LAist has a good run down of Dia de Los Muertos events (and they mention Creepy LA a couple times too) so I’m not going to rehash the cool line-up they’ve put together.

My plans call for biking to nearby Olvera Street in the early part of the evening for the traditional novenario procession, and from there heading to Antebellum Gallery in Hollywood for Rick Castro’s adults-only, down-and-dirty opening party for Dia de los Muertos ¡Erotica!

All in all, a fine tour from the sacred to the profane, whaddaya think? (I’ll be posting pics from both events tomorrow, some of them probably dirty- or at least I’m hoping.)

Antebellum Gallery 1643 N. Las Palmas, Hollywood; 6:00 to 9:00 PM; $5. 18 and older.

Photograph by Rick Castro

Just a nudge - our contest to win a copy of the unrated director’s cut of the “The Tripper” ends Friday at noon. As of this writing, we have ZERO entries. Meaning you could be a guaranteed winner just by entering!

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post here.

Lucha VaVoom had their first-ever Halloween party last night at the Mayan Theater in downtown Los Angeles. As my friend Lauren said, “It was like watching a live cartoon.” Complete lunacy after the jump. Continue reading »

Cemetery sex makes more sense around Halloween only because it’s another way to celebrate, not that we’re saying we think you should confine it to just this time of year.

But as this story from Manchester Online makes clear, be careful:

In the early hours of Sunday morning a couple were… taking advantage of the peace and seclusion of South Manchester’s Southern Cemetery when in the middle of their “courting” session, a tombstone fell on them. She managed to struggle free, but he remained trapped under the tombstone. Firefighters from Moss Side fire station came and five of them lifted the stone free. The man was taken to Withington Hospital, where he was treated for head injuries.

And there are other risks too. Good luck tonight at the screening of The Shining at Hollywood Forever.

To reward the Halloweeners who have joined and added photos to our Flickr group, and as an incentive to get more people to do the same, we’re going to begin a collection of Jeff Dwyer’s Ghost Hunter Guides to a lucky member on Monday. This gives you plenty of time to upload your photos of from this year or any other Halloween. Costumes, haunted houses, pumpkins, or whatever else fits the season.

The trick: Join the CreepyLA Flickr group and add at least one relevent photo to the pool by Monday, November 5th.

The treats: A three pack of Jeff Dwyer’s excellently eerie and exhaustive guides to finding ghosts in Los Angeles, New Orleans, and the San Francisco Bay area. These books cover both the better and lesser known hauntings in each city, and include tips on equipment and tactics to help ensure you spot a spook.

“It’s an annual Halloween tradition to freak out the customers by dressing up the Amoeba staff in khaki pants and white polo shirts. Just kidding, but that would probably be pretty scary, huh?”

We’ve featured Amoeba Music honcho Mary Patton’s Halloween desserts on CreepyLA. If you’ve seen them, you know this is a woman with a deep appreciation for the holiday and its attending festivities. So we asked her…

Being from the Windy City, which is scarier for Halloween, Chicago or Los Angeles?

There was once a time when I was sure no city could rival Chicago …until I moved to LA. The entertainment community here gets to apply their craft and unabashedly indulge in a fantasy world one night a year without restraint, and the result is spine-tingling and spectacular. I appreciate the attention to detail.

Keep in mind, you’re asking a girl who grew up with the nick-name, “Scary Mary,” and who once lived in a mortuary al a Six Feet Under. My step-dad was a mortician. I even used to keep caskets in my home long after I moved out of the funeral home and used them as functional home furnishings.

Give me an example.

They’re a wonderful place to store your vinyl LPs. Continue reading »

Mike from Franklin Avenue “live blogged” today’s pumpkin carving contest taking place between tenants of the Wilshire Courtyard Center, which includes E! Television, Variety magazine, The Weinstein Co., and the Family Guy production offices. Ad agency McCann-Erickson has my favorite so far:

Check out the rest here and here.

In addition to the map of yard haunts, aka The Ultimate Trick-or-Treat Guide Map, you’ll also find some fun houses to ring doorbells on the map to Haunted Los Angeles, or find a haunted attraction to hit up sometime during or after your rounds.

Leave plenty of time to get home from work and to wherever you’ll be trick-or-treating, as traffic on Halloween afternoon and evening is often treacherous. Take special care to avoid the neighborhoods around the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval, which closes numerous streets, including stretched of Santa Monica Blvd., Robertson, and La Cienega as early as 1pm. (details here)

If you need basic safety tips, check with the fire department. But they missed this creepy suggestion: use California’s Megan’s Law site to search for child predators in your neighborhood, or wherever your kids may be trick-or-treating.

Keep in mind that you have an extra hour of daylight this Halloween, as the dates for Dateline Savings Time were moved this year. (Its now on the first Sunday of November - the 4th this year). The intent was to make Halloween safer so little kids could trick or treat before it got dark, but I predict it will only mean the older kids will be staying out even later.

