On Halloween, the six-episode First Season of The Walking Dead premieres on AMC. This adaptation of the wildly successful comic namesake looks to be Television's saving grace this season; a zombie apocalypse TV show hasn't really ever been done to these depths before.

So, I'm excited. I read the comic, I like Frank Darabont, and from what I've seen of the show so far, it looks through-the-roof awesome. So much so, that The Walking Dead just might be the thing to fill the void left by Lost last season...and you know what that means.

The Walking Dead Fridays.

I'm dusting off my recapping skills for Season 1 of The Walking Dead, so be sure to come back here every Friday following each episode for some old-fashioned CDP awesomeness, Zombie-style. I'm looking forward to it, and I hope you are too.

Sound off in the comments section and enjoy your day. News on Aerating The Mashed Potatoes is coming soon.

So, the CDP Worldwide Mix-Tape Trade 8 came to an end a little over a month ago, and I want to once again thank everyone who participated and created such awesome pieces of art. Same goes for anyone who’s ever participated; I always appreciate the effort, and I’m consistently blown away by some of the neat things you guys come up with. It’s been a lot of fun.

The winner of the Trade this time around is TJ, for her ‘Write Back Soon!’ Mix. It was the perfect combination of artistic originality and superb track selection. As you may remember, TJ’s prize is a free, autographed copy of Aerating The Mashed Potatoes (my new book), which is set to be released by December. It was hard to pick a winner, but she really nailed it this time around. Great job.

Before, I said that this would be the last Trade I do- at the very least, the last one for a while. I’m still sticking to that for the time being for many reasons: I have a lot of other projects I plan on launching in 2011, I have a book to promote, and quite frankly, the Trade has left a bad taste in my mouth due to all the deadbeats.

If you were one of those people who always got a Mix sent to you on time, consider yourself lucky. If you were one of those people who sent out their Mix on time, every time, consider yourself awesome. However, there were people out there that got shafted every single time; people that put a lot of time and effort into their creations, only to get nothing in return. Conversely, there were people who signed up for the Trade and consistently made nothing. Even though I swore that I would publicly out these people, I never did (couldn’t bring myself to do it), but I saw it in the e-mail exchanges every time we did a Trade, and it bothered me. To put it another way, it infuriated me.

The late-senders and the excuses were always well-justified, and we all understood that. However, there were some who signed up knowing full-well that they had no intention of making anything for anyone, either because they were too self-absorbed to consider the feelings of their recipient, or because they sucked at organizing their lives so much that they couldn’t block off 45 minutes over the course of two weeks to whip something up and throw it in the mailbox. Anything was better than nothing, but they just couldn’t make it happen, even though they made a commitment to do so.

My tipping point was when I found out that one guy got shafted three times in a row by three different people. That’s straight-up bullshit, and I felt that sort of thing reflected poorly on me personally more than anything. I treated people like adults; I didn’t check up too much or send cranky e-mails to people. Apparently, I should have held more hands.

So yeah. In the end, the deadbeats ruined it for everyone. The 5% that pooped on the party. I’m not interested in ‘banning’ people from future Trades (I have no intention to run the CDP like a clique), but I can’t trust certain people to come through for the rest of you amazing Mix creators, so I’m going to throw in the towel for a while and let things sit. I’m also not interested in changing the format, so don’t bother sending me ideas to make the Trades more idiot-proof. Give me time to grumble, and I'll bring it back when the time is right.

It’s been a lot of fun, though. Personally, I’ve received nearly 100 Mixes, each more fantastic than the next. I’ve been exposed to dozens of new and classic artists, and I’ve held artwork in my hands that I would have never been intelligent enough to create on my own. The amount of heart and personality that goes into a well-crafted Mix is a thing all its own, and that was the whole point of the Trade to begin with. My CD cabinet, once a sterile and alphabetized affair, now looks more like a handwritten scrapbook compiled by interesting people from each corner of the nation. I didn’t think for a second that this would be the outcome of doing something like this, so each package in the mail was an extremely cool experience for yours truly.

The Trade was a natural extension of the CDP community, and the bulk of you nailed it with flying colors. Thank you for what you did for me, and what you did for each other.

I have a big announcement next week concerning an upcoming CDP project that I think most of you will really dig, and the book is so close to completion that I can taste it (it tastes mainly like paper). The remainder of 2010 is going to be a lot of fun; sound off in the comments section and enjoy your day.