Well, after spending the last month searching for the best Halloween decorations, recipes, costumes, decorating my new house and watching movies here are my thoughts. LAME! Okay not totally lame, but not as good as in years past. My biggest gripe was Halloween decor or the lack there of. Every Halloween I have spent hundreds of dollars on new decorations for the store and for the house that I could not live without. This year I spent $19.00 and that was just for spiderwebs, candles and misc. crap. WTF?! My thoughts are that with the bad economy they just didn’t really come out with anything new and scaled back on some of the more pricey items. My favorite has always been animatronics. I love things that move and say things. The ones they had this year were cheap looking and weren’t all that scary frankly.  Costumes were pretty lame as well. I wanted to post the scariest costume of the year, but I really didn’t see anything that was worth even a wimper. Some of the bad costumes that were popular, like Micheal Jackson and Octomom, were just in bad taste and stupid. Decorating our new house was great and everything worked better than we had hoped. We even got voted as the scariest house in the neighborhood, but there were a few that were really close. We’ll have to step it up a bit next year. Movie selection in the theaters was not even worth discussing, though rarely is it. All I can say is I really hope next year the economy is back on track and decorations are plentiful. This is my favorite time of the year and I found it depressing to go into stores that normally have huge Halloween displays and only had pitifully small racks of cheesy decor. Just my two cents.

Now that it’s going to start getting cold, this Crime Scene Scarf might be good to keep the chill away. It is just hilarious! I must have it.

As often happens, I was reminded of something when I found this. A couple of years ago we were just going about our business at the bookstore when suddenly multiple police cars arrived at the apartment building next door. I employ a bunch of curious people, so we all had our noses plastered to the front windows.

Turns out we had a double murder next door! A little too real for my blood, but it was interesting to watch the drama unfold. For the next two weeks there was what we started to refer to as the “murder truck” parked out front which appeared to be some sort of CSI RV. This of course started to drive us crazy because the RV blocked one of the entrances to our parking lot and the police were not willing to move it.

Now, of course, they taped off the entire area. Being the wicked-minded person that I am, I began to covet this police tape for my store. If you’ve read the About Me page you would know that I have a haunted used bookstore and if you haven’t well then get to it! Anyway, we all decided that we couldn’t take it while it was still technically a crime scene, so we waited. Eventually the murder truck was gone and they were done with their investigation. We decided to wait until the next morning to take some tape. When we came in they had already removed it. And put it in our dumpster! In the end we didn’t have to steal it at all. Now it’s cool to know that our crime scene tape is the real thing. And yes, they did catch the guy who did it.

Okay, so like many of you Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday and October is my favorite month. Mainly because of Halloween, but also because it finally starts to cool down. Scary Jane doesn’t do summer. Anyway, starting on October 1st, every day I will blog about something related to Halloween. It could be a costume, a decoration, a craft or just anything related to our favorite holiday. I realize that pretty much everything I cover could be called a Halloween item. For this month though, I want strictly Halloween stuff. Things you wouldn’t necessarily put in your house during the year. More of the cheesy decor type stuff, if you know what I mean. I have many things I plan on blogging about, but thought I would send out a message to everyone in case someone’s got an idea of something I should cover. It could be a recipe you make every year, a decoration that you made and would like to share or just a link to a fun item. Pretty much anything goes. So, send in your ideas to jane@scaryjane.com and I’ll try to cover them all.

Due to an unforseen event I spent the last week in the hospital. I’m sorry that my posts came to an abrupt stop, but I am back now so watch out! Look for my first post to appear later today.

If you are a vampire worth your blood you were at the first Vampire Con in Hollywood this past weekend. If you weren’t, you are a loser and shall be stripped of all your vampire benefits! I was not there, but I am not a vampire, so I think I am okay. I’ve been to so many conferences this year that I thought I’d wait until next year to go. There were so many vampires at Comic-Con that I thought I had already been anyway. A quick little article about what kinds of things went on at the Vampire Con can be found here. The most interesting thing to come out of the conference was the announcement (also announced at Comic-Con) of the first sequel ever to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, called Dracula: The Undead. It was written by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s Great-Grandnephew, and screenwriter/ historian Ian Holt. It will be released on October 13, 2009. Overall, I think more vampires would have been there if all of the festivities had been held after dark. It’s not easy finding your way to the conference through the sewers in Hollywood. Not everyone can afford to have black limos with darkened windows deliver them to the front door!

