October 31, 2009

Halloween Hodgepodge

"And ... Happy Halloween!" This is my favorite line from my most favorite scary movie of all time. And that is:


In my opinion, this is the best of all the films in the "Halloween" franchise, and that's because Michael Myers is no place to be found in it. In fact, it has nothing to do at all with any of the other "Halloween" pictures. The line is uttered by evil novelty mask magnate Conal Cochran (played flawlessly by Dan O'Herlihy) just before he activates the pieces of Stonehenge, which he stole ... yes, the whole thing ... that are embedded in the Halloween masks that he has brainwashed all the children of the world into buying through ingenious mass marketing techniques. Once activated, the teensy little Stonehenge pieces emit bugs and laser beams, which presumably kill all of the little tykes, but we never find out, because his sinister plan is thwarted at the last possible second by the films hero, Dr. Ben Casey.

This film is historic, in that it is one of only two movies that I have ever stayed up until 2 o'clock in the morning on a work night to watch. The other movie is Three O'clock High (check it out).

As an aside, many of you may not be familiar with Dan O'Herlihy, but if you are my age or older, you remember his brother Ed, who was the announcer for Kraft Television Theatre (Wednesday nights on NBC). He had a rich, beautiful voice, and there was no one on television at that time who could make you hanker for a big blob of Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese on your favorite snack cracker like Ed could.

Anyway, tonight is Halloween, and you've got lots of candy to pass out to all of the ghosts and goblins that come to your front door. And maybe when they're done, you have some left to distribute to any children who might show up. Hopefully you've bought enough, and you probably have, and more, because you want to make sure that you have plenty left for you so you can get a head start on the food binge that comprises the next two months. This binge will end on January 2. You will be 20 pounds heavier and hate yourself so much that you will have to double your tranquilizer dosage in order to keep yourself from committing suicide. That is unless you want to try for the prestigious title of "first suicide of the new year", which is second in popularity only to "first newborn of the new year".

Coincidentally, tonight is also the time to "fall back", which for all of you time rookies means that you set your clock back one hour at exactly precisely 2:00 am and not one second sooner. So, it's going to be a long evening and I hope you have enough rented movies, snacks and beer to get you through. So don't forget, or you'll be really pissed off tomorrow when you show up for church one hour early. Unless you're like me, and never go to church ... ever. Then there are no consequences.

One last note. I went to my handy Apple dictionary to make sure I was using the word "hodgepodge" in the right context. In fact, I wanted to make sure there actually was the word "hodgepodge" and it wasn't some word I made up, like "squink". I use that word occasionally ... example: that turkey pepperoni tasted squinky.

So, when you look up a word in my dictionary, they give you a definition, of course, and they also give you a sentence that your word is used in. Here's the sentence in my dictionary for hodgepodge: "Rob's living room was a hodgepodge of modern furniture and antiques".

Why, it's like they knew me.

Have a happy All Saints Day tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment