Plastic Pumpkins

Miracle Of The Bells

2011-12-10T21:02:00.011-05:00

Mellow Yellow

2011-12-10T21:00:00.002-05:00

Buzzed

2011-12-04T02:31:00.001-05:00

Plastic Pumpkin's Christmas In December!

2011-12-01T14:36:00.003-05:00

Tryin' to put a little life back into the blog in between Octobers... let's celebrate 24 Days of Christmas with daily doses of old Christmas cards and scraps of wrapping paper and any whatever other tinseled bits of this and that what catches my eye!

Misty, Pumpkin Colored Memories

2011-11-01T22:37:00.012-04:00

Just Under The Wire

2011-10-31T23:41:00.003-04:00

The bad news is that a self-destructing modem caused me to miss out on the last few days of this year's countdown. The good news is that all the stuff I didn't get to post in the last two days will make for a nice head start to next year's countdown. The other good news is that the new modem is up and running just in time to wish you all-

And if you all can stand one more day of Countdown fun then stop back by tomorrow and I'll have a post full of some of the photos ya'll would have seen this weekend if the fates had been so kind!

"Bwack-Bwack-Bwack-Bwack-Bwack-Bwack-Bwack-Bwack, Batman!"

2011-10-31T23:37:00.003-04:00

Here's a cartoon from the book "Scream Cheese and Jelly" which I posted about earlier in the countdown. This one tickled me so that I had to give it a post all its own.

I'm a sucker for fowl humor.

No Hope

2011-10-28T22:20:00.002-04:00

Too Ghoul For School

2011-10-27T15:26:00.018-04:00

After a four year absence, Ghoul & The Gang make their triumphant return to the Countdown!

Clown White

2011-10-26T20:16:00.003-04:00

As part of his blog's contribution to this year's countdown, John Rozum is offering up a different paper mask every day for you to print out and, I'm assuming, wear to work. That's what I'm doing. Now, not to steal John's thunder or anything, but I'm pretty sure that if he spent another 100 years scanning and posting paper masks he would never find anything as terrifying as this clown mask from an old issue of Jack & Jill. This is not your average run of the mill level of clown horrification either. This clown is something just a step above regular clown evil. This clown will eat your face off and then write a seven part series of articles about the experience for Rolling Stone Magazine. This clown will not only tip 10% for perfectly adequate table service, but he will also use his new iPhone tip calculating app to figure out how much that 10% will be. This clown makes honey badger care. This clown is standing right behind you, even as you read this. Good luck with that.

You Get Three Guesses And The First Two Don't Count...

2011-10-26T20:13:00.001-04:00

Monster Jams

2011-10-25T23:46:00.004-04:00

The Unsettling Private Lives of Superperson and Mudball

2011-10-25T15:06:00.002-04:00

Milk Dud

2011-10-23T23:37:00.003-04:00

Have you ever been at a book sale and saw an old children's book there that you thought would be full of all sorts of great illustrations for your blog's Hallowe'en Countdown so you snatched it up without even giving a quick glance inside, but when you got home and thumbed through it you realized how mistaken you were? That there were only a few drab drawings of a couple nondescript kids and a little old lady? Well, this is that book.

As far as the story... well, as early as the second page I was reassured that in spite of their previously pagan ways and their worshiping of the Prince of Darkness, the Celts eventually accepted the one God so- "Whew!" That's all I was really worried about, anyway.

There is, however, this picture of a cow with a sheet over its head, so it wasn't a complete waste of a dime-

That 70's Show

2011-10-23T18:35:00.001-04:00

Plastic Pumpkins After Dark

2011-10-22T22:05:00.006-04:00

I saved this post for late on a Saturday night because of the slightly risque nature of its origins. Hopefully all of the little kiddies are tucked safely in bed by now because the image above comes straight to you out of a 1974 copy of Penthouse Magazine! Believe you me when I started thumbing through a skin mag that was published before I had even started to lose my baby teeth the last thing I expected to find was material for the Hallowe'en Countdown, but there it was. And what a strange little critter it is. Looking at this cartoon you'd probably think that it was an accompanying illustration to this issue's token piece of literature, but you'd be wrong. This was a full-page, full-colored cartoon sandwiched all by its lonesome between that month's centerfold (her name was Doone Buddy) and an article about the coming gas crisis. Just bizarre. I have no idea what the cartoonist was going for here. Was he trying for a macabre Charles Addams vibe? Did he forget that Charles Addams was macabre and funny? Is there something going on here that I'm missing? Had the surgical staff just gotten back from a business meeting at a sushi bar? Is this irony?

