Bah humbug, Halloween edition

I am meh about Halloween and I feel guilty about it. Here's a holiday that (for secular adults without kids at least) doesn't have religious connotions or family obligations, doesn't have an expectation of gift-giving, is just about candy and revelry. It's easy to complain about Christmas/winter holiday commercialism or to complain about Valentine's Day; it feels too cranky to not like Halloween.

I like candy. I like pumpkins (real ones, and pumpkin-flavored-things, which a friend points out are really pumpkin pie spice flavored). I don't like most spooky things, but cemeteries and the occasional ghost story are cool. And oh I like dressing up. Every year I think my impressive collection of vintage clothes and uniforms and such should go to good use--I should wear something I can't get away with at other times, I should lend or rent items as costumes for others. Or sell a lot of it.

But...eh. I just don't get invited to Halloween parties, or go to the ones I know about, or want to do bar events (since Halloween has become nearly as bad for massive public drunkenness as St. Patrick's or New Year's Eve). I don't want to feel I have to wear a sexy costume. Or actually I'd like to wear one, but it's generally near-winter weather in Chicago at Halloween, even if other days in October have been warm. I live on a floor where I don't have to worry about trick-or-treaters coming to my door. (And don't miss it, as I grew up in a house set back from the street enough that we didn't get many trick-or-treaters. Or we got a few. It's Girl Scout cookie salesgirls we never got...) The Halloween costume pop-up stores in empty big-box and mall stores (especially empty Borders, RIP) depress me. And so this year, where a Wednesday Halloween somehow turned the season into two full Halloween weekends and the day itself...nothing.

The only two things I do are buy discounted candy, and watch morning TV news/talk shows for the hosts' costumes. This year the national shows didn't do their Halloween festivities because of Sandy storm aftermath, so I was left with just the Chicago shows. (Edited to add: oh, and always like the bit on Letterman's show, too--weird costumes for kids--which did happen. The image is of a girl as a restaurant cup of coleslaw.) They did all right dressing up on set or in bits at the big costume store. (Both WGN and ABC7 had LMFAO outfits, and I realized I'm so out of it I wouldn't recognize an LMFAO costume. I know the songs--I do attend a lot of minor league sporting events, after all--but haven't seen the videos enough.)

I am happy to have gotten the photo at the top of the post while walking in Bridgeport during a Forgotten Chicago tour. A nice mix of friendly and unfriendly. AMERICA.

Nov. 1. NaBloPoMo

Happy Halloween...or a bit after Halloween. This photo is from two days earlier, of a pumpkin given to my parents in Iowa, which was already falling apart (the top fell in the next day) and a bit moldy. I did virtually nothing to celebrate the holiday, since I was away from Chicago over the weekend (and away from parties I didn't know about/wasn't invited to). All I saw were a few costumes at the Iowa State Cyclones hockey game, and then on Halloween back in Chicago while taking the CTA. It's always a lost holiday for me--I have material (vintage clothes, uniforms--including some found in abandoned buildings!) for literally hundreds of costumes, but nowhere to wear it. At least I like pumpkins and I like candy. Day after Halloween, I almost forgot to look for candy except at my local Family Dollar, which didn't have much (Walgreens is a better bet). I bought a bag of candy corn for 50 cents and ate too much of it already. The store had Halloween decor still hanging from the ceiling all over...and plenty of Christmas decorations already up. Little trees on top of the refrigerated cases on both sides of the entrance. (They start stocking winter holiday merchandise the first day of fall every year.)

This is my first time actually signing into Blogger in months, since its redesign (which I haven't explored much yet). It appears I still can't combine my old Blogger account with my Gmail account and it appears posting photos still isn't any easier. But I wanted to try NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month, established in 2006 as an alternative to National Novel Writing Month (which I kind of hoped to try last year, but I know my limitations!): it's now hosted at BlogHer. I need to officially list myself and promote myself and figure out how I'll handle posts on a few days I'm out of town in November, but I'll try to have something up every day.