If you want a job with guaranteed stability, learn to dig graves.

Treadin' a little on Weird Jon's territory here, but for the last few weeks, I've been heading to Attack of the B-Movies at the local affiliate. I missed out on some of the better films, picking it up around 'The Wasp Woman'/'The Phantom from 1000 Leagues.'

Planning a daily write-up for here so far once it turns October. My hat's off to those who are rocking out already, especially to those fly the spooky all year 'round.

As I said, it's easy to burn out on Halloween, but so far, it isn't bad. Attack of the B-Movies is a cheap thrill that helps up the excitement. Seeing giant robots and Wasp Women inspires excitement for what has been appropriately deemed 'cheapness'. Lately, there's been a great deal of artificial cheapness in both music and television - insincere lo-fi revival and movies from the perspective of cam-corders.

Cheapness is making due with what you got out of sincere love, and probably because there's unscrupulous hands at the purse strings. There's a level of fun in these old B-movies. In 'Voyage to the Pre-Historic Planet,' there's guys hopping around in rubber lizard-men costumes. If they didn't have fun, then they missed the point.

I think that's where the grave digger's sense of humor comes from: taking things too seriously drains away some of the spirit that keeps the body going from day to day. With my music choices, it's good to not get into heavy content music. Goth won't be circulating on the playlist, instead replaced by death rock and psychobilly.

It's the difference between 'spooky' and 'scary.' Spooky means to give you the chills while leaving you smiling at the end. Scary means to make you SCARED.

With movies, it's hard to tell the difference, I suspect. Weird Jon will have to talk about it. With music, though. You can tell when someone's trying really hard to be scary because they're failing horribly at it. Scary is hard in music. I've only come across a few examples. It's easy to be creepy. It's much easier, and much more rewarding, to be spooky.

Happy Halloween

Not into September and there’s already a palpable spirit to the Halloween season. There’s something noticeable about this year, though. Even though it was 82 degrees out, there was still that fall chill in the morning. It’s easy to get excited about Halloween but just easy to burn out.

For the last two years, I’ve sworn every October 1st that I will spend the next thirty-one days listening to only spooky, horror-themed music. The promise turns the month into an endurance test and I usually end up losing. Thanks to other places like Scar-Stuff and the plethora of bands with MySpace pages, it has gotten easier to get close to that thirty-one goal-line.

It’s easy to burn out on Halloween. The stores have turned it into the new Christmas. From September on to November, it’s all black and orange and creepy. From there, it’s red, green and white until New Year’s. Thirty-one days of the holiday is a lot to take. Adding another month sounds a little like torture, but for both Christmas and Halloween, I think the spirit needs to be thinned out. Kids can have a longer running start, planning their costumes from the start of school onward (or if they’re not into it, one month is fine.) And adults can enjoy it for as long as they want.

Adults get a kick out of it, either for the novelty or a true love of all things fun and spooky and I’m glad to find that there is a prescient for people to keep their enthusiasm going well into their years. While most of my spooky-love fell into music, I’m now playing catch-up on the movies and TV shows that build it up. Thankfully, there’s plenty of Video On Demand movies and local horror showings that will help out.

I’ve already started on some music as a pregame for the main event. Figure I’ll write up what passes through my ears up until the big day and hope that it makes everyone’s a very Happy Halloween.