The other interesting 'thing' about this cartoon is that it predates John Carpenter's version of The Thing, and that movie's defibrillator scene, by almost a decade. I'm not saying that John Carpenter steals all his ideas from old porno mags, but he probably almost certainly does.

And yes, it was all I could do to not title this post 'Tentacle Porn,' but that kind of web traffic I don't need. Although, now I've gone and said it so there's that bell having been rung.

How To Host A Dynamite Monster Bash, Step Two: The Decor

2011-10-22T03:47:00.001-04:00

War Wohl Jedermann Bekannt Er War Ein Bluatsauger

2011-10-21T22:12:00.001-04:00

Kidnap The Sandy Claws

2011-10-21T22:08:00.002-04:00

Open Wide

2011-10-20T02:21:00.003-04:00

You Don't Choose The Pumpkin, The Pumpkin Chooses You...

2011-10-20T02:20:00.000-04:00

This Is Just A Picture Of One Fine-Looking Scarecrow

2011-10-19T23:48:00.002-04:00

How To Host A Dynamite Monster Bash, Step One: The Invites

2011-10-19T23:46:00.004-04:00

True Crypt

2011-10-18T15:51:00.002-04:00

In the past six years of participating in the Hallowe'en Countdown I've been responsible for sharing an awful lot of headache-inducing attempts at humor, but I really think that I may have crossed a line here and for that I apologize.

From "Wacky Classics" by Tony Tallarico.

Creature Of The Night

2011-10-17T21:31:00.001-04:00

Plant Scratch Fever

2011-10-16T19:38:00.009-04:00

It's Hallowe'en lottery card scratch off time!

I have to say that I'm a little bit disappointed that the Virginia Lottery went with a 'Plants Vs Zombies' tie-in this year. Not that I am in any way against crass commercialism, I just enjoy a more classic Hallowe'en motif on my lottery tickets. But if I win $500 I'll make do without the Jack O'Lanterns and black cats just fine.

Did not win $50.

Did not win $20.

That is the second time in a space of less than 30 seconds that I have not won $20. What are the odds of that happening?

Really, you stupid 'Plants Vs Zombies' scratch off card? I didn't even win $5? Really?

I better at least get a free ticket out of this...

Stupid 'Plants Vs Zombies' lottery card!

Atari Evil

2011-10-15T21:50:00.002-04:00

Before Resident Evil. Before Silent Hill. Before Doom.... Haunted House was the first (and second) name in video game horror. The premise was simple, but sinister- stay alive inside a haunted house long enough to gather the pieces of a shattered urn (Super Glue not included) and then find your way back out again. The giant tarantulas, rabid bats and fearsome shades that would appear out of nowhere made this game an edge of your seat thrill ride that you wouldn't want to play when you were home alone on a dark and stormy night.

If you're too young to have played Haunted House back in its early '80's heydays you're in luck- someone has taken the time to post an entire round of the game on YouTube-

I look back on things like this and often wonder at how stupid the world was in my youth.

Tomb Reader

2011-10-14T11:17:00.000-04:00

Self Portrait

2011-10-13T20:19:00.000-04:00

The Footie Pajamas Of Satan

2011-10-12T15:24:00.006-04:00

I love the illustrations in this book, but some of the puns are bad enough to kill a goat. One of those nervous fainting goat types. If you took this book out into a field of fainting goats and read a few pages aloud I'm sure you'd stop the hearts of at least a good half dozen of the little high strung ungulates. If you want to try it out for yourself you can find copies of this book on Amazon. A new copy will cost you $61.00 American or you can grab a used one for 13 cents. Or you can split the difference and pick up a copy at your local Friends of the Library book sale for a quarter, which is what I did. And yes, 25 cents is the difference between 13 cents and 61 dollars. Never question my math.

Are that one dude's feet part of his clothing? Does he change feet according to the whim of the moment like that lady in Oz changed heads?

Scooby-Doo, Onde Você Está?

2011-10-11T01:42:00.005-04:00

I don't know what's going on here, but I'm almost 100% certain that an entire museum devoted to Scooby-Doo is opening up in the Little Portugal section of San Francisco.

