Poor Halloween, stuck on a lousy Wednesday. So far away from the weekend. Of course, Halloween is one of those holidays that expires almost immediately and has no carryover into the month of November. You can carry over the Christmas spirit all the way up until New Year’s, but not Halloween. You really worry about anyone who’s still dressing up in costumes and playing with jack-o-lanterns just a couple days away from Election Day.
This season was a mixed bag for me. I started out real good early on, hitting many haunted houses. But as the month wore on, I didn’t get out to any others. Also, I didn’t catch any new haunted specials on TV so I’m disappointed in myself for not squeezing in more Halloween stuff.

But I hit new scary locales this year, including Kings Island Halloween Haunt. I was interested to see how something with the resources of an amusement park chain would handle Halloween. I was pretty impressed. They had multiple dark attractions as well as some outdoor arenas where ghosts and goblins jumped out at you. And if you pre-ordered tickets online, they price was pretty good. Otherwise, way too expensive. Once the sun went down and they cranked up the fog machines, the atmosphere was pretty excellent. Especially when guys like the one above wandered up to you while you’re waiting in line.

Let me know what Halloween things you did and a scary Sock Point will come after you and try to drink your blood.

Boy, I sure talked a lot about all the fun I had this weekend at the Bengals game, didn’t I? Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Turns out I was so busy going on and on about me, I forgot to thank the folks that made it possible. Lisa’s family was behind all the fun I had. They got the tickets, handled parking, and even gave me a homebase for my tailgating adventure. So, a big thank you to her parents, her sister, and her sister’s husband for a great time, depsite how much the Bengals stink.

Besides, it’s a great opportunity to show off my pics again, including where I got to meet the infamous Bengals Stormtrooper. I’ll try to get one that doesn’t have the sun blurring out my head, unless you prefer it that way. Again, here are my Flickr pictures from the day. Enjoy all the orange and black.

“Those aren’t ideas, those are special effects.”

Fine, let’s get this out of the way. The Steelers came into Cincinnati and won… again. That’s seven straight times they’ve beaten the Bengals in their own home. Now Marvin Lewis and his boys are 2-5. The NFL playoffs are pretty much a crack pipe dream for this year. The franchise’s performance is having everyone in town talk again like it’s the 1990s… which is not a good time in Bengaldom.

But I had a great time yesterday. It was my first chance to take part in any Bengals tailgating action. Normally, I get there right at kickoff. This time, I was there hours early and made my way through the parking lots surrounding Paul Brown Stadium. I got to enjoy the fan experience before the team tried to spoil the day with their soiled play on the field. While amongst my people, I saw some things I never saw before (liquor luge!) and even met the Mayor. (Although, I was much more jazzed about meeting the Bengals stormtrooper after the game. Man, that guy is a superstar.) Here are my pictures from the festivities, pre-game, during game, and post game.

If your sports team did well this weekend, or if they stunk like mine, let us know here in the comment section. Maybe a Sock Point will help soothe the wounded pride or make that victory taste that much sweeter.

My thoughts exactly, Carson. As nice as last week’s win was, it was against a stinky Jets team who definitely helped give the Bengals victory. That won’t be the case today. These Steelers have won their last six trips to Cincinnati. Based on the way these two teams are going this year, it’ll probably be seven straight. But I’m hoping not. Especially since I will be in Paul Brown Stadium to root on the home team. I’d hate to have to put a paper bag on my head by the end of the day. And for the rest of the year.

“Whoever invented rope was a real a-hole.”

Here’s footage of an area hospital that’s been abandoned for years. You can pretty much skip over the first thirty seconds. But the money shot’s in the last 15 or so seconds.

Ooooh, man. Are you impressed with the video “evidence” of a local haunted place? Or do you think it’s fake?

You can send me a YouTube link and if I like it (or need it) enough to put it up here, Sock Point to you.

