Category Archives: holidays

Happy Halloween!

I love me some Halloween!

Fall is my favorite season of the year, with it’s crisp air and rain and cloudy days, and Halloween is a great “party” right before the formal end of the year holidays.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I also like getting scared and this is the perfect time of the year to do it! So I present to you three movies that I think make for fun Halloween watching.

All three are anthology films. I like anthology films for Halloween because you get a lot of horror bang for your buck and aren’t committed to only one story for the whole duration of the movie. Also, if you are in a party setting, you don’t feel bad if you miss ten minutes while you hit on the hot Snow White on the other side of the room.

Hubba hubba!

So here they are:

CREEPSHOW

With creators like Stephen King an George A. Romero it has quite a bit of horror cred. Made in the 80’s (and it shows) I find that this still holds up as a time capsule of how movies were made back then, especially when it comes to the practical effects. It’s not scary like Exorcist scary but it is fun. Here’s the trailer:

CREEPSHOW 2

While the first Creepshow is campy, Creepshow 2 is actually more on the scary side. King and Romero join forces again and raise the ante. With segments like “The Raft” and “The Hitch-hiker” there is a lot of suspense added to the gore. Here’s the trailer:

Trick ‘r Treat

There is a lot of history behind this movie getting released. You can read about it HERE, but what I like about this movie is that it celebrates Halloween and tells you scary stories at the same time. Plus, Sam is a pretty cool mascot for the holiday.

I truly love this movie and think it makes for a great Halloween tradition. Here’s the trailer:

Do you have a favorite Halloween movie? Tell me about it in the comments. Also, if you’d like to watch these and other great scary movies why not try Amazon Prime? Click the banner below for details and a free trial!

 See you next time! Happy Halloween!

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Filed under Halloween, holidays, scary movies, videos

On Moving & April Fools Day & Geek Rants

April Fools! This post has nothing to do with Doctor Who.

After a week off from moving I’m back to writing, and settling into our new surroundings.

I’m not a big fan of moving.

I like the experience of being in a new place and exploring new neighborhoods and seeing new things, but the act of actually moving my stuff in not high on the list, in fact it doesn’t even make the list, of ways that I like top spend my time.

Picking up boxes, putting down boxes. Making things fit in the trunk of a car. Renting a truck, and having to bug your friends to help you move – even if you offer them food and booze for their trouble – it just isn’t any fun. Rene and I are very fortunate to have friends and family that were willing to give us a hand. And we were much better prepared for this move than we have been for moves in the past. I felt pretty good about that and it seemed that it was appreciated by those who helped us.

It figures that the day that we are officially out of the old house is April Fool’s Day. I am waiting for the other shoe to drop and find out this was all a prank and now we have to move again (ugh, that hurts to even think about).

I’ve never been a huge fan of April Fool’s Day, it just seems like a day where the unimaginative get mean and, with the advent of social media, you find out that all of your friends are “engaged” or “pregnant.”

There is one particular AFD story that did get me pretty good and appeals to my geek side.

Many years ago when the Star Trek show Enterprise was first released Wil Wheaton posted on WilWheaton.Net that he would be returning as Wesley Crusher, all grown up and time travelling to visit the NX-01. Here’s a link to the original post: Good News, Bad News

For me this was great news! I had some real problems with Enterprise. I am not a huge Trek fan, but I like it and if there’s a new show I like to check it out. Right off the bat the continuity nerd in me was upset that they even called the first ship Enterprise. In the canon of the series we have seen in many places “all” of the ships that bore the name Enterprise – from the sailing vessel, to the aircraft carrier, to the shuttle and then all the fictional star ships of the future. Never, not once until the new series, was there an experimental ship called Enterprise. Suddenly here it is. And it’s supposed to be a historic ship?! Something people remember!? Yet somehow it hasn’t been mentioned ever before? Sure, ok. Strike 1.

Then we see time travel become a major plot point in episode one, but not just normal Star Trek time travel; a whole race of time travelers being directed by a mysterious person from the future!

great.

