Hop on over to Invisible Oranges, my favorite metal blog, to read my report on Bloodstock 2011. It was a hell of a time.

Somehow, someway, we did indeed survive.

I plan on writing an in-depth review of the festival later (these things take a bit of time to digest), but here is a summary of things that came out it:

• We saw a ton of amazing bands that we had already loved, but more importantly learned of a bunch of new ones
• We drank stupid amounts of beer
• We got jealous of everyone’s patch jackets so we decided that we would make our own. We bought 13 patches a piece.
• We saw lots of people dressed in silly outfits.
• We saw lots of actual blood.
• We smelled like manure

I’m currently on a train that just left London, Vincent should be landing in Birmingham at any moment.

In case you didn’t know, we’re going to Bloodstock, an annual shitshow of metal in the middle of bumfuck UK.

There is no way this can end well. Will keep you posted.

In my post about Creepy, I mention that one of my favorite parts of the magazines are the vintage advertisements for all the little knickknacks, many of which are for monster rings.

I want monster rings. I want all kinds of them.

I started searching, and wouldn’t you know, some other people share a similar love for them. Check out toyranch’s toy ring Flickr set for many great ones.

If you’re really brave, search on eBay for the suckers, you can find some old ones there.

More eye candy for you:

http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/2011/08/amazing-poster-art-of-albert-kallis.html

Is a pretty damn awesome concept, designed by German artist Oliver Paass for a German horror TV station called 13th Street (made me laugh too). Check out this video about it.

[Via Neatorama]

Today is M. Night Shyamalan‘s birthday. I generally think his movies are complete garbage and incite eye gouging, but I recently saw his latest flick, Devil, and finally found a movie of his I liked (I kinda like Unbreakable but it was just so cheesy).

In case you were asleep for the past year, here’s the trailer from Devil, worth at least a spot in your Netflix queue:

And what Creepy does it put me in a very happy and calm world where I can detox from a day of bits and loops and schemas and other complexities that stress my already stressed brain more than I should let it.

When I reach for a read right after a stressful day, the last thing I want to do is get into something that’s going to be as difficult or more difficult than what I had already been focusing on for 10+ hours.

Not saying that Creepy is dumb, but far from it. It’s downright witty!

The reason I started picking up the old Creepy books was that Dark Horse has put out a new version of the book (volume 1 recently came out), and I picked that up and started doing some research. The whole story of Warren publishing is inspiring.

Creepy Magazine. #1 was published in 1964, about 10 years after Tales From the Crypt was canceled amid pressure from the Comic Code Authority (assholes). What Warren did was to release the comics in magazine format instead, bypassing the authority. Awesome.

The original Creepy has since been re-released as a series of 5-issue collections by Dark Horse, and is already up to the 9th volume.

Creepy is very much in the vein of TFTC: short stories, good prologue, a build up, and generally, a twist! The content varies from volume to volume, but you’re guaranteed to get a full dose of classic monsters (werewolves, vampires), some sci-fi (weird worlds, space), and lots of “karma is a bitch, now you’ll die” revenge stories. All easy to read, and each like candy, making you crave more after more.

One of the coolest parts of these archives is that they’ve included original read letters, as well as the old advertisements for things like monster rings, ant farms, movies, etc. Brings back memories no matter what era you were born.

I also picked up Eerie Archives Volume 1, and read it, and some consider it better than Creepy, which is weird considering they use the same authors and artists. Both good.

There’s a Creepy website too, although sadly, it is very old.

Look, I’m not above admitting that I only run this site to extol the brilliance that is Matt, the man who runs the original “remember this?” site: X-Entertainment. He’s been doing this shit since before youtube, before blogs were called “blogs,” and before anyone was talking about Thundercats after 1988. He is a genius, a gift, and the reason I read the internet every day. Well, no one online quite appreciates Halloween quite like Matt does, and Matt has begun his 2011 Halloween Countdown. Observe and appreciate. You owe him: