So another day of ghosts and goblins and ghouls comes to our bright metropolis. This will be my second year in Hollywood for Halloween and I feel slightly more prepared for it this year. That is not to say that I have gone crazy at the Goodwill store buying faded feather boas and distressed leather jeans, but that I am now mentally ready to see a 300 pound black man in a Playboy bunny costume standing in the center of Santa Monica Boulevard (this was the point last year at which Dorothy here said to herself, "Uhhh, you're
definitely not in Iowa anymore!"). You also know you're not in Iowa anymore when the police warn parents to watch out for candy laced with cannabis.
The irony about Halloween in Hollywood is that everyone makes such a big deal out of the crazy costumes when on any given night in this city you will see someone or something scarier or more ludicrous with complete nonchalance or unawareness about how absurd they are wandering down Hollywood or Sunset Boulevard. With all the actors in this city, it's not that uncommon to dress up, put on a frightening face and go about being a different person for a day - or every day of your life if you are some people. However, I understand - Halloween is about the candy for the kids and the drinking for the adults and human beings will come up with any reason to celebrate and get candy and beer.
If I seem like a killjoy when it comes to Halloween, I have a good reason for it. My first memory of trick-or-treating is running around my entire hometown of Epworth, Iowa (where the population is
now 1,600) with my five older cousins, trying to keep up for two hours, and losing half of my candy from the bottom of the paper bag my parents gave me (buckets were never an option with my parents). This is bad enough for a five year old, but as we were all trudging up the porch steps of my aunt's house on Main Street, she came running around the corner dressed in a mummy costume with fake blood all over it and picked me up. She stuck a fake knife to my throat and spun me around the yard all the while laughing in a deep gutteral chuckle.
I tend to think my aunt was drunk.
But I also have a theory that my father asked her to do this. For a while as a child, I had a terrible fear of knives. I had open-heart surgery when I was five, the summer before I started kindergarten, and naturally there was some subconscious trauma that made me associate knives with pain and death. Go figure. My father, an Army Reservist, a All-American dad kind of guy, graduated from the "Toughen Up, Soldier" School of Childbearing . I'm sure he thought that if my aunt spun me around the yard with a knife stuck to my throat laughing demonically long enough I would come to some sort of rationalization and see that knives don't kill people: people kill people - which is what I would have done to both of them had I been taller than 4' 5," weighed more than 60 pounds, had a drivers' license and a bank account that would have allowed me to go to the sporting goods' store and buy a firearm. Screw knives, five year olds know how to get the job done.
So that is my earliest memory of trick-or-treating. In subsequent years I suffered the agony that most kids in the '80's did of having to wear those hard plastic masks with half-centimeter wide breathing holes and eye slits and wearing a sort of jumpsuit made out of the same plastic as they make tablecloths from that sort of resembled a HAZMAT suit.
Looking back on this, there is something sort of cruel about adults encouraging children to get dressed up in goofy ways and then laughing at them. Like the time I wore the Puff the Magic Dragon costume with the green face makeup made out of Crisco (as did half of my cousins - the Puff the Magic Dragon costume will be an heirloom I'm sure if it's still around). Sure, I won second prize at the costume party and everyone thought I was cute or something like that, but I couldn't do anything fun with that stupid long tail dragging around when the balloons that were supposed to hold it up popped. All the adults laughed at it. I was mortified. My mom was late to pick me up from the party and I couldn't even play on the swingset while I waited. Thankfully, by the time I was in third grade we all got smart. Daddy and us girls agreed that being an Army guy was the best option - he threw my sister and I each one of his green fatigue shirts, helped us roll up the sleeves, plopped an Army baseball cap on each of our heads, got out the green war paint stick (it seems I have a history of painting my face green for Halloween) and away we went in our tennies and jeans bound for battle, on a mission for Tootsie Pops and little packages of Smarties. By fifth grade I stopped trick-or-treating altogether. I discovered that with the money I saved my parents on a Halloween costume they would buy me cool clothes or books or toys or something I would get long-term enjoyment out of.
I do, however, appreciate the spirit of creativity that goes into Halloween. If you're going to do a costume, then you should do it right: really put some effort and thought into it, not just buy some fishnet stockings and glitter eyeshadow. To that degree, I have to say, the last time I went out for Halloween in my hometown, some time in the early 2000's what I saw definitely had what I've seen in Hollywood beat, (though I will admit I haven't completely embraced the Hollywood Halloween.) For example, the woman laying on the cart in a hopsital gown with the bloody sheet over her and the bald on who popped his head up in between her legs. The costume: "Giving Birth." Or the two kids' mattresses bungee-corded to a woman's front and back side wide single red stripe painted down the middle of the front. Just think about it for a minute. While crass, still creative . . .
So we do this all in the name of beer and candy and some homage to the spirit of the dead who roam amongst us. The way I see it, it's easier to just go to the liquor store on the corner, get a 12-pack and a bag of Hershey's miniatures and flicker the lights on and off a couple of times, light a candle in the bathroom, chant "Bloody Mary" into the mirror once or twice and call it a night. If Bloody Mary does happen to show up and attempt to scratch my eyes out, I'll offer her a Coors Light and we can hang out and tell scary ghost stories. Something tells me she might have some good ones . . .