Room 217

2011-10-10T20:31:00.003-04:00

Photograph by my friend, James Torrence. Hence the reference to "The Shining." Get it? Although it's 'Torrance' with an 'a' in the book. So that sucks some of the clever out of it. And there wasn't so much clever in it to begin with that it can afford to go around losing any of it.

The Cunning Use Of Flags or Your 2011 Columbus Day Bonus Post

2011-10-10T20:18:00.004-04:00

Be careful while you are looking for these hidden objects that you don't accidentally run into some completely different objects altogether and think that they were the objects that you were looking for in the first place even though they are nowhere near where those objects actually are. Or something like that. What did this guy do, again? He found something that he wasn't looking for that other people had already found and that wasn't what he thought it was anyway? Something like that? Or he found someplace that nobody had found before, but thought it was someplace that everybody already knew about? Which one of those was it? Was he a Pilgrim? Was he before the Pilgrims or after the Pilgrims? He was Italian, right? Was he the one who stole noodles from the Chinese and took them back to Italy so that centuries later Americans would think that Italians invented noodles? Noodle stealing bastard!

Happy Columbus Day!

Pokemon

2011-10-09T21:28:00.001-04:00

Scooby Don't

2011-10-08T16:28:00.003-04:00

Here's a spooky little tale from "Grimm's Ghost Stories" that traumatized me as a child, but more on that after the comic-

This seemingly low key tale of terror played (still plays, I suppose) on one of my biggest fears and that would be the fear of baseballs. It's not pathological or anything, just a healthy respect for the little round missiles of death that was born from the fact that when I was a kid my father was a volunteer fireman and every spring and summer he would take part in the local firefighters baseball league. Those guys may have been great smoke eaters, but they were lousy baseball players. I would say that a good 90% of the balls that they managed to hit ignored the outfield completely and veered straight for the bleachers. People would scramble madly out of the way, hot dogs and giant foam fingers flung to the wind, as an itty-bitty horsehair comet plummeted from the sky to smack off of the metal bleachers with a deafening 'CLANK!' and then ricochet off into god only knew what direction. I spent most every one of those games looking for excuses to hunker down behind the cinder block concession stand as far out of the line of fire as I was allowed to stray.

It was nerve rattling, to say the least.

The fact that this guy killed someone when he was a kid and then didn't find out about it until many years later unnerved me as well. After reading this comic I spent many long hours going over and over in my head any point in my life where I may have similarly been responsible for the death of a fellow human being and not even been aware of the fact. That train of thought kept me awake more than one night.

In case you were wondering... the number of times I think it was possible that I may have accidentally killed someone when I was a kid is three, but we won't go into that now.

Dinogourd

2011-10-07T20:51:00.002-04:00

Crayorlok

2011-10-06T01:54:00.004-04:00

By Angus Carter.

Goin' To A Party Where No One's Still Alive

2011-10-05T01:01:00.000-04:00

A Night Of Fright Is DY-NO-MITE!

2011-10-04T15:37:00.004-04:00

I have a feeling that this will be the first of many Dynamite magazine centric posts this month as I have a stack of issues from that publication, the surface of which has barely been scratched in regards to Hallowe'een Countdown material...

The Funny Bone Of A Madman

2011-10-03T21:50:00.002-04:00

From "Wacky Classics" by Tony Tallarico.

A Simple Little Witch In A Simple Little Box

2011-10-02T22:04:00.001-04:00

A simple little way to start things off.

It Beginnieth!

2011-10-01T23:15:00.004-04:00

Are you ready for this? 'Cause I'm ready for this. I'm almost ready for this. I'll be ready for this tomorrow. In the meantime, click that link above and go check out some of the other participating blogs. Here it is only the first day of the countdown and some of those guys and gals already have three or four Hallowe'en related posts up on their sites. I hate those people. They make people like me look bad. People who wait until the very last minute (i.e. 11:20 PM on Oct. 1st) to start scanning and planning and photographing their Hallowe'en countdown contributions. I am so very, very almost ready for this...

If you're new to this blog then there are a few things you should know to make your stay here more enjoyable. First thing you should know: I always spell "Hallowe'en" just that way. "Hallowe'en." With the obsolete apostrophe. It just looks cooler with the apostrophe and also I'm pretentious that way. Second thing you should know: even I don't really know what's going on with those Beakbelly posts. If one of those happen to show up just roll with it, baby. Just roll with it. Also, if you missed last year's Hallowe'en Countdown and would like to see what I posted way back in October of last year then just scroll right down to the post directly below this one because I HAVE NOT POSTED ANYTHING SINCE THEN! I am the worst!