Feel free to send your suggestions to my gmail account. It’s woodmania. I’d type it out but I don’t need more junk mail. Just your YouTube suggestions.

You better tell the Merc With A Mouth. Or else. So speaks Bahlactus.

“I’m sorry, what was I saying?”
“You don’t know either? We gotta have a rule around here-when you speak at least one of us has gotta be listening.”

I just heard about this earlier this week or else I might have made the trek here: a national Office convention in Scranton this weekend. That’s right, fans of NBC’s hit show will gather in the now infamous setting of the show, Scranton, PA. It sounds like there will be lots of people there and even some of the people who help make the show. The Office has been kicking ass and has really done a great job of consistently throwing out little Easter Eggs to longtime viewers and other nice small touches that make it enjoyable to watch these episodes again and again. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of people make the trek to the Electric City to take part in this celebration of the show. I can only imagine the number of Dwight-lookalikes that will be all over town.

“How adorable. The actors are going to play war with me.”

During the fall, I try to limit my football talk to just Sundays and Mondays. If there’s a Bengals Monday night game, maybe Tuesday instead. But in an attempt to keep the blog’s subject random, I like to switch it up during the week and keep football to just twice a week. But when there’s news like my NFL Draft is getting a shake-up, I got to go with that.

The league announced several changes for the 2008 draft on April 26-27. Only the first two rounds of the draft will be held on Saturday, and each team will have just 10 minutes to make its first-round selection (down from 15 minutes) and seven minutes to make its second-round pick (down from 10). On Sunday, rounds 3-7 will be held, and each team will be given five minutes to make its selection (same as before).

I’m definitely down with the trimming of time from the first two rounds. It doesn’t seem like having that extra time resulted in a lot of trades so let’s keep the first round under six hours.

While we’re talking about the league that can do no wrong, turns out NFL Network ain’t doing so hot. This is slightly emberrassing considering most things the NFL touches turns to gold. Of course, the channel is almost exclusively on satellite as Comcast recently demoted NFL Network and things aren’t going well with Time Warner either. As much as I would like NFLN, I don’t think I’d enjoy paying extra jack per month to have it. The NFL Network will keep games through 2011 so I’ll miss out on those games.

“You can’t teach a hammer to love nails, son. That dog don’t hunt!”

I think we all agree it kinda sucks that we have to watch dumb commercials before seeing the film we drove to the theater to see. Nobody loves commercials, but they’re a necessary evil in many places. But I read something that says it has no place once the lights go down: commercials before movies is really bad. It’s always nice when someone writes an article about something that bugs you. Basically, the jist is that this practice serves no purpose. These ads do not reduce ticket prices and delay something that we paid for. Hopefully, this will bring awareness and help bring an end to seeing NASCAR drivers drinking soda before my blockbuster movie. The dynamics of what goes into your ticket price is tricky so it’s important to know who gets what part of your money so you know who to get mad at and who needs your support.

And if you want your theater money to be stretched as far as it can go, here’s 10 tips to save money on movies. Mostly, it’s just go less and don’t buy anything else there but some people need to see this and maybe it will help them.

“You’re what: selling light bulbs? Worried about the whales? Keen on Jesus? Out with it!”

It wasn’t that way in the first half. But by the end of the day, smiles all around. Nice win, Bengals. But the title was the first thing that came out of my mouth when Chad Pennington (Chad Pennington, for crying out loud!) beat Cincinnati for a deep bomb on the Jets first drive of the day. Fortunately, New York’s in worse shape than we are and gave up 28 straight points to give Bengaldom a well-deserved reprieve from losing. At least for one week.

And boy did I need it after the Cincinnati Bearcats shit the bed in Pittsburgh. I’m sure I’ve seen worse team performances than the one UC provided Saturday, but it’s been a while. So much for that Top 25 ranking. If things don’t turn around, I’d be surprised if they could play their way back into the International Bowl.

How did your team do this weekend? Talk football in the comment section and it’s a Sock Point for you.