It's Countdown to Halloween Time!!!

Taken on the Haunted Mansion (sans flash – I don't break the rules) this month
 at Disneyland when the ride stopped momentarily.

Yes, once more – I believe for the fourth time – I am taking part in the annual online Countdown to Halloween festivities. To put it as simply as possible, if you have a website that specializes in articles, photos, how-to activities, cosplay, videos, etc. related to Halloween or the horror genre, you get in touch with the Countdown to Halloween website (http://countdowntohalloween.blogspot.com/), and then your site gets added to a handy list that people can reference throughout October (and the rest of the year, really). They promote you, they give you nifty badges you can use on your site or on social media to draw people to your sites, and thereby help promote Countdown to Halloween in general. Fun and free, with the only real consequence being that you will find out exactly how many people are really interested in whatever crap you have to say (if that is something that will bother you in the end).

I posted a hell of a lot last year as part of the 2016 Countdown. I not only had articles here on the Pylon, but also on Cinema 4: Cel Bloc (my animation site), on The Shark Film Office (self-explanatory), and on my then-latest site, V for Voluminous, C for Cinema (my book review site). My buddy Aaron and I also had a couple of posts we promoted on our Stephen King site, We Who Watch Behind the Rows. In fact, I posted so much material last year, that I probably set a high bar for quantity (let's not even get into quality) that I will probably not be able to meet this year (or ever again).

There are just too many things going on with me in a physical sense, too many personal things going on, and too many distractions from the real world for me to keep up that pace this year. To say my mind is split a thousand directions right now is an understatement, and so I have decided that I need to calm down a little bit and just get done what I can get done. I will not be driving myself crazy trying to keep apace with anyone else or some imaginary publishing schedule that I have created in my head. Last year, I had something posted every single day in October on the Pylon; sometimes, more than one thing. At a point late in the month (specifically, the 26th), I suffered a hip injury that made it difficult to sit or stand for long (and which would haunt me for basically the next 8-9 months). I also had friends and family in town (in different groupings) and so my time was of a premium leading up to the actual day of Halloween. Despite all this, I still managed to post at least once every day on the Pylon, in addition to writing and publishing everything else on my other websites.

This year will be different. I am starting out the month away from home and away from my computer (this is a prepared, pre-scheduled post itself). Later in the month, I will again have various friends coming to town, and with that will be visits to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure and probably the beach. At those moments, I really won't care if I get anything posted in time.

But away from those moments, I hope you will enjoy what I will be publishing this month. Here on the Pylon, I will have a couple of articles in my The Monster's on the Loose! series – which concentrates specifically on formative moments in my horror movie upbringing – in which I will delve into a couple of monstrous documentaries from my youth and also one of my favorite all-time monster flicks, The Monster That Challenged the World. I am planning the third installment of my annual look back at Topps monster trading cards from the 1970s, and also the third piece in my recap of episodes from the old Monkees TV series that involved supernatural themes. There will probably be a couple of pieces of my Halloween visits to Disneyland, including checking out the new stuff they have added to California Adventure for the season. I am thinking of taking a stroll through some old, creaky horror comics that I own. There will probably be some mixtape tracks added to my collection for the Halloween season. And a whole lot of stuff that will work out as things pop up throughout the month. Don't want to give away everything. Or promise too much... I also have a lot of monster movies to watch this month as well, you know...

On Cinema 4: Cel Bloc, I have a half dozen (and possibly more) scary cartoons lined up for discussion, including a couple of Disney classics late in October. The Shark Film Office will finally see me tackle the two films that got cut last year when I got injured: my reviews of the atrocious Sharkenstein (that's right: basically, Jaws crossed with the Frankenstein Monster) and the absolutely mind-destroying Shark Exorcist, one of the absolute worst pieces of cinema I have ever encountered (and that is saying a lot). It is a film so painful that it nearly made me give up writing about shark films. Over on We Who Watch, Aaron and I will start out this month with our review of the new It movie, then a review of Mike Flanagan's new adaptation of Gerald's Game on Netflix, and we are planning to reread King's 'Salem's Lot during the month to also review, And if we can, we then want to do separate reviews of the 1979 Tobe Hooper TV movie and the 2004 mini-series remake.

OK, I have a lot to do this month. I hope that you will return here through the month (and afterward) to check out the fun on my various websites. And feel free to drop a comment or two while you are here. I love to talk to other fans of the stuff that I love.

Happy Halloween (in advance)!

RTJ