Halloween and Those Darn Kids Today
Ever since I graduated from the University of Nevada in 2000, I have been working with and around young people as my profession. I worked at a program called Kid’s University where late elementary, middle, and high school students took “sampler” courses with university faculty during the summer months. I worked as a non-profit youth civic engagement program director for 20 years and I am currently an adjunct professor at a local university and research analyst for the county juvenile services system.
Throughout my career(s), I often hear a refrain about how kids today are somehow worse behaved than those of prior generations. This is not a new concern and I’d like to remind you that people have been worried about the “corruption of the youth” since at least Socrates’ time. In my own lifetime, I remember the Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s where parents worried that Dungeons and/or Dragons and Heavy Metal was corrupting the minds of the youth. This isn’t to say that youth never misbehave or that we should allow young people to run around willy-nilly or put people over 40 into work camps where they are force fed LSD like Wild in the Streets. Rather, it is to say that we should view young people’s behavior in a realistic way and acknowledge the unique challenges they face in each generation AND refrain from having an overly kind view of how kids behaved in the past.
Case in point, this year I was reading Nextdoor (reminder to self: stop reading Nextdoor) and one of the get off my lawners on the site was complaining about kids today and how they were having to buy more candy this year because individual kids had taken too much candy when they drew from the Halloween last year. “Kids today are too greedy and have no respect for their elders of the cost of things” was the crux of their argument, though not a direct quote.
This got me thinking about the origins of the way that we celebrate Halloween. The holiday has its origins in ancient pagan traditions, where it is known as Samhain (saw-wain). Humorist
described that origin in today’s column as:The holiday that we know as Halloween began as a Druid religious festival in ancient Britain. Back then, groups of Druid youths would go door-to-door demanding treats, and if you refused to give them one, they would burn down your house. If, however, you gave them a treat, they would still burn down your house. That’s how religious they were. Today we know them as British soccer fans. — Dave Barry, ‘Halloween’ 2025
What’s funny, other than the whole article, is that Barry’s description of Halloween isn’t as far off as it may seem at first. The only change he would have made, if he wanted to shift from humor to history, is that the house burning was the American part of the tradition and not the Druidic part. You see, there was a time when young kids would seriously vandalize your home, or engage in otherwise dangerous behavior, on Halloween. It was so common that the classic movie Meet Me in St. Louis has a scene where Agnes describes to Tootie how the “body” they laid on the trolley tracks almost caused an accident that resulted in deaths or injury. She and Tootie laugh it off and call Rose square for being shocked. The entire Halloween scene is a tonal shift in what is
This was an era when kids would break into your house to steal pieces of your furniture and nailed people into their homes. While I might be almost as frustrated as the Nextdoor Naysayer about candy theft, having my furniture added to the town bonfire is not something I’ve ever worried about. If I lived in the time of Agnes and Tootie though, I’d have been far more concerned. You see, in the early days of “Tricking” that’s what the kids were doing. It wasn’t until “The Halloween Problem” of kids creating bonfires with stolen wooden items was solved by adding the “Treating” element to Halloween celebrations that those little hellions began to settle down. I’d much rather them take a handful of candy, instead of just one piece, if it means the kids don’t light my car on fire.
The best discussion I’ve found about this sinister history is in an episode of Max Miller’s excellent YouTube Channel Tasting History. I’ve featured the channel before, and will again, but I almost skipped this one because the recipe was for an “Old Fashioned Vinegar Candy.” Let’s just say the thought of vinegar based candy didn’t seem appealing. Watching this episode though, my understanding of “Trick” or treating and appreciation for vinegar based candy shifted.
While I balked at the thought of vinegar based candy, when I mentioned it to my wife her immediate response was “oh, that’s probably like a salt water taffy where you substitute vinegar for the salt water.” She was absolutely right and once again my limited knowledge about things outside of my eclectic pop culture interests was revealed.
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
Last week,
reviewed the most recent Tron movie for his Newsletter and while I disagree with his assessment of Tokyo Drift, I think he gives a fair and detailed review of Tron Ares and how it does and doesn’t work. I also think his Tokyo Drift analogy works on every level in that this film pushes us to think about what the franchise is really about and whether specific characters matter.On why I like Tokyo Drift, while Luke clearly doesn’t, I’ve been a big fan of Lucas Black since he was a young whippersnapper starring in American Gothic and I thought he was compelling in this role. He’s never quite made the transition to stardom, and I think his film choices have something to do with that, but he was very compelling in the film and I was glad they brought it back into the fold. I’m also a fan of Initial D and think that Pixar’s take on Tokyo Drift (Tokyo Mater) is pure brilliance.
