Pumpkin Spice Lattes: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You

Since Ouija, a board game, has now been made into a movie, it’s becoming pretty clear that lots of common household objects now can and should be made into films.

You might think that the stunning failure of the movie version of the classic game Battleship would have served as a sort of a cautionary tale, but, guess not.

Probably there are lots of folks who keep remembering how successful those darn Transformers flicks turned out to be, and those were based on toys. 

So just in case there’s someone out there looking to take a chance on a great idea for a movie about an inanimate object, here are my pitches:

Glade Scented Candles

I don’t know I if you’re aware of this, but these candles are, and I quote, “Inspired by the best feelings in the world.” The best feelings…IN THE WORLD. That’s hard to argue with. And then we have the drama of the multi-layer candle: one candle. Two smells. It’s pretty epic. Maybe this film could finally be the one that brings smell-o-vision to the multiplex.

Pumpkin Spice Lattes

This film has holiday classic written all over it. And, obviously, some smell-o-vision, as well as cross promotional tie-in possibilities.

 Wite-Out

This may seem like a harmless little item sitting in your desk drawer. But consider the sheer power. Once something is written, it’s pretty much there forever, unless you apply WITE-OUT. What if the power of WITE-OUT spread…what if feelings could be erased…or thoughts? The very fabric of reality is pretty much in danger.

This idea is gold. Well, it’s white, but you get the idea.

A Waffle Iron

This isn’t really a dramatic movie…just more like comfort food for the eyes and ears, perfect for that movie-release dry spell that hits right around January. Better yet, go straight for the taste buds and just scrap the whole filming-the-movie part, get a bunch of waffle irons, and have a waffle feast right there in the theater. I, for one, will buy a ticket to that show every time.

Halloween Playlist of...Playlists

I've made a lot of Halloween playlists…I love music, I love Halloween, it's a match made in…well, in I suppose heaven sounds wrong, but you get the idea.

Rather than post the actual lists here, I've been making some lists on Spotify, and so today I'm sharing a few for this month we call October.


First up, we have the Classics…not necessarily classic rock…it's more that these are some of my classic go-to songs for this time of year.

Halloween Classics

Next, we have a more eclectic mix…many of these songs were part of my Pandemonium Mix for the Heaven & Hell themed party my best friend and I threw a few years ago. I turned my office at the time into Lucifer's lair with the help of some strobe lights and some of these tracks.

Pandemonium Mix

Finally, this year's playlist--at least so far! I went for a dark but mellow vibe this year...

B-Sides: Halloween 14

Always looking for new tracks for all these lists, so send some my way!

A Completely Biased List of the Best Halloween Episodes of All Time

5. Freaks and Geeks, "Tricks and Treats"

Bill: "I'm sorry Steve Austin. I can't marry you. I'm mad at you right now. What? I'm sorry I can't hear you. Hold on I'm gonna put the phone on my bionic ear."

It’s Halloween in 1980, which is already awesome.

Someone actually asks Sam if he’s going out for “tricks and treats”—just like the Peanuts characters say in Great Pumpkin. No one has fun, and everyone ends up disappointed, kind of like a real life holiday.

"I'm not a little girl, I'm a bionic woman."

4. Buffy, “Fear Itself”

“I was just thinking about the life of a pumpkin. Grow up in the sun, happily entwined with others, and then someone comes along, cuts you open, and rips your guts out.”

The episode begins with a broken-hearted Buffy running her fingers through a bowl full of pumpkin guts…the bulk of the action takes place in a fraternity horror house that (of course, this is Sunnydale) goes very wrong because while decorating, the brothers accidentally summoned a real demon….and in the end, the demon turns out to be about twelve inches tall. 
Buffy steps on him like he’s a cockroach, and...end scene. 

 3.  Dark Angel, Boo

Original Cindy: "What the hell was that?!"

Max: Flashback. "Happens all the time."

The episode begins normally… as normal as a season 2 episode of Dark Angel can be, anyway. This is the season, after all, that took a perfectly awesome show, and added genetically engineered invisible geniuses, bug men, mermaids, and a dog boy. But the rest of the twenty episodes all take this mutant business very seriously. This one goes weird, and then it goes meta, and the whole thing ends up being just very terrible... but also pretty funny…and therefore kind of perfect for the most wonderful time of the year.

