"You killed the zombie Flanders!"
"He was a zombie?"
- Bart and Homer Simpson, "The Simpsons"
Boo!
Did I scare you? I doubt it.
For those of you "puffing on the crack pipe" to use a quaint expression, today is Halloween. It's a strange holiday. On one end of the extreme, parents dress up their toddlers as pumpkins, devils, ballerinas, etc. These kids are utterly clueless as to why their otherwise normal parents decide to dress them like soup cans or mufflers.
"Say 'Trick or treat' honey. Come on, say it."
"I pooped my pants!"
The opposite end of the spectrum is the 18-year-old male with a five o'clock shadow and two kids by two different teenage mothers. He makes absolutely no pretense of experiencing Halloween. His costume? Clothing.
"Gimme candy."
"Where are your costumes?"
"I want my f-king fun-sized Three Musketeers."
"Okay, here you go. Hey, don't take the lawn gnome!"
Halloween is also known for its pranks or "tricks." Some communities, Detroit for instance, celebrate by participating in urban renewal projects. So filled are they with the holy Halloween spirit that they burn down half their town. Go Red Wings.
For the properly socialized, destruction is limited to eggs, toilet paper and anthrax-laced flaming dog excrement. Sometimes though, a prankster can go too far. Okay, how was I supposed to know fire ants swarmed like Democrats on a welfare check? They released the dog from the hospital. Eventually.
Halloween started as a Celtic ceremony in the highlands of Scotland or Ireland or Manhattan prior to the birth of Christ. As our ancestors waited around for the crops to grow and television to be invented, they needed something to occupy time.
"Hey, we should make fire to celebrate God not blighting our crops," said a Scot from the Upper West Side, thankful to be chomping on a celery stalk instead of a dirt clod.
Their harvest festivals were subsumed in the tide of Christianity sweeping across Europe. Pope Emeril IV, worried the pagans wouldn't obey his all-powerful hat, grafted All Saints Day onto their orgy of bonfires. Citizens would dress as saints and beg for food for the poor. Thousands of years later, UNICEF would master the technique.
Among all the fun, frivolity and campaigning for Third World debt relief, there seems to be something missing from Halloween:
"What are you supposed to be young man?"
"A duck-billed platypus."
"O-kay. How about you, little girl?"
"I'm the wind."
There's no more fear associated with today's date anymore. This is not a new development. When I was little - being 6' 5" makes that a long time ago - my costumes were not frightening. I was Luke Skywalker, an astronaut, a soldier, even Megatron, evil leader of the evil Decepticons. The Megatron costume, hand-made by my mother who deserves a gold medal for effort, made me look like a tin foil-wrapped baked potato with eyes.
Suburban trick-or-treaters have an aversion to saying "Trick-or -treat" when asking for their candy, let alone "thank you." The trio of a mad pirate, Harry Potter and Russell Crowe from "Gladiator" on your doorstep restrain themselves from sneering at your Milky Way and asking for your wallet.
It's time to take back Halloween. Since I was born and raised in suburbia, this comes from that frame of reference. City dwellers and country folk can modify the following appropriately.
They arrive at the door with their hearts racing. That's when you flip the switch and play Bob Dylan songs. Tell them millions of people consider him talented. Not only will you horrify them, but break their faith in the collective intelligence of humanity as well.
Next come the questions. Ask each child to answer a series of knowledge-based questions. Name the presidents in reverse order from Bush to Hoover, formulate a complex quadratic equation, carbon date the earth's crust and name the state bird. Failure will crush their spirits, force them to doubt their futures and deny them candy.
If they answer correctly, a final test. A clip of Chris Tucker's toe-curling performance in "The Fifth Element." If the children survive this ultimate horror, they have earned their candy.
An admittedly Darwinistic view of Halloween, but an effective way to scare the kids and instill valuable life lessons.
I'm going to make a great dad.
Before we adjourn for the week, last Wednesday I asked people to send in their ideas about punishing Osama bin Laden. Based on the lack of response I've encountered, I conclude no one on this campus cares about anything, ever. The best one I received was from Heather Legg, a senior philosophy major.
"How about just sending Osama bin Laden a few copies of 'that other publication' and force-feeding him some weapons-grade hamburger?" she philosophizes. That seems a little harsh. I wouldn't wish the Generation - whose ass we're going to kick on Nov. 12 at LaserTron - on my worst enemy. Or his dog.
