eerieindiana | Entries tagged with trope: kingship and sacrifice

Head off into the mountain with some weird farmer guy you've never met before, I'm sure that will never work out badly. Time to rewatch Mister Chaney.

froodle

"You know me," said the Mayor. "Light-touch regulation only. I keep the taxes low, I make sure the milk floats have enough engine power to catch a fleeing teenage boy, and once every thirteen years I organise a single camping trip that inevitably has one fatality."

He paused for a moment, considering.

"You know, I think that gives me a better safety record than the Boy Scouts," he added. "Maybe I should make that a talking point for my next campaign."

Radford scoffed, poured them both another glass.

"I don't know why you bother," he said. "Nobody runs against you."

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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froodle

Her head was a moon-pale ghost pumpkin, and in the gloom of that early October evening it seemed to glow with a faint and flickering light all it's own.

Her clothes were rags of indeterminate colour, her body a haphazard assemble of salvaged planks and scavenged branches, and they blended into the dark so that only the white obloid of her face was visible.

Marshall Teller, Eerie's latest, last, and perhaps soon-to-be late Harvest King, stood unsteadily upon the uneven ground of the furrowed field, the soil hardened by an early frost, and she smiled her jagged smile upon him.

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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froodle

Mr. Radford's thoughts when he saw the name on the Harvest King lottery ticket. A name he didn't remember putting there. A name he wished he could unsee.

froodle

"Close your eyes," said the voice from the woods. "Close your eyes and reach."

Marshall Teller, pale blue eyes now full of green and growing things, shook his head. For a moment, it seemed like the trees were shaking with him.

"No," he said, forcing the words out with difficulty, as though his mouth was stuffed with peat and loam. "No, I don't think I will."

Now the trees did shake, though it was the anger of some ancient, hungry thing being thwarted, rather than a motion carried by the sympathetic magic of the Harvest King.

"Coward," the forest hissed.

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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froodle

Head off into the mountain with some weird farmer guy you've never met before, I'm sure that will never work out badly. Time to rewatch Mister Chaney.

froodle

Episode 13 of Eerie Indiana "Mr. Chaney" pic.twitter.com/52FC3c8fak
— James Gormanley (@JamesGormanley) November 8, 2020

froodle

"i don't care if he's a liberal OR an axe murderer" is the most batshit line of dialogue i've ever heard on show made for CHILDREN (eerie, indiana)
— sean (@gizzverse) September 7, 2020

i mean it first aired on nbc but it was also on disney channel and fox kids, which is just insane considering there's constant references to parental abuse and death. one episode is literally about a young boy getting hit by a truck and dying, and how that affects his friends
— sean (@gizzverse) September 7, 2020

there's an episode about a werewolf where the town's been sacrificing young boys to be eaten every 13 years, super fucked up right? in the end they just shoot the werewolf in the foot with a silver bullet and he's cured, and since he didn't know he's a werewolf he's forgiven
— sean (@gizzverse) September 7, 2020

i cannot believe this is a real show. i love it so much
— sean (@gizzverse) September 7, 2020

ok i've seen episode of eerie, indiana now and i'm extremely upset this obscure 90s supernatural mystery show for kids ended after 19 episodes when it was only getting better and better with more compelling mysteries and plot twists towards its end. hurts like firefly
— sean (@gizzverse) September 7, 2020

froodle

"Oh," says the Harvest King, speaking through her ex-boyfriend's face, and if she needed proof that this isn't really Marshall - at least, not right now, and she tries not to think that it might not be ever again - it's in the smooth, even tone of his voice.

Marshall, who tensed up if he thought Melanie was playing pinfinger a little too fast, wouldn't be this calm after almost maiming her.

Although, given what the things in the lake have done in service of their "repairs", maybe it still counts as a maiming.

She flexes her hand, whole but still damaged.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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froodle

"I was wondering about the vegetables," Janet admitted. "I didn't know we still had a farmer's market. I thought they died out when the Harvest King... you know, didn't."

