Whoa... what just happened?

We were told that it is slowly catching on here in France, but it is still not that popular. But, man, Halloween was way weird yesterday.

Our friends informed us that children don't regularly dress up and that adults may throw on a costume for a party. So we knew it was going to happen but it was still surreal. We were out around the town yesterday and, in all that time, saw just one little girl dressed as a witch. The only other costumes I recall seeing were the two of the cashiers at the supermarket, one dressed as a witch and the other one simply wearing a wig. The witch theme was the most common by far, by a count of 2 to 1 over wig lady.

This got me to thinking about how Americans tell time. Sure, we have clocks and calendars and watches, but we also tend to rely on the commercial nature of our holidays. Oh, there's a whole aisle at the store dedicated to cheap Halloween costumes and another dedicated to candy: must be October (or late September)! Look, Christmas ornaments, decorations, and displays: must be November 1st!!! Hey, Easter decorations: must be March, and about time for Christians to celebrate the zombie transformation of Jesus!

But we don't have that here. At least not for Halloween. It makes me curious as to whether or not the rampant commercialism associated with other holidays will be present here as well. If not, how am I ever going to know what time of the year it is?

Well, Erika and I stayed home last night, she cooked dinner while we drank beer and watched scary movies. Drag Me To Hell was the first film on the list and it sucks. I understand what Raimi was trying to do but he failed miserably in my mind. I simply don't think you can make a campy horror film with a real budget and CGI effects. I also think his camp skills are wearing thin anyways. Erika thoroughly enjoyed it, so that's good.

Next we were going to watch the highly-acclaimed Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In (which is so highly-acclaimed that, of course, Hollywood is rushing an Americanized remake), but the version we had was done in an incredibly bad English dub, enough so that it was distracting and we simply had to stop it.

So, instead, our last movie was the ever reliable and well done 28 Days Later. I have to say, that film has aged well, and Danny Boyle is just an excellent director!!!