Happy Hallowe'en Weekend

[Ardo Whortleberry]

Or Happy High-Harvest days, or Happy Samhain, or Pumpkin Day ( Night? )...
or what-you-will...

"Many Greetings To You,
Many Greetings To You..."

Actually, sometimes those words run through my head as part of a song ( the only words in the entire song, apparently ) that was part of a Jeeves & Wooster epsiode, where Bertie Wooster has been pressed into service to give an
"uplifting and morals - raising" talk to the girls in an all girls school
( the headmistress being under the false impression that Bertie is some kind of paragon of virtue and a clean-living advocate )
But it soon becomes evident ( as Bertie stands uncomfortablly at the head of the auditorium, twiddling his thumbs and trying to think of things to say ) that he is not a "clean-liver" at all, and the best "advice" he can offer the girls is how to make a sure bet with someone and pick up an easy fiver, when the headmistress finally intervenes, and instructs the girls to begin singing that song again - and the scene cuts away to Bertie rushing out the doors to the outside world, while you can still here the girls all singing:
"Many Greetings To You, Many Greetings To You..."
from inside the building...

I had a few high hopes, this time around, of doing Halloween up proper - like with some Halloween Lights & decoratons -
but this year we didn't even get a pumpkin yet...

Tonight, the Paramount Theatre in Oakland will be showing:
Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein --
I don't think we are going to make it, but going to the movies there is always a lot of fun - because, besides the fact that they only show older movies ( & the tickets are cheap - five bucks! )
they do the whole shebang - old newsreels, travelogues, a cartoon, previews, and a "Dec-O-Wheel" door-prize give-away
( they hand-spin an actual wheel - no electronic number selection & your ticket stubs have your numbers ) and on top of all that, a
big "Mighty Wurlitzer" theatre organ...
The only drawback is there is not supposed to be any eating or drinking inside the theatre seating area - although they do serve drinks up in a mezzanine lobby lounge, and there are sometimes intermissions in the middle of movies, depending on their length,
I guess...

I've strung a few of my photos together for a small "Haloweeny" themed gallery at my "flickr" site, if anyone is interested in checking them out:

www.flickr.com/photos/13656547@N02/sets/72157622567355763/

"Goooooooood Niiiiiiiiiiiight......"

[Stormrider]

[glow=red,2,300]BOOOOOOO...ahahahaha![/glow]

For the whole month of October, the disney channel has been showing many good ole clean Halloween type movies. There are quite a few out there! Desi, her boys, and I watched Twitches and Twitches 2 (twin sisters separated at birth and taken from their world to ours to live--finally meet each other). There were a lot of others but I can't remember everything (not that I watched many since my hubby hogs the TV).

Nice slide show, Ardo.

[Ardo Whortleberry]

Gooooooooood Eeeeeeeeeeeeeevenink...

There's a lot of other stuff going on around here - especially in the little business districts all over town ( the whole area, really )
- usually ostensibly for the kids ( Trick-or-Treat, costumes parades and face painting, etc ) but I'm sure it's good for drumming up a little business for those respective districts...

At night, a lot of the younger crowd ( not kids, necessarily ) get into the spirit of things - you see some imaginative and outrageous costumes...
Especially back in Berkeley - where it's not just younger people, but some of us older people who go around masquerading and living out their fantasies...
( but then, there has been a trend in recent years, for people who work in offices and such to come in to work around Halloween in costumes of one kind or another...
At the coffee-shop ( in Berkeley ) there, where I used to work, there was a
private high school down the block, and the teachers there would get just as costumed out as the students..
( in some cases, they may have out-done them! )
I've heard pro and con on this kind of thing -
some people think that grown-ups should just stay grown-up and leave Halloween to the kids...
Others think: Why should kids have all the fun? )

Years ago, when our daughter was younger, we used to take her sometimes to the 'Jack-O-Lantern Jamboree'
at Children's Fairyland in Lakeside Park at lake Merritt...
I realize this kind of thing is not unique, but it was especially nice at "Fairyland " --
( "Fairyland" - really one of the earliest of the "theme parks" -
but made specifically for children - modeled on Mother Goose and
traditional children's stories mainly, a small scale theme park, too - the wildest ride in the whole place is a small-scale Ferris Wheel, and there are real-live puppet shows instead of videos, etc )
Anyway, Fairyland was open at night for the Jamboree nights, a safe place to take the kiddies, with a "haunted tunnel"
( usually it's the "Alice In Wonderland" tunnel ), Trick-or Treating stations, volunteers dressed up in costumes, etc --

[Stormrider]

Our Office didn't dress up this year because we have been so busy, but we did the last two years. Downstairs they put up their spooky signs--the Scheduler has a Witch sign, the Lab is the Morgue, etc. Some of the employees kids come in dressed up and we hand out candy.

My son is the headless horseman in a haunted trail ride this year. Desi fixed up his costume from an old Witchking costume we had used when we went to see the LOTR movie exhibit in Indianapolis a few years ago.

We live out in the country so we don't get trick-or-treaters out here--too far to walk between places. The kids all go into town to get their candy.

[Ardo Whortleberry]

My wife and I wound up in Alameda, ( an "island city" nearby
Oakland ) for Halloween Night - both of the main business districts in town
( on either end of the island ) were doing the
candy give-away program, with the various businesses being the different candy give-out "stations" ( at least, until they ran out of candy ) and there were parents with their little kids going out, but we saw a lot of teenagers costumed up and out and about, as well...

Among the little girls lot, the "little princess" look seemed to be the most popular costume ( with maybe a little fairy or two in the mix ) --

Among the teenage ( and upwards ) set of girls ( amd women )
the provocative Victorian / Edwardian "Dance Hall Show Girl"
( or maybe something even more provocative than that?
Maybe it all has something to do with vampires, but I am not familiar with the movie or from wherever else they are getting the inspiration for this look ) look appeared to be the
NUmber One favorite ---

I have noticed that, for some time now, the various shops in the Park Street business district in Alameda have tended to put up the most elaborate and imaginative Halloween decorations and window displays in our whole area ( although some other business district enclaves have begun to catch up somewhat in this regard ) -
But then, Alamedans in general tend to do all the
Holidays up big - there were also a number of highly elaborate
Halloween displays in front of private residences, and
"Halloween Lights" displays to rival those one sees at
Christsmastime...

Alameda has always had a "small town feel" about it, in spite of its proximity to a congested metropolitan area, and along with the great number of well kept up Victorian / Edwardian homes in the city, it retains an Old Fashioned "ambience" about it - with traditions that hark back to an earlier period in our history...

The holiday lights and super-elaborate holiday displays are more modern-day, but there is also a preponderence of the wreath on the door, the pumpkin on the porch, and less flashy decorations, but, simple or elaborate, you do see a lot of this kind of thing and for almost all ( if not for all ) - the various holidays round the
calendar year ---

We came home with more DVDs from the library yesterday, too -
we were mainly trying to select things that had a
"Halloween theme" to them, like Phantom Of The Opera
( the Musical ) & Macbeth, but by the time we got home, we were too tired to watch either one of those - although we did finish up one of the Poirot videos we had started on Friday night... ( and ate candy, of course ) =