"It's mostly garbage," said Dash. "Hardly worth the effort of summoning the potato blight. Even the kelpie's only eating this stuff because it comes attached to a human arm."

"You shouldn't judge them on that," said Janet. "Getting a kelpie to eat it's vegetables is like... well, like getting a toddler to do it. This stuff could be perfectly fine."

Dash made a face. By the bandstand, so did the kelpie.

Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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froodle

There are four of them, huddled together atop a rocky outcropping overlooking a moon-drenched clearing. One of them, barely into adolescence, is still wearing his own Harvest Crown. It's been hard-used, for the corn stalks are bent and broken and some of the berries are leaking crushed redness down into the boy's hairline.

They're staring at something below, and the Harvest King feels a shock of recognition at the sight of Alderman Chaney, clothes torn and foot bloodied, howling up at them as he clutches the air around his wounded toes.

The smallest of the group spots him, and gasps.

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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froodle

There's blood on the ground and the strange, misshapen footprints in the soil are already overflowing with cold October rain. The full moon is reflected in the puddle's rippling surface, pumpkin-orange and hanging so low in a cloudless sky that the Harvest thinks he could touch it.

His mouth is dry, and the water looks cooling and sweet. He longs to drink, but his mother's voice whispers the old stories in the cavernous vault of his memories, and the Harvest King licks parched lips with a dusty tongue, and presses on.

Someone is wailing in pain, wolf-howl angry. He's close.

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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froodle

The first Harvest King was a young man, the night he climbed Wolf Mountain in the company of Alderman Chaney. Now he is old, but his face is still unlined, his eyes clear and his hair thick and glossy.

(there are leaves in his hair and it hurts to pluck at them. he tries not to think about it)

The rock formations here are strange and twisted, and they capture and keep sound in a way technology won't replicate for years after his disappearance. He can still hear the echoing gunshot, and the night air smells of smoke and silver.

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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froodle

There is a cave under Wolf Mountain, where the first of Eerie's Harvest Kings lies sleeping. He has beaten his ploughshare into a sword and he wears a crown of woven plants that remains as fresh and bright as the day the prettiest girl in Eerie placed it upon his head.

(that pretty girl was fed to a dragon a few months later. you don't ask too many questions of the town elders, not if you want to avoid your name being the next one pulled from a hat)

The King Under the Mountain dreams of silver, and he stirs.

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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froodle

Marshall Teller knows there were other Harvest Kings before him. The photographs with their wreaths of corn stalks and holly leaves have mysteriously vanished, and Mister Radford claims to have no idea where they went, but he remembers - old-fashioned clothes and crowns of dead and dying plant matter and a space, afterwards, where a person should have been.

Marshall Teller hopes that there won't be other Harvest Kings after him. Mister Chaney walks with a limp and eats more vegetables than he used to, but something still howls out in the cornfields at night, and Marshall dreads his twenty-sixth year.

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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froodle

The pine trees had been sodden with the unending rain, and the sudden cold snap froze the water beneath the bark so they swelled and creaked and cracked loud in the quiet of the deep woods.

Marshall Teller walked on, feeling the eyes of unseen and unseemly things watch him from the dark places. Something giggled in the underbrush, the sort of laugh that fit better on a knife-wielding porcelain doll than some fluffy-faced forest creature.

Maybe it was a doll. Certainly there were things in the Kingswood who had eaten enough lost Royalty to start taking on human affectations...

Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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Ongoing Verse: The Children

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froodle

Sunday challenge time! Your prompt for this week is:

Once and Future King

froodle

It was known locally as the Kingswood, the patch of land where the Eerie Wood met and merged with Deadwood Park. Here the trees grew tall and straight and the leaves never fell. The animals had human eyes, or human hands, or human hungers..

Normal folk didn't go into the Kingswood, the townspeople whispered, apparently classifying themselves amongst the normal even as they laundered straitjackets and sealed their children into giant rubber caskets. Or if they were normal when they went in, they weren't once they came out.

