I'm the biggest Halloweenie.

Recently I was trying to remember when I started hating Halloween. It was my absolute favorite holiday most of my life, right up until...what? All the stuff that ruined it, that's what.

I loved Halloween as a kid. Dressing up in scary costumes, running around at night unchaperoned, being allowed to eat your weight in candy (which, in a household where refined white sugar anything was strictly verboten, was like a sanctioned yearly crack binge); but I also loved it because it was the only day of the year my family's (shall we say...non-traditional) relation to the spirit world went unnoticed--was nearly acceptable. When grandma held one of her late-night chats with the ghost of a long dead confederate soldier in April, she was a crackpot. But at Halloween? She was being festive.

Our version of the holiday was like Samhain (had the Catholic church never put the All Saints twist on it later) meets Memorial Day, only with more death. It started a few days before the 31st when grandma would pull out the family albums, the sepia portraits of great-great-grandpa or grandma so-in-so, and lay them all out on on the dining table and start talking. We spent days hearing stories about the dead, during dinner, grocery shopping, riding in the car, while making our costumes and carving the pumpkin. "That was your great-uncle Charlie," Grandma told us, holding up his photo, "Now he was a character. One night, drunk out of his mind, he got the idea to steal the neighbor's crop duster and take it for a spin. He'd never flown mind you, it's a wonder he got the damn thing off the ground...but he did. And then (her shoulders shook with laughter) he promptly crashed the plane into his own barn."

"Did he die in the crash?" we asked. Grandma laughed more, "Heavens no. Charlie? Too stubborn. He crawled out of the wreckage and swore revenge on the bastard who moved the barn into his flight path."

Halloween was how we found out where we had come from in a familial sense, and where we were going in a mortal sense. The one night a year the line between the living and the dead was blurred, souls roamed the earth, and you could actually run around and cavort with them; demanding sacrifices in their name. Through this instructional playlet about mortality--brought to you by an army of tiny little demonic public service messengers--we all got to own death for a bit. Take control of it. It was empowering. Life affirming.

Which brings me to the first time Halloween pissed me off: trying to explain to a kid dressed like a cowboy that their costume was COUNTER PRODUCTIVE, and that they were TOTALLY MISSING THE POINT. Yet I persisted, for awhile. I quietly tolerated mass produced devil costumes and molded plastic Casper get-ups (he is a ghost, after all). Until one year, I think I was about ten, I just gave up. I mean, one could construct a fairly compelling argument as to the death-relatedness and sacrifice-worthiness of let's say, Dracula or Frankenstien....but Barbie? My Little Pony? Jesus Christ, people.

I don't think I enjoyed Halloween again until my early adult years, when it changed from a quasi-pagan family ritual into an excuse to dress in revealing clothing and get drunk and party with your friends--also a fine way to celebrate the holiday in my opinion. Because kneeling in front of a toilet in a demeaning little leotard, yakking up whatever brilliant concoction your host devised shit-faced at three in the morning (What? Nothing left but Creme de Menthe and Milk? Oh, alright...Milky Mint shots!) was equally effective at bringing you face to face with your mortality.

But if I were asked to trace back to the moment or event that truly ruined the holiday for me completely, I'd have to say it was Halloween of 1994, or '93? '94. Doesn't matter for the story.

I shared an apartment with my boyfriend at the time, and our plan was to spend Halloween in the fashion preferred by most sensible twenty-something adults: hiding out at a bar, until closing, or at least until you could be sure you could return home without the threat of any little ballerinas--ballerinas! What is wrong with you people?!--ringing your doorbell. But at the last minute we felt a little guilty about our plan. We talked about our Halloweens as little kids, and how fun it was, and how it's sad, really, that nowadays the grown ups in our neighborhood either go to a party, or a bar, or sit home in the dark and pretend like they aren't there...It's not the kids fault that the holiday had been bought out by Disney and is brought to you by Mars, Inc.

So we ran out to the drug store and bought a few bags of candy, and returned home with the new plan. We'd hand out the candy, and THEN go to the bar.

