Halloween Stuff

all you need, right there.

so me and my friends made a robocop pumpkin

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2707/4053248900_fc58db957f.jpg

thought you guys might like to see it

check out the full set here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slutsky/sets/72157622557831979/

https://i.imgur.com/NxURQ1F.jpg

ROCKULA: A vampire with sunglasses and a retainer forms a rock band to save his girlfriend from being bludgeoned to death by a hambone-wielding pirate on Halloween.

Starting Toni Basil, Bo Diddley, Thomas Dolby etc

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3w4rqQgsR_8

It's almost... HALLOWEEEEEN!!! Heheheheheh....

https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1383165445i/6422990.jpg

Lightest trick or treater load since 2021! Leftover candy and everything. Monday night blues, I guess.

Actually, since 2020, I guess. I forgot all about first covid Halloween. People were shooting candy down tubes.

from the facebook thread:

we sat on the porch with a massive bowl of penny candy and invited anyone who stopped in to pick out two choices.

two obviously twentysomething kids smoking weed stopped when they saw us on our stoop and one of them tossed on a covid mask and wandered up with "trick or treat, i just turned 15." he took a kitkat with our blessing.

separately, a lady in her fifties/sixties wearing a hijab strolled right up and lunged at our bowl before we could react, grabbing two massive handfuls, dumping them in her bag and then tried to do it again. we actually had to restrain her. she laughed and said something heavily accented about "3 at home" and held her arm out expecting more. i dubiously gave her an additional assortment of starbursts to make her go away. She looked to be carrying something like 15 pounds of candy in multiple sacks already. she tried the same thing next door but didn't make it past their front gate. Possibly a known local character that I haven't met yet?

Everyone else who arrived was 12 or under or parents and exceptionally polite. One dad had a killer homemade Red Guardian costume. Lots of anime characters. One dad shredder and his two kids as ninja turtles. One family dressed as the local broadcast crew for the Mets, kid wearing a mustache and a bald cap tells me "my dad will have to explain."

wife had the idea this year to get a bunch of halloween-themed pencils and erasers and stuff to give out along with candy. i didnt see it coming but kids went nuts over the pencils, yelling in joy and saying things like "Oh awesome, PENCILS!!!" I didnt give pencils to kids who looked older than like 12, but even had a few teens excitedly spot them and go "hey are those pencils? can we have one??" a very wholesome halloween.

Experienced a full on manic Halloween - 60+ kids I reckon - but probably because first year I’ve bothered with Halloween decorations

Neighbors down the street bought an 8-pound bag of potatoes to put out with the candy, and they said most of the trick or treaters took a potato (in addition to candy)!

Baked potato is hearty autumn food! Good idea!

We had our first rainy Halloween that I can remember. Still had almost as many kids as usual though - our neighborhood is pretty die-hard.

A few years before the pandemic, I got tired of handing out the usual candy assortments from the grocery store, so I started buying bulk toys - like wind-up toys, bouncy balls, jewelry, stickers, etc. It's more expensive than buying bulk sugar blobs, but I just wanted to mix it up a little. Then in 2020, I started putting them in gift bags along with a couple of pieces of candy, just to try to make it more socially distanced. The pencils sound like a great idea, and I'll try to remember to add something like that next year. The potato thing opens up possibilities as well. Hmmmm...

As far as costumes, there weren't too many that were out of the ordinary. One lone teenager showed up as Hooty from The Owl House, which my daughter has been watching lately.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle on our (UK) street whatsapp group as people on facebook were asking where were good streets to go for trick or treating and ours got mentioned - some people suggested a password so only kids from our street would get sweets! We went out with our two little ones at half past five and left a bowl of sweets on our doorstep, it was empty when we got back before six. There were kids walking up and down for over an hour after that, luckily some people had laid in better supplies than us. Would that kind of trick or treat tourism raise eyebrows in the US?

In my experience, leaving a bowl out on the honor system leads to one kid (or adult!) getting all of your candy.

Also, in the UK - it was very much a one sweet per person thing going on - I thought the kids would just grab a handful and scarper - and only knocking on doors of the houses that are decorated

Also, the password thing is ridiculous and mean.