Marshall Teller straightened his Harvest King crown, breathed deep, then marched ahead.

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Harvest

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froodle

It's Tuesday, so today you get a choice between two prompts. Pick one, combine both, pit them against each other - on Tuesday, you choose!

This week, your options are:

The Harvest King versus Miss Tornado Day

froodle

When the last barricade falls, Syndi can feel it. It's in the quality of the screams, the sounds of shifting debris. Something is coming to an end.

Her Miss Tornado Day sash, once a blinding satiny white any bride could be proud of, is fraying, grubby, and caked with gore. She slips out of it and unpicks the knot holding the two ends together.

Part of her is glad that Marshall can't see this, sure that he'd offer up some smart-alecky comment as she pushes sweat-damp hair off her face and keeps it there with a John Rambo-style bandana fashioned from a ribbon that once marked her out as a sacrifice for a sentient tornado.

Part of her wishes he was here anyway.

And another part of her wonders if she should have gone to Old Bob, when she was seventeen and her year was up, when the town chose a new Miss Tornado Day and she'd been sent out into the cyclone to die. Things might have turned out differently. For her, for the people she loved, even for Eerie.

If Marshall was here, she'd ask him about becoming the Harvest King. About the mountain and the wolf that howled in the night, and whether blood spilled under an October moon might have prevented all of this.

If he was here with her, hiding in the ruins of the Eerie Bingo Parlour, she would ask him whether it might have been worth it.

The tombola drum near the western windows begins to spin, slow at first, a handful of human teeth inside clicking against the rusting metal. Syndi reaches for the last remaining incendiary device - homemade hand grenades fashioned from stripped-down bingo dabbers and some sort of fruit cordial she'd discovered at the very back of the Parlour's walk-in refrigerator, covered in warning stickers and pulsating faintly.

Outside in the dark, something moves. The room she's in is three floors up, but the Garbage Men know how to climb. She'd seen them swarming like lizards over the surface of City Hall, the living surface of the building twitching and flinching at every touch.

She didn't blame it. In it's place, she'd have torn out her own foundations to avoid those clammy, grasping hands. Of course, in a very real way, the Garbage Men had already done that for her.

Syndi flicks open Janet's lighter and steps towards the glass.

Ongoing Verse: The Children

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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froodle

Sunday challenge time! Your prompt for this week is:

THE KING IN CHAINS

froodle

I've no new crafts of my own to share this year, so instead, I thought I'd spotlight some of the awesome craftworks the talented people in this fandom have created.

Here's a trio of Eerie Indiana-themed bookstacks by HelloCrumpet:

froodle

Head off into the mountain with some weird farmer guy you've never met before, I'm sure that will never work out badly. Time to rewatch Mister Chaney.

froodle

This is a great tradition https://t.co/PFSiwKM8VJ
— eerieindianadw (@eerieindianalj1) September 14, 2019

And a way better one than sacrificing someone to a wolf every 13 years
— Citizen D (@TheCitizenD) September 14, 2019

For a start, how am I supposed to remember something that only happens every thirteen years? They don't make diaries that cover that much time. #eerieindiana
— eerieindianadw (@eerieindianalj1) September 14, 2019

froodle

even Literal Slime Ball Mayer Chisel is patient with Chaney's stutter. #EerieIndiana
— William Arthur (@Wart_M) September 14, 2019

froodle

In honor of the Friday the 13th full moon, I will now be live tweeting a rewatch of the classic werewolf episode of #EerieIndiana: "Mr. Chaney"
— Citizen D (@TheCitizenD) September 14, 2019

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froodle

Ok, so I'm doing a video where I talk about overt political messages in kid's cartoons.

