Ep. 90: Halloween Traditions and Treats

0:18 Thank you. Hey, y'all. It's me, Tara Strong, a.k.a. Miss Minutes for Bama Geeks. I hope you're ready to watch, and if you don't, I will have to prune you. Stay on your sacred timeline. And a wonderful Sunday evening to you.

0:59 Thank you so much for joining us live. How are you? Hello. We're back. We're all four together again. All four. reunited and it feels so good. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Brock and Jess had to go watch some wrestling. Of course. Because that's our life. We've been ribbing Brock pretty hard at our member exclusive and beforehand because he kind of left me and Bo in charge without the technical ability. I mean, I do forty hours plus of web development, but even then I couldn't figure out how StreamYard worked to do the intro videos and stuff. And so me and Bo were trying to figure it out beforehand, and it didn't go back a watch, you can tell.

1:44 It was pretty funny. Yeah, the inmates were running the asylum that night. Hey, you guys did great. It's fine. It was fine. And a hello and a welcome to our good friend Shane. He says, don't sing too much as the overlords will get onto you. Yeah. We're trying to copyright ourselves, copyright strike ourselves. Like kind of like that Tales of the Crypt commercial y'all played. That video's not getting monetized. Well, I mean, it's commercial commercials, you know. It's all right. Well, I'm Brock Parker. That's my wife, Jessica. Hi. And of course, Kevin Gardner down below and then Bo Bearden. Greetings. We thank you so much for joining us tonight.

2:26 We really didn't come up with a solid topic for this stream. So we're just like, hey, it's finally October. It's our favorite month. We love this time of year. So let's just let's get poetic and nostalgic about things that mean a lot to us throughout the Halloween season and in October. I will tell you two things that are very important to us. Friday night frights. Yeah. Friday night frights. Dr. Willie murdered me and nurse Connie. Nice. Their season has started. So, uh, watch F N N.com. Uh, is how you can look up Friday night frights. Um, there's so far, they've already done two episodes in their new season.

3:07 So, so, In a past episode, we reviewed a movie filmed here in Alabama called Hide and Creep. It's a classic and it's Brock and Jess's favorite. Well, I have to bring this up. Since we're in October and we're talking about all things horror and everything else, Hide and Creep Has some scenes in it You definitely don't want your kids to see And if you remember In our review of this movie At the very beginning This guy falls out of a tree And he's missing his pants He has no pants on He just got abducted by aliens I wasn't expecting that And well They showed him without his pants So I was like Friday Night Frights, they did that for their first episode.

4:00 And I was like, okay, they're putting this on YouTube. How are they going to do this? And so when the guy fell out of the tree, thankfully they censored it using Willie's face. Yeah. Clever. Yes. He was laying down sans pants and just a big... And it was a marked improvement, let me tell you. It was so much better. I appreciated their version very much. Oh, man, that's great. I love it. Yeah, so definitely go show Friday Night Frights some love and respect and everything else.

4:41 We tried to get them on again for this episode, but they, as you can imagine, being the spooky season, they're very busy. Yeah. So I'm hoping maybe we can get them on kind of recap season three, maybe around the first of November or so once they wind down a little bit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Love those guys. We spent a lot of time with them at Alabama Comic Con a couple of weeks ago and just had a blast. Yeah. Oh, love them so much. It's so much fun. Well, like I said, we we don't have anything really rock solid as far as as far as a topic outside of just kind of, you know, talking about Halloween traditions and memories and nostalgia.

5:23 What's got what? I mean, look, granted, before we get into the Halloween stuff. Yeah. We have a particular non-Halloween thing that we need to mention. Go ahead. We mentioned the end of our member exclusive. It's nothing Halloween related, but it is awesome, and it has to do with SpaceX. Yeah. You guys ready for this? I don't know. If anybody watches Twitter, X, whatever it is, but SpaceX just did a launch, and they actually caught the big booster with the chopsticks. Yes. On the tower. On the tower with the first try and it was perfection and it was just like, I mean, we're talking, imagine if Werner Von Braun was alive today and he saw that.

6:07 He would be like, you know, yeah, it's fifty years too late, but that's great that we're there. We really love it. So, I thought that was a phenomenal achievement. And you could tell listening to the folks at SpaceX when they were cheering, the cheer got like Alabama football, well, at least pre-Vandy. Yeah. Alabama football levels. Alabama-Georgia game. But, like, the deafening roar, it got to that level because you could tell there were people at SpaceX that were just like, yeah, we didn't think that was going to happen. But it did, and we're excited. It happens. I don't get laid off. Yeah. You got that.

6:50 You got the comet that came through, like, last night. I think so. People call it. And then you had the, the Northern light situation again. So there's a lot going on in the sky lately. So many people share that. The photos, man, it was nuts. My whole Instagram was flooded with it. Facebook was flooded with it. I was like, you know what? When I went outside my house, I looked North and there are trees. And it's uphill. So it's trees. So I was like, I'm going to live vicariously through all the rest of you. Yeah. My parents go around. I didn't see nothing. So this time I graciously didn't even step outside. We saw them the first time it happened this year, but we haven't seen it.

7:31 We didn't get a chance to. I mean, we had a little bit, a little purple, a little bit of grimace. I want to say, where did I see? It was on Twitter or somewhere like up in Maine. They had like a purplish pink looking sky. I have quite a few folks that I work with up in Michigan. We have at least one guy that was up in the U.P., in the upper peninsula of michigan and um yeah yeah and he got some insanely good photos like nice it was pretty much like he was it was like a full aurora had all the different colors and everything and it's like that just never happens that well down past a certain parallel so it was that was incredible incredible and I mean even here you know obviously you know if you're in alabama you you've no doubt you saw at the very least we were getting you know red We got some red.

8:21 That was a crimson tide, boy. Yeah, baby. Well, speaking of seeing things on social media, make sure you check us out on social media at Bama Geeks everywhere. The plug is over. Go ahead, Bo. I was going to say, I know this is not on topic what we're talking about, but I wanted to bring it up with us all being band geeks. Went to, my son got to see his first high school marching band performance this Friday. Yeah. And he really enjoyed it. I'll sit there. Of course, it was in Alabama. Went to a good friend. His son marches in... Well, I mean, like I said, he watches at Hillcrest High School, performs in their band. They had a good show. And then I got to see Thompson High School, which that's the crazy thing about it.

9:04 Last time I was in this stadium where I saw them, I was in marching band myself. That was like eighth grade, the only time we went there. But, like, it was really cool. Like, what you got me thinking was, because Thompson, their theme was all space stuff. Like, they opened with the, what was it, theme from Interstellar. At one point, they played the Sixty Style Star Trek. They played the E.T. theme. Like, it was really good. Like, heads up, if anybody's, you know, like I said, Hillcrest, they had a great band. It was like, oh, I'm trying to remember what all they did. It was, because it was, they did theirs after halftime, because they did the Recognizing the Seniors at halftime, but. Either one. Sorry. It was really cool. And friend of the podcast and fellow Alabama Ghostbuster, Allison, she had posted up something a couple of weeks ago.

9:46 One of the local, around the Birmingham area, one of the high school bands was playing Ghostbusters stuff for their halftime show. I'm telling you, we're trying to get our Ghostbusters marching band together. Yeah. One day. Yeah, it was wild. Go ahead. is one thing that's crazy with me is like why would technology like cool things they did with like the marching band uh they had uh they were I think they were doing the opening from interstellar but they had some wireless like the ring cams like you have on your cameras on their heads like and they turned on it was kind of cool like I was like that's some stuff we would never be able to do when I was back in back in the nineties yeah but did they catch a trombone with some chopsticks no but you know that's not a bad idea With like the majorettes with two batons, like trying to catch a flying trombone.

10:33 Well, my trombone caught a few batons while I was marching a couple of times. Yes. I will never forget. We had a band. I think I was in like maybe tenth or eleventh grade. And we had this routine that we were doing one year where the majority of us got in line. And all the entire trombone section got in a line. And then we had this routine where... the evens would go down, like, would, like, bend down, and then the odds would come up, and they would swing their instrument to the side, and then come back, and then it would go up like this, and they would do like this. Oh, yep. Can you imagine how many trombones got busted with that? That's some chaos. It was so bad, because if you had somebody that got off, you would collide.

11:16 Somebody that didn't go down. That was, you know, I was asking our band director there, I was like, are you really, I mean... Back in the day, it was Nuncie's. Nuncie's music was the big... I was like, are you getting kickbacks from Nuncie's? Because they're going to have to... We had three trombones that year that had to go in and get the slide straightened back out because they were jammed up because they collided with another instrument. It was nuts. That's another future fun topic. We need marching band memories. Oh my gosh, dude. I have so many. That's nuts. Shane says, did they also have a walking monolith when they played the NFL? No, but they had a big giant recreated rock that the trumpet player got on top of and played.

