Let’s face the facts; a writer/blogger's life can be extremely stressful during the holiday season. The gift shopping, grocery shopping, decorating and planning can take a toll on anyone, let alone a writer or blogger who have deadlines. Most writers/bloggers also a have a daytime job, so thanks to many cups of coffee, we spend our time writing at night, which is typically when I do most of my writing, though writing late at night or in the early morning hours can lead to unwanted typos.  I use Grammarly for proofreading because the sleeping fairy has been complaining about my coffee intake at night. Plus, it saves me time by not having to go over an article or review minutes before it has to be posted.


For me, the holidays started early in the fall when I was planning the 31 Days of Halloween and the Holiday Gift Guide events. My plan was to have everything written/posted and scheduled ahead of time, that way stress wouldn't be that big of a deal, but I've been basically getting things ready the day before, plus a few guest spots are a no show, forcing me to come up with last minute posts. The Holiday Gift Guide is coming together a little bit better, though I haven't written the reviews/posts yet, but I plan on having them written way before Nov. 29th. 

Holiday meals and Christmas shopping (I already have a little bit done.) starts on Thanksgiving, and yes I'll probably attend the Black Friday sales (or should it be called the Thanksgiving Night Sales), so I can get a few bargains.

Into the Snow We Go!
Bubble Guppies/ Team Umizoomi
Studio: Nickelodeon
Release Date: October 15, 2013
Retail: $14.99
Running Time: 69 minutes
Rating: Not Rated

Review:

Christmas is getting closer and closer everyday and Nickelodeon is already getting ready for the holidays by releasing the DVD Into The Snow We Go! featuring a Christmas episode from Bubble Guppies and two episodes from Team Umizoomi, both series are extremely popular with the preschoolers.

Happy Holidays, Mr. Grumpfish! finds the Bubble Guppies getting ready for the great holiday party, but there is only one problem, Mr. Grumpfish doesn't want to attend as he doesn't like parties. It is up to the Guppies to come up with a gingerbread plan to get Mr. Grumpfish in the holiday spirit.

A Sledding Day has young Casey wanting to sled down a big hill, but he doesn't have a sled. It is up to Team Umizoomi to save the day by making their way across the snowy Umi City and delivering the UmiSled to Casey.

If you have your own company and want your employees to look professional and uniform, then you might want to purchase some men’s embroidered shirts for all of your employees. This type of polo shirt, with your company’s logo printed on it, can make your office and workers look professional. If anyone wears the office shirt outside of the office, they are now a walking advertisement for your business.

Polo shirts with logos in the corner are very popular on the golf course. Most golf courses require their players to have a collared shirt on if they plan on playing a round of golf. Golfers prefer the feel and flexibility of tee-shirt material over a collared dress shirt. The polo shirt has become very popular in the golf circuit. The majority of the players in the professional golf circuit are wearing embroidered polo shirts when they compete. Along with everything else they are wearing, these shirts are embroidered with a sponsoring company logo for everyone to see.

These shirts are a walking advertisement for different golf endorsers. Companies are taking advantage of the growing popularity of the casual feeling of polo shirts that still look professional. You do not just see golfers wearing these shirts on the golf course and polo jockeys wearing them on the polo field. These shirts are now found everywhere and men, women, and children are wearing them.

It may be only the middle of October, but Nickelodeon is getting ready for the holiday season with re-releasing four of their most popular DVD titles in Holiday Gift sets featuring a 16-page coloring book, crayons, stickers and a poster in each set at the retail of value of $19.99 each.

The DVD titles are:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Rise of the Turtles - The single-disc set features the double-length premiere episode "Rise of the Turtles" along with four additional episodes - Turtle Temper; New Friend, Old Friend; I Think His Name is Baxter Stockman; and Metalhead. Special features include six "Making of Animatics" and the Theme Song Karaoke Music Video.

Here is a snippet of my review earlier this year:

Rise of the Turtles is packed with six action-packed episodes that fans of all ages will enjoy watching.

