Brandon Notices

Last night, I was a bit restless from doing homework, so I went to Fred Meyer with my cousin Kevin. While we were there, we looked at Halloween stuff. They had a bunch of Halloween books at 25% off, including this one.


It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a hardback novelization of the popular Halloween special of the same name. It's not a very large book—it's about as large as my palm—but it has over a hundred pages, many of which are just text. However, there are cute illustrations from the cartoon sprinkled throughout the book. I haven't read through it yet, but it looks like they tried to include every event in the cartoon. Even at 25% off, $3.75 seemed like a bit much for this tiny little book, but it was what was on pages 108 and 109 that convinced me to buy the book:



These might be the two greatest pages in all of English literature. So, of course I bought the book. After seeing those pages, I couldn't resist. During the Halloween season every year, it'll probably exist on the coffee table, maybe picked up and skimmed through on occasion.

I handed out candy at my dad's work today. Every year, on the Saturday before Halloween, the businesses in the Greenwood area around his store participate in a trick-or-treating thing, and my dad hires me to give out candy for his store.

Most kids are too young to know to say thank you. Most of them I'm sure don't even know what's going on. (That doesn't mean they have to stare at you after you give them candy, though.) I was surprised by how many kids were saying thank you today. Several of them really seemed to be excited to be trick-or-treating, and I think this was a great thing. There was one group of girls, slightly older than the rest, each dressed up to give her a pallid look, and they weren't smiling at all, and they hardly said thank you. Were they in this just for the candy? It didn't even look like they enjoyed being together.

The worst part is when you give a kid candy, he turns around, and the mom or dad says, "What do you say?" The expected answer, from the kid to me, is "Thank you," but it doesn't always come to that. Often, the kid will just stand there, staring awkwardly, until the parent thanks me. Actually, what's worse than that is when the kid does say thank you, but the parent says, as they're leaving, "DID YOU SAY THANK YOU?" It's too bad that the parents don't trust their children. Did they harass them like this at every store?

There was one little girl who came in the store right as the event was ending at three. I gave her a Rocky Road candy and wished her a happy Halloween. Then, her mom asked her, "What do you say?" Instead of giving thanks, though, the girl said, "I'm allergic to nuts." So I had to take the Rocky Road out of her hand (it has cashews!) and replaced it with a Laffy Taffy.

This year's garbage ghost is up! We did the same thing last year, and we've done it before.

 

Jesse and I made the ghost yesterday. We used two garbage bags this year, taping them together to make a much larger ghost. We stuffed the head with plastic shopping bags, using just a little paper to cover the Safeway logo so that it wouldn't show through. Jesse drew the face on with a Sharpie. I am impressed by how generic he drew the face. I was afraid he might draw a stupid-looking half-scary face. The moaning ghost look is very appropriate. We stopped working on the ghost to rescue his cat, who was stuck meowing on his roof.

Hanging the ghost is very tricky. (I want to mention that the fishing line is attached to the top of the ghost's head—it is not tied around the neck.) Jesse plays a lot of sports, so he is a much better thrower than I. He tied the fishing line to a rock and threw it over the street light. Once we got it over, but before we pulled the ghost up, I messed things up. I stepped in a loop of the fishing line and got it tangled around my foot. I don't know what Jesse was thinking, but he cut the line around my leg, and this messed up this hanging.

I could tell that Jesse was getting tired, and when his mom asked if he wanted to go with her to pick up his sister, he went with her. Patrick and Jeanina had come outside to watch, but I realized that none of the three of us would have an easy time throwing a rock over the light in just the right place. I got out my Foxtail, tied the string to the tail, and flung it up and over the light. Unfortunately, I forgot to have someone hold onto the other end of the string (not attached to the ghost), and it got pulled up by the Foxtail's weight, so I had to do it again—I got it on the third try. I pulled the ghost up and anchored the string to the bushes underneath.

The ghost is really cool! With breezes, it spins slowly around, and its tail floats behind it.



It seems like the ghost is alive (or undead, at least), looking around the cul-de-sac. I hope this ghost stays up through Halloween.

Between the spooky frenzy of October and the festive frenzy of December lies the dull stretch of November.

I'm taking a break from taking down the decorations to briefly describe what happened last night, on HALLOWEEN.

