October, you see, is a big month for me, the crux of which is securely anchored to the holiday known as Halloween. I see Halloween as neither a mere night nor a scant weekend, but an entire month of grease paint and monster movie debauchery! A carnival of horrors commencing on the last day of September (when I climb the stairs into the attic to retrieve a Clark Griswold-esque treasure trove of beaded skull curtains, garishly hued lights, and various decorative severed limbs) and not concluding until early November when I finally make my way through all of the discounted seasonal merchandise at my local retailers.
Unlike most other holidays that involve me driving for hours to exchange overpriced gifts, enduring cookouts in the sweltering southern heat, or trying to find a card that says “I love you and thanks for not freaking out that time I caught the yard on fire,” Halloween is low-impact, low-stress. It mostly involves me drinking beer, dispensing junk food to neighborhood urchins, and watching “Rosemary’s Baby” for the fifty-sixth time. Sure it’s a little more complicated now that I have a child of trick-or-treating age of my own, but having the Halloween Spirit means never having to say “I think we’ve already gone to that house and they just gave us Smarties.”
Most importantly, I have always thought of Halloween as a nerd’s holiday. Some would argue that it’s actually a goth’s holiday, but I attest goths are just nerds with black nail polish. But I digress. Whatever your flavor of geekery, it’s a holiday for freaks and outcasts, for the dramatic and the slightly disturbed. Halloween is about fantasy, secrets, and lies, and who does that shit better than nerds?
Therefore, this year Hipster, please! is going balls-out for the month of October. I am currently working on three (Okay, maybe two and ½) written features, as well as a couple of seasonally themed podcasts. I’ll also be keeping you abreast of all the coolly ghoulish nonsense that I encounter. Hell, you’ll probably even get one of my patented keep Halloween evil rants.
Maybe this is exactly your kind of thing. Maybe it ain’t. Either way, I hope you find the same nominal level of entertainment value you’ve come to expect from Hipster, please! Halloween affords a unique glimpse into the American psyche. It’s a time of idle fun for children and emotionally stunted adults alike, a time that exposes our seldom-seen hopes, dreams, fears, and fetishes. But it seems like every year it becomes a little more sallow, a little less subsistent, more and more a footnote to the capitalist glut of the modern Christmas.
What can we do? How do we counter this trend?
Simple.
Have fun. Eat candy.
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