More Treat, Less Trick

Halloween used to be fun. My mom and I would Scotch tape paper skeletons with metal rivet joints all over the house. My dad helped me carve the most elaborate jack-o'-lanterns, using the leftover pieces for ears and horns and other accessories. Then I'd take the biggest pillow case I could find and run around the neighborhood taking candy from strangers.

These days, it's all about Saw IV and pictures of pale, creepy babies with googly-eyes. What was once cute and cartoonish is now dark and serious and disturbing. The kids of the '80s have not yet grown up. They've hijacked Halloween and taken it away from the kids of today.

I was in line at Rite Aid a few days ago when I heard an electronic shriek behind me. It's not unusual to hear kids playing with the noise-making toys stationed throughout the store. This is most notable later in the fall, when the poor Rite Aid employees are assaulted for hour upon hour with a cacophonous melange of Christmas carols.

Sure enough, right next to an arts-and-crafts front-yard signpost directing passersby to Witch Way and Ghoul Gulch, a little boy was taking an appealing package's advice seriously: TRY ME! But this electronic shriek was far worse than tuneless renditions of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Silent Night" all playing over top of one another, because its source was a plastic skeleton about 9 inches tall, sitting in a miniature electric chair. At the touch of a button, a blue light flashed from behind the skeleton, and he jolted and jiggled about in his restraints, moaning and screaming. The light went out, the skeleton stopped shaking, and he said something like, "Whoa ... Let's do that again!"

This isn't even a proper toy. It's not something you can really play with. You just press a button and laugh along at the merry spectacle of a human's death by electrocution.

And the kid's mother was standing there without an expression on her face. I'd rather have the kid play with a toy gun.

Solstice

Today is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, but you'd hardly know it. It doesn't feel much like summer. New York has been blessed with a mild spring this year. I desperately hope the lower temperatures continue.

It is the summer solstice. Basically, it all has to do with the position of the sun — which is way over my head. And everyone else's too. (Heh heh... get it?) Twice a year, the sun's path around the earth is the farthest north or south it can get from the Equator. On June 21, the North Pole is tilted toward the sun. Six months hence, on the winter solstice (to us Northern Hemisphere folk), the South Pole will be tilted toward the Sun. On the first day of summer, everywhere north of the Arctic Circle has 24 hours of sunlight, and the length of day at all places north of the Equator is more than 12 hours.

It amazes me to think how much of human belief has been shaped by the length of a day. It's all down to the accidental 23.45° tilt of Earth's axis, and its distance from the sun. One or two degrees in either direction, and the whole of human existence could have developed completely differently.

Who knows: If we were tilted a bit further, the polar ice caps would be bigger, we'd all be a little cooler year-round, sleep patterns would be different, biological rhythms would all be different.

We seem to make a bigger fuss over marking the winter solstice. Winter celebrations predate agriculture. As winter approached and the days grew shorter and the temperature dropped, and plants, animals and people began to die all around, I can see how ancient people might have been afraid that the sun was disappearing and not coming back. I'd do whatever I could do to get it to come back. Apparently, they lit bonfires and had big parties and built religions. (Today, rather than lighting bonfires, we risk housefires and death by electrifying evergreen shrubbery.) This in turn led to the founding of civilizations and nations and economic systems and flying to the moon and realizing that the whole thing is actually not managed by a guy in a glowing horse-drawn carriage.

My hat's off to those weirdos who counted the as-yet-undefined units of time between sunrise and sunset, and to all those who broke their backs hauling enormous stones and such just to tell time and mark dates. It's so easy for us now that they've done all the work.

Happy Night Shift Workers Day!

Believe it or not, but Wednesday (yesterday) was National Night Shift Workers Day. Working late nights can suck, but there is more to consider than the obvious problems of having a wonky schedule.

Someone dear to my heart went around the city Tuesday night to talk to people working the third shift and produced an awesome video story for ASAP, The Associated Press' service of innovative and original multimedia stories: Night workers get their day

Ironic, I think, that this national day of commemoration could not be observed by the folks for whom it was intended. They were all sleeping.

