Tagged: Halloween

Tweeks: Halloween Costume Help

Are you still looking for Halloween Costume? Yeah, we get it. Trying to coordinate with your friends is hard and sometimes even with all the planning ahead you try to do, you end up scrambling at the last minute to pull together the right costume.

Well, we’re here to help. We talk about some of our best group costume ideas and enlist guidance from Howie from Rubie’s Costume to help you figure it all out.

Tweeks: Halloween Vlog!

This week we vlog while sorting our Halloween candy Topics include our first Halloween at Orange County School of the Arts, the backlash against Harley Quinn costumes when obviously everyone & her sister was in a Stranger Things costume, a recreation of the Kardashian Kit Kat video, and a review Poltergeist.

Tweeks Halloween Ideas & SDCC Cosplay featuring Rubies Costume Co

We’re about a month out from Halloween and way past time to start planning! While Anya still doesn’t know if she’s going to be a Ghostbuster or not, Maddy is determined to be Harley Quinn — even if every other girl in their high school is too.

In this week’s episode, we talk to the Executive VP of Rubie’s costumes about what’s hot this year (& get a little background on their really cool store & website) and then we look back at some of our favorite cosplay from SDCC to see if anything sparks a Halloween costume idea.

Let us know what you’re being for Halloween…and maybe help Anya out.

Tweeks: Top 13 (Not Scary) Halloween Movies Part 2

This week we close out our Top 13 (Not Scary) Halloween Movie List with the numbers 6 through 1.  We disagree about Hocus Pocus, but come together on all things Tim Burton and Winnie The Pooh.  You’ll also find out in this week’s episode what food Anya should dress up as for Halloween and learn about her famous Pants Dance.  There’s also some girl crushing on Wednesday Addams and a our favorite non-musical Disney Channel Movie series.

 

Tweeks: MLP Spooktacular Pony Tales Ushers in Halloween

chicken_pie_by_keinzantezuken-d4dj64iNow that it’s officially autumn, we’re ready to jump right into Halloween.  Thankfully, Shout! Factory has just released Spooktacular Pony Tales, a collection of six My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episodes (along with extras like pumpkin stencils & a sing-a-long!) to help us ease into probably the best holiday ever!  Of course, we’d watch Pinkie Pie in a chicken costume any time of year.

Martha Thomases: Truth, Justice, and the Israeli Way

Supergirl-in-Israel

Purim in Israel is not like Purim in my life. Everyone is in costume. Sales clerks at the airport had on three-cornered Haman hats.

I love Purim. It is the story of a hero who saved the Jewish people. Kids dress up as characters in the story — Mordecau, Haman, King Ahasheares, and the hero, Queen Esther.

In Israel, it is more about costumes than specific characters, more like Halloween, a secular holiday.

I was in Caesarea, an ancient Roman city built by Herod. It’s a great place to take your family on a school holiday. There were kids dressed like knights and princesses and Voltron.

To me, the stars of the day were two gutsy girls, dressed like my favorite Kryptonian. It’s the right way to celebrate the story of a brave woman.

Jen Krueger: The Little Things

DW & GPK 014A few weeks ago, I was idly browsing a store that carried everything from as-seen-on-TV products to Halloween costumes on deep discount. I didn’t really expect to find anything worth purchasing, but just as a bored salesperson mumbled in my general direction that everything in the store was 30% off, I came upon an aisle with [[[Doctor Who]]] merchandise and figured a quick perusal couldn’t hurt. It was all stuff I’d seen before, mostly TARDIS hats, scarves, lunchboxes, and keychains, but then a rack of random packs of micro figures caught my eye. I already had two such micro figures on my desk at home, a Centurion Rory and a Tenth Doctor that had both been gifts, and I liked the idea of getting an Eleventh Doctor or an Amy Pond to join them. But as I thought about making my first micro figure purchase, I realized that despite my vast love of Doctor Who, I hadn’t actually bought much merchandise related to the show. Wondering how that could possibly be true, I grudgingly admitted to myself that my merch buying experiences haven’t been very good.

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John Ostrander: That Time of Year

ostrander-art-131110-150x108-3720871The other night, My Mary and I were looking for something to watch on the tube. She had recorded Fly Away Home, the 1996 film by Carroll Ballard, starring Jeff Daniels, Dana Delaney, Anna Pacquin and Terry Kinney. We’ve watched it many times and I think we even own a copy of it. It’s wonderfully acted and beautifully shot; if you ever watch it, try to see it in wide screen. Some of the shots of Canadian Geese flying are breathtaking.

One of the things that struck me (again) was Mark Isham’s soundtrack and the haunting song that opens and closes the film, 10,000 Miles, sung by Mary Chapin Carpenter. (You can find it on YouTube, along with the lyrics.) It was one of the pieces of music that I played over and over again during that year of grieving after my wife, Kim Yale, died. Music was, and is, one of my coping mechanisms in life and hearing that song brought me back, not to Kim’s life or death, but that time of grieving, of learning to live without her, of starting my life again. Not to the grief itself but to the memory of that grief.

It’s that time of year. Here in the Midwest, the leaves fall from the trees, the days get shorter and darker, it’s colder as we head towards year’s end. Labor Day comes, signaling an end to summer. We lurch towards Halloween and All Saints Day (or Day of the Dead) with its skulls and ghosts and reminders of mortality. The harvest comes in and the fields look bare even as we celebrate Thanksgiving. Christmas is coming, yes, but so is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. The cycle completes as the old year dies and a new one begins.

It’s not grief I feel now but a rise of melancholy. It’s always a part of me and, I think, always has been. I’m not sure of its origins – I went to many wakes and funerals as a boy, seeing people in caskets who I had known when they were alive, and I know it made an impression on me. I wouldn’t say that I treasure my melancholy but I do value it. I’m aware of death as part of life and that, I think, has informed my work as a writer. I enjoy life immensely and I don’t wallow in melancholy. It is simply there, a constant, and it makes me value those who are there and the joys and pleasures of life. Knowing they will all pass doesn’t make me depressed. Shadows help define an object and my melancholies help define my joys.

Every morning, I see a photo of my Dad sitting atop a shelf that he made for me and my brother when we were boys and I say, “Hi Dad.” I remember him and I miss him and I still love him just as I remember and miss and still love my Mom and Kim and friends and relatives and even pets. I miss places that are no longer there. They all still live in my mind and heart and I still know their stories. They all still have a value to me and are still helping to shape me into who I am.

It’s that time of year to remember and feel, to harvest our emotions, and value what we have. That’s what I’ll be thankful for as we approach Thanksgiving – the shadows as well as the light.

MONDAY MORNING: Mindy Newell

TUESDAY MORNING: Emily S. Whitten

 

The Tweeks review “Lenore: The Cute Little Dead Girl”

Lenore: The Cute Little Dead Girl
How distinctly we remember, on the day before November;
With the gaily costumed children wanting candy at the door.
Eagerly we wished the morrow;—vainly we had sought to borrow
From our comics breaks from sorrow—and we found the book Lenore.
Now the rare and radiant maidens called the Tweeks review Lenore
            Posted here for evermore.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ZucTafFiQ[/youtube]