So Spongebob tackling racist jokes

Recess talking about economics

Captain Planet in most episodes

basically any out-of-the-ordinary representation

I'd love suggestions!
— Quinton Reviews 🎬 (@Q_Review) August 23, 2019

i feel like round the twist tackled a lot. also: eerie, indiana.
— 🐝🐦🤷 (@DrWho42) August 23, 2019

froodle

"It only happens once every 90 years." If you've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Ari Aster's second feature-length film after he shocked audiences with Hereditary, then you'll be pleased to know that the release date for Midsommar has been bumped up more than one month.

As announced at CinemaCon and on A24's official Twitter page, Midsommar is now slated for a Wednesday, July 3rd release, bumping it up more than one month earlier than its previous August 9th release date:

Although specific plot details for Midsommar have been kept under wraps, the previously released teaser trailer (see below) follows a group of friends to a rural community to take part in a festival that only happens every 90 years. Although the movie features vibrant summery colors (with Aster re-teaming with Hereditary cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski), there are seemingly sinister intentions lurking just beneath the surface.

Written and directed by Aster, Midsommar stars Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, and Will Poulter. We'll be sure to keep Daily Dead readers updated on the anticipated film from the writer and director of Hereditary.

froodle

To absolutely nobody’s surprise – unless you’re seven and don’t know who Lon Chaney Jr. was yet – there’s a character in this story called Mr. Chaney, and he’s a werewolf. Chaney is played by Stephen Root, who’d co-star in the hilarious NewsRadio for NBC a couple of years after this, and he’s part of an old city conspiracy to look the other way every thirteen years when a new Harvest King is crowned, and the new king becomes werewolf food.

We think this was the first time that Eerie, Indiana actually frightened our son. He denied it, of course, and it was the good kind of frightened, but the animatronic werewolf mask was really quite good, and when the beast starts to creep up on Simon, our son turned completely around and hid his head in the sofa. It’s an entertaining episode, but the best part is when our triumphant heroes decamp to the World o’Stuff, and Mr. Radford mixes up an anti-wolfman potion and serves it up in a milkshake glass with whipped cream and an eyeball.

froodle

Head off into the mountain with some weird farmer guy you've never met before, I'm sure that will never work out badly. Time to rewatch Mister Chaney.

froodle

Stephen Root doesn’t get enough praise. He’s the king of the “oh yeah he’s that guy!” actors, capable of playing lovable idiots, menacing gangsters, evil racist villains, and well... everything with equal aplomb. One of our most underrated and hardest working character actors pic.twitter.com/vZXKLM5u86
— Will Mavity (@mavericksmovies) November 19, 2018

froodle

Hey, you just won the lottery! Sounds pretty good, right? After all, you just got a few million dollars, and are, unless you stupidly spend it all, probably set for life. Who wouldn't want to win the lottery?

Well, you wouldn't want to, if it was one of these lotteries. The Lottery of Doom is a lottery where the prize is something really bad happening to the "winner," usually death. The reason for the Lottery of Doom varies, ranging from an attempt to keep the population down, appeasing a dragon, wrathful god or Monster of the Week, select a "volunteer" for some dangerous or outright lethal task that needs to be done or just to be creepy. Sometimes the lottery players know that it's a Lottery of Doom, sometimes they don't. The lottery sometimes gets the perks of actually winning the lottery, but you aren't the able to enjoy it for very long, leading some characters to arrange some sort of inheritance thing.

So next time you buy a lottery ticket, be sure to read the fine print.

In a Town with a Dark Secret, expect this to overlap with A Fête Worse Than Death.

