For this latest spooky October post, I’ve grown a little bit impatient with the month and I want to cut to the chase. Here’s a nice little primer on the Celtic roots of the Halloween holiday and its evolution through the ages to the seemingly silly, scary celebration we know today.

Do the souls of the dead roam free during this time of the year? Are the ghosts friendly? What should I do as someone who lives on a former plantation just off the Trail of Tears in the South?

This video illuminates the evolution of the Roman Catholic Church in its relationship to the frustrating tradition of Samhain in the weird, old magickal world.

The story ultimately comes home to America where our current holiday finds youngsters and adults embracing both the macabre and the sexy. This piece even gets into the arson-crazed Detroit “Devil’s Night” bombings that I grew up with in the Motor City. Halloween is the one night of the year when many revelers feel comfortable to don the guise of a grizzled zombie or a blood-drenched monster. It’s also the one night of the year when men and women alike find it to be entirely appropriate to don costumes that amount to very little clothing at all. Halloween highlights both America’s denial of death along with its repression of sex — it’s no coincidence that our audio visual culture is driven by pornography and our national economy is driven by an abstract murder machine that we refer to as “defense.”

Let’s hope we find some answers here…

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Warhol’s greatest contribution was his democratizing of fine art by claiming a space for consumer packaging — like Brillo boxes and Campbell’s Soup labels — in a museum setting.

Now, a new line of toys made in his likeness returns the favor. Medicom Toy is celebrating the artist on the occasion of his 15 Minutes Eternal retrospective in Japan with a line of its Bearbricks and two stand-alone figures that capture the iconic look of the artist and his art.

Have a look…

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