Ode to the Halloween Section

-


  2017 has been a difficult year. It’s been a year filled with uncertainty. Just speaking for myself, and for the friends of mine who I’ve talked to about this, we’ve all gained weight, felt our anxiety stronger than we have in years past. All summer long I felt like I was in an overwhelming marathon of taking care of a thousand things at once. Some of you I’m sure can figure out why there’s been more anxiety this year than others. If you can’t, well, that’s a conversation for another time. 2017 hasn’t been easy, it’s been well…it’s been. 

Now that we have passed labor day weekend, the threshold of Fall is upon us (which is the name of my super pretentious novel coming out next fall). Fall to me means one thing. October. Which also means Halloween. If you’ve followed my exploits in these here pages for any length of time, you may recall that in the Ross family Halloween is a Christmas sized holiday. We take it seriously. We take making Halloween fun VERY seriously. This goes back to my mother's memories of her childhood, and her father making Halloween fun and spooky and memorable. So with 2017 being a year of anxiety and ALL THE THINGS, I have been looking forward to Halloween and Fall more than ever.

It came to pass that after a VERY busy August, I found myself out and about on Labor Day Weekend doing some shopping. I went by a popular chain department store, the one that doesn’t have a website devoted to those interesting characters that shop there. When I walked through the entrance, I noticed their dollar section had Halloween stuff in it. My heart skipped a beat, my pulse swelled. I gasped and thought to myself “Do they have their Halloween section up?” 

I raced towards the back corner of the store, the one where their seasonal stuff always is. As I turned the corner, I saw it. A huge sign above the section that indicated that Halloween had arrived. I rushed over, skipping past the board game section—that’s how serious I am about this. When I got under the sign, I was surrounded by all kinds of Halloween loveliness. Costumes, candy, decorations. It felt like I had just walked into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. 

In that moment I was a child on Christmas morning. Rushing around to check out all the fun toys. The decorations that talked, lit up, made spooky sounds. The ghost projection light that you can put in your yard to make your house look haunted. The bust of Frankenstein that says “Friend, GOOD!” The witches, the goblins, the ghosts, the plastic skeletons and styrofoam tombstones. My heart felt full. The smile on my face stretched a mile wide and lasted for the rest of the day. 

I bought some Halloween socks and a few pieces of decor. I made notes about things I wanted to get so I could go home and plot the best places to put them. The most wonderful time of the year is upon us, my friends. Though 2017 has been the year the world has felt broken beyond repair. I found hope that day among the spiders and the goodie bags. Halloween may not seem like the key to fixing all our ills, but it’s a damn good place to start.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr. Thompson, Thanksgiving, and Her

-
Image
I was standing in the fresh market, and I was having a panic attack. I’ve cooked Thanksgiving meals before. I’ve been in supermarkets the day of Thanksgiving with no trouble at all. This was different. I was getting ready to cook Thanksgiving dinner for a woman I found myself attracted to. We had gone out a few times, and each time was even lovelier than the last. Despite my angst and bitter disposition at the universe for the way that romance has treated me, the fact of the matter is, as Morrisey said, “I am human and I need to be loved.” Grocery shopping is one of the ways I relax, I know that’s weird, but that’s me. The rational part of my brain began to counter my panic centers as soon as the attack started. “Dude, you’re in a grocery store! You love this! Bread! Food! Cheese! Cookies! Those really nice organic cleaning products! Chill, brah.” Logically I knew I had this. I’ve cooked entire holiday meals by myself before. But the part of my brain that fuels the anxiety a
Read more

The Strangest Movie I've Ever Seen

-
Image
There are certain movies that defy description. Movies that are so strange, so bizarre, people would swear you were making them up, until you actually produced a copy of the film and showed it to them. There are movies in this world that were designed to be weird from the get go, but nothing is quite as weird as movie that wasn't designed that way. A movie that was made just as any other movie on the yearly slate for the studio. A movie that was made not as a strange B picture, but as a major A production, with a big name cast, a budget, and everything. Such a movie is MGM's 1971 picture Pretty Maids All in a Row . It is, without question, the weirdest movie I've ever seen. Pretty Maids All in a Row is such an odd movie, that I have a hard time trying to wrap my brain around it. It's very much a product of its time, and very much the kind of movie that NO ONE would dare try to make today. It's a film that I had never heard of, until a recent DVD release b
Read more

Blood Cold Mysteries

-
Image
If there is one bit of esoteric classic movie stuff that simply fascinates me, it’s the trilogy of films directed by veteran actor William Conrad—and all released in 1965. They’re the three of only four feature films directed by Conrad, who spent all of his other directorial adventures on the small screen. The late William Conrad was a famed actor, playing Matt Dillon on the original radio version of “Gunsmoke,” and coming to full pop culture fame on TV in “Cannon” & “Jake and The Fat Man.” For this writer, Conrad will always be immortal for being the narrator on “Rocky & Bullwinkle.”  The three films in question all were released by Warner Brothers—where Conrad had a production office it seems—and are: “Brainstorm,” “Two On A Guillotine,” and the film I’m going to talk about today, “My Blood Runs Cold.” One of the reasons I’m fascinated by these three films is my built in soft spot for 1960s, black and white horror fare with crazy, bombastic promotion. I adore the f
Read more