I went to write this post, but in an instant, my message vanished in a flash.
I screamed, I hollered, I panicked, I looked for something to smash. It was
then I realized that it was just a blog, no need for anger, no need to be rash.

    Oh, the places he went.

Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, whom wrote the ever-so popular children’s books: The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hatches the Egg, and many more, was born on this day, March 2nd 1904. As Dr. Seuss, Geisel brought a whimsical touch and a colorful imagination to the world of children’s books, and made both kids and adults alike fall in love with a new kind of entertainment.

Happy Birthday Ted!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkOHQGA8hZc

Legendary comedic actor Leslie Nielsen died this past Sunday of complications of pneumonia in a hospital near his home in Fort Lauderdale. He was 84. Shirley he had to be kidding, right? Sadly for millions of his fans, he was not; and in fact when the news of his passing broke, it wasn’t funny at all.

Canadian actor Leslie Nielsen, famous for his deadpan turns in Flying High! and The Naked Gun, has died aged 84, a radio station has reported. His death was first reported in unconfirmed messages on Twitter that suggested the actor had died in the hospital after suffering from pneumonia.

His nephew, Doug Nielson, told Canadian radio station CJOB that the actor had been in the hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for 12 days and that “he just fell asleep and passed away” with family and friends by his side. Born in Regina, Canada, Leslie Nielsen appeared in more than 100 movies and hundreds of television shows over the course of his career. Awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he was also made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2002 despite also being a naturalized US citizen. He was married four times, and had two children from his second marriage, Maura and Thea Nielsen.

Nielsen’s trademark was delivering cringe worthy punch lines with a deadpan expression as well as appearing oblivious to the chaos that was happening around him on screen.

He found fame in life as Hollywood’s unlikely king of comedy but for most of his career he was the go-to man stern, no-nonsense types. Nielsen first came to Hollywood in 1954 for a non-singing role in the musical The Vagabond King. The film was a stinker - Nielsen called it The Vagabond Turkey - but he was nonetheless signed to a long-term contract by MGM.

He memorably appeared as the square-jawed captain in The Forbidden Planet and the captain of the ill-fated Poseidon in the disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure but to audiences of the time he was usually the tough guy villain on numerous TV shows. “I found it hard to turn down work,” he once said of his amazing volume of output.
His screen image and his life changed when he was cast in the Zucker Brothers’ Flying High! (Airplane! to the rest of the world), a send-up comedy that spawned a whole genre of spoofs.

Nielsen’s doctor who preferred not to be called Shirley was the hit of the film - he got the deadpan style more than any other on the film. “It’s the kind of humor in which you never tell the audience what is funny. You let them find it for themselves. As an actor, you must never get caught in the act of trying to be funny. You have to walk a very fine line,” he said. The film led to Nielsen being cast in the Zucker Brothers’ spoof cop show, Police Squad!, which was transferred to the big screen in 1988 as The Naked Gun. The film was a triumph for Nielsen, who received some of the best notices of his career for his performance as “the Harrison Ford of dumb cops”.

Two Naked Gun sequels and cameo appearances in numerous spoofs and comedies ended Nielsen’s career as a straight man. However, he still performed serious roles on stage (such as his one-man theatre show Darrow, playing Clarence Darrow), and he had a sideline as a successful author of golf books - “the reason they call it ‘golf’ is that all the other four-letter words were used up”.

I’ve always liked Leslie Nielsen, he was one of those actors who never seem to have had a bad streak, the kind that was always a positive role model and good influence to young kids. Last year before the situation of my now ex leaving me, we were working on writing a movie featuring a character that I tailor made to Leslie Nielsen’s comedic sense of style. If that film ever see the light of day, it just won’t be the same without the possibility of Leslie in that role. The world lost another great actor, a wonderful man and role model.

Rest In Peace, Leslie.

