THE CURSE OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, PART I

I’ve always been enamored with Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” thanks mostly to the animated Disney version, an underrated classic.  It’s just so darn atmospheric and New Englandly, with the fall foliage and the covered bridges and the suspicious, narrow-minded villagers.  Despite having lived in New York for several years, being a West Coaster born and raised the East Coast remains an exotic wonderland, especially in the fall and winter.  A visit to the real town of Sleepy Hollow was long on my list of life goals and two years ago it finally came true.  Along with an age-old curse that will haunt me to my death.

Allow me to explain.  We decided to make the trek to Sleepy Hollow two Octobers ago along with our friends Jackie and Andrew and another couple.  In October, as you can imagine, there are all sorts of activities planned to capitalize on the small town’s legend: haunted mazes, a giant Jack O’Lantern Blaze and so forth.  We picked our weekend, made our plans and…a freak snowstorm hit.  In October.  As a result Sleepy Hollow was mostly powerless (our very own true life trope: A Dark & Stormy, in this case Snowy, Blackout!).  We went anyway despite almost everything being closed, downed power lines and the graveyard being coated in snow.

Sleep Hollow Cemetery. Note the unseasonable snow.

Despite our disappointment and so not wearing the right shoes for trudging through snow we had a really good time.  It was great fun to see the Old Dutch Church and cemetery and to discover that there really is a Katrina Van Tassel buried in the graveyard.  We vowed to return the next year and do it properly, this time with electricity and tickets to the Jack O’Lantern Blaze.

Now it’s October 2012 and once again we’ve got our weekend picked out, our tickets bought in advance, and our hopes and dreams for a spooky Sleepy Hollow experience primed and ready to go.  And then a little something called Hurricane Sandy blew into town.  Sleepy Hollow, along with Halloween, was cancelled.  This time we didn’t even make it to the car, but rather holed up in our apartments for a week while Mother Nature sent us a severe warning: DO NOT GO TO SLEEPY HOLLOW OR SOMETHING TERRIBLE WILL HAPPEN!

So of course we’re going this year.  Our party was divided; half of us were determined and the other, more superstitious half wanted to give up.  But like Ichabod before us we are heading down the dark road despite the warnings: the tickets are bought and the plans are made.  I’ll be counting down to our trip on October 21^st all month long with a series of posts about Sleepy Hollow in its many various incarnations across the pop culture landscape, along with pictures from our first ill-fated excursion. 

Will we make it to Sleepy Hollow this year?  Will The Curse strike again?  Will we encounter the Hessian horseman of legend?!  Stay tuned… 

SEASON'S READINGS: WEIRDO HALLOWEEN

Let me start this post with a tragic confession: I read just one Goosebumps book when I was a kid. It was titled You Can’t Scare Me! and featured some awesome swamp monsters on the cover.  My parents bought it for me at a local bookshop during a day trip to Carmel.  To say my family was big on reading is about as under an understatement that you can make but, as with television (no Simpsons, no Roseanne) and food (no fast food and just one piece of Halloween candy a day!), my mom had standards for books.  We were still in the car driving home when she had a fit of buyer’s remorse and informed me that this was the first and last Goosebumps book I’d be reading.

You always remember your first.

So I lived out the rest of childhood lustily staring at the (amazing!) covers of my classmates’ Goosebumps books.  I later watched the live-action show, absorbing many of the storylines that way, but a Goosebumps-sized hole stayed with me for years.  A couple of years ago I decided to make up for lost time and started getting the books from the library.  I tend to read them mostly in October but occasionally I’ll indulge in a summer camp themed installment (of which there are many) in June or July.  A Halloween-themed Goosebumps book is an even greater treat—it’s like the cronut of 90s kid lit (not that I’ve actually had a cronut, but you get my drift).

I’ve already read both Attack of the Jack O’Lanterns and The Haunted Mask so this year I turned to Weirdo Halloween.  Weirdo Halloween is a relatively recent addition to the mythos, part of an offshoot series focused around HorrorLand.  About 99% of the Goosebumps appeal is in the cover art so let me take a moment and examine it.  We’ve got an orange midget alien and a giant bag of Halloween candy.  Perfection! 

Approved!

As for the story… eh, not so much.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have particularly high standards when it comes to books written for an 8 year old demographic.  But a lot of them are surprisingly good even if way too many suffer from the whole “everyone is an alien!” twist ending.  Seriously, a lot of the books end with people turning out be aliens.  Weirdo Halloween promised aliens from the cover onward, however, so I knew what I was getting.

Our heroine Meg is of the typical, personality-free Goosebumps variety, along with her equally cipher-like brother.  En route to a friend’s Halloween party they help free a costumed kid trapped in a bush.  Later the party is mysteriously stink-bombed (it gets weirder).  When they return home the kid from the bush, who is actually—wait for it—an alien named Bim from the planet Weirdo shows up.  He says he stink-bombed the party as a sign of his gratitude and is now staying by their side FOREVER. 

Bim goes from annoying to psychotic, destroying Meg’s precious doll collection and forcing her to give him backrubs in a very creepy, molesty manner.  Really, there are detailed descriptions of her hands on his scaly, lumpy skin as he demands “more back rubs!”   Bim also regurgitates a partially-digested dead squirrel.  And then comes the book’s most horrifying moment: he sticks a piece of dead squirrel flesh IN HER MOUTH.  Yeah, I don’t get it either but I assure you it was disgusting.

Eventually the kids and their elderly babysitter Penny (the best character by far) drive Bim off first by insulting him repeatedly (it makes him shrink) and then reuniting him with his lost toy, which is why he was on Earth in the first place.  The end… or is it?

It’s not.  Weirdo Halloween is labeled a “Special Edition” meaning it’s twice the size of your average Goosebumps book.  So the ghostwriter (I’m assuming it’s a ghostwriter, anyway), rather than just write a longer story, has poor Meg get rid of Bim only to be randomly teleported to HorrorLand and engage in a totally unrelated second adventure.  Now she has to chase her brother and her evil twin doppelganger around the creepy amusement park and prove that she is the real Meg.  The highlight?  Meg and her evil twin almost drown in a giant pumpkin pie, complete with whipped cream.  After taking care of her evil twin Meg returns home only to find… her evil twin!  The last line is “How did you get in my room?”

The ending was so abrupt I thought I had a defective copy that was missing some pages but nope, that’s it.  Whoever wrote this just ran out of steam and I can’t really blame them; after coming up with a drowning via giant pumpkin pie anyone’s brain would be understandably drained.

 Read It, Skip It, Own It?

You can't really go wrong with a Goosebumps book; even at their worst they are a fun diversion.  But since there are so, so many books in the series to choose from you can skip this one in favor of one of the better Halloween offerings such as Attack of the Jack O’Lanterns or The Haunted Mask.

TRICK OR TREEHOUSE

8 Simple Rules

Season 1 (2002)

Shiny happy pumpkin people.

I’d never watched an episode of 8 Simple Rules before now; I only knew it as the show that John Ritter was starring in when he passed away.  It’s a very sitcomy sitcom—in the bad way.  The jokes and the characters are stale (blonde sexpot daughter, redheaded smart daughter, etc.).  The worst part though was the overwhelmingly loud laugh track.  At one point I rewound because I thought I’d missed some amazing joke based on the uproarious fake laughter.  But nope, the “joke” was something about “letting your wife work.”  The laugh track technician just leaned on the button too long or something.

It's bad when the cyclops jack-o-lantern has more personality than the human characters.

I can’t remember any of the characters’ names so we’ll just call them Family.  The episode begins with Family carving pumpkins and discussing their plans for the upcoming holiday.  Dad is excited for the usual traditions: trick-or-treating with Son and then the entire clan spending the night in a treehouse.  Except no one is interested this year and it’s only after being grounded one by one that the teens are forced to camp out.