But this isn’t about my feelings about Tokyo Drift, this is about Luke’s review and where I think he really hits the nail on the head. Is a movie really a Tron movie if it doesn’t feature Tron? Does it matter that the movie completely abandoned the storyline from the prior film? How much time do we have to spend in the Grid for it to be a Tron movie? These are all good questions and don’t even capture whether it’s actually a good idea to keep trying to make Fetch happen, which is doubly ironic since the first Tron film was a fetch quest and Fetch would be a great name for a program.
Luke provides insight into most of these questions as well as providing a review of the actual content of the film. It’s a review that combines the professional and aesthetic side of the industry and is very much worth reading.
I’ve been spending a good amount of time in Booktok and Bookstack lately, for better and for worse, and I’m starting to find the members of the community who aren’t merely 1) trying to sell “how to self-publish” advice, 2) finding the latest fad to complain about, or 3) trying to sell their own independently published novels while slagging on traditional publishing.
One of the writers I keep coming back to is
and his . Given the state of a lot of modern literary criticism, it’s a fresh read that channels an older era of reviews and makes more references to Aristotle, Eco, and James than to Benjamin, Lacan, or Foucault. Just as it was a delight as an undergraduate to escape the confines of New Criticism that dominated how I was taught literature in Middle and High School, so too is it refreshing to read someone not trapped in the morass of Critical Theory. Since Miller’s approach is more Eliot-esque, it doesn’t fully capture what I hope the fullness of Post-Critical Criticism will look like, it is an engaging alternative.In his recent review, and revisiting, of Bram Stoker’s masterpiece Dracula, Miller argues that most interpretations of the tale focus on the wrong individual as the true hero of the tale. For Miller, it is not Van Helsing who is the hero, but…well you’ll have to read it for that. I will say that there is one recent adaptation of the tale that interprets it very similarly to Miller and that it is among my favorite horror films.
Speaking of Bookstack, I was introduced to
’s newsletter when commented and restacked her on Notes. It was interesting to read her review of a reasonable slice of Brandon Sanderson’s fiction in her article “Brandon Sanderson is Not the Author for Me.” While Sanderson has been caught in the middle of the modern literary culture wars, and no I’m not going to discuss in detail why and how in this brief blurb, Kailani’s review doesn’t focus on those aspects and instead approaches Sanderson’s fiction from the perspective of an average reader.Instead of asking “does Sanderson tell the right kind of story?” (from a Left or Right perspective), Kailani asks “do Sanderson’s books speak to me?” For the most part, her answer is no and she goes into detail why Elantris, Mistborn, and The Way of Kings fail to connect with her. Some of her criticism is of Sanderson’s tendency to “lore dump” and to have characters who spend far too long processing their trauma and not enough time engaging with the heroic. I agree with her criticisms, even as I still think that Sanderson is a wonderful author. Of the books that frustrated her, I am particularly fond of Elantris. I also like the way that he misdirects the reader regarding who the real hero of the Mistborn trilogy is until the final book.
One of the problems of post-Elantris Sanderson is that he learned to write “Epic Fantasy” at the feat of Robert Jordan and this taught him that that genre was about massive lore dumps and internal monologues. His fan base, and the editors at Tor who are very much advocating for him to write certain kinds of stories, have pushed him to do even more of the latter and you end up with one of the major achievements of one of the heroes of The Stormlight Archive being the invention of group therapy in that setting. While group therapy is a very important tool in modern psychology, reading about the step by step creation of theraputic groups over three books isn’t engaging. The movie The Dream Team does a better, if less politically correct, version of the same thing.
I will say that of all of Sanderson’s writings, she might actually like Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians which, at least prior to the final volume, are largely free from a lot of the things that alienated Kailani as a reader. I did an interview with Brandon Sanderson about the first entry in that series back in 2009 and I’ll re-edit and upload that soon.
Anyway, read her discussions. They are great and they get a ton more engagement than anything I write.
had been working on an adaptation/expansion of the game Maze Rats by and it has transformed into a full solo role playing game called Torch & Blade. I’m eager to see the results. I’ve long been a fan of Spahn’s work in general, I was introduced to it through Alan Bahr, and this looks to be right up my alley. has an interesting article on existentialism, both psychological and philosophical existentialism, and its relationship to horror and how it underpins what makes horror work as a genre. It’s a very engaging read that does a lot to explain why we find H.P. Lovecraft’s Cosmic Horror so engaging. Where a lot of horror is intimate, Lovecraft’s is more cultural/general and yet it still has at its roots, according to Sweet Nightmares, the same foundation of fear.
While my wife Jody remains my favorite illustrator and cartoonist, I’ve really been enjoying seeing the illustrations of
over at her (aka Catherine’s Studio) substack. Sometimes you just need to see adorable puppies in your timeline, and by sometimes, I mean always. She’s a very talented illustrator and her puppy illustrations have a sense of life that I find very touching.
