phosfate

Wednesday Addams accompanied by a very tall White Rabbit including top hat. Elsa. Iron Man. Tiny witch. Zombie Space Jam Bugs Bunny. Airline pilot but in shorts.

The Fourth Doctor was not at Target this year (I always end up buying groceries on Halloween), so I could not shout, "Doctor! Thank God you're here!" as he went off in search of beer and Andy Capp's Hot Fries.*




*Target does not actually sell these - you have to go to suss gas stations or Dollar Tree - but I like saying Andy Capp's Hot Fries because he's, like, the worst possible character to license for snack food. "Oh Andy Capp, you wife-beating drunk." It's like selling Zodiac Killer Liquorice Hoods.

Thomas Dolby - "One of our Submarines is Missing"
The Rolling Stones - "Sympathy for the Devil"
Cab Calloway (or Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, as preferred) - "Ghost Riders in the Sky"
Pet Shop Boys - "The Last to Die"
TsuShiMaMiRe - "UFO for You"
M - "Mister mystere"
Matt Berry - "Devil Inside"
Cibo Matto - "10th Floor Ghost Girl"
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - "Fire"
BB King - "Into the Night"
Adam and Joe - "Nutty Room"
The Alan Parsons Project - "(The System of) Dr Tarr and Professor Fether"
Oingo Boingo - "Skin"
Patti Smith - "Dancing Barefoot"
Donovan - "Season of the Witch"
Eban Schletter - "Devil Doll"

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Halloween here was very cold, but we still got a few kids. Older ones who could go outside without dying.

I can't quite get my patter right. "Hello there, Spectre of Death! Hello, Scary Pirate!" Also shrieked, "NO! Jeez, you'll burn yourself!" at a Dad who picked up his son's lightsaber by the blade. It's odd to feel a kid looking at you funny from behind a Darth Vader helmet. But they got candy and soft toys, so they didn't complain. (I save unopened fast-food toys and minis to hand out. They're always the first to go.)

Now the candy goes in the freezer, and I get my work basket back.

This wasn't one of the classics. No night of screaming with Sharon and Susan, no theatre full of teenagers watching Halloween or Rocky Horror, no running home shrieking in terror (and lapping Dad!) when some fucker answers the door via intercom: "Whoooooo's therrrrrrre? WHOOOOOOOOO'S THERRRRRRRRRE???" But that's okay. Even a dullish Halloween is good. I felt a positively Dickensian flood of holiday spirit.

Or Burtonian. Whatever.

There was also a kid in Target wearing a full-body Stitch suit, the spacesuit with the extra arms dangling on fishing line. Awesome. His poor baby sister was, humiliatingly, dressed as Piglet. Her folks will show her dates photos of this in 15 years, eventually driving her to the Greyhound station and a life of dissipated prostitution on the Sunset Strip. Parents, for the love of God, think about what you're doing!

My own childhood costumes, once I was big enough to have a say in them, sucked. This was, I think, because I insisted on making them and hadn't a clue what I was doing. This has continued into adulthood, including yesterday's black sequined devil tail, which kept dropping off as though I were a panicky lizard. The only success I can recall was the time when I improvised three bullet wounds to the forehead, done in El Marko at the office. Should you ever want to try it, the key is shading the holes properly to show you've drilled through a centimeter of skull.

I...um...I seem to have wandered off my topic a bit. My point is, I hope you had a happy Halloween, and please enjoy your Crazy Mexican Dead People Christmas.

Trick-or-Treat kinda blew. The temperature dropped quickly around 7:00, and the already small neighborhood child population scurried inside. We've still got two or three pounds of Fun Size left.

Wait. That's not bad. Never mind.

Will the Lawn Guy and his wife brought over their baby, Griffin. All the other H'ween babies were peapods, pumpkins, chili peppers, etc. You know, the Anne Geddes thing.* Griffin was a squid. With big stuffed tentacles and a pointy spotted head. You'd try to pick him up and get a fake limb instead of a real one. He looked like mutated Y2K Stewie.

I tried to teach him to say "Victory is mine," but he wasn't having it.


ETA:

Here is the costume. But Griffin's had feetsies.



_{*Note to Bonita: "ANNE GEDDES SERIOUSLY STARTING TO LOSE HER SHIT."}