Join me and Ashley (from happy hour 19) for a bonus happy hour story! Ashley is awoken during her camping experience at Elk Meadows to some creepy lights dancing in the treetops. A scary midnight mystery while camping in the wilderness? Um, no, thank you. At least she had a knife in one hand and her dog by her side.

Shares not Scares by Justin from Happy Hour Eighteen: Start a movie club!
To make the pandemic slightly more bearable, Justin and friends started a movie club focused on watching terrible movies. They specialize in Blacksploitation and Australian exploitation films, watching them both for the ridiculousness of it all but also to recognize how/why these films are of a certain time and culture. 

Here are some gems he suggested (all descriptions are from the linked IMDB pages): 

Frankenhooker
A medical student sets out to recreate his decapitated fiancée by building her a new body made of Manhattan street prostitutes.

Killer Sofa
A killer reclining chair becomes enchanted by a girl and starts committing crimes of passion.

Blacula
An ancient African prince, turned into a vampire by Dracula himself, finds himself in modern Los Angeles.

Coffy
A sexy black nurse takes vigilante justice against inner-city drug dealers after her sister becomes their latest victim.

Join me for happy hour with Brenna! After Brenna graduated from college, she took the leap and moved to Japan. The only problem is she accidentally broke the law. A new kind of alien tale for Paranoia Happy Hour! 

Brenna’s Boo Club: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
Brenna said it best in her written description to me: “It is, like all her books, a romance novel in which Boy meets Girl, Boy and Girl have lots of consensual, respectful, emotionally satisfying sex-- very graphically described, then Boy and Girl have Critical Misunderstanding, Boy and Girl resolve critical misunderstanding by achieving a deeper understanding of themselves resulting in clarity about how they can better relate to others, and then Boy and Girl live happily ever after.”

A romance trope you say? I’ll be picking up a copy from the library just after I finish rewatching Bridgerton.

Brenna’s Shares not Scares: Mental healthcare for children
It’s often overlooked and a vitally important part of children growing up to become well adjusted adults. Also, check out the Autism Society of Oregon! And, if you’re not in Oregon, there is likely a local organization doing work in this area. 

Join me for happy hour with Alexis! Pack a flashlight and leave your existential dread at home, because we’re heading to the Winchester Mystery House. Is it as spooky as the tour claims? Are the staircases and doors to nowhere as eerie as they sound? ARE THERE GHOSTS LIVING THERE? Tune in to find out!

Alexis’s Boo Club
Dusty Corners Podcast
Pod description: “What’s better than getting spooked out by a paranormal story late at night? Come along with Eric and Noah as they take a look at their favorite tales of UFOs, ghosts, cryptids, and more, while discussing the common threads that create the paranormal lore we all know and love. Get the details of your next go-to camp fire story while listening to the Dusty Corners Podcast!”

Sounds Like a Cult
Pod description: “Do you think SoulCycle is a cult? What about Elon Musk stans? Or the Royal Family? What about spiritual influencers? Is Instagram itself a cult? We’re Sounds Like A Cult, a podcast that analyzes a different zeitgeisty group every week to try and answer the big question: This group sounds like a cult, but is it really?”

Alexis’s Shares not Scares: Berna Anat, Your Financial Hype Woman
Alexis describes Berna as her “gateway drug into the financial world.”
From Berna Anat’s website: “I’m a producer, speaker and Fin-fluencer (is that a thing?) dedicated to making financial literacy more funny, more accessible, and more Brown for young people everywhere.” Follow her on instagram @heyberna! 

Join me for happy hour with Maya! Don’t forget your layers and nausea meds, because we’re traveling through The Drake Passage, the roughest waters in the world, to get to our destination. From the wildlife to the warm springs, Antarctica is fucking weird. 

Maya’s Happy Hour Beverage: Orange Blossom Honey Moonshine by Kick Back Cove
With over 50 years of experience, our distiller, Red Bordner, is able to produce award-winning moonshine. The Kick Back Cove brand of moonshine has been nationally recognized for its quality, having won 30 medals during 2017 at international tasting competitions. That's because Red personally ensures that every batch of moonshine is brewed with 100% raw products for exceptional flavor.*

Maya’s Boo Club: DC Deck Deck-Building Game by Cryptozoic 
In the DC Deck-building Game, you take on the role of Batman™, Superman™, or one of their brave and heroic allies in the struggle against the forces of Super-Villainy! While you begin armed only with basic combat maneuvers, you will add new, more powerful cards to your deck as you go, with the goal of defeating as many of the DC Comics Super-Villains as you can. In the end, the player who has accumulated the most Victory Points from the cards in his or her deck wins the game!*

Maya’s Shares not Scares: Interconnected: The Tangle
The Tangle, a live theatrical dance experience, aims to de-stigmatize and bring awareness to the vast challenges of the human journey by bridging the arts and mental health education through a multi-media journey.*

*Info from linked pages. 

