#October2011
OCTOBERFEAST – Halloween Hazzards!
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
The OCTOBERFEAST is building to its crescendo and all of the participants can’t help but bask in the forbidden glories. As they mash sugar-goodies into their teeth, and rot their libidos with images of vampyric floozies, and cackle after drankin’ one too many pumpkin brews, the celebrants begin downward-spiraling into a dark nirvana. This is exultation and catharsis and jubilation, a doppleganger-Mardi Gras with mountebank intentions.
Yeah, it’s a bit dangerous. But isn’t the risky behavior exciting?
OCTOBERFEAST is a candied spark of excitement. So, of course, it’s always met by a bitter parental figure with an oversized fire blanket.
The priests always swarm our rusted gates, clamoring that they need to be let in so as to thwart our demonic conjurations. Health inspectors try to examine our cauldrons, claiming that we didn’t properly clean the residue left by last year’s eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, or tongue of dog. And the hippies always show up with signs claiming that our failure to use free-range sacrificial lambs makes us irresponsible consumers.
These folks, we can deal with. By ignoring.
But the ones that cannot – nay, must not – be ignored are those that attack Halloween, the pinnacle of OCTOBERFEAST. These worrywarts try to take all of the fun out of Hallow’s Eve by issuing annual reminders of some shit that went down years ago. It’s all been said before, but they hope to instill irrational fears into to any potential newcomers to the holiday. Simply put, the suggestions are tired and silly.
Yeah, we know – don’t wrap up children as toilet-paper mummies and then ask them to help you rearrange the candles! If Molesty Jim is your next-door neighbor, maybe don’t let the kids walk through his “haunted basement” unattended! Syringes sticking out of those caramel apples? Just toss `em in the barrel.
But alas, the warnings persist. Fortunately, most of the well-worn words of caution come in the form of homemade videos and public access public service announcements. So if we must listen to the enemy’s paranoid advice, at least we can chuckle and chuckle and chuckle.
Cue the OCTOBERFEAST projector, Brucie! We’re going to show our malignant ticket-holders just what the detractors have to say! These are the arguments against our very way of life!
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OCTOBERFEAST – Watchmen
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
Watchmen is a lot of things. A deconstruction of the superhero archetype. An exploration of Cold War tensions. An actualization of the comics medium’s potential. One of the most meticulously-plotted, visually layered, and rewarding narrative experiences ever stuffed into paneled pages.
There’s no denyin’ that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created something special.
However, noticeably absent from discussions about Watchmen are any considerations as to why the creators placed the story within its given time-frame. Sure, everyone is quick to point out that this alternate history’s dark vision of 1985 conjures up all sorts of anxieties about mutually assured destruction and the necessity to avert nuclear holocaust. But the overlooked time-frame is the season in which the tale of middle-aged superheroics unfolds.
Again, it’s easy to remember that Watchmen is a lot of things – deconstruction/exploration/actualization/masterpiece – but let’s not forget that it is a metaphor for autumn itself.
OCTOBERFEAST – Bark at the Moon
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
If the OCTOBERFEAST teaches us nothing else, it’s that every individual must act as both prey and predator of the heart’s darkened recesses. While evading their burdensome remembrances in daily living, one can use this annual masquerade-macabre to unearth the roots of personal anguish. Show them to the world. Chop them to pieces with a fuggin’ axe. Light them on fire.
For as horrifying as it might be to approach our own repressions, it is infinitely more exhilarating to air them out. So no one amongst us, from the most fragile bonfire-stoker to the strongest cask-hurling juggernaut, will escape the revelry without revealing a lost truth, a fact that may begin to be slipping into fiction. Go ahead – turn your head to the sky and just scream what it is that you don’t want to face but can’t bear to forget! There’s no need to be shy!
For even the most evil of our OCTOBERFEAST guests have some black-boned skeletons dancing in their closets.
Tonight, Lord Ozzy is going to get things going for us. Look there he is! And he’s about to Bark at the Moon!
OCTOBERFEAST – Your Actual True Hallowe’en Story
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
Hallow’s Eve, the official moment of the OCTOBERFEAST orgasm, is exactly three weeks from today.
Presented for your consumption is a tasty treat cooked up by Warren Ellis, my personal Internet Overlord. What follows is Your Actual True Hallowe’en Story, which I first read in Shivering Sands and tracked down on Ellis’ Livejournal.
OCTOBERFEAST – R.L. Stine
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
Lo! Did you just see that? The Ceremonial Mongoose got hold of the farmer’s prize pig! The little golden bugger escaped its rusty-nail prison, ran past the hobo-guard who was too punchdrunk from his bout with the cauldron-keeper’s wife to remain conscious, and lunged right at the farmer’s best oinker! Babe didn’t even stand a chance, being coddled by the unsuspecting and inebriated farmer as he showed off his handiwork to the pack of admiring agriculturalists.
The Ceremonial Mongoose sank teeth into throat.
