Autumn and Halloween

[auld argonian]

Wow!What fun you chaps seem to have--------I seem to have missed out on all this!

I'm always surprised that Halloween doesn't happen all around the world. A couple of years ago we had a contingent of city planners from Canberra visit. We live in a Walter Burley Griffin house and WBG is a big noise down under...he did the plan for Canberra and some of the government buildings. We set out a buffet lunch, popped a couple of beers, ate and went out to walk around and look at the WBG houses in the neighborhood. The Aussies were blown away by the big to-do about Halloween...I guess I made the assumption that it was celebrated in like fashion all over but this was new for them. There was talk about them delaying their return so that they could come back and be with us for Halloween proper and see the kids coming around and help pass out treats..they really couldn't stay, though.

If any of our Xsmarks friends are thinking about visiting (and taking advantage of that exchange rate...), autumn isn't a bad time and Halloween is increasingly becoming a city-wide celebration here in Chicago. I'll try to get some photos of the big Halloween parade that happens here on a Saturday before the holiday. The city has erected a Halloween Village in the City Hall plaza and there are tents for vendors much like a Christmas Market only for Fall stuff and masks and things. The parade features members of one of the local experimental theatre companies who create outlandish costumes and huge spooky puppets for the event.

One other thing about the parade is that it features local TV late-nite horror movie hosts riding in convertibles and waving to the crowd. Don't know if you folks in Euro-land have these but we have a tradition of local late night television programming where they run an old horror flick and it's hosted by someone dressed as some kind of ghoul or vampire who introduces the movie and does schtick between segments. SCTV spoofed it beautifully with Count Floyd played by Joe Flahrety.

http://sctvguide.ca/programs/monster.htm

Best

AA