Halloween, fanboy style

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There’s no holiday quite like Halloween when you’re a fanboy -- when else can you walk down the street dressed up like Jango Fett without the risk of public ridicule?

This is a banner year for fanboys, of course, and Hero Complex will have updates over the next few days about some truly silly ways to make your Halloween as geektacular as possible. Such as...

Make a Death Star jack-o’-lantern: Yes, that’s right you can take the gourd-like state fruit of New Hampshire and make your own statement about galactic domination, like the one in the photo on the left. You could also make an oversized orange squash into a wild-eyed alien, Frankenstein’s monster, Harry Potter or Jack Sparrow. Who knew?

Give blood for the ‘Saw’ films: Is this just some clever trick to lure in new victims? Yeah pretty much. The folks at Lionsgate and the makers of ‘Saw V’ are celebrating the opening weekend of the tender new film with their traditional ‘Give ‘Til It Hurts’ blood drive. It runs through next week as well. The campaign is done in tandem with Yahoo! and the American Red Cross and it’s more than a stunt; the ‘Saw IV’ blood drive pulled in 41,784 pints, so it’s most assuredly a good (if somewhat disturbing) cause. You can enter a Zip code to find a participating needle near you by going right here.

Do the ‘Thriller’ zombie dance in public: We should have seen this coming after ‘13 Going on 30’ made it somehow cool yet wildly uncool to do the monster mash, Michael Jackson-style. Anyway, this Saturday there will be (ahem) normal people just like you in 96 cities across 13 countries who will do a synchronized public celebration of the 25th anniversary of M.J.’s ‘Thriller.’ Here in L.A. the ‘Thrill the World’ dance will be at the Hollywood and Highland courtyard, which assures that anyone who dares to participate will be photographed by thousands of tourists, many from strange foreign lands such as Malaysia and Wisconsin. With the stakes so high, there’s rehearsal today at 5 p.m. at Pan Pacific Park in West Hollywood. Or you could re-learn the dance right now right there at your office desk by standing up and following-along to this step-by-step video. Heh. Double-dog dare you...

-- Geoff Boucher

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