It's just about the middle of February when we finally get around to scraping the hardened candle wax off the front steps, the same wax that ran out of the jack o' lantern's wide grin last October 31st.
Perhaps we should have left the wax where it was, because Halloween is again on approach, or at least ScareLA is headed this way, with maniacal chuckles and villainous glowering in tow.
LA's mondo Halloween convention, which covers the ghoulish gamut (think make up, costumes, haunted yards, inside props, eerie eats, theme park reveals, and everything to do with the spookiest of seasons), just made a Valentine's Eve reveal: The booth'd-out, presentation-filled happening is pulling up stakes from downtown LA — The Reef had been its HQ for a couple of years running — and shambling for the Pasadena Convention Center.
What hasn't changed? The convention, which draws experts in the fields of entertainment, haunting, and turning people into the undead (at least for a night), will still spread its prodigious spiderweb over the second weekend in August, as in years gone by. Those actual dates in 2015? Saturday, Aug. 8 and Sunday, Aug. 9.
Hey there, wait one scary second: This was all revealed on Friday the 13th. Very clever, ScareLA. Just when we were writing our Valentine's cards, and planning our Mardi Gras bead party, you crept out of the shadows and made us jump.
Well, jump with joy, since Halloween is quite the busy, moneymaking, fan-garnering industry for Southern California these days, with thousands of enthusiastic participants, from the big theme parks to the family down the block who creates nifty special effects for their garden.
This means that an early August date is not too early, at all, for Halloweenies to start plotting their Octobertime haunted houses as well as those terrifying tryouts for monster roles inside the theme parks. (Actually, those auditions fall in the summer, too.)
The Scene
Want to find new things to do in Los Angeles? The Scene's lifestyle stories have you covered. Here's your go-to source on where the fun is across SoCal and for the weekend.
The lineup is still TBD, as are other details with the still-six-months-away convention. Put plan on Pasadena, plan on that second weekend in August, and if we were you, we'd just leave the hardened wax on the side of the porch step, because it won't be long before another jack o' lantern is grinning from that very spot.
