What Halloween Means To Me '14: Adolfo Dorta

Welcome to From Dusk 'Til Con week here on the countdown.  For those who don't know, The FDTC Network brings you the best horror talk, music shows, and all around badassery (including my two shows) on the web, and this week I'll be featuring some of the voices behind the mayhem.  We're gonna start off with Adolfo.  He was the first person in the Days of the Dead/FDTC camp that I met.  I will always have DOTD's back because they treat street level horror media with the most respect of anyone I've dealt with in  the horror business.  Hell, they were the first people to accept SOC as a legitimate press outlet.  Some true for the fans/by the fans shit. Adolfo also has two shows on FDTC, Punk 'N Destroy (a punk rock music show) Wednesdays at 7 and Set The Dial (music talk with him and Scary Carrie) at 9pm on Mondays.  Hey, that's right before my show.  Hey, that's tonight! Quick, Adolfo, tell us what Halloween means to you so we can all head over to the network (LINK for your comp and LINK for your phone) and tune in...

"Growing up in Miami, FL - a region where the yearly cycle of seasons goes something like "Hot," "Hot As Fuck", "Less Hot", and "Managable...For a Week or Two" - my aesthetic concept of Halloween was much different than the one presented in so many horror movies I grew up watching, with palm trees, a sweltering climate, and the smell of a salty ocean breeze taking the place of pumpkins, crisp fall weather, and orange and brown hues. Haddonfield, it wasnt.

Nevertheless, Halloween maintained itself as my favorite holiday growing up if for no other reason than being that one day a year when I could be something more fantastic than I was any other day of the year. Be it a fiend or monster, super hero or villain, fear inducing or awe inspiring, an alter ego could be assumed which was limited only by one's own imagination. For one night a year, it was totally acceptable for me to be someone more than I was, to be as freakish, as bizarre, as downright outside the box as the mundane world told me I couldnt be the other 364 days on the calendar. It was a chance to gleefully embrace all things dark and monstrous without stigma.

As I've grown older, I've learned that I don't require anyone's permission to be exactly as I want to be and now openly represent the monster kid culture I grew up loving, despite my mother's worry that a penchant for all things spooky and macabre would result in her little boy growing up to be some sort of socially maladjusted weirdo (well....some of that may be true, though I certainly wouldn't blame my love for horror on it). Nowadays, Halloween has become the holiday where I curiously observe as everyone else celebrates the kind of marvelously devilish delights I indulge in on a daily basis. For those such as myself, for whom every day is Halloween, October is now the time where we let the rest of you enjoy a taste of what the rest of us appreciate year round. And we're more than happy to let you borrow our subculture for a brief time each year, just please stop it with these ridiculously tacky "sexy" costumes ("sexy Michael Meyers? Really?).

We all have something a little monstrous inside us - some more than others. And while most choose to keep the beast locked away for all but one holiday a year, a few of us were born to dance in the darkness year round. For myself, and those cut from the same cloth, Halloween is who we are down to our blood, marrow, and sinews, and all those October 31sts growing up where dress rehearsals for the fiends we would one day grow to become"

 18 days 'til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween.  18 days 'til Halloween.  Silver Shamrock!