This Wednesday, November 13th, my middle granddaughter Abby turns 4 years old, but yesterday she had her birthday party at Capehart Park in Orlando, Florida so that family and friends could all attend the celebration.
I think you can tell from the photos that she had a wonderful time and the party was a smashing success!
“Come and listen to a story ‘bout a man named Jeff
Poor mountaineer couldn’t tell right from left”
Ah, OK that’s all I’ve got. It’s been a long day of packing and getting things ready for us to head to sunny Florida. I’m tired and my brain is tired.
I’m writing this Monday night, but by the time you read it on Tuesday we’ll have been on the road for at least a couple of hours. Hoping to arrive in Orlando between 4 and 5pm at the latest. Looking forward to spending time with my children and grandchildren!
P.S. We didn’t really take the rocking chair with us.
Just a few things that have been on or in my mind the past couple of days.
Tigger is more accurate than the most precise atomic clock when it comes to his feeding times. 6am and 5pm on the dot and if you haven’t put kitty food in his bowl he is in your face, staring at you, meowing at you and knocking things off tables and onto the floor.
We had some heavy winds come through the other day, causing leaves on the ground to blow and in the trees to fall all around the cabin. I took a few minutes to go remove most of them from Wolf’s grave and to think about how much he is missed.
While we’re on the subject of dogs; I don’t think I could do such a thing, especially if it was my “beloved dog”, you know? I mean, if you’re such a poor outdoorsman that you put yourself and your “beloved dog” in such a position, then you should be the one paying the price for your stupidity, not your “beloved dog.”
We’re “Winterizing” the cabin tonight; draining the hot water heater, flushing the lines, pouring RV Anti-Freeze down all the sinks, toilets and bathtubs, and setting the thermostat to 45 so the pipes won’t freeze and burst. Well, actually our heater repairman will be setting the thermostat for us once he fixes the unit later this week. Other than the fireplace and our electric blanket, we’ve had no heat for a week and tonight we’re not even using the fireplace. 53 degrees in the cabin tonight, brrrrr!!
Sunshine State tomorrow!
I’m a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan, though it wasn’t always that way. The first time I saw the strip I thought it was the worst piece of drivel I’d ever seen on a comics page. But every day it would still be there when I turned to read the comics and I would glance at it, then read it. At some point I began to be amused by it and not long after that it became the first comic strip I turned to each day in the newspaper.
Today I own several of the collected editions in paperback and the Complete Collection in the matching two-volume hardback edition mentioned in point number 3 of this “7 Things You Might Not Know About Calvin and Hobbes” article over at Mental Floss.
And, Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson was pretty adamant that he never wanted the comic strip to progress to an animated cartoon like “Peanuts” or “Garfield”, but this fan couldn’t resist the urge to animate the boy and his stuffed tiger, even if it is for only 30 seconds.
We had quite a bit of wind yesterday at Wolf’s Haven in advance of the rain that arrived last night and the cold front that will arrive later this weekend. Here’s a short video showing a small amount of what we watched from our deck throughout the day.
Mikey and Granddad, Halloween 2001.
Well, here’s a blast from the past.
Back on Halloween in 2001, my grandson Mikey was almost 6 months old and I was playing around a lot with Photoshop. Those two interests collided in this page I created to have some fun with my little guy. I found the html file and photos today and was able to upload them to this site for your viewing pleasure.
It may help you to know, for the sake of context, that Mikey’s mom was (and I presume, still is) NOT a fan of Ms. Spears.
I had a lot of fun creating this 12 years ago. I hope you have some fun reading and viewing it.
October 31, 1996, Halloween night. I was working at a local bar/dance club in Orlando, FL as a DJ and we were having a big Halloween costume party. I had lined up all the theme music I would be playing, like “Monster Mash”, “Werewolves of London”, “Ghostbusters”, “Thriller”, “Witchy Woman” and others; prepared for the Costume Contest taking place throughout the night, and set things up for the Karaoke host we had coming in for part of the evening. Karaoke was the club’s call, not mine. To me, Karaoke sucks big time (unless my daughter is singing) but that’s what they wanted so that’s what we had. Of course, this was the same management that later had the “bright” idea of changing the music format to country (sucks almost as bad as Karaoke) which resulted in such a drop in business that the club had to close its doors. Yes sir, they were geniuses.
But that night things were going as planned and there was never any indication that I would meet the woman who would capture my heart and, in true Halloween fashion, cast a spell that made me hers.
A couple of weeks earlier I had just brought home my first computer. There was a group of people who were members of a computer club that came into the bar on Friday or Saturday nights and some of them were there for the Halloween party. I came down from the DJ booth early in the evening to exchange e-mail addresses with some of them. I think all of them were in costume, but one of them stood out and captured my attention. She was dressed as a medieval wench in a long, low cut flowing dress with a laced up corset kind of thing that, shall we say, showed off her feminine charms to their fullest.
Being the shy, retiring, gentleman that I was, I stood behind her chair talking with some of her companions and when she glanced up I asked her, “Do you mind if I just stand here all night and look down the front of your dress?” She laughed it off and I thought, “Well, she didn’t get up and slap me, so that’s a good start”.
