Costume Shop Follies…

My wife and I love Halloween.  When we met these many years ago, it was just before Halloween.  Some years later, when we married, it was just before Halloween.  Each year I put on my T-shirt depicting a tiny, glow-in-the-dark vampire bat with the words “Bite Me” underneath, and the two of us carve several very detailed and elaborate pumpkins.  The folks in our neighborhood make it an annual mission to come by and see them.  We buy way too much trick or treat candy, and wind up finishing the last of it just before putting up the Christmas tree each year.  It used to be that Halloween started in early October, when the pumpkins from the north started arriving at the local schools, churches and firehouses that sold them to raise money.  Pumpkins will not grow in south Florida.  The only thing orange that will grow down here is…well…oranges.  But now the holiday starts much earlier than it used to…Halloween now starts in early July.  As soon as the Independence Day decorations come down, the stores begin to fill up with Halloween decor.  Pretty good for a holiday featuring symbols of death (skulls, tombstones, ghosts) and symbols of evil (devils, witches, politicians).  But in the past few years, Halloween has become something else.  It has become, in part, a holiday during which we take the opportunity to spoof, to ridicule, to lampoon the culture at large.  And this Halloween-to-come appears to be no exception.

Each year my wife and I visit costume shops to see what’s new.  Last week was our first visit for 2010.  We are charmed by some of the kid’s costumes (cute witch) and appalled by others (slutty witch).  Some of the adult costumes are traditional (pirate, vampire, hobo), some are funny (giant penis, giant whoopee cushion), some reflect the popular culture (Toy Story movie characters, Mario and Luigi from the video games), and some are just inexplicable (please Google “Down for the Count Halloween Costume”, and brace yourself).  And then we have the masks and the costumes that poke fun at the famous.

Several years ago, when former child star Rusty Hamer committed suicide, another former child star, Danny Bonaduce (Hey…you’re 51 years old.  Isn’t it time to lose the “Danny” and go with “Daniel” already ???) is alleged to have remarked “good career move.”  Nothing amplifies fame like death.  Elvis is a bigger star than ever, and Tupac, who died fourteen years ago this month, is still releasing loads of new material.  This year, Michael Jackson will be everywhere for Halloween, if the stock down at the costume shop is any indication.  Of the many possible Michael incarnations (including “late Michael”, when he appeared to be an anorexic white woman searching in vain for her lost nose), the Michael from the “Thriller” years seems to be the most popular.  There will be adult males dressed as Michael, there will be adult females dressed as Michael, there will be KIDS dressed as Michael (the irony here is palpable), and although I’ve seen no evidence as of yet, there will probably be dogs dressed as Michael.  Oh…I’m sorry…did I forget to mention the hundreds of costumes for your pets?  My favorite so far is the one for dogs that makes them appear to be Yoda from Star Wars.  Now I really would like to spend some more time heaping ridicule upon the notion of costumes for pets, but as a man who owns a tiny Santa Claus hat for his pet rabbit, I’m afraid that I cannot in good conscience do so.

Not everyone buys costumes for Halloween.  Sometimes a mask alone will do.  Men seem to love to dress up like the President of the United States, whoever he may be at the time.  A rubber mask, and that dark business suit and tie that you never wear anymore except to funerals, and you’re good to go.  I still see the occasional Ronald Reagan (let go already) and Bill Clinton still appears from time to time, although I generally see him in pajamas or worse, boxer shorts with hearts on them.  Jimmy Carter shows up once in a while, although the Jimmy Carter masks over-emphasize his really enormous teeth, so it’s hard to tell if it’s Jimmy Carter, or a space alien here to devour us, trying to disguise his otherworldly self as an Earthling by wearing pin-striped Armani.  And last year, it seemed like everyone wanted to be Barack Obama except for Barack Obama, who by last October 30th was already having so much aggravation that he wanted to be anyone BUT Barack Obama.  But my favorite masks this year are pictured above.  This may be the year of the Talk Show Host Halloween Costume.

All of the drama surrounding late night television talk-shows seems to have spawned something of a trend.  You can now dress up on Halloween as Jay, Conan, or Dave.  The masks hang as a group down at the costume shop.  In order to avoid having to pay the real guys for the use of their images, the company marketing these masks has very carefully avoided using the actual names of the hosts.  But since the images are not really the most accurate, each mask has a name to avoid confusing the consumer, although I would suggest that if you (or even worse, your child) chooses to dress up as a talk-show host this (or any) Halloween, your personal difficulties far surpass simple confusion.  The Jay Leno mask is labeled “Motor Mouth”,  The David Letterman mask is labeled “Talk Show Host”, and the Conan Mask is labeled “Ex-Talk Show Host.”  The masks are priced at $12.99…the embarrassment is priceless.  I thought about buying the “Letterman” mask for a split second (it seemed to be the most scary), but no longer than that.  I also wondered if, somewhere on Halloween night, the kid dressed as Leno steals the candy from the kid dressed as Conan.

So this year, I’ll once again put on my Halloween T-Shirt, carve the pumpkins, and sit on the porch with my wife handing out candy to some very cute kids.  And we’ll see little skeletons and little devils and little witches (both the cute and the slutty varieties) and so on.  Sometimes it takes a holiday that celebrates evil and death to help you enjoy life.  And enjoy it we do.  As I said…we love Halloween.  And if we see any pint-size talk show hosts, we’ll get back to you.

If you can’t trust your honey, who can you trust ???

