What's this?! Two posts in one day? SPOOOOOOOOKY! The 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge goes up on Saturday, and...do I need to do these intros?
The theme for this week's challenge was Halloween! And everyone wrote stories for Halloween! Because it's Halloween!
My favorite time of year! I'm not allowed to enjoy the company of children any other day, but on Halloween there's an endless supply, and always more follow to enjoy my special treats.
I can't give you my recipe, it's a family secret, handed down from my great-great-great-grandmammy Wanda. She escaped the old country with only the shawl on her back and a girl scout under her skirt. Very misunderstood woman. She loved children! Loved to make them cookies. Just like me!
Don't be shy, kiddies, have another cookie! Watch your fingers! Wouldn't want them to break!
Prepare to get your pants scared off by spooktacular freaky fest here!
This day commonly called Halloween is my favorite holiday, even though I've had some doozies--like the year a boy dared another boy to poke me in a non-Facebook manner, or the year I got all dressed up and no one came to the door--but I posted Thriller last year. There wasn't a misspent second putting puzzles together in the basement while listening to Dead Man's Party, either.
As I got older and more vampiric, I got over the silly idea of needing other people to have fun. Yes, I said vampiric. When you grow up with a tendency to be a bit anemic and smolder in sunlight, you start getting called names. The one I didn't mind at all was vampire. Because, you know, er...well....
There was this dude who asked me if I was a vampire once, and I was so busy giggling girly giggles like the girl I was that I didn't answer. It was probably for the best, but being noticed by a socially-conscious Cure fan for those five seconds was fun.
Since the age of four months I've dressed up to blend in with the visiting ghoulies but I've never actually done myself up as a vampire. A devil, Wonder Woman, Tweety Bird, an Alien, Princess Leia, Apricot of Strawberry Shortcake infamy, a witch three years in a row, a flapper (not a French whore, dammit), Prof. LB Gumby, Freddy Kruger, Beetlejuice, a Simpson (really just a yellow bag over my head), a gangland terrorist, a convict, a Kabuki witch, a pirate, Freakazoid (one of the last-minute ideas involving an F! stuck on my shirt), Queen Amidala, another pirate, Lara Croft, a cat, Harry Potter, Zardoz, R2-D2, some other things I can't remember (which annoys me), pathetic crap like someone with a spider drawn on her hand, and the unfortunate alleged victim of an attack by a supporter of the Great Pumpkin, yes, but never a vampire. I don't know why, I guess I never thought of it as disguising myself. It'd be like going as a zombie computer geek. Which I've already done. This year, I've utilized my orange clothes to the max. I am currently a pumpkin.
Sadly, the makeup never goes well and has contributed to more awkwardness than being naturally pale and ghostly the rest of the time. I've been more greenish than usual and slightly yellow for days, and I was grateful my cousin started stripping the year I had 'flu because no one noticed my Minnie Mouse nose had rubbed off. I regret nothing. Except not having a photo from the year I used mascara on my crazy Italian facial hair and totally had such a fabulous beard going on that I had to shave it off the next day.
After the pumpkin Nan and Uncle Joe picked out in Montauk became undead we got a styrofoam Jack O' Lantern and that is lit again today. All that's left is to crank up the tunes. Like Moon Over Bourbon Street by Sting. Hell, any night is a good night to listen to that one. I believe we have deviated from misspent time this week.
The original version hasn't got a proper video so here's a slightly out-of-sync yet still lovely look at Chris Botti playing with a special guest...
If the kung-fu video sync glitch got you down or if you prefer your Sting sounding a bit more like Tom Waits, here's another nifty version by the Belgrade Dixieland Orchestra that has black cats in it.
Happy Halloween and a blessed Samhain to you. See you on the other side.
Perhaps you have already seen this one-take spin around a school where everyone is possessed by the Thriller. If not, see it now an
Although I was given my first radio in 1983, and one of the first pop tunes to become lodged in my head in those early days was Beat It, I admit Thriller never really did it for me. Maybe it was the frikkin' weird eyes Michael Jackson suddenly thought it would be fun to leave me screaming at. But of course I know it backwards and forwards and have the shirt and the glove and in the years since have gotten to appreciate it for the cult classic it is, and part of my brain is screaming at me to point out that yes, of course I love Thriller, don't be silly, it's got Vincent Price! I'm just dead inside. Dead like a juicy, juicy zombie.
You all are no doubt hopped up on candy and want me to cut to the good stuff, so I now bring you something so incredible, I nearly wept at the thought of so many kids getting together to do the same thing and not one stick the mud to be seen. I have no idea what that's like. It's beautiful to watch. I've had too much sugar.
If you watch TV for longer than three minutes, you might be familiar with the ads for the new 3 Musketeers Mint candy...thing. The ads show a woman eating a long candy bar that makes it snow or something because mint means snow! Very much like Peppermint Patties bring on hallucinations of ski lifts.
For a few weeks, we looked in our stores for these seemingly wondrous things, because if there's anything we need, it's candy. And possibly a blizzard. I finally found a bag of bite-size 3 Musketeers Mint candy things at the Rite-Aid Halloween sugar-fest. Me, buying candy? Something is wrong with the planets.
3 Musketeers Mint taste exactly like Peppermint Patties.
However, even the small Peppermint Patties are bigger than these 3 Musketeer Mint things. The name is bigger than the candy. The candy is a one-inch square. That's unfair, if you ask me. I just get into eating candy and it's gone.
I have eaten five 3 Musketeer Mint things in the past hour. It's not snowing yet, unless you take my perpetual seborrhea into account, and I wish you wouldn't, because it freaks me out. Now all I can think of is how many Peppermint Patties I used to eat as a kid, and I wonder what happened to the wrappers. I was going to use them as tiny book covers, man! Anyone who has seen B. Original must realize how ahead of my time I was to consider making books out of candy wrappers. Retro '70s candy wrappers at that, it would've been fabulous.
Happy Halloween, I hope your sugar buzz makes you as high as me!
What happens when you mix Bollywood Superman with hours of caulk removal, Plexiglas cutting, and replacing gaskets to make a shiny new storm window? Last-minute Halloween costumes for my babies, made at 3AM the night before they were to go hitting up the family for treats. You may already know I'm a crazy cat lady, you may already know I have access to scissors and glue, but you still may not be ready for this level of crazy.
First up, Macadamia the mysterious, predicting the future. She helped make her costume, you know. She picked the feathers off a few toys she found in her brother's beds. She loves feathers.
0.8 seconds later, she predicts..."Get in my mouth!"
Are they birds? Are they planes? No, they're the Supercat twins! I'm not going to be the one to decide which of the guys are more super than the other. The Fluffy One has the power to land on 2-inch wide doors and tame the wild sticks in the grass.
The Slinky One can do the dance of enchantment and is able to hover for minutes on end. His Kryptonite comes in the form of Nabisco graham cracker boxes.
I went as a rather pasty-looking pirate. Really. You could tell by my earring and occasional yell of, "Arr!"