Leslie Nielsen (1926–2010)

    Untitled Document #35: 31 Days Of Halloween - Day 31

    By Tim Tilley

      Harry Houdini, the man, the myth, the legend. Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-born American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer noted for his amazing escape acts. He was also a skeptic who set out to expose frauds purporting to be supernatural phenomena. He was born as Erik Weisz on March 24, 1874 and died on this day, October 31, 1926. From 1907 on, however, Houdini would claim in interviews to have been born in Appleton, Wisconsin, on April 6, 1874.

His parents were Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz (1829–1892) and his wife, Cecelia (née Steiner; 1841–1913). Houdini was one of seven children: Herman M. (1863–1885); Nathan J. (1870–1927); Gottfried William (1872–1925); Theodore “Theo” (1876–1945);[2] Leopold D. (1879–1962); and Gladys Carrie (born 1882-unknown year of death). Weisz came to the United States on July 3, 1878, sailing on the SS Fresia with his mother (who was pregnant) and his four brothers.[3] The family changed the spelling of their Hungarian surname into Weiss and the spelling of their son’s name into Ehrich. Friends called him “Ehrie” or “Harry”. They first lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as Rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. According to the 1880 census, the family lived on Appleton Street.[4] On June 6, 1882, Rabbi Weiss became an American citizen. Losing his tenure at Zion in 1887, Rabbi Weiss moved with Ehrich to New York City. They lived in a boarding house on East 79th Street. They were joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, next becoming a champion cross country runner. He made his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself “Ehrich, the prince of the air”. Weiss became a professional magician and began calling himself “Harry Houdini” because he was heavily influenced by the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, and his friend Jack Hayman told him, erroneously, that in French, adding an “i” to Houdin would mean “like Houdin” the great magician. In later life, Houdini would claim that the first part of his new name, Harry, was a homage to Harry Kellar, whom Houdini admired. In 1918 he registered for selective service as Harry Handcuff Houdini.

At the outset, Houdini’s magic career resulted in little success. He performed in dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as “the Wild Man” at a circus. Houdini focused initially on traditional card tricks. At one point, he billed himself as the “King of Cards”. But he soon began experimenting with escape acts…and the rest is history, literally.

For more information on Harry Houdini, check out the following link: http://www.apl.org/history/houdini/biography.html

Until next time, Stay Ghoul and have a Hexcellent week!

If you have any questions or comments be sure to visit my Facebook and  Twitter accounts to voice your opinion.

 If you like Halloween, you should also check out my Children’s Book series’ Facebook, and Twitter pages as well.

Untitled Document #34: 31 Days Of Halloween - Day 30

    By Tim Tilley

     When and where did it all begin? In an earlier blog post I had mentioned the history of trick or treating, and the history of Halloween is not that much dissimilar. Halloween on October 31st - began as the Celtic New Years celebration, and was the most important of their four “quarter days”. Popular belief once held that on this last night of the old year, the Celtic “Lord of Death” (named “Samhain”) gathered together and judged the souls of all those who had died in the passing year However, we now recognize that the Celts had no “Lord of Death”, and Samhain (pronounced “sahwen”) means “summer’s end”, and was the name for the three-day festival celebrated at the end of October. On this night all fires were extinguished, and the Druids (the Celts’ priests) kindled a new fire, which was distributed the next morning to each household. As the boundary between two years, Samhain was a time for not only for paying off debts, but also for fortune-telling and visits by spirits (the sidhe of Celtic mythology).

Another popular misconception about the history of Halloween is that it also stems from a Roman harvest festival honoring Pomona, “the goddess of fruits”. In fact, Pomona was a minor figure in Roman mythology who did not merit her own holiday. However, the Roman celebrations of Feralia (held in February) and Lemuria (held in May) were both festivals of the dead, and may have influenced the evolution of Halloween (especially Lemuria, a three-day event which ended on May 13, the original date set by Pope Boniface IV for the celebration of All Saints’ Day).

