Hey, Oprah gets to pimp her Favorite Things, so why not me? 

I'm not much of a material girl - I'll take a trip over a tiny box any day, and  while I can appreciate and savor a five-course meal, I also understand the subtle merits of the White Hut cheeseburger. 

That said, I am a girl, and things catch my eye now and again. Here are a few items off the Mad Money Wish List this month: 

Pandora wood beads; Plasticland patent purse; flor rake; Hot Chilly's Pepper base layer; iRobot Roomba; Veho neg scanner; VooDoo Rossi SC74 skis

1. House of 1,000 Corpses

2. The Wicker Man

3. Wicked Little Things

4. The Cottage

5. Brainscan

6. The Blob

7. Haunting in Connecticut

8. The Burning

9. Feed

10. Snuff: The Documentary

11. The Nun

12. The Abandoned

13. Murder Party

14. An American Haunting

15. Devil's Rejects

16. Resurrection Mary

17. Severed Ties

18. Return to the House on Haunted Hill

19. Halloween 

20. Documentary: The Villain

21. Primal Secrets

22. The Omen (Remake)

23. Clown at Midnight

A wedding in October ... great friends, great food, many toasts, and good times. What could be better?

Not much. Sara and Rob 's wedding at the Dennis Inn (<-amazing folks and food, hi Brad!) was one of the best I've ever been to, and celebrated some of the finest things about fall.

Things like bright colors and soft light...

Sweet treats... (a red-velvet cupcake tower as a wedding cake)

seasonal touches reminiscent of home...

bits of whimsy...

 ...and most importantly, a reminder: some of us have new bags of tricks these days. But we can always find each other at the old haunts. 

Singer Bad Dancer 1997 - 2001

(Pete - drummer turned Boston-based AV professional; Jon, bassist turned certified arborist, Rob, software engineer, rockstar, and new husband, and me. I hang out here.)

What is a good playlist if not seasonal? I give you my Rocktober Playlist - feel free to add to it in the comments. Let's make an uber list! 

Stop Dead, Duran Duran  

Superstitious,  Stevie Wonder    

Abracadabra, Steve Miller Band 

Frankenstein, Aimee Mann

The Ghost Of Tom Joad, Bruce Springsteen 

Dig Your Grave, Modest Mouse

The Ghost of You, My Chemical Romance 

Harvest Home, Big Country 

Haunt You Every Day, Weezer 

Hoodoo Voodoo, Billy Bragg & Wilco  

Monster Man, Soul Coughing El Oso 

I Want Candy (Kevin Shields Remix),  Bow Wow Wow

Purple People Eater, Judy Garland 25th Anniversary 

Real Live Bleeding Fingers And Broken Guitar Strings,  Lucinda Williams 

Season Of The Witch, Donovan 

Slippin' Into Darkness, War

Treat Street, George Winston 

I See Monsters,  Ryan Adams

Spiderwebs, No Doubt 

Werewolves of London,  Warren Zevon  

X-Files Theme, The Dust Brothers 

Halloween, Siouxsie & The Banshees 

I looked at the calendar in my iPhone today and I thought the settings got scrambled somehow. Oct. 20? Really? 

My favorite month is whizzing past me at break-neck speed. I've barely had time to stop and document the moments - but here are a few.

The Spoils:

The Likely Duo: 

The Food. Stuffed pork loin with spinach, cheddar cheese, apples, and garlic; homemade apple sauce; apple stuffing. Nom.

A group of alumna from a Catholic boarding school start dropping dead across the globe under strange circumstances. The daughter of one of the deceased, Eve, travels with friends to the school in Barcelona to find out the whole story, and meet some of her mother's surviving classmates. Those not-yet-knocked-off and the young travelers end up at the boarding school, where the spirit of Sister Ursula is none too pleased.

Wackiness ensues.

Overall, The Nun (2005, dir. Luis De La Madrid) falls smack in the middle of the horror spectrum, from blood-curdling to belly-laugh. What I find most interesting about The Nun, however, is how it takes a perfectly creepy premise and stretches it to its outer limits, thus damaging what started as a perfectly solid horror flick with religious undertones. Catholic school flashbacks - check. Protagonists with warped senses of spirituality - check. Sabre-toothed, undead nun in full European habit, circa 1960 - check. 

All of the elements of fear are nicely set in place. Throw in a few good-looking teenaged actors with relatively good chops and you've got a winner; just put the camera on autopilot, Mr. Director (who is also probably Mr. Writer and Mr. Producer). We don't need any more crazy in this movie, we're all stocked up.

But nay... directors can never keep their hands off of things, can they? Enter the twist ... way too late in the film, and poorly explained. It's almost like the twist is an after-thought; push it a little further, and there might have been something to salvage. But leave the plot alone as is, and The Nun would have sailed through Catholic-school-hell with ease.

Here are some of the highlights: The Nun takes a valiant stab at that tried-and-true horror staple of fear through the addition of complicated religious beliefs. As we all know, The Exorcist is and will likely remain the Godfather of this genre. The Omen isn't too shabby either. Moreover, what The Nun has that other films is an intriguing vehicle for the villain - literally. Undead Nun Ursula can only travel through water, as she was drowned, so she appears through drains, stagnant pools, what-have-you. This makes for some sick visual effects, and a particularly pasty, water-logged looking Ursula.

In addition, the cinematography in general is great in this film, from grainy hand-held shots to panoramas of Spain, to night-vision shadow-chasing in the abandoned boarding school. The live-action underwater shots are also downright pretty.

There are some loose ends left untied and a few too many subplots for the sake of subplots - but overall, The Nun is a good rental, saved by its visual effects and less-than-stale storyline. I also appreciate that Sister Ursula doesn't take the easy road and kill people by, you know, drowning them. I hate it when the undead nuns go for the obvious stuff.