Saturday, November 1, 2008

Happy Belated


I hope everyone had a happy Halloween! I should have posted this yesterday, but I just had to get that election stuff off my chest.

I didn't do much for Halloween this year. I have a shirt with tiny insects all over it that I wore to work -- vaguely Halloweenish -- and I watched "Shaun of the Dead" last night. There's a huge parade down in Greenwich Village every year, but you can bet I stayed away from that. It sounded like some of my neighbors were having crazy parties.

I didn't get any trick-or-treaters. People don't really do that in New York. For one thing, they couldn't easily get into any of the buildings, including mine!

Halloween has become so strange in the last few decades. It seems to be much more about gore and grossness -- at least in terms of decorating -- and less about ghosts and the supernatural. I think the slasher movies of the late '70s and the '80s transformed our cultural sense of horror, making it less about abstraction and imagination and more about concrete realism.

(Photo: Pumpkin in Back Bay, Boston, Oct. 2008)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately I think the day after Halloween is when the merchants pull out all the Christmas decorations and we spend the next working ourselves into a frenzy! 'Tis the season...

Anonymous said...

We hid out from the trick or treaters last night. Ordinarily we pass candy. The doorbell rings constantly from 6:30 until about 10:00 p.m. But none of us in the house on Tennessee were in a mood last night. We locked the gate, turned out the lights in the front of the house, hid out in back and watched TV. It was nice and relaxing.

Anonymous said...

i love that little rather cross looking pumpkin head!

Anonymous said...

Ha! "Shaun of the Dead"! Did you like it?