 

• Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure -Dora the Explorer's 2009's two-part episode is the perfect present for the holidays. Swiper gets on Santa's naughty list when he tries to steal the Christmas Star from Dora's Nochebuena Party. To help Swiper learn from his mistake, Dora must help him travel to the past, the present and the future to learn what the true meaning of Christmas is about.

Special Features include "Jingle Bells" Music Video, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" Music Video, and the Young People's Chorus Behind-the-Scenes Featurette.

Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure is a cute spin on the timeless Charles Dickens' tale.

Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection 
Directors: Don Mancini, Jack Bender, John Lafia, Ronny Yu
Starring: Alex Vincent, Alexis Arquette, Andrew Robinson, Beth Grant, Billy Boyd, Brad Dourif
Studio: Universal Studios
Release Date: September 19, 2006
Retail: $35.49
ASIN: B000FWHW86
Running Time: 350 minutes
Rating: R

Review: 

After viewing the Curse of Chucky (look for my review on Wednesday) last week, I had to drag out the Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection featuring Child's Play 2, Child's Play 3, Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky on two double-sided discs. Yes, I'm well aware the original movie is missing from the collection, but it was released by MGM/UA, who still held the rights when the collection came out in 2006.

When United Artists were brought by Australian investors, the company decided they were no longer making horror movies. Therefore, the creator Don Mancini produced the sequel independently with Universal Studios distributing it to theaters. Child's Play 2 was released in 1990 with Alex Vincent returning as Andy and Brad Dourif voicing Chucky. Two years after the original, Andy's mother has been committed to a mental hospital, forcing him into the foster care system. His new family is the Simpsons and his new foster-sister is Kyle. While exploring his new room, he finds a Good Guy doll. First, he was startled, but he is trying to get on his life and decides to play with the doll. It doesn't take long for Andy to realize the doll is Chucky!

Defiance: Season One
Starring: Grant Bowler, Julie Benz
Studio: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Release Date: October 15, 2013
Retail: $69.98
ASIN: B00E3QJ7X8
Running Time: 9hrs 18mins
Rating: Not Rated

Review:

The science fiction genre seemed to dead on television, but SyFy aired a brand new series last spring which was a blend of Deadwood and Farscape. Tomorrow, Universal Studios Home Entertainment will be releasing Defiance: Season One on Blu-ray and DVD, which would make an excellent Christmas gift.

Defiance is the first television series to tie into a multi-platform video game, interconnected between the two to tell the overall story. The series/game is set in the year 2046, a time where humans and aliens have lived together for over 30 years. Defiance is a small frontier town, built over the ruins of St. Louis, and is lead by Mayor Rosewater (played by Julie Benz.) A former Marine/drifter, Nolan (played by Grant Bowler), is the Chief Lawmaker of Defiance. Both of them try to set rules and regulations for the human and alien residents, but prejudices and politics threaten to destroy the town’s peace.

Episodes on the three-disc set are:

The Journey of Josephine Cain
An American Tapestry
By Nancy Moser
Publisher: Summerside Press
Release Date: September 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0824934279
Pages: 336
Buy Link: http://ow.ly/pq47s
Blog Tour: http://litfusegroup.com/author/nmoser

Review:

Fans of AMC's Hell on Wheels are waiting on pins and needles about the questionable fourth season, until then they can sink their teeth in the recently released The Journey of Josephine Cain by Nancy Moser. The plot involves an unmarried socialite, Josephine Cain leaving Washington D.C. to work side-by-side with her general father, who is supervising the day-to-day building of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Life on the great frontier isn't exactly what Josephine thought it would be like, as she is not use to the harsh weather, deadly gunfights and other dangers of the west. Things take an unexpected turn when she falls in love with an Irish railroad worker, Hudson Maguire.

Hudson works along side his brother Raleigh, who both is saving money to send home to their family. He didn't expect to fall in love with a well-educated proper woman, Josephine.