12:01 It was an interesting show. I'm sure nowadays in the modern era, you could probably look up their halftime show on YouTube. I'm sure there's some parent that's uploaded their kid's halftime show on there. Oh, heck yeah. There's a YouTube channel called Eight to Five that you can go and watch that does a lot of more of the urban bands. But they also will occasionally drop like a high school band and stuff on there that's really good. And they do a really good job with usually like shorts and stuff like that. It's really impressive stuff on there. Yeah, it was a good feeling. I got out there, and like I said, got to hearing the music again. I was like, man, I need to go to a competition one day just to sit and watch. It brought a lot of good feelings going back to that.

12:42 So what instrument is your son going to play? I'm hoping he gets in a marching band, but it's one of those things like I want him to do it himself. I'm not going to be one of those parents like, hey, I did this. I like this. You got to do it. You got to be in the band, boy. That's your dream. It's your dream, dad. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I've corrupted him with my music. So far, his music taste is in line with mine. Yeah. So is he listening to Disturbed yet? Yeah, he likes Disturbed. Disturbed, Rob Zombie. He knows a few of the Limp Bizkit songs I'll let him listen to.

13:26 Yeah. That's wild, man. My music taste is all over. I love my music taste. It's terrible. Everyone's music taste is terrible. It's okay. It's all good. Oh, my gosh. Oh, me. Yeah, sorry to throw the podcast off topic. This is just a classic Bama Geeks episode where we're all over the place. And we love it. Yeah. Yeah. But we do want to hit on October and Halloween stuff tonight. I was in the shower this morning. I'm like, why don't we call this Sentimentally Spooky? Sentimental Spooky. Yeah, just why not?

14:07 Talk about Halloween's past. We'll bring this up in the Christmas episode, but just go ahead and show what's sitting next to you again. Because I want to reminisce about some old Halloween decorations and stuff that we used to have, but we got this at an estate sale the other day. so we have been busy we have yet to put out the first halloween decoration in the park or household but we have a santa we got an vintage blow mold santa from an estate sale so yeah we're ready for christmas not for halloween yet which is a shame we usually have things up by now but Christmas tree cakes in the freezer and blow mold Santa in the living room right now.

14:50 Blow mold Santa with demonically blue eyes. He's in great shape. He is in fantastic shape. This is Halloween. Go ahead and put him back down. This is Halloween. And Shane said, your taste in music cannot be worse than his. This is so random. Well, look, Shane, we've established, like I said, everybody has crappy taste in music. Because the thing is, have you ever had that situation where you're like, you're really digging a song or you're really digging an album. And then you go and you play it for somebody else and they're just kind of like. you're like you mean this didn't change your life too and it's just it doesn't hit it hits people at different times like they could listen to that music in ten years and it changes their life you know that's just the way music is so it's like It's kind of like everybody has crappy taste in music because it just never... Oh.

15:46 Yes. It gets way too hot. Until it's eighty-five on Christmas like it likes to be down here. You just keep the light bulb. You guys need to modernize the light bulbs and just put an LED one in there instead. There's an LED bulb. We went ahead and replaced that so it wouldn't be hot. Yes. Vintage Santa with upgraded parts. That's right. So that reminded me, you know, In Alabama, growing up in the eighties, you know, you had some parents who would not decorate for Halloween. You know, it was satanic and all this other. Oh no, that's still a thing. Oh, is it? Oh yeah.

16:27 I'll wait till we did my story. Okay. Well, my parents, when I was really, really young, we had great Halloween decorations. I mean, we had like a blow mold, a witch. It was a, it was a flat like panel, but it was a witch that you could hang up on the, on the front porch. Um, and, um, oh, we had, uh, what else mom and dad would put, would put brooms out and they had a, like a plastic black cauldron and stuff. They would all put it on, on the front porch. But as I started to get a little older, they just, they had a change of heart and ditched it. So I really miss the old Halloween decorations. So. Yeah, I do, too.

17:08 And, you know, I see, you know, the vintage stuff out at the, you know, the Pickers malls and antique malls and everything. And they're just the price on them is not is not friendly. But I would love to that. Just like we have this, the Santa. One of my goals is hopefully maybe to acquire some of this old retro stuff. uh decorations like that dude we keep going back to christmas but I I I don't even you know we're gonna have to talk about this tomorrow but I mean I'm also the guy who played it paid an exorbitant amount of money for a literally a christmas tree topper years ago so I don't I understand the vintage stuff goes for a lot of money but the thing is is if you really like it and it's something that you really want just get it man I mean it's it's whatever well you're gonna enjoy it the thing is is that we we've said this before on the podcast brock and I do not live in a house that is decorate as far as outside goes it's not really decorator friendly and I don't trust a lot of the people that live around here either so yeah um Yeah, those paper craft ones.

18:18 Yeah, I like those. But also just like much like the Santa, I like to find some blown wool like pumpkins and things like that too. Yeah. Well, this house does not have an electrical outlet on the outside. So we'd have to run an extension cord from the inside out if we wanted to do like Halloween lights and inflatables and stuff. And so that's the big reason we don't do outside stuff. And then you get to play with snakes again. Nope. Well, we're talking decorations. Can I bring this up? Because whenever I think of Halloween decorations, especially for my youth, this right here, I'm going to throw this up here. This thing right here, I associate this.

18:58 This was at our school. This was in our lunchroom every year the entire time I was in elementary school. When I think Halloween decorations, these are the things that are ingrained in my brain until the day I die. It's something so simple, but yet it's something I always remember. Yeah, we never had the... the skeleton head on the skull on fire we never had that but we had the scarecrow we had the witch the pumpkin and the cat and the skeleton and the skeleton was always fun because kids would come and you know if the limbs were not taped down then yes positions yeah Yeah, I'm not going to say, you know, there was times. Okay, I'm glad it wasn't just me.

19:39 He says it was in every lunchroom. It was our school too. I can also agree. I had seen those before, but I agree. I had never seen the skeleton, probably because it was deemed too demonic. um the skeleton I'm sorry about the skeleton I'm sorry the uh the flaming head I'm sorry yeah I want to say we I want to say I've that we had the flaming skeleton yeah ours did too they went a little crazy with that and then they would have the cute little uh scarecrow there next there to it too I guess kind of offset it you know yeah yeah Those skeleton hands would be put in places it shouldn't be. Yeah. With our kids and our school. Yes. Yes. So I'm saying is if there's a pin maker out there, if you made a pin set of this, you know, I'd buy it anyway, but you know, that's me.

20:21 So, Hey, there's an idea for your pin set. Oh, well speaking. Oh crap. They're in the bedroom and I'm not going to go. The pin set that I got recently. So you see the shirt that I'm wearing. Oh yeah. And so say, see my. It's the McDonald's orange pumpkin bucket for our audio listeners. So I got this from Pinbackers, our good friend J.D. Raymer. If you've seen me wear the T-shirt that's the directed by Ivan Reitman shirt, that's the same person that did this T-shirt that I'm wearing. And he also put out a set of little pins that are like the Boo Bucket faces, the pumpkin, the ghost, and the witch.

21:04 Not the current Boo Bucket faces. I'm against. I am not pursuing this year's Boo Buckets. I do not like them. I'm not, they're not what I want. And our friend Johnny Ruckus over at ruckustees.com, uh, right now still has, uh, you can get, uh, like the, the cups. I think we showed them last year that were all the, um, vintage boo bucket faces on those, like, like her shirt. Yeah. Yeah. I got something too. I'm going to pull up on a, on a share screen here. Um, I wish that I could have found... I wish I could have found more of these as I go through my family photos.

21:49 This is Jessica as Bugs Bunny one year. These are the Ben Cooper Halloween outfits where they were just kind of a vinyl bag with a picture of the character that you wore as a shirt and then the plastic... The plastic where you had the tiny nose holes there that you had to breathe out of. I love that because it's like it's character-ception. Because it's like you're the character, but you have a picture of the character on the character. Yeah. And NECA right now, they've been putting out the little action figures of these Ben Cooper-style characters. costumes and we had a we got a message today we I posted this up on instagram that you know that we were doing this topic tonight for the episode and um wayne cordova who is who hosts the flip city ghostbusters podcast uh messaged me and it's like oh my gosh we just discussed this on ours he goes he goes those plastic masks with the ben cooper he goes you you're walking around and then the the rubber band would snap and then you're walking around all night trying to hold a mask while you're trying to get the candy yeah or you went to pull the mask off and you did it weird and it like caught all your hair yeah and the oh god oh yeah and shane says don't forget you got your tongue always stuck in the mouth slip of the mask yep our intrusive thoughts worn all the time with that

23:23 I did cut my tongue a couple of times on those slits. That sounded like... Exactly. It was like a weird Christmas story. He stuck his tongue to the pole. So that reminds me. You know, in the costuming community, in the cosplay community, especially... I'm gonna say it, if you're in the Ghostbusters community, if you're in the Star Wars community especially, you've got costume elitists. Well, I remember I was probably about seven or eight, and I pulled off a costume elitist with one of these Ben Cooper outfits.

