CANDY (CORN) O'CLOCK!
"Happy" National Candy Corn Day, I guess? Look, to each their own, but it bears noting that candy corn does have a reputation as "Halloween's most contentious sweet," and it's easy to understand why.
Sure, it's sweet, contains hints of honey and vanilla flavoring (typical crowd-pleasing qualities), and features seasonally appropriate colors. But it's also waxy and features ingredients made of boiled bones (aka gelatin) and a glaze made of bug secretions (aka lac-resin). Not exactly my idea of good eats, but if you enjoy them, I hope you get your fill today and tomorrow!
This is probably the most accurate representation of how my face looks when I eat a candy corn.
GIF via Reddit
GIF via Reddit
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Today is also Haunted Refrigerator Day, all about cleaning the mysterious and expired foods out of your fridge to create room for actually edible things (and avoid that leftover lasagna becoming a sentient freeloading roommate), and Create A Great Funeral Day — intended as a prompt to use today as an opportunity to discuss end-of-life and funeral plans with your loved ones now so they aren't overwhelmed with an unpleasant task in the event of your sudden and unfortunate passing. Don't leave them a bunch of work to do when they should be properly grieving your departure from this mortal coil!
While you wait with salivating anticipation for tomorrow to arrive, let's acknowledge some notable historical happenings and notable birthdays & deathdays from October 30ths of yore:
• On this day in 1831 Nat Turner was arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in US history. Weird how sixty years earlier it was "patriotic" to rebel against the British government because you disagreed with tax policy, but rebelling against the U.S. government's policy protecting literal slavery was a bridge too far.
• Today is the anniversary of the 1938 broadcast of Orson Welles' infamous radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which created a massive panic among some of the listeners who believed Earth was actually under attack by invaders from Mars.
• In 1945 Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking the color line of Major League Baseball.
• Birthday cake all around — because candy corn is just Halloween-colored punishment (yeah, I said it!) — for: 2nd President of the United States John Adams (1735), Swiss Neoclassical painter Angelica Kauffman (1741), poet & social critic Ezra Pound (1885), Italian-American bodybuilder Charles Atlas (1893), appropriately named English occult composer and music critic Peter Warlock (1894), singer-songwriter & record producer Eddie Holland of Motown's famed Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting team (1939), Jefferson Airplane singer-songwriter Grace Slick (1939), singer-songwriter Otis Williams of The Temptations (1941), actor and shark-jumping enthusiast Henry "The Fonz" Winkler of Happy Days and Parks And Recreation fame (1945), actor Harry Hamlin of Clash of the Titans, L.A. Law, and Veronica Mars fame (1951), actor & comedian Kevin Pollak (1957), Argentinian football legend Diego Maradona (1960), writer & comedian Larry Wilmore of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore fame (1961), English singer-songwriter & guitarist Gavin Rossdale of the grunge band Bush (1965), Canadian rapper, reggae singer-songwriter, and bane of my teenaged existence Snow (1969), actress Nia Long (1970), and actor Matthew Morrison of Glee fame (1978)
• Pour out all that candy corn (because it is terrible) for: Mythologist & scholar Joseph Campbell (d. 1987), rapper, DJ, and producer Jam Master Jay of Run DMC fame (d. 2002), and actor & singer Robert Goulet of Camelot and Beetlejuice fame (d. 2007)
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Sadly, no new customer Q&A this week! If you're feeling even moderately outgoing and would like to be featured in an upcoming Monday email (and are a customer with some Boredwalk tees, tanks, hoodies, towels, bags, or books to show off), just reply to this and let us know and we'll send you some fun questions!
We'll be back here in your inbox on Wednesday with some more random holidays to observe, historical tidbits to acknowledge, and fun links to entertaining content! Until next time...
Peace, love, and whatever candy makes your taste buds sing,
Matt
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