That said, however, Halloween is relatively easy. Many people have established traditions and simply pull the holiday out of a few storage boxes every season. It’s a bit different for children, who want to dress up differently every year; but, for adults, there is often a ritual involving costuming and decoration. Overall, however, Halloween, while fun, is not the most difficult holiday to prepare for. On the other hand, fall might not be a bad time to start preparing for the bigger holidays that are just around the corner in December.

This is why, for example, Marks & Spencer Christmas hampers are already on sale this time of year. The fact is, Christmas is a more involved holiday that involves significant preparation, if only because you have to, at some point, get your shopping out of the way. It seems that every year people put off Christmas shopping as long as they possibly can, and end up in hectic, last-second situations. However, if you consider your shopping as early as the fall, you can avoid this problem altogether.

Along these lines, Christmas hampers are actually fantastic gifts for people looking to avoid shopping hassles and decision-making difficulties. These hampers come ready-made, meaning that you essentially order a gift and receive it in basket form, ready to be delivered to its recipient. Also, while this may seem like a bit of an impersonal gift to some, there is actually a lot of variety in different types of hampers, with regard to their contents. You need only browse a bit and find the different hampers that will appeal to different friends and families.

Again, it’s probably more likely that your focus is on the fall, and on the upcoming Halloween. However, once Halloween has come and gone, Christmas seems to approach with surprising quickness. This is why it can’t hurt to start thinking about preparing for the winter holidays. If you’re prepared, and get your shopping out of the way early, your personal holiday season will likely be significantly more relaxed.

Happy Halloween and Christmas!

Alan

We thought it might be a good idea to start a kind of ‘sister’ website about Halloween, so we did!

If you want to know a little more about why we celebrate the weirdness that is Halloween, head over to www.TheHalloweenStory.com where we the Draula-in-Whitby.com team are putting together a collection of Halloween related articles, videos and anything else we can think of!

Here’s the link again, and please let us know if there’s anything you’d like to know about, read or watch: The Halloween Story.

If you’re in the States, here’s a little something from the Dracula’s Ball people to whet your gothic imagination…

Friends and fiends,

Pumpkin lattes and crisp autumn breezes are popping up all over Philadelphia these days, which means we’re so close to Halloween we can practically taste it. We’re roughly two weeks away from Dracula’s Ball (which starts on Mischief Night but at midnight, we officially ring in Halloween). Tickets are selling at the same pace as they usually do for Halloween, which means that once again, we probably will not have enough for everyone. Thus, we urge you to buy your tickets now. If something crazy comes up at the last minute, you should have no problem finding someone interested in your ticket, but if the night of the 30th rolls around and you don’t have a ticket in hand…you may find yourself out of luck. This is our final Ball of 2010; the next one isn’t until mid-January, 2011.

The next Dracula’s Ball takes place on Saturday, October 30th, 2010. Our party begins when doors open at 9pm, Halloween officially starts at midnight, and our event ends at 2am. Tickets are $16 and are available through Ticketmaster (online and in person), Digital Ferret (in person) and IsoTank (online, free shipping for 5 or more tickets). We’ll keep our website and Facebook page updated with ticket information.
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Rhys Fulber and Daniel Myer added to DJ lineup

Our DJ lineup is now complete. Joining us on the turntables will be special celebrity guest DJs Rhys Fulber (of Front Line Assembly and Conjure One) and Daniel Myer (of Haujobb and Covenant). They’ll have an entire dancefloor to themselves all night long, so you’ll have plenty of time to enjoy what they’re playing. We’re also pleased to welcome guest DJ Wintermute from New Jersey, and returning guest DJ Azrael from Massachusetts. 3 dancefloors will be open from start to finish.

We have two live performances as well. Baltimore’s Red This Ever performs at 10:35pm and Colorado’s Seraphim Shock performs at 12:05am. While Celldweller was originally scheduled to appear at this show, the band’s new booking agent was unable to get his paperwork in order on time, leaving us with no choice but to replace the band. Unfortunate circumstances, but the show, as always, goes on.

Dark and clever lyrics and a sound somewhere between rock and synthpop are the hallmarks of this Baltimore-based band. Equally influenced by Joy Division and Wolfsheim and having previously appeared on stage with And One and Das Ich (among others), Red This Ever is completely danceable and very watchable. This is their first appearance at Dracula’s Ball. Be sure to click this YouTube link for their song Aahhhhhhhhhhhhhh Lets Go!, which should give you an excellent idea of their sound.

There aren’t many bands better suited to playing a vampire Halloween party than Seraphim Shock. Their style is a blend of goth and hard rock with elements of industrial programming thrown in. The centerpiece of the band’s sound is the theatrical vocal style of frontman Charles Edward (that’s him in the picture), equally capable of Peter Murphy-style operatic feats and heavy metal wailing. While fans of Type O Negative should especially appreciate this mixture, in truth we can’t imagine anyone at a Halloween party who could possibly resist dancing and/or throwing the horns for this fantastic band.
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Details, Some of Which Will Be Familiar to You

This Ball takes place in our favorite location, Shampoo Nightclub, at 7th & Willow Streets in Philadelphia, PA (Mapquest and Google Maps info can be found on our website). As always, the Ball is open to all ages, but you must be 21+ with proper photo ID to drink. There is a large, free, enclosed parking lot, but it fills up quickly for the Ball. Personal photo cameras are welcome. Large professional camera rigs with unpleasant flash bulbs are not. Video cameras are not allowed.

Since this is our Halloween event, costumes are strongly encouraged, but they are not absolutely required. Visit our website to see pictures of some of the best outfits from previous events. Here’s just a very small sampling from last Halloween.

Our Facebook page is frequently updated with news on ticket availability and other matters. You can also use Facebook to officially RSVP to the Ball, Share links to the Ball on your own page and see how many of your friends have already RSVP’d to the event.