24:08 There was a girl. We had a Halloween party, and there was a girl who came, and I feel so horrible about this now. Man, kids are mean. That was mean. Yes. Her mother made her a Darth Vader costume, and it was the most wonky, janky-looking thing you'd ever want to see. And I had the Darth Vader costume. Ben Cooper costume. I had the, the mask that looked like Darth Vader's helmet and had the, you know, of course the big Darth on the front, like you said, the character and character, uh, character inception there. And I just looked at her and I'm like, your costume is not as accurate as mine.

24:49 This is like seven or eight. It started at an early age. I'm not that way anymore. I appreciate the hard work, but now that I look back on it, That memory struck me today. It's the first time I've thought about this poor exchange I had with this girl. And she was such a sweet girl. She was a good friend. And I just went off. And I was like, your mom worked hard on that. And I felt so terrible. Well, today I felt terrible. I didn't care back then. But yeah. You totally need to look that girl up and be like, you remember? I am so sorry. Yeah.

25:30 oh actually oh god she's passed away now oh man yeah now that I remember a few years ago wow okay brock there's some well no closure for you oh I feel like trash and this is why you should never be a costume elitist no you should That went dark. Yeah, I'm sorry. I took a stare. It is a Halloween episode, guys. Come on. I just remembered who the girl was, and I was like, oh.

26:13 Oh, wait a minute. It was quite a number of years ago, but... Yeah. Oh, geez. She died of a broken heart. It wasn't that. It wasn't that. Hey, bud, what you got there? Yeah, as I was saying, this is one from my Halloweens here. We're going to talk about, it was homemade, but outside of the toy, but hey, here's my early days of ghost busting from Halloween. Yes. I still have that same Ecto Popper. It's sitting over on my shelf over there. You got it, but do you have the onesie? I know. I'm sure there's no telling where that is or what happened to that. But I mean, that's the Incapable of our youth there. You got that eighties wood paneling in the background.

26:53 Yep. The nightmares. Yeah. I wish I could find more pictures of costumes I did as a kid. Because I know you were talking about Star Wars. I know somewhere, as I remember it, I was C-IIIPO one Halloween. And it was the plastic, you know, the Ben Cooper style costume. But it wasn't like C-IIIPO costumes. on, you know, the, the chest of the costume, it was like, it was made up to look like his body, like, you know, his little heart show it and all that. So, yeah, um, I, I know a C three PO one year for Halloween. I wish I could find that picture. I wish, I wish somebody would take a picture. I wish I could find that one.

27:34 Yeah. I, I probably have a picture of some of my old stuff back in my mom's photo albums. I got a whole crate of them. Um, but I remember one of my, one of my favorite costumes as a kid was definitely one of the Ben Coopers, but it was Casper friendly ghost. Um, my very first stuffed animal I ever got was the, the, the Christmas after I was born was a Casper sub Casper. I still have it to this day. Um, But yeah, I remember it's like Wayne messaged us today. It's like the rubber band busted on that thing and I cried because like, I want to be Casper, you know. I just wanted to be Casper. Yeah.

28:14 And other than, I always loved, you know, one thing that we used to really kind of back in the eighties too is, you know, we'd have our own, create our own costumes and things like that and do our own. I remember one Halloween I did, it was when Monster Squad came out and the... What? Why are you laughing at me? Please don't tell me you were the Wolfman. No, I was not Wolfman. No, I was not Wolfman. Because, you know, you know what Wolfman has. And I know what you don't. And I don't have that. No, but you know that... Wait, what?

28:58 Have you not seen Monster Squad? Have you ever seen Monster Squad, Kevin? No. Okay, you're totally missing the joke there. Kevin, look up Monster Squad and watch it. It was like one of those... I think one of the taglines was, you know, you know who to call for ghosts, but now who do you call for monsters? That was like one of the taglines. Oh, yeah. No, I wanted to be... Shane, OMG. OMG. Wolfman. Yeah. Yeah. Holly, Kevin. Yeah. Shane said the world's going to end because Kevin has not seen Monster Squad.

29:39 I didn't even know what this was, so... I'm not going to ruin the joke or the line for you. It's probably the most famous line from the movie. Yes. But anyway, what I was getting at was that the lady vampires from the movie, I wanted to do that for Halloween that year. So I remember we just bought like a white nightgown and my mom did the pale face with I got the fangs with the blood coming down. So it was like one of the female vampires. But I remember that. And of course I've always did. There was a couple of years where I was doing, you know, either the Cindy Lauper thing or the punk or the rock, you know, pop star kind of costume.

30:23 You get the, you had to get the spray paint, the spray for your hair. Yeah. Oh man. I loved, I loved when I could spray my hair, all different kinds of colors. So that's one of my favorite things about dressing up as a kid. And the first time Jess and I ever met face to face at Dragon Con, she was dressed up like Madonna. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, I was. Because I always loved, you know, that part of the eighties, that fashion, that style. I've always loved it. So, yeah. Yeah. Shane said Monster Squad's a good throwback to the old Universal Monsters. It really is. Yeah. Oh, there's Mitchell. Yes. Mitchell Grinkley.

31:04 Hey, buddy. I saw Monster Squad for the first time last night. It was awesome. A must-see movie. Oh, yes. Awesome. So you get the Wolfman reference. Yes. Yeah. Don't spoil it for Kevin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Oh, and I did find out too, because we were talking about this a couple of, maybe, maybe it was last year around Halloween. Maybe we were talking about movies and stuff, but we discovered that Brock had never seen Little Shop of Horrors. And I did find a way that we can watch it now. So Brock is going to finally see Little Shop of Horrors. Why did you not watch it before this so that we could talk about it? Well, because I just... Because we didn't find it until like twenty minutes before we went on. Yeah.

31:44 Because I was like, surely with it being, you know, October, it's got to be out there somewhere. Well, I did find it. Well, you know, the next time we go live, we'll have all seen Phantom of the Opera at the Alabama Theater. And so maybe before then, before then, I will watch. I would definitely watch Phantom. little shop of horrors the the rick moranis version and then maybe the next episode we can talk about that yeah yeah I think so I did watch like the old the old version like the original movie version that was terrible it's bad that is the definitive version I mean they keep talking they're going to reboot it and I'm like don't I mean it's one of those ones where you just don't I mean it's yeah the Frank Oz movie you can't top that one no that that's just it's beautiful now I will I will say and granted this is without spoilers to you brought but it would be really cool if you don't get it if whatever you watch doesn't have it make sure that you go to YouTube and look at the alternate ending that was the original ending original ending yeah it was the original ending but they changed it for this film um to be a little lighter but the original ending was a lot darker okay you need to make sure you see it I can't wait till he sees like all the people he's seen from various other movies and other forms of media in that movie yes he's just gonna have to I'm he's gonna have to especially bear with me singing and singing and quoting lines

33:15 because that's another one well I would definitely have it watched before uh before the next time we could talk about it then So one reason the original little shop maybe is bad because it was done by Roger Corman. I didn't, I didn't realize that Roger Corman did that one, but yeah, it was terrible. It was bad. It was so bad. It's terrible. The acting was no. So, uh, uh, I, I remember in, of course it, Bo tell me you, you, you did something similar in eighty nine. What, what did you go as an eighty nine? Do you remember?

33:55 No, I don't think I had Batman. I didn't have Batman or anything like that. Honestly, I'm trying to remember. It's weird. I have memories of Halloween, but I don't have memories of costumes. That's the crazy thing about it. I'm the same way. I'm the same way, though. I'm sure my mom's got tons of pictures I need to find. I have memories of things I did around Halloween, but actual Halloween itself, I don't know. But I'm sure if there was a Batman available, I probably would have had some form of it. There was. It was, of course, not the greatest quality. Oh, yeah. You know, like the, the old makeup kits you could find at Walmart or whatever, probably still can. Uh, I witnessed the Joker, uh, the eight and nine Joker. It was terrible. I had the face paint, the smile and everything else.

34:37 That part looked good. Had the green hair with the, like Jess was saying, just spraying the, uh, the paint in. uh, the, the hairspray, uh, my dad being a former state trooper had an old smoky, you know, the smoky bear hat. So I had, I wore that, um, which he wasn't happy about because it died the inside of it green. Um, yeah. And then of course I wore just a pair of like bugle boy slacks and I had a sweatshirt with a picture of the Joker. So it was like an adult Ben Cooper character exception. Um, cause I didn't have the, uh, I didn't, I didn't have access to the you know the good overcoat orange shirt and all that jazz but I don't know if I've got a photo I'll look at it but yeah but what are some costumes that you that you might remember What we did?

35:28 Yeah. I know I did He-Man one year before Ghostbusters grabbed me. I was He-Man one year. I can see that picture vividly in my mind. I just can't remember if my mom has it or if it's in my grandmother's house with all her packed up stuff. I need to go up there and look. Because I have tons of old pictures there I've got to get. Yeah. I've got to go through my mom's stuff some more. I went through a few of them. But trying to see really quickly if I've got a, if I had posted a picture anywhere of that costume. I probably didn't.

