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Thinking about Halloween

the scariest story

Halloween not Xmas Thinking about Halloween, I don’t remember specifically what I wore when I went trick-or-treating as a kid. I’m sure it was with one or both of my sisters, and my mask was one of those weird plastic things with the eyes out so you can see

Maybe it’s partly because I don’t have a lot of photos of me then. I had this wonderful red photo album of mine, which I believe was left at my grandmother’s house when I went to college. Like my LPs and my baseball cards, it disappeared either from theft or subsequently when my grandmother’s house left our family’s possession in a narrative too complicated to get into here.

So, I remember Halloween as an adult much more than I did as a kid. Mostly, it’s because I have photos. I’ve mentioned before Sid and Shirley. I was invited to lots of parties.

Then, I would go out trick-or-treating with our daughter, which was fun. The funny thing about going trick or treating with my daughter is that she would get lots of candy, but a lot of it had peanuts to which she was allergic. This was good news for my wife, who loved Reese’s pieces.

When our daughter was old enough to go out on her own, I also liked staying home and handing out candy. I found that was very much a community thing, as we live very close to an elementary school. We would give away 200 pieces of candy at Halloween. Of course, in 2020, we passed. But the numbers haven’t come back post-COVID.

People complain that teenagers and young adults shouldn’t be going out, but I think they’re being too fussy.

Inbox

I was looking through some of my Gmail because I have way too old emails. I have about 700 items marked Use It. I’m going to post some of them here because I obviously kept them for an odd reason. Many were sent to me by my friend Dan.

I had been working on a comic-related project with ADD in 2015, and I contributed this as the scariest story I had ever read:

I used to own a bunch of the EC box sets that Russ Cochran released in the 1980s. (Why I don’t is irrelevant but annoying.)

The single scariest story I recall was in Shock SuspenStories #2, The Patriots! by Jack Davis, from 1952: “A mob whipped up by anti-communist sentiment” chastises a man “when he doesn’t doff his hat to the flag during a parade.” In their fury, they end up beating him to death. Only afterward do they discover he was a blind war veteran who couldn’t possibly have SEEN the banner.

It was far scarier than any ghost story because it was totally believable.

Links

White Zombies by Key and Peele

Aliens abducting Cows – the holiday is mentioned.

My late near-relative Arnold Berman sent me Rhinoceros – An Animation of the Absurd. In high school, I was in an Ionesco play, The Bald Soprano, so its absurdist sentiment resonates.

Dogs can sense magnetism! What they found is that dogs, um, poop along Earth’s magnetic lines, which is spooky.

This one has nothing to do with Halloween, though the guy is a nightmare: Le papier ne sera jamais mort / Paper is not dead on influencia.net ! It was sent by an SBDC colleague named Leslie.

Daft Punk Cockatoo has no Samhein connection except its oddly mesmerizing enthusiasm.

Those were all from 2012 to 2016 and were buried in my Gmail. More recently:

fillyjonk decorates for Halloween

We Want Our Mummy (1938) The Three Stooges

The Skeleton Dance

DC and Alexandria

Hurricane Debby

I love Washington, DC. It was the destination for several demonstrations I attended, primarily in the 1970s.

In 1998, I took one of those on-and-off tour buses and visited several locations. I visited the Capitol and sat in the House gallery; I must have got permission from my Congressman. I also went to Arlington Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the then-new FDR Memorial.

On our trip on Tuesday, we took the DC Circulator from the Washington Monument, not far from the African American Museum of History and Culture. We also visited the Jefferson Memorial, which I had never visited. It was very striking.

The Wednesday sojourn involved waiting a while for the circulator. A really strange young man was on the lawn on his way toward the Washington Monument. He kept yelling into his megaphone, “You’re gonna burn.” He said “burn” a lot. City workers should quit their jobs. His flag had the 45th president embossed on it.

He seemed to leave for a time, but at some point, he returned, came over to the water fountain not very far from where we were sitting, and washed himself up, including his private parts.

We finally visited the MLK monument, which had not been created the last time I was in town. While I’d seen it on TV before, viewing it in person reminded me of its unfinished nature and the incomplete nature of justice. Then we walked to the FDR Memorial, which is more vast than I recalled.

Discontinued

The free DC Circulator is on the chopping block. “On Monday, July 29, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) announced the start of the planned phase-down of DC Circulator service, which will begin October 1, 2024, and culminate with service ending December 31, 2024. The program downsize and shutdown are part of the District Fiscal Year 2025 Budget and Financial Plan.

“As services wind down, DDOT is working with Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to determine service levels to help reduce the impact to the public. DC Circulator is operated by RATP Dev USA, and employees have been provided with written notification of the planned service closure.”

