Trick-or-Treat Bag of Halloween Humor

October: the time of year the witches set aside their Swiffer Wetjets for more traditionally seasonal modes of flying transit... 

Those bright, crisp days before the carved pumpkins begin to sag, sink and soggily sway like drunken old men on every doorstep...

The time of year I realize how many Halloween humor posts I've written since I started blogging, and that newer readers haven't gotten a chance to check them out!

So if you're looking for a few holiday cackles, a dollop of zombie fun, a resurrection of 80's childhood nostalgia and maybe even a few otherworldly groans, look no further than our list below! Click a title to find your frightening funny.

All That is Zombie

• T'was The Night Before Halloween, Plus Zombies (My Shaun of the Dead Sequel Poem). What happens when Shaun pays a trip to visit an American friend and finds himself in a mall full of the Undead? And where do you buy a good cricket bat?

• Rip Slaughter: Zombie for Hire. An original example of the Film Noir Zombie Detective genre. Okay, there probably isn't a genre that specific yet. But maybe there will be.

• Ten Signs Your Neighbor is a Zombie. You know you worry about these things.

• New!: The Anti-Zombie Bra from Ashley's Armoire. Do you want to be Evil Dead, or Evil Drop Dead Gorgeous? Defend yourself the stylish way through this exciting new product available from Ashley's Armoire.

Halloween in 80s Kiddom

• Nightmare on Sesame Street Part One. Take one talented seamstress mom, two tons of fiberfill, and a tube of window caulking and what do you get? Halloween immobility and award-winning costuming all-in-one. 

• Nightmare on Sesame Street Part Two. The mean streets of Jersey prove trick-or-treating is a dangerous game, and not just because Mrs. Martin's been giving out the same bag of Milk Duds for five years.

• Halloween on the Doll Lady's Doorstep. An eccentric neighbor with an obsession with dead-eyed dollies as outdoor decor made for triple-dog-dare worthy childhood moments.

Hope you enjoy 'em-- They're sugar and razor-blade free!

Wrath of Mom Versus Hall Pass Liberation

One was a methane molecule. And in retrospect, I now understand that it was also, technically, a bathroom joke our class would have found really funny if any of us had actually understood it.

Yes, our chemistry teacher had been creative and his bathroom pass was one of those Tinkertoy styled molecular models. CH4. One little round thingie surrounded by four other little round thingies on spokes. I remember it to this day. Which was, I suppose, my chemistry teacher's whole point.

Sending out a twenty-years-too-late High Five to him now. Woot!

Other teachers went for the Piece of Wood on a Keychain pass. Or the Piece of Cardboard Hastily Scribbled Upon pass.

Or, if I recall correctly from band, the Metal and Fur Flute Cleaner Pass-- which being a flute player myself, I know to be something no one really should want to touch for long. Thus ensuring a very quick trip to the restroom.

But then at some point-- because when you think about it, half the student body was walking around brandishing items which otherwise should have belonged in a yard sale-- there seemed to be some kind of global switch-over to the Official Pink Signed and Dated Hall Pass Slip.

And it was this that added undue complexity to my days at Edgar Allen Poe High School.

See, as I'd mentioned earlier, I was in band. And for half the year, most of our activities were not, in fact, inside the school-- but far, far out in a weedy, goose-poop-littered field to one side of the school.

There we would march in precision formation. ("Precision" here meaning "a couple of kids will be chewing gum, while some lag to talk about copying math homework, while a few more try to kick the goose poop off our shoes.")

And we rehearsed our tunes with driven dedication. ("Driven dedication" here meaning "paying attention enough so our band director wouldn't single us out and yell.")

But the bell would ring, to signal the switch of classes, and we had a few scant minutes to do this before we would be labeled "Tardy."

("Tardy" here meaning "old people came up with this term for being late and didn't really understand how we would enjoy inappropriately using the phrase.")

So I had to go from Goose Poop Central, put away my flute, grab my stuff, and head to the gymnasium at the opposite end of the school.

