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[wombat]

We have a thread about the day we change the clocks, but not about Halloween which is a much better holiday?

This year my Halloween goal was not to buy too much candy for a change.  I mean, I just had to throw out some leftovers from last year. I know they have a lot of preservatives but I hesitate to eat a year old Milky Way.  But I am now looking anxiously at the small pile of candy that is left when it's only 7:45.  I really want to have some leftovers of this Fear Factor brand candy in the shape of bugs and worms in dirt and suchlike. 

I did not do anything good this past weekend because I had to work, but surely some of you went to cool parties in cool costumes that you can post pictures of.

[jough]

We've only had 14 trick or treaters so far, and most of them don't even bother saying "trick or treat."

I'm the guy who says "Aren't you supposed to say 'trick or treat'?" and then they roll their eyes like I did when I was a kid and give a half-hearted "trick or treat."

Yep.  That's me.  I'm that guy.

[theinevitable]

dang, there is neither tricking nor treating going on. I only saw 1 kid dressed up all day! Fuck this shit!

tonight we're all watching The Shining, though. That should be fun.

[Drygioni]

In a village where there are two children, trick or treating didn't really work out this year. Suffice to say, I am now sick to the stomach of large quantities of sweets, at least until Christmas rolls around .

[jay-ell]

We took my child, dressed as a dragon, on a whirlwind tour of five houses of people we knew.  Our neighborhood is the suck for trick or treaters, most grownups in this neighborhood turn off their porch lights and most kids go up the street to the 'hood where the Benjamins be.  So we got in the minivan and did the drop-in on friends and relatives to show off our cute kid. 

Photos here. 

[side_show]

We had only 40 kids this year, compaired to 60 last year, but this was the day after a major snow storm, so it was sort of to be expected. 

Best costume of the night:  Kid aroung 9 had on one of those half-head masks of Elvis, a t-shirt he had drawn on to make look like a football jersey and a plastic axe.  I asked him who he was supposed to be and he proclaimed proudly "Elivis and Miscellanious Costume!" 

Also several cute toddlers that were clearly too small to eat the candy their parents were collecting.

[littlefallsmets]

I haven't gotten one trick-or-treater since I moved to California. I guess living in a... gated apartment building where... nearly everyone is either an unattached immigrant from Mexico or a twenty-something white kid trying to scrape by until their "big break"... you're not going to get a lot of child-activity, are you?

Seems like almost all the Halloween activity revolves around "community centres" and "in-home events" and theme parks and haunted houses and little parking-lot carnivals and they just kinda... stage... trick or treating within the confines of those situations.

Which is sad to me but, like, I grew up in a small town at the edge of the Adirondacks where no one locks their doors so... like... perhaps I was the exception and not the other way around. Maybe in urban areas, there just never was just roving bands of ten-year-olds each accompanied by one token adult, maurauding for treats.

The other, sadder, Halloween thought is... a wedding's for the wife (or more often, the wife's mother) and maybe Halloween's for the kids and... a kid anymore I ain't, you know? Maybe it's better to be out here where the entire idea of Halloween is overconstructed and it can't depress me so much that I'm an adult, as opposed to the quiet little redneck podunk whitebread pissant mountain town of my origination.

[pmcd9]

Fall Festival Costume.

~Paul

[Drygioni]

Fall Festival Costume.

~Paul

Dang Paul, swish costume you got there!

[pmcd9]

I know we talked about this before, but I can't remember, is swish good?

~Paul

[wombat]

Maybe in urban areas, there just never was just roving bands of ten-year-olds each accompanied by one token adult, maurauding for treats.

Yes there were.  I did it in New York City.  Really, it is an activity which is even more suited to densely populated areas.  More candy per distance walked, after all.

The fact that Halloween gets more organized every year also depresses me.  Trick or treating is our last authentic folk tradition, it seems to me.  But we had more kids this year than last, even though they had some kind of organized thing on the weekend as well.  So you may live in the wrong neighborhood now but it's not dead yet.

[theinevitable]

Paul-- yes, swish is good.

[Sub_Topical]

RE: Swish

noted and educated

My Halloween candy gifting was suburbia busy goodness.

[pmcd9]

When I was a kid we took candy from strangers.  I only got a razor blade once.

~Paul

[side_show]

See, we took it upon ourselves to encourage the greed last night.  The question of the evening was "which do you like chocolate bar or chips?" to which most good natured kids looked slightly confused, and would reply with a statement of preference, which was fulfilled.  Only the ones who said "both" got rewarded with words of praise and both tiny bags of Doritos and Caramilk/Wunder/Crispy Crunch/Crunch bars.

In a neighborhood where three murders have happened within a ten minute walk from my house in the past month, it's sort of a relief to see neighbors encouraging their kids to be at least moderately social.

We got 20 less kids than last year, and have so much chocolate/chips left over that it's crazy.  If I don't contain myself, tomorrow I'll have diabetes.  Those Crunch bars a basically chocolate covered sugar.  Also to my horror, I discovered the delight of sandwiching a mini Wunder bar between two squares of Caramilk bar... Basically, what I'm telling you all is that you need to pray for me.