So the only way this series ends well for me is if there’s some kind of chronological breakdown that erases the ship from history and we get a tragic story of a great ship and crew that never was as far as the timeline is concerned. You’d have the drama of these people performing valiant acts of courage and duty with the knowledge of knowing that eventually they would be erased from history. I thought that was a great idea, but I figured it would never come to pass… then I saw Wil’s post and my heart grew hopeful.

I’m very bad at checking the days. I barely know what day it is today without looking at the calendar and so I neglected to see that this post was made on April first.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one, here’s the followup he made on April 2, 2001: Sorry Mom & Dad.

So that’s my April Fool’s Day story, do you have one? Share it in the comments!

See you next time!

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Filed under geek, holidays, moving, rene, star trek

Happy Fourth of July!

Here’s hoping you have a safe and wonderful celebration!

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Filed under Frankie, holidays

Fourth of July!

Sitting on the couch watching Rene sort papers, listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour, sitting next to a sleeping dog and a cat who is cleaning himself.  It’s a pretty mellow day – even if a good part of that day was spent doing maintenance for pet and home.

Rene and I are enjoying the day as a rest day.  We did the big “hang out & eat bar-b-que” yesterday and, with the exception of the occasional pops and whistles from illegal fireworks outside, today doesn’t really feel much like a holiday. It’s a welcome change.

I do have some work to do today – easy fun work, but work all the same – and a video to post on WiggyWebs.

To end today I’d like to feature a picture of Frankie with his America bandana:

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under Frankie, holidays, rambling, rene, work

New Look! For Now…

You may notice a small change here on the site – that’s right, I changed the template!

I felt that the old green/blue page, while fine before, didn’t reflect what I wanted now.  Which this new template is closer to.  It’s still not quite there yet.  There’s still new site design happening – but with my current workload it has become clear to me that it is going to take a bit longer to get that done.

It looks like we’re going to have to take a week off of WiggyWebs due the the hectic/packed schedule on the plastic surgery doc.  I will probably do some small vlogs for the channel just to keep content coming out.  You heard it here first, but don’t be surprised if there are new videos next week.  Well maybe be surprised.  I don’t know, I’m actually trying to do, like, eight different things at once here and I feel like I’m just rambling.

I hope you enjoy the new layout, you may notice that it looks and awful lot like the WiggyVonSchtick Blog and website, that’s not on accident it’s all part of my nefarious plot to unify the brands!

OK, I gotta’ go.  BTW: what do you think of this picture?

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under business, general, holidays, rambling, Wiggy VonSchtick, wiggy webs

Project 365 7-4-2010 Happy Fourth of July!

Happy Birthday America!

Rene, Frankie and I had a very full Fourth!  We started at the block party on her brother’s street.  They do it every year with food, a giant inflatable water slide and a bike parade that we missed because the alarm didn’t go off.

I didn’t mind that the alarm didn’t go off.

They had a taco guy who made tacos right off a small portable grill which were delicious!  Between the tacos, taquitos and salad I was pretty stuffed – and I managed to miss the cupcakes which I could have totally powered down had there still been one.

Frankie even got into the spirit with patriotic bandana, which is today’s picture:

After the first party we took Frankie home and joined Dean at at new friend Roger’s house!  He’s a voice actor who voiced Chris Redfield in Resident Evil 5 and a whole bunch more, but I’m a R.E. geek so Chris Redfield was enough for me.  He and his lovely girlfriend Steph were marvelous hosts and were very kind to open their home to us.  We floated in the pool, had some drinks, Roger grilled meat – that I eventually made room for – and we played some very hard core air hockey in his game room.

Seriously, the air hockey was hard core!  We played with four pucks at a time and played fifteen minute games.  Very active!  I have bruises forming on my wrist and a sore spot on my palm from the thing that you hit the puck with.  We’ll see how those heal.

Then too finish off the evening Rene and I burned sparklers.

Like I said, full day.

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under Frankie, friends, holidays, project 365 2010, rene

Project 365 5-31-2010

I have a love hate relationship with three-day weekends.

