Halloween Shenanigans

Oh Halloween. The greatest holiday of the season, though I have to express my extreme disappointment that I didn't dress up this year. Well, I sort of dressed up ON Halloween. The wife and I got all gussied up for the trick-o-treaters, and I put out the decorations and we had the big basket of candy. We even Dressed up the DOG. Yes, the DOG had a costume. We spent a good 10 minutes before the fun started haggling with each other about how much candy to give each kid so that we wouldn't run out. Turns out the correct answer would have been HALF THE CANDY. That is right, we had TWO kids come to our door. FAIL FAIRFAX! FAIL!

What the crap, do kids not trick or treat anymore?! As I later found out, it appears that your modern texting-phone picture taking-video game playin-pop culture obsessed kids NOW trick or treat at.... are you ready for it? The MALL. They Trick Or Treat and the F-ING MALL! What, do they go door to door getting small articles of clothing, coupons, and possibly the odd but slightly relevant gift like Bananas from the Banana Republic?? What the CRAP. Yea, I know it is "Safer" and stuff, but Halloween is all about being scared shitless, even if it is by your creepy neighbors trying to give you suspect candy. That is why you have PARENTS who go through your candy to pull out all the razor-blades, nails and used condoms. The riveting door to door salesmanship of it is what makes trick or treating so exciting and dare devilish. I blame the parents, the lazy lazy parents who just want to go turn their kids loose in a MALL! and not have to worry about them.



I miss the good old days where kids would spend the day BEFORE Halloween trying to find the biggest portable container possible so that they could collect the crap out of candy. You'd see some kid towing a 32 gallon trashcan down the street door to door filling it with candy, and you'd think "why didn't I think of that, all I have is Pillow Case for a Body Pillow that i'm dragging around, and it doesn't even have convenient wheels like that kid's trashcan does". Yes, THAT is how it used to be, now kids are walking around a MALL, probably texting each other while service people at each store who don't want to be there drop a pre-requisite amount of mall stock candy into each glitter coated Hannah Montana Halloween Bag using some sort of candy distribution equivalent of a Wine Tasting spout. Sadness.

And people used to make their own costumes too. I wander through Party City and yea, all the adults can look like sluts, wooo yea and all that crap, BUT all the KIDS look like SLUTS TOO! Each and every dirty whore costume for the adults has an equally slutty and utterly baffling equivalent in the kids section. You want a scanky little miss Muffet or Strawberry Shortcake? How about an scandalously inappropriate Native American Indian? I know, lets go with the super low cut dress of a prison inmate! (You know, just like real prison!) Makes me understand why everyone goes to the mall cause all the Pedophiles out there would LOSE THEIR MIND. But it IS disturbing! Back in the day those costumes were just grouped under one category, prostitute. And kids weren't allowed to wear it. Oh modern society, you have taken Halloween, made it un-scary and full of fun for kids of all ages, and then you took away the fun, and made it scary again but in a very weird slutty way.

Anyway! I had a good/devastating Halloween. I went with some friends and the wife down to Williamsburg for Bush Garden's "Scare-o-Thon" or whatever it was called. Now let me describe a few things to you (also, this was why I didn't really dress up this Halloween cause I spent the entirety of it in an amusement park). Now the amusement park up till about 6:00 was your run of the mill place with people riding rides and crap like that. One hurdle with this is that it was raining a bit (nothing much, and basically ignored) but other hurdle was that they closed some of the rides cause it was "Too Cold". That's a thing?? They can be like "Sorry, it is too cold outside right now for this ride to run" which makes no sense cause I don't think science comes into play anywhere, the ride should still work. Maybe the person with the brake has slowed reactions and they worry about that? I dunno. So we rode the "Loch-Ness-Monster" ride about 8 times, and fun was had.

The other slightly odd thing was that we went to this one food hall for lunch and watched (now keep in mind this is an Amusement Park. For KIDS

and on a day for KIDS. And everyone in the lunch hall was a KID) and we watched a "Naughty Nurse Show". Now... read that again. We watched.... a Naughty Nurse... show. Now I don't know what medical degree these fine ladies have, but aside from the fact that I wish I had attended their Alma Mater this show was more akin to a Burlesque show than something appropriate for CHILDREN. About halfway through (why it took till halfway, especially with the title "Naughty Nurse Show" most of the parents had taken their kids away. And then after the show the nurses in classy nurse fashion, handed out syringes full of Jello Shots for about a million dollars a pop. The one amusing aspect of this was that my one friend kept trying to another friend to get a nurse to let him take a jello shot as a body shot, and the lack of feasible physics behind this and the ensuing discussion as to the legitimacy of this request was quite enlightening as to aspects and uses of anatomy that I had hitherto been unawares.

Anyway, so we leave there and start walking around. Now the park after 6 does 3 things. 1) It opens up a bunch of "Haunted Houses" which are essentially the back areas of the park re-done to be scary and shit. 2) Certain areas you have to walk through in the park to get from the "You are here sign" to the "You will be here" sign, got turned into "Horror Gauntlets" where they would pump out a shit ton of fog and make it upber scary. And 3) people in ridiculous costumes started jumping out at you EVERYWHERE. There were probably about 500 mannequins throughout the park and about a fifth of them were people just waiting for the right moment to grab you. One area we walked through had 5 guys in a staggered fashion jump out with Chainsaws and scare the shit out of this one guy whom they chased for a good 10 minutes. With CHAINSAWS. He screamed alot. And like I said before, there were ALOT of people with their INFANT CHILDREN AND TODDLERS. The logic behind this aspect alludes me.

But remember earlier when I said I had a good/devastating Halloween? This is where it got devastating. Situation: I was 1) Kind of Drunk, 2) Had eaten something sketchy earlier in the day (I think you all know where this is going) and 3) Was in a park where the only objective of everyone working in the park was to scare the SHIT out of me. Little did they realize how attainable a prize that was likely to be. It was taking ALL of my concentration, and it was NOT easy when we kept going into haunted houses and through Horror Gauntlets where little unsuspecting me would walk past a poorly constructed scare-crow only to find out that it was in fact, not a scare crow but a man with a chainsaw and a fecal wish. Or walking through haunted houses where you would be walking through dark rooms only to have people either A) Jump out at you (surprise) or B) tickle you with a feather on a stick (little weird there. Just a bit).

All in all it was a fun experience minus the obvious difficulties, but no impossibly embarrassing moments were encountered so that was okay then. Hooray Halloween. I will dress up better next year and watch what I eat.