It’s two days before October when I write this.
Tonight, I’m headed out to Otto’s Shrunken Head to see the Tombstone Brawlers and hang with the monsters in an event that waves good-bye to September. (The Vibrators are also playing elsewhere but free show+drinks > show w/ticket + drinks in my cash-strapped state.) Come Monday, when the 09 switches over to 10, it all begins.
Except—it’s been going on for weeks now. Halloween has set up shop in in Walgreens, Duane Reeds, Rite Aids and Targets. All the pocked marks of dead retail lots are probably filled with the orange pus of Spirit Stores. When pumpkin-flavored donuts appear, it’s the unofficial start of the Halloween season, at least in my coffee-addicted mind.
I always feel this pre-season revulsion at Halloween, which is not unexpected. I’m, by freak design, a always-half-depressed and miserable person. I don’t know if I should be thankful that I keep that misery and depression internal; though, because of its containment, I can have an external excitement towards things like Halloween, surf music, the movie Repo Man, etc.
Maybe the greater accessibility diminishes my enthusiasm. Finding a new scary band in April, where they don’t belong, heightens the discovery. Watching horror movies in January seems more taboo. One of the twins over at VoodooSugar / VoodooPin told me of a Halloween Warehouse where she lives and how the yearly trip brings out unfettered joy. And I know I would feel the same way if I were to go there. But this time right now, knowing how the world’s going to be garishly painted orange+black for two more weeks, before the red+green starts to bleed in, well. It’s hard to get the blood going.
I do enjoy Halloween. I like the creativity that comes with it. I enjoy the weather. So this feeling right now, two days before October officially starts? I call it a bit of the introvert’s hesitation that makes me dread going up the high dive ladder. Once I jump off the edge, though, I enjoy the trip.
Over the next month, we’ll have more content here than the two months combined. Feel free to share it with your friends and to comment. Talk with us. Let us know what you think or what you’re doing. Or send pictures of your Halloween costume – contact@gravediggerslocal.com.
Happy Halloween.
