Halloween
isn’t what it used to be.
Yeah
- this is going to be a total Old Man Rant, so hang in there.
Back
when I was your age we waited until it was dark to go trick or
treating. We walked from house to house across every neighborhood in
a two mile radius. We actually said, “Trick or Treat” to every
single person that opened their door. We did inspect our candy, but
only in the most cursory of ways. And nobody
ever, under any circumstances, went trick or treating without a
costume.
If
you are the sort of person that would participate in a
Halloween-oriented event – whether it be a party, Trick or
Treating, or some other kind of themed gathering in the month of
October – without wearing a costume, kindly go fuck yourself.
Seriously – take some portion of your anatomy that qualifies as a
protrusion and violently insert it into another portion that
qualifies as an orifice. Repeat.
I
take great personal offense at people who would do such a thing. If
you are such a stuck-up ass that you think wearing costumes is
beneath you or something, then what are you even doing a party in the
first place? Let alone a Halloween party. You should be at home
drinking weak tea.
Halloween
used to be such a massive event. We would wear costumes to school,
man. I remember my first years of elementary school and actually
wearing full-on costumes. But then the government started whittling
away what was “acceptable”. First no masks, then no “evil”
characters, then no full costumes; it got to the point where you
could basically just wear a black t-shirt and it was no fun anymore
and nobody bothered. I think nowadays they can’t even wear black
t-shirts.
Heck,
we even Trick or Treated at school. We’d have half an hour or
whatever to walk around with our class to the other classrooms and
get candy. Now the only thing the government allows kids to eat at
school are apples and gluten-free crackers.
Once
you got out of school, the countdown was on until sundown. That was
when you got started, not when you finished. The only Trick or
Treaters out before then were the kids under five. And like I said –
we walked. Everywhere. A couple of neighborhoods. Nobody would even
think
of having their parents drive them around.
Get
this shit – we don’t have many kids in our neighborhood. Last
year we got exactly two Trick or Treaters. They came in a minivan
that parked at the bottom of our driveway. The two kids got out, ran
up the hill, rang the doorbell, and held their bags out when I opened
the door. I waited for the appropriate greeting. Nothing. They just
held their bags out. So I said, “Hey, how’s it going?” and the
two looked at each other, holding their bags out. I asked what they
wanted and they said candy. I asked how they were supposed to ask for
candy. Finally one of them said the magic words and the other picked
up about halfway through. I gave them each one of those inaccurately
named “Fun Size” candy bars. They’re lucky they got anything.
HOWEVER.
Not
everything about Halloween has gone bad. As a matter of fact, it is
now easier than ever to enjoy and celebrate the holiday.
One
of the things I used to anticipate the most about Halloween was
finding out what was going to be on TV. Every year we could count on
It’s
the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
to mark the season, but there were also other animated specials and
spookily-themed episodes of the various sitcoms of the day. Some of
the best TV ever are the Halloween episodes from The
Cosby Show,
Roseanne,
The
Facts if Life,
A
Different World,
and pretty much any other sitcom from the 80s and early 90s. That
stuff was so corny and fun but the main point was that even the wacky
archetypes on TV were having some spooky fun.
Nowadays
we’ve got it even better. I don’t keep track of sitcoms like I
used to, but The
Office
and Parks
and Recreation
(currently my favorite sitcom of all time) have done great Halloween
episodes. Mythbusters
has done a few spooky-themed shows. And now that there are whole
networks devoted to cartoons we get great Halloween specials from
shows like Adventure
Time,
Regular
Show,
and Phineas
& Ferb.
But
the big winners of the pumpkin pie are SyFy and AMC, who feature
marathons of horror and creepiness. As you know if you’ve been
following Needless Things, SyFy’s celebration of Halloween lasts
the whole month of October. AMC’s isn’t as long, but I have to
admit that the quality tends to be stronger. And then there’s all
of the horror available from OnDemand. Pretty much any fright flick
you can think of is there; many of them for free. That’s good
stuff.
Finally,
there’s the presence of Halloween at retail.
When
I was a young ‘un we had maybe one aisle of costumes at any of the
major retailers. Lionel Playworld tended to have the best selection,
but they were pricey. You could go to Richway, Service Merchandise,
or Sears; but there was just that one aisle. Then came the malls and
a store called Art Explosion.
Art
Explosion was a quirky little retail chain the predated Spencer
Gifts. They carried exotic décor and knick-knacks year-round –
lava lamps and black lights and MC Escher and Salvador Dali prints
and puzzles. But at Halloween they carried all manner of licensed
stuff before licensed stuff was a thing. This was the first place I
ever saw a Freddy Krueger mask.
Then
came Spencer Gifts.