We were supposed to be across a certain line in the hallway by the time the second bell rang. We knew, because Mr. O'Neill would watch for it like he was timing the New York Marathon. And every day for a year I had managed to just slip over that line in time...

Except one.

"You! You're tardy! Detention!"

Well, I had never had detention in my life. There was a reason for this, too. Detention meant being detained. Which meant my mother, who would be picking me up after school, would have to wait for me. And my mother did not so much wait. I would call it more of a slow boil.

I believe I mentioned this before, I was an only child and Mom didn't exactly have what you'd call perspective in child rearing. ("Perspective" here meaning "any sort of concept that children weren't just lovely quiet plants that you could put in window, water occasionally, watch them bud into something breath-taking, and which never, ever would inconvenience you by dropping leaves on your carpeting.")

So I had done all I could do to avoid this. My own significant lack of perspective knew it would be The End of the World as We Know It.

Detention meant that not only would this go on my clean School Record, it would trigger the Wrath of Mom.

Which almost guaranteed my having to explain and apologize for the error of my ways, AND a loss of TV and/or phone privileges. This meant missing vital 21 Jump Street time.

(For my younger readers, there was no TiVo or TV series videos in the 80s. If you missed an episode, it was lost forever. Weep for us.)

Well, I spent the better part of this day in a panic. I wondered at the various punishments I would receive at home, and in what combination. I pondered whether my detention would prevent me from getting into a good college. And I worried that Detective Tom Hanson of Jump Street and I would be separated from each other for the rest of my young life.

So after school, I ran to Mr. O'Neill's office as fast as my pink high-top sneakers could take me. And there, Mr. O'Neill saw a girl who he'd never, ever seen even speak before. The one who sucked at almost every sport he trotted out, but had an unnaturally wicked volleyball serve.

And she began to speak in tongues. She said something about goose poop and running marathons... And the unreasonable expecations of academia... And logic and imaginary lines... And impending doom and tardiness...

And she concluded with a phrase rife with rage and exasperation and all of the injustices of youth, "And I've never had a detention and I'm not going to have one now."

Well, poor Mr. O'Neill. He didn't know what to say. And really, what was there to say? I had said it all.

I avoided detention that day, and every other day, as I think Mr. O'Neill was a little afraid of me after that. Plus, I eventually got ahold of the most prized items of all items in the school...

On pure accident, I ended up with an undated, un-time-stamped Official Pink Hall Pass.

And that's when I knew, nothing could stop me now.

The Devil and Great Adventure

Gold... power... smokin' hot stringed instrument competitions in two-part harmony with feelin': these are the things the Devil of American fable and song tends to lean toward for his bargaining chips.

But if he'd ever wanted to expand his repertoire a little, I'd say he'd have found himself a thriving new niche market courtesy of one school trip and the Looping Starship down at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey.

It was our junior year high school Physics Class. And the benefit of this class was not simply that we got to drop things that went "sploot" to see them plummet at 9.8 meters per second squared in the name of Science.

Although any 16 year old will tell you, that was pretty satisfying.

No, it was that every year, the junior class went on a field trip to Great Adventure amusement park.

Now this, too, was in the name of Science, and Education, and Big Whirly Things Demonstrating Physics in Action. We knew this, because we were sent with worksheets, where we were supposed to calculate these Real Life Examples scientifically. Y'know, in between applying sunscreen and smearing ourselves with day-glo liquid cheese.

We started out with the best of intentions. Why, we crowded into the Enterprise and understood just how it was that centripital force prevented Sally Rodriguez and Andy Goldberg from being pitched off into Long Island. Which was a disappointment to some because Andy Goldberg had really been holding our football team back this season.

We strapped ourselves into the Pitfall and worked out that yes, my inappropriately loose footwear had, in fact, dropped at 9.8 meters per second squared. And we calculated the distance it would take for me to hop to the nearest souvenir shop to purchase a pair of flip-flops.

