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Tuesday
March 16, 2010 Since 1922 |
I thought you were dead!
By Luke Hales
Published October 8, 2009 I’m continuing my tribute to Halloween with another morbid, bizarre and spooooooooky column.
Okay, it’s not spooooooooky. But it is a little of the others.
There’s something special about Halloween. See, other holidays like Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving are all about family togetherness and celebrating the good tidings of season.
Halloween is about dressing up like a weirdo and scaring little children when they come begging for tooth rot. We also get to mutilate pumpkins into the shape of a face.
On top of that, we get to play that game where when you’re driving you look into the cars on the road with you and see which workplaces have costume contests. I kid you not, one time I sat in traffic between two clowns, a vampire, and Austin Powers.
See? Awesome.
I have a special connection with Halloween, because for some reason or another I keep getting roped into doing haunted houses and whatnot. The first one I can remember was a church haunted house way back in the early 90s. Everybody got gussied up in their finest array and put together whatever ghastly items they could find. I seem to recall a bowl of cold spaghetti playing the part of brains. Gross.
Of course, me being me, I wasn’t content with just a bed-sheet or fake fangs. No sir. Mom bought me this kit that involved plastering your face with some kind of oatmeal stuff and painting over it with this snot-colored greasepaint.
So I took my place in the coffin (Yup. That’s where they put me, I would imagine so I didn’t gross all the other church kids out) and waited for the tour groups.
And I waited.
And waited.
And got up to use the restroom.
And waited some more.
And started counting ceiling tiles.
Finally, about thirty minutes later, the first group came through my makeshift funeral parlor. Now common sense dictates that a corpse in my condition would never be put on public display in the care of a reputable funeral home, but seeing as we weren’t that, there I was.
They stuck their little faces into the coffin with looks of absolute disgust. Of course, one of them said, “He’s not really dead.” This happened in every group. Why there was any doubt as to whether a local church would throw a cadaver into a Halloween party is beyond me, but haunted houses aren’t really about logic.
I waited for the perfect moment, then threw my body straight up in the coffin. I didn’t even say anything; I just sat up.
Those screams were priceless.
I went home with the satisfaction of a job well done, and spent the next two days pulling snot-colored oatmeal fragments out of my hair. I think there’s still some there, actually.
This trend continued, sans the Quaker Oatmeal Monster getup, for more than a decade. Eventually I hit the big time: I was cast as Frankenstein in two different productions at Six Flags Astroworld, which has since seen its own untimely demise. They cast me as Frankenstein because … well … most theater guys are on the smallish side, and I’m … well … not.
My costume consisted of (and keep in mind, I’m not kidding) black nail polish, leather pants, this strange-looking vinyl shirt thing, a vest made out of chains and KISS-style platform boots. To add insult to injury, they threw in a dog collar with bolts sticking out the sides.
They expected me to dance in this outfit. I’m not exactly Fred Astaire anyway, so this presented something of a problem. Fortunately I was playing Frankenstein, so it was cool if I looked like an armoire with feet.
While I’m on the subject, let’s consider the weather. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to put a big guy in leather pants, platform boots and a vinyl shirt in Houston needs to come meet me so I can punch them. Hard.
Anyway, all that being established, we were expected to sing, too. And since we were supposed to be some kind of modern goth-emo-rock band thing (hence the leather pants and whatnot), I was singing the greatest hits of Rick James, KISS (the boots came in handy there), and AC/DC. You ever heard AC/DC? You know how that guy sings like they’re cutting out his appendix? Yeah. I had to do that five times a day.
I’m complaining, I know, but it really was a lot of fun. How many people can say they got paid to dress like that?
Recently I haven’t had any such opportunities, but I still try to do a little something extra on Halloween. A couple of years ago I cut a hole in a cardboard box and stuck it on the front porch of the house with a tablecloth and a bowl of candy on top. Naturally, kids being kids and not seeing an adult around, they took a little more than one piece.
They dropped it, however, when I grabbed their legs from within the box. It worked out well, since I only bought one bag of candy.
I do miss being a kid and wearing those costumes with the plastic masks you couldn’t see out of or breathe in. It didn’t bother us, because for one night we could be anyone we wanted to be, as long as you could buy them at K-Mart. But really, you don’t need the costumes to enjoy Halloween. You just need a jack-o-lantern and a bag of Fun Size Skittle packages.
A sick sense of humor also helps. Come by my place on Oct. 31. You’ll see what I mean.