Like
a lot of chain retail stores, Spencer was much more specialized and
underground when it started. Almost as wild as Hot Topic when Hot
Topic first started. Granted, you can walk into Spencer’s (as it is
now called) and buy a vibrator now; but the place just isn’t as
edgy as it was in the late 80s and early 90s. I can remember dropping
by the mall on a weekly – if not more often – basis just to see
if Spencer Gifts had put out their Halloween display yet. It was that
awesome. The whole front of the store would be darkened, with just
black lights and strobes. There would be a wall of nothing but
horrific masks ranging from Freddy to Pinhead to zombie clowns to
massive creatures that looked like something out of Pan’s
Labyrinth
(which wouldn’t come out for years). Another four foot section
featured full costumes, another had accessories – fake knives,
handcuffs, swords, and such. Then there was the makeup section. Fake
blood, appliances, eyeballs, nails and razors that looked like they
were embedded in your skin. All manner of nastiness. And I fucking
loved it. I would save money all year just so I could buy a few
things at Halloween. This was before the internet. If you wanted
horror supplies you could take a chance and order them from some
unknown vendor out of the back of Fangoria
or Gorezone
or you just had to wait until October at Spencer Gifts.
But
nowadays you young whippersnappers can walk into Target and buy a
Friday
the 13th
t-shirt. Toys R Us carries action figures from Aliens,
SAW,
and A
Nightmare on Elm Street.
Heck, if you’re in Kroger picking up your cereal and muffins you
can also pick up a stuffed witch ready to give a blwojob:
You
kids can go to Walmart and buy a pair of glowing, bloody, disembodied
breasts any day of the week.
Okay,
maybe not.
But
you get my point. Walmart, Target, and any other retailer has aisle
after aisle full of Halloween choices. Sure, some of them are crappy,
generic costumes. But there’s so
much.
Never again will a child be forced to look like this:
And
that’s not even considering Spirit and Halloween City and all of
the other seasonal-only stores. I’ve been to haunted houses that
weren’t as scary as the Spirit store.
So
we’ve got it pretty darn good now. Which is a little sad. Because
as much as I still love Halloween, it honestly just isn’t as
exciting as it once was. There’s no more waiting for horror
merchandise. You can buy it online year round. Anything you want can
be had at any time. Halloween stuff shows up in stores (but not
Spencer anymore) and is almost immediately supplanted by Christmas
merchandise. Halloween may be easier to celebrate, but it’s so
common
now. I guess it felt so much more special back then.
I
guess that’s what nostalgia is all about.
-Phantom
Phantom
Troublemaker vs. 31 Days of Halloween
I’m
changing the format a bit this year in order to more accurately
portray SyFy’s schedule and also to preserve my sanity. I had the
genius idea to cut and paste the schedule directly from SyFy’s page
rather than typing it out in my own format. This has saved me an
awful lot of time and also means that individual episodes are listed
rather than blocks of programming like previous years. So what I’m
going to do is provide commentary where I feel it is needed rather
than posting next to every single entry. Don’t worry – you’re
getting the same amount of hilarious, then kind of funny, then
labored, then thoroughly disenchanted Phantom content. Just in a
different way.
Like
last year, I am covering the programming from the time this posts
until the time of the next post. That means that on Fridays you are
going to be treated to a shit-ton of this stuff.
Let’s
do it!
Well,
SyFy may have been playing most of these all month long already, but
I just can’t fault the logic in a marathon of classic slasher
flicks. Granted, it’s pretty lame that they’re repeating
Nightmare
4
& 5
so close, but it could be worse. At least it’s not a bunch of
natural disaster or bug movies.
Oct
31 11:00 AM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Nightmare On Elm Street 4:
The Dream Master
Oct
31 01:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Nightmare On Elm Street 5:
The Dream Child
Oct
31 03:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Freddy Vs. Jason
Oct
31 05:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Nightmare On Elm Street 2:
Freddy's Revenge
Oct
31 07:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Nightmare On Elm Street 4:
The Dream Master
Oct
31 09:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Nightmare On Elm Street 5:
The Dream Child
Oct
31 11:00 PM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Freddy Vs. Jason
Oct
31 01:00 AM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie Halloween H2o
Oct
31 03:00 AM 31 Days Of Halloween Movie The Pumpkin Karver
Oct
31 05:00 AM Naked Vegas Paint The Town, Red
And
I’m gonna call that the end of both SyFy’s and Needless Things’
31 Days of Halloween. All that’s left after this is Paid
Programming and a bunch of movies with “Meteor” in the title.
Given that none of them are followed by “Man”, I don’t give a
shit.
I
haven’t decided what my November plans are yet. As of right now I’m
not posting tomorrow (though that may change – find out…
TOMORROW!), but I have big plans for the week of the Doctor Who 50th
as well as a very special podcast with Round Ear Spock. That’s
gonna be a hoot and a holler.
-Phantom
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