Author: Stephen J Frankenberry

(Note: this tends to be a yearly thing, ya know, with this time of year rolling around on a yearly basis and I have written different iterations of this over the years but it is still fun in, ya know, another year’s iterations sorta way)

When I got home earlier last week I said to my Sis, Beck, and Nephew Matt “So, how do you know when it’s October? Pretty simple, the pumpkins adorning front steps, the Halloween decorations filling up lawns, sometimes to the extreme (oversaturation people!! Fun, but oversaturation!! And inflatable “evil” is a something that just doesn’t quite come across) football season already a quarter way through, the cool crisp nip to the air and the proliferation of hoodies and sweaters and the nagging sense of fear at the back of your head and taste buds of pumpkin spice (Pumpkin Spice is people!!!)”

I know I said that last year, and probably the year before, just because it’s funny (Ok, even if only I think so) but still, I didn’t yell that part all madly Charlton Heston-like so as not to frighten so we’re good, but then I asked “How do you know when it’s October in this family though? When you see this particular display in the grocery store” … and I then showed the both of them the picture on my phone from my trip to Market Bistro (my new favorite grocery store by the way and I absolutely LOVE a good grocery store) in Latham earlier to grab something for my lunch (and no, I wasn’t grabbing Halloween time perfect cereal, Mom would not approve of such a meal, not now anyway) to which Beck said “Hell yeah!!!”

Though Beck immediately noted the lack of Fruit Brute or Yummy Mummy in the display … then it was a quick lesson of family history for Matt who had also chimed in with his Mom’s “Hell Yeah!!” but was now confused.

“Yah see Matt … why don’t you sit down son. Way back in ’71, the Monster Family of cereals was born into a cereal age where sugar coated treats could be sold as a healthy breakfast option replete with whole grain and a varying number of essential vitamins and minerals and calcium (milk not included) but also a laundry list of other ingredients you couldn’t pronounce that would cause pause years later according to science and could explain some things, but claimed with cartoon character spokestoons for legitimacy in a kid’s world and Frankenberry, Count Cholula and Boo-Berry were welcomed into the greater family fold of these cartoony sweet characters with hyperactive kids Mom sleeve tugging in the grocery store to buy “Please, Please, Please!”, Ok’d by Moms only because of the “essential vitamins and minerals” labeling bit and the need to get you to just shut the hell up and stop stretching her blouse.

Your uncle here was only 7 back in that day, Matt, a day where the internet was Saturday morning commercials of cereals and candies and toys that just happened to have cartoon vignettes placed between them of anvils and beep beeps and a wondrous company called “Acme” that provided myriad ways to blow shit up, Wacky Racers Wacky Racing, cat and mouse best friends trying to kill each other, a snarky rabbit in a rabbit hole “What’s up Doc-ing?” with a sarcastic smirk and a carrot, a That’s All Folks’ and before, shudder, the actual internet where you had to walk uphill both ways in your bare feet over broken glass (Yes, a lotta broken glass back then Matt and folks without shoes … oh, and it snowed a lot) to get information from a library or a newspaper and where you communicated with your friends through an ancient tradition of talking face to face or on a telephone attached to a wall in a kitchen that was only as smart as the conversation happening on it (which was often decidedly NOT, no matter who was on it, Moms and Dads included) but one that came with a timer as, back in that day Matt, the whole family shared just one phone, or more to the point, just one phone line even if there were other phones in bedrooms, maybe, for the hoity-toity wannabe’s who just wished to show off to friends and neighbors but which could get uncomfortable with your mother showing them into her and Dad’s bedroom for a “glance” at a new bedspread or curtains or something … “Oh that little extra phone thing on my nightstand?” but still just one line, so that if you picked up another phone you could hear someone else’s conversation.

So you had to learn patience and a respect for privacy (unless you thought your Mom had some juicy shit to share with her friend Marina or there was something you could hold over your brother and his friend’s heads to blackmail them with so you quietly snuck into Mom and Dad’s room and picked up the hoity-toity phone) or if it was a real far away friend you might actually have to send a letter as those long distance calls could be a cost so you sat down in your room and wrote a letter with words on paper, or parchment as you might think of it now, and then put it in an envelope with a stamp … what? … a stamp? … oh, a small square sticky paper thing with fancy edges that represented mail money with presidents on them or flags or flowers or whatever was the latest “this deserves to be on a stamp!” picture that you licked a gluey bit to stick them … sorry? … yes licked … a gluey bit … with your tongue … and after some person at the Post Office had rolled out however many you were looking for through their bare, possibly filthy fists across the sticky bit that you were going to lick … I know … how did we all survive and that stamp went on that envelope that you wrote an address on and put in the mailbox to then wait patiently for a reply until you died of old young age. And you can’t even imagine what a breakthrough stamps you could peel off of a sheet were!! Think of the DVR or the toaster oven or the wheel just in a stamp kinda way … and the public health implications. It was HUGE!

Anyway, I won’t belabor this as I’ve written something to this effect at this season for years, just know Matt, that I don’t change, nothing in the air at this time has me suddenly looking any scarier or sickly sweet as I do on a Sunday morning, after a sleepless Saturday night doing just this sort of wordy thing only with beer, for a pee replete with “Aaaaaarrrgggghhhhs!!” at a damp bath mat soaking my socks (dammit fella’s!! can ya dry off in the shower a bit more when you’re done?! And I was gonna keep wearing these dirty socks I’ve had on since Friday!! They were practically, and comfortably mind you, pasted to my feet”) full moons don’t have me suddenly transform, that is a Fruit (Frute) Brute gig and his warewolfyness, I don’t float around all dreary eyed high-like wondering who I might be the blueberry spirit of (probably of some marketing guy who reveled the late 60’s too much), I don’t have a sarcophagus in the basement where all that overbought emergency toilet paper of recent years can come in handy, I don’t have to run from villagers chasing me with torches and pitchforks and poorly misspelled signs just at the mere sight of my pink self for sale, like some sort of monster nightmare commodity replete with steam vent horns and temperature gages, clunky boots, knobs in my neck and sleepless night residual sugar highs (I swear some of that sugary stuff could sit in the system Matt … like all day … at least that was what could have been my excuse for a who me was if I hadn’t been too young to think of it).

