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These Are a Few of My Favorite (Halloween) Things


Autumn. October. Halloween. The Magnificent Morgan Fairchild dressed as a witch perched atop a giant pumpkin. These are a few of my favorite things.


The season is upon us, kiddies. The spooky season, when the leaves hit the ground and the evil spirits are all around (especially in Amityville). I like to call it, The Most Wonderful Time of Year, because it never fails to give me life. I mean, I want to live inside a Spirit Halloween every October! Here are a few other reasons why we're currently in the best season ever.


Just the overall spookiness of the spooky season provides such powerful comfort for me. I know it sounds weird to some, but being surrounded by scary stuff throughout October is pure nirvana. Makes sense, though, because horror provides comfort to some of us because it offers a controlled environment for processing our own fears and anxieties.


The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976) is a relatively new entry in my list of favorite Halloween things. I'd heard of its legend for years, but finally the variety show popped up on Amazon Prime recently, and holy hell is it a work of mad genius.


Lynde is irreverent as ever. Guest stars include: rock 'n' roll all nighters Kiss! Leggy Pinky Tuscadero herself Roz Kelly! Funniest man alive (at the time) Tim Conway! Immortal comedy legend Betty White! Sweet as pumpkin pie Florence Henderson! It's my new favorite Halloween tradition.


Creepy kids begging for candy at your door? Terrifying any other time of year, but oddly comforting on Halloween.


Halloween gives you license to over-indulge in thrills and scares to your heart's content. 'Tis the season!


This time of year always brings annual reminders that,  yes my dear, it is possible to add "Sexy" in front of any potential costume idea and market it to sorority sisters across America. Well, someone finally took it too far, because this Halloween, "It's a smokin' hot day in the neighborhood."


Yikes, there goes the neighborhood.


As you might imagine, people understandably lost their minds over this. You can blaspheme the Catholic Church all you want with "Bad Habit" sexy nun ensembles every October—available at Spirit Halloween, Amazon, and wherever slutty costumes are sold!—but dammit you will not fuck around with Mr. Rogers. By the way, that AV Club headline in the link up above is the funniest play on words I've read all year. Cheers, you Chicago hipsters!


The Most Wonderful Time of Year always brings me back to memories of watching B-grade horror movies in the fall, on USA Up All Night, with hostess with the mostess Rhonda Shear. Any season that consistently reminds me of Rhonda is the best season ever. On a related note, Rhonda recently followed me back on Twitter after The Retro Network reshared the celebration of all things Rhonda and Up All Night that I wrote for them a few months ago. Not only that, but she was genuinely moved— "humbled" is how she put it—and she called me a good writer! As you might imagine, I blacked out for a minute. If all this sounds like bragging, well, it is. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm hopping in my DeLorean and traveling back to 1991-ish, where I will alert my teenage self to this mind-blowing turn of events (and explain to him what the hell this "Twitter" thing is), at which point he will promptly die from happiness.


Speaking of horror hostesses, no Halloween season would be complete without at least a zillion mentions of the Queen of Halloween, Elvira. I've written about her several times, and even found a way to fill my Christmas post last year with no less than four photos and one gif of the seemingly ageless beauty Cassandra Peterson. This year, I've been asked to write another appreciation for that gal with the shape that drives the boys ape. Stay tuned!


Excellent Halloween-centric articles abound all over the internet this time of year, like this recent one from the always fabulous Dinosaur Dracula about the famous and previously hard to find first television broadcast of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) in 1981. This is the sort of online journalism that gets my blood pumping. This is important history, especially for Halloweenologists.


This time of year also reminds me of horror legends like Tom Atkins (Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Night of the Creeps, Maniac Cop, etc.), meaning that I walk around shouting "Thrill me!" even more during the fall than I already do the rest of the year.


Horror movie marathons. I get absolutely jacked up on horror in the weeks and months leading up to Halloween every year. My unofficial annual kickoff to The Most Wonderful Time of Year is typically the last week or two of August—yeah, you read that right, I totally ignore the end of summer and pretend it's fall already. Deal with it. So far this year I've watched several dozen horror movies, and there's still plenty of time for more! Here's one of my favorites (which I've already seen several times) that I simply must make time to rewatch again this season:


I'm also prone to reflection on the Masters of Horror who have filled my childhood and adulthood with so many splendid scares, through their unparalleled abilities to tell spooky stories. Stephen King, John Carpenter, Debra Hill, George A. Romero, Clive Barker, Wes Craven, and on and on.


Autumnal vistas like this, especially if you live in the Northeastern or Midwestern United States, are my forever happy place, full stop.


Pumpkin ales. Nothing burns my pumpkin seeds more than a stuck-up beer snob turning his nose up at the mere mention of pumpkin beer, as if it's some blasphemous affront to "real" beer, whatever the hell that is (probably the beer snob's precious IPA, that's what). Every fall I want to shout, "Dude"—and believe me, it's always a dude—"brewing beer with pumpkin dates back to the 1770s here in the United States." As this article from a years ago says, "Like It or Not, Pumpkin Beer is an American Tradition." Now I think I'll go savor a glass of my favorite pumpkin ale:


 Did you know that if you say "pumpkin spice latte" three times in front of a mirror (à la Candyman), a white girl in yoga clothing called The Pumpkin Spice Fairy appears? Surely, this is the stuff of pumpkin-fueled nightmares for haters of the omnipresent fall flavor. Well, this nightmare is real, because it's a thing on the internet. God, this is a magical time of year, isn't it?


Happy Halloween, all you ghouls and goblins out there. May your fall air be refreshingly cool and crisp, your horror movies frighteningly good, your pumpkin ales perfectly chilled, and your Pumpkin Spice Latte Fairies piping hot.



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  1. Paul SOctober 1, 2019 at 8:13 AM

    What an awesome story about Rhonda Shear. You must have been tickled pink, and she's not wrong you are a great writer. Your enthusiasm for Halloween is infectious, I wish I could share some Pumpkin ale and a couple of horror movies with you. Have a great month.

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