In honor of today’s Reformation Day (no, not Halloween), here are the lyrics to Martin Luther’s A Mighty Fortress is Our God…

A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing:
For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:
Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours through Him Who with us sideth:
Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

What do you get when you merge two hot toy properties like Transformers and Star Wars? You get the following monstrosity… A Millennium Falcon that transforms into Han Solo & Chewbacca. It just doesn’t make any sense.

[Note: This entry originally appeared on the AOL Shopping blog.]

At this time of year, you can’t help but crave a bit of frightful fun. No Halloween season is complete without staying up to watch cheesy horror movies the week leading up to Halloween. But don’t waste your precious evenings picking a dud at the video rental store. Here are my picks for the best horror movies for Halloween.

11. The Others

Overshadowed by the success of a similar ghost film (The Sixth Sense) at the time of its release, The Others didn’t receive the positive attention it deserved. It is a smart, scary ghost story that keeps you in suspense all the way up to the satisfyingly twisted end. Nicole Kidman is compelling as the frightened mother, and you find yourself just as confused and terrified as she is throughout the film.

10. The Lost Boys

Boys with fangs. This 80’s gem has an all-star cast of vampires and vampire killers, including Keifer Sutherland, Jason Patrick, Corey Feldman, Corey Haim and Alex Winter. There is a perfect mix of horror, comedy, romance and drama in this film. Like the hero (Patrick), you start off thinking the “lost boys” are the coolest guys on the planet. But after the initial seduction, you begin to hate them more and more. Until, finally, you’re cheering when the snot-nose little brother (Haim) is unloading a squirt gun filled with holy water on one of the biting biker baddies.

9. The Blair Witch Project

I understand that this is a highly-debatable selection on my list, but I simply could not ignore the genius behind the release of this film. The grassroots marketing for The Blair Witch Project was phenomenal. It was the epitome of viral marketing. I knew about the story of the Blair Witch way before I even knew there was a movie. The producers of the film leaked out rumors of the events portrayed in the film’s footage on the Internet and built up a credible “legend” prior to announcing the film’s release. When they said the footage of the three lost campers was found and was being released as a film, I was genuinely intrigued. I went to see the film on opening day (before all the hype) and got sucked into it. The footage felt real. The emotion felt real. The terror at the end felt real. The real success of the film was that it showed that you didn’t need a huge budget to make a compelling horror film. All you needed was a cheap video camera and a great idea.

8. The Sixth Sense

The movie that rejuvenated the horror movie market. Despite its long-parodied lines (”I see dead people”), The Sixth Sense is a truly frightening and intellectually mind-bending masterpiece. It set the stage for a slew of copy-cat trick-ending knock-offs that came afterwards. Bruce Willis plays a weary, empathetic character trying to help a young boy deal with his psychological maladies and delusions. The little boy sees dead people, but no one believes him. Willis’ character tries to help the boy—but meanwhile his own relationship with his wife is withering. He eventually finds a way to help the boy and solve his issues with his wife. But not in the way anyone would expect.

7. 28 Days Later

Back in the 80’s, there were a multitude of really bad, low-budget zombie films. So much so, that purists of the genre simply looked to the past (1968’s original Night of the Living Dead) for their zombie entertainment. That’s until Danny Boyle (director of Trainspotting) decided to make a low-budget zombie film of his own in 2002—reinventing the slow-moving, lumbering zombie into a fast, agile rampaging maniac. Boyle’s zombies were terrifying, because you couldn’t escape from them. They chased their victims with relentless speed and anger. And they never stopped.

6. The Descent

This sleeper hit from 2006 features a group of female friends with a clearly distinguished (and disturbing) history venturing off on a caving exposition in order to renew and heal their social bonds. The horror they find within the caves is secondary to the sociological horrors they face between themselves in reaction to their cave-dwelling adversaries. The Descent is a seriously engrossing, realistic look at how people react to adversity.

5. Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Riding on the heels of 28 Days Later’s success, this remake of George Romero’s classic zombie film Dawn of the Dead succeeds in the impressive task of bettering the original. The new version of Dawn of the Dead replaces Romero’s slow zombies with Danny Boyle’s swift zombies. Mix in some quality B-list actors like Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer and Ty Burrell, update the special effects, and you have the best modern zombie film of the bunch. The classic story of zombie holocaust survivors in a mall is still unmatched.

4. A Nightmare on Elm Street

The original nightmare featured a serious and mysterious Freddy Kruger. There were no comedic one-liners, over-the-top death scenes, or outlandish character histories. There was just a very scary boogey man and four unlucky, sleep-deprived teenagers. The original Nightmare on Elm Street had the best cast of all the Freddy films, including Johnny Depp and the original Nancy—Heather Langenkamp. What happens when something as unavoidable as sleep becomes the harbinger of your own death?

3. Evil Dead 2

The funniest horror film ever. Before Sam Raimi (director of the Spider-Man films) became a household Hollywood name, he and his buddies (Bruce Campbell, Rob Tapert, and brother Ted Raimi) made low-budget movies for fun. After the success of their very serious horror film Evil Dead, they made a follow-up film that took the premise of Evil Dead, but added lots of visual gags and a comedic performance by lead actor Bruce Campbell. This genius mixture produced a cult classic horror film and an iconic character in the form of chainsaw-wielding Ash.

2. Night of the Living Dead

In 1968, a low-budget horror movie was made that started a new sub-genre of horror—zombie films. Night of the Living Dead shocked audiences in the late 60’s because there was nothing like it ever created. George Romero introduced the world to undead, reanimated zombies that craved human flesh and could not be stopped (save for a shot to the head). Even though Romero’s zombies were slow-moving, mostly-lifeless creatures, he captured the sheer horror of seeing a dead body walking around on film. For audiences, the horror was in the disbelief of it all. His later films accepted zombies as a given and were, thus, less horrifying. Night of the Living Dead is an absolute classic.

1. The Exorcist

The Exorcist truly scared me to the bone, when I saw it as a child (don’t ask me how I got my hands on it at that age). And The Exorcist still scares me to the bone, when I watch it as an adult. Based on a documented case of demon-possession in the United States, The Exorcist depicts the horror of watching something terrible happen to your child and not being able to do anything about it. As despicable as the child in the story becomes due to the demons inside her, her mother is still by her side. The movie is shot in a realistic way, showing a normal household dealing with frightening occurrences. The demonic voices coming from the little girl will give you nightmares for weeks.

I just want to write a quick summary of the past couple weeks…

I finished the Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 class. I learned a couple of things here and there, but ultimately, it wasn’t worth the $450 cost. I already knew most of what was taught from my time exploring the program on my own. I’m definitely not taking the “advanced” class. Instead, I’m going to learn by doing and will purchase the $35 training book by Adobe.

Two weekends ago, I went to Kings Dominion with Edita. It was a perfect day to go to the park. The weather was warm and clear, and there were no lines at any of the rides. We had a lot of fun, and it was great to see her experience being at a theme park. (I’m sure they don’t have anything like it in Croatia.) She’ll only be in the country for two more months. I think I’ve done my best to show her around. She wants to see the beach & the Atlantic Ocean, so I’ll probably take her down to Virginia Beach or to Ocean City for the day sometime soon. After that, I’m out of ideas.

The AOL layoffs put a damper on the work week. But honestly, I never gave it a second thought. First of all, I was pretty certain my group was safe (because we’re profitable for the company), and secondly, my contract was originally supposed to end in November anyway. I figured I couldn’t change anything by worrying about it, so I just went about my business. My friends at Sprint also informed me that they were hiring some web content writers, so I figured that’d be a good fall-back plan. As it turns out, my group was unaffected by the layoffs, and all indications suggest I will be able to stay at AOL as a full-time employee.

