MR WRONG: It's Halloween, dummy

COLUMN DEP’T.

MR WRONG: Keep the Spooky Season Fun-Sized

THE NEXT HOLIDAY we have to deal with is Halloween. I enjoy Halloween, for the pumpkins and witches and black cats and stuff that is also very Autumnal, such as hot cider and a fistful of candy clenched in the hand of a Spider-Man or Batman, or in the hand below a genuinely, to me, creepy melty white face man from the Scream franchise of B-Movies, or the white mask with holes in it from I can’t remember which franchise of stab-the-teenagers movies, or the mask from the other big franchise that is supposed to be a William Shatner mask. Scary!

I don’t particularly dig those kinda movies, the stabby ones, but the Iconography all fits fine into Halloween, the ’een of Hallows, or the Ween of Hallows, if you swing that way? I’m not even sure what that is, but it’s at night, The Eve of All of the Hallows, and hopefully not too cold, because nothing is crappier for a trick-or-treating kid than to have to go out in a costume you are psyched about, but it’s so fucking cold you gotta wear a Winter coat over it, and then when you get warmed up you are trying to manage the coat and your candy stash, and eventually something gets lost, and it generally is not the candy, that’s way too important to lose track of! Boo!

I am looking at Halloween as a thing for The Children, and my Halloween-hackles bristle or rise or do whatever hackles do when I see all this “Spooky Season” crapola, which has basically now marketingwise spread one special night out over several goddamn weeks, and at this point Xmas is bleeding all over it, interspersed with flecks of Thanksgiving. Even the fucking Lottery Machine at the supermarket is displaying Xmas-themed scratch-offs, jeez.

Also, I am an Adult, and as an Adult, I have been to some Halloween parties for Adults, and wow, do some people get cranked up for this kind of party! That’s fine, I have even been in Halloween costume contests, and one time I won at one, when I was in college. I think when I was in college I was definitely not an Adult, but anyway, I wrapped my body in aluminum foil and put a large filmy plastic globe on my head, a spent spheroid previously filled with beer, which was a depleted Matt’s Beer Ball, an amazing and now obsolete innovation of which I was a huge proponent on account of I saw the party-potential when the product was launched and bought one of the flimsy plastic taps to suck the beer outta the ball, which meant I got into a lotta beerball-based parties because I owned a tap. Anyway, I duct-taped a coupla radio antennas to the ball so I could be a Spaceman, but also, you couldn’t see my face very well, so I won a prize for that, $75, good times. I got really sweaty dancing at the party, a “College Mixer,” with unlimited amounts of alcohol, and by the end of the night the rest of my outfit was down to an aluminum-foil diaper, but I was committed to the beer-globe staying in place on my Unrecognizableness. Arrooo!

I have been to a few Adult Halloween parties since then, and they’re fine, and I am not gonna be grouchy about any Americans who get psyched, as grown-ass Adults, to put on a costume for Halloween. I prefer the funny and/or clever homemade costumes to the sexy-whatever getups that people buy at the Spirit shop or Amazon or whatever, but mostly, partywise, I have devolved into the kind of partygoer who just wants to get to the hooch and get mellow, you know? If I got invited to a Halloween party now, an Adult one, I think I would dress up as a Chicken, because I have a Chicken costume up in the attic that I bought for some goofy non-Halloween events I put on, and so I own a Chicken suit, and also a Santa getup with a strap-on belly and everything. Ho ho creepy! Putting on a Santa suit for Halloween would be ultimate laziness, so I would go Chicken, but really, I’m not looking for a Halloween party, I am a grownup, and if I got invited to one I think it would just make me anxious or something, I mean, if I go to a party I just wanna get loose, you know? Being responsible for a Look would distract me from eating and drinking, just saying, I have priorities! Oh wait, one time I went to an adult Halloween party and I made a crash-test dummy outfit out of a full-coverage paper painter’s suit and a skinhead wig I painted white. I painted my face white and taped some electronic-looking things out of an old radio onto my skull, and when I drove to the party, I stopped at a light, and some people pulled up next to me and started laughing and waving at me and acting like they were bouncing off the dashboard of their car, and I didn’t know what the fuck they were doing until I looked in the rearview mirror at my chalky dummy-face. So I did a coupla bounces off the dashboard and they appreciated it. Wow, I wonder what a Psychiatrist would make outta me choosing costumes that involve full-body coverage and radio parts? Ooo-eeeeEEE-OOoooh!

As an Adult and a Homeowner, I now face the runup to Halloween with basically a lowkey feeling of Dread, because I live in one of those neighborhoods that has a rep for being a great place to trick-or-treat. There’s lotsa families with children, and bunch of ’em do a Halloween event in a little park near my house, and people drive over from all over the fucking city to drop their kids off so they can go crazy loading up on candy. If you commit your house to looking like you are giving out candy for Halloween, you are gonna see at least 500 legit trick-or-treaters, I’m not kidding, it’s exhausting, especially if you think you can sit in the living room and go to the door each time, forget that shit, you gotta sit out on the stoop and sling candy to a never-ending stream of Barbies and Princess Jasmines and Iron Mans. Right now, my candy stockpile is approximately 700 pieces of Value-sized stuff, mostly cheap sugary crap, including one 100-piece bag of chocolate-centric candy, which will be given out according to my Judgment of costume, enthusiasm, cuteness, adorableness, and Halloween Spirit. The cheap candy will go to shitty teenagers not in costume and adults pushing strollers who are collecting candy “for the baby.” Jesus F. Christ, boo.

The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly wherever it can appear. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP’T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS for the assembly of select sandwiches from The Modern Club Book of Recipes, contributed by club members and their interested friends, and edited by Mrs. Norman S. Essig, Chairman of Home Economics, Modern Club, published in 1921. This book is in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

SANDWICH APPETIZER
1/4 lb. Roquefort cheese
1 cake cream cheese
Little mustard
Little salt
Little vinegar to taste
Little catsup
Little Worcestershire sauce
Little cider

Mix Roquefort with a little vinegar and mustard and salt, then add cream cheese, catsup, Worcestershire sauce, and cider stirring all together. Spread on rounds of toast with a narrow slice of tomato across the sandwich.
—Mrs. Harold DeLancey Downs

HOT CHEESE SANDWICHES
1 roll snappy cheese
1 egg
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. mustard
Bacon
Rounds of bread

Cream cheese, add egg and seasoning. Spread on bread cut 1/2 inch thick. Place slice of bacon on each round, bake in quick oven till bacon is done.
—Mrs. F. R. Savidge

CRACKER SANDWICH
Mix together 1 small jar of McClaren's cheese and 2 tbsp. of mayonnaise. Put 1 green pepper through a vegetable grinder and add it to the cheese.

CRACKER SANDWICH
Roquefort cheese with enough butter rubbed in to spread, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce and a little prepared mustard. Sprinkle paprika on top.
—Mrs. Harold B. Beitler

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, kindly send a picture to us at indignity@indignity.net.

MARKETING DEP'T.

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