Item #5 - Visit Salem during Halloween season

Halloween is my favorite holiday. It has been for years. It may have taken the #1 slot about the time I learned Santa didn't exist (unless you're like 6 years old and reading this blog in which case . . . I'm kidding! Hooray for Santa!). Or it may have taken over #1 around the time I started drinking. Dressing up in a costume in your mid-teens in front of girls because you want some candy? Lame. Dressing up like a jack-ass later on when you can get drunk and beg girls for their "candy"? Much more fun. However, during my early-teens when all I wanted was non-metaphorical candy, I'd at least come home satisfied. So that was nice.

But being a jack-ass is what makes Halloween my favorite holiday. The more you know me, the more you know I am kind of a jack-ass (just ask any of my ex-girlfriends). But on Halloween, everyone is allowed to let out their inner jack-ass and dress as stupid as they see fit. Even the biggest wallflowers can come up with a clever costume and end up as the talk of the party. It's equal opportunity stupidity. And it's fantastic. I've dressed as various girls (sorority, school). I've dressed in uber-skin-tight spandex. I keep year-long list going just in case I'm getting costume-block come October 1st. The higher the degree of jack-ass-ery, the more props you usually get. Though i think theres also a direct correlation between level of jack-ass-ery and likelihood-of-going-home-alone. Oh well. There's 364 other days I can worry about reigning it in. But Halloween has no limits (that I've found yet. We'll try again this year to find them).

My own jack-ass-ery and personal experience aside, I would probably rank Halloween as the second best night of the year to meet members of the opposite sex (and by night of the year, I mean specific day of the calendar. Weddings may be easier, but those aren't specific dates).  If everyone is willing to dress stupidly and let go of their normal inhibitions, then . . . everyone is willing to let go of their inhibitions. And all the costumes lead to easy opening lines (or so I'm told. When I grow a pair, I can make that statement more surely). The full ranking of best days to meet members of the opposite sex:
1) New Year Eve 
2) Halloween
3) Valentines Day
4) Arbor Day 

So as a longtime superfan of Halloween, I've always wanted to make it out to Witch Capital USA for the Halloween season . . . and it only took me 7 New England Halloweens to do so. So on Sunday October 26, my friend Alycia and I took the commuter rail up for the experience.  Luckily, she had done it before, so she knew what attractions to avoid because they were underwhelming tourist traps (spoiler alert - there were lots of them).  So we'll just go with a picture tour here (a plog?), complete with snarky comments.

Yes, it's a statue of Samantha from Bewitched. It debuted in 2005. So instead of creating it during the height of the TV show's fame, they actually created it the same year the "smash Hollywood hit" Bewitched came out. Genius.

 

The Salem Witch Museum. From what Alycia said, its basically a bunch of animatronics that make It's a Small World seem life-like. Alas, we skipped it.

No snarkiness here. I got nothing but appreciation for people that go all out on Halloween decorations.

 

A lighthouse right by the the replica tallship Friendship. Yes, they named the ship Friendship. Get it? Its a play on words. Its clever.  

There was a small carnival along the water (is there a better smell than carnival food smell? Answer . . . no. We had corndogs. They were delightful).Considering they were put together by drunk carnies, these rides might be the scariest things in Salem. I mean, am I right? . . . AM I RIGHT?

 

We rode the ferris wheel. This is me realizing that since we were the second group to get on, I'd be stopped at the top with Alyica while they let the opposite groups off. 

 This is the uninterested face Alycia would make as we were stopped at the top.

 

Apparently the cemetery in the middle of town is the second oldest in the country (the oldest? I don't know. Google it or something).  John Hawthorne is buried there. He was a judge during the witch trials and the great-great-grandfather of The Scarlet Letter's Nathaniel Hawthorne. I think if you were a Hawthorne in Salem, you were probably guaranteed ass.

We caught a play/reenactment of one of the trials. After witnesses presented their evidence, audience members were allowed to ask questions. One harpie apparently didn't realize this was just a reenactment, as she basically tried to take down the whole Salem judicial system with her continuous questioning. I weep for her husband.

After hitting the bar (it would take some advanced withcraft to formulate a spell that kept us two near-alcoholics from enjoying the Fun in Sunday Funday), Alycia talked me into doing one more Salem-esque attraction that would actually count towards another list item. The rare item-within-an-item. So here's the sneak preview of list item #6:

Will I find true love? Will I get fired? Will I lose an arm in a combine accident? Only the cards know.