Join me for happy hour with Michelle! A fourth-generation Oregonian, Michelle tells the story of her ties to the Shaniko Hotel in the ghost town of Shaniko, OR. Her family participated in the 1977 auction of the Shaniko Hotel. Fast-forward several years when she and her husband visited and stayed in the historic hotel in 2006. You’ll never guess what she finds there!

Boo Club: The Devil in The White City
From Erik Larson’s website: “The No. 1 New York Times bestseller about the architect who led the construction of the great Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and the prolific serial killer who used the fair as a lure. Just blocks from the fairgrounds, the killer built a hotel of horrors equipped with an acid vat, dissection table and crematorium. The book won an Edgar Award for best fact-crime writing, and was a finalist for a National Book Award. In November 2010, Leonardo DiCaprio acquired the rights to make a feature film based on Devil, and has stated he plans to play the role of the killer, Dr. H. H. Holmes.”

Shares not Scares: Restore Oregon
Restore Oregon’s mission is to preserve, reuse and pass forward the places and spaces that reflect Oregon’s diverse cultural heritage and make our communities inclusive, vibrant, liveable and sustainable.

Join me for happy hour with Jane! Jane adventures to Bhutan on her honeymoon with her new husband and in-law family. While staying in the town of Punakha, they visit Chimi Lhakhang, the temple of the Divine Madman. This 14th century dude LOVED to dick down and is known as the “fertility saint” and “The Saint of 5,000 women.” We hear Jane’s tale of low key dissing this guy in his own temple (I mean, same, Jane, SAME), and the retribution that the Divine Madman dolled out in return. Be careful what you say! The fertility god may be listening.

Jane’s Boo Club: Midsommar
Description from IMDB: “A couple travels to Northern Europe to visit a rural hometown's fabled Swedish mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.”

Jane’s Shares not Scares: Ema Datshi

• Recipe by 196 Flavors
• Recipe by Bong Eats
• Recipe by World Travel Chef

What happens when Alma Rosa’s husband opens a hefty bag he found abandoned on a cemetery gravestone? Well, when your do-gooder hubby picks up litter to help the community, things can get a little hairy. This story involves a town on edge due to a recent murder, Alma Rosa’s folkloric Mexican upbringing, and the absolute possibility of witchcraft. 

And for anyone curious about the murder of David Grubbs in Ashland, Oregon, here’s a link to September 2021 article by Medium on the still unsolved case.

Alma Rosa’s Boo Club: Obit by Victoria Chang
Description from Copper Canyon Press: “After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. In Obit, longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award in Poetry, Chang writes of “the way memory gets up after someone has died and starts walking.” These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died (“civility,” “language,” “the future,” “Mother’s blue dress”) and the cultural impact of death on the living. Whereas elegy attempts to immortalize the dead, an obituary expresses loss, and the love for the dead becomes a conduit for self-expression. In this unflinching and lyrical book, Chang meets her grief and creates a powerful testament for the living.”

Alma Rosa’s Shares Not Scares: Volunteer with St. Vincent De Paul!
From the SSVPISA.org site: The mission of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is “a network of friends, inspired by Gospel values, growing in holiness and building a more just world through personal relationships with and service to people in need.”

Members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul (known as “Vincentians”) are men and women who strive to grow spiritually by offering person-to-person service to neighbors in need. Our members represent all ages, every race, and all incomes, and all are gifted with awareness that the blessings of time, talent, and treasure are to be shared with neighbors in need.

And some links to withcraft-y things mentioned during the story:

• Nov 27, 2019 - Santería or voodoo, they’re used to headless chickens at Tampa cemetery
• May 10, 2014 - Are voodoo rituals behind the growing number of decapitated roosters being dumped in Las Vegas streets?
• Feb 28, 2008 - Blog on TreasureNet: Found My First Cache, 2 Coconuts & 1 Dead Rooster !!

Join me for happy hour with Morgan Grether! As a child, Morgan lived in an isolated Civil War-era house in the woods of eastern Kansas. Picture the kind of setting that would need very little altering to become a horror movie film set. For weeks, his sister was the only one in the home who could hear terrifying voices in her room. She had everyone convinced it was haunted (including herself) until the real culprit was revealed.

Morgan’s Boo Club: Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog
Morgan calls this film a “beautiful testament to the human spirit and human drive; ambition that is all for art and not for money.” Sounds very much like this podcast (that last part, anyway). Color me intrigued!

Description from Wikipedia: Fitzcarraldo (/fɪtskə'raldo/) is a 1982 West German epic adventure-drama film written, produced and directed by Werner Herzog, and starring Klaus Kinski as would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who is determined to transport a steamship over a steep hill to access a rich rubber territory in the Amazon Basin. The film is derived from the historic events of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald and his real-life feat of transporting a disassembled steamboat over the Isthmus of Fitzcarrald.

Morgan’s Shares not Scares
Art is more important than ever. Check out Morgan’s beautiful photography at grethershot.com or follow him on instagram @grether for a regular dose of beautiful nature shots.

Pro Choice Resources
If you’re not sure where to start, here are three great organizations where you can donate, volunteer, attend events, sign petitions, etc.: 

• American Civil Liberties Union
• Center for Reproductive Rights
• Planned Parenthood