In the Eerie, Indiana episode "Mr. Chaney", the town uses a lottery to pick a "harvest king" every few years: Supposedly all that happens is that they're sent into the woods with Mr. Chaney as a guide, and if they see the "Eerie wolf", the town will have plentiful crops. Of course, every harvest king seems to mysteriously disappear (it's a running gag that they're all allegedly "in Spain"). It turns out that Chaney unknowingly is the "Eerie wolf" - the town regularly sacrifices one of it's own to Chaney in werewolf form, presumably so he won't run rampant. The lottery is apparently always fixed, and you can be picked to "win" whether you actually entered or not: In this case, the mayor had it rigged so Dash X would win, but Dash X in turn rigged it for Marshall.

froodle

Read the whole thread here.

froodle

It's about to start guys oh my God! If you're here and want to stop by and say hi, I'm on the right hand side, four rows from the front, second in from the centre aisle. I've got long brown hair and I'm wearing a blue and purple dress, a Miss Tornado Day necklace and a denim jacket covered in pins.

froodle

It's a full moon tonight, the official Harvest Moon of the Northern Hemisphere, and Eerie's Harvest King must venture out onto Wolf Mountain in order to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Eerie Wolf before heading off to... Spain.

froodle

See it here.

froodle

The planned screening in Manchester might not be happening, but since I'm here anyway I thought you might enjoy a look at my Meetup Jacket (tm):

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Eerie, Indiana bookstack brooches by HelloCrumpet. Better Weird Than Dead blackboard by Sugar and Vice. Eerie, Indiana/Z Nation crossover by SoozysCraftorim. El Gordo/conjoined piglets pin by DemonicPinfestation. World o' Stuff and POP16661 sign by MattRyanTobin. Eerie, Indiana pin by SuperYakiStuff. Husky brooch by AcrylicAsylum.

froodle

The Eerie, Indiana screening in Manchester is one week away, and I need your help, Eerie fans! What should I wear to this, surely the social event of the year? How shall I accessorize? To blunder here is to spend an eternity mired in sartorial regret,and so I turn to you to narrow down my list of options.

I've divided them into three sections: necklaces, brooches and pins, on the basis that I can wear a bunch of different pins and at least a couple of brooches, but only one necklace.

Before we begin the winnowing, though, lets take a moment to be sad that since this takes place in mid-August, I won't get the chance to show off the awesome doorknob scarf

eviinsanemonkey made me, or the Loyal Order of Corn hat by LizzyLittleFish. To make up for it, here they are being modelled by by a rainbow sheep:

And now, to the choosing!

Miss Tornado Day and Eerie Trio necklaces by AcrylicAsylum. 3D sculpted anatomical heart necklace by AlternativeJewellery. Eerie, Indiana town limits sign by SoozysCraftorium. Camera, coil of film and blue Eerie, Indiana necklace with pink bat charm by Tatty Devine. Key with blue gem necklace by Eclectic Eccentricity. All the rest by Sugar and Vice.

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Better Weird than Dead brooch by Sugar and Vice. Poodle with bone and "be prepared" penknife by Tatty Devine. Eerie, Indiana bookstacks by HelloCrumpet. Husky by Acrylic Asylum. Eerie, Indiana/Z Nation brooch by SoozysCraftorium. Jackalope and Poe Raven by Erstwilder. Raven with rose and ravens on a branch by CherryLoco. Eerie, Indiana logo and Centre of Weirdness map badges by me.

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World o' Stuff and POP: 16661 pins by MattRyanTobin. Eerie, Indiana pin by Super Yaki Stuff. World o' Stuff button by

diello. Pitbull Surfers button by me. El Gordo pin by DemonicPinfestation.

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froodle

It's the day of the Harvest King selection, and as usual, Marshall is not feeling the bizarre Eerie tradition. What exactly is the Harvest King, you may be wondering? Excellent question! Every thirteen years, the town's “elite” (The Mayor, Mr. Radford, and a mysterious man named Mr. Chaney are the selectors this year) pick a citizen of Eerie to go out into the woods and look for the Eerie wolf. Why? It's all part of the town's superstition—if no one goes, then they believe that the town's crops will fail and they will suffer bad luck. The only problem with this whole theory, is that no one who has been selected the Harvest King has ever returned from their trip to discover the Eerie wolf. Even creepier: no one seems to care.