Later in the evening she came up to the booth and asked me to play a certain slow song for her. “What’s in it for me?” I asked and she replied, “I’ll dance with you during it.” I arched my eyebrow (like The Rock, only better) as if to say, “That’s all?” but later I played the song and we danced. That started one of those special little things that is still with us to this day. The club had 2 walls of floor-to-ceiling video screens and you could either have a video you were playing on them or you could activate the dance floor camera and show the crowd (or in this case, just us) dancing. I nodded toward the screens and said, “We look like Beauty and the Beast dancing” and she pulled me a little closer and said, “I LOVE Beauty and the Beast!” Back then I had long hair and with my size and goatee I could pass for a beast. Today, I’m a bit more clean cut and perhaps not so beastly. She still looks like a beauty to this day.
Our Wedding Day, March 30, 1997.
Five months later were married, but tonight marks 17 years since we first met. For the first 3 years we would go downtown to the Olive Garden restaurant that was on Church Street, sit in the dining room that spanned the street and watch costumed revelers walking below us, laughing and pointing out to each other some of the best costumes. Sadly that restaurant closed, but we would still go to an Olive Garden somewhere on this night and celebrate our fated meeting on All Hallows’ Eve until 3 years ago when we moved to our cabin in the woods.
“Witchy Woman” indeed.
One thing I love about Halloween (apart from the candy) is getting to hear “The Monster Mash” played so often. It’s one of my favorite holiday songs. Below, thanks to Mental Floss, is the story of how the song came to be and some of the results of its popularity.
Robert George Pickett, the lead creator of the song, grew up in a movie theater in Massachusetts where his father was the manager. Unsurprisingly, he became infatuated with the films shown and developed a lifelong desire to star on the silver screen. This childhood experience also gave him a chance to practice celebrity impressions, and his best impression was of Boris Karloff.
Upon turning 21, he immediately moved to Hollywood to live his dreams of stardom. While his acting career never really took off, he did get involved with rock music and started playing with a doo-wop group called The Cordials. During performances, he would often bust out his Karloff impression, much to the pleasure of audience members.
One day in 1962, band member Lenny Capizzi encouraged Pickett to do more with his impression than a silly skit during performances. The two men then started working on a humorous dance song based around the narration of a Boris Karloff character. Originally, they thought of working with The Twist, but that dance craze was out of fashion, so instead they opted to make the song work with The Mashed Potato. They titled the track the “Monster Mash” and recorded it under the band name “The Crypt Kickers.”
To enhance the setting of the tune, the band added in a number of sound effects, such as rattling chains and a creaking coffin. Because they recorded the track themselves, they had to do these sound effects themselves. The coffin noise was made by pulling a rusty nail from a board, the bubbling cauldron was created by bubbling water through a straw and the chains were just chains dropped on the floor.
Aside from the main Boris Karloff impression, Pickett enhanced the song’s imaginary star power by adding his impression of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula when he asks, “Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?”
One of the 1,000 copies that Gary S. Paxton (GARPAX) had pressed to hand out to radio stations.
While the boys knew their record was a hit, the record labels disagreed. Every label they shipped the song to rejected it. So the record producer, Gary S. Paxton, printed one thousand copies and then delivered them to every radio station he could find. The stations loved it and within eight weeks, the song was at the top of the Billboard charts, peaking on October 20. These days, it still receives a quite a bit of airplay every Halloween.
The song was re-released a number of times and appeared on the Billboard charts three more times after its original release, once in December 1962, once in August 1970 and once in May of 1973. Interestingly, none of these re-releases made it on the charts around Halloween. The song didn’t make it onto the BBC charts until 1973, though, because the censors refused to release it in 1962, claiming it was too morbid. In 1973, it peaked at #3. It reentered the British charts in 2008, peaking at #60.
To follow up on his success, Pickett released a Christmas themed “Monster’s Holiday” in 1962 that reached #30 on the charts. Decades later, he tried to capitalize on the growing trend of rap music by releasing “Monster Rap” in 1985. This song dealt with the scientist being frustrated that he couldn’t teach his monster to talk. In the end, he solves the problem by getting the monster to rap.
With a song this silly and this successful, it’s not surprising that the tune has been covered by so many notable artists. Including:
* Only two years after its original release, the Beach Boys covered it on their album, “Beach Boys Concert.”
* Boris Karloff covered the song in a 1965 episode of Shindig!
* Horror icon Vincent Price also took notice and recorded a version that was released in 1977.
* In 1994, Alvin and the Chipmunks did the song in their Halloween special “Trick or Treason.”
* Rush used samples of the song in their 1996 album “Test for Echo.”
* The Misfits released a music video covering the song live in 1997. In 1999, they released a studio recorded version.
* In 2003, Disney released a version of Goofy singing the song for the album “Mickey’s Monster Bash.”
* Most recently, the Smashing Pumpkins released a live version of the song for their album “Live Smashing Pumpkins.”
What’s your favorite Halloween song?
