Showing posts with label halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label halloween. Show all posts

Monday, October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween From Cranberry County Magazine!


As we await the Great Pumpkin, let's check out some Halloween decorations.


He's actually breathing fire, but my camera was frightened into blurriness.   
Witches are considerably more cheerful the further south you get from Salem.

Our Halloween special was shot in broad daylight and will be published close to the Witching Hour.


I was going to wear my twenty foot electric blue avenging angel costume, but this guy beat me to it.

Mayor McPumpkin of Wareham


They say that, during zombie apocalypses, the guys who tidy up cemeteries are the first to die.


"The line to get at them jugs on her starts at the left.... in fact, you're the first guy in it."


Let's see... a coward, a dummy, some trash, a girl leading them.... Hillary rally?


A couple o' guys wearing sheets, led by some strange orange-tinted evil creature.... Trump rally?

Some decorations get a forward lean if October is trending windy.


You can open a cemetery in your yard even if you have a small lawn, but you can only cater to midgets.


Same to you!


Yeti pretty much have to dress as Frankenstein. It's tough to play a witch or a princess when you're 8 feet tall and furry.




Most people go Scary when they decorate for Halloween, but this house went Cute.



I'd hit that...


When you're as famous as Frankenstein is, you can just grab girls by the pelvic bone,no consent needed.



That's pretty much how it works when I need a lawyer...



Sunday, November 1, 2015

Halloween Displays VI: Halloween Night In Duxbury

We finished up our South Shore Halloween Display Rampage in Duxbury.
120 pound pumpkin, carved.


Laying down the law, zombie-style.



Too much pumpkin pie?


This looks like one of those bugs that came off the Cloverfield monster, especially where I get the shaky-cam effect even when I stand still.




Children will walk through a graveyard if they think they can get a Twix.


I'm not sure what that is, other than "well-carved pumpkin."


Thank you, Duxbury!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Halloween Displays Part V, And Some Halloween Stories


.We still have a pile of Halloween stuff to go through, so I'll just create some lyrics as we go along.

I have to bang this out by 3 or so, or it will be a midnight publication. We're busy bees today, as anyone with a 9 year old would understand.
.
I probably have enough material for 2-3 more articles, so don't be despondent if I missed your house.


One of my favorite time-killing reads are conspiracy theories. Several of them are based in  Horror.

There is supposed to be a lost episode of The Simpsons where Bart is killed. He gets sucked out of a plane, it's actually a rather sad episode.

The strange part is at the end. As the Simpsons (who, for some reason, seem to have abandoned the baby character) visit Bart's grave, they walk past other tombstones in the cemetery. They are all the stones of people who have appeared on The Simpsons.

Each stone bears a date of death. For someone deceased like Michael Jackson or Phil Hartman or whoever, the date is exact. The really spooky part is the stones of everyone who is still living. They are ascribed a date of death in the future.

It's all the same date.


My other favorite conspiracy with Horror and Entertainment involves Stanley Kubrick and The Shining.

I was previously unaware of this, but we didn't actually land on the moon. For many years and perhaps even now, we have actually been defenseless against Soviet ICBMs. What I thought was our best defense- our ability to respond in kind- is actually a myth.

You need rocket science to get those missiles flying, and we don't have people who can do that.

When Sputnik hit the air, the Soviets seized a Cold War lead that we couldn't match until we could do the same. We were unable to for many years.

What we can do well in America is make kick-ass movies. More than one war has been won through Bluff, why not this one?

Stanley Kubrick, who had just filmed a groundbreaking space movie, was recruited by the US government to fake a moon landing. Such an accomplishment would make the Russians sweat Fear, and would scare them from even thinking of launching on us.

Kubrick did the job, but guilt set in. Then, a brilliant director decided to dabble in the gutter of Hollywood.... Horror.

If you watch The Shining, you'll see a lot of things that could be read as Apollo 11 references. Other than the kid's sweater, not a lot of them make sense to me. You, however, may be more open-minded.

If so... enjoy.


Top Unsolved Murders In Massachusetts

1) The Molly Bish murder

A teen lifeguard disappears from a lake. The search goes on forever, but they eventually find her body. Her killer is nevr brought to justice.... at least not by Massachusetts authorities, because I think that the suspect from the drawing may have been hung in Iraq.

2) The New Bedford Highway Killer

In the 1980s, a series of junkies and prostitutes disappeared from the New Bedford/Fall River area. Many of them were found along Route 195 and other local drags. They looked at a slew of suspects- including a lawyer, a guy who liked to rough up whores, and even the Lisbon Ripper- but no one was ever convicted for it. Although the crimes have stopped, the suspect may still be at large.

