[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 heavy iron gates have been torn asunder. Children howl, fire in their eyes and sugar in their guts. Geezers don masks, chuckling their emphysema chuckles and launching bottle rockets at the Hunter’s Moon. Women hike up their skirts, tempting the menfolk to make decisions most unwise. The torrent of maniacs has flooded the campgrounds – there’s no mistaking this dark carnival for any other event.

Welcome back to the OCTOBERFEAST!

Today’s festivities feature musical accompaniment, a score to facilitate the fermentation of the parishioners’ blood from a vital red to a syrupy orange-and-black. Yes, instead of bat wings flapping and incantations groaned, the revelers tap their toes to a sludgy Gothic manifesto. One born out Brooklyn, no less.

Let us all raise the fist of the metal child to October Rust.

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[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]

There are those who bemoan society’s current condition. These are the folks who love to reminisce about how much more wholesome things used to be, how everything used to be safe and hearty and family-friendly. You’ve probably seen one or two of these types in the supermarket, waddling through the aisles and grousing about the fact that we live in an era in which goblins and lunatic-geniuses encourage the youth to lose their minds.

If you identify with this perspective, it’s probably in your best interest to steer clear of the OCTOBERFEAST!

That’s right, folks, it is once again time to explore those grimy crevices of Hallow’s Eve often excluded from the prepackaged celebrations! So take a rip of the closest beverage, whether it be pumpkin-beer or your Uncle Edgar’s famous gasoline-Mountain Dew cocktail, and make your way into the campgrounds!

We begin this year’s festivities by issuing a missing persons announcement over the public address system:

Attention! Attention! Has anyone seen Fruit Brute?

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[cue the music]

There’re moments   in life in which appreciation simply cannot be thwarted, try as Life might.

Today has been the Greater Boston area’s first real taste of fall, a forty-degree recess that seems to cool not just the sweltering landscape, but burning souls as well. That stack of work piling ever higher? Crack open the office window and laugh as the breeze pushes papers across your desk. Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, a nameless worker-bee in the mass exodus from the hive? Take a look beyond the overpass at the trees, all showing off their summer’s-end sunburns of red and yellow and orange. Finally home and having trouble sloughing off the day’s worth of stress?

Just crack open a Harvest Pumpkin Ale.

Autumnal awesomeness will follow.

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[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 you’re reading this, you’ve survived long enough to reach the final day of OCTOBERFEAST. Congratulations. I can’t even tell you how many celebrants I’ve seen collapse halfway through, proving themselves too faint of heart to endure the satanic shindig. Terror-induced heart attack, alcohol poisoning, spontaneous combustion, sugar-coma – a ticket to this event also grants admission to death by about ninety-nine different methods.

But here we are – alive and demented as ever on Halloween! This day brings us the concluding activity, an event that anyone with a heart (even a black one) should enjoy taking part in. Today, for a few hours, we reverse the relationship between the dominated and the dominating. The powerless become empowered. The ruling class elite must answer to the disenfranchised. And in the process, boatloads of candy are consumed.

Tonight’s featured enterprise is, of course, trick or treating.

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[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]

It is with the utmost respect and admiration that I present the following declaration:

Ray Bradbury is the official writer laureate of OCTOBERFEAST. The awarding of this position to Mr. Bradbury shouldn’t shock or surprise a single soul, as his work is the printed embodiment of the annual fright-festival. The bizarre, the ghastly, and the speculative synergize to convey a sense of wonder and possibility.

This year’s gala features Ray Bradbury’s The October Country.

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[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]

There is no doubt in my mind that Devin Townsend is a genuine, living, flesh-and-blood hero. The man was discovered by Steve Vai and sang on one of his records. He then went on to front Strapping Young Lad, a band whose heaviness is often imitated but never recreated. And his solo records include some of the most inspiring art I’ve ever experienced.

In short – HevyDevy is the goddamn man.

As a bit of a benevolent screwball, Devin Townsend has generated plenty of material that could make its way into OL’s annual celebration of undead-pulp-malarky. For a time, it appeared as though Ziltoid the Omniscient was going to stop by OCTOBERFEAST but he changed his mind when I told him that we weren’t serving coffee, only beer and soda. Oh well – his loss!

Luckily, a suitable replacement has emerged!

