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But you know...few
shots of cheap liquor, and I decided to test the waters by dancing on top of
Ichabod Crane's grave. We'll get to that in a minute. I think I know what
inspires people to say 'Bloody Mary' in front of mirrors and do little
seances with black candles in the hopes to raise an evil spirit. It's not
because we necessarily want the spirit to be evil, it just seems like
all the good spirits never show their face. And we've got to get some
kind of proof, so we'll just deal with that whole 'evil' side of things. It
has nothing to do with any of us being innately satanic or anything like
that, it's just common knowledge that bad, evil spirits are far more
accessible than the nice, good ones.
That's where this
Ichabod guy comes in. It's a really rare occasion when one has a chance to
deal with spirits and ghosts who don't want to maim and kill, and once I
found out that the real-life gravesite of Ichabod resided in my small town, I
knew there was something to it. The only real attractions here are a giant
dollar store and a deli with zero tolerance for expiration dates, so if
Ichabod managed to find his way here - there was a reason. I never really
considered Burton's Sleepy Hollow that great of a movie. But, it had
some pretty great things going for it. Firstly, the principal from Ferris
Bueller, in a much heftier form, dies. Secondly, this is the only movie
in history that would dare commit such a crime as to cast Christopher Walken
and not give him anything cool to say. Sure, he cuts heads off and gets to
wear contact lenses usually reserved for Goth night at the local moose
lounge, but Walken-worshippers are going to have trouble trying to emulate
him when all he can say is 'arrrr'. Thirdly, and most importantly,
Christina Ricci's dress is really tight near the top. So, as long as we don't
look past those three things, it was a great flick. With that, we decided it'd
be a good idea to seek out Ichabod's grave. Naturally...you see a good movie,
you look for a related tombstone. While the story is fiction, there actually
was a real Ichabod. How he met death isn't the issue...what's important is
that the guy was buried here. We decided to test out
the hauntings-level of the gravesite. I figured, at best, we'd say something
like 'haha you're dead' and hear a mysterious wolf howling in the background
immediately following. I never thought what happened would happen. Folks,
we messed with the spirit world...and we got fucked. It was the most
accursed, haunted night of my life. If you exclude that time I had the flu,
couldn't move, and was forced to watch an entire marathon of the old Star
Trek series on the Sci-fi Network. But that was more of an Act of God...this?
This was supernatural.
The gravesite resided
somewhere in a cemetary adjacent to a born again church that had a giant disco
cross in it's belfry. Obviously, we were in for trouble. This was just a
warning sign we chose to ignore. If only we hadn't, I wouldn't be plagued by
a elephant/stoneman toy who works without batteries as I write this. More on
that later.
And there it was. The
grave. Now, some previous visitor with misunderstood good intentions had
defaced the stone with a unique special blend of spray paint and a totally
incomprehensible tag name, but don't be fooled. This is Ichabod's
grave. For a guy who's been
represented in all these movies, cartoons, and Johnny Depp action figures, poor
Ichabod really got the shaft. This wasn't the graveyard to call home about.
If the hedgestones weren't completely covered in grafitti, they were flat out
broken. Some of them were hidden behind years of tree and plant growth.
Others were made of polyresin. Definitely not the choice graveyard for a rock
concert, but nonetheless, this is where poor Ichabod's skull lies. Maybe it was a
temporary lack of judgement. Maybe I was just sick of having to 'respect' all
these dead people. I don't know what my guiding light was, but the demons
posessed me and convinced me that I needed to crouch on top of Ichabod's
grave for a picture. And this, friends, is where things started getting
weird.
CURSED, I tell you...CURSED! For on
this fateful night, I had done the unthinkable. I'm by no means an angel, but
this was definitely going far and beyond any kind of trouble I had previously
caused. I woke the dead. The shivers sent down
my spine clued me in immediately - I'd just done something terrible. People
piss off others all the time. It's a natural thing. In our lives, we learn
not to annoy others when they're in a particularly bad mood or when they've
had a pretty bad day. We know it's just not worth their wrath. So you can
imagine the end results of fucking with someone who has the supreme pent up
frustrations of being dead for over a century. This isn't like eating the
last piece of chicken before your father gets home after a hard day of work.
This is much worse, and the wrath? BY GOD the wrath...was far
more stupid and esoteric. Thus began...The
haunted night from Hell.
