Well carve a hole in a pumpkin and call me Randy …it’s finally October! I know the blog posts aren’t exactly coming fast and furious these days, I’ve been concentrating on my new, actual-for-real job and settling in, but I promise to get back on a regular schedule soon for the 3 or 4 of you reading. But I absolutely would not miss this annual Halloween Mixtape Post. Everyone who knows me knows this is my favorite thing of the entire year, a tradition started by DJ Daymage in 2009 that I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to top, copy and rip off ever since. This is my first mix using Ableton Live. I use it correctly about 0.000001% of the time, but I was able to do a few special bits here and there on this year’s mix. And, for any of the songs I didn’t already own, I actually purchased…including the Louvin Brother’s “Satan Is Real.” So they should see a 5 cent spike on their royalty check this month.

First things first, if you download all the Halloween mixtapes from DJ Daymage and I—from now until the present—you’ll now have yourself exactly 4 Hours and 18 Minutes of Halloween spookery to listen to all month long.

Some thank you’s are in order: The LAW Group (especially Sean T. Collins for lending no less than 6 rare horror soundtracks, which I used in hopes I’ll be repaid with ongoing Mad Men commentary and discussion at his website) and my Facebook and Twitter super-pals for sending me a ton of great suggestions, too many of which to use. I hope some of yours made it. If they didn’t, it’s nothing personal: probably just in the hopper for next year.

Matt at X-Entertainment for carrying the online Halloween geek-out torch better and brighter than anyone. I’ve been reading his site for, Jesus….so many years now. To this day, no one beats X-Entertainment. Horror and VHS-core sites The Scandy Factory and—the site I got this year’s cover from—VHS Wasteland. They are doing god’s work. Respect. And, last but not least, the greatest site on the internet, Everything is Terrible! who I share my very aesthetic DNA with. Mad props 4 Evah.

So without further ado, World of Ward Crap.com presents… TERROR STAIN: A 2011 HA11OWEEN MIXTAPE! Below, you can read the track listing SPOILERS. I, for one, don’t read track listings before I hear a mixtape because I enjoy the surprises. If you’re like me, check it out after you listen.

Listen below, download for free here.

TERROR STAIN: A 2011 HA11LOWEEN MIXTAPE TRACK LISTING

1. Ascension: Diabolical — Vlantis/You’re DOOMED! — Crazy Ralph

2. Die Monster Die — The Misfits

3. Busted — Texas Chainsaw Massacre Original Soundtrack

4. No More Hot Dogs — Hasil Adkins

5. The Creep — The Lonely Island

6. Possum Kingdom — The Toadies/”They’re Coming to Get You.”

7. “You Can’t Be Helped, Young Lady.”

8. What’s He Building In There? — Tom Waits

9. Werewolf Bar Mitzvah (remix) — Tracy Morgan & Donald Glover

10. Visitations — Clinic

11. Young Men Dead — Black Angels/”Halloween Safety Tips”

12. Rejected KFC Commercial — Peter Serafinowicz

13. Helena — The Misfits

14. Pinion — Nine Inch Nails/”His Knife Is His Penis” — Charles Bronson

15. Scarecrows on a Killer Slant — Liars/”I’m Glad You’re Dead!” Jack Nicholson

16. Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free (Wardcrap Mix) — Zombie Zombie

17. They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haa! — Napoleon XIV & Jerry Samuels

18. The Act of Being Polite — The Residents

19. Welcome to Hell — Venom

20. Fresh Blood — Eels

21. Satan Is Real — The Louvin Brothers/Hellraiser — Main Theme

22. “Halloween is Satan’s Night” — Pat Robertson/Ben’s Tale — Night of the Living Dead OST

23. I Was A Teenage Werewolf (Original Mix) — The Cramps

24. Do The Scalp — Hasil Adkins

25. “Welcome To the Tunnel of Terror!” — DJ Connor

26. Last Caress — The Misfits

27. Mr. T’s Trick or Treat Rules — Mr. T

28. Trickin’ It To The Treats — Scott Gairdner

29. This is Halloween — Marilyn Manson

30. “Let Them Know It’s Halloween” — Tim Curry

31. Night of the Vampire — Roxy Erickson

32. “Deadliest Night of the Year For Child Pedestrians…Happy Halloween! — Elvira/”The Cellar’s the Safest Place” — Night of the Living Dead OST

Download SATANIAC: A 2010 HALLOWEEN MIX Here or listen below.

Download DJ Daymage’s Hall09ween Mix HERE or listen below.

Download DJ Daymage’s Ha10ween Mix HERE or listen below.

HEY!