We watched It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! It had aired the night before, but I kept it on the DVR to watch on Halloween proper. I like watching it, except for the parts where Snoopy pretends to be a World War I flying ace, because those parts are long, boring, and drawn out. You know, I think a lot of the film acts as filler. One filler moment is when Sally yells at Linus for wasting her Halloween night. She yells nonstop at him for 50 seconds, which is an eternity in TV land:

I was robbed! I spent the whole night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, when I could've been out for tricks or treats! Halloween is over, and I missed it! You blockhead! You kept me up all night waiting for the Great Pumpkin, and all that came was a beagle! I didn't get a chance to go out for tricks or treats! And it was all your fault! I'll sue! What a fool I was! I could've had candy, apples, and gum! And cookies, and money, and all sorts of things! But no! I had to listen to you! You blockhead. What a fool I was. Tricks or treats come only once a year. And I missed it by sitting in a pumpkin patch with a blockhead! YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!

After that was You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown. Lucy and Charlie run as Linus' campaign managers as he runs for student body president, and he does really well until he jeopardizes his chances of winning the campaign by mentioning the Great Pumpkin during a speech.

I noticed something odd about how the voting was done in the show. Whoever's in charge of the election didn't seem to mind putting Charlie Brown, Schroder, and Violet--all Linus' friends--in charge of counting the ballots. Certainly, someone should have realized that they would probably cheat to get Linus to win.

Something else odd about the voting process is that the students write and submit their ballots while the votes are being counted and displayed as tally marks on a huge chalkboard. As someone puts the ballot in the box, Charlie pulls it out and shouts it to Schroder and Violet for them to make a big tally mark. Really, this is worse than exit polling. So Linus wins by one vote, but it was all for naught because the principal won't let Linus actually do anything anyway.

Well, I can't wait till the end of November, when A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving airs. It's undoubtedly my favorite Charlie Brown special.

A few weeks ago, my sister Stephanie asked me to make invitations to a Halloween party that she was planning. And she gave one of the invitations to me! The party was last night, and Stephanie called it a Halo-Wii-n party, because she was planning for us to play Halo 3 and Wii games. But first, we had to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Stephanie decided that we would watch it outside. In 35-to-40-degree weather. So it was cold. She decided that we would participate with the movie like people did in the '70s, so she handed out rice, newspapers, toast, etc., and told us what to do and roughly when to do it. I got cold and went in near the end of the movie.

Kevin had brought over his Xbox 360 the night before to ensure that we could hook up everything successfully. This allowed me a little time to practice playing Halo, but it wasn't enough to make me anywhere near good enough to beat some of Stephanie's friends. My battle strategy is to run up at people, shooting continuously at them until I get close enough to hit them with my gun. But they usually managed to kill me before I could reach them.

While some of us were playing Halo, Stephanie and the rest were sitting on the floor, decorating cookies. At Safeway, we had found ghost- and jack-o'-lantern-shaped chocolate cookies that came with frosting, sprinkles, and small candy. After I was done losing at Halo, I sat down to decorate one. I was uninspired and came up with a very dull pumpkin that had globs of frosting for eyes, a mouth, and a nose. Each of the four globs had different-colored sprinkles. It's not my best work, and since chocolate isn't really my favorite, I don't know if I'll ever eat this. It's probably hard, dry, and stale. (Actually, I just took a little bite. It reminds me of Cocoa Krispies.)

Stephanie's friend Madison started complaining that nobody was playing Wii, so I set up Mario Party 8 for everyone. They started getting mad at me for starting the board game mode because they secretly wanted to play only minigames. They played one game, Shake It Up, repeatedly, because they thought the inadvertently suggestive animation of how to shake the Wii Remote was funny.

Remember, everyone, that It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown airs this Tuesday at 8/7c on ABC. (I told you earlier this month that it would air tonight, but that was a lie.) Immediately following it is another special, You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown, which is about Linus running for class president. The title is a little odd, since Charlie Brown isn't running at all for president. It has only a little bit to do with the Great Pumpkin episode.

I thought I would take some time to point out more Halloween decorations I've put up around the house.

This is a ghost I found at Value Village for the very affordable price of $5. The fabric ghosts hangs freely from the rusty-looking structure, and it blows in the wind, which is totally awesome. What's kinda sucky is that the ghost sometimes loops over the top and gets stuck, so I regularly have to unravel it.

Speaking of ghosts, I noticed a few days ago that the garbage bag ghost the neighbors and I put up has fallen down. It looks like the string ripped itself from the bag. This probably happened during a wind storm we had. I took the ghost and hid it in my yard so that hooligans don't run off with it.

This is something new I made this year. I got the idea online, and I have dubbed these cut-up garbage bags "Spooky Streamers". (I want to point out that I have a habit of using the word "spooky" as an adjective to describe things having to do with Halloween, such as Spooky Cat. I think I use "spooky" like this because the Halloween items in one of my favorite video games, Animal Crossing, were prefixed with "spooky".) The Spooky Streamers look really good when a fan blows on them, or when someone passes by them, because they swoosh around, and the light glimmers on them.