Last week Entertainment Weekly did a big cover story on vampires called “Hungry for Vampires”. They interviewed a lot of the popular authors that are writing vampire fiction right now including Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer, Melissa de la Cruz, Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris and P.C. Cast. The best part of the article, however was the rating of their idea of the 20 Greatest Vampires of All Time. In general I agree with the vampires they chose, but not the order. I believe two great vampires were missed and should have been included in there somewhere. Jerry Dandrige played by Chris Sarandon in Fright Night was a creepy vampire even if he was somewhat campy and Spike, my personal favorite, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Spike was the Billy Idol of vampires and James Marsters, who played him, did a brilliant job of balancing a dangerous vampire with a vampire that was in love and wanted to change. I might also complain about what was written by the EW editors about Anne Rice’s Lestat. “Without Lestat, there would be no Twilight. Until Anne Rice introduced the character in her 1976 novel, Interview With the Vampire, the undead had all the sex appeal of Bela Lugosi in plastic fangs.” I completely disagree with that statement. There would be no Twilight or Leastat without Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I, and many others, found vampires extremely sexy and attractive long before we had even heard of Anne Rice. Don’t get me wrong she’s a wonderful writer and Lestat is a great character, but to say that she created the sexy vampire is just wrong.

I’m not sure if this is really creepy or just weird. You decide. A French artist by the name of John Nouanesing designed this table that he refers to as “Paint or die but love me”. I will refer to it as the Blood Table because that’s what it looks like. Unfortunately the website does not give much information about it. It is however only a conceptual design. If it was or ever will be real I’m sure it’s way beyond my pocketbook even if I did want it. Which I don’t. It is very interesting though. I wonder what it could be made of. I’d be afraid that the drips would break off. If it was tall enough I’d use it in my kitchen. That way if I cut my finger the blood wouldn’t show and it certainly wouldn’t stain if it was at all porous.

This is so freaking fantastic! I am so excited to tell you that after a more than 2 year long wait since the announcement The Addams Family musical is set to debut on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre April 8th 2010 with previews starting March 4th. The pre-Broadway run will be in Chicago beginning November 13th if you just can’t wait. Tickets are already on sale here.

The production will star Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth as Gomez and Morticia Addams. Uncle Fester will be played by Kevin Chamberlin, Jackie Hoffman as Grandmama, Zachary James as Lurch, Adam Riegler as Pugsley and Krysta Rodriquez as Wednesday. Rounding out the cast will be Terrence Mann and Carolee Carmello as Mel and Alice Beineke with Wesley Taylor playing Lucas Beineke.

For story and information, visit www.theaddamsfamilymusical.com.

So, ever wonder what brought Jane to the Dark Side? Well, even if you didn’t I’m going to share anyway. It seems I have liked all things scary my whole life, but it really started when I was still little Jane. I believe the year was 1983. MTV was all the rage and I loved it. One day after school when I was watching MTV this amazing video came on called Don’t Pay The Ferryman by Chris De Burgh. I was transfixed. It was creepy, spooky and it didn’t hurt that the guy was cute. Hey it was the 80s give me a break. To my young eyes it was a world that I had never seen before and I wanted to be in it. I had loved Scooby Doo for years, and still do, but this was better. Now, unlike some of you, I have never been into the gorey side of life. Gorey is not scary to me. I like scary and this was it for me. Some might say that I am Goth. I think I was too early for that, at least what we know of as Goth today. The Goth culture started in the US in the early 80s, but it is not what we consider Goth to be now. I like scary better anyhow and I believe it all started with this video. So check it out.

Being a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all things vampire in general, I always keep my eyes out for anything vampire related. I came across this great article in Newsweek about people’s obsession with vampires that you just have to check out.

“Bite Me! Why We Love Vampires”