By late afternoon we found ourselves getting really excited about greeting trick or treaters. As excited as I'd been about the holiday since I was a kid. We even constructed a make-shift haunted house, of sorts. I put a jack-o-lantern on the front porch, and lit a path up the porch steps to the front door with a bunch of candles, and turned out every other light in the house. He put a spooky sound affects album on the record player, and dressed up like a bloodied ghoul. He was to answer the door and scare the crap outta them, and then I'd hand out the candy. We were going to be the best damn candy-hander-outers in the city. It was going to be fucking great.

Night fell, and our first trick-or-treater rang the bell. Yippie! Boyfriend opened the door and said "Yes?" in his darkest, scariest, most ghoulish voice. There stood a mom (or aunt? babysitter? whatever, the grown-up) and a kid. Both were carrying bags, neither wore a costume. They didn't answer. They just stood there.

"You rang?" again, in the scariest, most ghoulish voice.

The mom nudged the kid, who then said, "Oh. Yeah. Um, trick or treat." I stepped in, put a piece of candy in the kids bag, the mom held our HER bag for a piece, I obliged, and they turned around and walked away.

Which was okay. I knew there was going to be a certain amount of, I don't know, dispirited poo-heads. But the fun was coming. We were getting the crappy people out of the way early, is all. The grand parade of sucrose-addled, niftily costumed children delighted by the harvest moon and our efforts, who'd gayly scream "Trick or Treat!!" at the top of their little lungs were to arrive any minute.

Except for the part where they were all the crappy people. No, seriously. Of the measly number of trick or treaters we did have (for a heavily-populated city neighborhood), only a couple wore costumes--if you call plastic fangs or a face mask and street clothes a 'costume'--but the bulk didn't even bother with that. We'd given up on anyone saying "trick or treat" about a half-hour into the whole nightmare. The worst part was the number of adults who had their kids ask for extra treats, for their 'sick (brother, sister, cousin) at home'. The first time we heard that plea we felt sorry, understandably, for the poor kid who was missing out. But he tenth time? I was praying these people were simply greedy liars using Halloween to teach their children how to be greedy liars, because any other explanation was too horrible to imagine... like if there was an actual flu epidemic going around and there were idiots out there who thought it was a good idea to feed sickly bedridden children Snickers bars. Or that someone was so impoverished and desperate, they actually NEEDED the extra candy, to stock up for winter. Whatever the reason, the no-costume-wearing, no-trick-or-treat-saying, fucked up little can I have some more people were REALLY FUCKING AWFUL AND RUINED HALLOWEEN. I HATE HALLOWEEN. I HATE IT!

Wow. I guess that answers my question. Now excuse me while I begin my activities for this evening: watching tv, drinking wine, and pretending I'm not home.

On the first day of Fitzmas, councel gave Libby...

Two counts of Purgury,
Two counts of False Statements,
And Obstraaac-shun ah uh of Just-ice!

Maybe the times they ARE a changin'?

At the laundomat tonight, the news comes on the teevee, and I overhear "Cheney" and "indictment" and "CIA operative" and I run over to the teevee to join a middle aged woman who is also watching the news, and I bellow excitedly, "Is it Fitzmas?! Is it Fitzmas?!" completely forgetting that I'm at the laundromat--not exactly the epicenter of blogsphere in-jokes--but before I can explain or change my question to something more middle-aged-lady-at-the-laundromat appropriate, she answers in a thick polish accent:

"No. We do not get Fitzmas to-day. But I think tomorrow, perhaps."

Thank you Sister Rosa.

In 1976 I was an eight year old kid living in the shadow of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in a suburb of Philadelphia called New Jersey.

That year it was announced in my school that something called "Negro History Week" was to be expanded into "Black History Month". I giggled when the principal said "Negro", we all did, because it was such a silly old-time thing to say. Who the hell said Negro? All the black people I knew called each other cousin. I wondered why it wasn't called "Cousin History Week". This is the kind of logic you got from an eight year old who thought New Jersey was a suburb of Philadelphia.