3) The Lady Of The Dunes

A mutilated corpse was found laying among the Provincetown dunes. She was nearly decapitated. They never found out who she was, or who killed her. Whitey Bulger was a suspect, but this was a rare case where Whitey was exonerated because the crime was too brutal.


I work with a girl named Stacey. She's really short. Her husband isn't.

One Halloween, Stacey went out with the kids. She threw on a Patriots sweater because it was cold. She's a foot and a half shorter than her husband, she has a doctorate, and she's in her 30s.

Unless she's fibbing... whenever they would trick-or-treat elderly people, Stacey's two kids would get candy and praise. At some houses, the homeowner would then look Stacey over once or twice, adjust her glasses, look at the husband, make a calculation.... and then reach into the bucket and fork over a Snickers to Dr. Monponsett. "Aren't you just a pretty little Patriot??"

"I was very offended at first," said Stacey, "But as the night went on, I ended up with a fat stash of candy. My husband laughed every time it happened, but he wasn't laughing when I refused to give him any Twix bars. F*** him."



Every picture in this aticle is from one house, which I believe is in Whitman.

We took a lot of pictures. I should remember what town that the best house was in, but I don't. I actually met the lady, too. She was very cool.

Either way, she's leading the tournament right now, although I have a ringer lined up on Washington Street in Duxbury.


We have a pile of shots to go, and we'll add to them tonight when we go hunting and gathering.

We'll have either a late-night update or a Sunday edition, unless football gets in the way.

Feel free to check out our other Halloween Display articles:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!


Friday, October 30, 2015

Halloween Displays IV, and A Rich Man/Poor Man Comparative Analysis

(EDITOR'S NOTE: We lifted this article from a site we used to write for, and it dates back to 2012. "2012" explains why we planned to egg Taylor Swift's house, as she had then been smitten with Konnor Kennedy and had bought a house adjoining the Kennedy Compound. She has since divested herself from both entities. 
Also, my kid was Wolverine that year, he's a stormtrooper this year. 
The pictures in the article, aside from being Halloween-themed, have nothing to do with the story.
This article is the fourth installment in our Halloween Displays series, and the pictures come from Whitman, Hanson, Halifax, Plympton, Carver, Wareham and Plymouth.)

One way to make a childish activity fun for Mom and Dad is to use your child as the bait in a half-assed sociological experiment. This Halloween, we did just that.
He didn't care. He got to dress like Wolverine, and he hauled in enough candy to bring a dentist to climax.
The experiment was thus: Take a kid trick or treating in two neighborhoods of varying wealth, and try to take note of any differences that might make themselves apparent.
We had to choose two neighborhoods. Mommy had the Whammy, an absolute veto.... which eliminated Brockton, Roxbury, etc... and some pre-Halloween recon eliminated the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port when we found that no one but the staff was around there after Labor Day. 
Let the record show that I would have had No Problem At All with egging Taylor Swift's house if she didn't show my people some proper confectionary love. Fortunately, it never came down to that.
The Kennedy logic also eliminated many of the marquee Cape Cod neighborhoods. We have nothing but love for Summer People, but they aren't of much use when you need candy in late October. Demographics are everything. We needed more of a bedroom community, and a wealthy one at that.

We narrowed it down to Jersusalem Road in Cohasset, and Washington Street in Duxbury. Even though Cohasset's main drag has more of a Gatsby feel, Duxbury had the advantage of centralized parking (we used what most locals still call "Sweetser's") and more occupied houses per square mile. The average house goes about a milly or so, and you can bang out a bunch of them without walking a costumed 10K.
As for our seedy site, we chose Wareham. We wanted to use Shangri-La, but the sidewalk/streetlight ratios didn't work out in favor of those with a wandering five year old Wolverine. We decided instead on a trailer park between Mazzilli's Farm Stand and Barnacle Bill's Seafood Shack. The double-wides are too tightly packed to get a car moving through at any kill-a-child speed, and we could do 50 units without any great hardship.
Your average home on Washington Street is owned by someone in the finance industry. Your average person in the trailer park works at Benny's or the Lobster Pound. The average salary on Washington Street is probably equal to the salary of 20 people in the trailer park. The average salary in the trailer park is probably half or a third of what the kid's car costs on Washington Street.
Does it matter? Does it translate into generous candy giving?