This is unfortunate. Although I must admit that it wasn’t reliable in terms of coming every 15 minutes, this could be a function of previous cutbacks.

Trying to go home

We stayed in Alexandria on Thursday and went to the waterfront on a local free trolley. It must have flooded often in this particular area near the Potomac, as it was that specific day, because people had sandbags already prepared and had them just in case.

We went to a nice restaurant called IndoChen. The waiter asked where he was from. Neither of us guessed Nepal.

On Friday, there were all sorts of weather watches in the DMV area (District of Columbia/Maryland/Virginia), including flash floods and tornado warnings for Alexandria at 8 a.m. caused by the very slow-moving Hurricane Debby. Eventually, the weather cleared, but our 11:10 a.m. Amtrak train to NYC became later and later, so even if we got to Penn Station, we’d miss the train to Albany. The big problem was debris, mostly trees, on the tracks.

Fortunately, an earlier delayed train out of Alexandria had shed enough passengers – they made other plans – and we got to NYC. We were in the Moynihan Station across from Penn Station, which was far enough from us that my wife and I couldn’t sit together. I listened to the loudest, most vapid person I ever heard on a train. And she was sitting BEHIND me, probably boring her seatmate half to death. And it was so foggy and rainy that I couldn’t even see the Hudson River, usually a treat on that leg of the trip.

Nevertheless, we got home only about a half hour behind schedule, very tired, but happy to have been able to fit two vacations in my wife’s time off.

A game of cat and mouse

Stormy

Stormy On a recent Friday evening, I heard rustling, a game of cat and mouse. The cat was playing; the mouse wasn’t nearly as excited about it.

Our remaining cat, Stormy, entered the living room from the hallway with a mouse in her mouth. Initially, I didn’t know if the mouse was alive or not. Eventually, Stormy got bored with holding it in her mouth, let it drop, and the mouse started to run away. Stormy quickly caught it.

The scene repeats a few more times as the mouse scurries into the dining room. Some boxes on the floor stifle Stormy, but I move them, and Stormy snares her prey. Finally, after releasing the mouse again, Stormy can’t quite get to it because it’s hidden between returnable bottles on the floor. I move the bottles, but the mouse moves underneath a tool chest; I don’t know how it fit under there.

Goodbye

The mouse was lying on its back, so I got a pair of winter gloves and picked it up. It was still moving but not nearly as robustly as before. I took the mouse outside, probably to meet its fate via an outside cat or a raptor.

Midnight and Stormy were inside cats and didn’t have the killer instinct. But they did have the play instinct. Earlier this year, we discovered a dead mole at the top of our steps. Even then, we were sure the cats didn’t kill the rodent but found the deceased creature.

Stormy is a great alarm clock for these things. One time, about a decade ago, she was staring at the brick wall above a fireplace, and we discovered that a bat was hanging there. We managed to get the bat out of the house without hurting the bat or us, but it was only because Stormy was so intent on staring that we even discovered the creature.

Stop Project 2025 comic!

It includes enabling the president to have much more power than the constitution allows.

Here’s your problem: trying to tell all your friends about Stop Project 2025 and why they should care. It’s difficult because the plan is dense, vaguely incomprehensible, and perhaps a little bit boring. I point to this great page, which is quite thorough.

It includes a 38-minute video, a quiz, and lots of words—important words, to be sure, but still. It does direct you to that four-and-a-half-minute song I’ve linked to before.

Several people created the Stop Project 2025 Comic, which you should share. Why did they make this?

“We’ve made comics to explain some of that agenda, and move you to vote against it.

“We did this because you shouldn’t have to read this monstrosity. After all, it’s more than fifty times as long as the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution…combined.

“Our two founding documents are short because it doesn’t take a lot of words to say, ‘You matter, and you have a voice.’

“Project 2025 is longer because it’s a detailed plan to shut you up and shut you out.

“Don’t let it do either.

“Read on, then vote.”

Project 2025 is a detailed plan to shut you up and shut you out.

You matter, and you have a voice.

Related – Election Subversion 2024: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Is immigration something you do or something you are?

When Trump Rants, This Is What I Hear from Carlos Lozado, a NY Times writer who came to the United States at age three, is touching. The article is probably behind a firewall, but here are a few paragraphs.

djt’s “eating the dogs” rant prompted Lozado “to look back on his xenophobic cacophony, building so relentlessly over the past decade, in attacks that have narrowed the distance for me between immigration as a memory and being an immigrant as a present identity…

“When Trump told four Democratic women in Congress to ‘go back’ to their countries, he unknowingly trivialized how often I’ve gone back in my mind, wondering what that other life, that other person, might have been like.

