The following are the top three definitions of Halloween, as voted on by the users of Urban Dictionary:

”(1) An annual excuse for girls to dress like sluts and get away with it.

Girl 1: I’m going to be a ______ for Halloween.
Girl 2: What’s your costume look like?
Girl 1: I’m wearing my ______ underwear and _____ bra and heels.

(2) celebration where little kids dress up and get candy, teens dress up, get drunk, and go get candy, and adults dress up, get drunk, and give out candy, funny how things all work out.

im dressing up as a farmer for halloween. im so cool.

(3) the day that makes the other 364 worth living.”

For a lot of people Halloween is the one day out of the year that they can truly be themselves. It was always my favorite holiday and then one year it seemed like almost a let-down, like it wasn’t really any different from any other day. Which, in a way, meant that I guess I’d made the right life choices to get to be who I wanted to be all the time, but, since then, I try to pull out the stops when October rolls around, so it still feels special. Sometimes trying to pack so much into one short time period makes me melancholy and high strung around Halloween, but I generally end up feeling good about it, after all is said and done.

As usual, this year, Blue Blood is the media sponsor for a ton of events. The ones Forrest Black and I will be personally shooting at include the just passed Release the Bats Nine Year Anniversary and the upcoming Hex Hollywood Halloween 2007. You can see what we shot last year in the Hex Hollywood Halloween 2006 photo gallery.

”well I live with snakes and lizards
and other things that go bump in the night
cos to me everyday is halloween
I have given up hiding and started to fight
I have started to fight

well any time, any place, anywhere that I go
all the people seem to stop and stare
they say ‘why are you dressed like it’s halloween?
you look so absurd, you look so obscene!’ . . .

well I let their teeny minds think
that they’re dealing with someone who is over the brink
and I dress this way just to keep them at bay
cos halloween is everyday”

That is a quote from the seminal Ministry song Every Day is Halloween, by the way. It was actually first released in the early 80’s, although most people will guess later than that, even those somewhat versed in their goth-industrial trivia. This week, I recommend you give candy to drunk girls in excusable slutty costumes and quiz them about the origin of the expression “Every day is Halloween” and win barroom bets, with an assist from your pal Amelia G.

I first wrote and published this article October 29 of 2005, but it is that time of year again and I’m simultaneously having a lot of fun and really stressed out from being stretched so thin. We’re crazy busy, so I’ll make this brief. The “Blue Halloween” article has not been available through the Blue Blood site navigation since the redesign, and I was thinking that this is the time of year when some of you might need to hear this.

Around Xmas-time, a lot of apparently normal people get completely freaked out. They just want everything to be so so so very perfect. They tear up at the very thought of how perfect they want everything to be. They spend more money than they can really afford on things that neither they nor their friends and family really need. But- but- but it is Xmas and everything has to be so so so very perfect. If there is the slightest flaw in the ornaments or the gifts or the comfy sweater, then it is like there is no good fellowship among mankind, no peace on earth, no family love, blah blah blah.

Just try wandering through the mall around Yuletide and you will see the stress level I am talking about. I can look at that objectively and just sigh and think they need to relax and maybe get more mistletoe.

But Halloween rolls around and, ooh boy, I am singing a different carol. I just want everything to be so so so perfect. I mean, if every day is Halloween, then Halloween has to be super duper Halloween, right? Almost everyone I know is totally off the rails right now. Everyone I come across is so edgy that the slightest thing blows up into World War III.

A lot of the people I know are either doing totally nothing for Halloween this year except maybe taking their kids trick-or-treating. Or else they are trying to do twenty different things every night for the four nights around Samhain and hoping a chemical assist gets them through.

My phone keeps ringing with people who want me to play free casting agent for them. My voicemail keeps overflowing, so I’m probably getting even more calls than I know for this stuff. Who knew there were so many mainstream organizations and people who wanted to throw a spooky party and didn’t realize until the end of October that they wanted some spooky people to perform at it? Now everyone I know who does performances is either (a) booked or (b) double-booked or (c) so hard to work with that I wouldn’t recommend them to someone I like or (d) totally spazzing out that it is Halloween and they want it to be so so so perfect.

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. The one day a year I was most myself. I suppose I should pat myself on the back that I get to enjoy those aspects of myself pretty much 24/7/365 now. Maybe everyone I know should give themselves a bit of an attaboy for the very same reason.

I tell myself that serious drunks don’t go out on New Year’s. They know that is amateur night. But somehow the comfort rings hollow. I just want everything to be so so so perfect for Halloween.

The costumes, the parties, and the sweets, the pranks, the tricks, and the treats all have to be just right or there is no community, nothing is cool, all my choices have been wrong, there is no joy in Mudville, the sky is falling, blah blah blah.

I’m glad I don’t freak out in December. That would be so unimaginative, dull, and mundane. Or maybe it would be the same damn thing on a different calendar.