We even managed to calculate the amount of force that was behind the lunchtime chili cheese dog, nachos and funnel cake Kelly O'Hara was reintroduced to on the pirate ship.

But when we buckled into the Looping Starship, our view of life was forever changed.

This ride was new at the time, a Space Shuttle-shaped contraption on a 360 degree arm. Having just seen the Challenger blow up in very recent memory, there was already an uneasy sense about the ride.

It would have been like folks in the early 20th century stepping onto a gondola ride named "The Titanic of Love." It sets a certain tone.

But, this ride had also been advertised on local radio and television for months now. Its reputation preceeded it to the point that it had become a thrill ride Collossus.

We were young and pepped up on sugar, and completely game for anything. And so was one of our math teachers. We'll call him Mr. Barnes, an eccentric man who looked a bit like actor Joel Grey with a mustache, and whose wardrobe choices involved glaring polyester primary colors which he would mix-and-match with joyful abandon.

Heretofore, Mr. Barnes had been treated with the bored tolerance you'd expect from teens. He was there to supervise, and nothing more. A kelly green pantsed and yellow shirted and red cardiganed prison guard we tried to block out which, given the color scheme, you can imagine wasn't terribly easy.

When the Starship first started its back-and-forth penduluming, we felt all the optimistic anticipation of youth.

Back and forth... back and forth... higher and higher the Starship it climbed.

Right... left.... backwards... forwards... we swung and rocked.

The harnesses over our heads pressed into our middles as our weight increased against them.

The harnsesses shimmied and wiggled against this pressure, as our view began to swing from sky to ground.

Until finally, finally, there! There, we were hanging like bats above the entire park. Our world turned completely on end. The time we hung there seemed interminably long. And that, my friends, that is when my classmates and I began to crack.

One girl began to laugh uncontrollably. Another was shrieking. And one of my friends began to speak in tongues.

No, wait, it wasn't in tongues. It was just the words she was saying before us were so foreign, so unbelievably impossible, the ears would not initially process it.

"Mr. Barnes, if you get me off of here, I promise, I'll really buckle down in math. I'll get As! I'll start a study group! Really, I will. Just get me offa this thing!"

And the trend began to catch on. As we swept back around the 360 for a second dangling upside down experience of seemingly infinite length, other kids began to make their bargains.

"Totally, Mr. Barnes! I'll do extra credit! I'll tutor other students! I'll clap the erasers without being asked! Just get us down from this thing!"

If Mr. Barnes had been wise, he would have gotten this all down in signed contracts. After all, we did have paper and pens with us.

Because as the Looping Starship finally made its slow, sweeping, careening descent back to Earth, those promises, they evaporated like the blue raspberry Icee stain on Patrick Kennedy's t-shirt.

"So about those A's... when do you want to start that study group?"

The memories of promises made vanished into the humid Jersey early summer air. Even our worksheets were forgotten. We had gotten on the Looping Starship and we survived.

The Devil wouldn't have let us off so easy.

My Life as a Junior High Heavy Metal Rockstar

"So, how's that heavy metal band going?" Fig Newton, self-appointed class clown (you can read about his ongoing War of Wills with one substitute teacher here) had turned his chair to me, Cheshire grin on his face.

I liked Fig. His jokes never ventured into that truly mean territory that some kids' tended to. But I also knew enough to sense danger ahead. Y'know, like livestock seem to know a thunderstorm is coming.

Heavy metal?! In that moment, I tried to recall my current musical work. To-date it had involved eight years of tedious piano lessons where I tried desperately to squeeze even mild Billy Joel tunes into an otherwise rigid classical repertoire...

And the rest of it was all about school band flute-tooting, where the closest we got to rocking out was Neil Diamond's "America."

We took what we could get.

"Um..." I suavely stalled for time.

"You and Josette," Fig went on to explain. "Your heavy metal band. 'Thorson and Hadley.' I hear it's getting really big."

