Halloween Aftermath

Alright, so we've already established that I don't like Halloween, so perhaps you're wondering whether I did anything Halloweeny at all. Well, I'll indulge your insatiable curiosity just this once, but then I swear we're not talking about this wretched "holiday" for at least another year.

See, I use quotation fingers and loaded words such as "wretched" to make my negative opinion toward Halloween stronger than it really is.

I don't hate Halloween; it's just that almost everything about it is either unappealing or flat-out repulsive to me, and I deal with it. Sort of like celebrating Christmas with a relative who means well but doesn't realize he or she has given you the same pair of hideous socks every year, and though it bothers you to put on a fake grin and stare at the ugly pattern once again, it always turns out that you forgot to pack socks and need to wear them the next day anyhow.

Or something like that.

So what did I do for Halloween? I indulged my girlfriend, who brought back a stack of movies taller than the average trick-or-treater, and picked out two Halloween-ish movies to watch with her and my father, who happens to love horror films. Well, I managed to trick them both into thinking that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a horror movie (not really--they'd both seen it), so we watched that one first.

Honestly? My outlook became a ghoulish touch more positive when I saw Joss Whedon was involved, but despite some of the clever one-liners I've come to expect from him after watching Firefly, I was bored. Now, the movie didn't take itself seriously, which helped me to refrain from the kind of squirming I usually do when vampires show up, but it wasn't ridiculous enough to cross the line between being a vampire flick and being a total parody. And I just don't care much for vampires, fang you very much.

I don't care much for zombies, either, but next on the list was Resident Evil: Extinction. Don't act so surprised. I actually saw the first two Resident Evil movies, but those are more like action movies with zombies than horror movies. Also, I sat in on enough of the first one with my dad one time to know that I'd be able to tolerate it if I watched it the whole way through, and the movies are based on a video game, which automatically makes them a little more OK for me to watch.

I enjoyed Extinction more than Buffy, but mostly because there were a few cool action sequences and one or two neat ideas that I appreciated. Mercifully, the movie was just barely over 90 minutes long; it didn't overstay its welcome.

After that we shifted gears and played Castlevania for the NES. My ultimate plan is to expose my girlfriend to all the video games I own, and Castlevania is the kind of series and any gamer worth his or her garlic salt should be aware of.

The original Castlevania is rock-hard, unforgiving, and frustrating to control. And I think I accidentally played the Portuguese version. Yaaaay.

To cap off the evening, we did the one thing I actually do look forward to every Halloween--we watched the latest Homestar Runner Halloween toon, where all the characters dress up in funny costumes and ridiculous things happen. Hilarious.

Oh, and I ate a 3 Musketeers bar.

I also spent the night before Halloween preparing a video for GameCola wishing our fans a Happy Halloween, and I like how it turned out.



Fun fact: The video was made using an NES emulator, PowerPoint, and MS Paint. And I'll be darned if it wasn't an enjoyable challenge figuring out how to make the kind of video I wanted with such primitive technology.

No, Halloween wasn't a miserable experience for me; the company was good, my girlfriend will finally stop bugging me to see Buffy, Resident Evil was decent enough, I got to do a little exfanding with Castlevania, making the video was a lot of fun, and I ate a 3 Musketeers bar. As far as Halloweens go, this one wasn't so bad at all.

Oh, and against my better judgment, I got all festive and dressed up in costume for Halloween.

I put on an orange t-shirt.

Happy Halloween.