The first sign that
things weren't quite right: the demon lawnmower. You know that old sea tale
where the sailors hear the Sirens song and die about five minutes later or
something? Well, the mythology of the haunted demon lawnmower might be lesser
known, but it's altogether more true and hits a lot closer to home. It's sort
of a spin on other supernatural legends. When you see the Grim Reaper, you
die. When you see the Demon Lawnmower, you can only find shitty cereal. I know what you're
thinking. That's not a real curse. Listen, you can doubt the unearthly powers
of Ichabod all you want, the proof is in the pictures, and I'm just the
narrator. If you think this is all bullshit and see no problem dancing on top
of Crane's grave...by all means, be my guest. Just don't come crying back to
me when you can't find the Honey Comb.
Waldbaum's is a local grocer here, usually
a pretty subdued one at best. Like some holy church, it's a place to go when
the ghosts and ghouls are attacking and you need salvage. And after our
experiences with Ichabod and the lawnmower, salvation was something we were
after.
The Halloween candy
selection was pretty normal. I was one of the kids who wouldn't stop
trick-or-treating until the candy-givers themselves refused me. There really
needs to be some sort of written age limitation law on that whole deal. When
does a kid know when he's too old to get free candy? And what kid
would want to admit that? I can understand enthusiasm over being too old to
take baths with the door open or too old to watch Mr. Rogers, but nobody's
going to want to think they're too old to get candy just by knocking on their
neighbor's door. In those years as a
trickster and a treater, I have noticed somewhat of a candy phenomenon
though. As people age, they completely lose their internal senses that tells
them what tastes good. How else do you explain all these old people trying to
throw Mary Janes and crushed caramel popcorn balls into your trick or treat
bags? The world would be saved a whole lot of trouble if we just named
Snickers the official Halloween candy. I don't think too many people would
complain about getting bags full of free Snickers. Unless they're allergic to
chocolate, and even then...who really cares what they think anyway? We had some real
winners in our neighborhood. The person right next door used to give us nickels.
Nickels! The thing that was really bad about all this...the kind of candy one
gave out really dictated their popularity in the neighborhood for the year to
follow. If someone gave out, as an example, a pack of Bubble Yum, the kids in
the neighborhood might be inclined to spare their cars the traditional
egging. But nickels? That's an insult - and one these neighbors paid dearly
for. But we're getting off
track. As stated, the evil
lawnmower was a sure sign of bad cereal to come. We cautiously walked down
the cereal aisle, hoping and praying that we might've eluded Ichabod's wrath.
We didn't. We were fucked.
Behold, the greatest
assortment of shitty, bootleg cereals of all time! America's Choice,
the nation's largest retailer of food that tastes like cardboard, supplies you
with an endless array of cereal you should never, ever think about buying. The cereals themselves
are bad enough - the basic deal here is to take every popular cereal and
strip it of whatever tastes good. If the end result doesn't make you sick, it
certainly won't make you smile. But to cover for the fact that it tastes
terrible, the company decided to give you something far worse to complain
about - the cereal spokescharacters. A few examples: Frosted Flakes
features a penguin in a yellow tanktop and pink sunglasses giving you the
peace sign. Bite-Sized Shredded Wheat features a seal in snow gear
with a hypnotic swirled background. And my personal fave - Krisp Krunch,
starring a crab. Ichabod's work? You be
the judge. Walking a little more
through the aisles, I noticed something that told me, without a doubt, we
were now cursed. I've been to enough 99 cent stores and shit, stupid
toys really don't shock me the way they used to. But this was a grocery
store. Grocery stores sell food, not giant, confusing toys. Grocery
stores don't sell...these:
STARRIORS FROM HELL Never before have I
encountered a toy this weird, this nonsensical, this utterly demonic. These
Starriors figures are about 15" tall, each an animal/stone warrior
hybrid with moveable arms, wheels on it's feet, and the ability to talk. The
ability to talk is the clencher - once you turn it on, there's no way
to turn it off - EVER. I purchased 'Ele-Man', the 'walking, talking
Meteoroid'. It doesn't walk. But aside from that blatant false advertising -
it certainly does talk. What does it say?