36:12 Yeah, I still I've still got boxes of stuff I got to go through as my mom gives to me. Like I said, I can not costumes, but I have memories of things I could done because I remember we went to our like, especially like in the mid to late eighties, the schools were big doing fall festivals and they would the fall festivals at the schools. Mm hmm. And like ours even had, like, I remember my first haunted house was in like our, the gym, the gymnasium. They set one up for the weekend. That was my first haunted house. I can remember going through it easily. And now I can remember it was a lot of garbage bags and pallets and stuff hanging around with flashing lights. I mean, you know. Exactly. That's, you know, you talk about that. That's one of the things that I have, you know, when I think back as Halloween as a kid, the fall festivals we did at school, I always looked forward to that every year.

36:57 They were always so much fun. And of course, you know, dressing up, going trick or treating. I mean, yeah. And it gets said quite a bit, especially by, you know, people our age and older. But that's, you know, you used to go and your parents could turn you loose and you could just roam neighborhood after neighborhood. And you were safe because you had your little flashlight. And so it just it's I miss those. I miss those moments as a kid. Those were just some really fun times. yeah and my kids had had some neighborhoods that they went and uh and did trick-or-treating in growing up so they got to experience all that which is great um but yeah the the school haunted houses were I never went I remember the first one um because I grew up in a little town called coffee springs I mean less than three hundred people in it but we had our elementary school and everything there and it was you know of course in the the old high school gymnasium yeah and I would go and They had the fishing game with the cane pole with the paper clip or the closed bin.

38:09 On the end, you threw it over and everything. And I remember that they had sectioned off part of the gym behind that game as the haunted house. And I could hear all the high schoolers scaring everybody. And I'm like, nope. I was only in first grade, I think. Well, I used to do, we used to have, you know, the community haunted houses here. And when I was in high school and I used to work with, used to volunteer and work in those. And I remember one year I had, I was laying there and had to lay down on the floor the whole night. But I had a, you know, we had a thing like was tied around my waist where it was like an ax that was going inside.

38:53 And then the shirt went on top. There was a hole in the shirt I was wearing. So the shirt went on top of that and they just stuck the ax handle down there. So I just got to, you know, I just got to lay there all night as a, as an ax victim. So yeah. Yeah, I remember doing a couple of those as well. I remember my most vivid memory of that was getting my hands stomped by people because they would come through and my job was to like scare them and then people would like stomp my hands. I quickly learned to get like some gloves and like tape them up so that it wouldn't hurt nearly as bad but it's it's always fun to see what people's reactions are but they're going to get scared yeah you may think with people's reactions I'll never forget it was after I graduated high school but I think I helped out with either something it was either abandoned a haunted trail somewhere and uh I would never forget there was a group of teenagers they got scared and like I I was just standing there to make sure nobody ran off in the wrong direction into the woods even though they had like a guided path but, uh, I still never forget.

39:50 I scared plenty of people just standing there, you know, I mean, but that was good. And then also one time there was a big scare up before me. So that's one reason why I stood there and make sure nobody ran off the woods. And I was sitting there like, Hey, y'all need to stop running there. They're running off into the woods. You know, I never did work at a haunted house or anything until I was in the air force. Um, I was out at Fort Hood and they had this big restaurant sports bar on the middle of the post called the Sports Dome. And so it was it was in ninety five because the World Series was going on at the same time. I was trying to watch the Braves win. and but I had to go but we had to all be back out and they had a large area back behind the restaurant and they gave us paintball guns which was great they're like look these are adults they can handle this so we got to actually shoot people with paintballs as they were sweet they were coming through the haunted woods oh but you know there were soldiers they could handle it yeah you know yeah they had worse things fired at them Yeah, I always loved doing the, growing up doing the spook trails and the haunted houses and things in the area.

41:01 We used to have the J.C. 's haunted house. Yeah, I was going to ask if the J.C. 's ever did anything around here like that. They did. It was down, it was south side. Well, close to the, uh, St. Vincent's area, uh, Birmingham. And it was an old white house that they used to have. Uh, they used to have that area and it's, it's gone. They've torn it down since. Um, but we used to, that was like one of the Birmingham traditions was the JC's haunted house and then used to have sloths furnace. And yeah, I'm still sad. They got rid of sloths. Cause it was such a beautiful backdrop for a haunted. Yeah. I did. I did sloths once. Loved it. That was fantastic. Yeah.

41:41 Yeah, the JC's down in Enterprise. They did a wonderful haunted house every year. And that was the first one I ever went to, I think in middle school. And I remember they had, you know, Freddie and Jason and had the chainsaw going from Leatherface. And I remember that the chainsaw actually touched me on the back of the leg. And that's, that got me over my fear really quickly because there was no chain on it. Thankfully, you know, it was like, oh, okay. There was always that story about that. I knew somebody that went in there one time and they chased him with a chainsaw and it touched their legs and it ripped their leg open. And then, you know, so there's always that story that it always happened to somebody. Somebody got hurt. And there was always that urban legend of like some of the major cities had this haunted house.

42:24 If you made it to a certain floor, you would get, you know, you'd get paid or stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah, you made it this many levels. You have to keep going up. The higher the level, the more you'd get paid at the end. Everyone just needed a David S. Pumpkins with the levels. Oh, gosh. Any questions? That is a good skit. Speaking of Saturday Night Live skits, if y'all haven't seen the parody they did for the Spirit Halloween commercial. Oh, it is wonderful. It's really good, so you should go check that out. It's a little spot on. Yeah. I know we can't play it here, but go check that out.

43:06 Cause, and then your spirit had to fire back at them. So yeah. Oh yes, they did. Yeah. They took in Saturday night live, took a dig at spirit and spirit just hit him right back. So yeah. Fifty year old show. That's irrelevant now. So if you haven't seen that, go check that out. It's, it's pretty good. Yeah. Um, Were there any influences that you remember from your childhood that now impact the way you decorate for Halloween? Oh, one hundred percent. There wasn't any. So now I decorate.

43:47 But I will say now that it's decorated now that, like I said, being the lawn enthusiast dad, it's very, I ain't going to lie, it's added that extra level of, crud, I've got to pull all this stuff up so I can cut grass only to put it right back down again. The dad. The joy of double decorating. Yes. Well, I mean, a lot of the problem I have now is I decorate for Halloween so freaking early that it's fun actually managing the lawn around all the decorations. And then I realize I'm like, I'll just leave it alone because it just makes it look spookier. Yeah. well there's like I want to say it was a couple years ago I had to move uh it was transitioning from christmas to uh I mean from halloween to christmas and I had to move a one of the decorations and there was a snake under it so that's you know yeah no yeah yeah to your point kevin of leaving things down and letting the grass grow up around it I mean it's Alabama.

44:47 I mean, we do that with our cars anyway. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it's not my yard though. I don't like doing that, but I mean, if it's a, I guess if it's like a skeletal rattlesnake in the grass, I guess that's okay. Right. Yeah, sure. It works. Oh, I saw it target the other day. They had a skeleton dachshund. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I've got to go get that. Cause I, that's the, the, the breed of dog I've had more times than, Any other in my life. I have two of the skeleton dachshunds in my petting zoo. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got those. I don't know if you guys remember last year I had a skeletal dog walker.

45:28 Yeah. They're walking the dogs. And there were two dachshunds in with that as well. Oh, yeah. But they're smaller than that. They're like. don't know they're like miniature so they're like maybe a foot long at the most they're just super cute speaking of skeleton I was this close to getting one of the Home Depot twelve foot skeletons I had to wait out that I finally found one local to pick it up when I get there somebody had got ahead of me they're like hey we'll pick it up by one so I was sitting there I waited there and they showed up at like eight minutes to one I was like of course they did but I think if we get one we're gonna probably leave him up all year and just decorate him with the correct holiday What I want to do, I've got the, you know, I've got the Home Depot or not the Home Depot, the Costco ground breaking skeleton.

46:11 I want to do the whole thing where people have put him on the roof and then, you know, put the you basically you put some of the make it look like he's bursting out of the roof and then use that and decorate that all year long. So like for for Christmas, give him a big hat. But the thing is, is like everything would have to be custom made because it's really difficult to realize just how big this thing is. Like his head diameter is bigger than a basketball hoop. It's huge. So it's like everything you'd have to make for it. My wife was telling me about it. I hadn't found it because there's like some video where somebody took one of those and like they made like where it looked like fake skin was falling off of it with a saran wrap and other stuff. That sounds amazing. Oh, wow. I want to do it.

46:53 Huh. I want to do it. And for those of you watching in the chat, let us know what you guys do for your Halloween traditions. We'd love to hear that as well. So we'll put your comments up here on screen. Well, maybe think while we're thinking about it, of course, if it's Halloween, you got to talk candy. So favorite Halloween candy. Stop reading my mind over there. I was thinking about candy, too. like halloween candy when we were a kid talking about razor blades yeah you know you're gonna check your needles in them or or you know okay where's the other one where you know you always had the grandma because you would go to your grandma's house and she would have that bowl of candy that was congealed in the one thing yeah you would have to have an ice pick to like knock it off and then they and you would have the old person that would always try to give that away And it was like, you would have them in little baggies, and it's almost like, I'm not going to eat that at all.

