All hands on deck! We’re approaching terminal velocity on Spaceship Omega, hurtling towards the end of the workweek at breakneck speed! Ah hell, we should’ve recalibrated the autopilot! The social contract allows for an early reprieve from indentured servitude this week, and now we’re rocketing ahead at a rate that’s virtually guaranteeing a crash landing.

Brace yourself! We’re going to smash right into Planet Thanksgiving, and our survival is dependent on the ability to craft entertainment-cushions.

Luckily, this here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE! In this Monday feature, I show off the various bits of enjoyment I’ll be using to try to make life awesome. Then, your job is to hit up the comments and share your wares.

It’s internet show and tell. And we love it.

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Quick, name a movie I love!
What’s that you say, Blade Runner? Fantastic!

Okay, now name one of my favorite comics artists!
Paul Pope?! Yeah, he is one of my panel-producin’ heroes!

Now hit the jump to see what happens when the ever-mighty Pulphope tries his hand at sketching a couple of the most iconic scenes from Blade Runner!

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Take a breath. You’re safe. I promise.

I know that you were probably scared out of your wits today. It’s okay. I was too. Hell, who wouldn’t be terrified at the prospect of having to spend every single Monday from now until retirement/death/tiger-mutilation lamentin’ existence. Oh, you didn’t think that I heard you? I did. In a way, actually found your exasperated sighs lyrical.

“Motherfucking rat race life! How’m I supposed to keep doin’ this without going postal? Arggh!”

Take another breath. I’ve got the solution. You’ve come to the right place.

This here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE, OL’s workweek refugee camp. What we do is showcase the various bits of entertainment and pop-culture detritus that we’ll snack on throughout the week, consuming just enough Nerd Calories to get us to the weekend. I’ll go first, then you’ll hit up the comments section and show off your recipe for ennui-repellent.

Who wants to dance?

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In my most cherished fantasies, I’m a member of Rogue Squadron. That’s right, if you see me crashing into the mailbox during a mid-drive daydream, I’m probably imagining myself nosediving into the Death Star’s exterior. As the suburban townsfolk yell and scream and cry in the hopes of getting my car off of their lawns, I can only hear Biggs and Wedge and Porkins egging me on. The cops throw down spike strips, and my tires blow out, and all I do is turn up the radio and mutter, “Stay on target.”

It’s this wonderful hallucination of being a bad-ass space-rebel that helps me cope with the fact that I’m nothing more than a sci-fi lovin’ scamp of a man.

Also helping me get through the ennui of my regularly-scheduled quarter-life crises is beer. Sweet, bitter, dark and fizzy beer. On Fridays I make a point to try a new beer, thereby expanding my palate and giving me a deeper basis-for-comparison well.

Tonight, I’m combining my yearning for intergalactic adventure and beer-lust by sipping on the Rogue Brewery’s Double Mocha Porter.

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Ahoy! How goes it, bros and babes of the OL Nation? It’s been awhile since I’ve danced aboard this burning ship of nerd-revelry, as I’ve needed some time off to lick the wounds inflicted during my stint as the OCTOBERFEAST emcee. But alas, I’ve returned to the command center, eager to help Caffeine Powered steer this conflagration-barge right into the hearts of the willing.

Whether its pounding in your chest or blackened by loss or fluttering amorously, we want you to open your hearts to the Omega Level. So come on, don’t just stand there! Hop aboard! ALL HANDS ON DECK!

This here’s the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE, the weekly salvation-via-distraction show and tell feature. The fact of the matter is that the workweek sucks – we kill ourselves at jobs that date rape our spirits and then can’t even be bothered to   drive `em home in the morning.

How uncouth.

To thwart forty-hours’ worth of ruin, we’ll take turns showcasing the bits of entertainment we use to ensure our souls’ chastity. I’ll go first, then ya’ll can hit up the comments sections and follow suit.

All together now.

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Lo! The vortex on the horizon – do you see it? Surely you must! It’s a gargantuan cyclone, an indomitable mass of swirling purple and orange and black. Those protesters who’ve spent the last month screaming at the revelers, naysaying and posturing themselves above the traditions of candied-chaos? Well, they’ll be summarily swept away, fallen victim to the natural disaster that’s been summoned by the OCTOBERFEAST celebrants to end the festival most tempestuously.

It’s the Tornado of Souls.

Look closer! At the top of the soul-storm is a wicker chair, stationery despite its position. The twister slowly diminishes as makes its way towards the campgrounds, giving all present parties a better view of both the chair and the individual sitting in it. He is aged but regal. Grey-haired but black-hearted. Avuncular but assailing.

Riding into the grand finale of the OCTOBERFEAST on a goddamn tornado-chair, this is figure represents evil incarnate in a way no other ever has.

This man is Christopher Lee. And he’s responsible for more cinematic villainy than anyone else on the planet.

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Samhain is upon us! Let’s scream paeans at the top of our lungs and imbibe pumpkin-elixirs and hand out candy to the ghoulish younglings terrorizing our suburban sanctuaries! This is the day we reserve to celebrate autumnal bliss!

Unfortunately, Halloween falls on a Monday this year. Which is lame. But as always, we can ward off the malignant spirits of the workweek by paying tribute to the MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE – this is the weekly post where I show you what I’ll be doing to entertain myself so as to survive five days of job-related drudgery. After you check out the treats in my pillowcase, hit up the comments section and share your own!