'I... (scream) ...General of the
Armies of the Ele-World!!! ... (scream) ...Yes.' As if that's not bad
enough, check out Ele-Man's bio from the back of the box. This is a
word-for-word exact replication of what's there: 'A legend goes that in
3000 B.C., Babylon, the oldest mysterious nation in the world, was originally
ruled by the peace-loving ruler of earth - Kahame, the King of Ele, and
ancestors of mankind and various kinds of spirit lived a happy and careless
life. However, bewitched by the Devil Gila, the mankind began to learn how to
invade and launch a war. As a result, the mankind and spirits could not
coexist peacefully and the world has become more and more chaotic. Now, mankind
had gradually suffered the consequences for what they have done. In order to
re-create a peaceful nation and to eliminate the influence of the Devil Gila,
King of Ele, who is living deep down in the earth will appear at any
time....' WHAT?! What the fuck is
this thing? What does all that mean? 'The mankind began to learn how to
invade and launch a war'? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? WHO IS
ELE-MAN?! And why is he being sold in the fucking GOYA section?!?!
But hey, for 15 bucks?
A steal, Ele-Man came home with me. I noticed that the thing was working as a
result of the included batteries. It takes four AA batteries. I opened up the
compartment and noticed that there were only two batteries in. While
he was talking. I removed the two batteries...Ele-Man was *still*
talking.
Exactly what
otherworldly spirits had we risen when we went to that cemetary? Why was
Ichabod torturing us? If we went through all this just for taking pictures of
his hedgestone, I hate to imagine what happened to the person who
spray-painted the grave. Alas, the haunting
continued. If it wasn't strange enough that Ele-Man and friends were in the
grocery store, there was a crane game next to the register. All
throughout this past summer, you've seen what cranes do to me. They turn me
into a 5-year-old who likes Pokemon dolls.
So now with Squirtle at
my side, my Pokemon collection was complete. But the question still remains:
why was there a crane machine by the register? What about Ele-Man? And
can you explain the store only selling cheap versions of good cereal?
I came home last night, full of despair and drunk. The last thing I ever
wanted to do was make Ichabod mad. I loved Ichabod. To me, the guy's a
god. Unfortunately, a very very vengeful god. I came back with
nothing on my mind other than sleeping off the curse. I woke up around 9, and
at first, things seemed normal. Ele-Man was still here, so it wasn't all a
dream. But...he stopped talking. I checked the cabinet...oodles of Honey
Nut Cheerios. All clear there. For a second - a split second - I thought
maybe, just maybe, my imagination had been playing tricks on me. Maybe I
wasn't being punished by Ichabod after all. That train of thought was sadly
temporary, because after talking to our resident media guru, Dr. Rocket, I
found out that Ichabod had gotten to him too. Posessed his soul, did Ichabod,
and forced our usually on-the-mark multimedia wizard into uploading the most chilling,
evil download...of all time.
Yes. Rick Moranis, in
animated form, starring in Gravedale High. Awhile back, we featured
the Madballs cartoon on the site, and I was then convinced that
nothing could ever top it. It was that bad. A cartoon that not only
featured the voiceovers of Rick Moranis, but also Ricki Lake and Jonathan
Winters. A cartoon about a bunch of monsters in high school. A cartoon that
had Moranis singing it's theme song. Moranis plays Mr.
Schriner, a human teacher sent to Gravedale High to teach. All the
students are fashioned after Hollywood's greatest monsters, only with a
twist. The only thing scary about these monsters were their jokes. Their
endless jokes from Hell. It's quite possibly the most disturbing show
we've ever featured on the site, and remember - we've done the Pac-Man
Christmas Special and Lazer Tag Academy. If you need convincing - the
first minute of the show featured a girl making a television powered by a
pyramid and a Rodney Dangerfield impression. It doesn't get much worse than
that. To Download Gravedale High,
(8 MB), Click Here!!! Be prepared to end your
life if you do decide to download it, though. As if the show's not bad enough
on it's own...the commercials for Teddy Grams and Alpha-Bits
are still left intact. There's even a commercial featuring the Kool-Aid Man.
On one hand, I was
plagued by bad cereals, Gravedale High, lawnmowers, and Ele-Man. On the other
hand...I got Squirtle. So it's really up to your personal
opinions...is the Ichabod Curse a good thing...or a bad thing? I'm undecided.
I'm not particularly fond of the idea of being haunted by dead people. If by
chance you are, maybe this whole taking pictures on top of graves thing could
work to your benefit. Just don't say I didn't warn you. - Matt |