Need something to read while you’re listening to all this crap? Check out my 10 Worst Childhood Halloween Costumes of All Time PART 1 and PART 2 (with pictures) or read Horror Aficionado and Movie Reviewer Supreme John Dodd’s incredible 45 HORROR MOVIES in 35 DAYS MEGA REVIEW! It’s more Halloween then you can shake a Tim Curry at.

Shown: One of my Top 10 Worst Childhood Costumes. But is it #1? Spoiler Alert! It is. It is #1.

Well, here it is…the 2009 costume. My wife has been going around telling people I’m going as “Mario riding Luigi,” so I’ve got some damage control to do (to be fair, they’re both green. And that’s also a better costume idea).

Sorry for my video editing skills, I have neither the means nor the interest to improve upon them this cold evening. Now go out there and get some motherflipping candy bars inside your mouth.

Shitteriffic Costumes #10-6 are HERE, so let’s dive into part 2 of my worst childhood costumes, shall we?

5. The “Silver Surfer”

Halloween being my favorite holiday, and getting out of any and all learning activities a close second, you can imagine how I kicked myself when I forgot to dress up for Mrs. Fife’s drama class one morning in High School. The deal was, if you dressed up, you got to leave class and go show off your costume to the little kids. Everyone else got to stay behind and do assignments. Thinking I was sneaky, I got into the prop closet before class started and had my friend Bryan spray silver hair color all over my entire visible body.

And here’s how that conversation went:

TEACH: What the hell is this?

CHRIS: I’m the Silver Surfer!

TEACH: Tell me you didn’t use that hairspray color to do that

CHRIS: Yeah, you caught me, ha ha ha!

TEACH: Chris, you have to wash that off your skin.

CHRIS: Ok, I will, ha ha ha! Oh well, I tried! HA HA HA!

TEACH: No I’m serious…like right now. Any minute now your skin is going to stop breathing. You have to get that stuff off immediately.

If my face wasn’t doused in a thick chemical aerosol, you would have seen it go immediately pale when she said that. Try to imagine this being how you die: your pores were blocked by silver paint, your body stops getting oxygen, and you die on the floor of your drama class…and not even particularly well, since you suck at acting.

It literally took hours to get all this shit off my body. My skin was raw and bleeding. And when it rinsed off, the paint dripped all over my sensitive bunch. I’m talking real Tin Man’s balls here. But I missed most of the school day, which was kind of the point. And I got the shiny set of testicles I still sport today. What, do you think I washed them off? Dude…c’mon, chrome balls! I finally figured out how!

4. Hobo with Distended Ulcer

“Hi! I’m Apple Cheeks the Gainfully Employed Hobo! I gotta BIG CEE-GAR! I got me a Dick Tracy HAT! I’m a Lone Ranger memorabilia collector! Straight off the black gold, nuts in my hand, trustin no man, got my glock cocked, runnin this thing, ya understand ! AH CHA CHA!”

I think this picture ran in the paper. I have zero recollection of being this…whatever I am. The Green Hornet’s hayseed-in-the-city cousin? Jimmy Durante’s loser kid? I don’t know. If you know, then GIVE YOURSELF A GIANT CEE-GAR, KID! AH CHA CHA CHA! One thing’s for sure: there must have been a fire sale on Lone Ranger masks. Why does a Hobo need a Lone Ranger Mask? Why does the Pumpkin Girl in front of me? Was this some bizarre Kid Identity Protection clause at the newspaper? Or have you just wandered into a junior production of Eyes Wide Shut? I think this is right before I tricked Nicholas Cage into rescuing me, so we could put him in a giant Wicker Man. THE DRONE MUST DIE! THE DRONE MUST DIE!*

*middling reference to the 2006 Wicker Man remake, which I have just watched and feel I must immediately reference before my brain purges all memories of that movie from my cortex. Which happens right about….now.

3. Anton Chigurh

Left: Mugshot of Death Cab for Cutie keyboardist after some hostile snicker-snag with unruly fangirl. Right: Oscar-Winning badass.

Guess how many Halloween bar-patrons have heard of the 2007 Best Picture “No Country For Old Men,” and Best Supporting Actor Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, most iconic screen villain in recent years? The answer is zero. Or, to be more exact…

….how many Halloween bar patrons, after several beers, could recognize a walking broomstick of a man holding a painted garden sprayer with a Prince Valiant shag as the most terrifying film villain of our time? The answer to THAT…is also zero. I was so in love with Anton Chigurh that year, that I was blinded by the fact that you should never, ever go as a person for Halloween. And without the larger-than-life screen personality, eyes that could stop a man’s heart, or blood curdling voice, that’s essentially what I went as that year: a person. Jesus, THIS guy looks more like Anton Chigurh, and was better received at the bar:

I guess I figured people would say, “Who are you?” and I would say “Anton Chigurh, friendo!” and they would laugh and laaaaaugh and say, “I love that Oscar winning movie!” and I would flip one of the many quarters I was carrying around in my pocket that night and say “CALL IT, FRIENDO!” and they would say, “Oh no! ha ha ha. Don’t do it!” and I would squirt them in the forehead with my water-spraying, fake oxygen tank thing.

