Halloween

The seventh episode in season three of The Twilight Zone is a very good one - it is the retelling of an age-old fable, this time set in the old west. Appearing in this version is Lee Marvin, Strother Martin, Lee Van Cleef and various other players. The story is a good one, well told. For those who have not seen it, go watch it now. 

Are you back? Good, otherwise what follows might be a spoiler. That Twilight Zone epi reminded me of something that actually happened to me on Halloween evening back in 1990. In those days I lived in a town that had over 60 miles of paved trails through the neighborhoods - the trails went uphill and down, all around through the woods, and you could get to any part of town without riding on the road. Sure, you would cross various streets, but there wasn't much traffic, so sometimes I would hop on my mountain bike and get some miles in after work but before it got too dark.

This particular Halloween it was a dark and non-stormy night, with Halloween stuff all over the place - ghosts hanging in trees, pumpkins carved into hideous visages glowing from some ungodly internal light, skeletons lounging about, spider webs draped everywhere, and some of the webs were not made by the spiders in the woods, doncha know.

So there I was riding along, minding my own business, riding fast so I could get home before it got pitch black out in the forest and while climbing a short rise that led up to a cul-de-sac, the strangest thing happened. A thing I had never experienced in my tens of thousands of miles of bicycling. As I cranked up the hill my right ankle was gripped by a bony hand. How can this be, I thought? I mean something had grabbed my lower leg, front and back and it was not letting go. I glanced down to my right, thinking that perhaps a dog had come out of the woods and latched on to my tender ankle with his sharp teeth. Nope, no dog. Maybe it was a Dwayyo? Nope, no Dwayyo. What the hey?

Since I still had my wits about me and I still had some momentum, I rolled up to the cul-de-sac and stopped to see what the hell was going on. Well, what do you know, the top cap head bolt, a lowly Allen screw, one of the two that secured my water bottle cage to the seat tube, had backed out and was gone, leaving the cage free to rotate and grab my leg like a bony, skeletal hand of death trying to drag me down into the earth. Phew - that was a close one. I retrieved my Allen wrench set from my tool kit and removed the one remaining screw, put the bottle cage in my other pack and rode on, thankful that I had dodged the supernatural for another day. Some day I won't be that lucky.

I rode on gilded splendors.

KLEM FM

linky

That's Jimmy Page playing guitar on Donovan's 1966 song. Trippy visuals. Don't stare at it 'cause it might induce seizures.

h/t: "House" Words And Deeds

lyrics after the jump

"Yale SJWs screaming at professor...

...because he isn't making the university enough of a "safe space" by denouncing offensive Halloween costumes."

(UPDATE) Here is the email that supposedly got the student panties in a twist... link

Dear Sillimanders:

Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween­wear. I’ve always found Halloween an interesting embodiment of more general adult worries about young people. As some of you may be aware, I teach a class on “The Concept of the Problem Child,” and I was speaking with some of my students yesterday about the ways in which Halloween – traditionally a day of subversion for children and young people – is also an occasion for adults to exert their control.

When I was young, adults were freaked out by the specter of Halloween candy poisoned by lunatics, or spiked with razor blades (despite the absence of a single recorded case of such an event). Now, we’ve grown to fear the sugary candy itself. And this year, we seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween.

I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.

It seems to me that we can have this discussion of costumes on many levels: we can talk about complex issues of identify, free speech, cultural appropriation, and virtue “signalling.” But I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.

As a former preschool teacher, for example, it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde­haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it. I suppose we could agree that there is a difference between fantasizing about an individual character vs. appropriating a culture, wholesale, the latter of which could be seen as (tacky)(offensive)(jejeune)(hurtful), take your pick. But, then, I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross.

Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? Should we start explaining that too? I’ve always been a good mimic and I enjoy accents. I love to travel, too, and have been to every continent but Antarctica. When I lived in Bangladesh, I bought a sari because it was beautiful, even though I looked stupid in it and never wore it once. Am I fetishizing and appropriating others’ cultural experiences? Probably. But I really, really like them too.

Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin­revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience;increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power? Have we lost faith in young people's capacity – in your capacity ­ to exercise self­censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you? We tend to view this shift from individual to institutional agency as a tradeoff between libertarian vs. liberal values (“liberal” in the American, not European sense of the word).

Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.

But – again, speaking as a child development specialist – I think there might be something missing in our discourse about the exercise of free speech (including how we dress ourselves) on campus, and it is this: What does this debate about Halloween costumes say about our view of young adults, of their strength and judgment?

In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It's not mine, I know that.

Happy Halloween.

KLEM FM

link in case the video doesn't play 

This song has been part of Halloween since I can remember. It was on a 1963 Disney children's album that my parents had. Sung by Thurl Ravenscroft, this version is better than the original Bing Crosby song in the Disney animation of the Washington Irving story. Ravenscroft also sang the songs in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas (not Boris Karloff who narrated) and also voiced Tony The Tiger (They'rrrrrr, Greeaat!).

Hillary email server

Hillary Clinton email "server" pic.twitter.com/l4yG3i4zdy

— Noah Bierman (@Noahbierman) October 31, 2015

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe - Read by Christopher Walken

Heavenly signs

Link to larger image

"Dead comet with skull face to hurtle by Earth on Halloween"

KLEM TV

I have to watch this every year at this time...the Halloween scene from "To Kill A Mockingbird."

Look how young Robert Duvall was:

KLEM FM

The song is childhood favorite of mine. It appeared on Disney's 1963 "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." I like the zydeco accompaniment. There's an earlier version of the same song sung by Bing Crosby:

Thurl Ravenscroft's voice, familiar to many as the voice of Tony The Tiger ("They're Grrrreat") also sang the songs in "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" (that was not Boris Karloff). Ravenscroft's voice still narrates the train ride at Disneyland.

Our president is an excellent barrytone. I wonder if he could do a Thurl Ravenscroft impression?

Lileks Candy

And so it begins: the annual Parade of Sullen Ingratitude.
— James Lileks (@Lileks) October 31, 2013

"Dang it, none of my favorite candy," says the girl before walking off with a Milky Way.

— James Lileks (@Lileks) October 31, 2013

"Can I take an extra one for a friend?" Details, please. Sick? Shy? Or the condition of Nonexistence? Here, have a circus peanut.

— James Lileks (@Lileks) November 1, 2013

Man, that last batch of kids really smelled of cigarettes.

— James Lileks (@Lileks) November 1, 2013

Needed: Spooky Music Suggestions For Halloween

Here is one:

Bedknobs And Broomsticks

Where does the flying broomstick myth for the Halloween witch come from?  Is it related to hallucinogenic drugs...or is it a clever and subversive plot to undo a Christian tradition -- The Legend Of La Befana?

You decide:

"The War on Halloween is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things"

"In the latest example of small-mindedness plaguing our educational system, schools around the country are attempting to ban costumes and candy on what is surely one of most kids’ favorite days of the year. The excuses range from vague concerns about “safety” to specific worries about food allergies to—get this—fears of breaching the wall of separation between church and state."

But whatever the motivation, the end result is the same as what Charlie Brown used to get every time he went trick-or-treating: a big old rock in the candy bag. What sort of lesson are we teaching our kids when we ban even a tiny, sugar-coated break in their daily grind (or, even worse, substitute a generic, Wicker Man-style “Fall Festival” for Halloween)? Mostly that we are a society that is so scared of its own shadow that we can’t even enjoy ourselves anymore. We live in fear of what might be called the killjoy’s veto, where any complaint is enough to destroy even the least objectionable fun.

Reason dot com via Charlie Martin

The War on Halloween is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things. http://t.co/j8pnCYyZ9O
— Charlie Martin (@chasrmartin) October 21, 2013