Countdown to Halloween: This is Halloween

Posted: October 1st, 2011 | Author: Max Romero | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Halloween, video | 1 Comment »

Every year around this time, something amazing happens.

It’s not the way weakening day slowly starts giving up its dominance to longer nights, or the brightly changing colors of leaves flaring like rustling supernovae. No, instead it’s something bordering on the diabolical, something twisted and perverse.

This is the time of year people start crabbing about Halloween.

Specifically, about a week ago I started seeing people complaining about Oct. 31, and all the things that go with it. It always seems to follow a template of, “Ugh, well, I don’t understand what all the excitement is about. I’ll just stay home and watch my box set of The Wire and drink bourbon. Halloween.” You can almost hear the dismissive sniff. Hell, you can almost hear the eye-roll.

(Nothing against The Wire, by the way. But you know what I’m getting at.)

I don’t get this attitude, because it’s really pretty simple. Halloween is fun. Watching scary movies is fun. Eating candy is fun. Even dressing up in a ridiculous costume is fun, if you want to get that into it. And why not? One of the things that surprises me is a lot of the grousing I hear comes from comic book folk, who apparently still have trouble sometimes with wanting to look cool. Reminder: This is a group of people (of which I am a part) who are geekily enthusiastic about something and are known to dress up like fictional characters. Just sayin’.

As someone might’ve guessed by now, I’m a fan of Halloween. And with that in mind, I’m going to revive something I did on Facebook a couple of years ago – every day until Oct. 31, I’ll be posting a short clip from various horror movies or spooky TV episodes that I get a kick out of (or, just as likely, freaked me out at some point).

I haven’t mapped out the whole month so if you have any personal favorites you’d like to see, just let me know!

And finally, since today is Oct. 1 I thought it’d be a good idea to reintroduce the reason for the season. And hell, feel free to help yourself to some bourbon.