In my most recent Geekside Chat, you can either watch it on Substack here or in the embedded YouTube video below, I mentioned that I had encountered a BookTube/BookStack author who managed to irk me a little by claiming that Lester del Rey had prevented American Fantasy from producing its own Tolkien. I disagree strongly. I not only think that del Rey was a good editor (and that formulas are good), but I think there is an American Tolkien. Though you’ll have to watch the Geekside Chat to see who that is. One of the things that irked me about the unnamed critic, and they will remain unnamed because no links for ragebaiters for reasons explained in my discussion of The Eye of Argon, was the setting. It was a perfect manifestation of Dark Academia, though I didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t until I read
discussion of Dark Academia on her excellent newsletter. Dr. Marks has quickly become my second favorite Critical Rebecca, or maybe my favorite Critical Rebecca since my favorite Critical Rebecca is a Critical Rebekah. She writes pieces, both on her site and in Notes, that provide wonderful context to a host of cultural phenomenon that are written in a way that appeals to both the novice and the expert.
Speaking of my favorite Critical Rebekah, that’s Dr.
of and she has written two very engaging pieces lately. The piece she wrote yesterday is a part of her regular ‘horror moments’ series and it examines “The Scariest TV Intros of all Time.” In her discussion, she spends a lot of time examining the introductions used for the television show American Horror Story and I was glad to read that I was not the only one who was alienated by moments of the first season even as I appreciated season three. American Horror Story was a bit of a phenomenon for a time in the US and I was glad to see Tim Minear finally achieve the success he deserved as a television executive. Tim was kind enough to do an intervie with me, which I’ll re-edit and post here soon, during the 2008 television writer’s strike and is an extremely hard working creator.Since this was a part of her Edward Gorey ‘horror moments’ series, Rebekah made sure to discuss the excellent opening credits for the Mystery television show. I have fond memories of that intro as it ran before so many of my favorite shows as a kid and it was the first time I saw Gorey’s art. Her piece got me thinking of horror shows that I think have effective intros and the show that I think might have the best intro of all time.
The best intro of all time? In my opinion, it’s Gerry Anderson’s UFO television series. The song is a banger and the introduction contains so much backstory in such a short period of time that it’s a master class. The show itself doesn’t quite live up to the premise, in part because not enough time in the show is spent covering the “cover story” for the agency at hand, but that’s a story for another time. Needless to say, the concept of a special agency that defends the Earth from alien invasion that uses a television/film studio as cover for its activities is one of the best high concept premises I’ve ever seen. The show also inspired one of my favorite miniatures games, Crooked Dice’s 7TV the SpyFi skirmish game.
And now onto effective horror show intros. FreakyLinks was a show starring Ethan Embry, another star I wish had gotten bigger than he did, that covers a band of young internet journalists investigating the paranormal. I really enjoyed the show and the opening channels the vibe of Blair Witch Project very well.
And then there is a show that deserved way more than it got, Shaun Cassidy’s American Gothic. I don’t know why it didn’t connect more with audiences, but it has a huge cult following and Gary Cole was perfect as the evil Sheriff Lucas Buck. I’d love to see a remake of this show with better cinematography.
Last, but certainly not least, our longtime subscriber
has a discussion of the Merlin issue of Marvel Preview Presents up on his substack. This is the issue with the super jacked wizard that you often see in D&D memes. J.Q. provides a good overview of the issue and I recommend you check this out as well as his review of WizKids’ Tales of the Arthurian Knights.
Cryptworld
Before Gary Gygax was ousted from TSR, he moved to Los Angeles in order to try to get a development deal for Dungeons & Dragons and other TSR properties as the head of Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment. While he was out there, two of his early partners (the Blume brothers) ascended to manage TSR’s day to day business. As a result of their management, TSR posted a net loss of $1.5 million and had to fire 75% of their staff. This is one of the reasons Gary returned in an attempt to take back control of his company, a task he hoped that Lorraine Williams (the sister of his friend and collaborator Flint Dille) would help him accomplish. That didn’t work out as Gary had hoped/expected and that has been the topic of a number of books. I won’t go into discussion of that here, but will recommend Jon Peterson’s books as a good place to start. I did say he was a great historian after all.
Among the 75% of TSR staff that were fired were Mark Acres, Andria Hayday, Gaye Goldsberry O’Keefe, Gali Sanchez, Garry Spiegle, Carl Smith, Stephen D. Sullivan, and Michael Williams. This talented group of game designers went on to form Pacesetter Games, one of the most ambitious game companies of the 1980s and one of the most creative game companies in the history of the hobby. Among their creations was an excellent game called Chill, a horror game with a very different vibe than The Game That Shall Not Be Named. Where that other game focused on cosmic horror and the death of player characters etc., Chill had players play characters who were members of an organization called SAVE that battled the supernatural and protected regular people like you and me.
