DOLLAR HALLOWEEN by Wyatt Doyle

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W Y A T T

D O Y L E

DOLLAR HALLOWEEN

W Y A T T

D O Y L E

DOLLAR HALLOWEEN Y P O C W E I V E RESOLUTION

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A New Texture book Text and photographs copyright Š 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015 by Wyatt Doyle All Rights Reserved.

Book design by Wyatt Doyle Some photos originally appeared on NewTexture.com in different form. www.NewTexture.com ISBN 978-1-943444-10-6 First New Texture Edition: October 2015 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

“Where do they come from? The dust.

Where do they go? The grave.”

Ray Bradbury

“Everything is cheaper than it looks.”

Neil Young

Los Angeles is a dollar store town. With

significant blocs of its population composed of recent immigrants, low-income laborers, and entertainment-industry cannon fodder—all working for peanuts—dollar stores help ensure the continued survival of the working poor by offering grocery essentials at a buck apiece.

If you’ve got a dollar, you’ve got a dinner…or something, anyway, until a dinner comes along.

The ubiquity of the 99 Cents Only chain makes the brand the Starbucks of their weight class (at least in Los Angeles), and their highceilinged, well-lit interiors provide familiar and reassuring echoes of their more expensive cousins (unlike most smaller, ethnic, or independently owned discount shops).

When a medium-sized 99 Cents Only in my old neighborhood outgrew its location, the company opened a much larger store, barely a block south—only to retain the original location as well. Even with the roaring success of the new superstore, there was no discernable drop in business at the old location, just a few yards away. Both stores continue to thrive.

Halloween decorations are curious items to begin with. The trappings of the holiday are so deeply ingrained, so traditional, they’ve all but lost their meaning. A date or the time of year is enough to move us to festoon our homes with make-believe rotting corpse parts and an ever-growing variety of sparkly death totems.

And where there’s a need, or even a mild desire, a dollar store stands ready to fill it for whatever you’ve got in your pocket. Come autumn, their aisles swell with an onslaught

of flimsy window decorations and off-brand Halloween tchotchkes. Most made in China, few sturdy enough to survive a single use.

Plastic jack-o’-lanterns and fastenerhinged cardboard skeletons are familiar, but the uncontrollable compulsion to foist more and more stuff on each other leads to the introduction of dozens of ultimately disposable decorating ideas to the seasonal shelves each year. And if Walgreens wants to sell you their version for $9.95, you’d better believe there’s a factory in China crapping out something like it that’ll wholesale for pennies and still turn a profit.

The haste, disinterest, and cynicism in the products’ manufacture are often reflected in the product. At times the low production standards and cheap molds add a layer of unintentional deformed menace to an expression, or lend an accidental resemblance to some obscure movie monster; other items, the process renders unrecognizable. Thin, plaster skulls crusted with cheap sequins, possibly topped by a bator spider-shaped glob…plastic severed limbs, heads, and masks, their spray-on painted details applied out of register…armies of gaudy Grim Reaper figurines, familiar from the windows of the city’s many Santeria botanicas, yearround…and occasional malformed, misshapen rejects that appear to have collided with another product somewhere down the assembly line.

Most of it dusted with glitter, all of it junk. When you handle one, it leaves paint on your fingers.

Throw it away, and bits are left behind.

Wyatt Doyle

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WYATT DOYLE is the author of Stop Requested and I Need Real Tuxedo and a Top Hat! His work as editor includes the Men’s Adventure Library series of pulp fiction anthologies, Josh Alan Friedman’s Black Cracker, and NewTexture.com

BLACK CRACKER jOSH aLAN fRIEDMAN

STOP REQUESTED Wyatt Doyle

The Tales of Times Square author’s novel of a childhood as the lone white boy in mid-1960s NY’s last “colored school.”

“Deeply Moving, Deeply Funny, Deeply Tragic, Absolutely Unique” — Brooklyn Bugle

Street-level stories of life on the buses, subways, and streets of Los Angeles; with evocative illustrations by Stanley J. Zappa.

WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH! ROBERT DEIS, et al.

HE-MEN, BAG MEN, & NYMHPOS Walter Kaylin

An illustrated trip through the men’s adventure magazine era, with an allstar table of contents and intense, lurid artwork.

“Manly adventure! I bought this book as soon as it was released.”

— Guillermo del Toro

NU LUNA ANDREW BISCONTINI Epic, revolutionary SF. A remarkable novel of destiny, lunar uprising, and the reinvention of the electric guitar.

“A fun, expansive ride... you care about damn near every character in it.”

— Amazon.com

“(He’s) Bukowski without the nasty streak. And he’s real good. Highly recommended.”

— Dangerous Minds

Pulp fiction’s forgotten master, rediscovered.

Two-fisted stories that hit like a clenched fist; get yours or get out of the way!

“Walter Kaylin, come back!”

— Mario Puzo

TELL THE TRUTH UNTIL THEY BLEED jOSH aLAN fRIEDMAN Revealing profiles share hard truths, insight, and treachery in the music industry trenches.

“A must for any fan of good music writing and great storytelling.”

—Houston Press

CRYPTOZOOLOGY ANTHOLOGY ROBERT DEIS, et al.

TEACHER TALES Richard Adelman

Man and monster go fist to claw in unearthed tales of pulp action and mystery.

A series of bad decisions in a veteran teacher’s final year before retirement brings his ordered world crashing down—tragically and hilariously.

“Shades of Camus, Salinger, and Groucho Marx” — Amazon.com

“Formative legends of Bigfoot, Yeti, and lake monsters, along with dinosaurs and monster birds to round out the menagerie.”

— Rue Morgue

I’VE GOT HEAVEN ON MY MIND Reverend Raymond BranCH Soothing, sincere, and contemplative gospel sounds from the saint of South Los Angeles.

Includes his cover of Lou Reed’s “Jesus.”

I NEED REAL TUXEDO AND A TOP HAT! Wyatt Doyle The other side of the city. Street life and street people in photographs and stories from the author of Stop Requested.

A HANDFUL OF HELL Robert F. Dorr Aviator, diplomat, and author, the prolific Robert F. Dorr brought a unique sense of legitimacy to his frequently fact-based pulp adventure tales of combat, heroism, and sacrifice.

Tales of action, in the air and on the battlefield.

SING-SONG SONGS STANLEY J. ZAPPa “The music of throwing your homework onto the fire on the last day of school in the nude.” — SJZ

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