Halloween Happenings: Drunken Pig

As many of you are well aware, the Halloween season is well underway. In fact, it’s impossible not to notice if you’ve stepped foot into any type of store over the past month or so. As is the case with every Halloween season, I am gourds-deep in everything orange and black, and I thought it would be nice to share with all three of you just what I’ve been up to in the days leading to…

CHUCKTOBER!!!

If you’ve been a long-time reader of CNAMB, then you should be familiar with Bolo, the mighty gourd plant that I started growing some years back. This season Bolo came on STRONG and grew so large that things got a little scary for a minute.

Unfortunately, however, Bolo fell ill, and do to his size it was tough/expensive keeping him healthy. As a result, Bolo kicked the bucket pretty early this season, but not before giving us a handful of new gourds to decorate our crack house with.

What’s interesting is that each year Bolo gives us vastly different looking gourds, and this year was no different. This is specific to the five oddly shaped gourds that were best described by a friend as vaginal, something that might come in handy one of these lonely nights.

As is the case every year, I am spending my days of darkness enjoying as many seasonal beers as possible. After coming across this shrine erected by the mighty Kroger, I knew the season had officially begun!

Below are but a few of the many Fall/Pumpkin beers I’ve been enjoying…

And of course, no Halloween season would be complete without me ingesting a ton of Halloween influenced junk food. I am a complete sucker for Halloween packaging, something I am only slightly ashamed of, and I have been doing nothing more than adding to my potential for developing diabetes.

Here’s a sample of my inability to control myself…

Normally by this time of year, I would have most of my Halloween decorating done. However, the days leading up to the month of madness have been overtaken by something other than Halloween. Specifically the fact that my mail-order bride and I have a child on the way, which I think is an acceptable reason to not get a lot of Halloween decorating done. 

What’s sort of fitting about this whole baby thing is the fact that she (as in a girl!) is due on November 4th, which is obviously right around Halloween. What are the chances, right?! Anyway, I have my claws crossed that our daughter will be born on Halloween day, but outside of black magic, I have very little control over that whole thing.

In any event, my mail-order in-laws were awesome enough to throw my mail-order bride a baby shower, and seeing as she is due right around Halloween, Halloween was indeed the theme for the baby shower.

Below are a few photos of the decorating they did, which I think came out pretty darned fantastic!

That about does it for now, kiddies. Hope you enjoyed this in-depth look into all the Halloween Happenings I have been enjoying over the past month or so. Now I have to get my rock-hard ass in gear and start setting up for Chucktober, so soon thou shall see you!

Salute Your Shorts: Mickey (2009)

Mickey opens with a black and white shot boxing match between the film’s titular character, Mickey (Hugh Elliot), and a much larger opponent. Everything seems to be pointing to this being an epic moment for the drastically undersized Mickey; however, within seconds of the bell ringing he is TKO’d. This happens again and again, as Mickey faces off against a handful of opponents, with the result being the same each and every single time.

This opening scene immediately sets the tone for both the film and the character of Mickey, as it is very apparent that, despite having all the odds stacked against him, Mickey never seems as if he’s afraid to step up to a challenge. It's an excellent way to introduce the character, because within a minute’s time the viewer really gets a sense of who the character of Mickey is and what he has likely dealt with his entire life.

Shortly after a run in with a dangerous gangster (Joseph West), Mickey is led to a tattoo shop where he discovers a peep show featuring a woman (Jessica Osbourne) imprisoned by chains. Despite the many dangers that he could be facing, Mickey decides it's his duty to rescue this woman. Will this attempt at heroism lead to the good-hearted Mickey getting one over the bad guys, or will this be yet another failure in the making for a character who has never had anything go right for him?

Written and Directed by Dusty McGowan, Mickey is a 20 minute short film that doesn’t rely on much dialogue to tell its tale of a character who refuses to let his small stature be a roadblock for his principles. To go with the lack of dialogue is a true sense of surrealism. Mickey is, at times, a strange film and somewhat reflective of the works of David Lynch, and this both works for and against the final product. The oddness of the film makes it tonally confusing at first, but once it’s clear that McGowan is going for surrealism, everything begins to gel a little better.

Overall, Mickey is an enjoyable little oddity about a little man with a big heart, so take 20 minutes to give it a watch for yourself below!