Among all the other projects bouncing around in my brain during the Halloween season, putting together a new costume is always one of the priorities.

In my 31 years, I haven’t missed an opportunity for costuming yet. As a kid, my mom helped put together my outfits, often sewing some or all of it. Once I hit the adolescent years and trick-or-treating was a bit frowned on for my age, my costume efforts waned. Admittedly, a few of them were rather weak. But as an adult, my interest in creative costumes was reborn, the more unique the better.

Coming up with a concept is never difficult. At any given time, I probably have 3 or 4 ideas for things I’d like to be in the future. I don’t do word-play concept costumes. I don’t dress as inanimate objects. I prefer to inhabit a character for the night. To be someone (or something) else. And not an everyday cop, prisoner, or doctor. My costumes usually involve morphing into some type of creepy human(oid).

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Every winter you’ll hear Christmas carols played on every radio station, in all the department stores, and as backing tracks of so many television advertisements. Unfortunately Halloween doesn’t get the same aural exposure. Songs like Thriller, Monster Mash and the Addams Family theme are all classics, but I crave more. So over the years I’ve been amassing quite a collection of terror tunes.

Every Halloween season (which for me is September – October, at least) I put all these bone shaking tracks into heavy rotation. Do I get weird looks when people overhear me jamming to a punk cover of the Ghostbusters theme in early September? Maybe, but I don’t care. After all, this is my job!

While there are many horror themed artists, it’s always nice to come across a song that is specifically about the holiday, and destined to become an annual Halloween anthem for the ages. Enter shock rocker Alice Cooper, with his new single “Keepin’ Halloween Alive.”

“At home my family all gathers around an old spooky tree decorated with skulls and bones in the living room, and we exchange gifts,” says Cooper. “It’s our holiday. We even all have matching black-and-orange Halloween sweaters! I wanted a theme song for people like me, and for us Halloween never ends. In the chorus I say, ‘I’m keepin’ Halloween alive, baby, 3-6-5′… and I mean it!”

Available exclusively on iTunes, if you head over to Alice’s Halloween site you can listen to the track and follow the links to purchase.

You just know I just have to love a song that starts and ends with the lyrics, “I’ll keep my jack-o-lantern light on for everyone tonight!”

I went to the Monster Mania convention this weekend (usually held in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, this was their first show in Connecticut). If you’re a horror fan and have never been to one of these events, let me recommend that you do so whenever you have the chance.

It may be the only time I’ve heard a security guard ask, “Okay listen up… does anyone have any blades, hatchets or chainsaws on them?” It’s the only place I’ve run into someone wiping down a machete in the bathroom and I didn’t even think twice.

Plenty of creepy cool stuff to buy like shirts, posters, movies, books, figures, comics, and severed body parts. You’ll see lots of low budget DVDs, knock-off posters, and price-jacked autographs. But also a lot of unique and crafty goods from some really talented artists.

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I always have my ear to the grave, listening for any rumblings in the world of zombies. So I thought I’d bring your attention to a new release from PopCap Games: Plants vs. Zombies

It’s rooted in the tower defense genre, a sort of puzzle/strategy style. There are 26 types of zombies and 49 zombie-zapping plants for you to strategically plant on the playing field to keep the oncoming horde at bay. The learning curve is nicely paced too. Just when you think you’ve got it mastered, they introduce new environments and special zombies that require new tactics.

But the charm of the game is in the animation, music, and witty humor. Call me a sucker for goofy animated undead, but I find much joy in launching watermelons at a shuffling zombie, who is wearing a bucket on his head for protection.

Available for download on PC and Mac, there’s a free demo to try it out. If nothing else, take a look at this video and try to not get this song stuck in your braaaaaiiiiiin.