 
Zombies Unbrained
12 Film Flesh Fest
Directors: Herk Harvey, Sam Newfield, Amando de Ossorio, Ray Austin, Jean Yarbrough, Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow, John "Bud" Cardos, George A. Romero, Jesús Franco, Juan Ibáñez, Jack Hill, Jerry Waren, Victor Halperin
Starring: Candace Hilligoss, George Zucco, Barbara Ray, Mark Burns, Dick Purcell, Vincent Price, Bo Hopkins, Duane Jones, Manuel Gélin, Boris Karloff, Don Sullivan, Bela Lugosi
Studio: Mill Creek Entertainment
Release Date: August 20, 2013
Retail: $9.99

ASIN: B00DJ44LI6

Running Time: 6 hours 32 minutes
Rating: PG, R, Not Rated

Review:

The ratings-hit AMC's The Walking Dead returns tonight with its fourth season, but zombies have crawled their way onto screens way before the comic-flesh-eating-fueled way before the original comic book printed. Mill Creek Entertainment recently released a 12 film flesh fest on a 3-disc set titled Zombies Unbrained, featuring masters of horror Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
 
The films on the 3-disc set are:

• Carnival of Souls (1962) - This eerie film matches some of the best Twilight Zone episodes. Filmed in three weeks, the movie centers around Mary Henry is a solo-survivor of a drag race, which her friends plunged to their deaths in a river. To get over the tragedy, she takes a job as an organist at a Church in Utah, but before long strange occurrences begin and she begins to believe she is being stalked by a mysterious man. She doesn’t know that death is coming for her!

• Dead Men Walk (1943) - Dr. Lloyd Clayton murdered his twin brother Elwyn in self-defense, but Elwyn returns from the dead as a vampire.

• Horror of the Zombies (1974) - This movie is the USA public domain version of The Ghost Galleon, the third movie in the Blind Dead series. When a publicity stunt goes horrible wrong, two female models are stranded on a mysterious galleon at sea. The women are unaware that the undead legions of the Knights Templar are aboard and they want blood.

It was Halloween again, October 31st, just like all the Halloween's before it. But this Halloween would change the world forever.

The Devil decided to go against God's wishes of only having enough power of deceiving our way of being able to choose between good and evil.

The Devil said "Halloween Night is the only night of the year that my powers are the strongest." As the darkness set in and the trick-or-treaters headed out of their homes to get candy, the Devil entered every trick-or-treaters mind using mental telepathy. The Devil said "Go out and fill up your sacks with all the candy it will hold, but this time you will say these words to whoever opens their door to hand out candy. Trick-r-treat! You’re dead! Then look straight in their eyes and all they will see is the eyes of the devil. They will be frozen like a statue. While they are staring in a trance, pull out the butcher knife from your sack and stab them until they fall to the ground. You have twenty-four hours to kill every neighbor in your neighborhoods. When morning rises there will be millions of dead throughout the world. When I release my hold of your minds at sunrise you will be saying where was God when all this took place."

Just as the Devil commanded trick-or-treaters around the world succumbed to the Devil's power and killed every person that opened their doors to pass out candy on Halloween Night.

For all the survivors that didn't participate in Halloween that night. When morning came and the neighbors all opened their doors in their neighborhoods they got the shock of their lives. As the survivors looked at their neighbors’ houses, there were dead bodies lying at their front door with porch lights on and doors wide open.

Gravity Falls
Voice Cast: Jason Ritter, Kristen Schaal, Alex Hirsch, Linda Cardellini
Studio: Walt Disney Home Entertainment
Release Date: October 15, 2013
Retail: $19.99
ASIN: B00EAHX876
Running Time: 129 minutes
Rating: TV-Y7

Review:

Being released this Tuesday, October 15, 2013, is the hit-animated Disney's series Gravity Falls: Six Strange Tales DVD featuring six mysterious episodes that the entire family can enjoy.

The series is about twelve-year-old twins, Dipper & Mable Pines, being shipped off to spend the summer with their Great Uncle ("Grunkie") Stan, who happens to run a tourist trap called the "Mystery Shack" - where the twins discover a strange journal about all the weird things that go about in Gravity Falls.

The episodes on this single-disc are: