Trick or Treat For Halloween

Happy Halloween! I started off a cloudy, damp, windy morning with spooky Saturday cartoons. In addition to the classics It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Garfield's Halloween Adventure, I ran a couple of Disney shorts from my Walt Disney Treasures sets.

Many of you have probably seen the 1953 Donald Duck cartoon Trick or Treat. The theme song is quoted in the title of this entry. Far less well known is a more recent Mickey Mouse horror tale, 1995's Runaway Brain. Mickey wants to make money for a vacation with Minnie, but he gets a lot more than he bargained for when a mad scientist manages to switch his brain with the brain of a Frankenstein-like monster!

As Leonard Maltin says in his intro, this is not your father's Mickey Mouse...and not your little sibling's, either. This cartoon is genuinely freaky, from the opening with Mickey playing a video game where Dopey drop-kicks the evil witch to the actual brain-switch. There's some really nice animation, though (like the brain-switch), and I love the Disney in-jokes. (I caught the name of the monster and the mad scientist.)

I dressed as a witch for Halloween this year. A nice witch. I didn't feel like slathering myself with green makeup, and my face is about as scary as a marshmallow. I did wear a little makeup, dark eyeshadow and cherry-red lipstick. I wore my good orange t-shirt, long black ruffled skirt, my black bangle bracelets and beads from the Big E, and the hat I bought from CVS. The hat is really too small and refused to stay on all day, but other than that, I thought the costume looked great. (I wish I'd thought to get a picture of me in it, but I completely forgot my camera. Oh, well.)

Work was utterly insane. It's not normally this crazy on Halloween...but we don't normally have 15,000 things going on besides Halloween, either. Tomorrow is the beginning of the month, and a lot of people either have or will be receiving government funds. At least three Philadelphia pro sports teams have major games this weekend, including the World Series Phillies/Yankees battle. Pearl Jam is playing the last concert ever in the about-to-be-demolished Spectrum stadium. Add numerous parades, hayrides, and festivals to that list, too.

The result of all this activity? We had long lines all day. The popularity of the World Series was proved by how many people showed up in Phillies jerseys and t-shirts, rather than costumes or anything related to Halloween. A few other people did appear in costume, including a hockey player and a girl sailor in a cute hat with an anchor on it. A manager compromised - he wore a Phillies t-shirt...over a huge latex "beer belly" as a typical Philly fan. My witch costume went over really well. Many people complimented me on it, said I was a pretty witch or very cute, which is what I was going for.

I had to do this week's grocery shopping after work. Thank goodness it had thinned out considerably by the time I finished. I needed more than usual, too. I bought two packs of chicken (one legs, one breasts), yogurt, apples, bananas, pears, escarole (it was cheaper than spinach), canned pumpkin for baked goods, and salsa and fajita-sized whole-wheat tortilla wraps for chicken tacos later this week.

Trick-or-treating was extended this year, thanks to Halloween being on a weekend. Oaklyn's trick-or-treating lasted from 12:30 to 6:30, giving me plenty of time to go home, put my groceries away, take off my work pants (which I wore to ride to and from work), change back into the skirt, freshen up my make-up, and head over to my dad and uncle's house to help them give out candy.

Dad claimed they don't usually get too many kids. They live on a dead-end street fairly far off the main road. I thought we did pretty good, though. There were some really cute costumes. I saw one group dressed as Biblical characters giving out papers with religious messages and candy corn. There were soldiers, a mini-Hiawatha and his Laughing Water mama, a black fairy or butterfly, Belle from the Disney Beauty and the Beast, a very pretty angel, a Transformer, Spider Man, a cute little lion, Elmo, at least three Cinderellas, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, a train conductor, a ghoul and his little skeleton brother, cowboys and cowgirls, several pirates of both genders, an Adam West-era Batman, a devil, Michael Jackson, and a whole platoon of pixies in huge neon tutus that Madonna would have loved in the 80s. Dolores' 2-year-old granddaughter May and her parents showed up dressed as bees in puffy, hot, home-made yellow-and-black costumes, complete with a big cloth "hive" in May's wagon.

The clouds that had hung around all day finally burst around quarter of 5. I waited around a little longer to see if any kids braved the rain, but the wind had picked up and it was getting much colder. I just said good-bye to Dad and Jodie (who were watching the 1942 Cat People on TCM) and walked home.

I spent the rest of the night watching Mad Monster Party? and more cartoons and baking Pumpkin Loaf Cake from the low-fat dessert cookbook. Runaway Brain was far from Mickey's first encounter with the darker side of Disney. He'd appeared in two spooky shorts in the late 20s and early 30s. Haunted House is something like Skeleton Dance with Mickey providing the music, but it does have its charms, including some literal outhouse humor. Mad Doctor from 1933 is much better. Mickey pursues the dognapped Pluto through a dungeon of horrors run by the really scary scientist of the title. He's attacked by skeletons and scary bats and wanders through hallways in a couple of neat shots.

If there's one thing I do appreciate, it's how much children's store-bought costumes have improved over the years. When I was a kid, a cheap kid's costume meant a printed plastic smock with a scratchy, sharp-edged mask that probably restricted a lot of their sight. As much as I wish they did, not everyone has the time or the skill that my mom does to make costumes for their children. At the very least, most of the costumes are made from fabric, and if there's a mask, it's small or made from more flexible material. Some of those store-bought costumes I saw today admittedly looked quite nice. The angel and black fairy getups were stunning.

Right now, I'm listening to the Original London Cast of The Phantom of the Opera, as I've done every Halloween night since high school. Whether you're at home like me or off to a party or sporting event, I hope all of you had a wonderful Halloween. For those of you who won't be around, enjoy this spooky weekend!