Traumatising your neighbour's kids since October 2010

October 31, 2010 1:47 AM

A friendly Halloween warning: do not go trick or treating at this badass house [SLYT]
posted by marmaduke_yaverland (31 comments total)

The 2010 program was even better. Great stuff!
posted by biddeford at 2:05 AM on October 31, 2010

daaaaad I'm TRYING to get to sleep
posted by the noob at 3:23 AM on October 31, 2010 [2 favorites]

Oooh! Ooh! Do Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" next!
posted by iamkimiam at 4:01 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

And you may find yourself
In another part of the world
And you may ask yourself
Why the fuck is Sony Entertainment blocking this in my country?
posted by Dumsnill at 4:04 AM on October 31, 2010 [8 favorites]

Clicking the link,
Dreaming of
A badass house,
Filled with candy,
Turkey, grouse,
Perhaps a slide,
Perhaps a pony,
But my dream,
Was blocked
By Sony.
posted by beerbajay at 4:44 AM on October 31, 2010 [2 favorites]

here's what i want to know: who ARE these people who seem to have the time to do this? and why? dear lord, why?
posted by msconduct at 5:24 AM on October 31, 2010

How cool that the severance package that gave him the time to do this went into buying the lights.
posted by dangerousdan at 5:36 AM on October 31, 2010

Clark Griswold was such an amateur.
posted by orange swan at 6:02 AM on October 31, 2010

Or more likely, this guy really, really enjoys his job designing theatre and concert stage lighting.

Why on Halloween? Probably because the HOA only lets him get away with it a couple times a year. (I bet he does something on Christmas, too).
posted by ryanrs at 6:06 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

This house has been removed from Riverside, CA due to a copyright claim from Sony Music Entertainment.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:16 AM on October 31, 2010 [9 favorites]

"who ARE these people who seem to have the time to do this? and why? dear lord, why?"

I often wonder the same thing about Sony et al.
posted by HopperFan at 6:29 AM on October 31, 2010

That's totally the "Hallow-e'en Special" of suburban sitcoms.
posted by clvrmnky at 6:44 AM on October 31, 2010

Blocked in Norge and Sverige but viewable in France? Odd. Sony just doesn't go your ge, eh. (terrible, terrible play on way/ge/eh, sorry. It's the fault of my Norwegian grandfather.)

More on topic... it's raining cats and dogs over here today. And Halloween ended up being a passing fad in France. I see more chrysanthemums for la Toussaint now than I do pumpkins, so this is probably the coolest All Hallow's thing I'll see today — thanks!
posted by fraula at 6:44 AM on October 31, 2010

LEFT BRAIN: you know, I'm a little tired of every holiday turning into some insane dick-measuring contest between suburbanites to see who can burn the most money and electricity on light shows using their crappy McMansion as a showcase. I can't wait until Peak Oil makes these pointless ego-fests a thing of a rotten, wasteful past that will make historians throw up over themselves.

RIGHT BRAIN: the singing windows were awesome. A+++!!!
posted by spoobnooble at 6:47 AM on October 31, 2010 [5 favorites]

It's overwrought, but really guys - you could run this whole shebang on one or two Arduinos and some bandpass filtering. Pick up your lights during the "please get this crap the hell out of our store" sale on the day after Halloween and you could do this for what some people spend to play a couple games of golf.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a giant spider to set up.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:58 AM on October 31, 2010 [6 favorites]

They missed their opportunity to use the "two-eyed" garage door as the singer.

spoobnooble, surely you've read enough history to know that the historians of the future will only speak of things like this as being magnificent pomp and pageantry. You don't hear historians showing contempt for Roman feasts, Cleopatra's barges or Elizabethan royal festivals just because they were expensive. It's the job of present writers and primary sources to be judgmental.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:59 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

I thought it was kind of pedestrian until the singing started...
posted by Ogre Lawless at 7:06 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

...at which point it got its ya-ya's.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 7:06 AM on October 31, 2010

Countess Elena, my Left Brain partly agrees with your statement, and yet would like to offer a rebuttal regarding morality and social norms, and the responsibility of historians to document both the strengths and failures of past cilivlisations with an eye on modern-day events. Unfortunately he is unable to do so, owing to the whooping and dancing noises from the Right Brain who is currently re-watching the links of the Weird Al "Polka Face" thread further down the main page. Perhaps another time...
posted by spoobnooble at 7:07 AM on October 31, 2010

Looks to me like a computer animation created across a few frames of video footage and not a real-life, full-scale light show.
posted by vhsiv at 7:28 AM on October 31, 2010

here's what i want to know: who ARE these people who seem to have the time to do this?

Yeah man, why can't they just sit in front of the TV like everyone else?
posted by Fleebnork at 7:41 AM on October 31, 2010 [6 favorites]

msconduct: "here's what i want to know: who ARE these people who seem to have the time to do this? and why? dear lord, why"

Growing up in Door County, one of the kids I was friends with, had a family that used to do this for Xmas... Maybe not animated, I can't recall... The funny thing was, they were Jewish. But they had the most decked out Xmas setup that I knew of growing up. It was damn impressive. It might help to have kids as slaves - IIRC, once the kids grew up, they stopped doing it.
posted by symbioid at 7:55 AM on October 31, 2010

I don't understand. Where are the zombies? What kind of hack does Thriller without zombies?
posted by elizardbits at 7:57 AM on October 31, 2010 [2 favorites]

Looks to me like a computer animation created across a few frames of video footage and not a real-life, full-scale light show.

I can tell from the bulbs, and having seen quite a few light shows in my time.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 8:20 AM on October 31, 2010 [3 favorites]

The 2010 program was even better.

Oh fuck. Did I accidentally the whole year?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:27 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

In 2010 programs, the years do you.
posted by Dumsnill at 8:29 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

What kind of hack does Thriller without zombies?

Yeah! I was totally hoping for the garage doors to open and the driveway fill with dancing zombies!
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 9:09 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

Electric power wise this would be next to nothing. The majority of the lights are LED's and the faces are most likely made of EL Wire.
If you bought everything after Xmas or bought from a wholesaler like these guys and you were handy with DIY projects, this could easily be done for a couple of hundred bucks.
posted by HappyHippo at 9:17 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

Clark, the little lights aren't twinkling.
posted by mattbucher at 9:35 AM on October 31, 2010 [1 favorite]

The 2010 program was even better.

The 2010 program included multiple tunes.
posted by kenko at 10:25 AM on October 31, 2010

I used to live in a neigborhood of people like this. One of them was a stage lighting/ prop guy and his house was insane: the whole front yard would be a light show like this but with real props (one year four or five zombies on real Harleys), fog machines, lasers, strobes, surround sound. You name it, it was there.

Picture a big knot of kids gathered on the sidewalk trying to pluck up the courage to traverse the large front yard to get to the candy at the door (which usually looked like the Gateway to Hell). Half the kids never made it.
posted by fshgrl at 8:44 PM on October 31, 2010