And what have we got here? Spooky Lights. Last year, we had three strings of Halloween lights: one in orange, one in green, and one in purple. We had them taped up in three different windows, which looked great from outside, but I decided to do something different this year. I pulled all the bulbs from the strings, and combined them into three strings each with all three colors in a pattern. It's very colorful, and for some reason, this color combination reminds me of candy. I've strung these strings around the living room. This is in lieu of a Spooky Chain, which is what I made last year. The Spooky Chain was a chain made by stapling orange and black construction paper links together.

Here, we have the leaf garlands. Garth is playing in them! He kept trying to eat the plastic coiled stems. These decorations are unique because they also stay out through November—they match the Thanksgiving decorations too. For the longest time, these decorations seemed to be lost in the garage, but I finally found them. They were in an unmarked paper grocery bag, shoved in with the sports equipment. I chanced upon them by accident this afternoon, which is really annoying, because I must have spent more than an hour determinedly searching for them earlier this month.

In celebration of the Halloween spirit, a spider has set up a new web site outside the window near the back porch. Not that I'm really afraid of spiders, but I don't think I would ever have gotten this close to a spider without a pane of glass between us.

I noticed today that my digital cable's Music Choice channel, Sounds of the Seasons, has finally begun playing Halloween music. Up until recently, they've been playing Oktoberfest music, which is a real letdown when what you really want is Halloween tunes. Last year, Music Choice made the decision of ending the Halloween music at the unfortunate time of 9:30 PM on Halloween (it was 12:30 AM the next day on the East Coast, where Music Choice is based). It was a little aggravating to suddenly hear the Jackson 5 sing Santa Claus is Coming to Town—it ruined the Halloween spirit. Seriously, do they expect people to crank up the Christmas music at 12:30 AM on November 1st? I hope Music Choice heeds the advice I gave them and holds off on the Christmas music for a few hours more.

"Tim Curry" isn't really a name I throw around every day. He's had a rather eclectic career. I really liked his work as Wadsworth in Clue, and Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island. I'm sure that others liked his role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. If you thought, however, that Dr. Frank-N-Furter was the strangest possible role to Tim Curry to act, then I think I must inform you of Mr. Curry's role in the 1986 made-for-TV movie The Worst Witch.

I'm not at all ashamed to admit that I'm not at all familiar with the plot of The Worst Witch. A quick look on the IMDB shows me something about a little girl at a witch academy. But really, I'm sure that the audience completely forgot about the plot anyway when they began watching this scene starring Tim Curry as the "Grand Wizard", singing Anything Can Happen on Halloween near the end of the film:

I came across the music video when I was looking up the lyrics (because the song itself is pretty corny too). At first, I was a little repelled, but then I continued watching to see how much worse it could get. I could continue to make fun of the video and its atrocious and incessant special effects, but I don't think I could do it as much justice as Matt Caracappa did in one of his articles on X-Entertainment.

I stepped outside today to check the mailbox. There were a bunch of neighbors outside, and one of them suggested that we make a ghost, like we've done in the past. Years ago, we would craft a ghost out of a white trash bag (it's waterproof) and hang it with fishing line from the street light in the cul-de-sac. A bunch of the neighbor kids wanted to help make it. I got some supplies out, and Jesse, Jeanina, Patrick, and I started to make a ghost. We made a ball of paper and stuffed it in the bag to make the head. I went inside to find some fishing line to hang the ghost up with, and when I came back outside, they had already finished the ghost, including tying the neck and drawing the face in permanent marker.

The hard part has always been getting the fishing line over the street light. I tied one end of the fishing line to the ghost, and Jesse tied the other end to a rock. Jesse had to throw several times to get the rock over the light. Every time he missed, the line got tangled up in the big, prickly bushes underneath the light, and every time, it was a hassle to untangle it. And we had to do that half a dozen times. When Jesse finally got the rock over, we pulled to get the ghost up, and Jesse and Jeanina tied the ghost to the basketball hoop underneath.

After we got the ghost up, I went inside. Not too long after that, they came to the porch, rang the bell, and said, "Trick or Treat!" when I opened the door. They had remembered a promise I made to them last year. They could come to the door in costume once a day during October and claim some candy. The candy is hardly ever anything very special, so I'm usually pretty lenient as to what counts as a costume.