Now go do some virtual trick or treating and come on back here tomorrow and tell me who has the best candy and who's just got Butterfingers and Mary Janes.

The Finish Line...

2010-10-31T21:36:00.001-04:00

The Bone Collector

2010-10-31T18:15:00.000-04:00

One Last Pun Before We're Done

2010-10-31T18:11:00.001-04:00

High Five

2010-10-31T17:49:00.001-04:00

Comes The Tartan Pumpkin

2010-10-30T23:42:00.003-04:00

Awhile back I stumbled across a "Make You Own Superhero" widget at the Marvel Comics Kids site (Can't find it now or I'd hook you up with a link) It was pretty low-tech... a couple different choices of gloves and masks and costumes that you could mix and match and color to your whims. I went with a Hallowe'en theme... surprise!... and created the official defender of all that is right and good with Hallowe'en. Presenting- "The Tartan Pumpkin!"

Thriller

2010-10-30T22:41:00.003-04:00

Bloodlass

2010-10-30T22:31:00.005-04:00

If she's that easy to lasso with a floaty ring or bean with a see-saw then just go ahead and stake her already...

Portrait Of The Blogger As Ghoul

2010-10-30T22:29:00.007-04:00

When all the signs for the Haunted Woods tell you that it is not intended for small children, when the tickets tell you not to bring very small children, when every advertisement and article written about the event tells you that it will be far too intense for young children... don't bring young children. If you want to come, but can't find a sitter then suck it up and stay at home. Know what that's called? That's called being a parent. There's nothing less fun then lurching out of your dark hiding place intending to scare crap and Christmas out of a group of adults and instead finding yourself face to face with a petrified four-year-old. How many times can one ghoul say, "Sorry your mom & dad suck. Hope you sleep again this week."

Frankenstein & Mirth

2010-10-27T16:11:00.001-04:00

A Great Fall

2010-10-25T17:08:00.002-04:00

One Random Bat As We Close In On Hallowe'en

2010-10-25T17:01:00.001-04:00

The Zombies Are Due On Maple Street

2010-10-24T04:43:00.019-04:00

Full Moon Stew

2010-10-23T19:05:00.001-04:00

What's In A Name?

2010-10-21T16:11:00.003-04:00

"But Flops Never Die. Flops Never Die."

2010-10-20T23:00:00.003-04:00

Horror musicals are rare, but not entirely unheard of. Some musicals with horror-heavy story lines become pretty well known... "Little Shop of Horrors" "Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" and "Phantom of the Opera" as three examples... and some settle quite comfortably into their off-Broadway cult hit niche... "Zombie Prom" & "Evil Dead, The Musical" the second of those two examples being the only musical theater experience from which I returned drenched in blood or at least a syrupy, crimson facsimile thereof. Hail a cab looking like that, I dare you! (Actually, it was pretty easy. New York is weird.) Then there is the horror musical which has the... is 'honor' the right word to use here?... honor of being the biggest flop in Broadway theater history. "Carrie," based on the Stephen King novel, ran for all of five days, lost some $7 million and has become the standard by which all Broadway flops are measured.

When a Broadway show, especially a musical, flops it flops hard. These things take a lot of money to get off the ground and if one turns out to be an early-folding stinker then there are no overseas DVD sales or late night cable reruns to help recoup the cash put into them. A five night run is not unheard of in theater, some shows have been shut down after opening night and some never even make it that far. And many shows run for months and months (and months) before they start that happy process of not losing money. If "Carrie" had just closed early and lost a lot of money then very few people would even remember it had ever existed, but the people who made "Carrie" pretty much managed to define and distill everything that makes for a bad Broadway musical and then crank all that up to eleven. 99.9% of every decision made about the choreography, the set design, the costuming and the special effects was wrong. Many words have been written on what was wrong about "Carrie" and if you are even halfway interested in the subject then I encourage you to go Googling for them. It makes for some fascinating and fun reading. But I'm not here to talk about all the wrongs in "Carrie" I'm here to honor one of the rights.