The Catholic celebration of All Saints’ Day was officially inaugurated in 609 A.D., although the Christian influence on Halloween actually begins in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory I instructed his missionaries that, rather than obliterate native peoples’ customs and beliefs, they should try to use them; hence, Catholic holy days were set at the times of native holy days, celebrations and festivals. As Christian missionaries moved into Ireland, they practiced Gregory’s doctrine of “syncretism” and replaced the Celts’ Samhain with All Saints’ Day (Pope Gregory III moved the observation to November 1 in the eight century). In 998 A.D. St. Odilo, Bishop of Cluny, instituted a day of prayer and special masses for the souls of the dead. This day became All Souls’ Day, and was set for November 2nd. In many areas All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day celebrations merged, as in Mexico, where October 31 to November 2 became known simply as “Days of the Dead”.

Another day with connections to Halloween is the British Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated on November 5. Guy Fawkes was a Roman Catholic who planned to blow up the Protestant House of Parliament on November 5, 1606; luckily for the House, he was apprehended and executed. Afterwards, the anniversary of the day was celebrated by building straw effigies, entreating passersby for “a penny for the Guy”, and finally burning “the Guys” in bonfires. British colonists to America brought the tradition with them, although it has since died out here. It wasn’t until the later influx of Irish and Scottish immigrants to America that Halloween began to evolve into the celebration we know today (remember, the Scots/Irish are the descendents of the Celts).

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, Halloween was a time of fortune-telling, harvest celebration and prank-playing (presumably in imitation of mischievous ghosts); it wasn’t until the 1930’s that the modern tradition of trick-or-treat came fully into practice (although it took the next two decades for the practice to spread across the country). Trick-or-treat is descended from a number of different mumming practices, which involve begging food in exchange for a costumed performance. In England (possibly as late as the 19th century), the poor in some areas of the country went about singing for “soul-cakes” or money, promising to pray and to spend the alms in masses for the dead; in America, a “masked solicitation” ritual centered on Thanksgiving died out just before trick-or-treat was born. Thus, trick-or-treat may derive from a combination of Guy Fawkes Day, Thanksgiving and All Souls’ Day traditions.

Halloween has undergone several curious turns over the last century. In the 19th century and early 20th century, Halloween was primarily the province of adults, with some older children participating in pranks (sometimes so elaborate as dismantling an entire wagon and rebuilding it on top of a barn roof!). However, from the 1930’s to the 1970’s, Halloween was primarily thought of as a night for children. Folklorist Jack Santino has suggested that Halloween was about inverting societal norms, so that children held power over adults (and, in his superb essay “Things That Go Snap-Rattle-Clang-Toot-Crank in the Night”, Carl B. Holmberg theorized that Halloween noisemakers provided the ritual means by which this power inversion was conducted). However, around the 1960’s, things began to change: Trick-or-treating was menaced by the suggestion that disturbed individuals were poisoning candy and putting razor blades in apples, while adult costuming gained in popularity, partly through gay culture. Today Halloween seems to have once more been largely claimed by adults as their own, as carefully supervised activities for children have replaced the festival nature of trick-or-treating.

Halloween is one of our oldest and most fascinating holidays, and it has endured through the millennia, this is one tradition that I hope will continue for another millennia or more. Happy Halloween everyone!

Until next time, Stay Ghoul and have a Hexcellent week!

If you have any questions or comments be sure to visit my Facebook and  Twitter accounts to voice your opinion.

 If you like Halloween, you should also check out my Children’s Book series’ Facebook, and Twitter pages as well.

    Untitled Document #33: 31 Days Of Halloween - Day 29

    By Tim Tilley

     Hallowe’en then and Halloween now, looking back you may realize just how much things have changed. It seems it is one of those holidays that continue to change every decade, if not every year. When I was a kid we would celebrate Halloween during a two to three day period depending on when Octorber 31st fell. If it was on a school day, we’d celebrate at school and dress in costume, have a costume contest and a mini-parade. Just as soon as we had gotten home from school, planning for the big day began.