To support the Devin Townsend Band’s Synchestra, a video was filmed for the track Vampira. I’m almost positive that the song has nothing to do with Halloween, goblins or even the horror-icon after whom it was named. However, this didn’t stop the video from taking the form of a live-action Vault of Horror adaptation.

Set within the panels of a comic book, Vampira shows Devin Townsend (in the same devil costume worn in Problem Child) rocking out with his band of skeleton-men. As the troupe shred inside of a cemetery, they dance about with a fearlessness only possessed by evil musicians. And unlike the Misfits, these guys actually tear shit up.

Also worth noting is the vampire babe that shows up. She’s not a ten or anything, but for a member of the undead (and a star in a Devin Townsend video) she’s worth a look. Her inclusion can probably be attributed to the desire to include a title character. Whatever, I’ll take it.

It’s the Friday of OCTOBERFEAST. Pop on Vampira, tap your toes, and get ready for the most wicked weekend of them all.

[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]

I’m going to tell you a scary story.

When I was a little kid, there was a professional wrestling company called the WWF. Don’t look for them – they don’t exist anymore. This company had absolutely perfected the slop-culture art of pro-wrestling, creating a product that was as enthralling as even the finest piece of art. The good guys were the best. The bad guys were pure evil. And even the maniacs captivated. If you were an apostle of the WWF, it was a beautiful time to be alive.

But lurking about the dark underbelly of staged athletics was a different creature altogether. Relegated to filthy corners of sports entertainment, this abomination took umbrage at its second-class status. This being didn’t smile and shake hands. It didn’t kiss babies on the forehead and say “God bless.” And it sure as hell set any precedents.

This ghoul was called the WCW. And it was the malevolent doppleganger of the WWF.

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[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 – writer extraordinaire or drug-addled lunatic?

Both.

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[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]

Is eating a healthy breakfast a wise decision? Probably.

Is eating a bowl of monster-themed sugar-clusters a wise decision? Definitely.

The official breakfast of this year’s OCTOBERFEAST is the wonderfully horrific Frankenberry. Originally released with the infamous Count Chocula, this cereal has plastered saccharine smiles onto children’s faces for nearly forty years. The taste alone is worth raving about; strawberry-flavored corn crisps carry marshmallows directly into your tum-tum. Through the standard morning-meal process, any milk used is transmuted from that yucky liquid doctors and parents want you to drink into a lite-milkshake.

Perhaps more important than the gustatory experience is the fact that Frankenberry is a goddamn abomination. That’s right, America, we’re feeding our children a food with Frankenstein’s monster as the mascot. You realize that Frankenstein’s monster symbolizes aspiration corrupted, the dream that we pursue so zealously that we lose sight of how grotesque it’s become, right? We are, in essence, consuming our own wretched failures! And they’re delicious!

In the course of two days I have polished off an entire box of Frankenberry. I just couldn’t stop myself from going back for more. I felt obsessed, as though by eating the cereal I could be transformed into an athlete of superhuman capabilities. Yes, maybe I will try out for the Hanshin Tigers…

Don’t judge me, it’s the OCTOBERFEAST! My only concern is that the holiday-treat might play some tricks on my digestive track.

[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]

It’s that time of year again. The undead are becoming restless, preparing for the annual night of domination. The ghouls are tearing off their flesh-masks, skulking about retirement home windows in the hopes of inducing heart attacks. Perverts are slipping roofies into the punchbowls, their lunatic cousins hiding razor blades in apples. And soccer moms are stocking up on candy.

It’s wonderful.

Clearly, there are a number of ways to get into the holiday spirit. Anyone who doubts this need only view the video for Thunder Kiss `65.

Younger readers may not know this, but before Rob Zombie was a kooky director, he was the kooky front man for White Zombie. My feeble descriptive skills tell me that White Zombie was a horror-oriented metal band that embodied the sloppy spirit of early `90s drug binges. But what do I know?

Anyways, the video for Thunder Kiss `65 is a perfect overture for OCTOBERFEAST. With half of the footage in black in white, the video summons the spectres and hauntings that blessed the Universal lot. A luchador drives a muscle car across a barren wasteland, only stopping to drink with Frankenstein’s monster and the grim reaper. Logically, leggy Go-Go dancers shake their stuff and psychedelic filters wash over the band. It’s a tantalizing cross-section of the different types of mayhem found at Samhain.

Trust me, you want to watch this.