"Happy?" Halloween

"Happy?" Halloween!

I used to say that Halloween was my very favorite holiday. Christmas is too commercialized and too localized to just your immediate family on the BIG DAY when you open tons of presents at home under a beautiful tree that no one else sees but your family. It's too much sharing with too few people. Christmas involves sending Hallmark greeting carsds, too, which I am emphatically against for reasons I'll discuss at Christmastime. Halloween, on the other hand, is postage-free, and is a get out of the house, let your inhibitions go and dress up in a crazy outfit just like everyone else, decorate your house if you want, and prepare tons of sweets and candy for others. You get to see everyone else's costumes and enjoy the pageantry and parade, you get too feed your sweet tooth, and you can even do it anonymously but completely publicly if you're wearing the right costume. The Americanized version is just the best idea for a holiday, even though it's origins lie in All Saint's Eve and the Mexican Dia De Los Muertos.
My memories of Halloween are rich and wonderful. My first memory is my Mom dressing me up as the Jolly Green Giant. A costume based on a mythical spokesman for frozen foods and canned vegetables. Remember the commercial on TV and the jingle?
"In the valley of the Jolly
ho Ho HO
Green Giant!"
In elementary school days, we would run around the village neighborhood and collect tons of candy, filling our pillowcases with pounds of chocolate. Sweet! And then we'd be sure to make it to the Elm Hill School gym / cafeteria by ~9pm to get more goodies, see everyone else's costumes in the area, and watch a screening of classic cartoons such as Woody Woodpecker and the *?* Crows. What a madhouse the school was on that night. One big treat. Those were the days when people gave out handmade cookies, popcorn balls, candy apples and the like and you actually thought those were the best treats. Before the rumors fueled the fear of razor blades and pins in the apples, or poison in the popcorn, and people stopped trusting their lifelong neighbors. Ahh, the good ol' days - am I imagining this?
For many years as a teenager, I remember not really having my act together for a costume until the big day, so I'd always go as a "hobo" or a "bum". Pretty easy to throw together some old ripped up clothes and smudge on some black facepaint. Quick and easy and comfortable, but how lame was that!?
It was good for camouflage when we'd go out and steal jack o'lantern pumpkins and roll them down the steep Elm Hill that led right to the center of town. There were two parts to this annual ritual. One was the days leading up to Halloween when we'd get whole pumpkins, as yet uncarved, still plump and nice and heavy and full of punkin' guts and roll them down Elm Hill late at night. The goal was to have them roll fast, far and make a spectacular mess in the middle of the hill when they 'exploded' when the gourd's thick skin could no longer contain it's slimey contents and the velocity and momentum of the orange orb caused it to disintegrate into bits. Rolling pumpkins was great autumn right of passage like jumping in a pile of raked leaves or throwing snowballs at cars and pogey'ing in the winter.

Egg Throwing - I was never into egg throwing, but knew plenty of kids who were. My own mom got hit driving up Elm Hill one night. Her driver side window was down and she got hit with an egg right in the face. She made it home but was crying and was a mess. I think she went to the hospital. Her glasses and hair were covered in egg yolk. It was pretty scary.

Shaken, not stirred at the door. My scariest Halloween story.
One teenage year I was out Trick or Treatin' with friends. We were right across the street from Mike Davis' house. The house we approached was dark with no decorations. It was a tight squeeze at the top of the steps for all of us at the front door. I was squeezed in the back next to a black iron grate railing. For whatever reason we banged on the door over and over and rang the doorbell many times. No one answered. I moved to the front of our pack to try to peer into the darkened house and, BAM!, the door flew open and a huge old man reached out with both hands and grabbed me by the shoulders. He shouted "God damn you little bastards I'm gonna show you!" Our group scattered, but I was trapped, and he slammed me against the railing over and over again, screaming anger and venom at me. Somehow I ended up over the top of the railing and flipped over the other side into the bushes in front of the house. I was scratched up but FREE and I ran like crazy out of there. It took a long time before our group reassembled in various parts of that neighborhood. I was pretty shaken up, but had hung on tight to my pilowcase full of candy and didn't spill a thing. I never needed to gorge myself on comfort chocolate more than that night, and I'm sure the sugar buzz lasted for a few weeks after that.

I was a hobo that year. A couple of memorable times in later years, I really got creative and daring and actually came up with a cool costume.


