There's only 362 days left till next Halloween!

The next time someone asks me what kind of movie I like, I think I'll tell them that I like really cheesy, poor-quality movies. It will be mostly true.

Throughout the Halloween season, I've been watching various Halloween shows and movies, and they get progressively longer. I watch all of the Halloween shows I own, whether I like them or not.

On Monday night, after an FHE in which my pumpkin won the contest (there was only one other pumpkin),

I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. That is not a cheesy, poor-quality movie. It is beautiful and one of the most creative things ever. I have it memorized, and yet every time I watch it, I notice something I didn't notice before. For example, this time I noticed that in the scene where Dr. Finkelstein transfers half of his brain into the woman he's creating, Sally is in the background. She's just in the background, and she's blurry, yet she's still blinking her eyes and moving around. The amount of work in the movie is insane! It's always one that I like to watch with people who haven't seen it before. But that didn't work too well. My roommate Jordan had a bad headache, so he went to bed. My roommate Scott watched part of it (he'd seen it before), but then he too went to bed. My former roommate/current home teacher Zach Zimmerman was going to watch it, but he didn't come until the last fifteen minutes. Afterwards I had to show him the "This is Halloween" and "What's This?" sequences.

On Tuesday, I watched the new Frankenweenie movie. This is also a beautiful movie. Sadly, not many people have seen it or even heard about it, but it is a wonderful little movie. It's more beautiful than The Nightmare Before Christmas, although not as good. Both Zach and Scott watched most of it and seemed impressed by it. It's the scariest of my Halloween shows.

Then after Wednesday, the cheesiness came in. Scott was watching the World Series, so I waited for him to be done. I actually saw the end (although I wasn't really paying attention), but I didn't think anyone actually watched baseball anymore. I think the Red Sox should have slacked off for five more years--then it would have been 100 years since they won a World Series. But I guess it was fitting for it to be the year of the marathon tragedy.

Anyway, after the game, I turned on Mad Monster Party? I kept saying that it's one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. After the movie, Scott said, "I think that's the strangest movie ever created!" It's a 1960s Rankin Bass movie. The songs and the animation would make it a children's movie--yet the mild innuendos and darkness make it more of an adult movie. It's literally light, but the story and the sight gags are fairly dark, definitely darker than The Nightmare Before Christmas. Some of the jokes are funny ("It's her own fault for thinking so loud"), some are not ("How did he get an invitation? He has an unlisted tomb"), and some are just bizarre ("Quit acting like the Statue of Liberty!"). You get a surprise ending, Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller as stop-motion puppets, and really weird songs.

Then, of course, Thursday was Halloween. I had classes during the day, but I finished my homework so that I could have fun. I went to a stake party that wasn't that fun and got my face painted to accompany my simple costume,

and then I went to a smaller party with some friends.Then I came home and Scott was watching Wait Until Dark (on KBYU!) and then I watched The Munsters' Revenge. That's a TV movie that was made in the late 70s (but didn't get broadcast until the early 80s). It's very cheesy. The only reason it works (and it barely does that) is because it had part of the original cast. If it had different actors, it would be completely intolerable (like The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas). After it was over, Scott said, "Mark, that's the movie you save for Halloween?" I told him I do so because it's the longest--that's the only reason.

Then the next day, I got up early to cut up a fruit salad to take to a work party. I listened to my Thanksgiving playlist, which has thirty songs. It may not be the greatest music, but it makes me feel so happy and so Thanksgiving-y. People who listen to Christmas music at this time just don't know what they're missing. I have most of the music from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, recordings of hymns 91-95, and a few other odds and ends. The Thanksgiving version of "Linus and Lucy" is the best ever.

I went home for Friday night in order to get ready for Thanksgiving. My time spent at home means that I will have to be Johnny Tremain again today. On Friday I watched a YouTube video on my parents' big TV--it was another Rankin Bass special, The Mouse on the Mayflower, which hasn't been released on DVD. Which confuses me, because I think it would be easier to release it on DVD than on VHS, especially since many companies do manufacture-on-demand DVDs now. But I guess DVDs are starting to go into obsolescence now anyway.

Then yesterday I went with my family to go see Free Birds. It's a new movie about turkeys who travel back in time to take turkeys off the Thanksgiving menu. I read the reviews, and I expected it to be pretty terrible. I expected it to be like Disney's Chicken Little from 2005--so bad that the whole time you think, "This is stupid and not funny at all." It wasn't terrible. It wasn't great--certainly no Pixar or How to Train Your Dragon--but it wasn't terrible. It was a perfectly mediocre movie. I'd take a mediocre Thanksgiving movie over a mediocre Christmas movie or mediocre non-holiday movie any time.

Some people also thought it had a political agenda, promoting animal rights or decrying American imperialism. I guess if you were looking for that you might find it, but I don't think that was the intent of the movie. It certainly isn't promoting veganism, since there's lots of cheese pizza. I don't like how they made Myles Standish a villain, but I didn't think the movie had ulterior motives.

I just love Thanksgiving. I put up all the Thanksgiving decorations at my house. I also count candy corn as suitable for both Halloween and Thanksgiving, so I always go overboard buying clearance Halloween candy for Thanksgiving. In the last few days, I bought candy corn jelly beans, candy corn M&Ms, Starburst candy corn, caramel candy corn, s'mores candy corn, autumn mix, candy corn suckers, candy corn and peanuts, pumpkin spice candy corn, and a candy corn Blow Pop. When I showed Scott my supply, he told me I was going to get diabetes. So I'm sharing, because there's no way I can eat that much candy in four weeks.

I just love November!