During that February, our teacher would spend each morning telling us stories about influential black people, and their contribution to society. We learned about Frederick Douglass, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and W.E.B DuBois. We read books about the civil war, civil liberties, and civil rights; and the movement that began when one woman refused to give her seat on the bus to a white man when she was told to.

Even though it was only 1976 (just over ten years into the modern civil rights movement) it was inconceivable to me that there could even BE such a thing as a 'white' section of the bus. I couldn't imagine a time when people were called negroes and were made to eat in separate restaurants, or drink from different water fountains. In my world in 1976, black was beautiful, black was powerful. My black aunts and uncles (how I addressed the adults in my life) wore their hair in afros and dressed like the guys in Earth, Wind, and Fire and had names like Chunk-O-Funk and sat wherever they damn-well pleased, and it had always been that way. As far as I knew, Jim Crow and segregation went the way of the dinosaur like, a million years ago.

But, I learned, it had barely been twenty years. Which meant when mom was an eight year old girl like me, she wouldn't have been able to go to a restaurant with any of her band members. When my mom was eight, my babysitters, Grace and Mike, would not have been allowed to be legally married because Mike was white and Grace was black. Uncle Chunk wouldn't have been able to live in that sweet hi-rise apartment complex downtown because back then the only black men allowed inside were there to sweep the floor. There'd only be white kids in my school.

The butterfly effect of what our lives would be like had one woman decided to stand up and give away her seat overwhelmed me. And the knowledge that a single, powerful, non-violent gesture could change the very course of history--ultimately change the law--created and informed every political and social ideal I have to this day.

I learned a lot that year. I even got a better handle on my geography. Like, for instance, I know now that New Jersey is NOT a suburb of Philadelphia.

It's a suburb of New York City.

abscence makes the feart grow honder

As I mentioned a few days ago, Mom's here for a work visit. So there won't be a peep from me until next week. And no, I'm not going to make any 'overbearing mother in the small apartment' jokes. Mom's been a peach. A delight.

Now I'm off for my bed making lesson, as its recently come to my attention I've been making them incorrectly these past twenty three years of living on my own.

Have a good weekend!

A quick rundown of my morning.

Morning dog walk and a man, a very, very large man--think Mr. Creosote--paused at a red light in his large American gas-guzzler, wolfing down fistfuls of White Castle breakfast whatevers, windows open, who honks to get my attention so that he may serenade me with lines from the song playing on the radio, which, lucky me! happen to be "...Ehef you want my body, aaand you think I'm sexy, cuh'mon sugar let me know..."

Picking up the phone to call the landlord, again, to remind them that the heat is still not on, and it's only fifty degrees in the building, and there's a six week old baby downstairs, and hearing the tell-tale signal there are voice mail messages, noting we were home at the time all the messages were left, wondering if I need to make a repair call with the phone company, and then realizing (a) I shut the ringer off the phone before a nap three day ago and never turned it back on and (b) I'm not a loser with no friends who never gets invited anywhere, but am, however, someone who needs to make several apologetic calls before I become a loser with no friends who never gets invited anywhere.

Finding out I have more in common with, and more admiration for the talent of, Julia Sweeney than I thought possible. (hit the realplayer link, ff to approx 38:00)

Remembering my mom is coming tomorrow, for a week, and that I need to wash bed linens; but forgetting I haven't a penny to my name until AFTER I've dragged all the laundry down to the laundromat. Dragging said dirty laundry back home again.

Realizing the no money thing means stretching these eight cigarettes further than has been possible for me since the sixth grade. Chain smoking half of them out of worry. Picking out which household appliance I will be hawking on the stoop this afternoon.

Becoming very depressed after reading the resume one of the out-of-work neighbor hipsters gave me "in case I ever need more production assistants at work," because he's more qualified to do my job than I am (by like...let's just say the kid has credentials)--did I mention he's OUT OF WORK?

Ditching my daily job searches on Craigslist and Mandy. See above.

Being reminded that the only thing in the world more delicious and restorative than my Sunday Sauce, is my leftover Sunday Sauce.

Pissed I so capriciously and prematurely empty all the ashtrays around here--the ones with all the nice, long butts in them--but glad we have a good bottle of red wine ready to be corked, as getting saucy and snuggling with the pup is quickly becoming the only option left in this freezing, penniless, house of dirty beds today.