Roosevelt Bouie - Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 1979



At Syracuse University in 1979, my freshman year in college, I had grown 2 inches and gained 20 pounds in the first two months of school (5'7+" to 5'9+", 135 to 155 pounds). This growth spurt was the result of a dining hall card that allowed me to eat ALL YOU CAN EAT for every meal, breakfast lunch and dinner. This included sneaking into the dining hall where the football team ate huge steak dinners on Friday nights before the games on Saturday. I also was not running around playing after school sports every single day like I did in high school. I also worked at the Sadler Snack Bar in the evenings flipping burgers and drinking my specialty milk shakes. I dreamed that I was on my way to growing into a Center for the famous SU hoops team. So my low-budget costume was to go as senior hoop star Roosevelt Bouie. He and Louis Orr made up the famous Bouie 'N Louie Show under coach Jim Boeheim. I had not only met him (really nice guy), but actually played against him - and guarded him!- in a pickup game and what a joke that was, but that's another story for another day. My costume was easily thrown together. A Go Orange t-shirt with a #50 on the back made with electrical tape (stapled on for good measure cause it kept peeling off), hoop shorts with black sweatpants underneath (it's cold in Syracuse on Oct. 31, my friends), and the piece de resistance - black face paint and my curly brown hair all afro'd and fluffed up. I carried my basketball for a prop - and ended up losing it - during a night that was full of scandalousness I'd rather not remember completely or at least not publicly. Yes, it was my ball that smashed the glass Playboy pinball machine in the Delplain Hall front lobby, but I wasn't the one who threw it. Honest. TILT!

.insert pic here of d'land shroom candle.

'Shrooms - 1980 at the University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont.

I road the psilocybin pony for the first time - and got thrown off. I had blood like pure spring water (see the Coors beer commercials) and even low dosages of drugs had a drastic effect on me. I don't remember much from this evening actually. I was given some dry pieces of mushrooms and put them in a peanut butter sandwich and washed it down with keg beer. This was when the drinking age was 18 - I was 19. I wandered out of Simpson Hall over to a large rock along the side of the parking lot near the tennis courts. This rock was maybe twice my height, but I climbed up it and laid on top and stared up into a starry night sky. I can't remember if I was alone or not. It was cold, but I had this feeling of being outside my body. I'm usually a pretty hyper guy, but everything slowed waaaay down and I felt like I was on that rock for an eternity. I paid attention to every detail. I remember being amazed at how everything worked (who made these perfect shoes for me?!) and was awed by how all the pieces of the world didn't just come apart and crash into each other. Bright lights that I focused on had the effect of turning into negative images of themselves - bright to black, black to bright white. I made the mistake of tagging along with friends to go to downtown Burlington. At Last Chance, a dark basement of a dive bar, I wondered over to watch people play the latest craze - video games like Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Ms PacMan or Gallaga. When I focused on the fast, bright lights of one of the games, suddenly the negative imaging exploded on me and the brightness completely blinded me - like special effects they show in movies for a nuclear explosion. I remember my head physically snapping back like I'd been hit in the face, and I slowly, but surely lost my balance and started reeling all over the bar. Thankfully I was with good friends (Good Dougie!) who were watching out for me, and I was grabbed and set down in a chair in a corner... TILT! again.


'Damnit Jim' (Bones) O'Donnell, 'Big Doug' (Spock) Parker, 'Little Doug' (Cap'n Kirk) Madden, 'Scotty' (F?!) Harrison, Burlington, VT, 10/31/82. The Klingon shown is actual size after we put our phasers on shrink. Thanks for this pic go to J-O'D who finally figured out how to scan it in with his 1970' era tri-quarter reader.


Star Trek Crew vs. the Klingons - In 1982 at UVM, this was the best Halloween ever.

