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When Sarah Sanderson comes calling…I’ll follow.

Here a few orange and black “nuggets” to impress your friends over the apple-bobbing bucket this Halloween. P.S. Beware “dog germs,” of course.

Nailed IT! That’s what Hollywood’s screaming after the newest Stephen King reboot “floated” (ahem) away from the competition, earning a staggering $180 million opening weekend.

With those kinds of numbers, Hollywood may be scrambling to find the next King-sized retelling. We here at Quirk, ever the visionaries, think they should consider going in a different direction: “The Stephen King Character Mash-ups You Didn’t Realize You Were Dying For!”

[Movie still from To Kill a Mockingbird 1962, Universal Pictures]

Ah, Father’s Day…that second-fiddle after-thought of the greeting card holidays. According to a prominent bank, America spends 40% more money on Mother’s Day. That’s an average of $57 dollars less on Dad than on Mom, and the gap has been widening since 2003.

Your friends here at Quirk understand. Everyone has their reasons for snubbing Dad (to a much less extent).

Maybe a stroll through grades for the good, bad and downright deadly of literary dads will give you some perspective this Father’s Day. Maybe even inspire you to ditch the necktie and get Dad something that says, “I love you just as much as I love Mom.”

Since the first Academy Awards in 1928, thirty-three Best Picture winners were based on novels.

All told, that accounts for almost half of all Academy Award winning films! That’s quite a track record attesting to the critical success of “book to screen.” But do literary characters fare equally well?

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, jolly ol’ Saint Nick and his cast of Christmas-time characters, from Frosty to Grandma’s manslaughtering reindeer, permeate the radio airwaves almost as soon as Halloween ends.

It’s big business! Write a memorable holiday jingle, and you’ll be fa-la-la-la-laughing all the way to the bank. Macca, Mariah & even Irish punk rockers The Pogues, all make close to half a million dollars a year off the royalties of a single holiday song. And don’t forget the cross-media potential: TV specials, first-run movies, fourth-run movies, internet memes… even book deals.

Unless…of course, the book came first.

Can you guess which of these Christmas denizens originated as book characters? Quirk “double-dog-dares ya’” to find out!  

Forget Dracula and Hamlet…the modern day actor worth his mettle must take a shot at Ebenezer. All the greats have: George C. Scott to Albert Finney, Tom Hanks to Jim Carrey, Captain Picard to Frasier, Kermit to Mickey, Mr. Magoo to Fred Flintstone.