Happy that I have that option, at least.

Realizing the full extent to which this weather is not for everyone.

If you live in or around the tri-state area, you are a soggy thing most likely; it's been alternating between heavy rain and full-on downpours for over a week now. The nightly news looks like stock footage from the lesser-hit areas of the Gulf Coast; people standing in ankle-deep water on their raised front porches; semis hydroplaning through intersections before floating to a stop. All that stuff that happens in the North after a two month drought, after the soil has turned into concrete, absorbent as glass. The upshot? My normally flaky skin has an uncharacteristic dewy freshness. And we live on the second floor.

Since G and I long occasionally for the whole buy a house and have a family thing--something you can't do in New York City unless you're pulling down beaucoup bucks or are willing to settle for a two bedroom co-op in Hell for which you'd have to shell out 3/4 of your monthly earnings--we talk, sometimes, about leaving the city. And when we do, the cities we gravitate toward are either much farther North on the East coast, or on the Northwest coast. Places where the livin' is cheap and easy but the weather is inclement more often than not, and you can count the sun shiny days on one hand. He, the Texan, says he'd be fine living somewhere with more rain and snow, but I can't help but wonder if the bleak, bone-chilling eight weeks of total darkness that is February and March in upstate New York (and I'm not talking Poughkeepsie, I'm talking Finger Lakes) would make him go all The Shining on my ass.

I've been using this week as a test: "This rain huh? Wow, sure is cold and dark...Imagine if it were like this for weeks, for months...because that's what it's like in..."

So far G has talked weather relativism. How staying indoors for a few months due to hundred degree temps and humidity (like in Texas) is no different than staying indoors because it's freezing and miserable. And then he runs his thumb along the sharpened tip of the ax he bought because "it was such a weird thing to see at the 99 cent store", and smiles; and wonders aloud if months of forced isolation isn't just what he needs to finally finish his novel.

Your results may vary.

So remember, if your cell phone rings and it's an international call from country code 234...DO NOT ANSWER THE PHONE! Hand your phone over to the nearest neo-con and say, "It's for you."

Happy Birthday Mom!

I was thinking, earlier today, about the kind and genteel fashion in which we age. I don't think I look any different than I did ten years ago. My friends don't look any different than they did ten years ago; our hairstyles and a few pounds up or down not withstanding. But if it were possible to magically POP! into the ten-year-younger me and then go take a gander in the mirror?...well I'm sure I'd shit my pants and never stop screaming. But luckily one little wrinkle becomes two, the grey starts with a single hair, then multiplies slowly. You're really only ever one day older than you were yesterday. We are spared from waking up one morning with our tits at our belly buttons, our testicles are at our knees, all trapped inside a crumpled paper bag of a body that has to moan--Awwwah--every time it gets down into or up out of a chair. It happens nice and slow. So you don't shit your pants. Until you're really old and are shitting your pants, but by then it seems like you had been forever. Actually, if you look at it the right way, with the exception of those middle seventy or so years, you have.

Feeling "lucky".

[SUPER FABULOUS west-village hair stylist neighbor, in our foyer; casually]:

"So, wow. You cut your hair."

"Yeah. I did."

"...short."

"Yep. Short."

"Well, don't worry. It'll grow into something workable in a few months. Feel lucky it's such a great color."

Life after the cramps

Back in the day I used to go to the bars. The thing I liked most about the bars, even more than the adult beverages and the witty repartee, was being exposed to new music. When I heard music I liked, I would turn to someone, the bartender usually, and say "I'm digging this hip sound. Who's puttin it out?" or something similar, and the bartender would say, "It's the [Blah-blah's], aren't they wicked cool?" or something similar, and then I would go buy their CD at the record store. It was in this tres-analog fashion I built what the kids call "a CD collection."

But that was back in the day. Now that I no longer frequent the bars, I no longer hear new music; nor am I informed when an old favorite has a new release. A perusal of my CD collection would give one the impression the music industry ground to a halt around the time Pavement released Terror Twilight in the spring of '99; which was, you might correctly assume, when I stopped frequenting the bars.

