

Take my hand.

First off, we have this precursor to the animated television special, "Mickey's Christmas Carol". This one is performed by the "Walt Disney Players".

The only real major changes to the cast are Merlin as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and the Witch from Snow White as the Ghost of Christmas Future. I'm trying to imagine those characters in the place of the ones in the TV show... and I find them lacking. I'm just so used to Jiminy and Pete at this point that anyone else in those positions seems like sacrilege.

Apparently the televised animated special also spared us the pain of MANY musical numbers. There were quite a few on this tape. Goofy's song, "Being Tight Is Not All Right" seems like it belongs in a different kind of show.

Found this awesome book, "Snow Party" for the Christmas kids' book pile. It's not a Christmas book per se, and it was probably very carefully crafted to be a winter holiday book for folks not celebrating Christmas... but I'm not worried about "The War on Christmas," so this beautiful little book is a nice addition to our holiday season.

This is a book where snowmen get together to hold a huge celebration on the first snowy day of winter. The celebration is beautifully illustrated.

Such a fun and simple little book with a nice feel to it. My kids liked it quite a bit. This will definitely be added to the rotation every year.

I also found this beat up copy of the Beetlejuice "Horror-Day" special. In which Delia's and Beetlejuice's Christmas celebration gets sidetracked by a pickle he's gotten himself into with a ghostly engagement to be married.

Here are some of the more notable panels from the comic, the most holiday-themed ones, and a couple of VERY questionable panels from the story.

This final book is honestly something I've been trying to track down for YEARS. I LOVE Christmas mythology, and any reading materials I can find that describe traditions and myths from around the world pertaining to Christmas are must-haves. I also really enjoy the Time/Life series of books entitled "The Enchanted World." And I've been keeping an eye out for "The Book of Christmas" ever since I discovered that my high school library had a set of these books and this was included in the collection.

It wasn't all I dreamed it would be, if I'm being strictly honest. It was nice to cross this one off the list finally though. And a lot of the illustrations are really fun. They don't delve into the darker corners of the Christmas mythos as much as I would have liked. No appearances by Black Peter, the Yule Cat, or Krampus for instance. But the Kallikantzaroi make an appearance! Although, they do make the mistake of confusing/blending the name with the Callicantzaroi which were a sort of Greek Christmas Vampire if I'm not mistaken.

And last but not least, I did actually put together a 2015 Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks Toy Nativity Scene. I was not even remotely happy with how it came out, so I didn't give it ANY fanfare and I look forward to doing a better job next year.

The Three Wise Men are Han Solo, Mal Reynolds, and Peter Quill. They come bearing gifts of Gold (Nuggit), Frankenstein, and MURDER (CLUE). Murder was a last resort honestly. I wanted it to be Gold, Frankenstein, and Murray... but my minimate version of Peter Venkman is strictly the animated version which was voiced by Lorenzo Music, whose portrayal of the character Murray famously decried. So I just couldn't say he was "Murray". (On a side note, I got the Ecto-1 Ghostbusters LEGO set for Christmas so next year, look out! It's the movie version of the 'Busters and this Venkman is ALL MURRAY BABY!!!)

The shepherd is Bo Peep from Toy Story. She's played this role in years past, and I was kind of kicking myself for not finding an original character for my shepherd... but she's literally the only shepherd character I own who comes with her own mutant, three-headed sheep. I have a few pig toys I added just for the heck of it, and to round out the animal population I added the Gladys and Buster figures (or the figures I INSIST represent those two characters) to the creche.

The energizer bunny plays the role of my little drummer boy this year, and a Weeping angel watches from above.

That leaves only the starring family left to describe, including Mumm-Ra as Joseph, the Wicked Queen from Snow White as Mary and Bill Cipher of Gravity Falls infamy as the center of the tableau. I went with a slightly evil bent for some reason. I have no explanation as to why I did this.

So... welcome to January 2016 everybody! We're like a week in, and things seem to be going fairly smoothly.

In other news, my good buddy Brian Farrell of Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture fame has been interviewed by the NEMMC (New England Media & Memory Coalition) about the concept of "Trash Culture". It's a great read, Brian makes a lot of great points, and I really urge you all to go check it out if you're a collector of literally ANY sort.

2016 should be a fun year! I'm going to try and mix things up here a little bit, and while I'll still be posting lots of "Hey, look what I found!" kinds of posts, I would also like to tackle a few specific topics as well. Things I like and love, people on the internet I find interesting, reviews of things, I dunno, whatever strikes my fancy. So look forward to all of that, I guess.

I also want to remind all y'all reading this that I co-host a podcast with three of my good friends from these very internets! The aforementioned Brian Farrell, the both wondrous and wicked Miss M of Diary of a Dorkette fame, and Jason Roberts of the Nerdy Life of Mine blog. Together we are the Eclectic Mayhem podcast! YOu can dowload us on iTunes, so please be sure to subscribe and leave us a review!

Aaaand... since I haven't mentioned it here previously, I want to take a moment and congratulate Jason Roberts on his 2015 Halloween wedding to Carly Roberts!

And with that dear readers, I bid you a good night! I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies to share! Until that time, Happy Hunting!