47:48 And the candy that was always melted together with always the really hard peanut butter pieces with the brown and the orange wrappers on them. Yeah, yeah. Or another one I just thought of, the Psychos that would give out the circus peanuts. Yes. I'm still trying to think. The circus peanuts. I forgot you liked that. Who did that? Did you do it, Brock? Did you give out circus? No, that was my mom's favorite candy. Uh, yeah, he's got a soft spot for circus. I understand that. It was in, she had that. That was the last candy she ate before she died. Oh, I'm sorry.

48:28 No, it's, it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. We had a, he's still horrible though. I'm sorry. I have, I have not eaten any since, since she passed away, but yeah, we had a bag of them in a room. Uh, when she died. It's all good. I'm also the guy that likes candy corn a whole lot. I love candy corn. Dude, I will die on that hill. Candy corn is amazing. Shane says, I do nothing as I live in the middle of nowhere and I have a quarter mile driveway uphill. I will tell you one good thing about... And he says, so he getting a trick or treaters as they would die walking up the hill.

49:09 He says, I got animal crackers. Animal crackers. Hey, I'm good with that. Well, Hey, speaking of that, that made me think, I think I've seen them at Sam's. They make like Reese's Reese's peanut butter, chocolate covered animal crackers. They have them at St. Sam's. Amazing. If you haven't had any yet, get you some. If you don't like candy corn, What you should do that will probably make you like candy corn, and this is always subjective because some people will just not like candy corn. Get some popcorn and put candy corn in it. Okay. Put candy corn on top of popcorn. Okay. It will change your life. I mean, you guys took my advice before on the Christmas tree cakes.

49:49 I'm telling you, this is another one that will change you. So I have a theory I'm going to test. So y'all like candy corn. Do you also like black licorice? No, no, no. Okay. So usually the candy corn enthusiasts like black licorice. That's why I always thought they're kind of little enjoyment. I just can't eat too much of it because it'll put you in the hospital. Yeah. I don't like licorice of any kind. Like, like even like go as so far as Twizzlers and stuff like that. I can't stand that, that the consistency of the, you don't like a niece, the, the, the licorice. Yeah. Yeah. The ingredient. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. And speaking of spooky things, Jess, did you pull up a website that's got a blinding white screen? Because you look like you're in Poltergeist.

50:30 Oh, I'm sorry. It is a Halloween episode. Well, we did have that little green dot that flew in front of my face earlier. Jess, say, this house is clear. It made me think, with y'all talking about watching spooky stuff, my son's nine. I'm not ready to traumatically scar him yet. I'm waiting until he's about twelve before we start watching all the good horror stuff. I'm ready to get him there. Yeah. Last year, we finally let my kids watch Psycho last year. And they loved it. My daughter really loved it. So now that she's in college, I can probably bust out the Nightmare on Elm Street.

51:15 I can probably get to that part. And Shane says, Shane says, I remember a lot of times getting the generic candy Werther's or candy they don't make anymore, like candy cigarettes or big league chewing gum. Candy cigarettes. Candy. Yeah. Candy cigarettes were big. What do they call them now? Just candy sticks, I think. Candy sticks? Do you want to buy some death sticks? I don't want to buy some death sticks. Do they sell them all as chocolate? I don't know. I haven't paid attention. Either that or you would get Dump out your candy, you'd eat all you want, and then you're left with a bunch of Tootsie Rolls and Smarties that never get eaten.

52:02 Then you had some people that gave out the Bit-O-Honey. Yes. Don't not eat Bit-O-Honey. I remember that. Bit-O-Honey is good. Yeah, but still, it's not one of the most top-tier Halloween candy. It's not. Every now and then you would get somebody to give you a fun dip. Oh, yeah. Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. All right. So this year, you know, you guys, I have my tiers of candy, right? I do the full-size candy bars. My backup candy for when I, if I run out, it's Fun Dips. Nice. Fun Dips. And I'm going to mix that in so I can kind of slow things down a little bit because I would like to have some betas left over for me. But, you know, yeah, I'm expecting around two-fifty.

52:43 Fun dip is just an insane idea. Here, you eat candy with candy. Pure sugar. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And pixie sticks. Pixie sticks, yes. Oh, man. Those were the death sticks, man. You didn't get enough of those and you were bouncing off the walls. What were the giant ones called? Like Saturn or Mars? It was something to do with a planet or something. But the tubes were like this big and this long. That's why I take an Olympic now. Yeah. Shane says, fun dips are always fun, especially when you use them the way you're not supposed to. What?

53:24 I don't know if we want to know this, Shane. You lost depositories, man. That's a completely different kind of fun dip. Hey, now, hey. Wow, Gus. I mean, that's what they were kind of shaped like. Yeah, you're not wrong. Man, you guys, I'm never going to look at Fun Dip the same ever again. Would you kids like a Fun Dip? Make sure you use this as directed. Hey, Mitchell says, I grew up a fat kid, so tootsie rolls, Smarties, and a bit of honey, whatever you gave me, you're fine with me?

54:08 Okay, Shane, now we know what you're talking about. Shane says, snorting the candy. Okay. Let's take it to the little white sticks. Okay. I love that we do live streams now. This makes it so much better. We love interaction. I've tried the other things. Every now and then, somebody would give you some Pop Rocks. Then you have the curve there. With Coke? Of course. You've got to knock out a chunk of your teeth while you're doing it.

54:49 You're going to make your throat explode. Pop Rocks and soda at the same time. I always loved people who gave out Jawbreakers. The thing is, you get a jawbreaker and you're going to be on that for like two days. You're going to be good to go. And the little atomic fireballs. Oh, God, those are so good. Man, clear your sinuses out. Yeah, you want your cinnamon, baby. Here you go. Red Hots. Lemonhead. Jason knows in your stomach. Mikey likes it. Not anymore.

55:31 that's it's it's cool like I said the halloween I think I think that's why like our generation is buying all these day the decorations and stuff just because halloween's been important to us like I think I think like our our parents generation they kind of enjoyed it but like I think we were the first mass marketed one that ingrained it in our culture yeah yeah well we had all the horror movies and stuff back in the eighties all the slasher films and stuff like that that really helped yeah because we were watching those when we weren't supposed to I know. I'm like, you know, I'm trying to expose my kid. I'm like, no, I remember that we had cartoons based on this stuff. Well, and you still have, God, you still have people that, you know, like, And I'm not knocking it here, but you have people that do Trunk or Treat, right?

56:12 And so we got Trunk or Treat. And a lot of that stuff, the reason that Trunk or Treat came around was that people are still scared about us getting razor blades in our candy and then weird people in their homes snatching kids and... taking them and things like that. And, you know, I know you guys had the same experience likely, but you know, when I was a kid, I don't remember my costumes. I'm the same as with Bo. I don't remember what I did, but I do remember that it was like, all right, you guys be home at ten. Have fun. Bring home some candy and you would just go wherever. yeah it didn't matter um and so yeah that was a real concern and now you got parents the parenting style is very different now and there are different expectations on you as a parent there are things that you would never do now because you you know you would be shamed to death if you were to do the same things that were done to us where you know drink from the water hose and go and you know you know go go just go get your own candy but like you know now that's you know now you've got the rise of like trunk or treat and you know you know I'm personally trying to bring trick or treat back into my neighborhood pretty hard one of the things I wanted to touch on if you guys don't mind a segue a little bit from the can yeah go ahead um so my neighborhood I live in a smaller community, but we're – I don't know if I'm a responsible part of this, but we're really well-known in the area for being a place to go and get candy because just about everybody on my street does

57:43 trick-or-treating, and we always give out candy. So this year we had a lot of folks that were coming forward going, look, we really appreciate that a lot of people come into our neighborhood, but we don't ever get anybody, any trick-or-treaters come over here because we only have a handful of people on our street. To do it. And I'm like, okay, well, so I just started making a Google map. I literally started making a Google map with everybody's little, you know, put little trick-or-treat icons. And I'm going to set up QR codes all over our neighborhood that you can scan and you can literally know where all the betas is. You just go pick it up, baby. And you don't have to look for porch lights like we did when we were younger. But we had hit on a little bit earlier about people that think, you know, Halloween is for the devil.

58:28 It's full of devil. The amount of people that I've had come forward and either message me or say openly in the threads on the private groups that they're not going to do it because they don't let their kids do trick-or-treating. We don't like kids doing trick-or-treating. I'm like, all right, cool. I mean, it's usually the, you know, what's her name? God, Jennifer, the one who was in Hunger Games, Jennifer, blah. Jennifer Lawrence. Where's the last name? Jennifer Lawrence. Thank you. Thank you, Jess. You saved me. Thank you. You know the Jennifer Lawrence gif where she's going, you know, like she's like, oh, yeah.

