Mulliga's Myths and Folktales, Part 6 - A Nightcap from Dr. Juliette Wood

This Halloween, I'm featuring freaky folklore from around the world...everything from the Mothman, to Bloody Mary, to the alligators in New York sewers.

Halloween is almost over for this year, so I thought I'd give the last word to Cardiff University historian Dr. Juliette Wood, former director of the Folklore Society - good night and happy Halloween, everyone!

Guns: S&W Model 15-7 review - A Halloween (.38) Special

Happy Halloween everyone! It's been awhile since I reviewed a gun on the blog, and what better way to celebrate this year's All Hallows' Eve than featuring the Smith & Wesson Model 15, the gun that shot Michael Myers six times (six times!!) at the end of the original Halloween?

Introduction

The Model 15, formerly known as the Combat Masterpiece, is a six-shot .38 Special revolver built on Smith's medium-size K-frame. It was once the most common police firearm in the country, but of course, law enforcement tastes have changed.  With the mass migration to autoloading handguns, it's not surprising S&W hasn't made the Model 15 in years.  My gun is a heavily used police trade-in Model 15-7 from a local gun store, complete with an old holster and speedloader pouches:

Judging by the beat-up condition of the gun, the "HCI" stamping on the holster, and the fact that street cops in my area haven't carried revolvers for decades, my (wild) guess is that this setup came from the Homestead Correctional Institution. Who knows, though? Maybe the gun belonged to officer Harold C. Irwin.

The Model 15-7 was the last Model 15 to feature the traditional hammer-mounted firing pin, which Smith phased out of all of its revolvers in the late '90s in favor of a flat hammer with a floating internal firing pin. Frankly, there's no functional difference, and I'm sure the newer hammer design is cheaper to make, but it does look "weird" in the eyes of a revolver traditionalist. Later Model 15s also featured MIM internal parts and other cost-saving measures. Again, to the extent such changes even reduced long-term durability, I figure it's a wash, since the forged parts on any Model 15-7 will be nearly 30 years old at this point.

I did check out the gun before I bought it, and mechanically, it was in great shape.  That's not surprising at all; law enforcement trade-ins often look mangled on the outside but function fine on the inside, since they are usually carried a lot and shot a little. My gun had a fairly smooth double action pull and a light, near-hair-trigger single action pull. The sights are plain black adjustable - nothing fancy, and not the best in dim light, but adequate for a well-lit prison hallway or security guard post.

Range Report

My Model 15-7 has a 4" untapered barrel, which makes the gun a little muzzle heavy but also improves practical accuracy.  The gun averaged 3" groups at 15 yards, standing offhand, with several different types of ammo. I experienced no failures or mechanical issues at all.

Magtech 158 gr FMJ:

Handloaded 158 gr. LSWC

S&B 158 gr. FMJ (this load has fairly heavy recoil for some reason)

Conclusion

The Model 15 is not the gun I would personally pick if I were facing off against the Boogeyman, but with the right ammo and the right person behind the trigger, it can still do the job even in 2025. The simple operating system and comparatively light recoil make this a fine gun to hand to a beginner - just make sure they go for the eyes.

Mulliga's Myths and Folktales, Part 5 - It Came From the Desert!, Vol. 3

This Halloween, I'm featuring freaky folklore from around the world...everything from the Mothman, to Bloody Mary, to the alligators in New York sewers. In this post, we'll look at a compilation album put together by Matt King, a Coachella Valley musician, loosely themed around Halloween:

The It Came From the Desert! project mixes original songs contributed by Coachella Valley musicians with comic radio skits depicting monstrous happenings. Volume 1 was about fishmen invading from the Salton Sea, Volume 2 featured homicidal Robotic Süper Compüter 6060842 and a robotic takeover, and this year's Volume 3 is about the hunt for the mythical Yucca Man, the Southwest's version of Sasquatch.

It's a neat listen, and the Volume 3 album is the longest one yet, clocking in at an hour and 45 minutes. The comic skits actually maintain continuity with the prior volumes, and some of the musical tracks absolutely cook - just listen for yourself:

Mulliga's Myths and Folktales, Part 4 - Dandadan

This Halloween, I'm featuring freaky folklore from around the world...everything from the Mothman, to Bloody Mary, to the alligators in New York sewers. Today, let's look at a fun anime series that puts an extraterrestrial spin on both Japanese yōkai and classic cryptids:

Dandadan (also spelled Dan Da Dan) starts off when a UFO-obsessed high schooler who doesn't believe in the occult (Ken "Okarun" Takakura) makes a bet with his spiritualist classmate who doesn't believe in extraterrestrials (Momo Ayase): he'll visit a haunted tunnel and she'll visit an alien abduction hotspot, to settle who is correct about the paranormal once and for all.

Of course, this being anime, they both "win," and promptly get plunged into a world of genital-stealing aliens and wisecracking ghosts:

It's a lot to take in at first, but Dandadan smartly focuses on Momo and Okarun, whose odd-couple Mulder-and-Scully romantic tension does a lot of the heavy lifting early on, before they get joined by a host of wacky supporting characters.  The cast deals with typical high school drama while battling a menagerie of famous folkloric monsters, including a sumo-wrestling Flatwoods Monster and kaiju renditions of Nessie and the Mongolian Death Worm.