But the ever-acute Marshall wants no part of this weird ritual, and seems to be the only person not buying a ticket for the chance to become the next King. Well, he's the only one besides Dash-X, who is now in every episode from here on out. In this one, he is first seen during the Harvest King festivities, stealing cans of food from the World o' Stuff. Mr. Radford sees him, and he storms out of the building, only to return later on that night to overhear the three-person committee prepare to make their final selections. The mayor casts a ballot for Dash-X, hoping he gets selected so they can get rid of him (although he still doesn't have a name at this point, so they simply write “The Kid With The Gray Hair” on the ballot). Once they leave for the night, Dash-X mischievously scratches out his “name”, and replaces it with Marshall Teller. And guess who “wins”!

At first, he is the most popular man in the town, with women throwing themselves at him and farmers offering him cows (!). But before he has a chance to truly bask in all the attention, it is time for him to head to “Wolf Mountain”, with the mysterious Mr. Chaney in tow. It doesn't take long to discover why: as the full moon beams down on them from above, Mr. Chaney turns into a werewolf! He's about to make Marshall his next meal, until—SURPRISE!--Dash-X shows up and knocks him out from behind with a swift log to the head. It seems someone was spending time at the library, and uncovered old newspaper clippings from previous year “winners”, which all stated the earlier Harvest Kings went for a “trip to Spain”, which is a euphemism for “were killed”.

Rather than kill the beast, Dash, Marshall, and Simon all bring him to Marshall's house and tie him up in the kitchen. While he's still unconscious, Marshall wants to pay a visit to the “powers that be” and, along with Dash-X, show up to the World o' Stuff, where Mr. Radford and the mayor are very shocked (and somewhat disappointed) to see that he is still alive. Marshall threatens to reveal the secrets of the Harvest King to the whole town, to which the mayor bluntly replies: “This town...heck, this whole country, has a long tradition of looking the other way. The Warren Commission, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the October Surprise...the people don't want to know about this stuff, because if they knew about it, they might have to do something about it.”

This is a brilliantly truthful line that I'm surprised actually made it into the final cut. Granted, it probably went over children's heads way back in the early '90s, but now with the joys of the Internet, anyone can look up and learn about these “conspiracy theories”, many of which have more than a modicum of truth behind them. Hell, we have to look no further than a few months back to find the latest example of an “October Surprise”, in which the FBI decided to reopen its probe against Hillary Clinton, an announcement that supposedly cost her the election (nevermind the fact she was a terrible candidate who felt she was entitled to the presidency thanks to her many “connections”, but we'll go along with the mainstream explanation). Who knows the things journalists and government workers know, but will never reveal for fear of their lives. It's really quite a hard-hitting, audacious line to spring on its impressionable audience.

Meanwhile, back at home, Simon gets sidetracked from his werewolf-watching duties by a delicious pie, and that's when the werewolf wakes up. He grabs Simon, and is about to munch down on him when a clueless Syndi enters the kitchen, groggily grabbing a banana. The werewolf's growl startles her, and she screams before passing out. This, in turn, startles the werewolf, who leaves the house (by running right through a window).

Radford arrives, moved by what Marshall said, and vows to help them stop the Eerie wolf. Armed with a rifle and silver bullets, they head back up to Wolf Mountain, where they discover the wolf/Mr. Chaney. One well-timed shot to the foot turns Chaney back into a human, presumably for good, while Marshall's only side effect from getting slashed by the Eerie wolf are super-hairy sideburns. The end.

This is a decent episode in concept and execution. It's not as funny as “The Hole in the Head Gang”, nor as powerful or thought-provoking as some of the better eps (I hate to always have to quote “Heart on a Chain” as an example, but examples don't get more powerful or thought-provoking than that), but it's perfectly watchable and has its moments. The wolf transformation, which seems to have been done digitally, is actually better than similar effects in a lot of low-budget fare from the same time period; I was actually surprised at how decent it looked, especially for a kid's show.

