Enjoying the Halloween Season
(Credit out friend @crypt_sleeper on instagram for the awesome artwork)
Sometimes, the season sneaks up on you so fast, you forget to stop and take it all in. For those of us who love Halloween, or any holiday season in fact, it’s important to take in everything. I live for the food-tie ins, when Target puts out it’s Halloween stuff, watching scary movies and burying my face in Enchantresses shoulder. I lot of people say holidays have become cash grabs, or “greeting card” holidays. Not me! And I see Halloween as the official start of the holiday season! This season doesn’t end with Christmas. I love the special Valentine’s Day candy and food tie-ins, then next you get awesome stuff for St. Patrick’s day. And lately Easter has become almost on par with Halloween (ALMOST, but not quite). We even have Easter cereal! For me the season ends with summer, when you go on vacations and enjoy the glory that is the warm weather. We need the holiday season to get us through those cold months and short days. Every bag of special holiday candy, and every holiday swap of greeting cards is a new chance to make the day of someone special in your life. Don’t complain about the cash grab. Remember, you don’t have to buy it, but every new holiday keeps someone in work. All these products are jobs for people. Artists who write and draw greeting cards, bakers who make special edition Oreos, confectioners making special M&M’s and heart shaped Snickers!
Okay, I’ll get off my soap box.
Let me go over a few things I actually did to enjoy the Halloween Season so far.
Let’s start with the first “whiff” of Halloween, when you’re in line at to buy your Monster (drink, not actual monster) and you notice the impulse candy section of the convience store has gone to the macabre side. For me, this was July 18th, FREAKING JULY 18TH! I can’t say I hated it, even thouh it was about 400 degrees outside that day, it was still pretty aweome.
Next up, the night of August 16th, 2018. I went to the grocery store to grab some stuff after work, and I saw this beautiful orange glow on the end cap. Then first Halloween cereal of the season and it was a new one. Pumpkin Spice Frosted Flakes! While not technically Halloween, but more of a “fall” exclusive, I don’t care, I’m gonna count it.
(Note: I didn’t try any of these new cereals yet, but that’s coming”)
Next it all starting falling into place. I picked up the new boxes of Kellogg’s Halloween Cereal, the Halloween Edition POP Tarts, the obligatory Halloween Oreo. We bought the all new Monster Crunch battle game based on the General Mills Monster Cereals. I randomly walked into a Walgreens and got the limited edition Jason from Friday the 13t part 2 pop, and we found a remaining box of Freddy Kruger Ceral from Funko at FYE (although the different cereals are now becoming more ubiquitous than pops themselves). And of course it wouldn’t be Halloween without stopping at Yankee Candle for some seasonal scented candles.
But that’s enough of material things, we did some pretty cool stuff as well.
Early on in the season on September 14th, we went to Field Of Screams. Known as the East Coast’s largest haunted attraction (citation needed). It was a blast! There was a hayride with tons of scares and awesome visuals. Two indoor haunted house attractions and a really cool haunted woods outdoor haunted house style attraction. This is all surrounded by a carnival like atmosphere of games, food and a live band. Enchantress always gets a good scare in which she screams and then bursts out into laughter. We finished that weekend with my first ever escape room expierance. It was just three of us in a room for 5. We got so close, but didn’t escape the pirate themed room. (It was my first time, don’t judge)
Probably the thing that is going to define this Halloween season for me is coming up, we’re literally waiting in the airport to travel there now, but there was an item I got that also will help me always remember this Halloween.
Mondo did this really cool promo, releasing a bunch of Halloween Soundtracks on special edition vinyl. They started with 4 and 5, but then came the coolest and quite possibly the best of them all. Halloween 3: Season of the witch! This score was composed by John Carpenter himself, for a really cool movie that actually didn’t feature Michael Myers. They released three editions, the pumpkin mask, the skeleton mask and the witch mask. I wanted all three but enchantress and I settled on the Pumpkin mask varient. SO COOL!
Finally (well not finally, we’re going to do something so cool now, but for this article). Last night, we went to see the new Halloween. A quick review: I liked it. It was fucking terrifying, and really fun. Some things were annoying and didn’t make sense, and I still might like H20 better, but fuck was it fun! And scary! Jaime Lee Curtis is AMAZING returning as Laurie Strode! I recommend seeing it and seeing it soon! It’s very atmospheric and puts out a great Halloween vibe!
This weekend, we’re doing something really cool (delaying the next podcast release till Sunday night, it will be Halloween themed though) I’ll write about it when we get back, but for now, make the most out of what you have left this Halloween Season!