Today, I gave them Baskin-Robbins hard candy flavored like mint chocolate chip ice cream. Then they came back a little later in different costumes to get more candy. I had to tell them that the candy is a once-a-day deal, but they got really aggressive about it. Jesse would keep his foot in the door so I couldn't close it, and they would try to push themselves past me to reach the candy dish located on the nearby table. I acquiesced, offering them a few jelly beans. A few jalapeño jelly beans! But they weren't satisfied with that. They kept pushing. Jesse reached in and stole a lollipop, and then Jeanina started crying because she didn't get as much candy as Jesse. So I had to give everyone a lollipop. Wish me better luck tomorrow.

We've been listening to Halloween music all night thanks to our digital cable's Music Choice channel, Sounds of the Seasons, which all month long has constantly been piping Halloween music into my house. I'd been having a smashing time all night on this Halloween night until about 15 minutes ago, at 9:30 PM, when Deck the Halls suddenly started playing in place of Halloween music. Then after that, we heard The Jackson 5 sing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Angry and confused, Kevin and I walked into the living room to make sure that they weren't just fooling us. After all, it's just 9:30. But no, they've changed their programming to Christmas songs already!

The reason for this is obvious to me. Music Choice is based in the East Coast (Pennsylvania, it looks like), where Halloween has been already over for 45 minutes. But what about EVERYBODY BUT YOU, East Coast? You know, we're still trying to celebrate Halloween! It's only 9:30! The night's only beginning! But you've killed the Halloween mood.

So I was at the blood center today, signing one of the donors up for her next appointment, when she said, "Uh oh." I looked up to see that her bandage was leaking. Blood was dripping onto the counter and floor. In these cases, I'm not supposed to touch the blood; rather, I'm supposed to call a technician over. So Lisa told the donor to go lie back down so she and Wendy could put another bandage on her, then Lisa cleaned up the mess... I thought you might like to know what goes on at the blood center.

I tried cream soda for the first time today after buying it from Safeway. They're currently remodeling, moving all their merchandise and stuff. Mom's annoyed, saying that you shouldn't fix something if it isn't broken, but I think it'll work out to be okay. The produce department is now apparently in the middle of the store... I'm a little peeved that the pop and chips are currently on opposite ends of the store, but I hope they'll move them closer together. Hurry and go to the store now, go as far to the right of the store as possible. It's totally empty! Check it out!

Also, in case you haven't noticed, a Spirit Halloween store has opened next to the mall, not far from Red Robin. I went in to see if they had any Halloween music CDs, and I was really disappointed to discover that the store this year sucks compared to last year. Last year, there was a dark, moody atmosphere, Halloween music was playing, and you could hear all kinds of haunted sounds. This year, in the smaller store, there are mostly costumes (instead of decorations), and they hang from undecorated pegboard. Maybe they plan on furthering their decorations or selection as we get closer to Halloween, but I doubt it.

Driving School: ARRRGH! Today, in driving school at Sears, Mr. Norris put us into groups to do a test about subhabits and crash analysis. And guess what. My group was useless! No help at all! So I ended up doing it all by myself. Then I got upset when the one guy asked me for my answers. It only got worse as Mr. Norris repeatedly said, "Think hard, write fast," repeatedly while we were working. I did well on the test. Regardless, I was in a real bad mood afterwards.

I learned that Brandon B. works at Sears. I didn't have an opportunity to find him today. Maybe Thursday. Oh, and Natalie works there too. I remember her a little from middle school.

I had a very happy Halloween. On Saturday night, Kevin, Carla, and I went to Spencer's Gifts to get a strobe light. We carved pumpkins on Sunday. Mine was a sad pumpkin. Kevin carved a cyclops pumpkin. Shelly made a normal happy pumpkin. Michelle carved the word "moo" in hers. I'll add pictures if anyone requests them. At the blood center, later that day, everyone was dressed up for Halloween. Nobody dressed up as Dracula. I wore my costume shirt. The creepy music was fun! The technicians brought in potluck food and it was all good.

Well, today, I worked at my dad's carpet store to hand out candy for the 22nd Annual Halloween Trick or Treat Thing.

Mostly, what I did was sit there, wait for kids to come in with their parents, and give them candy. I had a nice stack of carpet samples to sit on. It was surprising to me how many people came in, sniffed the air, and said, "Wow, it smells like carpet in here!" People, it is a carpet store! Some people never learn.

There was one little boy in glasses who kept asking me questions. The conversation went like this:
"You sell carpet?"
"No, but my dad does."
"Where is he?"
"He's that way," I gestured towards him. "He's working."
"What's your name?"
"Brandon."
"Do you sell carpet?"
"No, but my dad does."
His dad apologized to me, and pulled him out of the store.

Well, it was pretty fun, I guess, if not boring and frustrating.