DECK THE HOLIDAY'S

Cheung Chau Bun Festival or Cheung Chau Da Jiu Festival is a traditional Chinese festival on the island of Cheung Chau in Hong Kong.  Being held annually, and with therefore the most public exposure, it is by far the most famous of such Da Jiu festivals, with Jiu being a Taoist sacrificial ceremony. Such events are held by mostly rural communities in Hong Kong, either annually or at a set interval of years ranging all the way up to once every 60 years ( the same year in the Chinese astrological calendar). Other places that may share the folk custom include Taiwan, Sichuan, Fujian and Guangdong. Cheung Chau's Bun Festival, which draws tens of thousands of local and overseas tourists every year, is staged to mark the Eighth day of the Fourth Moon, in the Chinese calendar (this is usually in early May). It coincides with the local celebration of Buddha's Birthday .    The Cheung Chau Bun Festival began as a fun and exciting ritual for fishing communities t...

Masked Halloween Mystery    Decked out for Halloween, a masked woman on roller skates—most likely a random addition to her costume—poses in 1910.    Masquerade parties in the United States were much more common a hundred years ago, when people dressed up not just for Halloween but also for several other holidays, including Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve, according to Lesley Bannatyne, author of the forthcoming book Halloween Nation: Behind the Scenes of America's Fright Night.    Private social clubs often threw Halloween parties for their members, as it was the first major holiday after most people had returned from their summer homes.    That said, it's "not like Halloween [in the early 1900s] was an East Coast phenomenon or a high-society phenomenon"—people of all classes donned costumes across the country, even in small Western mining towns, she said.    The "early 20th century also was the beginning of a real democrat...

Classic Horror Actors     As a small boy growing up , my family had no problem letting me watch horror movies. As a result, I quickly became desensitized to the genre that scared my friends for many years.   So I grew to enjoy and appreciate classic horror movies. Take a look back at the top five classic horror actors in history. 5. Lon Chaney, Jr.    Quite honestly, I never really thought of Lon Chaney, Jr. as a "horror" actor. I did not find him scary at all and he was talented enough to act in many different genres. Still, the impact he made as an actor in many different classic horror movies cannot be ignored. The son of "The Man of a Thousand Faces," Lon Chaney, Jr. is best remembered for his role in the classic horror movie, "The Wolf Man." 4. Peter Cushing    Classic horror movies experienced a decline in the 1950s. The genre lost the respect of critics and moviegoers in the decade because most h...

The book that started it all    "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain , his first great success as a writer, bringing him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (its original title) and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp , California , about the gambler Jim Smiley . Twain describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to—to wherever he going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road." Samuel Clemons aka "Mark Twain"    "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is also the title story of ...