Halloween
Bye-bye beatnik
Two unusual takes on Jack Kerouac's death and legacy. Plus: Viagra raves, zines that shouldn't exist and real-life Halloween scares.
Oct. 21 marked the 30th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s death. In honor of the occasion, writers nationwide spilled ink and a few tears as they told us who he was, who the Beats were, how very influential “On the Road” was and is and why “Dharma Bums” doesn’t compare. Many a well-worn, poignant anecdote was wheeled out for the occasion: Kerouac reading the New York Times review of “On the Road”; his friendships with Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al; the drinking that eventually killed him; living with his mother. And, of course, numerous anthologies and tributes have arrived in bookstores just in time to benefit from the outpouring of nostalgia.
Continue Reading CloseJenn Shreve writes about media, technology and culture for Salon, Wired, the Industry Standard, the San Francisco Examiner and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, Calif. More Jenn Shreve.
Sex offenders: Halloween’s boogeyman
Registered abusers are being rounded up tonight to protect trick-or-treaters. How real is the threat, though?
(Credit: iStockphoto/Salon) As costumed kiddies take to the streets tonight, thousands of sex offenders across the country will be forced to turn off their lights and refuse to answer the door. Some will be required to also post “no candy” signs and refrain from decorating their yards. Some counties round them up for a mandatory movie night or an evening in jail. In some areas with prohibitively strict residency requirements, police will be rounding up several hundred transient sex offenders.
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Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter. More Tracy Clark-Flory.
How adults ruined Halloween
Today's kids have a coddled holiday. What happened to the real terror of BB guns and raw eggs?
(Credit: iStockphoto/HeatherPhotographer) Here is a Halloween tradition, circa 1892, as described by an article in the New York Times: You hang a stick by a string from the ceiling. At one end of the stick is an apple; at the other end, a lit candle. You spin the stick around, and try to snag the apple with your teeth without getting your face burned off.
By the time I was a kid, in the 1980s, not much had changed.
Rosecrans Baldwin is a founding editor of The Morning News. His first novel, "You Lost Me There," was named one of NPR's Best Books of 2010. His latest book is "Paris I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down." More Rosecrans Baldwin.
Fiction: Sympathy for the Mummy
What happens when an ancient mummy is cruelly unwrapped? Exclusive Halloween fiction by Lynda Barry
(Credit: Jack schiffer via Shutterstock) It’s the mid-1800s, and a Croatian guy goes to Egypt on vacation and buys a mummy as a souvenir. So you can already tell what kind of guy he is. The mummy turns out to be wrapped in strips made from a book handwritten on linen in Etruscan, a language that died out 2,000 years ago.
It’s known as “Liber Linteus.” It’s the longest Etruscan text ever found. It seems to be a ritual calendar of some sort, but no one really knows what it says. No one has spoken Etruscan for 20 centuries. Only a few fragments have been translated, like this one:
Continue Reading CloseArtist, novelist and playwright Lynda Barry's latest book is "Blabber Blabber Blabber: Volume 1 of Everything" More Lynda Barry.
The twisted history of candy
From the tragedies of the slave trade to the glitz of the Jazz Age, the story of these sugary treats echoes our own
(Credit: carbonated / CC BY 3.0/iStockphoto/lisafx) As frost bites the air and plastic Halloween bunting unfurls in suburban yards, our thoughts turn to the simple delights of candy: the pastel snap of Necco wafers, the dubious rattle of a box of Good & Plenty. Half the candies we ate as kids weren’t actually good. Even at the time we suspected as much. But candy offered an undeniable pleasure: It was fantastic, it was unreasonable, it came in colors and shapes unrelated to actual food. And on Halloween, it was free.
Although tricks and treats have been part of Halloween tradition for ages, October 31st didn’t become a candy-centric holiday until the 1950s, when aggressive marketing campaigns began to tell Americans a different story about All Hallows’ Eve. And naturally, the story was about candy. Perhaps this is appropriate. Our larger story as a people is, in a sense, a story of candy.
Continue Reading CloseFelisa Rogers studied history and nonfiction writing at the Evergreen State College and went on to teach writing to kids for five years. She lives in Oregon’s coast range, where she works as a freelance writer and editor. More Felisa Rogers.
The world’s spookiest attractions
From Roman crypts to Incan mummies, these creepy sites will satisfy your taste for the macabre SLIDE SHOW
Let’s start from the premise that the tourism industry is, quite frequently, a freak show. And not just on Halloween … plenty of places keep it surreal all year round. Why? Luring people into your temple, museum, medical school, church or crypt isn’t as easy as you might think. You need a hook.
While severed body parts and corpses may not have a tourist-brochure ring, gore sells. Catholic churches have been collecting bodies and relics for pilgrims to visit for centuries. Little bits of the Buddha are scattered in shrines around the globe. Medical curiosities and oddities fill glass cases and jars in museum sideshows.
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