The pic above really tells it all. This was the year we lived at Rose Street and we were poor and made our own costumes out of yellow felt and tape, toy guns, action figure klingons and the one key costume purchase: Spock Ears for "Big" Doug Parker. I was engineer Scotty, of course, armed with a phaser and keeping a prisoner Klingon. Jim O'Donnell went as Dr. Bones McCoy, and had his old-school cassette player to take triquarter readings. Doug Madden was lady-killer Capt. Kirk, of course, armed with the perfect narcissist attitude to go with it. We were a hit everywhere we went. Late at night we met up with another ensemble costume group - a bunch of guys dressed up as Klingons! Their costumes were awesome, too, and I never did see their real faces and have no clue who they were. But they had cool props, including swords. So, on the sidewalk downtown in front of Rasputin's (or was it Texas - somewhere there), we ran into each other and spontaneously broke out into a mock battle just like in the TV show. I faced off with one Klingon with a sword and as he swung wildly, but always under control and intentionally just missing me, I jumped and ducked and dove out of the way. A big crowd circled around us as we ad-libbed a fantastic fight scene that would've made Gene Roddenberry smile. We just kept going with the flow and it was so surreal. Every move just fell into place and it felt and looked real. People were cheering and oohing and awing and it felt great to entertain so many people. I'll never forget the spontaneity and feeling of being in that zone with the other guy. I never did catch his name, but we can honestly say that we do our own stunts.



Pics - Tammy Farmer and the transgendered me at her aunt's house in Anchorage, AK. The blue dress was later used by some intern named Monica, and I later became mayor of Wasilla, AK and was nominated to be Vice President of the USA. (ok, last sentence is exaggerated).

Nylons and a Nice Blue Dress - Anchorage, Alaska 1983

In Alaska, there's something like twenty men for every woman. Odds aren't good for single guys, but I was lucky and met up with a fellow UVM grad, Tammy Farmer, up in the Great Land. She had an aunt and uncle who lived in Anchorage. I bought their 1967 Plymouth Valiant frozen into their driveway for $500 and fixed it all by my lonesome and put it on the road. But that's another story. For Halloween, Tammy and the aunt talked me into dressing up as a woman. We went to the Salvation Army and picked out a really nice blue dress and a pair of high heels that actually fit me nicely. This was pre-Monica Lewinsky mind you, so we didn't think to embellish the blue dress with presidential stain. Anyway, they gave me nylons and did my afro hair (no wig required) and make-up and lipstick. And of course we stuffed the breasts full of socks and I was built. Dare I say I was hot? The parties we went to were OK, and I had a good time, but check this out. I actually felt the eyes of guys at the parties staring, dare I say glaring, at me. And I remember thinking, I better not get too drunk tonight or I'll do something I'll regret. I had to walk carefully on the icy walkways in my high heels, too. That was rough. One short older guy actually came up to me and hit on me. I'm not sure he was kidding and it was getting really weird. I was thinking, where was my wing-man, I mean woman, when I needed her!? So it turned out to a pretty scary Halloween after all. It took some balls to do this, but I'd do it again. You know, Governor Palin has her Alaskan lipstick shtick, but I'd wear her Neiman Marcus wardrobe and show her who's boss any day, and twice on Sunday.




Pic - Some of the crew at the Waikiki Youth Hostel circa 1984. Greg, me (the mature one), Jenny, Sue W, Bob, Jacky, Andrew, Lisa, Lee. Missing: Sue "Heaps!" Parky. What a good looking bunch before the costumes came on...

Pic - an actual gokiburi hoihoi cockroach trap, as I remember it. Notice the roach waving from the window on the right.



Gokiburi Hoi Hoi- Honolulu, Hawaii 1984

I had the pleasure of spending Halloween in the International Youth Hostel just off Waikiki in Honolulu in 1984. The Aussies, South Africans, Irish, Welsh, Swedes, Canadians and other hard partying world travelers at the hostel were totally stoked to celebrate this uniquely American holiday. We made make-shift costumes and planned to hit the festive Waikiki bar scene. My costume was inspired by the ubiquitous cockroaches that shared the common kitchen area with us. I decided to be a cockroach trap (goki buri hoi hoi in Japanese). I wore a cut out black garbage bag body suit and made a tent shaped hat out of folded cardboard. Then I cut out a bunch of larger than life cockroach shaped pieces of cardboard (old pizza boxes) and taped them all over me. My imagination ended there, but the rest of the hostel gang took it to the next level, embellishing the 'trap' by sticking other random hostel detritus all over me. Real squashed insects and roaches, half-eaten donuts, pizza crust, cardboard shaped 'cocks' and real condoms, cigarettes butts and genuine pre-smoked home-grown Hawai'in 'roaches'. In preparation for the festivities to follow, lots of glue was slathered on the costume so we could add items as the night went on. Bar coasters, bottle caps, toiler paper, sea shells, Budweiser labels and fuzz and fur from other's costumes got tacked on as the night went on. Red face paint came out later and my face was decorated with images of cockroaches, as well as 'cocks' and 'roaches'. At one bar costume contest I actually won a prize which I vaguely remember was free pitchers of more beer for me and entourage. My memory gets awful fuzzy after that... I don't think I have a picture anywhere of this costume, but the image I have in my mind is certainly more elaborate and impressive than what it looked like in reality. It was hilarious (to us, at least) and that's all that matters.


