All-hallow-even

As is my holiday tradition, I am listening to the The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s 1938 Halloween radio presentation of the War of the Worlds. Its available, along with most of the rest of the Mercury Theatre’s works, here: mercurytheatre.info

I didn’t listen to my next favorite version of The War of the Worlds, Jeff Wayne’s 2 CD rock musical version with narration by Richard Burton. Maybe I’ll take the CDs to work tomorrow. There is an upcoming CGI movie version coming out… Just watched the trailer for it and it gave me goose bumps.

I’m typing very quietly with all the lights off (except for the cyclops of the TV) because for the first time in history we are not handing out candy to kiddies. Nearly all the kids in our neighborhood are now too old for trick-or-treating. The only ones of proper age we have seen in recent years are driven into the area by their parents from far flung sections of the city. With the proliferation of church sponsored “fall festivals” and the mall, downtown businesses, city rec center candy giveaways, we didn’t think anyone would miss our one little household. Even the local college campus is holding a family friendly trick-or-treat event. And now we won’t have to deal with the too old trick-or-treater.

While talking of Halloween plans at work today, I mentioned most of what I said in the previous paragraph, my boss related a story of how several years back he had two, probably 16ish, teenagers dressed in their typical baggy pants plus ratty t-shirts holding plastic Wal-Mart bags ring his doorbell. One half heartedly mumbled, “Trick or treat.” The other didn’t speak because he was to busy exhaling cigarette smoke.