2. My So-Called Life, “Halloween”

“When I was little I, like, worshipped Halloween. And truthfully, part of me still does. 'Cause it's your one chance all year to be someone else.”

It’s not the best episode of this series, by any stretch, but any episode of this show is better than the best of lots of other shows, in my opinion.

Angela flirts with a ghost (for a realistic show they seem to go supernatural fairly often—there’s a ghost in the Christmas ep too!?) Best moment: her little sister, usually a throwaway character, briefly steals the show by doing a perfect emo imitation of her big sister.

1. Buffy, “Halloween”

Giles: "And-and your…costume?"

Willow: "I'm a ghost."

Giles: "Yes. Um… the ghost of what, exactly?"

This could be a controversial choice…although Buffy ran for seven seasons, they made only three Halloween episodes. I’ve left off the season six outing, “All the Way.” In spite of some great one-liners, it’s the weakest of the three for me. I’m giving my top slot to season 1’s classic, if non-creatively titled “Halloween.”

There are so many quotable moments, but this one would probably win for me just for the moment when Willow, turned momentarily into a ghost by a spell which turns people into their costumes, walks straight through the library wall. Giles drops half the card catalogue, and his expression: priceless. Buffy gets a nice moment at the end when she’s turned back into the @$&-kicker we know and love. And, unusual for an early ep: Spike! The perfect Halloween cocktail.

Beware of Book Review-Haunted Week Day 8

 Haunted Week is hosted by Cheyenne at {This Girl Reads}

For the final day of Haunted Week, we are posting a review of a scary story of our choice.

I’ve decided to review the scariest book I’ve ever read.

“Can’t you see?...Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!”

Major instruments of social stability.

Standard men and women; in uniform batches… “Ninety-six identical twins working in ninety-six identical machines!...You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” He quoted the planetary motto. “Community, Identity, Stability.”

                  

Huxley’s vision of the future is, as Neil Postman points out in the introduction to Amusing Ourselves to Death, often overshadowed by George Orwell’s 1984. But as Postman points out, we do not appear to be on a path toward totalitarianism. Many of these regimes around the world have already fallen. Big Brother is likely easier to see coming than Huxley’s version, Brave New World, in which we are distracted by entertainment, pacified by mindless slogans, and utterly seduced by science.

Anyone who spends time with teenagers today, whether they themselves are a teen or not, can see the sort of passive indifference to learning that characterizes the denizens of the Brave New World, a world in which nobody protests when the collective works of Shakespeare are destroyed. And perhaps even more upsetting, today’s adults are often infantilized by video games, smartphones, reality TV…

Meanwhile, though, not everyone has given up thinking. Our ability to manipulate nature through science marches forward. It’s not all that difficult to imagine that today’s ability to alter genes to select a child’s gender or screen for genetic defects—or clone living things—will lead us to the ability Huxley predicts: The Bokanovsky Process, in which people’s destinies are determined by the state before they are even born. Some are born Alphas or Betas, and they are individuals, after a fashion, with jobs and a degree of free will. Some are Deltas or Gammas, who go where they are told, never asking questions because the ability to think has been taken away from them. Deltas, for example, are conditioned to dislike flowers. They are conditioned the way I trained my puppy to behave for cookies.

The architects of the Brave New World believe that they have perfected mankind, and created a world of stability and order.

In many ways, this notion of free will versus well-intentioned control is the theme of all science fiction. It was echoed in one of my favorite films, Serenity, when Mal decides to stay and fight the Alliance, to take a stand against a government that tried to use drugs in the air supply to keep the population calm:

“Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that.”

        

That’s the thing—the goal is always good on paper. But the drug meant to calm the population of Miranda in Serenity led to an army of murderous, cannibalistic Reavers. In Huxley’s version, they are out for good as well. When the Savage, who grew up outside the confines of civilization, asks why no one reads Othello anymore, he is told that it’s because there’s no need for tragedy anymore.

“Our world is not the same as Othello's world… you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get.”

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ll take the tragedy—I’d rather know what I’m missing.