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Thursday, November 11, 2010

All Hail Halloween

I have finally said my teary goodbyes to my favorite month of the year, October. The leaves turning orange (yes L.A. has leaves), the enchanting smell of pumpkin pie at Ralphs (no not the rotten fruit smell!), and getting the $H1T scared out of you! Let's take a look back at all the fun activities...

Knotts Scary Farm
In the annual tradition we went to Knotts Scary Farm. My favorite haunted maze this year was the Terror of London. The bloody midget that chases you at the end was a nice, yet terrifying, touch. The show was as stupid as it always is though they did make a crazy at Disney's World of Color which was hilarious. We also managed to scare a bunch of kids in line for the logride and survived the Xcelerator which launches you down the track getting up to 82 mph in 2.3 seconds. Overall, it continues to be a solid Halloween scare choice.

Pierce College's Halloween Harvest Festival
This is the place I told you about last year that I just happened to find. This year, believe or not, it was EVEN BETTER. Two of my girlfriends and a group of about five boys dared to venture into the festival. The boys thought it'd be hilarious to send the girls into the haunted corn maze first ensuring that they would get to watch us sprint screaming in different directions as ghostly creatures appeared in the night. A clever addition was an old shack in the middle of the maze that you HAD to walk through. An actor in a bloody scarecrow costume rocked in an old rocking chair staring at you as you enter. You are SO focused on him that the man in black that rushes at you from the side takes you completely by surprise. I bolted out of that death trap like a racehorse heading out of the starting gate.

I thought that this would be the scariest part of the night but that was clearly naive. We ventured next to the Haunted House. They told us they could only take groups of six so our group needed to split up. Of course, the boys opt to have the three girls go in alone although the operator assured us there were three more people inside that we would walk with. We enter a dark black box with a man dressed like Frankenstein. As the door begins to slide shut behind us we realize...it is just us. The gut-wrenching screaming ensued as we sprinted through the maze slamming into walls and each other and using spin-moves to jump past angry clowns and bloody zombies. It was like a fast-paced haunted version of Mario World only when you look at these ghosts - they keep moving. The maze ended with us in a sweaty heap outside the back door with a laughing clown staring at us from the entryway. I felt like I'd just survived a massive asthma attack. Only one maze to go...

The last maze was a new one this year that involved finding you way through a maze of chain link fence while zombies chased you. Not cool. The maze turned out to be pretty easy so I managed to escape without too much mental damage. This festival gets better and better every year.


Pumpkin Carving
Yes, we had a wine and drunken pumpkin carving night and, yes, I refrained from carving something inappropriate. I did want to be creative though so I went with a Pacman chasing the dots around the pumpkin. I later found out that my friend plagiarized me. Criminal.

My Pumpkin

The Copycat's Pumpkin


Hollywood Halloween at the Vanguard
Usually I avoid Hollywood like the plague when a major holiday is anywhere nearby. This year, Miike Snow was playing at the Vanguard so I was convinced to go. We planned ahead this year and made sure to be in line at the venue by 9:30pm already inebriated. Minus some bitchy girls in line who I had to man-handle it was an amazing night filled with great music, pink unicorns, and the cast of Rad Anthem complete with coke dangling from their nostrils. Someone also got the memo about how much I love ghetto street dogs because a lady with a cart was standing right outside waiting for me!


West Hollywood Carnival
It has been many years since I made it to the West Hollywood Carnival and it's a bleary memory at that. I felt it prudent that I go this year, it being on a Sunday and all. It was also my mission to photograph myself with as many other Lady Gagas as I could find. The carnival met every expectation that my faulty memory presented from a flawless reproduction of the Alice in Wonderland cast to Lady "CACA" covered in poo to Wolverine and Ariel and their MerWolf baby. Sadly, I was unable to find the beer gardens that I so vividly remember from last time...


And there you have it - the many festivities of All Hallows Eve. I hope you enjoy the ridiculous pictures.