Life sprayed everywhere.
The farmer’s blue-ribbon became a carcass.
Oh, such is the wonder of OCTOBERFEAST – the one event offering free bacon-cologne via crowd-drenching blood-mists!
So, why is it that those in attendance didn’t flee? How could everyone revel in such a horrific spectacle of pork-creation? What type of human being attends the OCTOBERFEAST? Well, the fact of the matter is that the celebrants are a varied lot of orange-and-black clad maniacs and lunatics and rejects and psychotics who’ve spent a lifetime reveling in popular culture’s horror. We didn’t wake up this way, but had to learn to love the dark visions, the glimpses into humanity’s unspoken fears.
As such, it is with the utmost reverence that we celebrate the career of R.L. Stine, a man whose lifework introduced many of us to the horror genre.
OCTOBERFEAST – Vigo the Carpathian
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
Mythology is a facet of human existence that is simply unfettered by the constraints of space and time. With its archetypal structures firmly embedded within the collective unconscious, mythology is both prehistoric and ever-persistent. Heroes and villains. Tragedies and triumphs. Narratives will always be around, adapting accordingly and continuing to provide guidelines for livin’.
The messiah is Jesus is Neo. The sage is Virgil is Ben Kenobi. The bildungsroman is Holden’s excursion into NYC.
You get the point.
Operating under the presumption of narrative omnipresence, it becomes clear who can be credited as the most dastardly of villains. While dark forces work against every era, there are also those especially evil forces that’re willing to plague innocent folk across the epochs. These overachievers traverse space and time, doing their best to snub out the dwindling flicker that is human benevolence at every vulnerable moment.
Of all the malignant space-pirates floating around the universal ether, and there’s no shortage of `em, one is a notch above. This is a man whose powers allow him not only to travel through time, but to stave off death in a manner impossible for mere mortals. Yes, this is a man who upon being killed (which required he be shot, stabbed, hung, stretched, disemboweled, and then drawn and quartered) remarked, “Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I’ll be back.”
So, if you would, all of the OCTOBERFEAST celebrants are asked to please give a warm welcome to a magician who needs no introduction but will get one anyways. A man who almost ruined NYC’s 1989 New Year’s Eve festivities. A fellow who almost killed Bill Murray.
The one. The only. Vigo the Carpathian.
OCTOBERFEAST – Reign in Blood
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
The OCTOBERFEAST rages on, undaunted by those protesters standing outside of the gates. With their self-assured smirks, those do-gooders standby with band-aids and pamphlets about PTSD and bottles of the always-refreshing Gatorade. Who the hell do they think they are? Don’t they realize that the proselytes of popular-horror can’t be dissuaded? And even if conversion were possible at some point, it certainly wouldn’t be on this date.
For October 7th is an especially important day in the OCTOBERFEAST cycle. After all, it was twenty-five years ago today that a portal to Hell was activated, granting a diabolical musical-daemon safe passage to Earth. Although this malignant spirit only appears in thirty-five minute bursts, the terror he instills last a lifetime. If you ever crossed paths with this October-beast, you’ll never forget the experience.
Today, OCTOBERFEAST proudly serves as Earthrealm-host to Slayer’s Reign in Blood.
OCTOBERFEAST – Brach’s Autumn Mix
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
While Satan’s Snacktime is rooted in traditions of terror, it’s also dedicated to progress. Lookin’ ahead. Celebratin’ the future we call now. As such, the 2011 edition of OCTOBERFEAST will be known as a great revelry of inclusivity. After all, segregation sucks. Even in the candy world.
When autumn hits, all sorts of muthafuggahs be snackin’ on candy corn. And I don’t blame `em, cause that shit is delicious. You’ll never catch me complaining about festively-shaped handfuls of pure sugar. So if it’s candy corn that you include as part of the sacrificial dowry necessary for entrance into the OCTOBERFEAST, you’ll be admitted.
But if you roll up with a couple of bags of Autumn Mix, you’ll be commended by ghouls and ghosts and she-bitches alike.
OCTOBERFEAST – Paul Bearer
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
Paul Bearer is the most evil man in professional wrestling.
OCTOBERFEAST – The Masque of the Red Death
[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]
Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the most celebrated madman in all of American literature. When he wasn’t drinking himself into a stupor or bedding his thirteen year old cousin-bride or snorting blow off of cadaver asses, Poe spent his time setting the precedents for what would become the modern horror genre. Oh, and he also invented the detective story.
It was a pretty solid life for a guy whose last days on Earth consisted of being found wandering Baltimore in someone else’s clothes while crying out for some mystery figure named “Reynolds.” Perhaps if this Reynolds had revealed himself, Poe wouldn’t have collapsed into a death-coma. But then again, perhaps the legend of Poe wouldn’t be quite so epic without a hazy opium-cloud of a demise.
Of all his works, The Masque of the Red Death may be Poe’s most explicit acknowledgment that his reckless ways would lead to a tragic demise.