Due to us having to pick Mommy up in Sagamore at a certain time, Wolverine and I decided to start in the Wareham trailer park. We got out a little before dark, and we set right to our task. Wolverine (the Michigan yellow/blue Wolverine from the comics, not the leather jacket one from the movies) is five, cute, and fully invested in the candy acquisition process.
In case you think that this article is going to make fun of the poor... don't. Wareham came correct. I'm proud to say that every trailer we knocked on answered, and nobody came cheap with the goodies. Wolverine didn't have to disembowel anyone with his kid-sized adamantium claws due to Grinchy candy withholding.
The only standout facet was that some of the candy was of the cheap variety, a la individual Starbursts, Dum Dum lollipops, and the small solo generic Reese's cups with the gold foil. This was offset by the fact that they gave it out in great amounts. Besides, in this economy, and in that neighborhood, we should have been (and were) happy to get anything.
Some of the trailers were decorated, and some weren't. I may have seen 5 pumpkins... not bad, until you remember that the park is next to a farm stand. Hay bales, corn stalks, scarecrows and various gourds were easily available 20 feet away. I suppose that if a poor neighborhood has to skimp somewhere, they should skimp on decor rather than candy.
Finally, and this is important.... Wareham residents are cool enough to hook up the Elders with a beer now and then. One must be properly fortified when taking the kids about. I even was offered a bong hit, but that doesn't really count because I knew the guy. Either way, my bibulous handouts are important to me, I'm the judge/author, and they factor into the analysis.

I wasn't 100% shocked by the results. I had no concrete reason to think that Wareham would fail to be rewarding. Nothing really jumped out about the candy to cancel the theory one of my friends put forth that "Everyone shops at Wal-Mart."
We were working against the clock, so Wolverine and I hopped into the Benz a bit after sunset, picked up Mommy, and hauled our candy asses up Route 3 into Duxbury.
Now, the wealthy don't have all the advantages when being stalked by a trick or treat posse with a purpose. For instance, wealthy people's houses are farther apart than trailer park homes are. We probably covered 10 trailers in the time it took us to walk up the driveway of the first house we hit on Washington Street. For Duxbury to shame Wareham, the candy-per-step ratio would have to be amazing.
Also, Duxbury residents may or may not have been aware that they were a part of an experiment. They also most likely don't share my view of their role as Giver in the Redistribution Of Wealth theory I was aiming for, as they were more likely to assume that whoever was knocking on the door in costume was just another wealthy person from a nearby neighborhood.
I use the ambiguity because Washington Street has a go-to rep among local trick or treaters, and the residents there may feel an urge towards overkill. We were among 200 or so people trick or treating Washington Street during the hours that we were operating... not too shabby for a town with 15000 people at about 45% elderly.

Here's Duxbury, in a few bullet points.
- There were probably 50-100 yards between houses, if you count the walkways and so forth.
- Every door was opened by a grandparent or a trophy wife. There was one Yummy Mommy at the end of Fort Hill Road who actually could have not handed out candy and just used "You got to look at me up close" as an egging deterrent argument.
- I didn't think that people still put bags of candy unguarded outside of their door with a "Take One Per Person, Please" sign on it. People in 4400 sq. ft bayfront houses do, however.
- People hand out the full size candy bars in Duxbury. Those rich folk gave it up smooth.
- Not only do you get the name brand goods, but you also get the more rare stuff... Caramellos, Hilliards, Pop Rocks, Fun Dip, Flake Bars and so forth. You know... the good sh*t.
- No one handed out money, but it happened a few times during my youth in that area.
- Many residents had the same variety bowl of candy that the Wareham folks did, probably most.

-  One house- and I swear I'm not making this up- had a video screen set up in front of the doorway. The homeowner was able to hide in the house and speak to us through the video screen, which showed a Grim Reaper sort of visage. The Reaper spoke whatever the homeowner said. He also had music going through a loudspeaker, which made his house sound like a nightclub from 100 yards away.
But wait...there's more.
He also set something up where horror film images were holographed onto the house itself, so you'd turn around and be facing a 15 foot Wicked Witch. To offset this, he had his daughter and MILF wife outside, distributing the actual candy.
I'd say he spent about $3500 or so on the electronics, and that may be a conservative estimate.
- Beers were not offered in Duxbury. This was not through rudeness. Every cop in Duxbury was on Washington Street, to the point where I would have been able to discharge firearms on other streets with total impunity had I chosen to do so. Public drinking was out of the question.
- People in Duxbury hand out toys, coloring books, Pez dispensers, crayons, toothbrushes, McDonald's coupons, cheap sunglasses and so forth.