My reasons for loving them are probably the same as your reasons for loving them, if you are a lover of three-day weekends:

  • No work responsibilities.
  • A unifying day off for friends and family through most industries.
  • An excuses to catch-up on the things that I normally can’t make a priority.

I’ve gotten so much sleep this weekend it’s silly and I’m afraid that I might get addicted to it.  Rene and I were allowed to run around and check things off the wedding TO DO list, and that’s never bad.  And today I got to eat flame cooked meat – twice!  We saw my sister and brother-in-law and the nephews and some friends who we haven’t seen in a long while!  Those are all great things about three-day weekends, this one in particular.

But then there are the troubles with three-day weekends:

  • Forced time off.
  • No one is around or available.
  • Financiers are shut down.

 There’s a movie to be made and every day that isn’t spent getting closer to that first shooting day is a day that the first shooting day is delayed – even weekends.  On a holiday like today that means one less day in the week to be able to communicate with the people that can make sure this project happens on time, and that stinks.  Even if you wanted to get things done, and there were a few things that I would have liked to have gotten done, you can’t because everyone either A) asks to talk about it Tuesday or B) isn’t even reachable.

I look forward to the day that I’ve got enough going on that I can firmly allow myself to completely shut down on a three-day weekend (although, admittedly I shut down pretty good over the last three days ;)).

Today’s picture is of me falling asleep:

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under business, holidays, making movies, project 365 2010

Project 365 5-9-2010 Mother’s Day! Again! And Iron Man 2! Again!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!  Hope it was wonderful.  Rene and I spent the day with her family which includes her parents and her brother and sister-in-law and the nieces.  There was a tremendous amount of food to keep with the tradition of moms stuffing their children full, but I’m rushing this part because it’s family stuff.  If you had a good time with your mom and family then you know how our day went and there really isn’t any new ground to cover on that.  Although we did make Shrinky Dinks, and I’m pretty sure that it makes our day just a bit more fun.  Here’s a picture:

I also had my second viewing of Iron Man 2, this time with Rene.  I feel like this movie is going to benefit from distance and multiple viewings.  Because of the speed of the dialogue and the amount of material that they shoved in this movie seeing it a second time allowed me to catch things that I missed before, like the self tanner all over Sam Rockwell’s hands, which I thought was a particularly fun touch.

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under comic movies, holidays, iron man, project 365 2010

Project 365 5-8-2010 Mother’s Day!

Today we celebrated Mother’s Day a day early so that we could celebrate with my mom, my sister and my brother-in-law’s birthday.  We had dinner at Wood Ranch Restaurant where they make wonderful tri-tip and garlic mashed potatoes.  It was delightful and Rene and I both forgot to take a picture of it because we were having such a good time.

Then I played in Improv Shmimprov and had a great show with some great people… and Rene and I forgot to take pictures.

So my picture today?  It’s of my hand.  I’m making metal horns.  Because I rock.  That statement was intended to be sarcastic.

See you tomorrow.

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Filed under holidays, Improv Shmimprov, project 365 2010

Project 365 4-5-2010

Today went by so fast and was spent playing catching up.  I hate having to wait on other people for stuff, especially when I get a good momentum going.  But better to be waiting on someone else then to have all hope gone.  The most exciting thing I did was prepare the next set of lots for eBay.  I found another box of “childhood” worth selling and with a wedding coming up it seemed like a good idea to get that stuff out.

In fact today’s picture is one of those lots:

They are old Resident Evil action figures from my brief obsession with the game.  After looking at eBay to see what these are going for I think I can expect $10-$15 for the whole set.  That’s a fifth of a person at the wedding!!

I better win the lotto.

Anyway, that’s about it for today.  I’m also posting this blast from the past that I had forgotten about until Rene found it again:

The Easter Bunny does hate you and, if you want more back story on what made E.B. so violent you can go HERE but, personally, I prefer the shorter version.

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under holidays, project 365 2010, the wedding