“When he mocked immigrants for not speaking English, he ignored the interplay between native tongues and new ones and how demanding purity in language — and in people — is utterly self-defeating.

“How can immigrants ‘poison the blood’ of the nation when we have always been its lifeblood? With his accusations, Trump is administering his own brand of venom, one whose cumulative effect is to disfigure a nation, not exalt it.”

Sunday Stealing: best birthday party

It’s Love

birthday month music

Sunday Stealing Questions 200.07 includes my best birthday party. Or parties

What’s the best birthday party you’ve ever had?

I’ve had a lot of fine birthday parties. The first one I can think of is when I was 16, and my parents rented out something called the American Civic Association on Front St. in Binghamton, NY. It was the place where my father had volunteered. Our house is very small, so I never had any real parties at my house – one with two people attending when I was eight – so getting that place was great. I remember my father found a couple of my friends making out in one of the closets, and he casually invited them to leave the closet. In 2009, one of those mass casualty events occurred at the ACA, which devastated me.

I remember my 33 and a third part. My birthday is in March, so you can’t have an outdoor gathering in upstate New York. We had it in July. Somewhere in this house, I even have a copy of the invitation.

My 50th birthday was at my current church, and my sister from San Diego was there. There was singing involved.

Ya gotta have…

Since I got to be 60, I decided I would have a hearts card game at my house for my birthday week, and we’ve done that most years. In 2015, my friend Karen, who I’ve known since we were in kindergarten, attended. She said she knew how to play hearts – she did not – but she regaled the group with her stories about the music business, including finding marmite for Paul McCartney in New York City and singing Will the Circle Be Unbroken in an elevator with Johnny and June Carter Cash.

When I was working, I would take off my birthday. If it were a Saturday, I would take off the Friday before; if it were a Sunday, I would take off the Monday after. I think some people thought this was a weird indulgence until I read a book by Henri Nouwen, the late Canadian theologian I quoted several times in this blog.

Where is your favorite place you’ve ever visited?

The Barbados honeymoon was paid for by Jeopardy.

How do you like to spend your free time?

This is an odd question because I still struggle to find the answer. I don’t even know what free time entails. Take this weekend, for instance. I was telling somebody I could be doing A&B&C&D, going to a gala, a play, a concert, a movie, and church; it’s all vast.

Formerly Young

What’s one of your favorite bands?

I picked the Rascals, formerly known as the Young Rascals. I’ve listened to them quite a bit recently; Felix Cavaliere’s birthday is coming up. When The Beatles broke up in April 1970, they were probably my favorite active band.

My favorite Rascal song is It’s Love, with that great Hubert Law on the flute. I had it on vinyl and then got a new record player. It’s Love is the last track on the second side of the Groovin’ album (1967). Just as it gets to about 15 seconds before the song ends, the new stereo record player rejects it because the runoff on the LP is too short. The machine thinks the record must be over. So I bought the CD pretty much for the last quarter of a minute of the song.

What is the cutest animal you’ve ever seen in person?

Cute doesn’t come to mind. The most striking thing I ever saw was a peacock at the now-defunct Catskill Game Farm, only about an hour South of where I am now.

How would you describe your style?

I have no idea. Laissez-faire.

If your wardrobe could only be one color, what would it be?

Well, obviously green. There are lots of different shades of green that I’ve probably written about.

Philharmonic Hall

What was the first concert you ever went to?

Seals and Crofts in New York City, on November 12th, 1971, with my then-girlfriend, who eventually became my first wife. Boz Scaggs was the underappreciated open act.

What is the best book you’ve ever read?

It’s an impossible question, so I’ll just say the World Almanac because, for a half-century, I would get it every year, and it was my go-to source of enjoyment and information. Or one of these.

What’s your favorite movie of all time?

I just did a blog post about movies, but I don’t know if I could ever narrow it down to a single film.

What’s the stupidest movie or TV show you’ve ever seen?

In general, it would be a reality show. When my daughter was a teenager, she would watch Temptation Island, though she knew it was trash. I couldn’t stand it.

If you could only have one food for the rest of your life, what would you choose?

Well, pie is the perfect food. You can have apple pie, pizza pie, or chicken pot pie, which are all wonderful.

Annoyed

What are your biggest pet peeves?

I have so many, but let’s go with people who can never apologize. They can never be wrong. When they are wrong, they may say, “Sorry if you were offended,” rather than take ownership.

Are you more into brains or looks?

I believe that intelligent women are inherently more attractive.

Do you celebrate any holidays? What’s your favorite?

My favorite holiday is probably Thanksgiving because it involves food other than Halloween candy, Valentine’s Day candy, or chocolate in the Christmas stocking.