50 Shades of Grey – Memphis Flyer

So when did Halloween become a six-week holiday? How did the storied and benign traditions of fall — pumpkins, gourds, cornstalks, colorful foliage — merge and become irretrievably linked with ghouls, skeletons, graves, death, candy, and alcohol?

How did we go from putting our kids in sheets and superhero outfits and walking them around the block to collect sweets from the neighbors to this current state of affairs, with its giant spiders and nasty fake cobwebs and massive inflatable yard-witches and speakers blaring scary music and traveling vans full of trick-or-treaters?

Alan Kolnik | Dreamstime.com

It’s the United States, so I’m gonna go with, “follow the money.”

Forbes Magazine reports that 68 percent of people in the U.S. celebrate Halloween. According to the National Retail Federation, men will spend $96 on average each year, while women will spend approximately $77. About 70 percent of Americans will hand out candy, and 47 percent of us plan to wear a costume. That’s a lot of spandex and rubber masks and wigs!

It gets crazier: In 2018, consumers spent approximately $575.26 million on pumpkins during the Halloween season. Let that sink in: Americans spent half-a-billion dollars on pumpkins! That’s insane. I’m surprised the cartels haven’t moved in on this action. “Nice little pumpkin patch you got there, Clyde. Be too bad if something were to happen to it.” I’m guessing someone’s pitching this idea to Netflix as we speak.

Overall, Halloween sales were projected to reach $8.8 billion in 2019 — nearly doubling the $4.8 billion in Halloween spending in 2009. Of course, 2019 was a “normal” year. Remember those? Mileage will probably vary in the unrelenting hellscape that is 2020, though at least it’s likely that more people will be wearing masks — except for those wearing cheap red hats made in China.

As I walked my dogs around Midtown over the weekend, the evidence of Big Halloween was everywhere. It’s an economic juggernaut. There were inflatable ghouls and scary stuffed black cats and massive furry spiders and big headless creatures and jack-o’-lanterns of all shapes and sizes.

I passed a dad and his two little girls in their front yard, happily setting up a dozen styrofoam headstones next to several half-buried plastic skeletons. It seemed so strange.

“See girls, death is fun! We’re making a graveyard! Watch Daddy bury this dessicated body! And make sure that bloody headstone is straight, Sarah Jane.”

I don’t get it. When did death become ironic and decorative? How much does America spend on styrofoam headstones? A lot, it appears! And where do I buy that stock?

What happened to the old traditions, like destroying your kids’ faith in humanity by telling them that people would put razor blades in their Snickers bar? That dad move was a thing of beauty, mainly because it gave you a chance to “check” your kids’ bags before they started gorging themselves, and maybe snag that Toblerone almond bar they weren’t going to eat anyway.

“Kids, Daddy’s gonna take this one, just to be safe. It looks a little suspicious.”

How did we go from those innocent days to this crazy fall fandango? What used to be a fun little night for kids and parents has morphed into a month-long home-decorating extravaganza, with whole aisles in grocery stores, drug stores, and even hardware stores dedicated to displays of Halloween paraphernalia.

Halloween also seems to have evolved into much more of an adult celebration, a chance to dress up and live out fantasies like Naughty Nun or “Bad” Cop — or terrible puns, like “50 Shades of Grey.” (Gray paint sample strips from Home Depot glued to a T-shirt. You’re welcome.) And you know somebody is working to come up with a costume for “social distancing” even as I write this. Also, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx costumes are going to be big this year, I predict.

Actually — and I know it’s probably a futile wish — I hope there aren’t a bunch of big Halloween parties this year. I hope millions of us don’t go out and mingle and socialize in groups. I hope most of us are smarter than that. Please be careful out there. Real headstones aren’t nearly as much fun as those styrofoam things in your neighbor’s yard.

It was a heck of a year, 2015. In television, we saw the departure of NBC news anchor Brian Williams, whose fanciful anecdotes became the stuff of Internet memes. Then Jon Stewart left The Daily Show and David Letterman departed CBS after decades of stupid people tricks, leaving a void on late-night screens that their replacements will be hard-pressed to fill.

Early in the year, the long-awaited 50 Shades of Grey hit movie theaters and proved that kinky sex could be boring if you cast the right actors for the job. And “Uptown Funk” became the first Memphis-produced No. 1 song since “Disco Duck,” back in the 1970s. Hopefully, some enterprising Memphis musician will write “Uptown Duck” and keep the magic alive in 2016.

This was the year that Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner and posed for the cover of Vanity Fair, putting the T of LGBT into more conversations than ever before. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court struck a blow for L, G, and B by ruling that gay marriage was legal in all 50 states — except for that one county in Kentucky where Kim Davis was the clerk. By refusing to issue gay marriage licenses, Davis got her 15 minutes of fame, and later, some well-deserved jail-time.

On the pervert front, Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, Josh Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting, and Bill “Dr. Huxtable” Cosby had their sexual deviances exposed and suffered varying consequences. Hopefully, we will not hear their names again, except in a court dossier.

The New England Patriots and Tom Brady survived “Deflategate” and won another Super Bowl; Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors jump-shot their way to the top of the NBA; and the Kansas City Royals won the World Series. Also, some team won the National Hockey League championship, but I’m too lazy to look it up, and you don’t care because you live in Memphis.

Unsurprisingly, we in the United States endured another year of mass shootings and mass death in churches, schools, malls, military bases, Planned Parenthood offices — and a California facility for the mentally disabled. The latter incident was perpetrated by Islamist terrorists and therefore became the incident that was the sole focus of right-wing media and the GOP candidates. They, of course, ignored the one common denominator of all the shootings, no matter the politics, religion, or mental state of the perpetrator: easy access to high-powered weapons. The NRA-owned GOP Congress then decided that even people on the terror no-fly list should continue to have access to guns. Because freedom.

Donald Trump gamed the presidential nomination process by dominating media coverage of the GOP race with his outrageous comments, each of which only seemed to increase his strength in the polls. As 2016 approaches, the GOP establishment is in near-panic mode, and will probably be forced to support Marco Rubio, the least wacky of the remaining viable candidates, and the only one they see having a chance to beat the Democratic nominee.

In Tennessee, the boneheads in Nashville played their usual tune, turning down federal money to expand Medicaid, and focusing on loosening gun laws, dumbing down our education system, fighting gay marriage, and taking on the horrific encroachment of Sharia law.

In Memphis, we elected a new mayor and got Bass Pro to fill the Pyramid with outdoorsy stuff. We learned to love Tiger football, and are struggling to learn how to live with mediocre basketball.

For more on the year just past — and predictions for the year ahead — in Memphis, check out the pages of this, our special year-end double issue.

The new year is upon us, bright and shiny and filled with hope. We at the Flyer are glad you’re with us after 26 years in Memphis, and we’re looking forward to another run around the calendar. Let’s get after it.