As for suggestions on where to trick-or-treat… you’ll have to Continue reading »

Born in City Terrace, Antonio Villaraigosa is a lifelong resident of Los Angeles. He was elected mayor in 2005 and is the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since Mayor Cristóbal Aguilar led the city in 1872, when its population was barely 6,000. He also served in the California State Assembly, where he was named Speaker, as well as on the Los Angeles City Council representing the 14th district.

What do you love about Halloween in Los Angeles?

What I love most about Halloween in LA is seeing all the happy faces of ghosts and goblins while they are trick-or-treating. Continue reading »

CreepyLA presents our third and final map: The Ultimate Trick or Treat Guide. Based on the notion that neighborhoods with quality “yard haunts” have rewarding tricks and treats, use the map to plot out your All Hallows Eve rounds.

Click here for a larger version of the map.

For research, I plundered the websites Hollywood Gothtique and Alley Kat Scratch. both managed by very cool ghouls who work hard every year to maintain lists of yard haunts and other Halloween events that are both exhaustive and current.  Steve from Gothtique also recently let us know his favorite yard haunts here.

Check out The Ultimate Los Angeles Trick or Treat Guide, Part Two, for tips on making your Halloween activities creepy, fun, and (reasonably) safe.

Photo by me from Metroblogging L.A., reminding everyone that silly string is banned in Hollywood from midnight, October 31 to noon, November 1. Interesting conversation going on there, from grumbling about the poorly designed sign to the effectiveness of the law.

San Francisco’s Castro District has cancelled its infamous Halloween celebration after years of rising violence, including stabbings, shootings, and last year, one guy wandering the streets with a real live chainsaw. As a result, the website “Home for Halloween” provides alternatives, but strongly urges SF residents to just stay in for the evening.

L.A. Times columnist Sandy Banks explains that Halloween “feels like a nightmare-in-the-making, in a class by itself as a holiday ripe for kiddie calamities and parental stress.”

There’s an actual War on Halloween in our country, which is being driven by both ends of a perceived spectrum: Fundamentalists “who think All Hallows Eve is Satan’s annual pledge drive” as well as some witches who are offended by their depiction as pointy nosed freaks “that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion.”

But not everyone is a Halloween Scrooge: First Baptist church in Hendersonville, TN of all places, has opted to cancel midweek services so that its ministry could stay home and hand out candy… with messages on it: “We’ll have tracts that talk about how they can have a relationship with Jesus.”

At the Democratic presidential candidates debate tonight in Philadelphia, Barack Obama announced he would be trick-or-treating in a Mitt Romney mask.

From USAToday.com’s live bloggers at tonight’s debate:
11:03 p.m. ET. What will he dress as on Halloween, Obama was asked. He suggested he might wear a Mitt Romney mask, which would have “two sides” — a shot at Romney’s alleged flip-flopping on issues.

So we’re assuming he knows about this Forbes.com page that has the best selection of cut-out political (and otherwise) masks we’ve seen so far. Oddly, there is no Cheney mask; probably too creepy.

Images from Forbes.com / © AP Photo

If all the talk about death this time of year seems a little un-sexy, coupled with the close attention the LA Times is paying to “slutty” costumes (Paging the new Image section: Hasn’t Tom Ford turned it into a year-round phenomenon?) then maybe Rick Castro is on to something.

His Antebellum Gallery will present, Dia de los Muertos ¡Erotica!, the first-ever art exhibit offering erotic interpretations of Dia de los Muertos. Castro reached out to artists of all cultures, religions and nationalities and asked for their amatory interpretations of this primarily Latin tradition, seeking to illuminate connections between different communities and the ways they view life, sex, death and spirituality.

He opened Antebellum (Latin for “before the war”) two years ago as the first, and still the only, gallery dedicated to fetish art. For Castro, it was the act of drawing a line in the sand for looming, full-on, cultural warfare; he thinks everything up to now has just been skirmishes.

You can judge the sharpness of what’s in his quiver this weekend at two adults-only events at Antebellum Gallery, 1643 N. Las Palmas, Hollywood.

Opening reception, Friday, Nov. 2nd 6:00 to 9:00 PM; $5 cover.
Muerto Tea Party, Saturday, Nov. 3rd at 5:00 PM; $10 cover. Both 18 and older.

After the jump, some images from the upcoming show. By clicking on “continue reading” you certify that you are 18 years old or older. Continue reading »

First Christopher Hitchens’s attack book and now this. When you marry God, you’re asking for trouble.

Really. From CraigsList:

Call for submissions : Funny Coroner Stories
Date: 2007-10-27, 7:09PM PDT

This is a call for submissions for TRUE and humorous coroner stories. I’m a freelance editor with a fun anthology project in the works.

You don’t have to be a writer to submit. You just have to be a coroner with a story. Or to personally know a coroner with a story. The stories must be true, but the names of anyone other than yourself must be changed. A release form will need to be signed before any submission can be officially accepted.
Please respond with brief introduction of yourself and a summary of your story.
Fair and equal compensation will be awarded to all contributors in the event of any profit.