Halloween - brought to you by the same people as St Paddys Day

October is finally here. I'm no longer jumping the gun on this whole thing and I can officially tote Halloween's awesomeness without people saying "Dude, it's only September."

I figure I should ring in the month by giving you a brief history of Halloween. See, it all started when the Celt's would celebrate Samhain (the festival, not the pumpkin headed guy from the Ghostbusters). It was the halfway point of the solstices and supposedly the one night each year when the boundaries between the dead and the living were let down. They did all kinds of kooky shit to celebrate and eventually the Christians showed up and tried to "church-up" the holiday. In 835 Pope Greg the forth decried that November 1 would be All Saint's Day, or All Hallow's Day, making the 31 of October All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween as we know it today.

The whole Trick or Treating thing goes back to the Celt's though. They used to leave out candy corn, Milk Duds, and small bags of Doritos for ghosts, ghouls, and other netherworld baddies to snack on so they wouldn't get all pissed off and stir up some shit.

In North America we started celebrating Halloween around the turn of the 19th century because up until then the puritans who founded the continent had a stick up their ass and wouldn't even celebrate Christmas because they thought it was sac-religious.

I also thought I'd throw out some historical Halloweens for you;

835 - Pope Gregory IV declares November 1 All Saint's Day.
179? - Ichabod Crane gets ownt by the Headless Horseman
1864 - Nevada becomes the 36th state
1926 - Harry Houdini dies, some creepy shit surrounds the death, but if you want to find out you'll have to look it up on Wikipedia
1938 - Orson Welles does the whole War of the Worlds thing and the entire eastern seaboard shits its pants
1961 - Peter Jackson, director of LOTR and the Frighteners is born
1963 - Rob Schneider is born - scary
1968 - Vanilla Ice is born
1978 - John Carpenters Halloween comes out, thus creating the slasher genre. Virgin's everywhere use the excuse "I want to survive a horror movie"
1984 - My first Halloween. In an event that foreshadowed my love of Halloween and childhood weight problem I take my first steps ever to walk across the room to get candy after my mom refuses to give me anymore. This is also out of protest that she dressed me like a bunny.
1993 - River Phoenix dies outside the Viper Room in LA
2002 - I get IDed 5 times in 45 minutes at Mingles when they doubt my fake ID. They couldn't prove it was a fake, but I storm out angrily and boycott the bar until I actually turn 19.
2006 - It hasn't happened yet, but it will indeed be awesome and thus deserving of being listed here.

Also, tonight I went to the Allans Video down the road and picked up a bunch of movies, so now I'll be watching along with you.

Watch:
Hocus Pocus - That movie is how Halloween's should be. You, your little sister, the hottest girl in school, and a talking cat should totally be chased around by witches and a zombie only to have you save the day and get the girl.
Van Helsing - Yeah, its not going to win any awards, but its a great popcorn movie. It combines the big three movie monsters and has Kate Beckinsale looking hot as balls in a corset and leather pants. Whats not to love?

Read:
Goosebumps - RL Stein You read them when you were a kid and they were awesome. I have no idea where any of my old ones are now, but if I did I'd totally hit that up. I remember one called "The Werewolf of Fever Lake" or something like that. Classic.

Hear:
Halloween (She gets so mean) - Rob Zombie I picked up this Halloween Hootenanny CD a few years back and this was on it. The whole CD is good for a laugh. Rob Zombie put it together and it's all kinds of Halloween themed bands and songs. He does this song with a instrumental surf band called The Ghastly Ones. Reverend Horton Heat have a song on it and Los Straitjackets do the theme from The Munsters.