The obvious solution? Go spend more time in bars. However this is not necessary...now that I've found Pandora. I can tell Pandora that the most current CD I own is Terror Twilight, and she doesn't mock me like the kids at the Virgin Megastore. She's all, "Then you were totally a Guided by Voices freak, and Robert Pollard has a new CD, and you will love it." And she plays it, and I do. And feel safe and warm and good, and strangely compelled to buy an iPod for the first time since they hit the market.

All the bars around here only play 80's music anyway, and I already own all that shit because I was a kid hanging out in bars and Pandora hadn't been invented yet.

I'm gibbon you all I got.

The most insanely adorable--of the "you are emotionally dead if you don't go 'awwwww'" variety--video EVER!
(via #1; heretofore, "The Mush")

But I gotta say, the ad for orange milk? ...Tastes like a dreamcicle!??? Man. That's a joke, right? I hope they ain't giving that freaky cocktail-O-nasty to the monkey.

I'll be here all zee weeek.

Insert Monk-style late night talk show monologue joke about putting the "tit" in entitlement, here.

"Okay, just to be clear...

...the Grand Canyon was formed 4,500 years ago."
"Yep."
"By a flood."
"Yes, when God flooded the earth to punish man for his sins."
"The Big Flood, the Noah's Ark flood."
"The same."
"So the earth was underwater for like five months, and when the water receded into the oceans, poof, there was a Grand Canyon."
"The Great Flood formed the canyon, yes."
"I wonder...how come all the other recorded major floods--Zuyder Zee, The Yellow river, The Nothsea coast--how come they didn't make a Grand Canyon? Albeit, you know, littler ones. Canyonettes."
"The Great Flood was a punishment sent by God, those other floods...were just floods."
"So you have to add 'wrath' to make a Grand Canyon."
"I wouldn't put it that way, but yes."
"Otherwise it's just a meteorological event. Like New Orleans being under water."
"Well, in some instances, but not New Orleans. Many Christians believe New Orleans was punished for its sins. The sins of the men who live there. The drugs, prostitution, gambling, pre-marital sex, open acceptance of homosexuals and transvestites...its a modern-day Babylon"
"So Katrina was sent by God to punish sinners."
"There's no doubt."
"Aha!"
"Aha?"
"Katrina was God's wrath! So when they finally pump the last bit of water out of that sin-hole, there'll be a Grand Canyon!"
"There will not be a Grand Canyon."
"Sure there will. Sin plus wrath plus flood equals canyon. You said so yourself.
"That's not...you're confusing things."
"Look, I'm just trying to work with your formula here. Let's go back to the beginning...the Grand Canyon was formed by a flood 4,500 years ago..."

Breaking up with Tom Delay

You'd think--what with so many GOP crimes and misdemeanors finally making the front page--I'd be exhausted from victory dancing and hoarse from screaming "yippie" non stop. You'd think I'd have a good gloat working, at least. Sore smiley muscles from sporting the Grin Of The Vindicated so long.

But not so much.

My reaction is more like...you know when you've suspected a partner is having an affair? Nothing you can prove, just a creeping fear brought on by some hinky behavior on their part. And when you get up the nerve to confront them they give you the I can't believe you'd even accuse me of such a thing. It hurts that you don't trust me spiel, and then commence with assassinating your character: you're paranoid, immature, jealous, controlling--maybe YOU'RE the one having the affair. That whole thing. But you were right, of course. You came home early, found your partners bits all entangled in someone else's business, there was no denying it, they don't even try. They just slip their pants back on, fill up a box with their shit (all of which you bought with your credit card, you note), pause at the front of the door and say, "This never would have happened if you hadn't pushed me away. Congratulations, you got what you wanted."

It all kinda feels like that.

Try new Cronies! Now with 80% more country-destroying power!

What do you call "an important government job occupied by a person with no apparent qualifications other than strong personal, political, or business ties to a member of the administration"? Ans: A Brownie. Now go find one!

Hint: You could start by looking here. A freebie, from me to you.

[via TMN]