"Japan stole our Halloween magic that tracks cause it died here about 10 years ago."

"I live in japan... you know... walkable cities and all. Halloween is BOOMING here! I handed out candy to 500 kids in just a mid-sized town here (went through ten 50-pack boxes) and my friends went to Nagoya and said there were THOUSANDS of people dressed up this year and it's only getting bigger because people hear about how fun it is and CAN ACTUALLY GET TO THE EVENTS!"

From a Reddit post asking what millennials did (supposedly) that ruined Halloween.

Interesting about Japan. As for America, it might be that millennials think they need to escort their kids from door to door, but if they do that, who will be home to give out candy to the kids that come to their door? I think you need lots of 2-parent families. Leaving out a bowl of candy doesn't work, because there's no one to see the costumes (and it's not surprising that kids dump the whole bowl). 

Other issues: "trunk or treat" format is replacing the door to door approach. And: "Was giving out Halloween candy in my neighborhood and not a single kid said the phrase 'trick or treat.' Literally not a single child."

Decorating your front lawn for Halloween in an election year.

I laughed but somebody else might be truly horrified (and by what, exactly?):

Who uses this method? Either do Halloween or don't!

pic.twitter.com/0nV36VjHiR

— Out of Context Human Race (@NoContextHumans) November 1, 2023

Why are we doing handouts anyway? To show what human beings are like? If you answer the door and dispense the handout personally, you can maintain a system of one portion per person, and you might even get a smile or a thank you. If you put out a big bowl of multiple portions because you don't want to monitor the process and impose single portions, then people will serve their own interests and take all they want. You knew that. The kids who took it all also knew that if they didn't take it all, the next group of kids would take it all. It's a state of nature without supervision and enforcement. Don't pretend you trusted people and you had some sort of admirable "hope" that now I'm supposed to feel bad got crushed. No, you lazy bastard. Answer the damned door next time. Or have the courage to turn off the porch light and huddle in a back room and celebrate the end of the holiday you no longer believe in.

Halloween sweetness.

A TikTok video, so it's below the jump:

"So a couple of years ago, when I was doing some late-summer decluttering of my daughter’s bedroom..."

"... and had to figure out what to do with the dolls she’d outgrown, the answer came to me like a disembodied whisper: 'October’s almost here. Place them out on the lawn.'... Doll decor can be as uncomplicated as dumping a pile of tattered and disfigured dolls on your lawn, because few things are weirder than an unexplained pile of dolls... I suggest letting your own twisted whims serve as your guide. This year, for example, I’ve toyed with sticking several dolls in my shrubbery, limbs akimbo...."

From "The Cheapest, Easiest, Freakiest Halloween Decor Is a Bunch of Old Dolls" (NY Magazine).

Your old trash + your twisted whims = Halloween.

You know what they always say: The only Halloween that matters is Election Day.

Let me just screen-shot my ramblings on Facebook (where I only talk to a few friends and family and don't want new friends):

"Even a holiday which celebrates debauchery, irreverence, and immature or dark humor should have no place for words or actions of hate."

"This deranged individual was looking to create fear and anxiety. We don't believe that he is a student, rather an outside provocateur."

Said Rabbi Mendel Matusof said, quoted in "UW-Madison releases statement after Adolf Hitler costume seen on State Street" (WKOW).

Here's a Reddit discussion — replete with a photograph of the person wearing a Hilter costume on State Street. I found that via this other Reddit discussion, where somebody says, "If it's any consolation, I was told by a bartender on State Street that the dude got his ass kicked."

UPDATE: Channel 3000 quotes the police report, which makes 3 important points:

1. Wearing a Hitler costume is protected speech, so no crime has been reported. 

2. Even though "no reports received by MPD rise to the level of a prosecutable crime," it nevertheless identified the person and interviewed him. 

3. It turns out that this person "has a cognitive impairment due to a past traumatic brain injury."

ALSO: Who called the police on a guy in a bad costume? Did anyone call the police on the person who beat up this mentally impaired person?

"Behind her, she heard people yelling, 'Hey, push! We’re stronger! I’ll win!' Then the flow of the crowd suddenly stopped."

"[Seon Yeo-jeong, a South Korean YouTuber] described 'being swayed back and forth as if in a tug of war' before temporarily losing her vision and being squeezed from front and back. 'If my friend hadn’t held me and helped me,' she said, 'I think I would have passed out and fallen to the ground.'"

From "Seoul Live Updates: As Nation Mourns, a Focus on How a Festive Night Turned Deadly/A crowd surge during a Halloween celebration in a nightlife district killed at least 153 people. Witnesses say police presence was scant, even through people were thronging the streets" (NYT). 

Here you go: 9 TikToks, carefully curated. Some people love them.

1. When you think you've arrived at the beach.

2. Put the baby outside... in Denmark.

3. Put your lips away.

4 What are you going to be for Halloween?

5. She's got the energy.

6. Grandma doesn't want to replace her frappe with protein drink.

7. Medieval hairstyles for men.

8. What's the difference between a boy and a girl?

9. Does this photographer know what he's doing?

"Nerds are winning."

I said to a trick-or-treating kid just now, and he seemed amused. I am taking a survey, giving all kids a choice between Twix — which I consider the mature choice — and Nerds Ropes — the funny choice.

The near west side of Madison has voted and the choice is clear: Nerds are winning.

I don't know what this necessarily means for society at large, but it seems to me it's a vote for fun.

"The theme of our party was Constitution Day. I was trying to say we’d be serving classic American foods, quintessentially American foods—sort of caricaturing ourselves as Americans..."

"... on Constitution Day, this very American day. And I have a very casual tone when I write emails. So that’s why I referred to 'basic-bitch-American-themed snacks.'"