"Ohhh!" I said, light dawning over my mental schoolyard. Now I saw where we were going with this. This was supposed to be humor. See, because my best friend since the beginning of time, Josette Hadley and I were both big ol' nerds. Quiet, and good students, and hopelessly awkward....

Josette was a nervous kid because she'd had so friggin' many CCD classes she'd gotten the idea she was treading a fine line to Hell with pretty much breathing the wrong way.

I had the unfortunate curse of being the only child of strict, distinctly-unamused perfectionists where even my most minor toe out of line was viewed as a horrifying reflection on their failure in the whole unspoken Exceptional Parent Competition they seem to have signed up for...

None of my classmates knew these specific pressures, mind you. But they could smell fear. Sort of like sharks to blood in the water. It couldn't be helped. It was Nature's Law.

So this all was supposed to be hilarious because the banging of the heads, we did not so much do.

"They have a heavy metal band," Fig confidentially told two of the boys around him. "Thorson and Hadley, it's called. They really rock."

"Um, sure," I said, flatly, "the gigs-- they just keep coming." I went back to doodling hearts and Garfields in my Trapper Keeper notebook.

And so began the rise of this new and rather eccentric running joke among my classmates. During the day, Josette and I were introverted goody-two-shoes junior high students...

During evenings and weekends, though, we were leather-clad hard core rockers who gave Joan Jett, Heart, AC/DC and Yngwie Malmsteen a run for their money.

The shift came somewhere into about the third day of this (because in school situations, what is funny one moment is, of course, well-worth repeating word-for-word a bazillion times to infinity).

So seeing that this theme could easily run clear into summer vacation and possibly follow us for the rest of our lives, being something we'd have to try to smooth over with potential employers-- ("no, I never did bite the head off a chicken") -- Josette and I got an idea.

And we went to work.

"Here," I handed Fig a slice of spiral bound notebook paper. I even had gone to the trouble to trim those little fringy things off, so he knew it was important.

"What's this?" He held it, frowning.

"Read it."

In big letters on the top of the paper was a logo. We'd toyed with this, oh, for a good hour or two. Which in kid-time is really years. Trying out different variations. Little nuances. Eventually we'd settled on writing "Thorson" in jagged 80s KISS-style lettering, and "Hadley" all in capital letters. Because, since my name was first, y'know, hers should be in caps. To show equal importance.

We were determined not to have any control and ego issues break up our band like McCartney and Lennon... David Lee Roth and Van Halen... erm, Simon and Garfunkel.

Instead of a traditional "and" we showed our rebellious heavy metal nature by using a separating lightning bolt.

Oh, it was so very cool, we were sure.

Below this masterpiece of branding, was a song list. Twelve song titles, from the first Thorson/HADLEY album.

These titles were as repulsive and violent as we could think to make them. Which, of course, wasn't very. But we gave it our all. Edgy! Raw! Involving pain and stench even, which we thought was a particularly nice touch.

Oh, we had stepped onto the stage and strummed the first grinding electric chord of a whole new age in junior high school life!

Fig passed the paper around to his buddies, the ones who had been helping perpetuate the theme. As long as it had taken me to get the initial joke, it took them to realize Josette and I had decided to embrace it.

Next in our work were the lyrics pages. Lyrics fleshing out all of those vulgar song titles. We were nerds, after all, so one thing you could certainly count on nerds to do properly-- particularly girl nerds who excelled in Language Arts-- was to write decent rhyme.

Oh, we made the songs ridiculously silly, incredibly spoofy, and shared those, too, with the masses.

Then came the promo posters. We were Artsy Nerds, yes, so promotional literature could be whipped up in no-time!

Our school book covers brandished our logo and information about our tours. We had rave reviews written up. Soon, everyone knew about Thorson/HADLEY. Our heavy metal infamy extended throughout junior high and well into high school, until it had absolutely just nowhere else to go.

We had peaked at 18, like so many child stars.