You couldn’t just go trick-or-treating on Beggars’ Night and go door-to-door without a game plan, one would need to ensure that they selected the best homes in order to get the best candy, who to trick and who to go to first. You also had to plan your costume in advance, and make sure you were home in time to view all the cool Halloween cartoon specials. It was a truly magical time of the year. It still is to this day, but only to a certain degree as to what it used to be. Things just are not the same. Just to start with, the night you go trick-or-treating is no longer on the 31st in most places, instead they opted to have it during a school night, and no longer are you out at dark… you are now forced to go during broad-daylight in some cases. From my point of view, it takes away the magic of the entire holiday. Well, at least we can all celebrate in our own way.

Until next time, Stay Ghoul and have a Hexcellent week!

If you have any questions or comments be sure to visit my Facebook and  Twitter accounts to voice your opinion.

 If you like Halloween, you should also check out my Children’s Book series’ Facebook, and Twitter pages as well.

      Untitled Document #32: 31 Days Of Halloween - Day 28

      By Tim Tilley

     Universal Studios Monsters, there isn’t much that needs to be said about them. They’re cool, fun, enjoyable, and almost everyone likes at least one of them if not all of them. They have been remained, recreated, imitated, time and time again since their inception. I myself have been inspired to create my version of these famed monsters with my children’s book series: Spook Central Elementary.

    Universal Monsters or Universal Horror is the name given to a series of distinctive horror, suspense and science fiction films made by Universal Studios from 1923 to 1960. Many today, know them as the many incarnations the characters have received; yet the series began with the 1923 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and continued with such movies as: The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. The iconic gallery of monsters created by Universal has created a lasting impression on generations of avid moviegoers around the world.

Until next time, Stay Ghoul and have a Hexcellent week!

If you have any questions or comments be sure to visit my Facebook and  Twitter accounts to voice your opinion.

 If you like Halloween, you should also check out my Children’s Book series’ Facebook, and Twitter pages as well.

     Untitled Document #31: 31 Days Of Halloween - Day 27

    By Tim Tilley

     Found among the papers of the late Diedrech Knickerbocker.

A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer sky.
Castle of Indolence.

With that, so begins the story of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” a short story written by Washington Irving contained in his collection “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.,” written while he was living in Birmingham, England, and first published in 1820. With Irving’s companion piece “Rip Van Winkle”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is among the earliest examples of American fiction still read today.

Aside from “Rip Van Winkle,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” I have not read much of Washington Irving’s work. Of the two, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is by far one of his bests, and a favorite of mine. I remember watching more than one adaption of this growing up, two of them alone were both Disney animations. There was also the Tim Burton live action film as well, of which I loved every second of it.

The story itself is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a sycophantic, extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer, Baltus Van Tassel.

As Crane leaves a party he attended at the Van Tassel home on an autumn night, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during “some nameless battle” of the American Revolutionary War, and who “rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head”. Ichabod mysteriously disappears from town, leaving Katrina to marry Brom Bones, who was “to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related”. Although the nature of the Headless Horseman is left open to interpretation, the story implies that the Horseman was really Brom Bones in disguise.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was based on a German folktale, set in the Dutch culture of Post-Revolutionary War in New York State. The characters of Ichabod Crane and Katrina Van Tassel may have been based on local residents known to Irving. The character of Katrina is thought to have been based upon Eleanor Van Tassel Brush, in which case her name is derived from that of Eleanor’s aunt Catriena Ecker Van Tessel.

Irving, while he was an aide to New York Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins, met an army captain named Ichabod Crane in Sackets Harbor, New York during an inspection tour of fortifications in 1814. He may have borrowed the name from the captain and patterned the character in “The Legend” after Jesse Merwin, who taught at the local schoolhouse in Kinderhook, further north along the Hudson River, where Irving spent several months in 1809.