Let’s get to two-steppin’!

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[OCTOBERFEAST  is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as  Satan’s Snacktime]

If you ain’t ready for a snack on this penultimate day of the OCTOBERFEAST, then you haven’t been partying hard enough. But if you count yourself amongst the hordes of mischievous maniacs that’ve been on a month-long plastic-horror marathon, then you probably need some sustenance to get to Hallow’s Eve. If only just a handful of somethin’ or other.

Fortunately, today is the day for Heretical Confirmation known as Jack O’ Lantern carving. Yes, the day before Halloween is when many of the Feasters disembowel their pumpkins, recite the unholy words, and transform them into gourded sentries. While this rite is important in that it helps cast an orange glow over the conclusion of Satan’s Snacktime, it also yields a most appetizing byproduct.

Pumpkin seeds.

It’s hard to find a treat as intrinsically connected to the OCTOBERFEAST as roasted pumpkin seeds. Sure, apple pies and pumpkin pies and candy all certainly play their respective parts, but they also periodically pop up at other times of the year. But roasted pumpkin seeds? When was the last time you snacked on some of those sonovabitches at Christmas? Most likely, never. Which is a damn shame, because they’re crunchy and salty and fun as junk to make.

Tomorrow’s the day we’ve all been waiting for. Samhain. Hallow’s Eve. The Big Orange and Black Dance. Make sure that you’ve got enough energy to last through its day and night. So just as marathoners gorge on pasta the night before their twenty-six plus, make sure you chomp on pumpkin seeds until they stab your gums and make `em bleed.

Need a recipe? Look no further!

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[OCTOBERFEAST  is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as  Satan’s Snacktime]

Like any worthwhile annual event, OCTOBERFEAST owes its greatness not only to the current torchbearers but also its precedent-setting pioneers. If not for John Carpenter, we’d be without Halloween and They Live. How many of us would’ve ever embraced horror if R.L. Stine hadn”t made it palatable to our impressionable little minds? Thanks to Stingy Jack, October evenings are   dotted with the warm glow of orange monster-faces.

To all these heroes, and too many others to name, a token of appreciation must be gifted.

But there is another who deserves even more praise. This man has been dead for nearly seven hundred years, but without his poetry we’d be devoid of one of the most fundamental premises of our modern Hallow’s Eve festivities. In truth, had this dude failed to bang out his seminal work, we could very well be bereft of some of the world’s finest horror movies, metal songs, Hot Topic shirts, and ill-conceived biker tattoos.

The fact of the matter is that Dante Alighieri’s Inferno defined Hell with an attention to detail that had never before been conceived.

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[OCTOBERFEAST  is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as  Satan’s Snacktime]

As you no doubt know, OCTOBERFEAST is the annual celebration of shock-and-awe entertainment, those dastardly bits and pieces that we can’t help but love with mouths agape and eyes closed. The same way that cavemen would streak past brontosaurus nests for cheap thrills, we need to scare ourselves silly sometimes. And to do this, we watch scene after scene of gruesome murders, horrifying mutations, and savage acts of violence.

Again, the reason we meet year-after-year to celebrate this tenth-month carnal carnival is the fact that there are deep-seated desires in all of us to explore the sweet ugliness. Unfortunately, there are those that think indecency has no place in entertainment. That depictions of decapitation are in poor taste. That zombie movies are not only insidious but also trite. Hell, this moral imposition isn’t a new idea, but the self-righteous are proliferating at unprecedented rates.

Fortunately, there are heroes amongst us.

In 2007, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino teamed up for the exploitation-throwback Grindhouse. This double-feature consists of two original flicks shown back-to-back which are also accompanied by faux-trailers. If nothing else, the experiment was a deal for the fans just in terms of economics: one regularly-priced ticket granted a viewer access to far more material than that which is provided by any standard flick.

With that being said, Grindhouse is also a horrific tour-de-force, a masterpiece for those who love blood and guts and gore and camp.

The first entry in the two-movie feature is Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. This flick is an over-top-zombie flick that sees Rose McGowan stealing the show not only with her scantily clad body, but also her firearm leg prosthesis. There’re gross-out moments with zombies exploding, laughs-a-plenty with some characters being more concerned with BBQ recipes than the end times, and conveniently missing reels. To top it all off, the movie has Bruce Willis.

That’s right – McClane himself.

On the other hand, Tarantino’s Death Proof presents a brand of terror that is more grounded in its intentions. This second flick sees Kurt Russell playing Stuntman Mike, a washed up stunt driver longing for the glory days of Hollywood during which the stunt people reigned supreme. To get his kicks now that he’s been replaced by CGI, Stuntman Mike offers hot babes rides in his car. Of course, there’s a catch: Mike’s stunt car is completely death proof for the driver, but nearly guaranteed to kill a passenger if it crashes.

Which it does. Because that’s what Stuntman Mike wants, and he gets what he wants. That is, of course, until he runs into a pack of bad-ass bitches that don’t take shit from anyone, including maniacs with film-industry experience.

Grindhouse is a rare treat, as it knows exactly what it is and revels in it. Tarantino and Rodriguez manage to simultaneously poke fun at the conventions of classic grindhouse flicks while paying homage and revering them. Additionally, clocking in at just over three hours, this cinematic collection is the perfect accompaniment for a cold, dank OCTOBERFEAST eve.

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