Halloween Roundup

Who wore it better?

Our Halloween was quiet, as is usual these days—we wore a couple of dinosaur costumes and waited outside to greet about seventeen trick-or-treaters, spaced out from 6:15 to 8:20 or so. (We always wait until 9 PM before slipping back inside.)

A pair of Ghostfaces from Scream were the only pop culture reference we saw this year: there was also a cop, a princess, a few skeletons, and most memorably, a shark paired with a shark attack victim. Classic stuff. Sorry I don’t have any pics for you, but these kids were shy enough as it was, and their parents didn’t really know us, so I didn’t feel right about asking.

We played a Halloween mix while we waited outside and offered Cheetos and Doritos this year—still snacks worth acquiring, and ones that I’m less likely to raid than chocolates. Here’s that playlist, by the way—a nice mix that includes Gaga, Rihanna, and Eilish hits along with older standbys like “The Purple People Eater” and “Season of the Witch.” (If you just want a sample, I’ve inserted the first video below.)

It’s a bit of an adjustment from our own very different Halloween experiences. When I was a kid, the children from the block would gather into a single Halloween bloc and we’d hit all the houses on the two blocks of 69th Street—I’d estimate there were fifteen or so participating houses. The people involved all knew each other fairly well, and a good time was had by all.

Janice snorts, “Fifteen? Those are rookie numbers.” Although she didn’t enjoy much about the densely populated and often high-income area of Long Island, its Halloween was an opportunity not to be missed. She often did it solo and treated it like a competitive marathon—plus, hitting the same house again in a different costume was not an unknown practice. That’s a maneuver that never would’ve occurred to my younger self, but I have to say, if you’re willing to invest in two costumes, slip back home during vital trick-or-treating time, do a quick-change, and then risk discovery, it could be argued that you’ve earned that extra candy.

I certainly wouldn’t turn away such an enterprising kid. The Ghostfaces asked if we might offer extra chips if they sang us a song. We, of course, complied.

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Apologies for scheduling this one to update in the evening rather than the morning. I’m pecking away at work on The Journal of Wordplay #8; I’ll have enough of it done by EOD tomorrow to share some preliminary mockups with contributors.

Next: The art of altered book covers!