Think About It: Is it Halloween Yet?
Well friends, here we are. It’s the last week of September, only a few days since autumn officially began, temperatures are still in the 90s here in southern Louisiana, and too many of us are still dodging phone calls from the Jerry Lewis people trying to collect on the pledges we made back on Labor Day just to hear our names on television. But even though October doesn’t even begin until Monday, the stores are already flooded with Halloween candy, Halloween costumes, Halloween decorations and artificial Christmas trees. So in the face of this overwhelming evidence, despite the calendar showing more than a month left to tread, I say screw it. It’s close enough to Halloween for me.
For many people, Halloween is just a day, one out of 365, a night when they have to turn off the porch lights and ignore the children pounding on the door shouting, “I know you’re in there! Gimme a Snickers!” For me, though, Halloween is many things. It’s the beginning of the End-of-the-Year Trifecta: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, my absolute favorite time of the year. When we see the ghosts and pumpkins and skeletons out in people’s yards, I know that the heat waves will end relatively soon and we’ll see some beautiful fall weather, unless it’s one of those years when Louisiana Summer lasts until approximately mid-November.
Halloween to me shouldn’t be just one day, it should be a season, like Christmas. For weeks ahead of time, I want to hear Halloween music (okay, there aren’t carols like at Christmas, but every horror movie score, most of the library of Alice Cooper and Buddy Pickett’s “Monster Mash” are enough for me to get by). I want to gorge myself on scary movies - both films that are legitimately frightening (Psycho) and crappy, cheesy movies that are delightful in their mediocrity (anything with a guy wearing a mask chasing women who always trip running through the woods at decidedly inconvenient moments).
Halloween is a time to dress up and become somebody else. Now there are two routes you can take here: scary or funny. You can go for the gross-out costumes with blood and gore, ugly warts and skin rot, bones sticking out of the flesh and eyes gouged out with toothpicks. Or, if that’s not what you want to do, you can try to frighten people.
But seriously, I do love costumes. It’s nice to get to act out for an evening, to become someone else. A hero or a villain, a monster or a saint. Freddy Krueger or “Jeopardy” contestant Studley McNugget. (A cardboard box painted like a game show podium. My brother did it last year.) There are so many choices! In fact, it is in the sheer volume of choices that I face my downfall. Much as I love Halloween, it’s always a chore for me to select a costume. It’s my own fault, I always overthink my costumes, and there’s nothing worse than a Halloween costume you have to explain to people. It’s like explaining a joke - by the time you’re finished, whatever seemed clever about it now just seems lame and everybody is just staring at you and thinking you’re somewhat pathetic.
You’ve got to play to your audience. For example, for years now I’ve wanted to go with a relatively simple costume: a trench coat, a fedora and a gas mask. Quiz time: How many of you guys know what costume I just described.
Hold on, I’ll get Studley to play the “Jeopardy” theme while you ponder.
Okay, raise your hand if you guessed Wesley Dodds, the Golden Age Sandman as per his first appearance in Adventure Comics #40, circa 1939! Congratulations! You almost certainly aren’t going to be at any of the same Halloween parties as I will, because ain’t none of them people gonna guess that. (Unless my comrades Mike or Chase throw a party this year, in which case exactly two people gonna guess that.)
Maybe that’s another reason I start so early: the hope that I’ll come up with a decent costume if I think about it for a month.
At any rate, guys, I’m hereby declaring today, September 28, the official beginning of Blake Petit’s 2007 Halloween Adventure, which means that Monday will launch the Think About It Central Halloween Party in earnest - horror movie reviews, Halloween comics, special columns, articles and podcasts… I promise, gang, it’s going to be a blast.
And if you think I’m starting Halloween too early, look at it this way: if Think About It Central was Wal-Mart, I’d be launching the Christmas Party this week.
Blake M. Petit still wants your suggestions for the Halloween Party. Post ‘em here or e-mail ‘em to BlakePT@cox.net.