This will be our 52nd Dracula’s Ball event and as always, we anticipate the perfect blend of new and familiar faces. October 30th may be devil’s night, but it’s also our night, and we intend on making sure you have a devilishly good time. We look forward to seeing you at the Ball!

Best wishes,

[Patrick] & Dracula’s Ball Staff
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P.S. Those of you in the Philadelphia area may be interested to know that Gary Numan and Rasputina will be performing at the Trocadero Theatre on Thursday, October 21st. Tickets are available at Digital Ferret CDs, Isotank and Ticketmaster as well as at the Trocadero.

If you’re in the US, the latest news from the fantastic Dracula’s Ball Team is below.

If you live in the UK and need some fast ideas for celebrating the Halloween season, have a look at our new site:

Green Halloween

Don’t forget, there are a couple of tasty Halloween ideas on the Dracula-in-Whitby site too:

Ghost Stories

Halloween Games

Here we go…

Happy October to you!

Can you believe that Halloween is only four weeks away?  This is always our largest Dracula’s Ball event of the year, and it has sold out for the past several years in a row, so we very strongly encourage you to buy advance tickets for this event.  On top of the usual list of reasons to attend, this year Halloween is a Saturday.  It also happens to fall at the end of Daylight Savings, which means that at 2am, instead of closing our doors, we join everyone else in rolling the clocks back to 1am, making this a six-hour long event.  Finally, we have a rare US performance (Tapping The Vein) and an exclusive US debut performance (Dope Stars Inc).  In other words, this is a very hot ticket!

Our website contains all the information you need about tickets (check out our FAQ in particular) but the essential details are as follows.  Tickets are $15 and are on sale now. You can pick them up in person from Ticketmaster outlets or at Digital Ferret CDs (www.myspace.com/digital_ferret).  You can get them online from Ticketmaster or IsoTank (www.isotank.com) – and note that IsoTank offers free shipping on orders of five or more tickets.  In the unlikely event that there are still a few tickets left at the door, there will not be enough for everyone, so order now.

As we mentioned in previous bulletins, we’ll be flying in Italian electro-glam-rock band Dope Stars Inc. for their very first US concert appearance.  We’re also pleased to welcome back our dear friends Tapping The Vein, who have not played a US show in some time.

If you’ve never been to a Ball before and live bands aren’t your thing, don’t fret – we’ll have four rooms open all night long, with a different DJ in each room. If you’re not feeling the groove for some reason, there’s always another room to check out.  Our DJ lineup will be posted on our website this week.

Our venue for this Dracula’s Ball event is Shampoo Nightclub, located at 7th & Willow Streets in Philadelphia, PA (Mapquest/Google Maps info can be found on our website).  As always, the Ball is open to all ages, but you must be 21+ with proper photo ID to drink.  There is a large, free, enclosed parking lot, but it fills up quickly for the Ball. Personal photo cameras are welcome.  Large professional rigs with unpleasant flash bulbs are not.  Video cameras are not allowed. Doors open at 9pm and the event ends at 2am (sort of – see the note above about Daylight Savings).

It’s Halloween, so costumes are encouraged.  Of course, costumes are always welcome at the Ball, but this is -the- occasion for that one special outfit you’ve been saving (or saving up for).  Costumes aren’t required, but why not make the most of the opportunity?  If you need inspiration, check out our photo gallery to see some of the amazing costumes we enjoyed at previous Halloween events.  Naturally, we will have enough candy to give your dentist nightmares.

Some more about our performers:

TAPPING THE VEIN: As we’re fond of pointing out, Tapping The Vein performed at the very first Dracula’s Ball, so having them return for the 48th Dracula’s Ball is a testament to how well their music and live performances have held up over the years. Their blend of hard rock and gothic music with female vocals that can range from a haunting whisper to full blown fury is a style that many other bands later attempted. Few managed to do it with the same level of skill as TTV. Fans of groups like Lacuna Coil, Within Temptation or Garbage will surely enjoy them. Since part of the band relocated to the UK, concert appearances in the US by TTV are uncommon, so catch them while you can. Expect to hear old favorites as well as material from their recent album, Another Day Down.
STAGE TIME – 10:30pm
http://www.myspace.com/tappingthevein

DOPE STARS INC: You know we love exclusives. On Halloween, we’re very pleased to bring you the very first US concert appearance by the Italian band Dope Stars Inc. They’re flying in from Italy for this show and flying out right after, so this is your only chance to see them in the USA. Their style and sound clearly have a glitter-glam influence, with an equal mixture of electro-industrial and rock-n-roll. Their song “Fast and Beautiful” (which is also an apt description of their performances) was chosen as the lead track for the Hot Topic / Asleep By Dawn “…Underground Club Mix #2″ compilation. Their albums generated such huge sales as European imports that the band caught the notice of Metropolis Records, who gave the band’s July 2009 album, 21st Century Slave, an official US release.
STAGE TIME – 12:05am
http://www.myspace.com/dopestarsinc

Again, we can’t emphasize how important it is to get advance tickets for this event.  This is our last Dracula’s Ball event until January 2010.  And for your reference, the next time that Halloween falls on a Saturday night will be 2015.  So, be sure to get your tickets…before somebody else gets them.

We’ll see you at the end of the month.

Best wishes,
[Patrick] & DB Staff

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Dracula’s Ball
Quarterly since May 1998

http://www.draculasball.com
http://www.myspace.com/draculasball
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Dracula’s Ball
Quarterly since May 1998

http://www.draculasball.com
http://www.myspace.com/draculasball
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More information on Dracula’s Ball and what it’s all about, especially info for travellers, can be found at http://www.draculasball.com

Visit us on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/draculasball