Your faithful HVBLogger was on the scene at Van Cortlandt Manor yesterday and shot this video of Dikki Ellis, king of the slack rope walkers (and a pretty good comedian/magician, too).

Yes, Dikki will be there today for those of you who still haven't made it to Animals & Acrobats.

The classic tale of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow continues to inspire creative types nearly 200 years since Washington Irving penned it. Now, the latest film to pay horror homage is released on DVD today by First Look Studios. Entitled Headless Horseman (obviously these folks wanted to cut right to the chase, literally), it debuted in theaters last October.

This film follows seven youngsters who end up in a mysterious town on Halloween night, only to discover, yes you guessed it, the Headless Horseman. Convenient for the Headless one, though not so much for the group of seven interlopers, he needs to collect seven heads before the night is over. Doing their best to follow in the footsteps of Children of the Corn, the locals work diligently to keep the strangers' heads in town, if not detached.

You can watch a trailer for the DVD by clicking the image below.

Oh, and get this! The film stars Richard Moll of Night Court fame. He played the wacky bald bailiff, Bull. Bonus!

Ken Sargeant is a Croton-based videographer and HHV fan. Van Cortlandt Manor is a Croton historical site - and its staff is a big fan of Ken!

Recently he visited Historic Hudson Valley food historian Lavada Nahon as she was preparing a meal in VCM's reproduction open-hearth kitchen, capturing it on video and posting a snippet of the results on YouTube.

Van Cortlandt Manor offers limited enrollment open-hearth cooking workshops throughout the year, where you help prepare - and most importantly, consume - a meal in the style of the 18^th century. Some of the workshops feature dishes that are based on actual Van Cortlandt family recipes (or "receipts," as they used to be called). The next one is Saturday, May 17.

Click on the image to watch the video.

The long-awaited results of the Blaze YouTube Video Contest are in. Competition was fierce and there were a number of outstanding entries, but the one entered by Dolores Spero and her father Allan Way was tops according to the judges. The pair will soon be the proud owners of a 42-inch Hitachi 1080i plasma television, a Toshiba 1080i HD DVD player, and a collection of classic Halloween DVDs, all courtesy of K104.7.

Great job folks!!

You can check out the winning entry here.

I've just learned that Historic Hudson Valley will be announcing the winner of the Blaze YouTube Video Contest on Monday. The talented winning videographer will be receiving a 42-inch flat screen TV, high def DVD player and a bunch of DVDs, courtesy of K104.7. Not a bad haul considering he/she also got to check out the Blaze!

The judges were pretty thrilled with the quality of the entries and are taking a few more days to decide. But, Monday I'm told will be the official announcement. I'll leak notice of it here, and it will also be announced on WHUD, The Peak, and K104.7