Pic - chonmage wearing me and the crew at San Lucas in Ito.

Chonmage hachimaki bikeman - Tokyo, Japan 1987

In 1987, I was newly married and riding my Peugeot mountain bike every day from my Kawasaki apartment into work on Aoyma-dori in the heart of Tokyo. An easy 30 minute ride through congested traffic that beat riding the 真人電車 (manindensha) over-crowded rush-hour commuter trains that took just as long. I'd stop at a Fitness Center across the street and shower before going into my programming job at Nippon Ashton-Tate. Halloween was not big in Japan then, but when it rolled around I felt I had to do something. I had a chonmage skull cap that someone from the infamous San Lucas bar in Ito had given me the year before. The chonmage (pic above) is a traditional hair style worn by sumo wrestlers and samurai warriors with the head shave except for a very long center piece of hair heavily oiled and stacked up on top. To that I added my 日の丸 (hi no maru) red circle representing the Japan flag hachimaki. The hachimaki is a bandana often worn during times of battle to inspire the wearer to success. It was a staple during the war, of course, and in modern Japan is worn by rabid sports fans as well as high school students studying like crazy for the impossibly difficult Japanese college entrance examinations that will shape their future. My hachimaki had the Japanese characters 必勝 (hissho - 'must win' or more optimistically 'certain victory') printed on it. With the chonmage and hachimaki I wore a really tacky touristy t-shirt with a lavish picture of a Japanese geisha on it. OK, so I by weird stuff. Anyway, you get the picture. With little effort I was decked out and rode my bike into work. I had sunglasses on, too, as always to protect my eyes from the dust and exhaust from the road. As I rode in and passed the cars stuck in the interminable morning traffic jam I could feel the eyes on me. I'd slow down and stare into the cars at the bored but unsuspecting drivers and really enjoyed the looks on their faces. Of course they had no idea it was a Halloween costume holiday and they would gape in disbelief and surprise at the gaijin in the over-the-top get-up. At one stop light, I peered over at an unsuspecting salaryman who stared and then indiscretely reached over for the auto-lock button to lock himself safely in is car. I smiled my gaijin smile and got a kick out of it. But the best was yet to come... When I reached the office I kept my costume on and took the elevator alone up to the top third floor. When the elevator doors opened, standing right in front of me waiting to get on the elevator was a balding older Japanese gentleman I had never seen before. He froze, his jaw dropped open and he started shaking a little bit at the sight of me. I wasn't sure what to say so I blurted out "Trick or Treat!" in English. He obviously didn't get it, and he started shaking more. There were already some of my Japanese and American office mates in the room who glanced over and started laughing. So he laughed nervously, too. I took off my sunglasses and chonmage and shouted out the traditional morning office greeting of "Ohayou gozaimasu!" (good morning) and then added "Happy Halloween!". One of the Japanese employees rushed over and introduced me to the man, the owner of our office building and our landlord. Woops! Then they explained briefly the meaning of Halloween to the shaken landlord. He composed himself and then, with all the courage he could muster and his voice shaking he said in Japanese-English, "W-wo-wo-wondahfuru!" (wonderful) and we all burst out laughing. It was a classic gaijin moment for all of us.



My Kid's Costumes and the Santa Cruz Halloween experience -
- The Open Source Prisoner
- The Rasta WereWolf
- LRRH, Where's Wally in VT...
- cowboy, cop, batman, clown,
- Giraffe
- Ballerina Boy
- Dinosaur Boy
- Charlie Marley...

"Happy?" Halloween!
What a strange greeting. Wishing people happiness on a day that remembers and evokes death. Halloween in 2005 was like re-living nightmare for me.
Skeletons
Tombstones
Decaying body parts
Ghosts
This year Charlie Marley and Pippin aren't going to get to enjoy this 'best of the holidays'.

Related topic: stealing lawn ornaments and FOR SALE signs and decorating other's yards.