Halloween Is Upon Us

Hi Kids.

Halloween is just around the corner! I have always rather enjoyed it. I’ve got this fascination/fixation with masks…As revealed in an earlier posting, my favourite toys when I was growing up were...

“Maskatron”

and...

“Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces”

I just have always liked masks for some reason. We all wear masks every day, figuratively speaking…

Anyway, I remember one Halloween when I was a mere slip of a youth and I had three costumes that I wanted to wear. My dad and I decided that it would be a swell idea to go up and down the same long street three times, changing my costume in the car, which would be parked at the end of said street. My dad wanted to go with me, but people would have recognized him and figured out our “trick”…(I realize that ethically, it probably wasn’t the best thing that we could have done, but I thought it was pretty cool of him and we had a good story to tell). I almost forgot about that story until I saw Conan interviewing John Leguizamo last week, (I think ~ it’s all a blur)...anyhow, he told a similar story about going to the same places dressed in different costumes…he was with his buddies…and it was like last year or something…

Attack of the Six Foot Pumpkin

So, Lasagna and I bought a 6’ Jack-o-lantern that we put in the front yard. Last night at about midnight, I was watching “Cat’s Eye” on TV and I heard voices coming from the front yard. I muted the TV and looked through the blinds to see what was going on. There were five teenagers gathered around Jack-o…I went outside and they said they thought it was pretty cool…They asked if it was OK that they were on our lawn...I said that was fine and went back inside…I thought maybe there was going to be trouble for a second and my heart started to beat faster as I opened the front door…but they seemed like OK kids and they meant no harm…They were just curious…When I came back in, I was reminded of when I used to work at a go-cart track for a few summers when I was in high school…(Cue the flashback music and the blurred fade)...The owner and staff would tell me horror stories of how it used to be…People would be on drugs or drunk and try to wreck the place…The owner told me that he eventually had to hire bikers to watch the track, working in the field with baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire…They still operated with that mentality, even though things were pretty tame…Perhaps some of the staff wanted something to happen, so they could “fuck somebody up”…Things never really got too out of hand while I worked there though…I had to “subdue” a guy once, but that was about the extent of physical confrontation…Occasionally, there would be conflict that was easily defused through discussion or by giving the occasional free lap or two to somebody. So this one woman I worked with would count laps with her clipboard in a chair mounted on a giant tractor tire near the track while she worked on her tan…A kid was intentionally fish-tailing the go-cart around every corner and she kept yelling at him to stop it…So she jumped out of her chair and went after the kid with her clipboard…He almost ran her over (because he had no actual experience driving and couldn’t get to the brake under pressure/attack). Reacting the way she had been conditioned to when people broke the rules, I thought she was going to kill him…My point...I think...is that if strangers were on her lawn, she would probably have gone out her front door cocking a shotgun, yelling “GET THE FUCK OFF MY PROPERTY!!!”…She was funny. A truly nice person…if you were on her side. We would discuss a lot of issues and it was interesting to get her perspective. She had been through the school of hard knocks and wasn’t going to take any more shit…from anyone. I enjoyed messing with her sometimes, saying it was her right to be absolutely wrong. Her daughter once asked me if I was on drugs because I smiled all the time (I wasn’t)…meanwhile what she didn’t realized was that her mom was doing “hot-knives” in the garage with a blowtorch while she was asking me that…Ah, the good old days…(This thought went through my mind in what seemed like a second, but it took so much longer to write it out...Sorry).

When I looked outside again, the kids were gone. Leaving something like that in the yard makes me nervous, because it’s just begging to be vandalized…We live in a pretty good neighbourhood, but I never trust anything 100%…

In other news

George Takei has announced: “I’m gay!”
To which my only reasonable response can be “No shit.”

Hey, if you haven’t checked Howard Stern’s site in a while, they have added a new intro which cracked me up. Make sure you have your speakers on...I’m immature, but responsible. What can you do?

This morning I got to see Green Day’s new video for “Jesus of Suburbia” ~ a 9 minute song. It was pretty good. I’m not a fan of censorship though. I can understand it with swearing, I guess…but the line “Doing someone else’s cocaine” had the word “cocaine” removed…(Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” video was on next and it was all censored too…Then I watched “The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show”…Sadly, it too was censored…I wonder if all this censorship is helping kids to grow into better people…we’ll see). I am looking forward to “Bullet In A Bible” (See earlier post for trailer)…It should be good. I downloaded a few clips the other day. My only concern about the band is how are they going to top this successful album in the future? I hope they can keep up the good work. (That “immature, but responsible” line is actually something singer Billie Joe once said in an interview…I’m not sure why I remember stuff like that, but I do…).

Immature...

Responsible...

Lasagna’s been away for the week, so I have to take care of stuff…Everything’s been pretty good so far. I have to take care of this guy:

Lasagna's friend brought him home for her kids, who liked him, but it turns out that her husband is allergic…So now we’re the proud owners of this meatball. He’s cute, but not too dynamic...and he shits a lot...

Pet care is a lot of work...Remember Mark Anthony and the cute kitten in "Feed the Kitty"? That's one of my favourites...It's amazing to me that it was made in 1952!

This is for my new pal S*, who asked:

“What's up with the monkey fixation?”

The short answer is: I've got issues...major ones.

If you would like a more involved answer, I guess it stems from the notion that we are all descendants of apes...whether you believe in that notion or not...and we can learn a lot about human behaviour through them...

The first "Planet of the Apes" film was ground-breaking in terms of the science-fiction genre and the series as a whole presents socio-political commentaries on the events that were taking place at the time each film was made...

The documentary that comes with the box-set (“Behind The Planet of the Apes” 1998) discusses this and there's also a book entitled "Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race, Politics, and Popular Culture" by Eric Greene, (which I have recently ordered)…Reviews of the book are largely favourable and suggest that it provides an interesting and original analysis of the film series...“a politically-minded scholar's insight that helps lift the series from trivia into concrete seriousness” as one review states.

Also, chimps are funny when they're dressed up to look and act like people...and voice-overs are added to scenes of them chewing on something…But sometimes we forget that they are wild and extremely powerful animals because they seem so gentle and human. So it's interesting when you hear about chimps attacking humans (who contribute to demeaning them in such ways).

I also feel sorry for gorillas...sure there's that "Gorillas in the Mist" factor...but also because they are so big and powerful, yet they have such small penises relative to their body size…hence the chest pounding and the amazing, yet understandable, rage. (Warning: this link discusses, and displays images of, penises. Anyway, scroll down to “Size” if you’re up for it and gorilla size is mentioned...chimp too). Perhaps one can better understand human males with small penises by studying the gorilla...For instance, a lot of bar fights can be avoided if eye contact is not made with the lumbering oaf at the bar...maybe...

Also, if you haven't seen this clip of Charlie, the ass-kicking chimp, before...it's another good reason to like apes...If only their strength and agility could be controlled by a sound, enlightened mind, they'd be unstoppable...(insert mad scientist's laughter here)...

I hope that was a satisfactory answer to you query, S*.

I also hope that everybody has a safe and enjoyable Halloween if we don't communicate in the meantime.

Your Pal,

Zambo.