BLOODY, MERRY

A safe and Happy Halloween weekend to everybody! Check out my review of the new horror comedy Christmas at the Kringles...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

TODAY GAME NIGHT; TOMORROW THE WORLD!

Happy Halloween week everybody!

Does anybody out there remember Trick or Treating for UNICEF?

Your Humble Narrator does. Sometime in the early '70s, I went out with a group of kids from church onto the chilly October streets of North East, Pennsylvania, each of us carrying our little orange cardboard boxes, to collect dimes and quarters and nickels for the United Nations Children's Fund from long-suffering folks in the area.

It was fun, though I seem to recall it had a half-hearted, dutiful feel. The prospect of helping kids in other countries didn't have the same appeal as the self-serving, tooth-rotting, greedy orgy of candy collection that would follow on Halloween proper.

I've thought about this recently because of a junkshop find I came across: a 1979 UNICEF "World Card Game."

It's a Go Fish/Authors style game, but with open globalism and class judgement; it's fun to imagine the right-wing pants-crapping with which it would be met today!

Although the art appears meant to look like it was drawn by kids, it says the "concept & illustrations" are by Nico Van Oudenhoven, so it's apparently grown-up art.

In the directions, we're told that "The World Card Game is meant to be enjoyed. Yet it also has a serious purpose. It invites you to think about what is going on the world, and to become interested in the various lifetsyles throughout the world. The game tells you something about development and change as well. It offers more than one way of looking at the world. When the game is completed the players might take a few moments and discuss whether they agree with the different things that characterize each category."

Anybody up for a game?

I was also cheered to find that Trick or Treating for UNICEF still goes on, though now, of course, with a heavy online component.

JENNA-RATIONAL TALENT

Check out my review of Klara and the Sun, with radiant Jenna Ortega...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

BIG GULP

 Check out my review of Whalefall...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

CAMP CLASSIC

Used book nook find: It Was A Short Summer, Charlie Brown, by Charles M. Schultz; Scholastic Book Services, 1970:

Although I saw the Peanuts TV special from 1969 that this tie-in was based on when I was a kid, I hadn't thought about it in decades. It's about the gang going to summer camp. Lucy, Peppermint Patty and the girls are enthusiastic at the prospect; the boys are less so, particularly Linus:

"They always have those camps out in the woods someplace and those woods are full of  queen snakes. Have you ever been chomped by a queen snake, Charlie Brown? Boy, you get chomped by a queen snake and you've had it."

No such casualties occur in the story which ensues, which mostly focuses on the competition between the boys and the girls at swimming, canoe racing and, ultimately, arm wrestling. The girls are dominant.

There is, by the way, a species of North American snake, Regina septemvittata, a relative of the water snake, that is commonly called a queen snake, among other names. They are notorious as picky eaters, with a diet consisting almost entirely of crayfish, preferably crayfish that have just molted. 

But they're non-venomous. I suspect the queen snakes to which Linus is referring are examples of apocryphal Peanuts zoology like "gully cats" and "hedge toads."

Anyway, it was lovely to see this little book, especially at this time of year. In most of the country, after all, the title is wistful; here in this part of Arizona, it's cheerful.

LEAK PERFORMANCE

Check out my review of The Social Reckoning...

...Aaron Sorkin's follow-up to 2010's The Social Network, online at Phoenix Magazine.

HE SCOOPS TO CONQUER

Happy Friday everybody! Check out my review of Digger...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.