If you're not big into the musicals and the name Betty Buckley means anything at all to you it's probably because she played the role of Abbey on "Eight Is Enough" back in the '70's or '80's or whenever that show aired and because she played Carrie White's gym teacher in the movie version of "Carrie." If you have even a passing familiarity with Broadway then you probably know her as the beltress of the song "Memory" from that play about the singing kitty cats. But what you really need to know about Betty Buckley is that she is to musical theater as oxygen is to human life. I don't think that I overstate. I have never, never, never ( may I add... never, never, never) heard a bad Betty Buckley performance. Her voice is a beautiful, trilling, powerhouse instrument that makes me shudder with happy every time that I hear it. With the musical version of "Carrie" Betty Buckley returned to the Stephen King story only this time not as the gym teacher, but as Carrie's insane, abusive and religiously fanatical mother. And good golly what a time she had in the role.

I was looking for a nice musical interlude for the Hallowe'en Countdown and I think the horror story background of "Carrie" makes it appropriate for the season. There was no official cast recording made for the show and no commercially produced video. The only recordings of the show that exist today are audience taped bootlegs and the soundboard recording of the show made for copyright purposes. The clip I'm posting today is a combination of both of these things and I'm sure that whoever originally posted them to YouTube didn't have any sort of legal right to do so. Yeah bootlegs are bad, but when there's no commercially available alternative then I figure nobody's losing any money on the deal so what the heck. Slippery slope maybe, but did I mention that Betty Buckley is a goddess of music? If illegal is the only way that I'm going to hear her singing "And Eve Was Weak" then slap the prison stripes on me and call me '24601.'

So a little haunting, holiday music for you as Margaret White goes bible-beating, bat shit crazy on her recently-menstruating and newly-telekinetic daughter...

Creepy Crafts

2010-10-19T22:08:00.007-04:00

From SuperMag and The Electric Company Magazine-

One Random Jack O'Lantern

2010-10-18T22:06:00.000-04:00

Four Faces Of Hallowe'en

2010-10-17T22:13:00.001-04:00

And The Third Little Pig Built His Broom Of Bricks

2010-10-16T16:03:00.005-04:00

Bogies & Bubble Men

2010-10-15T03:14:00.005-04:00

From "Buster's Monster Fun Holiday Special" 1982

Box Of Colors

2010-10-14T02:19:00.002-04:00

They Aren't Wrinkles, They're Laugh Lines...

2010-10-13T03:22:00.004-04:00

Paper Bag Scarecrows

2010-10-12T17:04:00.002-04:00

Putting Words In Her Mouth

2010-10-11T23:01:00.004-04:00

Apparently there was an unwritten rule that some form of the word 'dearie' had to be included in the final cartoon. This was, I am certain, in homage to legendary jazz singer and Schoolhouse Rock contributor, Blossom Dearie.

Zoinks!

2010-10-10T22:08:00.001-04:00

Dead Letters

2010-10-09T23:11:00.002-04:00

Sweet, Sweet Candy

2010-10-08T14:06:00.002-04:00

Insert Alliterative Post Title Here

2010-10-07T01:06:00.002-04:00

The Scarecrow Tree

2010-10-06T01:06:00.004-04:00

Bell, Book And Kryptonite

2010-10-05T14:52:00.004-04:00

Yes, flying alien boy in blue Spandex... people in the old days sure did swallow some mighty ridiculous notions.

Then in the very next panel, Superboy is whisked off to the 50th century or thereabouts and he and Lana Lang's great-great-great-grandsomething have an adventure that has nothing to do with Hallowe'en or witches, but Santa Claus does make a cameo so that's one post for the Christmas countdown taken care of.

Glamour Ghouls

2010-10-04T01:38:00.007-04:00

Can you name all of these femme fatales and the movies they appeared in? The first one's a gimme...

Illustrations by Katrina Taylor from Dynamite Magazine #32

Phantasm

2010-10-03T01:15:00.000-04:00

Gourd Humor

2010-10-02T20:45:00.002-04:00

Let The Right Bunny In

2010-10-01T14:01:00.002-04:00

I'd Forgotten How Cool The Word "Hallowe'en" Looks With That Apostrophe Stuck In There!

2010-09-30T22:10:00.004-04:00

Boy, is it musty in here.

It smells like a grandmother's attic... old paper, old toys, old clothing all baking together in an peaked cedar oven... it's making me a bit light-headed. Shoulda cracked a window before I left.