59:09 It's usually that gif. It's like, okay, I get you, but shut up. Let us have our fun, you know. Yeah. Yeah, well, there's idiots everywhere, man. You know what? There were idiots back when we were kids, but their parents just didn't care. They were just like, go get your stuff, and I hope you make it home. Well, that's like you were talking about the maps. My wife found something through the next door. They have a thing called the spooky map where you can say, hey, my address is decorated. Bring your kids here, especially when it comes to Halloween. Because usually we're out with my kiddo for Halloween, but we still leave a bowl of candy on the front door. So, hey, it's there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really miss taking my kids trick-or-treating.

59:51 That was always such a joy. I'm glad they got to experience that. And hopefully they will with their kids. Hopefully that's going to make a huge comeback. Yeah, I think it's – I mean, it's – the amount of trick-or-treaters we've had, at least on my street, has gone up exponentially every year since I've lived there. That's your fault. Oh, yeah, I'm sure I'm a big driver, especially since it's like, hey, come – we know we can go get full-size candy bars on this street because it looks like Vegas. Go to the house that looks like Vegas, and that's the guy. Thankfully, my neighbors across the street are good sports because I asked them this year. I'm like, I'm going to be upgrading my proton streams on my Ghostbusters, and it's going to be like Vegas this year.

1:00:33 They're like, we love it. We don't care. Just keep doing it. Shane says he thinks a lot of people do more trick-or-treating if they live in apartment complexes. That's a good point. Yeah. I can see that. Sure. Absolutely. I think people do trick-or-treating if they want free candy. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, it's a given. I mean, I wish more people did it. And I'm actually recommending without... Yeah. I'm actually recommending this year, we have in our neighborhood, we have a trunk or treat at some ball fields that are off the edge of our neighborhood. I added it as an icon there, too. So it's like... Go get candy. I don't care where you go.

1:01:13 Just get out. Do trick-or-treating of some kind. I kind of feel like it's a dying thing. Although, one... You know, we don't like, like, rapid commercialization of holidays gets a bad rap. And it's usually for a good reason. But one holiday that really has not been mass commercialized yet, it's working on it, is Halloween. Like, this year it was more commercialized than anything. And if anything, that's just going to be, I'm hoping we'll get net positive. Because it just gets more and more people wanting to do. I mean, I see a lot more trunk-or-treat. like decorations for cars and stuff like that which is really cool but I'm also seeing stuff that is geared more towards like decorations on your house obviously and and just getting people to come to your house um which that stuff like that I mean little just makes me giddy I love it yeah and welcome in the seb good to see you uh in my small town less than seventeen hundred people there are several houses we can all walk to and that's awesome yeah that is awesome I know that you know we don't decorate like we mentioned we don't decorate outside for for halloween and I can't wait until we do because like at lowe's this year we got the master gracie headstone from the haunted mansion we've got we're starting a really good haunted mansion headstone collection um and we don't put it out and I I don't like that but I'm hoping once we move from this house and get into a little bit more Uh, open area with a bigger yard,

1:02:43 kind of away from the houses being right next to each other. You know, I want to be able to, I want to be like, Kevin, I want to go just full board to the wall. Just. Just put stuff up and I'm afraid if we don't ever get out of this house, I'm going to be too old to do that. yeah my eventual goal is I want to put some more like those lights up that sync to music like that's one of my goals I want to do it but like I'm gonna find one that's just you know you program it where it changes color so I put them up right for october and they'll be up from october to christmas yeah so that's that's that's a cool idea that they've come out with things like that too those leds and that you can do the strips and stuff with the house and it's Well, a company called Govie, I mean, it's maybe what you're talking about.

1:03:28 They actually have permanent outdoor lights that you literally just put on there and you just leave them out all year long. Oh, Fourth of July. Cool. Let me put on the Fourth of July pattern. Boop. Turn it on and you're fine. I've got some of their indoor lights from that company. Oh, man. Those are my Christmas lights for my Christmas tree. Those things are incredible. Oh, my gosh. We have to try that this year. We've got lights already built into the limbs. Oh, I turned those off when I got the Gubby lights. They are so much better. My dad would be rolling over in his grave if he knew I was using a fake tree because he ran a Christmas tree farm for thirty five years. We've discussed that that child labor issue I had with that because I was laboring.

1:04:09 The sub says we park at the church for their trunk retreat, then walk the town. So you double dip. That's really good. That's huge. I mean, we've got in our neighborhood, like I mentioned, we've got The closest trunk or treat to our neighborhood, which is the big one for candy, is kind of off to the side. So I'm kind of trying to work on some of the folks that are on that same street to make it where you can. It's still not going to be enough to where you can walk because it's a big neighborhood. But you could leave. You could start at the trunk or treat and then leave and then just kind of follow the road around and just know where all the houses you can stop at. That's my dream. That stuff makes me so happy. And the Seb says, this year is our grandbaby's first Halloween.

1:04:50 Awesome. I'm going to go to the Jasper Fall Festival. The entirety of downtown is just one big trunk or treat style. Oh, that's great. Yeah. That's really cool. Now, I love events like that. Yeah. That's really cool. I mean, anything to get people out and enjoying Halloween. It's huge. I mean, it's a holiday that deserves more attention. Yeah. And it's just fun. It's just where people can just go out and express themselves as costumes. And we don't know, the people on this podcast know nothing about going out and expressing yourself in costume. No, absolutely not. Right? No, but you're right. I mean, Halloween is a holiday of fun.

1:05:33 And all the different things that you can do in October, whether it be haunted houses or the spook trails or... You know, just the one thing that I really hope that we try to do more is just to take time during the month and watch a movie. There's something about that coziness of, you know, sitting on the couch and watching a good movie. horror movie during this month. I mean, it's just setting the vibe for everything. But Halloween was meant to be fun. And, you know, that's the one thing that sets it apart and makes it special. Well, and additionally, just Halloween is what you make it.

1:06:17 It's like, it can be scary. Like, you know, my decorations are not scary. I don't, I don't want to scare kids, but I have, there's a house at the other end of the neighborhood that they do scary decorations and it's amazing. Yeah. It can be scary. It can be fun. It can be. Like I said, it's meant to be a holiday of fun. If we ever build our next house, Jess and I are in talks of how we want to make a more modern looking, well, make a a haunted mansion style exterior, you know, but have, you know, a modern architecture and stuff like that.

1:06:58 I don't know. We, we've got ideas that we want to make an old creepy looking house, but have it completely modern and certainly a more structurally sound. I know you guys have a giant, like two story tall. Yep. Kevin froze area. You have a vestibule. Oh, yeah. You're you're froze. We were, we heard two story tall and then you froze. A two story tall aerial banner. right because you're going to need to have a mcmansion so that you've got the vestibule so that you can hang that thing up so you can do all kinds of fun stuff with a vestibule like that I I do have a have an eleven foot tall aerial banner from the disney disneylands anaheim resort I haven't forgot about that I know you're gonna try to figure out a way to hang that up Yeah, we got to have some big walls, a tall wall somewhere in the house for that.

1:07:53 Because that thing's been hidden. It's been hiding in storage ever since. I wouldn't mind breaking it back out. Shane says, have you seen any of the Japanese Halloween stuff? I'm not sure. I'm sure it's intense because they don't play around. Yes, I have. I've seen the ring. the original movie so I was gonna say yeah are we talking about like so like the ring then yeah which I saw there I think it's uh universal japan they're uh they're halloween horror nights they have like the modern resident evil game like thing going on for that and I was like oh and then we have what um uh universal studios when they do the harry potter parks they have the death eaters come out which is freaking awesome yep that's awesome The sub says a family in our town will do an interactive scare for the trick-or-treaters.

1:08:43 They're dressed up, walking the road, fake body parts on a grill, etc. That is awesome! And Shane says he meant the Halloween parties and the street takeovers. I can imagine. I haven't seen that. No, I haven't seen that. So just something, something you can look up as far as like over in Japan, I guess that's what you're saying. I have to look into that. I don't know anything about that. Yeah. I would love to decorate so much more for Halloween, but we just got to get out of this neighborhood and get to a place where I'm comfortable leaving stuff out. Yeah.

1:09:24 I mean, we've never had a problem here, but at the same time, it's just always that thing that sticks in the back of your mind subconsciously. You're like, just in case. Yeah, the one time, yeah. No, I've had people steal wind chimes out of this yard before. Oh, you have? Yeah, before you. But yeah, I had a nice display of wind chimes on a planter. And somebody came and stole them. Wow. That's cool. Shane said, Universal Japan does Resident Evil as you play laser tag while trying to escape an umbrella research site. That's cool. That's really cool. That's insane. I love that. Yeah, and the Seb says another house did something similar where they'll play Halloween movies through a projector on their house.