Erin Go Blah

On March 17th, he's the man. [catholic.org]

St. Patrick's Day just ended, and not a moment too soon.

I never was too jazzed about St. Patrick's Day. And that's fine. If it's your bag, you're welcome to it. St. Patrick doesn't need my approval. Since driving the serpents (or pagans) from Ireland, he's been driving millions of Americans to drink. Far be it from me to quarrel with ill-advised drinking binges. I just wonder if it all gets a bit insulting at times.

It's one thing for Irish folks to go out and celebrate their heritage with a few too many pints and all the corned beef and cabbage they can handle — and even for their non-Irish friends to join them in the revelry. Far more than the feast day of a Catholic saint, revered for various and sundry miraculous works and acts of selflessness, this day is now an occasion for people to tramp through town, bar to bar, from early morning to late night, in green wigs and enormous green Cat-in-the-Hat chapeaux, shamrocks painted on their faces. It is a bastardization of a religious observation-turned-national-holiday. It is an entire culture reduced to a cartoon. For many on St. Patrick's Day, moreso than any other day, "Irish" equals "drunk."

New York is the city of parades. Everybody's got one: lovers of Christmas, trick-or-treaters, wearers of Easter bonnets, gays, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Irish. We love identity politics in this city. It's a defense against anonymity. And I love a parade, but honestly I'd rather watch golf. And so would a lot of other people, I guess. I didn't see heaving throngs of spectators yesterday on TV.

This year's parade was plagued with bad publicity. Some Irish groups got upset because the MTA banned alcohol from suburban transit lines. They claim the MTA is targeting and discriminating against Irish. Truthfully, maybe they should ban alcohol on all holidays, to be fair. Seems to me, though, folks should have no trouble getting their drink on well before or well after riding that train.

The GLBT community has long been upset because we are excluded from being publicly gay in the parade. It's a long-standing struggle. Irish-American lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has boycotted the parade for this very reason, opting instead to march with the Irish in Dublin at their invitation.

Governor Eliot Spitzer wasn't there today, either. He was upstate in Rochester, the first time in 12 years a New York governor wasn't in Manhattan on this day. Some have seen this as a slight against parade organizers. Some have seen this as quiet opposition to the gay ban. (I doubt this. Spitzer doesn't seem to do much quietly.)

The latest controversy this year involves a dispute between parade organizers and the FDNY. The firefighters were moved from the front of the march back about 35 spots as apparent punishment for an episode last year. Apparently, a contingent of New Orleans firefighters who joined in the festivities to thank New York for its support after Hurricane Katrina held things up a bit and threw the parade a half hour off schedule. Oh, and Committee President John Dunleavy also said that the firemen are usually drunk in the parade anyway, so nyaa nyaa!

It seems like everyone's fighting about this parade. Only a non-native New Yorker such as myself would dare ask: Is it even worth it?

Packaging Majors of the World, Unite!

	These red-headed stepchildren of the Hershey family are not festooned in playful holiday colors.

Rite Aid is trying very hard to be a toy store or a carnival side show. It's Eastertime apparently. I might not have known but for the enormous duckies and bunnies hanging in the doorway, threatening to take my head off the moment I pass through the automatic doors. For the entirety of January and February, we had oversized frogs holding fluffy hearts that read: I LOVE YOU! In December, we got "Plush Bear Figurines" dressed as toy soldiers, and statues of bears leaning on snowshovels or something.

When I walk in with freshly sharpened darts looking for a wall of balloons to pop, hoping I can win one of those anthropomorphic monstrosities, all I get is a dirty, yet slightly worried, look from the manager.

I get the Camel Lights and leave quietly.

These days, Rite Aid is selling the hell out of its Easter candy. Which is to say it's selling the hell out of the same candy it was selling the hell out of for Valentine's Day. But in different wrappers. The chocolate's been done over in pastels, distasteful even at the best of times, instead of the reds and whites and purples of the festival of love. I think it's hilarious that the same stuff on super-discount-clearance, everything-must-go sale last week is now in another package and going for the regular price.