But do know, as you grab at crucifixes and lunge for holy water that that ain’t my monster domain either, plus poking me with said crucifixes while making a nice lemon butter and garlic pasta just makes me giggle, it tickles, and that is the Count’s purview anyway, plus he takes a pill now that helps him “Wow, I never knew how tasty garlic was!” which he says EVERY FUCKIN’ TIME WE TRY TO ENJOY ANYTHING WITH GARLIC AND IN HIS ANNOYINGLY OVERDONE ACCENT (he always wanted to be an actor). Yeah, we get it … you can have garlic now … sigh

But I should also let you know Matt that your Mom was remiss in her noting the lack of inclusion of some family members in the “family picture” display at Market Bistro as last year we Monster’s were introduced to a long lost cousin, and a pretty cute one too, well, as cute as an undead zombie that only wants to eat your brain can be cute, Carmella Creeper, but certainly a hell of a lot cuter than we ugly mugs, that’s for sure. Yes, that includes you Count. No, shut up, you ain’t “distinguished lookin'”

Carmella has fit in quite nicely and to tell you the truth it is nice to have a woman around, she freshen’s up our old guy monsters perspective and in Caramel Apple, such a nice addition to our tired flavors.

Anyway Matt, that is the story and where we stand right now in another Frankenberry Monster Family cereal season.

Matt: (looking up suddenly at the stares from his Mom and myself) “What, were you talking to me?”

Me: “You put your earbuds in didn’t you? Had them in almost the whole time?”

Well, anyway, next October will come around sooner than you think for more story time.

Before that though, this was the Attic introduction of Carmella to House Frankenberry Monster Cereal Haunted House of the Monster Cereal Family House.

Ok, I can work on that.

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June 10, 2023

A Welcome To A New Monster Cereal Family Member

A good friend of mine recently posted to me at Facebook of the arrival of a new member of the family of Monster Cereals, Carmella Creeper. (thanks Patty, I didn’t get the cereal text alert for some reason … thought for sure I was on the list).

Fixing up her room here in the haunted house here as we speak.

For those that may not know my name is actually Frankenberry. It’s not a radio handle I invented somehow as some have thought on occasion over the years, that I may have decided, maybe drunkenly they surely had to have thought, that a pink strawberry flavored Frankenstein looking monster cereal character would be the perfect name to attach to a radio persona or to a Blog from an Attic.

No, Stephen J Frankenberry to be exact as my English mother would surely and adamantly have you note. And Stephen with a proper “PH” she would also add. Not some Americanized “V” as she always viewed it. Not that she thought less of anyone with that “V” mind you, though maybe silently thinking such of the parents, “It’s not their kids fault” she surely thought.

“I’m sure they are all very fine Stephens but just with a “V”? … Oh, Bloody Hell”.

The cereal came out when I was 7, in 1971 (yes, I’m old) and inspired many the jokes then and ribbings on long school bus rides and also prank phone calls on the weekends that would drive my mother mad, in a “mad” monstery kind of way huh? HeHeHe.

“Hello, is Count Chocula there? (click)

“Hello, is Boo Berry there?” (click)

A few years later

“Hello, is Fruit Brute there? (click)

She, in her very English just off the plane only 8 years earlier, had no idea what prank phone calls were.

“Joseph Frankenberry!! You and this bloody name!!” followed with a “Hell’s Bells” and many other very English expletives that she would eventually get a bit more explicit with but with an English accent which just made them sound really cool and cute so you forgave.

Whatever and well, I have always been inextricably connected to a pink strawberry flavored Frankenstein monster cereal character and am quite fond of it, even have a tattoo on my forearm to proclaim Monster Family solidarity.

So, to find out that I have a cousin?

Well now, that was pretty exciting.

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Nice to make your acquaintance Carmella, and welcome to the family.

So, a couple of things. I tend to walk around the haunted house here in only my boxers, neck bolts and my big ass scarred head and head accessories clutching a one eyed teddy bear, the Count can be a little arrogant and is something of a night bat with his late night TV viewing of horror and Hallmark flicks (he finds it very amusing that somehow the two aren’t really all that distinguishable from one another), Boo is a sweetheart though a little flighty, and Fruit Brute is a bit unpredictable and will most certainly leer at you. Just remind him that we are family and that this isn’t the South … oh, and that you will kick his ass (he’s all talk). Yummy Mummy visits from Egypt on the holidays and has his own room with a sarcophagus in the basement.

Oh, I’m also historically, according to the TV commercials, a bit of a scaredy cat, so if you can keep the “Creeper” part of “Carmella Creeper” to a minimum I would appreciate it. Your room is all the way up at the top of the stairs in the attic loft bedroom with a great crow’s eye view of the graveyard in the front lawn. It’s a pain in the ass to mow and weed whack around all the headstones but is still quite eye catching (though the HOA are NOT fans and don’t find the same aesthetic in it that we do).

But again, welcome to the Monster Cereal Fam Carmella!! Lookin’ forward to October!!

Brute, seriously? What did I tell you about her being family?! Really Carmella, feel to kick his ass!!!