To this day the story of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” has been translated into cartoons, comicbooks, and stage plays, and film adaptations. Notable film adaptations include:

Will Rogers in The Headless Horseman (1922)

The Headless Horseman (1922), a silent version directed by Edward Venturini, and starring Will Rogers as Ichabod Crane.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), directed by James Algar, Clyde Geronimi and Jack Kinney, produced by Walt Disney Productions and narrated by Bing Crosby. This is the animated adaptation of the story I was talking about earlier in this blog post.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1980), directed by Henning Schellerup. A made-for-television movie filmed in Utah, starring Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane, Meg Foster as Katrina, and Dick Butkus as Brom Bones.

Tall Tales and Legends episode “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1987), starring Ed Begley, Jr. as Ichabod Crane, Beverly D’Angelo as Katrina Van Tassel, and Charles Durning as Doffue Van Tassel who is also the narrator. Produced and hosted by Shelley Duvall.

In 1988 PBS and Rabbit Ears Productions produced a multi-award winning animated adaptation and a subsequent book depicting the Irving story. Illustrations, directing, and adaptation was done by Robert Van Nutt, music by Tim Story, and the narration by Glenn Close.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1999) was a Canadian television film starring Brent Carver and Rachelle Lefevre which was filmed in Montreal.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) directed by Tim Burton, though the adaptation takes many liberties with the plot and characters, changing Crane from the local schoolmaster into a police constable sent from New York to investigate recent murders, with the Horseman being used as a weapon against the local landowners. Johnny Depp starred as Ichabod Crane while Christopher Walken plays the Headless Horseman. The cast also featured Christina Ricci as Katrina, and Casper Van Dien as Brom. While vastly different from the original Ivring story, I still found this one to be quite enjoyable.

The Hollow (2004) was a TV movie that premiered on the ABC Family channel starring Kaley Cuoco. The adaptation focused on a teenage descendant of Ichabod Crane.

Some of the elements from Irving’s story exist in other interpretations in our various forms of entertainment. For an example, the Marvel comic book Ghost Rider exhibits a certain familiarity to the Headless horsemen. That said, it’s all in the mind of the reader, or viewer to make that decision.

You can watch part one of Disney’s The legend of Sleepy Hollow, right here.

Until next time, Stay Ghoul and have a Hexcellent week!

If you have any questions or comments be sure to visit my Facebook and  Twitter accounts to voice your opinion.

 If you like Halloween, you should also check out my Children’s Book series’ Facebook, and Twitter pages as well.

    Untitled Document #30: 31 Days Of Halloween - Day 26

    By Tim Tilley

     Jack O’ Lanterns, I love them, and chances are you do as well. Every year around October, people go out and purchase pumpkins buy the millions, okay to be fair I mean that millions of them are being bought, not that each person is buying millions of them but I personally would if I could. There is something so special about carving a pumpkin, and not just because pumpkin carving is a popular part of modern America’s Halloween celebration but because it’s a fantastic bonding experience between children and their families or caregivers. few Americans really know why or when the jack o’lantern tradition began. Or, for that matter, whether the pumpkin is a fruit or a vegetable. I’ll start off by letting you know that a Pumpkin is a fruit. It contains seeds that come from a flower; each plant will have boh male and female flowers. Now on to the history of Jack O’ Lanterns.

People have been making jack o’lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed “Stingy Jack.” According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul.

The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years. Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since.

The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” and then, simply “Jack O’Lantern.” In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o’lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack o’lanterns.

To this day the tradition carries on, we may not be trying to ward off evil spirits or Stingy Jack, but we still have a lot of fun carving jack O Lanterns out of the pumpkins each year.

Until next time, Stay Ghoul and have a Hexcellent week!

If you have any questions or comments be sure to visit my Facebook and  Twitter accounts to voice your opinion.

 If you like Halloween, you should also check out my Children’s Book series’ Facebook, and Twitter pages as well.

(Source: history.com)