Countdown to Halloween Day 21: Anthologies - Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark... And More!

Welcome back kids and kid-ettes! Today I'm taking a look at a tried-and-true classic series of anthology story books: The "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" series by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell!

You remember these. Don't chew your fingernails and shuffle your feet and shake your head sheepishly no. I KNOW YOU REMEMBER THESE. All who have been children at some point remember these books. We fought over who got to take them home from the library at school. We loved looking at the pictures very briefly, and then flipping past the pictures as quickly as we could... so the pictures didn't see us back. Unless... we spent time just sitting and staring at the details of the pictures, letting each one corrupt our sanity just a smidge more.

Oh yeah, and there were stories in the books too. Like stories you could read.

It all started back in 1981 with this first book, "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark," which combines urban legends, ghost stories, and creepy folktales collected and retold by Alvin Schwartz with drawings by Stephen Gammell (as you can see on the cover, obviously. Not even sure why I typed all that out, honestly...). I can tell you from experience that kids were probably not picking up these books for Schwartz's gripping storytelling prowess. To be as respectful as I can, but still stay honest too, I don't think the writing is all that special here. Schwartz does a manageable job of recounting the stories... but not much else. There isn't much "scary" to his scary stories. With a different storytelling slant, that could have been much different. 

No, when we bought a ticket to this show, it was to see the horrific illustrations by Stephen Gammell. I honestly cannot FATHOM what the publishers were thinking. Such illustrations would never even be considered for a children's book these days. On the other hand, I have a deep, genuine love for these books and their contents that stems from being messed up by them so thoroughly as a kid. 

My youngest kids however, will not know that particular joy for a few more years yet. I don't remember how old my daughter was when she first encountered this book, but I DO remember the night that followed as we had a very scared little girl crying in her bed and telling us she couldn't get those pictures out of her eyes... which is kind of a creepy idea for a story in and of itself... but I digress. That was a parenting lesson. 

But you look at the pictures I collected just for this post and you get the idea. 

It really isn't the stories themselves. Stories like "The Haunted House," or "The Girl Who Stood on a Grave," or "The Hook," or "The Babysitter," have the potential to be scary, but not the way Schwartz tells them. There is no atmosphere, no spookiness, just a flat kind of rote repetition of story points and details that each have a beginning, middle, and end. If these stories had been published either without illustrations at all, or even with milder, less terrifying ones, we would have no memory of these books at all. This is demonstrated very clearly by the newer editions of these books that include illustrations by the very talented Brett Helquist. The illustrations are very capable and accomplished... but they are NOT of the same creepy caliber as Stephen Gammell for making these stories truly "scary." 

What's strange is that I barely remember the second book at all. It came out in 1984, and I actually had it confused with the 3rd book, which didn't come out until 7 years later, but which I remember much clearer, even though I would have been 13 when it came out. 

What surprised me about it now is that the pictures are much more tame feeling in this one, like Gammell really toned down the squishy-wet gore and the twisty-dry bone feeling of the first book. There are still small measures of it here or there, but most of the illustrations are of landscapes, animals, faces, and even what feels like a few surrealist pieces thrown in for atmosphere alone. Yes, they are eerie and yes there are still a few examples of skeletons or severed limbs in the book, but even these feel muted vs. the original book. 

I'm not sure if this was a publisher's mandate or some sort of self-censorship on Gammell's part, but I think this is the main reason the book stand out less in my mind. It just doesn't have the same sort of bite to it as the first collection. The stories on the other hand? They seem more edgy and dangerous here. Schwartz still has a bit of a dry storytelling style here, but he seems to know how to end his stories a little better this time around. The stories themselves feel a little... meaner too maybe? The story of "The Drum" really stands out to me as a particularly weird one. It doesn't really get creepy until the very end, but boy it really takes the wind out of your sails fast! The storycraft itself doesn't really get much better, but it feels like Schwartz is genuinely trying here to up his game by choosing even darker tales, and having more ambiguity in his endings.

I have no idea why such a huge gap came between books 2 and 3 in this series, but we jump 7 years from 1984 to 1991 and suddenly Gammell is back to full nightmare fuel mode.

We're a out of the early 80's and into the early 90's and the gore and thanatophilia are back baby! Look at the spiders and blood EXPLODING from that horrified girl's face! This book has scarecrows made of stitched up flesh, giant-headed flying monsters with oozing eyeballs, skeletal horses, and the most messed up looking "Mexican hairless sewer rat" that you've ever seen. The really creepy ones aren't that overt though. The strange, doughy, smiling woman with long lanky black hair, or the ghost that looks like a paper doll with its center scooped out... those are the pictures that really give me the heebie-jeebies.

Schwartz gives us kind of a mixed bag of stories here. We get almost as many "just plain weird" stories as we do truly "scary" ones. But almost all are fun to read. 

I picked up this collected edition of the books a while back, but found that I really missed owning the three individual volumes too. So now I have them all! Of course, I have to keep the cover of this book hidden most of the time, because I'm afraid it will creep out my kids. That does it for the "Scary Stories" books (for this post anyway... they will live on in our imagination FOREVER) but I have 2 more books to share, one involving Schwartz and one involving Gammell.

