The Music of the Night

Happy Halloween, all! Actually, I had a very quiet Halloween, especially compared to the last few years. I worked late tonight, so I didn't get to help out with trick-or-treating. I did get the laundry done this morning. I was surprised at how busy it was! I figured everyone would be getting their kids ready for tonight or themselves ready for parties. Thankfully, I did get a washer and a dryer pretty fast. I had a very large load, including towels.

When I got home, I ran Halloween specials as I put the clothes away and had leftovers for lunch. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is the most famous of the trio. Linus insists that the Great Pumpkin will arise out of a sincere pumpkin patch on Halloween night and give treats to good little girls and boys. Lucy and the other kids scoff, but Sally's willing to spend a night in the pumpkin patch with her Sweet Baboo. Meanwhile, Charlie Brown has his own problems with trick-or-treating, and Snoopy begins his eternal World War I battle with the Red Baron.

When most people think of Halloween specials, this is probably the one that comes to mind. Actually, there's an awful lot of filler (Snoopy's World War I sequences don't really have much to do with the rest of the story), and who on earth gives children rocks in their treat bag? On the other hand, some of the opening episodes, with Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football and the kids getting ready to go out, are more fun. And for once, Lucy gets zinged (by Patty, I believe).

The other two I ran are less well-known. Garfield's Halloween Adventure takes Garfield and Odie have a very spooky encounter with a group of ghostly pirates after their lost treasure. Halloween Is Grinch Night is less spooky and more just plain strange. When a sour sweet wind sends the Grinch on the prowl, young Whoville citizen Eukeriah takes it on himself to make sure the Grinch never gets to the town.

Switched to Arsenic and Old Lace while making bread pudding with the last of the whole wheat bread and getting ready for work. A 1944 adaptation of a hit stage play, this dark farce features Cary Grant as a drama critic who discovers that his two little old lady aunts have been poisoning old men with no family and burying them in the basement. As Mortimer tries to figure out how to deal with his two serial-murderer aunts, his ghoulish criminal brother and his plastic surgeon show up with skeletons of their own in the window seat.

This is a great Halloween comedy for those of you looking for something that's just scary enough. It's even set on Halloween.

With Halloween on a weekday for the first time in two years, work was much, much quieter than the last few Halloweens have been. It was steady during the rush hour when I came in, but it died as early as 5:30. By the time I left, there was practically no one left but one or two customers and the remaining employees.

I did see some nice costumes on the college students. One boy was a whoopie cushion. (Seriously.) Another was a hockey player. The girl working the customer service desk was a panda bear in a fuzzy costume. Another cashier was the blond girl in the blue sailor middy outfit from the movie Sucker Punch, complete with fake sword.

Some of the kids had cute outfits, too. I saw the sweetest little Belle, and a lovely pirate girl. An older boy wore Army fatigues. Another young lady was a very pink and silver Spider Woman. A college-age girl was Minnie Mouse.

I was Little Red Riding Hood this year. I wore the red cape I got from the Haddon Heights town-wide yard sale event a few weeks ago and the jean skirt and vintage apron from Frugli in Collingswood. I had my own white t-shirt on under the cape and carried an Easter basket trimmed with flowers and Gabe the WebKinz Gray Wolf. Tied a red ribbon in my hair and wore red socks. (Alas, there wasn't much I could about wearing sneakers. My good white shoes are not only inappropriate for the chilly weather, they're not the most comfortable things to stand in for six hours, especially given the way my heel's been feeling.)

I'm now running the original London cast CD for The Phantom of the Opera, as I have every Halloween night since I was in high school. Here's hoping your Halloween was truly spook-tacular!