I finally scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the first time in several years. The doctor’s office where I got my last Allegra prescription refused to renew my prescription unless I came in for a visit. Apparently, the doctor I had the prescription with hadn’t been working there for over three years. When scheduling my appointment, I was allowed to choose my new doctor. After a quick glance at the bios posted on their website, I naturally chose the good-looking, young female doctor who spoke French. Ha, ha. Although, this turned into a slight liability, when she ended up looking up my nose and in my ears during the check up. Not sure how I feel about scheduling my physical. I think I need to lose some weight and build some muscle first. Ha.

I took the day off work on Thursday in order to finish working on the first episode of DCderby.TV. The next derby bout was on Saturday, so I had to have something to show from the last bout before recruiting another skater to take part in the show. (I also needed to have a completed episode for other reasons, which I’ll touch on later.) I worked and worked on the episode late into the night. In the midst of working, I was startled to hear voices coming from behind me. I turned around and saw that my radio alarm had turned on. I had literally worked through the night. And I still wasn’t finished. Once I completed my last edit, I began the exporting/compression process and jumped in the shower. An hour later, the video file had been created. I rushed to work and ended up being 2 hours late. After that, I swore I would never wait until the last minute to work on my podcasts again. After a long day of sleep-deprived loopiness, I tweaked some edits when I got home and published the derby episode.

You can view the high-quality video file on the DCderby.TV website, or subscribe to the podcast. If you don’t have broadband access, you can check out the mega-compressed Flash version here…

DC Derby - Episode 01 - Harley Quinn

On Saturday, the DC Rollergirls held their championship bout. Despite my last-minute planning, I was able to find a skater to profile for the next episode — Five-Ho. I always thought she looked way cool, so I was looking forward to interviewing her. She turned out to be a really rad girl with an interesting profession and attitude. (Check out the next episode of DCderby.TV to find out more.)

I forgot to mention that, earlier in the week, I took part in a Marketing Professionals panel at George Mason University, where I joined four other panelists in answering the questions of GMU marketing students and giving advice on how to find a good Marketing job after college. It was pretty fun. I thought a lot of the advice given by the other panelists was very theoretical, so I stayed with specifics. I told the students what exactly they could be doing while they’re in school to give themselves a leg up after graduation (like working for the student paper, using the free media production facilities on campus, learning technology, etc.). In all honesty, I thought I gave some great advice. Unfortunately, I know most of them won’t take it.

I’ve been spending what little free time I have at home watching the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Back in 2001, I spent the entire Halloween day watching all seven Freddy movies. Since I’m not unemployed, like I was then, I don’t have that kind of time. Instead, I bumped up my Netflix subscription and now get a new Nightmare just about every other day. I have to say, so far I’m noticing that every other movie is good (the odd ones), while the even ones are much lower budget and suck big time. The first one, of course, is the best. The third one, Dream Warriors, is also good, because it has an all-star cast. My favorite Elm Street character ever is the one played by Jennifer Rubin in Dream Warriors (the punk rock chick with the switchblades). Although, Johnny Depp is a close second.

Still haven’t seen 30 Days of Night, but desperately want to. I’ll probably go after work sometime this week.

I finished my Vocal Impact class this evening. All-in-all, it was pretty enjoyable. I learned more in this class than in the Voice & Diction class I took in college. The teacher was also entertaining. I made a new friend, who I hope to hang out with in the future. Maybe she’ll come to my brother’s karaoke birthday party this Friday.

This week looks to thankfully be pretty low-key. I need a down week to rest. I’ll probably spend some time capturing derby clips. We’ll be having a team-bonding bowling trip at AOL on Friday during lunch. And that’s about it.

Oh, one last thing… I’ve begun building a very low-budget studio in my condo. I had to convert my sun/exercise room into a mini video studio. I bought some lights and a green screen backdrop from Penn Camera and am just waiting for the backdrop stand to be delivered. Once that’s all set up, I’ll begin my sample, audition videos. I have big plans for my professional future, and these little videos are going to be the first step. More on this later.