Dandadan is a fun, lighthearted romp with a unique animation style and some oddball humor (more so than the typical shōnen anime). I think most people will dig it, though there are some parts that seem a bit sus when taken out of context:

Tech: Hollow Knight: Silksong

I enjoyed the original Hollow Knight even though I never got around to finishing the game, so like millions of other people, I picked up the hotly-anticipated sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong. What followed was 55 hours of the most wondrous, most arduous Metroidvania I've ever played:

Silksong follows Hornet, a supporting character from the original Hollow Knight, as she is literally dropped into a strange new bug kingdom full of deadly creatures, treacherous terrain, and forgotten mysteries.  Who kidnapped her? What do they want? And what is the strange force zombifying most of the kingdom's inhabitants? The only way to answer these questions is to claw your way to the top of the labyrinthine Citadel and confront whoever (or whatever) is up there...

Developer Team Cherry famously spent about 7 years working on Silksong, and it shows. Every inch of this fictional insect world feels like a real, lived-in location, with its own aesthetic, denizens, and lore. Even 40 hours in, when most Metroidvanias would be long over, the game was introducing new biomes and bosses, and bringing new events and quests to prior areas.  It felt like it would never end, in a good way.

But oh, those bosses. Silksong began life as a Hollow Knight DLC, so it implicitly assumes that you have played through the first game. That means even early fights are tough, palm-sweating affairs, with multiple phases and summoned "adds" to complicate things. While the second half of the game gets a lot easier as you power up your character, I feel like many players will simply not have the patience or dexterity to deal with the challenge; for example, the final Act 1 boss one took me over a dozen tries to beat, including a frustrating "runback" that tacked on a minute or so of platforming before each attempt.  

It's really a shame that Silksong doesn't have the difficulty adjustment settings of other hard indie games like Celeste or Cuphead, so while I did love the game, I must score it accordingly.

Rating: 91/100 (subtract 15 points if you hate having to re-try bosses over and over again)

Mulliga's Myths and Folktales, Part 3 - MrBallen

This Halloween, I'm featuring freaky folklore from around the world...everything from the Mothman, to Bloody Mary, to the alligators in New York sewers.  Today we feature one of YouTube's most popular folklore/true crime podcasters, MrBallen:

MrBallen has an interesting background for a YouTuber - he graduated from UMass Amherst with a philosophy degree, deployed to Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL, and then started making Internet videos and podcasts about the criminal and the unexplained:

In olden times, people like MrBallen would host documentary shows on cable TV with live action re-enactments and interviews.  MrBallen's content doesn't have that kind of budget (it's mostly just him talking over static backdrops in his signature plaid shirt), but I think that may actually work in his favor. The spotlight here is on the storytelling, so if you miss hearing strange tales of murderers and mysteries over a campfire, give MrBallen a try.

Mulliga's Myths and Folktales, Part 2 - Willow Creek

This Halloween, I'm featuring freaky folklore from around the world...everything from the Mothman, to Bloody Mary, to the alligators in New York sewers.  This post will look at a found footage horror flick about Bigfoot...written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (?!):

First, a disclaimer - I am someone who has been to multiple Bigfoot museums.  I watched all those Discovery Channel shows about Sasquatch growing up.  I am the target audience for a movie like Willow Creek: 

Yes, it's found footage in the style of The Blair Witch Project, and no, it's not particularly original. The film's leads, played by Alexie Gilmore and Bryce Johnson, are making a low-budget documentary about the Patterson–Gimlin film, and along the way, they interact with the locals, get antagonized by a strange man in the wilderness, and eventually spend one terrifying night in the California woods.

It's a good premise, but the execution is a bit lacking.  Aside from one long take inside a claustrophobic tent, there's nothing here that really cries out for feature film treatment, and most of the time, Willow Creek feels like a watered-down V/H/S segment. Still, this is one of the few films to tackle Bigfoot (aside from the obvious), which is why I am giving it...

Rating: 5/10 (subtract 4 if you hate found footage films, add 2 if you're a Bigfoot fan)

Mulliga's Myths and Folktales, Part 1 - An Illustrated History of Urban Legends

This Halloween, I'm featuring freaky folklore from around the world...everything from the Mothman, to Bloody Mary, to the alligators in New York sewers. Today's post looks at a fun, family-friendly gazetteer about these kinds of topics:

English author and illustrator Adam Allsuch Boardman has already written An Illustrated History of UFOs and An Illustrated History of Ghosts, so one gets the sense that he took all the material he had left over to write An Illustrated History of Urban Legends.  That's not necessarily a bad thing - like an Atlas Obscura for the occult, the book surveys a wide variety of apocryphal stories from around the world and throughout history that are interesting but hard to categorize - dead mice in Coke bottles, Stanley Kubrick faking the Moon landing, and the Abominable Snowman.

Everything is presented in a fun "explainer"-type format, with cartoony illustrations and simple, short flavor text. I could see this being a great title for bathroom or coffee table reading, especially if you have kids. The downside is that there's not much depth here, so if you're looking for a serious study of urban legends, this is not your book.