That’s Dracula from Pennsylvania

This past weekend (Two weekends ago) I went to the Grey Towers National Historic Site in Milford, Pennsylvania for a dramatic reading of Dracula.

The site is really quite impressive. Built by some rich dude who’s decedents donated it to the whole place to the Forest Service. It’s got over 100 acres and tons of atmosphere for this time of year. The forest service did a great job setting the place up and marking the trail from the parking area to the mansion with jack-o-lanterns. A full moon on a cool, clear fall night topped off the Halloween factor.

The performance was in a dramatic reading format which I had seen before and was quite interesting. Everyone had binders with the dialog, although the…readers?…actors?…(I’m not sure of the proper term) knew most of their lines and only occasionally referred to the text. Just about all of the performers were amateurs, holding down ‘proper’ jobs but they did a stellar job and looked like they were having a lot of fun. The guys who played Butterfield and Renfield were standouts. One of the actors is in an indie movie called “Night of the Ambien Zombies” (a trailer starts immediately when you open the site and it contains scenes NSFW).

They were part of a group called the American Readers Theatre. Check them out if you get a chance.

Boo!

Happy Halloween! 

As we were carving pumpkins last night I began thinking about the trick-or-treating traditions I had as a child.  At the risk of sounding like some sort of old codger, I think it was a whole lot more fun back in the day.

Today, many towns have rules about what times trick or treating can occur.  Some even move the day to the preceding weekend to make it more convenient!  That’s totally unacceptable and ruins the whole idea.  Once we move Christmas we can talk about moving Halloween.  Otherwise, hands off!

I’ve seen a lot of parents who drive their kids around, from house to house to trick-or-treat.  Again, it misses the whole point of the event (on top of demonstrating why childhood obesity is such a problem in this country).  Don’t worry, you’re kid can walk a few blocks once in awhile.  It won’t kill them.  Besides, the best part of the night was stumbling back home, exhausted and footsore with a bag bursting with candy.  It left you with a sense of accomplishment, like running a marathon only with candy at the end.

A lot of malls offer trick-or-treating which is a simply ridiculous and pathetic attempt to get people to shop.  No self-respecting trick-or-treater would sell out by going to the mall for candy.  It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.  Where’s the challenge?   Where’s the fun?  Mall trick-or-treating is for losers.

Right after school I’d get home and get my costume on.  My mom would then have to physically restrain me  from leaving, telling me:  “Let people get in their homes for a second!”  She was probably right, I don’t think there were many people around to hand out candy at 3:30 in the afternoon.  Once it was deemed late enough, I’d meet up with friends and we’d canvass as much of our town as we could.  I can’t remember my parents giving me a deadline to be home by but there must have been one.  Fortunately, they weren’t uber-paranoid types, worried that every piece of candy had a razor blade in it or that legions of psychos and sickos were just waiting to snatch me off the street so we (a bunch of pre-teens) were free to wander the town by ourselves.

We had a funeral home in town which converted a garage into a rest stop of ghoul and ghost wanna-bes.  They set up chairs and gave away free donuts and cider and kids could go there to rest and plot their next moves.

One of the most fun things I remember was running into other groups of kids around town and sharing information about which were the good and bad houses to go to.  Who gave out the good candy and who gave out a couple of pennies?

Ahhh…..good times…

A Public Service Announcement

As a public service, I wanted to give all of you some advice on how to avoid getting mauled by various monsters of the night. The most basic of all precautions is avoiding what I call “The Boogeyman Spot”.

The definition of the “Boogeyman Spot” is: That side of the bed where the Boogeyman (monster, psychotic killer, or any other no-good doer for that matter) has the best access to. Usually it’s the side of the bed closest to a window or door but individual floor plans may make different sides of the bed more attractive to monsters for different reasons.

Now, this information really is of no help if you are the only person in your bed. The marauding monster will make a beeline for you in that case, regardless of where you are. So…..the best way to avoid the Boogeyman is to get some unwitting person to share your bed with you (obviously, someone who doesn’t know about the Boogeyman spot or they’ll try to get YOU to sleep in it!). How to dupe someone into being your Boogeyman decoy is beyond the scope of this page but some do it by buying someone dinner and drinks, offering money and jewelry, and some of us have to take the ultimate step of marrying!

Now… some may consider this unethical but the whole object of this is to make the “Boogey Man” want to take your partner instead of you. As everyone knows, “Boogeymen” are lazy and not particularly choosy so they will take the first person they can get (and as an aside, once I discovered this it occurred to me that I’m eminently qualified to be a boogeyman myself). Therefore, you need to make up ANY excuse you can to not sleep in the Boogey Man spot. Some possible excuses include:

• I need to be near the alarm clock
• I need to be away from the alarm clock
• The sun rises in the East so that’s the side of the bed I need to rise on
• I need to sleep next to the wall so I won’t fall off the bed
• I need to be closest to the toilet
• YOU really should be closest to the toilet

(I’ve used all of these and they all work well.)

As you can see, the list can be endless. Anyway, after you have convinced your partner to take the “Boogeyman spot” you can be assured of nights of worry free sleep. Just be careful if your partner constantly likes to rearrange the furniture. You will need to constantly reassess the most likely Boogeyman spot and adjust yourself accordingly!

I’ve provided you with a schematic of a generic bedroom and how you could set it up so that you could avoid being the next target of the boogeyman.  Now, getting the ’safe’ spot is no guarantee.  You’ll still have to escape while the boogeyman is gainfully employed devouring your significant other which is no easy feat since you’ve gone to such lengths to make sure that there are no windows or doors near you.  So, you’ll have to keep yourself in reasonable shape.  Good enough, at least to vault over a boogeyman eating his gruesome meal and get the hell out of dodge.

Now, this might seem a bit cold so it’s very important not to let your partner know about the boogeyman.  If he/she does find out, at best you’ll look like a jerk but at worst they’ll understand that there’s something to this whole thing and try to put you into the boogeyman spot.  What happens then is that you’ll have to suspiciously eyeball each other, getting very little sleep until you eventually reach an uneasy compromise and agree to share the boogeyman risk equally.

Needless to say, this is quite unacceptable but you’ll have to figure out how to deal with that on your own.

Good luck…and lock that window!