I love to cook. My mother was pretty good in the kitchen, and as a kid I watched her and learned. I’ve done all of the cooking in my house for decades now, and in all due modesty, I’m not bad at it. I’ve got good knife skills, I know the difference between broil and braise, and I can usually pull off the most difficult aspect of cooking…having dishes that are to be served together ready at the same time. Nobody wants those Brussels Sprouts for dessert. But what I’m most interested in is what most good cooks simply call “product”, those wonderful ingredients that somehow come together to form a meal. I know my meat (please insert joke here), and I can tell you the subtle differences among at least ten different kinds of apples. I keep more than a gallon of homemade chicken stock in the freezer at all times. I have actually made my own pomegranate reductions, and I have a favorite brand of balsamic vinegar. We grow our own baby salad greens, herbs, and some heirloom vegetables. I know that some recipes need “Red Bliss” potatoes, while others require “Yukon Gold.” I’ve recently begun using agave nectar as a sweetener, and I’ll purchase almost any kind of unusual mushroom. I guess that means that I’m officially a “Foodie.” But like many if not most foodies, I’ve got some guilty pleasures…foods that are so bad and so bad for you that they seem to contradict everything that you know about cooking and eating.

Some guilty pleasures are legendary. Twinkies, those little cakes that will outlast civilization as we know it. Snowballs, faux cream-injected, marshmallow frosted, coconut-topped chocolate “cakes.” Big Macs, with their “special” sauce. None of these interest me in the least. My guilty pleasure…Kentucky Fried Chicken. I prefer the “original” recipe. In the “extra crispy” you can’t find the chicken in all the breading, and in the “honey barbecue” you can find the chicken…you just can’t taste it. But the “original”…it’s mostly actual chicken, and it tastes good. It also gives you about a ten year supply of grease. This is far from healthy food, so I don’t have it very often. Not long ago the company tried to re-brand itself, and rid itself of its junk food image by trying to convince the world that KFC stood for “Kitchen Fresh Chicken.” What Nimrod green-lighted that idea? It worked about as well as you might have expected. It’s “Kentucky Fried Chicken.” It will always be “Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Get over it.

So there I was yesterday, at KFC, and hungry. This is not a good place to be when you are hungry. My wife was with me. Like so much else that we have in common, my wife feels as I do about KFC, although I do not share her other guilty pleasures. She loves Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls, chilled in the refrigerator to near-freezing. She is addicted to Jif Peanut Butter, creamy only, spread on most anything except on Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls, although I’m convinced that it’s only a matter of time before she discovers that combination. So we ordered a bucket of “original” Kentucky Fried Chicken, along with some potato wedges and some buttermilk biscuits. And we asked for ketchup to go with the potatoes, and honey to put on the biscuits. I’ve lived in the south for most of my life, and when you are eating fried chicken, you put honey on your biscuits. That’s just how it is. When we order a bucket of chicken, we always discuss when we’re going to eat the leftovers. This is as useful as discussing the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. There are never any angels, and there is never any leftover chicken.

So we got our food, and sat down to enjoy our meal. The biscuits had just come from the oven, and they were still piping hot. The honey comes in little plastic packets that cannot be opened by anyone who is not a member of the World Wrestling Federation. They are even more difficult to open when your hands are coated with a thick layer of hot chicken grease. So as I struggled to open my honey packet, I noticed something. The packet no longer said “honey”…it said “honey sauce.” Now I’ve heard of “honey barbecue sauce” and I make a mean “honey-mustard sauce.” But what in the name of Julia Child is “honey sauce?” The substance in the packets looked like honey, but what was it really? So I read the ingredients. There is still a tiny amount of honey in the “honey sauce”…eleven percent. The rest is corn sweeteners, coloring, and flavoring. So as if this food isn’t bad enough for you, you don’t even get real honey anymore. The “honey sauce” had no taste of honey (cue Herb Alpert, for all you old folks out there) whatsoever…all it was, was sweet. Now…listen closely…that sound you hear is “The Colonel” spinning in his grave. And I took this as further evidence of the decline of western culture. When the honey for your biscuits is no longer real honey, then the terrorists win.

There was no chicken left over.

So after we ate, I stopped in to my local supermarket to stock up for the holiday weekend. I thought that it might be nice to have a little ice cream, so I was looking in the freezer case, when I saw, for the first time, several different types of ice cream specifically for…wait for it…DOGS. Yes, there are now several brands of ice cream manufactured expressly for your dog. And the packages state that these products have no artificial colors or flavors. Some even claim that they are “all natural.” I guess that a lot of folks, seeing the cute, colorful packaging and noticing how healthy these products claim to be, unknowingly bought them to serve to the family, not realizing that they were…ahem…PET FOOD. I came to this conclusion because directly above the shelf with the Doggie Ice Cream was a fairly crude hand-lettered sign, with large bright red letters that read “FOR PETS.” Imagine Mom’s surprise, after little Susie said that tonight’s new dessert tasted “Yucky” and Mom took a closer look at the box! So now, the treats that you purchase for your dog (who also considers sniffing the butts of other dogs to be a treat) are more healthy and more “real” then the “honey” for your biscuits. Situations like this is why, many months ago, I named my blog “Go Figure.”

I need to stop eating anywhere but at home, and I need to stop eating anything that I don’t cook myself. I need to avoid eating ice cream unless I can have a look at the packaging first. And if I ever go to KFC again, I need to bring my own damn honey.