Merry Halloween and a Happy New Valentine's Day

Ahh, Halloween. It’s here. You know how I know? Because last Saturday I walked into my nearby hardware store and saw on display row after row of fake Christmas trees. Nothing says Halloween like Christmas trees.

What about all the Halloween stuff, you ask? Did they ever have that out? Oh sure. If you stopped in between the day after Father’s Day and the Fourth of July, you could have bought an assortment of Halloween decorations. Fireworks for your July 4th celebration weren’t available at that time because those were on sale during Groundhog’s Day.

I know the subject of retail stores displaying Christmas items too early has been beaten into the ground, so I won’t do it here (anymore). But seriously. Christmas trees? (I lied)

I expect that from Wal-Mart or Target, but not the hardware store. I know they’re trying to copy other stores who profit from Christmas long before Christmas arrives, but they haven’t quite figured out how. In the seasonal section of the store, right next to the fake trees, they still have barbecue grills and riding lawn mowers for sale. For those that don’t know, I don’t live in southern California or Florida or someplace that sees the sun after October. If people in my town are buying Christmas trees, they aint buying lawn mowers. Make up your mind, hardware store!

So, if you’re a fan of Halloween, hopefully you bought your decorations during the 15 minutes in which they were available. And who isn’t a fan of Halloween? If you’re a kid, you get loads of candy. And the reality is you don’t even have to dress up and walk around the neighborhood burning calories. You can be a true glutton – American style – and just graze on the candy your parents buy to give out to the neighborhood kids. You can also score more candy at school every day during the week leading up to Halloween.

If you’re an adult, you have an excuse to buy loads of candy and the power to yell at your kids, “Hey! That’s for the trick-or-treaters that come over. Put it back,” and then pull out a piece for yourself and eat it right in front of them.

On Halloween, everyone – young and old – also has an excuse to dress up and pretend to be something they’re not. This way, Matthew McConaughey can put on a costume and pretend to be a vampire instead of wearing his usual outfit and pretending to be interesting.

Tons of crappy scary movies hit the theaters around Halloween too, while a lot of good scary movies are shown on TV. For instance, even though I haven’t seen it, I imagine the latest SAW movie, and all the ones before it, is pretty crappy. Then again there have been about 18 of those, so people obviously like them. And to keep audiences coming back for that many sequels, the writers and producers obviously create wildly different plot lines for each one. I’m sure not one SAW movie looks anything like the others, and I would no doubt be completely lost by randomly picking one and watching it without first seeing the ones that came before it. So they’re probably pretty good after all.

For those that prefer movies with a little imagination, this week AMC has been running Alien and The Shining, two classic scary movies with great writing and top-notch directors. However they can’t hold a candle to Poltergeist, the scariest movie of all time. How can I definitively say it’s the scariest movie ever? Because I watched it when I was five or six years old and it gave me nightmares for a week. It’s scary as sh*t.

Now, you might say, “Why don’t you watch it as an adult and see if you still think it’s scary?” Well, I would watch it again except that when I watched it as a kid, it gave me nightmares for a week. It’s scary as sh*t! Did I not say that already?! Pay attention.

I can’t even watch the DirecTV commercial with the little girl from that movie because it’s too spooky. And you know the worst of it? Poltergeist is rated PG. It’s true. Get a hold of a copy and see for yourself. It came out before the PG-13 rating existed, but why it didn’t receive an R rating is beyond me. Aside from all the other freaky things in that movie, did you know there’s a scene in which a guy goes into the bathroom, looks at himself in the mirror and then PEELS HIS FACE OFF? And not the way Fred and Daphne would peel the masks off the bad guys at the end of Scooby Doo. He peels it off in little pieces, exposing a lot of stuff that you wouldn’t see unless you worked with cadavers. And it’s rated PG! Episodes of Desperate Housewives don’t even get that rating. We’ve definitely softened as a society.

But you know what? In some cases that’s a good thing. Sure it’s stupid that nowadays kids who play sports don’t know if they win or lose because no one ever keeps score, but on the flip side we no longer hear anyone say, “Good luck with your Small Pox.”

So yeah, Halloween. Enjoy it.