Sometimes, now as an adult, when I find myself once again being thrown into the role of responsible, reliable goody-two-shoes, I find myself longing for my headbanging past. Those days so free, so full of beautiful music with words like "reek" and "puke" in it... And of course the fame...

Oh, the fame...

But, at least these golden days of glory were immortalized. In various spots, in the 1989 Edgar Allen Poe High School Year Book, you will see it printed there-- a message for us graduating seniors to remember always:

Thorson/HADLEY RULEZZZZ!

You can take the girl out of the 80s big hair, but you never quite take the 80s big hair out of the girl.

WWMD: What Would MacGyver Do?

Technical whiz. Humanitarian. Mediator. Mullet fashionista... In the 1980s, MacGyver was many a teenaged girl's Renaissance Man.

At least, among my circle of friends.

I was reminded of this recently, as conversation with some of these same friends-- recently reconnected due to the Seven Degrees of Separation Known As Facebook Stalking-- drifted back to the Swiss-Army superman we'd loved so well.

It was really only a matter of time.

MacGyver had absolutely topped our list of 80s heroes. Michael Knight of Knight Rider wasn't bad, but somehow deep-down we knew any guy who'd wear a black leather Member's Only jacket every single day, and whose best friend was his car, was just not relationship material.

I'd had a mysterious crush on Mike Nesmith of the Monkees-- the sarcasm, southern accent, sideburns and green wool hat was an acquired taste, I'll admit.

Harrison Ford was a particular favorite, too-- at least once I overcame the Kid-Brain Observational Barrier that prevented me from realizing Han Solo and Indiana Jones were actually played by the same person. (I don't exactly recall why it took me so long to figure this out. I can only say it was the same inconsistent value-assessment issue that caused me to think that Roddy McDowall was the Greatest Actor Ever because he played Cornelius in the Planet of the Apes films. I couldn't understand why he wasn't earning Oscars for this.)

And Johnny Depp as Tom Hanson of 21 Jump Street was a perennial on that list, prized not just because of his innate Depp-ness, but because that show was actually preachy enough it got my mom's Stamp of Approval.

But MacGyver.... Among my friends and I, MacGyver was a unifier. Someone we could all agree on.

Discussions around the lunch table covered all the normal drool-drenched fluff that hormonally-charged teenaged girls would dwell on. But inevitably, we would linger on MacGyver's impressive problem solving skills.

Yes, while boys would debate who would win in a fight, Superman or Batman, we would evaluate how our favorite TV hunks would get out of various jams.

"Who would be able to break out of prison first, Michael Knight or MacGyver?"

"Michael Knight would just call K.I.T.T. who would roll through the brick wall and bust him out."

"Yeah, but then the cops would know he broke out and be looking for him right away. MacGyver would weave his paper napkin from his meals into a super-tight string, and use it to either get the keys to his cell, or fashion it into an elaborate pulley-winch system, which used physics to bend the bars enough for him to get through."

(Science class was always disappointing to us, and I blame MacGyver. We never did cover making a bomb out of chewing gum, a can of baked beans, an aerosol hairspray can and a lighter. He set an example our teachers couldn't hope to live up to.)

In fact, no one quite compared. The A-Team members needed the whole team, a blowtorch and large plates of metal that happened to be lying around once a week, 15 minutes from the end of every program.

Magnum P.I. had personal connections.

Remington Steele had luck and Laura.

The Six-Million-Dollar Man had superpowers and a price tag.

Yes, when compared side-by-side to our other heroes, it seemed MacGyver was the only one who could get by entirely on his own innate wit and mechanical skill.

If we were stuck on a deserted island with only one TV leading man, we all agreed, you couldn't do much better than being stranded with MacGyver.

Plus, he's the only character from my youth that's had the distinction of becoming a verb.

Note: this post is dedicated to my high school lunch table friends, and was MacGyvered together from Grape Fruit Roll-Ups, duct tape, Superglue and a lot of coffee.

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