What actually happened is I just wandered around trying to keep an unapproachable look on my face, as everyone’s eyes darted in the opposite direction. I probably just looked like a retarded, angry landscaper.

So never go as another actor for Halloween. Unless you were horribly disfigured in a police accident, then you can go as Fred Krueger: Motivational Speaker

The next rule is, when all else fails, go as Gallagher, like my friend Sarah did. As in, “Who’s that cool Gallagher chick hanging around with that denim-loving ass-gardener?”

Pictured: Not at all a terrifying moment.

2. Every Clown My Parents Forced Me To Be

You see that mouth hanging open? That is the face of a brainless, mouth-breathing baby. That’s me. I’m that stupid baby. You know what I’m probably thinking right there? I’m probably thinking about eating my sock, or digging my fist into my own eye. That’s because babies are ridiculously, hilariously stupid creatures. Because they’re stupid and can’t make their own decisions, their parents decide what they are for Halloween until the child is cognizant enough to point at the TV and say “Mider-Man.” (that’s Spider-Man. That’s how I said it, and that’s how I got my first vinyl Spider-Man costume).

But until that time, my parents made me a clown. Year after yarn-brained year. And you can see, after half a decade of this, just how excited I was about it…

Pictured: From the photo series “Bad child gets what it deserves” or, alternately, “Purple clown placed in hot sun.”

Yes, I never got tired of this crap. I believe I allowed my face to be painted in this picture in exchange for a balloon and an A-Team shirt. Absolutely no dignity.

That’s also why, to this day, I believe I see a midnight visitor whenever I look out my bedroom window. Someday, my kids will too.

1. A. GOD. DAMN. CABBAGE. PATCH. DOLL.

When I was digging for these old costumes, this picture hit me like a pink nightmare. What. The. Hell. Was. This.

To be blunt—to be absolutely, frank, really—“Holy tits, why was I dressed like a fucking Cabbage Patch Doll?!??!” was one question that breezed through my mind. Again, I have zero recollection of this. I sincerely hope that thing hanging around my neck is a pacifier, and not a “plug” of some sort. Mom explains that this costume was thrust upon me, again, by my Aunt who hates little boy cousins, but enjoys little girl nieces.

There must be a big metal bin in most minimum security sex offender prisons where the mail sorters throw contraband pictures that come addressed to inmates. Near that metal bin must be a smaller, pink basket wear the guards throw only the most twisted and mind-shattering of incoming inmate mail. Alone, this picture would occupy that pink basket. Surely, this is the only reason I can think of for a picture like this to exist: be be mailed to a convicted pederast, or to bait one into appearing on Dateline.

Cabbage Patch related side-story: Kids of all sexes in my town went ape-shit for Cabbage Patch Dolls, like the rest of the country, in the early eighties. My small, backwater town was ill-prepared for this demand, but managed to get some dolls in that sold out instantly. And yet, somehow, my mom got my brother and I a Cabbage Patch Doll that just wasn’t selling in my tiny, values-driven Illinois town. No one had even touched it. I couldn’t believe our luck. My brother and I loved running through the yard with that thing, clutching our blankets. It wasn’t until years later that we figured out the reason my mom got her hands on it: it was a BLACK Cabbage Patch doll, and no other moms in town wanted it. Wow. Just….wow.

So, yeah, our family was ahead of the curve on human/doll race-relations.

The background of this terrifying picture is, of course, the popular Halloween posing spot in my house, as seen in “Skateboard Frankenstein,” so we’ve come full circle. I hope you’ve enjoyed a look at my most tragic Halloweens to date. Lord knows I’m now dead inside.

Christmas can go swallow a whole bottle of Flintstones vitamins and die on the way to the hospital as far as I’m concerned. Halloween is where it’s at. I’m working really hard this year on another boss costume to top last year’s Care Bear costume, an idea I BLATANTLY STOLE from Rickey Purdin and James Walker. And I got away with it, because I moved 1000 miles away and no one’s heard of Rickey and James west of Cincinnati:

Shown: Me as Care Bear and unnamed, sober woman I may or may not work with

But my ideas, stolen or not, haven’t always been on the mark. Here are the first 5 of the Worst Halloween Costumes I’ve Ever Worn (Look for the rest as the week goes on!!!!)