Overall, I'd score them about equally candy-wise, with Duxbury enjoying a huge edge in decorations. Duxbury had enough people handing out full-sized candy bars to offset the greater distances between houses. Wareham people are giving enough by nature to offset the median household income differences.
Wolverine did ridiculously well. That bag of candy you see at the top of the article is what was left today, about five days after Halloween, after several sessions where the adults had at it, and after a children's birthday party. The goody bag was full enough that Wolverine was having trouble carrying it at the end of the session.
We'd have had more, but Wolverine likes lollipops. When offered a bowl full of large Snickers bars and lollipops, he'd grab 2 tiny lollipops instead. I actually had to intervene when he chose a Dum Dum pop over a full Milky Way bar... "He wants one of these, too."
I'm just happy that Trick or Treating hasn't faded away to oblivion like Christmas Carols or whatever. That day is probably coming, and the world will be less exciting when it happens.






Thursday, October 29, 2015

Halloween Displays, Part III

Yeah, that isn't a good start....

I told you that we had a lot of material, and here comes a pile of it.

We surveyed Facebook, got some leads, followed up on them, and here's what we came up with. We'll have a few more issues before Halloween plays itself out this Saturday night.

Be sure to check out Part One and Part Two, if you wish.


We ran from Rochester to Whitman and then back South through Hanson, Halifax, Plympton, Carver and Plymouth.

We still have Duxbury and Cape Cod to go through. The weather cost us today and maybe tomorrow, and we may do Duxbury while we're trick-or-treating there.

Duxbury gets their own day, because we know a guy there who might be spending $5K on decorations, and we get full-size Snickers and so forth all up and down Washington Street.

The winds of today's storm may cost us our foliage hunting, which we will take up in earnest on November 1st. The South Coast and Cape Cod turn around then, anyhow.


Halloween is a pagan ritual, adopted by the Romans, modified to fit Christianity, imported from Europe and perfected by America.

Halloween celebrations were banned in colonial New England, as the Puritan forefathers weren't fans of pagan, superstitious celebrations. Halloween was the night before a solemn Holy day. Remember, these were people who frowned on Christmas, because it was too Church-like.

An influx of Irish immigrants helped popularize the Halloween traditions in America, and the traditions have held on to our present day.

It soon became primarily a children's holiday, although it is more of a children-of-all-ages thing.

No irony intended, I just had to shoot over a car.
America spent 6 billion dollars celebrating Halloween in 2010, and that was at the height of the Great Recession.  That ranks it 7th among money spent on American holidays, just behind Father's Day at #6 and way behind #1 Christmas at $130 billion.

There are more kids than fathers in America, but you can't handle Dad with two mini Kit Kat bars. You have to at least buy him a tie or something. That adds up.

Kids make it up at Christmas. It's a kid's world, we're just running it for them.


Most Popular Halloween Costumes, according to Google Trends and CNN:

#1, Harley Quinn

#2 Star Wars

#3 Superhero (Non Superman, Non Avenger...generic, Villain or Other, see #5,9,10)

#4 Pirate

#5 Batman

#6 Minnie Mouse

#7 Witch

#8 Minion

#9 Joker

#10 Wonder Woman


My Own Top 5 Halloween Shows/Movies/Stories

- It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

My personal favorite, also the source of the worst overdub video of all time.

- Halloween

I prefer the Carpenter one to the White Zombie one, but I am just one lonesome columnist.

- The Nightmare Before Christmas

I've never seen it, and I'm not sure this is even a  Halloween movie, but it seems to be everywhere, so we'll throw it up in the mix.

- The Fat Albert Halloween Special

The Cosby mansion is now the Worst Place To Trick Or Treat in Hollywood.

- The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow

You can't deny the Headless Horseman his spot, he's sort of like Halloween's Santa Claus.



Films That Involve Halloween But Aren't Halloween Films

- To Kill A Mockingbird climaxes on Halloween, which is a sinister sentence to say about pre-teen Scout Finch.

- Arsenic And Old Lace has a Halloween wedding

- Regina steals Cady's BF at a Halloween party in Mean Girls

- The Exorcist, while not a Halloween film, was set in Halloween season.

- You know that Ernest Scared Stupid isn't set on Arbor Day, payer.



Worst Halloween Specials

- The Lou Grant Halloween Episode

- The Paul Lynde Halloween Special

- The Fall Guy "October The 32d" episode

- The Dukes Of Hazzard, "The Hazzardville Horror" episode

- The Smurfs, "The Legend Of Smurfy Hollow"

- Fraggle Rock, "The Terrible Tunnel."



We'll get a few more articles in before Halloween, thanks for checking us out!