Here’s a small slice of life from New York’s Chinatown, circa late 1960s. If anyone can identify the street or approximate year please let me know!

Once again your humble curator has signed on to be an official Halloween Cryptkeeper! As always, this means throughout the month of October you’ll see all sorts of fun, spooky posts with a Halloween theme, along with the usual, non-scary tomfoolery of course. I’ll also be posting some scary stuff on my Tumblr and Facebook pages, so check them out too!

To join in the fun and see other blogs participating in the countdown, just click the Beistle skull icon in the upper right. And of course you can view all of my previous Halloween content by clicking here or by checking out the fun Halloween stuff I have on Tumblr. Boo!

After sitting out for a few years, I’m back on the roster as a Halloween Cryptkeeper! That means throughout this month you’ll see all sorts of fun, spooky posts with a Halloween theme. Along with the usual, non-scary tomfoolery of course. I’ll also be posting some scary stuff on my Tumblr and Facebook pages, so check them out too!

To join in the fun and see other blogs participating in the countdown, just click the Beistle skull icon in the upper right. And of course you can view all of my previous Halloween content by clicking here. Boo!

Despite the dearth of new posts here on the blog, it’s been a very busy past several months here at GFS HQ. So what have I been up to? Well, mainly I’ve been beefing up The Press Room at a furious pace.

I don’t have an exact figure but I would estimate I’ve added several hundred new game programs and media guides since the summer, for all the leagues I cover. But what I want to announce here is the addition of a new league to the Press Room — the Canadian Football League!

The CFL joins my ever-growing list of league publications, which also includes covers from the AAFC, MLB, NBA, College Football, NFL, NHL, and WFL.

The timing isn’t the best on the addition, as the 2014 CFL season recently ended. Nevertheless, I now have programs for teams past and present, going back to the league’s first official season in 1958.

At present there are publications for the Montreal Alouettes, Toronto Argonauts, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Edmonton Eskimos, BC Lions, Ottawa Rough Riders, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Calgary Stampeders (your 2014 Grey Cup champions), and Hamilton Tiger-Cats. As I move into the 1990s expect to see covers from many teams that no longer exist.

Surprisingly, program images are not that easy to come by; especially compared to other North American leagues like the NFL or MLB. So the collection is a bit on the thin side at the moment. Fear not, I’m always on the lookout for new scans, and as always I welcome any donations.

And in case you don’t already follow my Press Room Twitter account — @PressRoomGFS — now would be a great time to do so. On it I send links and images of programs from my collection, and often mark the anniversaries of games both important or not-so-important.

I guess it can now be said that I have made the big time. Thanks to one of the many great connections I’ve made through the internet, some of my AFL programs were recently featured in an article published in the December 7 edition of the Boston Globe!

Titled “How football programs have changed—and what it means” and written by online buddy Robert Newman, the article looks at how the great Boston Patriots programs of the old AFL stack up against the modern, slick New England Patriots covers. (Spoiler alert: The old ones are better.)

A related article highlights a handful of old Pats vs. San Diego Chargers programs, with good commentary by Robert. It’s well worth a read (and a listen) even apart from the fact that it features items from my fantastic collection of sports ephemera. Make sure to check it out and give Robert a follow while you’re at it.

And of course if you haven’t already checked out my latest and greatest project — The Press Room — what are you waiting for?

I’m giving Twenty Fourteen a whirl, so expect some nuttiness over the next several days as I figure things out.

This week I started rolling out my newest and most ambitious project yet, and paradoxically the one I’ve spent the least time promoting — The Press Room. Basically, the Press Room is an extension of my popular and beloved gallery of American Football League covers but with one major difference.

Not content to waste dozens of hours scouring the internet for vintage AFL programs, I’ve decided to expand to all four of the major North American pro sports leagues — MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA. So I’ve begun the long, painstaking task of assembling a collection of images from those four leagues featuring game programs, media guides, yearbooks, and more. I’m hoping to be able to cover just about everything up until the early 1990s.

I use that as the cutoff point for no particular reason, other than I think that’s when pro sports started feeling way too corporate and homogenized for my liking. That could also have to do with my age as well, as I entered college at about the same time. Who knows. In any case, I have to put some kind of cutoff in or I’ll go nuts collecting this stuff.

In a perfect world I would have rolled this thing out fully formed. But it’s not a perfect world and I’m too damn impatient. So as of right now, all I have are a handful of NFL items for the San Francisco 49ers and Chicago Bears. I am adding new teams and items as quickly as I can, which is one of the reasons the blog has been fairly quiet as of late.

I’m really excited about this project, as I’ve wanted to get it off the ground for some time. The response to my AFL site has been positive and I think you’ll love this one as well. Because the scope is so vast, I’m going to depend pretty heavily on user submissions to help. So if you want to provide me with any images for the Press Room, please read this.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this thing become more fully formed, and I hope you will dig it too. Don’t forget to spread the word via Twitter, StumbleUpon, and the usual social channels. I don’t make a dime off this stuff, but it’s nice to see it take off just the same.

I think I like the idea of reading Golden Age superhero comics more than actually doing it. Compared to today’s comic books, the stories and artwork often don’t measure up. But man, I could look at the covers all day. So in the spirit of the season, here’s a few Golden Age comic book covers with a Halloween theme. The Superman one is technically Silver Age, but I think it has the same lighthearted spirit as the other three so I included it.

If straight-ahead horror comics from the Golden Age are more your thing, I’ve got a gallery of them too.

Whiz Comics #36 (Fawcett, 1942)

Adventure Comics #294 (DC, 1962)

Flash Comics #78 (DC, 1946)

Black Cat #14 (Harvey, 1948)

Comic Cavalcade #12 (DC, 1945)

I couldn’t resist including this last one from Batman, even though it is firmly entrenched in the Silver Age and is of a much more serious tone. But how can you go wrong with a vintage Neal Adams cover?

Batman #237 (DC, 1971)

It’s October 1, and that can only mean one thing — it’s time to kick off the Countdown to Halloween! I had so much fun acting as a Cryptkeeper for last year’s countdown that I’m back to do it again. So throughout the month you’ll see all sorts of fun, spooky posts with a Halloween theme. Along with the usual, non-scary tomfoolery of course.

To join in the fun, just click the Fruit Brute icon in the upper right to see every post for this year’s countdown. To see all of my cool Halloween posts, you can check out the Halloween archives for those.

I’ll also be posting some scary stuff on my Tumblr and Facebook pages, so check them out too!

Oh and lest I forget, the headquarters for the Countdown to Halloween is here. Please visit other participants’ pages as well to see what they have to offer.