I love October. Everything gains momentum. Autumn swoops in like a storm, school and sports and TV really get rolling, and as far as I’m concerned the whole month is Halloween.

I’m a sucker for Halloween. I cherish socially acceptable grotesquery, but it’s more than that. I adore the juxtaposition of gore and monsters and nightmares with children. It’s like a grand validation of my own oddball youth. I was the only kid I knew who spent junior high school devouring Lovecraft and horror fanzines and black-and-white gothics on the late-late show. There was no internet or home video back then, and Goodwill hadn’t yet realized people shopped there for costumes. We had to work for it, uphill both ways, daggummit! These days I can walk into a Halloween superstore and buy gibbering latex madmen for my kids. For one month a year I feel like I’m actually living in the future, and the future is awesome.