The Crowd Went Batshit
So, Halloween was this last weekend, and it was real interesting as it marked the first time I’d ever been in the Halloween parade.
Now, Halloween has always been a real important holiday for me, probably because of the influence of my father. My old man was always a big horror fan, and was a kid during the golden age of horror (he was born in 1933). He saw all of the golden oldies when they first appeared in the theatre, was around for the advent of 3–D, etc. When I was a kid, he told me about dressing up in these elaborate Halloween costumes he’d put together. His Wolfman costume, for instance, involved mortician’s wax purchased from a mortuary, and yak hair. I don’t know where the fuck he got yak hair from, but I assume someone must have been selling it somewhere.
The old man was a never ending font of scary stories, a lot of which he just made up. He also had a habit of going outside during the full moon and howling. No shit, he really did this. He had a pretty good wolf howl too, and the sound would echo through the valley we lived in. Dogs would be barking, coyotes would be making that weird coyote sound, and the old man would be laughing.
Since I grew up in the middle of nowhere, Halloween unfortunately kind of sucked. First of all, trick or treating was impossible because everything was so far away. I’d get decked out in my costume and my parents would have to drive me around, because everything was so far away. Sometimes you’d bump into other kids who were being driven around as well. My haul at the end of the night was usually pretty lousy. I’d get a lot of apples, candy not really meant for kids (like toffee drops or something), and pennies. Pennies, yet! I mean, even in the eighties a penny didn’t go too fucking far, you know what I mean? You’d be hard pressed to amuse yourself with a fucking penny.
The only good thing to do was to go to the local Division for Youth Services facility, where there was a haunted house. The DYS facility, where my dad ended up working, was one of New York State’s many juvenile detention centers. The haunted house was pretty fucking scary, I will say, and included this fake severed hand with a motor in it that would kind of twitch. I was terrified of that thing.
Anyway, I basically shelved Halloween at a pretty young age, and spent it by myself wandering around outside at night or sitting around watching horror films. My father, of course, wasn’t so content to sit around. I remember one costume he’d invented called the Killer Pile of Leaves. He’d take two tarps and sewn them together to creat a gigantic sort of pocket. He covered the top of this with layer upon layer of leaves. He’d rake the lawn and glue the leaves to the top of the tarp. He’d then wait impatiently for a day or two for more leaves to fall, then glue those down. He painted this weird mouth on the bottom of the tarp. That Halloween, he’d crouch down on the grass of the local Presbyterian church, looking, so help me god, like a pile of leaves. When kids or senior citizens would pass, he’d rear up, displaying this gigantic, awful mouth. He scared the shit out of dozens off kids, and nearly killed poor old Mrs. Gould, who had a weak ticker. I should mention that my father was in his sixties while he was doing this.
Anyway, over the years I sort of grew to miss Halloween. So I was very excited to move to New York City where Halloween was a massive event. It soon became clear that being in the parade was probably a lot more fun than watching the parade. One year, after dressing like a zombie, I was having lunch with Sarah and mentioned that it’s not much fun being a solo zombie. It would be nice to have a whole bunch of zombies that could run around in a gigantic mob.
“Yeah, and you should all do the Thriller dance,” she said.
One of the interesting things about being with Sarah is that she is very good at making things happen, an ability which I think is sort of beginning to rub off on me. I don’t know. For instance, we went to Serbia recently, and here’s how it hapened. We both wanted to go on vacation, and couldn’t decided where we wanted to go. We both sort of wanted to go to Russia, but didn’t feel prepared yet and didn’t really have the cash. We were listening to a CD of Balkan brass band music taken from an annual Serbian music festival. We decided “hey, lets go to that,” and we did. It was amazing. It just all came together, and we went to Serbia. Stuff like that always happens with her. This year it was “hey, let’s assemble an army of zombies.”
Although it should be noted that neither Sarah nor I can really take credit for what happened this Halloween. An army of zombies doing the Thriller dance is an idea that sells itself. Before we knew it we had two dozen recruits. Kim choreographed the dance, Katrina cut the song down to a more manageable length, Seth rented dance space and kindly helped some of us (OK, me) who were dance-impaired to get the moves down, Niegel got us a space to put on our makeup, Sarah Reynolds showed up with a video camera, Tom and Heather showed up as scientists in matching wigs, Garth let us into his apartment to rehearse, and just about everybody put the word out to other zombies and/or learned how to do zombie makeup. Matt, Angela, and Greg came from out of town to be zombies. In fact, Greg endangered his very reputation as the Chrome Consultant at Woodstock Harley Davidson by donning sweatpants and shakin’ it like Janet. It was like watching Voltron come together and . . . do whatever it was that Voltron did. I don’t know what that was because I never knew any kids who had all the Voltron toys. I had like the yellow lion or something, and I knew some kid with the red one, but that’s like only an arm and a leg, you know? Anyway, I digress. After a few weeks of what seemed like manic activity and teamwork that would put an afterschool special to shame, we were standing in a sea of people ready to issue forth into the Halloween parade.
Standing in a big group like that, you really get an idea of how schizophrenic the parade is. We were between some shitty New York radio station float, some stupid cut rate porn site float, some Star Wars nerds fighting with light sabers, bikers in skull masks, and some douchebags playing the bag pipes. Nothing spells Halloween like the fucking bagpipes. In fact, I think an album called “The Chilling Sounds of the All Hallows Eve Pipers” would go over real well. What is it with people who can play the bagpipes? They think they’re real fucking special, don’t they? In my town growing up, the local volunteer fire department had a bagpipe division of these plaid clad geriatrics who flat out butchered Oh Danny Boy at every public event. Every fucking holiday brought the bagpipers. The bagpipes, as I understand, were originally designed to be played while armies marched to war, and their terrifying sound was meant to carry for miles. It wasn’t meant to sound nice up close. I wish these people could find a less, uh, piercing way to remind people that they’re Scottish.
Anyway, here’s how the parade worked: us guys dressed like zombies would be herded by others dressed like scientists. Periodically, the zombies would get out of control, and the scientists would play Thriller. We would rock the Thriller dance to the delight of the crowd. By “delight” I mean “batshit crazy screams of acceptance and wonder.” Seriously, the crowd screamed really fucking loud. Granted, everyone involved in his production was incredibly good at doing the Thriller dance. We looked great, and made the bagpipers marching near us look like shit. What would YOU rather see, a bunch of frumpy kilt-wearing schmucks or a bunch of good-looking zombies busting a move?
By the end of the parade, it was clear that we were the coolest thing in it. In fact, there’s a Reuters photo of Garth and Anne and the backs of our heads as we wait for the parade to start. It a really good Halloween, and I can only imagine how we’re going to top it next year.
November 2nd, 2005 at 9:54 pm
bad-fucking-ass