The first one is "In a Dark, Dark Room," by Schwartz, but this time with illustrations by Dirk Zimmer. This book hold a place of very early equal regard in my heart as the "Scary Stories" series, because it almost feels like it's a younger cousin to those books. Schwarz did another one of these "I Can Read" books with illustrator Victoria Chess, called simply "Ghosts!" but I've never really been a fan of that one for some reason.

Now, Dirk Zimmer is no Stephen Gammell. Let's get that out of the way up front... but he is his own brand of weird and disturbing to be sure. I couldn't really look at books that had been illustrated by Zimmer later on in childhood because I had such strong associations between this book and his style.

The stories are fairly tame... but not SUPER tame considering this book is really aimed at first-through-third graders.  We have talking corpses, long-fanged stranger danger, a woman's head abruptly falls off, and the book ends with a large, rather menacing looking skeleton. So again, it really is the work of the illustrator, this time again, to scare the kiddies. Maybe mot on the same scale as Gammell's work above... but it get's the job done. And speaking of Gammell...

Last Halloween I was thrilled to discover there was a book of Halloween poetry that existed that had been illustrated by Stephen Gammell, that seemed to be done in exactly the same style as the "Scary Story" books. And man, do I LOVE ME SOME HALLOWEEN POETRY.

It's a collection put together by Myra Cohn Livingston in 1989, and Gammell is at it right out of the gate! You can't even get pas the contents page without seeing a skull clown! (If that's meant to be a clown... it may just be a big, gross nose hole... either way, brrrr...)

There's a really nice assortment of poetry here, and Gammell's illustration do their job well. There are really only maybe three truly "scary" illustrations (I've included two of those here)  while the rest are just sort of off-putting. If you're a fan of Halloween poetry, or Gammell's illustrations, this is worth tracking down for sure. It is out of print, but you can find it on various online secondhand vendors as I did. I think I found mine in a store on Amazon.

Well that's it kids! Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane... Hope you sleep well tonight! Heh. I'll be back soon with some Ghastly Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!

Remember, I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.

Countdown to Halloween Day 4: THE SPOOKY OLD TREE

Welcome back! Today I'm going to focus on just a couple of Goodwill finds, but very special ones in the Goodwill Geek's household! 

I don't remember exactly WHEN I found Stan and Jan Berenstain's "The Spooky Old Tree" book at Goodwill, but I realized it was one I remembered fondly from when I was a kid myself. This book came out in 1978, which was the same year I was born! I was born on October 4th but I have no idea what day this book was released on. But we're around the same age anyway.

This book is fantastic! It's a kid's book version of the Goonies going on an adventure in the Addams Family house.  The book manages to build suspense with very little wording and very little in the way of plot besides: Do they dare keep going? Yep! There are crocodiles...

Giant keys that open secret doors...

Killer suits of armor...

And a ferocious grizzly bear that chases them hungrily out of the Spooky Old Tree. My boys THRILL over the adventures these bears have in this tree. It's ridiculous. And if you think the Berenstain Bears are just not your thing, think again. This is not one of the wordy, moral touting books with a lesson about strangers or enjoying your birthday too much. This is a nice, succinct adventure story in a creepy wonderland for kids. It has a firmly established and well-deserved permanent position on our Halloween books shelf, and it gets read at LEAST once every Halloween season. 

What's even better? They made a board game in 1989! I paid a little more for this one than I would most board games... but it's complete, and it's a special case so I relented. 

The cover of the box reveals that they've added a fourth, key-toting bear to the posse, whereas the book only has three kids, equipped with rope, a flashlight and... a stick.

The "Scariest" Game a Bear Ever Dared! We haven't tried this thing out yet, but we're GONNA. I showed this thing to my boys and they FLIPPED OUT. So we'll see if this thing can be as hair-raising a they seem to think the book is. 

I love everything about this box. The instructions sheet is even awesome to behold. Check out these silhouettes!

Here's a look at the whole game board, and the spinner. All of the weird pear-shaped portions of the board with color boarders are designed to flip over. I'm not sure why. I believe they all represent hazards of some kind... but as we have yet to play the game... I have yet to find out. But this gae board looks like so much fun! It's frame-able in my opinion. They put a lot of attention to detail into this thing and they threw in some fun little points of interest:

Like this guy here! Creeping in the window with his creepy crawly fingers... what the heck even is that!? Nothing like this nightmare fuel shows up in the book. He lives in this board game only.

A lot of the threats from the book are represented, like the killer suits of armor,

And the snapping crunching alligators under the stairs. So cool. I know you probably think it's lame that I'm getting this hyed up over a board game based on the Berenstain Bears... But dudes. This is basically what my life is all about these days. LET ME HAVE THIS.

I don't know why exactly, but I was also tickled to see that the cardboard pop-outs to a lot of the game pieces still live in the box. Like the center of the spinner, and the tabs on some of those pear-shaped pieces that flip. These could have-- SHOULD have been thrown away... but here they still are. A testament to hoarding in a way. 

I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year. 

Well that's it for tonight kiddos! I'll be back soon with more Gross Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!