1:10:07 That's Kevin. Yeah, have you been in my house? Well, that's like the end of my driveway. We've got this big concrete wall. When eventually we quit going out for Halloween, that's one of my goals is I want to have that thing. Dude, that would be sweet. That'd be neat. Mm-hmm. have a drive-in type thing or something. Yeah. I don't know. That's one of the things I said, you're going to have kids to just stand there. They don't, they don't leave. Yeah. Well, I mean like there, you have that, like, of course, where I live at a Tannehill is close to me and they have their big hollow. They call it their Halloween fairy land. And people have like their camper set up and they have like their show. Yeah. I think that's what it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's an interesting name, but I was out there a couple of weeks ago and I saw them doing the setup for that.

1:10:47 It's actually looking really good. Yeah. I've never been. No, we have. remember halloween we went we we didn't go for halloween but we were down there uh remember we had to get it was a couple years ago we went down there get together um yeah we did that but it wasn't on halloween though right all the decorations were up yeah yeah it's insane like you got to get there like multiple hours before sundown yeah you got yeah man one of those one of those rvs out there had the the giant um dragon inflatable. The one that looks like Charizard. Yeah. That looks huge. I was jealous, man. I wanted to get that one. I was like, I don't know how it would fit into my theme, but I want a Charizard dragon out in my yard.

1:11:29 I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I want it out there. Make it work. I'll figure it out. I've noticed, though, for some reason, a lot of the festivals and things that are taking place this year, at least around here, have been happening on the twenty-seventh. Oh, what? Kevin glitched. Did I do it? Oh, my God. I keep blitching. I'm so sorry, guys. That's all right. Yeah, a lot of things now, like they do it the Saturday beforehand. That's, you know, which I get that. It's like there were some people who were trying to petition to have Halloween be like the last Saturday of the month or whatever. And I'm like, nope, it's the thirty-first. It has to be the thirty-first. It has to be. I don't care. Like this year, it's on a Thursday. I don't care.

1:12:11 Kids are still going to come out. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that's like, yeah, like somebody brought up a good point. Yeah. Yeah. The sub says that the previous magic city con, my youngest daughter got her picture hugging Jason Voorhees. Was it a purple Jason Voorhees? If it was the NES purple version of Jason Voorhees, we know exactly who that was. We know that person. Very, very dear friend of ours. Or if it was Jason from part six. Yeah, he's done both. She pulled up his mask and then dropped it back down. That has to be Rookie because I'm going to do the same thing too.

1:12:54 She probably saw Rookie's normal face. That's what I'm saying. That's funny. I love it. I tinkered with the idea of getting a full Jason costume at one point, but I was like, eh. Or it could have been, it could have been Roberto actually. Yeah. Roberto's got the, the, the Jason mask. He, he could have. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. He said, she said, I'll tag into the, uh, tag the Facebook photo. Yeah, please do. Cause I'd love, we'd love to see that for sure. Yeah. Please tag us. And if you need to know where to tag us at Bama geeks everywhere, social media. And if you're on Facebook, then join our Bama Geeks Front Porch on Facebook.

1:13:37 Just look us up, type it in, ask to join. We'll put you on there. Again, the plugs are over. And hey, you never know. No, they're not. Do the plugs at least. One day maybe we can get the Discord going pretty good and we can do a watch-along if everybody joins. Oh, absolutely. Patreon or the YouTube members. Yeah. I think we could probably pull off a good Riff Trax to some stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. We could definitely, especially Little Shop of Horrors. That would be amazing. With Little Shop of Horrors, though, you may think of obscure movies, or not really obscure, but movies. Have you ever watched Attack of the Killer Tomatoes? Oh, my gosh, yes. Years ago.

1:14:19 Years ago. That was phenomenal. That one and the second one, the first two, they're great. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Demonetized. I remember the only time I went to Sloss for their haunted house, they had the killer clowns from outer space running around. Yep. Yeah. That's another good one. It's so funny because we watched Ernest Scared Stupid a couple weeks ago, and I always remember when you see all the trolls come on. Some of them were reused. The aliens were reused. They were repainted as trolls.

1:14:59 Yeah. Yeah. That's another horror movie that had a cartoon. Absolutely. I saw the cartoon before I saw the movie. Huh. that ought to be another episode where we talk about the R rated properties from the eighties and stuff that had toys and video games. Yes. That would be a wonderful one. Yes. I am all for that. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's put that on the planner. So, well, is there anything else we want to talk about, uh, for Halloween nostalgia? Are we good or anybody in the chat? If you've got any last minute, uh, Halloween memories, you guys want to throw in there, go ahead and, The only else I can think of, you got any preferred Halloween special?

1:15:44 The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Of course. Yeah. I got a rock. Yeah. It just reminds me of Phil Fulmer from Tennessee. The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I always think of that when I always think about the Ghostbusters Halloween special with the Boogaloo. That's always one that sticks with me. Garfield. Garfield. Garfield, yeah. As much as our love of Paul Lynn. I watch the old Paul Lynn Halloween special. Yep. Shane said, I think more people got into a killer tomatoes due to the anime chainsaw, man. Okay. This says they represent the opening credits. Okay. Uh, yeah, uh, definitely Garfield. Uh, um, ah, heck there were, there was always one, uh, a Mickey cartoon.

1:16:30 Um, Oh, and the sleepy hollow, the legend of sleepy hollow. Yeah. They could bought crane from Disney. the um uh disney's halloween treat yeah they showed they do they had like little um snippets of different little cartoons all together also um speaking of eighties halloween I don't know if y'all have seen it but me as a girl growing up in the eighties the worst witch Oh, I know. I don't remember that. Is it the Tim Curry? Yes. Tim Curry. I remember the name. I don't remember the actual.

1:17:10 Feruza Balk. Now I want to watch it. Before, yeah. Young Feruza Balk. Before or after Return to Oz? um hold on same time worst witch was uh done in hold on just one second I don't it's probably around the same time it's not far off though shane said witch's night out is that the one with dan akroyd is that what you're talking about shane OK, so Worst Witch was nineteen eighty six. And that was probably after Return to Oz was eighty five. So, yeah, that was I'll say they were they they weren't even about a year or so apart. Yeah.

1:17:52 So Worst Witch was was was a one that as a girl growing up in the eighties was a must watch for me. Well, granted, it's not as old, but one particular movie I like watching around Halloween every year, and it's not incredibly Halloween-related, but it's awesome, is Army of Darkness. Oh, of course. Oh, yes. Army of Darkness. That movie is so freaking good, man. That was Sam Raimi at his best. And, of course, Beetlejuice. Yes. You gotta have Beetlejuice. Yeah.

1:18:33 So I'm looking, the Seb said that we were tagged and I'm not seeing it. I wonder if he tagged it as Bama Geeks or I'm not sure if it's personal. Oh, you guys, I got a story for you. I got a story for you. So this is not Halloween related, but it's scary movie related. It definitely fits anywhere. I agree with that, Shane. So you guys remember a little movie back in the late nineties called The Blair Witch Project? Yes. Did you guys go and see it in the theaters? I did. No, thankfully not, because I did not want motion sickness. I did. Probably for the best. So what did you think of it, Jess? You know, I mean, the hype was... The marketing was fantastic.

1:19:18 Yeah, it was the first viral marketing thing. The, yeah, the hype and the marketing leading up to it was fantastic. I gotta be honest. I wasn't, I wasn't wild by the movie. I mean, were you scared? No. I was the same way I didn't I wasn't scared but I'm wired wrong and I I just I don't I don't react to scary movies the way I wanted to but I wanted to be scared and that's one thing too it's like I I wanted to be scared by it and I wasn't so but you know sometimes it's like you've got you know horror movies that's gore and slasher then you've got horror movies that are psychological so it just depends I guess it's like you know whatever psychological really yeah yeah yeah hey the the seb do you mind if I share this photo on the stream I see it now that's awesome that may be roberto I'm pretty sure that's roberto let us know in the chat if you don't mind if you find me sharing this so I'll continue I'll continue with the story until we get a response there and then I'll stop.

1:20:25 But so, okay, go ahead. Let's go ahead and share. Sam says it's fine. Let's see. Here we go. Share screen. But I want to continue my story. Yeah. We're done with this. Cause it's actually kind of, I don't know if it's funny. We'll go. We'll find out what you guys think. Yeah. Here we go. Yeah. I'm pretty sure this is Roberto. That's Roberto. Yeah. And he's not wearing a mask. That's just normal Roberto. You must have caught him before he got his morning coffee. Yeah.

1:21:06 That man is on caffeine all day. Oh, he's awesome. Thank you for tagging us and sharing that. That's awesome. Yeah, we appreciate it, man. So, Blair Witch Project. Somehow, my sister, she's coming of the age where she was like, I'm going to go and see scary movies. And I was like, okay, cool. So, she decided... I'm going to go with my brother and keep in mind, this was like late nineties. So my sister would have been like. Thirteen, twelve, thirteen, maybe fourteen. But she was like, I'm going to go watch this movie because the viral marketing got her right. And so she, we go to the theaters and she's like, it was, I mean, you remember Blair, which was huge when it first came out because the marketing, but this was also like several weeks after it came out, I had already gone and seen it.