I had about 30 kids here, which is a pretty good turnout as I live on top of a hill that is a pain to trudge up. There was rain last night, but it held off until late, so that was lucky. This year giant skeletons have been the lawn decoration of choice for some reason.

Yeah, don’t think I’d be down with the password system - I’d probably go out of my way to sabotage it

The bigger kids came round later and they’d obviously trekked round the entire tower judging by the hauls of sweets. Kinda admired the enterprising attitude

Not a single child came to my estate - not one

That sucks, do you live in a Manor House?

My house seems to have a foreboding aura - I am probably the Cause of it - though i usually seem to be a people-attractor in public places

Would that kind of trick or treat tourism raise eyebrows in the US?

in the 80s i remember my white suburban boomer parents being very concerned about "kids from other neighborhoods", kids they didnt recognize, kids not in costumes, etc, coming and getting our precious candy, obv just barely-veiled racism, classism and white flight paranoia.

Halloween is a bad holiday for introverts

My own kids I know would occasionally strategize over which blocks to hit, who had the best/biggest candy, etc. We used to get plenty of "kids from other neighborhoods," but I don't know anyone that had a problem with it, bar the occasional group of uncostumed who come by after the official trick or treating hours. Even then, the hours here are 4-8. If you work late it can be a pretty rough slog! The last group we had featured a couple of adorable little kids and one very tired looking parent.

the potato thing is a social media meme btw, i was tempted to take part

a squirrel stole the top (lid) of my jack o'lantern, fucking squirrel.. he also gnawed on the face

whose face?

he chewed up my jack o'lantern and stole the top... it's annoying, it cost $5

I think I know which squirrel it is, too

it's like that frank zappa album, Squirrels Gnawed My Face

I wish Jack O Lanterns would last a bit longer

https://imgur.com/a/EqBIiVe

kid's sharpie sketch traced by missus

scquirrels will do that. they like to f things up = they can be jerks. I feel your sad tone. The crymes of the squirrals

“This year Halloween fell on a weekend /
Me and Ilxor boys were trick or treatin /
Robbin little kids for bags…”

this week i've gotten in the mood for halloween television. i don't really like horror movies so tv works well for me. mostly i've limited it to stuff from my youth and before... there's so much stuff out there today and i'm sure lots of it is great.

i started out with the halloween episode of MASH, from the show's 11th and final season. at this point the show was dipping pretty heavily into trauma porn, and most of the episode isn't that great. the opening, though, is great. george wendt plays a marine (yes, really) who has a billiard ball stuck in his mouth, and david ogden stiers' character responds by, well, basically domming him. that's not the intention, mind you, but i can't read it any other way.

since i was already watching george wendt, i went on to watch the cheers halloween episode from the third season. i'm not much of a cheers fan, having grown up with the later seasons, but this episode was sweet. cliff clavin is more of a well-rounded character than the cliff i knew... an awkward nerd who does poorly enough with girls that there's speculation that he's queer. anyway, i just wasn't used to seeing the cast written as characters rather than caricatures... if i watch more of these early seasons i might actually end up liking it!

next i went with the vincent price episode of the muppet show, which i heard had a good reputation. it was nice, though, as i mentioned elsewhere, kermit being weird about pronouns hasn't really held up. was also surprised that miss piggy didn't appear at all! i mostly remember the show from half-watched reruns. not everything worked, but price singing "you've got a friend" was unexpected and very sweet.

the first night court halloween episode, titled "halloween, too" (not to be confused with season four's "halloween ii")... it made no sense at all. the whole plot harry stone's new girlfriend turns out to be a witch? and everybody is very concerned with that, like, because he is a JUDGE and this is VERY SERIOUS, he couldn't keep being a judge if it got out that he was dating a witch! i'm also not really sure what they mean by "she's a witch". like apparently she can do actual witchcraft? i mean it's stage magic, and judge stone calls it out, and she says "no, that's actual witchcraft". i'd think that this lady actually having supernatural powers would be more of a big deal than that she's dating a judge? the whole thing is just extremely implausibly stupid. mind you, i did like the tag, with flo showing up as a biker and mac looking _amazing_ as ms. muffett. just a fantastic look for him. anyway they did four more halloween episodes, i hope at least some of them were less ill-conceived than this.

then there was the route 66 season 3 episode "lizard's leg and owlet's wing". honestly, the hook for the show was a good one - boris karloff, peter lorre, and lon chaney jr. meet up in chicago to resolve a dispute they're having regarding the nature of horror. it's relevant! this was broadcast in 1962, when the idea of "horror" _was_ seen as corny and outdated. lorre in particular is _excellent_ in this episode. no, the problem is in the "B" plot, which involves a secretarial convention. there's this character who's in love with her former boss and, i mean, to me she comes off as pretty emotionally unstable and lacking in a sense of self-worth. but the lady saying "for god's sake we are professionals here to do a job, not looking for men to marry" gets treated as a shrieking harridan? anyway chaney as the wolfman terrifies everybody except for the emotionally unstable lady, and to me, this was a good character beat. someone that emotionally unstable has probably seen shit a lot worse than a wolfman. hell, she might even be a monster-fucker. don't tell me they didn't have monster-fuckers in 1962. i wasn't born yesterday. that's the headcanon, that she was a monsterfucker, except then boris karloff CALLS HER OLD BOSS in Indianapolis and says COME OVER HERE AND MARRY HER and he DOES, which, ok, is going to make a great story at dinner parties but it doesn't make up for everything else about this entire situation being completely terrible.

god damn, though, karloff and lorre and chaney jr., one hell of triple act.

oh, also, they use the word "propinquity" in this episode! it's the whole dobie gillis thing. i didn't recognize until recently just how influential that show was.

i guess the way i'd rank them are:
cheers
muppet show
MASH
route 66
night court

Propinquity is such a great word! It’s one of my favorites. I learned it from a kids’ book, The Hot and Cold Summer, which makes a really big deal about it. What’s the Dobie Gillis connection? Zelda?

I keep meaning to make a thread for the weirdest Disney b-movies. i probably never will, but there’s a couple of made for tv Halloween ones ca. Y2K that *almost* qualify. One is Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire, where the TV teen is desperate to get his mom (the fun aunt from Sabrina - Caroline Rhea?) out of the house so he can sneak out, so he sets her up on a date with a vampire (Maxwell Sheffield from the Nanny - no idea). Adventures In Babysitting-style hijinks ensue. There’s another one where the prankster-goblin living under TV Teen’s bed frames her for all the shit he pulls, so she conjures an imaginary friend to help deal with it. Also the imaginary friend leads an uprising of unattended children in a Gymboree. I’m sure you have something better to do.

I think i saw the Vincent Price Muppet Show ep a long time ago, I don’t remember much about it though. No Miss Piggy? Bummer. Rte 66 is tempting, love Karloff, always get Chaney Jr. and Sr. mixed up.

Re: Halloween shows, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer halloween episodes are comfort food to me.

I recently came across this clip compilation of some late-season Family Matters Halloween episodes. I wasn't watching the show at this point, but I'm intrigued. I plan to check out the whole episodes (which are streaming on Hulu)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb2sMz-MLSM

The Square Pegs Halloween episode is mid, and the OG Magnum PI doesn't really have one unless you promote the one where he teams up with a psychic to Halloween status.

Propinquity is such a great word! It’s one of my favorites. I learned it from a kids’ book, The Hot and Cold Summer, which makes a really big deal about it. What’s the Dobie Gillis connection? Zelda?

― muriel’s webdings (Deflatormouse)

yeah, zelda's use of the word seems to have given it a big memetic bump. it was also only fairly recently that i learned that the scooby doo characters were based on dobie gillis characters. it kinda puts some things in context for me. even though velma wasn't created as a lesbian, there's definitely some lesbian DNA in the character.

the word i learned from a children's book was "obstreperous". i think it was a book about a kite.

heh, 'obstreperous' is the name of my next door neighbors wifi network :)

so, i totally made the connection between Maynard and Shaggy…. and yet somehow missed that Dobie = Freddie, Zelda =.Velma and Yvette = Daphne, mind blown tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by9H1tjNXEY

ugh, i should have watched this whole thing before sharing sorry
i got too excited seeing the opossums getting treats