It really just boils down to the same old complaints: Syndi is given nothing to do besides scream and pass out in this one, but then with the caveat that she conveniently forgets everything she's seen upon waking up. Which, you know, was "only" a werewolf. Dash-X is once again a pretty pointless character who flips and flops between “good” and “bad” with no real reasons why. I don't hate the character, but he certainly doesn't seem to be needed. It's an okay entry in the series, but nothing of note from within it.

EPISODE RATING: 6.5/10

froodle

Sean Astin is a movie and television icon, but this weekend, he’s just a dad.

Astin and his wife, Christine, are in Winchester to support their 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Louise Astin, who was crowned Friday afternoon as Queen Shenandoah XCI.

Joining them at the 91st Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival are their other two daughters, 21-year-old Alexandra “Ali” Astin and 12-year-old Bella Astin, as well as Ali’s fiance, Ben Ubinas.

Sean and Christine Astin said they are thrilled to see the spotlight shining on Elizabeth.

“There was an electronic marquee and we saw her name come up, and we looked at each other and thought, ‘Yeah, that’s about right. Queen Elizabeth,’” Sean Astin said Friday afternoon.

Elizabeth is the second royal member of the Astin family. Ali Astin served as Queen Shenandoah LXXXVII in 2014.

“And mom’s a queen,” Ali Astin said Friday, referring to Christine Astin being crowned Miss Teen Indiana in 1994.

“Queen Mother now,” Sean Astin said. “But there’s no Queen Father. The father’s just kind of an appendage, but they let me stay.”

Sean Astin’s father, actor John Astin of “The Addams Family” fame, attended Ali Astin’s coronation four years ago, but wasn’t able to return this year for Elizabeth’s ceremony.

“We told him too late,” Sean Astin said. “I told him only a month ago and he had already agreed to be at a wedding.”

The Astin family has been praised by Bloom Nation for their kindness and warmth. Sean Astin said he learned the importance of respecting others from his dad.

“He said, ‘Every single human interaction is sacred,’” Sean Astin said. “I don’t think we live up to it all the time, but we try to appreciate that.”

Sean Astin, 47, grew up in show business, making his first screen appearance in the 1981 television movie “Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom,” which starred his real-life mother, Patty Duke.

His first big-screen role was in 1985 when, at the age of 13, he played Mikey in “The Goonies.” He went on to cement his icon status with dozens of other performances, including the title role in the movie “Rudy” and the character of Samwise Gamgee in director Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Sean Astin earned a whole new generation of fans last year when he portrayed Bob Newby in Season Two of the wildly popular Netflix television series “Stranger Things.”

“Our friends are so stoked,” Elizabeth said. “The sweetest part of him came out in that show.”

“They gave him a jean jacket that had ‘Stranger Things’ on the back of it and I took it to college with me,” said Ali Astin, who studies at Harvard University. “Everybody at school started coming up to me and asking, ‘Where did you get your jacket? I need it.’ So he must be cool.”

“Are you recording this?” their father asked. “They’re in public and have to say something nice. I just want it captured.”

Sean Astin, who first came to Winchester in 2004 as co-grand marshal of that year’s Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, said he and his wife would be honored to return for a fourth time to place the queen’s crown upon the head of their youngest daughter.

“We do have one final princess who could do that if she was invited,” Sean Astin said. “They wouldn’t have to ask twice.”

“Honestly, that would be a dream come true for me,” Bella said. “I hope I can come back here.”

For now, though, it’s Elizabeth’s time to shine.

“Now that you’re queen, are you going to ditch the rest of us?” Ali Astin asked her sister.

“Yes!” Elizabeth said with a laugh.

froodle

If you want to ensure good luck, low taxes, and a high yield crop, better slap a goofy looking hat on the nearest male over 13, and pretend they were headed for a Spanish vacation come the harvest. It's time to buy a ticket for the Eerie, Indiana Harvest King lottery and wait for the Eerie Wolf to make an appearance.

froodle

Head off into the mountain with some weird farmer guy you've never met before, I'm sure that will never work out badly. Time to rewatch Mister Chaney.