10. Skateboarding Frankenstein

Old school Nash skateboard? Pretty cool. Homemade paper mache Frankenstein head? Quite a feat of my mom and I. But combine the two, and I look like a Ralston Cereal Mascot reject: “Frank N. Boarder! Part of your complete breakfast, dudes!” And what’s with my neck bolts being in my forehead? If this rang my doorbell, I’d kick it in the nuts just on principal.

9.Teen Wolf

The guy in the middle? He’s the winner of the Jack and Jill Grocery Store costume contest. That’s because he looks like what he’s supposed to be. My cousin Jarrod on the left there, even he looks like a parrot. I’m supposed to be Teen Wolf. Here’s a quick comparison:

There’s no mistaking the picture on the left as Michael J. Fox as the beloved 80s icon, Teen Wolf. And there’s no mistaking the picture on the right for, what appears to be, a bear cub with Barry Gibb’s pubes glued around it’s entire head, wearing a flannel shirt. Needless to say, I didn’t win the Jack and Jill Grocery Store costume contest.

Name dropping side-story: When I worked at Wizard Magazine, I used to have to interview writer Jeph Loeb all the time. Then, one day, someone revealed to me that he wrote the Teen Wolf movie AND Commando! “Teen Wolf bought my first house,” he told me. I was floored. From that point on, and to this day, all I want to really talk about with Jeph Loeb is Teen Wolf. I don’t give a shit about how he and artist Tim Sale interact, I don’t care about what’s going on with Lost or whatever he’s producing these days….I want to hear goddamned Teen Wolf stories. I could not get enough of them, and took every opportunity to try to get one more out of him.

8. Jaws from Jaws IV

We got a lot of use out of this costume, which my mom made from those cool patterns they used to sell at Wal-Mart, housed in big filing cabinets, before Wal-Mart said “aww, fuck it” and started selling the same five “slutty nurse” costumes for $40 apiece. If I was 10 years old in 2009, I’d probably be a slutty nurse this year. There’s, like, no other choice.

Between me, my brother and my cousin I think, we got a lot of laughs from relatives who thought we were the SNL “Landshark” from year to year. Not exactly the vision of Dreyfuss-eating terror I was hoping to inspire. What you’re not seeing is a view from the front, where my face is painted black in the shark’s gaping mouth. Probably because I don’t want a more pictures of myself in Blackface all over the internet. Hey, I don’t need THAT public relations headache again, am I right!?!

But, hey, I thought I looked like Jaws. The rest of the neighborhood probably thought I was going as “An Orca eating Al Jolson,” but that’s neither here nor there.

7. Sad Vampire

This was another case of me being way ahead of my time. Today, sad vampires are all the rave, and adorable little Hulk Hogan costumes would just be too tasteless to imagine in light of the Hulkster’s divorce scandal, son-killing-a-kid-with-his-car scandal, daughter-being-a-talentless-whore scandal, and transvestite wife scandal.

I think that Hulkster is this guy Beau Thomas, I can’t remember. Though, I do remember being really jealous of his costume, and really feeling like I had phoned it in with a common vampire get-up that year.

“Stupid, SO STUPID!! You’ll never win the Jack and Jill Grocery Store contest with this bushleague vampire horseshit!!! Another year wasted!!!!,” I might be heard to say, alone in my room, slamming blocks and grinding potato chips into the carpet.

6. Michael Keaton’s Batman

I feel really bad about putting this on the list, because I think I gave my mom a really hard time about it, and she probably looked really hard for a good Batman costume.

I was in fourth grade, and Batman: The Motion Picture WAS MY EFFING WORLD. And evvvvery last sumbitch was going as Batman that year, and we knew we were going to have to top each other. I know it’s around somewhere, but I can’t find classmate Ryan Heinz’s superior Batman costume. I believe he held me down that year, and made it quite clear that HE WASN’T THE ONE WEARING HOCKEY PANTS!!!! I conceded his point.

Mine had ears that wouldn’t stand up, and a Lone Ranger mask sewn into it. Looking back, there’s probably nothing that could have met my expectations of a Batman the Movie costume short of Kevlar body armor with pre-molded nipples. But they weren’t selling that at Walgreens that year: they were selling this. And here I am, trying as I might to re-create the “terrify criminals with my cape extension trick” scene from the first 15 minutes of the movie. Just sad, really.

I lost whatever contest was going on, and Ryan Heinz went on to be the coolest man to ever live.

Shown: Redefining the shit-eating grin, Batman showoff Ryan Heinz

TOMORROW: THE REST OF THE WORST!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!