1:21:51 So I went and saw it with her and. So she's like, I am sprayed. I'm going to sit in the middle. And I was like, I'll just kind of sit off to the side and watch it. I've seen it. And as the movie progressed, she kept moving and getting closer to me. And getting closer to me. Before it got about midway, she was sitting next to me in the theater. So we just kind of moved. And I was like, being the loving and studious big brother, I decided to take advantage of how scared she was of this movie. You guys would be either repulsed or proud that I... You remember the pine straw things that were hanging from the trees in the movie?

1:22:34 I made one of those. I hung it in a tree out in front of our house, right where the bus goes by. And the way I... The way I timed this, I was so mean. It was so bad. To this day, my sister just hates me for it. But she... Let me tell you. I waited until like... I waited until like two o'clock in the morning, like a couple nights after. I waited a couple nights after. And I went outside her window in our house. It was clicking rocks together. Like you did in the movie. Wow. And I put on like a mask with a breather. So when she would look out the window, she would see a freaky face.

1:23:18 And this poor girl. My mom had to tell me to stop because apparently she had went and borrowed four Bibles and put them in all four corners of her room because she was terrified to death. And then she was like, Kevin, Kevin, I know you're having fun with her, but you've got to stop. Because she's scared. It's time to stop. It was the funniest thing. And then up until like, I don't know, a few years after I moved out, I still had that hanging feeling. thing that I made because I was so proud of myself for making that. I did it with like a hula hoop and some other metal pieces and just put pine straw around it and hung it up and kids coming around that you could tell the kids that had seen it.

1:24:01 Yeah. Because they came around the corner with the bus and started screaming. It was so funny. And of course, you know, at this, at that time, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm driving myself to school. So I did, we'll just stay a little bit longer just to see what the reaction for the kids was. Yeah. Yeah. I was a bit of a turd. That was amazing. I loved that movie. I loved the reaction that people had and just being able to scare kids off the viral marketing. That's awesome. If my sister is listening, which I'm sure she's not, but if she ever listens to this, that was awesome. But I love you. Seb said, I watched Blair Witch at Home on VHS. It was a movie.

1:24:43 You didn't get the same effect unless you saw it in the theaters. You had to see it in the theaters, and you had to see it right after the viral marketing hit. Otherwise, it didn't work. And then Shane says, was I the only one that laughed at the scene where the main character was crying and you were waiting for the snot to fall on the camera? Well, especially if you watched the scary movie version of it where the snot was pouring out. Oh, man. And Seb said, my first actual horror movie I saw was Friday the Thirteenth, Part Six, Jason Lives on VHS. I was seven or eight. Yeah. Yeah, my first real one was Nightmare on Elm Street. Probably about the same age. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, man. The eighties were great for horror movies.

1:25:23 God, I'm glad we, I don't know what made me think of Blair Witch, but I'm glad that I did. Man, that was, that was great. No, man. That was a great story. It was huge. I loved, I loved Blair Witch. I, I was entranced by the marketing. Well, especially since they made the film for like fifty thousand dollars or something. Yeah. Like millions. Yeah. I should probably go back and watch. I know Jess probably won't watch it. You're not going to like it. It's probably not, especially since the mystique around it is ruined. Yeah. Now. But at the same time, that was the marketing was so good for that. Well, just, you know, watch it as a product of its time rather than, you know, I'll remember this being great. Just watch it for what it is.

1:26:04 That's what I do with most Hades shows now. Yeah. You know, you go back and see, it was like, hmm. A lot of them didn't age well. Yeah. Man, you know what? If I decide to do like a movie in the backyard for Halloween, I may just put Blair Witch Project on. So then some of these kids have never seen it. They'd be like, what? Yeah, same, Seb. I've got the Nightmare on Elm Street DVD box set that came with the three-D glasses for Freddy's Dead. Lost my original pair from the theater. Oh, that was awesome. Exact same situation. I still have that DVD box set back there in our media closet. And yeah, I lost my theater ones as well.

1:26:46 And change that for Blair Witch. They did a reboot of a reboot. Yeah. They remixed the remix and made it back normal. Yeah. So, hey, Seb, just looking through your Caldwell cosplay page, is this you as the Riddler from Magic City Con? Because it's a fantastic Riddler. Looks great. Go check that out. Caldwell cosplay. It's both with K's. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to show some love. You got to see this. It's Halloween. We got to show good costumes. Fantastic Riddlers. Look at this.

1:27:26 Yeah. With Constantine. Oh, yeah. Nice. It's like one of the last Magic City Cons, I think. Which is coming back. Yeah. Magic City Con coming back next year. Can't wait for that. So, well, guys, we've gone almost an hour and a half with you here on the stream tonight, and we really appreciate it. Any other final thoughts? So the plan for the next episode is I will watch. Oh, that's your oldest as Constantine. Oh, that's awesome. Great. Okay. Very cool. I have yet to get my kids into costume to do anything with me. They did Ghostbusters when they were little, but that was as far as they went.

1:28:09 They haven't done anything with me recently. Granted, I haven't done anything recently. So Little Shop of Horrors, I'm going to watch before the next episode. And what else? We're going to see Phantom. Phantom of the Opera at Alabama Theater. That's right. On the same day that we record. October twenty seventh. Look up a couple of episodes ago with Gary Jones from the Alabama Theater. That's got all the links and everything to get tickets for that. October twenty seventh, two o'clock in the afternoon, I believe, at the Alabama Theater downtown Birmingham. You don't want to miss it. It's such a treat. And we can't wait. We were actually...

1:28:49 We're getting my daughter to go with it. She's actually agreed to it. Mm-hmm. So. The Lon Chaney one. The original. Yeah, the original, Shane. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Seb says, no, no. The only one that matters, the one with Rick Moranis. The Frank Oz one. Brock's only seen the the the nineteen sixties version when he's never seen the eighties. We're going to we're going to fix that. Yeah. The sixties ones was terrible. It was not good acting. But yeah, yeah, we're going to I'm finally going to see the Rick Moranis one. I don't know why I've never seen it, but. Yeah. Yeah.

1:29:30 But all right. So we'll, we'll talk about those two. The Phantom of the Opera experience at the Alabama theater will be fresh on our minds because we'll be out of there around four and we'll record and come back live four hours after that. So. Shane said it's not the one with Gerard Butler. No, not the one with Gerard Butler. We're not doing that. And not the Andrew Lloyd Webber one, according to Gary Thewes. Yeah, that is the Gerard Butler one. Oh, man. Well, yeah, I know. But Gary was telling the story. People thought they were going to actually see the Andrew Lloyd Webber Phantom production at the Alabama Theater. Yeah, man. If you guys haven't watched that episode, you should go back and hear Gary tearing up the hole in that Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff.

1:30:13 Watch it for Gary in general. Oh, my God. Gary's so awesome. We can't wait to see Gary in a couple of weeks. My gosh. Cannot wait. He's going to be so much fun at the Phantom. Hopefully, we'll see you there, too. All four of us, I believe, are planning on being there, right? Yeah. It's going to be fun. I'll have my daughter. It's going to be fun. She said the set designer for the Butler fandom was a bit too lonely. All right. Oh man. Well, we're going to wrap it up. We thank you guys so much for being here with us again for social media.

1:30:55 If you want to find us anywhere where you're at Bama geeks, just look us up on all the platforms that you peruse all the major ones, not the, not the little, you know, lesser known ones, whatever they are. But you can join us on Facebook and our private group, the Bama Geeks Front Porch on Facebook. Just type that in, ask to join, and we'll let you write in. And if you want to support the podcast and our streaming endeavors, you can do that. Patreon.com slash Bama Geeks. Five dollars a month will get you access to our Discord, which... Need some help. But we also do bonus episodes.

1:31:36 We recorded one right before this one. We always try to do a bonus episode for our Patreon members. Five bucks a month. Patreon.com slash Bama Geeks. Or if you want to hit that join button below this video. We've got a ninety nine cent per month. That'll get you some little emojis and emotes and stuff like that. And then a four ninety nine a month, which will get you everything that's included with the Patreon bonus. No obligation to do that whatsoever. No matter what, we just appreciate you being here. But if you want to support us in any way, shape or form, that's how you do it. Patreon or join us on YouTube.

1:32:17 So that just is a whole bunch of words here, Bo. I did the emojis there, but unfortunately StreamYard's translation today didn't. Look at those on YouTube. Not on. Yeah. Looking at a stream or that's what we see. Oh, yeah. I see that now. Yeah. What are those? So, but yeah, we love you guys. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks. We'll review Phantom of the Opera. We'll talk about The Little Shop of Horrors after I finally get a chance to see it. But, yeah, that's it for Kevin and Bo and Jessica. I'm Brock. We love you guys so much. Thank you so much for being a part of us.

1:32:57 Thank you so much for joining in the chat. And we will see you guys hopefully in a couple weeks. Come back and see us now. Are you here? Thank you.