What is the difference, I ask, between a miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cup in a red foil and one in a robin's egg blue foil? Packaging is an exact science — to be sure. And what a bizarre science it is. My alma mater, Michigan State University — to which I still give money as a sappy, gullible alumnus — had one of the premier packaging major programs in the country. Apparently. Someone would introduce himself to me in front of a keg as a packaging major, and after I sized him up as someone I would or would not like to sleep with (usually not), I would sort of admire him as one of those people who figured out how to fit an IKEA kitchen table into a box the size of an index card. But now I know he's really just spending his days flipping through a palette of colored swatches and dressing confections. He and his peers could be a Bravo reality show.

Or maybe he's making a mint as an investment banker, like everyone else (but me), regardless of his major.

Whatever. Personally, I'm holding out for the yellow and orange and brown ones that come out in October. Far superior.

(You know, I saw a Fear Factor-themed Easter basket today. What... does it contain raw bull testicles that we are Triple Dog Dared to eat? Instead of Easter grass, is the basket filled with mealworms or maggots or nightcrawlers? Bravo. What better way is there to celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior?)

Better than the Reese's are the Hershey's Miniatures. Well, except for Krackel. Krackel sucks. Everyone knows it. (So watch out for the pink ones.) When you were selling candy bars to pay for your seventh grade trip to Chicago or Washington, D.C., or ... oh, I don't know ... Stratford, Ontario, no one ever bought the chocolate with crisped rice. It was all about the Caramello knock-offs or the Hershey's with Almond.

Krackel. Feh! Fie upon it! I just eat the Special Darks and the Mr. Goodbars. Nothing else even matters. Not even the ridiculous, waxy, stomach-turning regular Hershey bars.

Only in America could we make something out of chocolate that no one likes.

Christmas Toys

Someone in my building got a new TV for Christmas. And by the sound of it, it's a nice one. I can tell because horrifying sounds of death, horror and destruction sound like they are coming at me simultaneously from below and above and behind me. I bet the DVD is new, too. It's very generous for my neighbors to share their gift with all of us in this way. Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams and Barbra Streisand are having a devil of a time competing.

Kitty Liberation Day

	The unwilling captive

November 24 henceforth shall be known as Kitty Liberation Day. We expect Bloomberg any day now to issue his proclamation stating words to this effect.

One of nine friends we had invited for Thanksgiving is allergic to our cat, Mukau. And she's a big girl. There's a lot to be allergic to! So we knew we had to do something drastic. On Tuesday evening, I thoroughly swept and vacuumed the bedroom and invited Mukau in. While she lay comfortably on the bed, I moved her food and water dishes and her litter box into the bedroom. She quietly regarded my bizarre activity. I left the room, and closed the door behind me.

"Forgive me, kitty," I said.

She was my prisoner.

I put a fan in the open living room window to blow out as many allergens as possible while I moved the furniture and swept the floors and vacuumed the rugs and vacuumed the furniture. Then I washed the floors. The place was gorgeous. It smelled disinfected. Surely, there would be no allergic reactions from anyone.

Naturally, five minutes after his arrival, our friend was popping Benadryl. So much for that.

Every time we went into the bedroom Tuesday night, all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, the cat tried to get out. The moment she heard our footsteps, she'd run to the door and spring toward our feet to attempt escape every time we opened it. She got more and more crafty, and her senses are far better than ours in every respect, but she always hesitated just enough for us to be quicker than she was.

She grew angrier each time. Once, there was a scuffle, and it got a little rough. She was getting desperate. I guess it spooked her, because she hid under the bed for a few hours afterward. We'd open the door, and she'd peek just her little head out from under the dust ruffle. A room made for our comfort and safety had become a torture chamber for her, for all she knew.

She complained loudly from behind the door. She had food and water. She had her potty. She had a west-facing view from the window. But even her little walnut brain had the capacity for enough object permanence to know that there was a world beyond that door that she was not a part of.

Every cry she uttered increased our guilty conscience. But our friend was having such fun hopped up on Benadryl and red wine.

Early this morning, not a minute after our friend left, I opened the door and stepped aside. Mukau looked up and muttered. She looked at the door. She looked at me. She started as if to hop off the bed, but she stopped. Could she trust us? Was this another nasty human trick?