The world wasn’t ready for the game, even with its solid mechanics the “fighting against evil” vibe didn’t appeal to the horror rpg fans of the day. I guess we’d have to wait a decade for Buffy and the Winchesters to create the fanbase. Chill’s first edition is a great game that is not easily available today, except thanks to Dan Proctor and the folks at Goblinoid Games. They acquired the rights to a number of Pacesetter games, and to the mechanics, and used those to create Cryptworld. Cryptworld isn’t identical to Chill, though it plays very similarly, but it is a very worthy successor. Much more so than the 3rd edition Chill that funded on Kickstarter. If you are looking for a game to play this Halloween, make it Cryptworld I know I will be playing it.
I’m going to keep the commentary to a minimum in this week’s music recommendations, but will reveal the very obvious theme to this week’s songs. Every one of them deals with the fall/autumn in some way.
No seasonal song recommendation would be complete without Vivaldi and his Autumn is quite wonderful. Spring tends to get all the discussion, but Autumn and Winter get far more play in my household. Autumn, like Spring, is a joyous song filled with fantastic virtuosic moments that push the soloist to create joy.
It’s almost Halloween and that means it’s time to break out Camille Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre. Saint-Saëns is often overlooked in discussions of innovative musical artists, but that’s in part because his career was so long. He went from being an innovator to being a defender of the established and old. He journeyed from avant garde to old guard and thus doesn’t always get the same amount of focus as many other composers. After all, the steadily working and productive artist who lived to be 86 doesn’t make for as dynamic a tale as one about a composer who died at 35 at the peak of production. Regardless, Danse Macabre is fantastic and a portion of it was included in the movie Tombstone.
Earlier this week, Dr. Rebekah King asked for some soundtrack recommendations that might make her feel epic as she filed paperwork. I recommended John William’s score for the John Wayne movie The Cowboys. I say John Wayne movie, but like Kim Novak in Psycho it is John Wayne’s death that is when the adveture truly begins. Even though I can hear the words “Steak, it’s what’s for dinner!” every time I hear these opening notes, the score is one of my favorite soundtracks. John Williams based the score on Aaron Copland’s Rodeo Ballet, just as he based his Superman theme on Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.
A last entry, which channels the Spooky season, is Graham’s Theme from Michael Mann’s movie Manhunter. It’s an interesting and haunting song that manages to remain timeless, even as other synthesizer scores from the 1980s (I’m looking at you Ladyhawke) have not stood the test of time. It has a bit of a John Carpenter feel to it and that’s a complement.
Since I shared the haunting melody of Graham’s theme from Michael Mann’s Manhunter as one of the music recommendations this week, it is only natural that I recommend the movie. Even though I’m recommending 60+ horror movies (7 a week) in a series of articles, I’m not including any serial killer or psychological thrillers of the kind represented by Manhunter. It is one of my favorite films about serial killers and it’s entirely because of how Michael Mann approaches the material. It’s a very different approach from most serial killer films.
Manhunter is Michael Mann’s adaptation of Thomas Harris’s book Red Dragon and it includes the most haunting and terrifying version of Hannibal Lector yet to be filmed. Lector’s arrogance, distance, and disdain for the rest of humanity is perfectly captured by Brian Cox. This performance by Cox, combined with the stark realism of the mental institution (a sharp contrast to Jonathan Demme’s gothic institution), adds real horror to the movie by making it more real and less fantasy.
I love Demme’s direction in Silence of the Lambs, but the palette, locations, and set design give me a sense of distance that makes me feel safe when I watch the film. I worry for the characters while I’m watching, but I don’t worry about myself when I walk around town in the dark hours after I’ve finished walking. That’s not true of Mann’s version. The verisimilitude of the locations and the sets, combined with the natural and understated performace by William Petersen, makes it feel more like I’m watching a documentary and I can feel how vulnerable my own home is to someone like the Tooth Fairy.
Finally, over the past two weeks I recorded two Geekside Chat episodes which are just me spontaneously spouting off about a subject. There’s no script and I don’t edit them. I’m looking to do more of these, but I don’t want to do them alone. I’d much rather them be actual chats, which is where you come in. I’d love it if we could make arrangements to have a chat. You pick the topic and I’ll schedule the conversation. I know Luke Thompson has some interest, and I look forward to making arrangements to chat about one film or another with him, but there is room for you too. Let me know if you are interested.
Geekside Chat #2 is me complaining about those attacking Lester del Rey as an editor and Chat #1 is me discussing the things I am currently thinking about writing about in the near future.
I love that you pronounce Samhain correctly. That used to be my hill to die on, these days I find myself expiring in defense of the correct Spanish pronunciation of axolotl.
You have some interesting points of view here. Thanks for the shout-out.