It loomed on the side of a Metro Bus. My first reflex was to think, "That film came out during the 90's." By today's dubious standards well long enough for a remake, but this will be series television. There was the nearly shadow-textured figure, looming up on his horse. It's the acephalous equestrian, the headless Hessian of Sleepy Hollow.

Brought to you, as it says in the ads, by people who gave us pretty high tech fantasy in the cinema. Washington Irving's story really was front-loaded. When I read it as a child most of us wanted the "good stuff", and now things jump and roar and bleed before the seat is warm and the popcorn settles.

But the short story was about young America and the frontier: it climaxed as a party prank, someone acting out, "You aren't from around here, are you?" and with equal cultural timelessness, "Stay away from my girl." Irving's detailed forward spoke of the ethers which seemed to gather Out There in the frontier.

Mentor probably could recite many of these lines to me in the office had I brought this up. The classic Disney cartoon followed the skeleton, ahem, of the story. For several years the now on its hind couplers Fillmore And Western Railroad had a Halloween run and in the brochure it said the headless horseman just might show up.

You think?

I haven't of that run for this year as their lease and other things expire in time for a not so jolly Christmas. In the mean time we have the Fox Network kind of chasing its own tale: their dramas and comedies are often lurid and boundary pushing, and this time it is higher tech ahoy than Burton.

Now it is set in the present day, piled with witches, goblins, "have we left any(one) out?" myths, CGI and headed---okay, bad pun and it's sticking to me---by a character who would have a decent excuse for watching Fox News.

No eyes, you say. Come on, reader, who's swinging the axe here?