Luke Hales is the assistant managing editor for The Baytown Sun.
Published October 8, 2009 I’m continuing my tribute to Halloween with another morbid, bizarre and spooooooooky column.
Okay, it’s not spooooooooky. But it is a little of the others.
There’s something special about Halloween. See, other holidays like Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving are all about family togetherness and celebrating the good tidings of season.
Halloween is about dressing up like a weirdo and scaring little children when they come begging for tooth rot. We also get to mutilate pumpkins into the shape of a face.
On top of that, we get to play that game where when you’re driving you look into the cars on the road with you and see which workplaces have costume contests. I kid you not, one time I sat in traffic between two clowns, a vampire, and Austin Powers.
See? Awesome.
I have a special connection with Halloween, because for some reason or another I keep getting roped into doing haunted houses and whatnot. The first one I can remember was a church haunted house way back in the early 90s. Everybody got gussied up in their finest array and put together whatever ghastly items they could find. I seem to recall a bowl of cold spaghetti playing the part of brains. Gross.
Of course, me being me, I wasn’t content with just a bed-sheet or fake fangs. No sir. Mom bought me this kit that involved plastering your face with some kind of oatmeal stuff and painting over it with this snot-colored greasepaint.
So I took my place in the coffin (Yup. That’s where they put me, I would imagine so I didn’t gross all the other church kids out) and waited for the tour groups.
And I waited.
And waited.
And got up to use the restroom.
And waited some more.
And started counting ceiling tiles.
Finally, about thirty minutes later, the first group came through my makeshift funeral parlor. Now common sense dictates that a corpse in my condition would never be put on public display in the care of a reputable funeral home, but seeing as we weren’t that, there I was.
They stuck their little faces into the coffin with looks of absolute disgust. Of course, one of them said, “He’s not really dead.” This happened in every group. Why there was any doubt as to whether a local church would throw a cadaver into a Halloween party is beyond me, but haunted houses aren’t really about logic.
I waited for the perfect moment, then threw my body straight up in the coffin. I didn’t even say anything; I just sat up.
Those screams were priceless.
I went home with the satisfaction of a job well done, and spent the next two days pulling snot-colored oatmeal fragments out of my hair. I think there’s still some there, actually.
This trend continued, sans the Quaker Oatmeal Monster getup, for more than a decade. Eventually I hit the big time: I was cast as Frankenstein in two different productions at Six Flags Astroworld, which has since seen its own untimely demise. They cast me as Frankenstein because … well … most theater guys are on the smallish side, and I’m … well … not.
My costume consisted of (and keep in mind, I’m not kidding) black nail polish, leather pants, this strange-looking vinyl shirt thing, a vest made out of chains and KISS-style platform boots. To add insult to injury, they threw in a dog collar with bolts sticking out the sides.
They expected me to dance in this outfit. I’m not exactly Fred Astaire anyway, so this presented something of a problem. Fortunately I was playing Frankenstein, so it was cool if I looked like an armoire with feet.
While I’m on the subject, let’s consider the weather. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to put a big guy in leather pants, platform boots and a vinyl shirt in Houston needs to come meet me so I can punch them. Hard.
Anyway, all that being established, we were expected to sing, too. And since we were supposed to be some kind of modern goth-emo-rock band thing (hence the leather pants and whatnot), I was singing the greatest hits of Rick James, KISS (the boots came in handy there), and AC/DC. You ever heard AC/DC? You know how that guy sings like they’re cutting out his appendix? Yeah. I had to do that five times a day.
I’m complaining, I know, but it really was a lot of fun. How many people can say they got paid to dress like that?
Recently I haven’t had any such opportunities, but I still try to do a little something extra on Halloween. A couple of years ago I cut a hole in a cardboard box and stuck it on the front porch of the house with a tablecloth and a bowl of candy on top. Naturally, kids being kids and not seeing an adult around, they took a little more than one piece.
They dropped it, however, when I grabbed their legs from within the box. It worked out well, since I only bought one bag of candy.
I do miss being a kid and wearing those costumes with the plastic masks you couldn’t see out of or breathe in. It didn’t bother us, because for one night we could be anyone we wanted to be, as long as you could buy them at K-Mart. But really, you don’t need the costumes to enjoy Halloween. You just need a jack-o-lantern and a bag of Fun Size Skittle packages.
A sick sense of humor also helps. Come by my place on Oct. 31. You’ll see what I mean.
Luke Hales is the assistant managing editor for The Baytown Sun.