Quiet in here, too. And dark. And a bit lonely. And I keep thinking I see something moving around in the darker corners, behind all the boxes and the dressmaker's dummy. Actually, I don't remember there being a dressmaker's dummy in here...

Hey, remember when I had a blog somewhere around these parts? Well, if you do than you are obviously doing a lot better than me in the memory retention department 'cause I seem to have forgotten all about it. One lonely little post since the end of last year's Hallowe'en Countdown and here I am slipping in the front door about two hours before this year's countdown begins to throw my Ben Cooper mask into the ring and say "Hey! You five people who still check in here once a week or so... I'm back!"

Thrilled. The crowd is thrilled. I can feel the trilling of your thrilling right through my Yoo-Hoo sticky and Cheetoh-dyed keyboard.

Forsaken and forgotten poor little Plastic Pumpkins may be, but there's no way I could let a Hallowe'en Countdown pass by without taking part in it in some minor fashion. So for the next 31 days I'll be here doing my small, quiet bit to celebrate the season with a least one Hallowe'en-ish post each day. My contributions this time around won't be anywhere near as elaborate as they may have been in past years, but there are plenty of other blogs out there picking up the slack and if you click on the cool Cryptkeeper button to the right of your screen you'll be zapped to Countdown central and from there you can fan out, ringing as many doorbells as you can before Oct. 31st. The virtual goodie bag is bottomless so don't be shy. Grab as much as you can! Every blog with the front porch light on is fair game!

Hey! Where'd that dummy go?

"Beware Thy Bane On The Rocky Lane"

2010-02-28T01:23:00.016-05:00

And Once Again We Reach An End...

2009-10-31T18:20:00.004-04:00

Favorite Hallowe'en Picture Ever!

2009-10-31T16:05:00.001-04:00

Me and my nephew a few years back. A portrait of two people who have each had one too many Hallowe'en cupcakes... I don't remember who vomited first.

Return To Hallowe'en Town

2009-10-30T22:21:00.011-04:00

The Foot Of The Stairs

2009-10-29T22:49:00.002-04:00

Random Witch #4

2009-10-29T22:42:00.001-04:00

Random Vampire #3

2009-10-29T22:41:00.002-04:00

Jack & Jill Went Up The Hill To Fetch A Plastic Pumpkin!

2009-10-28T00:28:00.014-04:00

Okay, that picture isn't really Hallowe'eny but how could I resist it?

Little Green Monster

2009-10-27T02:19:00.003-04:00

Do The Mash

2009-10-27T02:17:00.000-04:00

Greetings From The Hollow

2009-10-27T02:16:00.000-04:00

Three Sisters

2009-10-27T02:15:00.000-04:00

Marvelous Monsters Of Filmland

2009-10-26T02:56:00.008-04:00

Random Witch(es) #3

2009-10-26T02:29:00.000-04:00

Paper Clown

2009-10-26T02:28:00.001-04:00

Your Sunny, Funny Face...

2009-10-25T02:48:00.000-04:00

Hallowe'en Words

2009-10-25T02:47:00.001-04:00

Random Vampire #2

2009-10-25T02:37:00.000-04:00

Humpty Dumpty's Tales Of Terror

2009-10-24T03:36:00.007-04:00

On the surface this story may not be as spine-tingling as last year's tale of a serial killer stalking a Hallowe'en costume party dressed in the skin of his victim, but when you know that witch tradition demands that those you trick-or-treat with one year must be devoured alive in a cleansing ritual before the next year's trick-or-treating may commence, well then... that final line leaves a chill!

Monsters Rule O.K.

2009-10-23T19:37:00.028-04:00

Don't be afraid to click on that last guy. It's not like his eyes are gonna pop out of his head or anything...

Gag Me With A Broom

2009-10-22T17:59:00.002-04:00

Random Ghost #1

2009-10-21T02:08:00.002-04:00

It's Not Just Hot, It's Swizzle Stick Hot!

2009-10-20T03:10:00.004-04:00

I would have much rather have found the actual model or even the box that it came in, but the instruction sheet is kind of a work of art in and of itself what with all of that groovy '60's drag-racing talk and the fact that I've decided that 'swizzle stick hot' will be an excellent addition to my catalog of nonsense slang that I whip out at odd conversational moments. Usually during religious ceremonies.