From "The Yale Law School Email Controversy: An Interview With Trent Colbert/Colbert is 'cautiously optimistic' that the climate at YLS might improve in the wake of this conflict." (The interview is conducted by David Lat at his Substack.)

Colbert is one of Yale Law School's Native American students, by the way, and the email at the core of this controversy was addressed to Native American Law Students Association. This is such a small group — so hard to recruit in "critical mass" numbers — that it amazes me that Yale wasn't especially considerate to Colbert when he was accused of racism. 

It's also interesting to me that the Native American group was making a party out of being ordinary Americans. It's so loathsomely incurious of Yale to jump at the critique by black students and to have no interest in what this meant to Native American students.

That party idea made me think of "Mundane Halloween," a trend in Japan and Taiwan where they costume themselves as ordinary people — "From 'the guy who had to work during vacation' to 'the surprised man who got a vasectomy last year,' all the costumes you're about to see are downright amazing."

"In Japan, the #地味ハロウィン (translation: #MundaneHalloween) tradition has people coming up with very clever costumes of all-too-familiar situations and people."

"Artist @TAGASAING translated some of this year's examples" (Twitter). 

“person who refused a bag but their item ended up not fitting in their purse,” “a store mannequin children played with,” “PE teacher who usually wears jerseys wearing a suit in the graduation ceremony,” “an uncle’s facebook selfie,” “Person who is quietly despairing over the lack of seats with power outlets in a cafe they popped into,” “someone at the entrance of a thrift store, but you don’t know if they’re a customer or a staff”....

At the Sunrise Café...

 

... you can write about anything you want.

IN THE COMMENTS: tcrosse said: 

The ancients knew that Hallowe'en occurs when the sun rises over the center smokestack of the Broome St Power Station. It's Madisonhenge.

Yeah, I love the way the smokestacks change the sun into 2 glowing eyes. 

"Americans are split on whether children should be allowed to trick-or-treat on Halloween this year and whether they will hand out candy, given the coronavirus pandemic."

"According to a YouGov poll, 30 percent of Americans say they plan to hand out treats to trick-or-treaters, while 26 percent say they usually do but won’t this year. Another 35 percent, who I can only surmise are either unable to give out treats or just extremely grumpy, said they never give out treats.... Twenty percent of American adults say that ghosts definitely exist, according to a YouGov poll conducted last week. About a quarter say they probably exist, 39 percent say they probably or definitely do not exist, and 16 percent said they don’t know."

From the extra stuff at the bottom of a FiveThirtyEight page with the headline "Americans Say They’re Fired Up To Vote — Especially Democrats." 

I clicked on that headline because I thought it sounded dubious. A poll asked Republicans and Democrats whether they were "more fired up than usual" about voting. Do you vote because you get "fired up"? I think more conservative people vote because they have a civic duty and a standard practice of voting. So they might not "say" that they are "fired up" — that is, emotionally agitated — even though they're going to vote. 

Really emotional people might react with a quick "yes" to the question whether they're "fired up" but may have some other emotion going on when election day comes around, perhaps a peevish resistance to the damned candidate put up by that party they feel they're supposed to vote for. 

What's your plan for coronavirus Halloween?

Are you just going to turn out the lights and hide?

"I was starting on this year's Halloween projects and kept seeing 'Karen' pop up in my news feed and thought, 'Damn this is the real monster of 2020.'"

Said Jason Adcock, quoted in "A Los Angeles artist is selling $180 'Karen' Halloween masks, calling them 'the real monsters of 2020'" (Business Insider).

"Are you me? Are you me?! For Halloween?"

More Halloween...

I don't know the characters!

I just got some kind of mouse with 2 big swords, and before that, some kind of thing with a white headpiece and some red I don't know what, and then there was a bear — I got that — whose companion was dressed as — apparently — a ceiling fan.

Halloween is hard for me now that I don't watch any kids' shows and movies and I don't know the video games

Tagg Romney's son dresses up as Pierre Delecto for Halloween.

Thomas as #PierreDelecto and Joe as Nacho. World beware. pic.twitter.com/3SstDeyvwb

— Tagg Romney (@tromney) October 31, 2019

Funny. I laughed. But then I wondered: If blackface is wrong, is Frenchface wrong?

I asked the internet, and the first thing that came up was "Why it’s not okay to wear Frenchface (ever)" by kpopalypse (a blog about K-pop). A highly amusing read:

We’ve all seen it – k-pop idols wearing berets and hanging out in cafes, posing with antique furniture or standing around on rustic-looking street corners to give that “I’m a French person in Paris being all French and stuff” vibe....

It’s incredibly offensive because it is a caricature of a French person, meaning it exaggerates the French form to reinforce racist perceptions. Historically it has been used to perpetuate the fallacy that the French are an inferior beret-wearing cafe-frequenting too-lazy-to-go-to-war race....

Starting in the early days of cinema, non-French actors performing in movies would wear berets and hang around in cafes to impersonate French people and act out these racist stereotypes of French people. These movies were enjoyed by non-French people who wanted to dehumanize French people so they could continue to view and treat them as less than human....

Okay, look… I’ll be honest. When I was younger… I was really racist and would make racist jokes about French people in school all the time. In home group in class I’d wear a fake moustache and act like I was sipping a coffee or something and put on a fake French accent while we were waiting for the teacher. The whole class laughed at the time, and we all thought we were being hilarious, but since then I became all “woke” and stuff and now I realise that what I did was wrong....

CORRECTION: This post originally identified the guy in the costume as Tagg Romney. It's Tagg Romney's tweet, but the guy into the photo is his son Thomas.