‘Tis the season of Pumpkin Pie

Oh yeah! Oh no!

I love fall. Well, only in geographic regions where one can actually experience fall, which in my book includes:

1. Leaves on trees turning colors in the throes of death.
2. Cool, crisp weather necessitating a jacket or coat, and sometimes a scarf.
3. Wood-burning fires and the resulting smell wafting through city streets.
4. Darkness descending earlier and earlier.
5. Palpable excitement created by knowing that Halloween is approaching.
6. Pumpkins aplenty

One of the main reasons for my loving this time of year is the many uses of pumpkins. I specifically am referring to only two: Jack ‘O Lanterns and Pumpkin Pie. But let’s not forget pumpkin flavored coffees and drinks, pumpkin spice candles, and those delicious pumpkin shaped candies sold along side Candy Corn which are good for one or two handfuls and then make you wish you had never eaten them.

Among other reasons, pumpkin pie and the other awesome pumpkin uses are good because of the time limit. You just don’t have them during the rest of the year. It creates anticipation. I love pumpkin pie more than any other dessert. Period. But I don’t have it at any other time of the year, simply because I don’t want to ruin it. As I write this, my stomach is grumbling at the mere mention of that delectable food. It is telling my brain to find some so I can digest it. Right now!

There are many other things to love about Autumn, and I’ll get to them soon!

Owning the Experience

What do we like about music and movies?  Different things, perhaps.  But also some of the same.  Music is now very easy to listen to wherever you are, including the bathroom.  Audio quality (unless you are a hopeless audiophile) is actually pretty good for a minimal investment.  Recordings are cheap and easy to get–free even, if you don’t mind looking.  But concerts still sell out.  More musicians practice and perform than ever before.  Why?

It is because the experience of going to a concert can’t be replicated – not on DVD, not on CD, not on an iPod.  The act of going with a friend and being in a room with 100, 500, 10,000 other strangers who come together in a social experience to enjoy a commonly loved band is special, worth paying money for, worth making an evening or even a road trip out of it.

Some of the reasons movies aren’t pirated as much as music are because the files are protected by more filters, it’s not as commonly known how to rip them from DVD, and they are huge (in terms of storage space).  Good quality files require many gigabytes of storage, and while storage costs are low and continue to get lower, it’s still too much for the average person to keep investing in.  Songs are about one hundred times easier to download, and that might show in the statistics, but I’m not really interested in looking that up, and that isn’t what this argument is about.

Movies share something with concerts.  It is an exhibition of something that strangers come together to experience as a common interest and fantasy.  People experience something that cannot be copied or owned or held.  Like a rollercoaster:  you can own the physical apparatus, but you can’t own the rush, the feeling, the sensations of riding it.  A couple on a first date wouldn’t pop a romantic comedy into a computer, not even a giant 24″ iMac in all its glory.  (It might lead more quickly to makeouts, but people, this is an old-fashioned couple.)

I’m pretty biased, because I love seeing movies in theaters more than most people.  BUT, I do think that is why people still go see movies and concerts: for the experience.  That is where artists will continue to be relevant and make money.  Their art can be contained in many ways, but the ways in which the experience cannot be copied or owned is where they have their true power.

Jeepers Creepers!

It’s a creepy day outside.  The weather is…a bit creepy:  just crossing the fine line from cool into cold; the sky is a low, uniform ceiling of translucent gray cloud; calm at one moment, windy enough at the next to raise goosbumps…but not just cold goosbumps, creepy goosbumps.

What makes it creepy, you might ask?  Is there something real to be feared, or is the fear fueled by experience–too many of the same horror movies, vampire movies, awesome movies? Horror cliche and real life fear–which is the chicken and which is the egg?*

Whatever causes it, the fear here is fueled by potential.  The possibility of the unknown.  You get this otherworldly feeling that something else is existing on the same plane as us.  Like our two worlds have slid past each other, but paused in this moment to stop and mingle.  But the other world isn’t out of this earth.  It’s here, and it’s banished.  A world of the dead.  Their time is over, but on days like this, it comes back.

Of course Hallowe’en, the awesome’st holiday of the calendar year, originated from this very idea–this world aligning with the next so closely on one day of the year that spirits could just hop back and forth like as between two hayracks passing each other.  This is a very dangerous thing!  You could slip on some loose hay and fall between the trailers, maybe hitting your head, maybe the drawstring of your hoodie gets caught in the wheel and strangles you, dragging you along the dark, unforgiving gravel road.  That’s why the driver told you no getting off and back on!! It’s the same with the spirit world:  you’re not supposed to do that!

Which brings us to our point:  things are only creepy if they don’t belong–if we’re not used to them.  That’s why the teen horror flick industry fails so miserably.  If a movie is set in the present day, in a realistic setting, then *gasp* some guy starts murdering people…That’s not creepy. That might be frightening, there might be suspense and timing that causes us to jump in our seats, but the creepiness is no where to be found.  Creepy is all about place, time, sound, mood, and it must always be unfamiliar.  New houses are not creepy, old houses are creepy.  Creepy ghost stories don’t involve characters in everyday clothes who suddenly appear. “Oh, hi, I didn’t know anyone was here.”  But dress the character in *gasp* clothes from like a hundred years ago and WHOA UGGH WHA??

SO:

Time Periods or Cultures That Are Creepy or Have Potential to Be Creepy

Puritan New England

Antebellum Deep South

Old West

1920s Urban

WWII Military

1950s Rural

1970s Suburbs

All times in Louisiana and the Bayou

(*Egg=Fear, Chicken=Your Mom)

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