Dad finally realizes that he can’t force the love and everyone is freed.  However when a thunderstorm hits and the power goes the teens show up at their parents’ bedroom door, resulting in some cozy reminiscence. 

John Ritter vs. Too Old To Trick or Treat.

The Halloween elements, when they appear, are enjoyable.  The carving pumpkins intro scene is the highlight and there are a few good Halloween jokes.   We get a couple trick-or-treaters (including one dressed as Sully from Monsters, Inc.—hello ABC-Disney synergy!) before Family trundles off to the treehouse for boring family bonding.  I always get absurdly excited when I recognize objects that I own on screen so I was particularly thrilled to note that Family has the exact same fall leaf garlands that I do.

Recurring Themes: Unsurprisingly this clichéd sitcom relies on Too Old To Trick or Treat.  It also features the Carving Pumpkins Intro and a Dark & Stormy Blackout.

Halloween Quotient: This earns an uninspired 2.

See It, Skip It, Own It?

You can skip this one and its overpowering laugh track.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: Pizza Hut & Taco Bell Halloween

I can’t believe I somehow forgot about Pizza Head but while doing some research for the blog we were happily reunited.  For those of you who may have also forgotten, he was the talking pizza slice that met with several unfortunate fates in numerous Pizza Hut commercials in the 90s.  For Halloween he dressed liked a pirate and investigated a haunted house:

Of course I was reminded while watching this of the McNugget Buddies commercial, which similarly features anthropomorphic junk food in a miniature haunted castle.  I seriously adore these mini masterpieces!  Someone got paid to make mini suits of armor and sarcophagi and that person, whoever they are, is living my dream.

I also came across this Taco Bell commercial:

I’m currently reading a Goosebumps book (more on that soon) so I was thrilled to learn of this line of Goosebumps-inspired fast food toys.  Details online are sketchy (Taco Bell toys are clearly not as cherished as McDonald’s or Burger King’s) but from what I could glean they were essentially school supplies in the form of Goosebumps monsters.  The Mummy was a measuring tape and Slappy, the evil ventriloquist dummy, was a sort of pseudo-Pez dispenser. 

 

I owned a fair amount of Burger King kids meal toys in my day but apparently, like fast food itself, I can never get enough of these things!  

THE HOLOGRAPHIC EXCITATION

The Big Bang Theory

Season 6 (2012)

There are several ongoing culture wars that rage throughout our apartment.  Buffy versus Charmed.  Star Trek versus Everything.  And one of the newest and fiercest conflicts revolves around The Big Bang Theory.  Nick loves it.  I hate it, despite being a fanboy firmly in their target demographic.  Up until now I’d watched just one episode (a Christmas one—surprise!) and it was enough to turn me off the show for good.  Now that Nick is a devotee I’ve caught plenty of snippets and learned more about it.  I’m glad Mayim Bialik is getting work and it’s nice that Jim Parsons came out but I’m digging my heels in on this whole “hating The Big Bang Theory” thing.

Raggedy Ann & Raggedy C-3P0

I am always lured by the siren song of a holiday episode, however, and in watching “The Holographic Excitation” I was also offering an olive branch to Nick.  He probably now wishes I had just eaten some olives instead since the experience of watching this episode has only added to my list of reasons to actively dislike this show.

In this episode the gang of nerds are preparing for an upcoming Halloween party held at their local comic book shop.  Sheldon and his girlfriend, played by the aforementioned Mayim Bialik, can’t agree on a couple’s costume (he wants science; she wants romance).  Another character (I won’t dignify them with names) is obsessed with referencing his recent trip to space.  And finally, the main couple keep having sex every time the guy talks about science.  Really.

Nice try but not even the Smurfs can save this mess.

I made a few notes while watching this episode.  They were as follows: Sex, Sex Tape, Sex Robot, Hickeys, Porn.  Those were the punch lines of the jokes—and that was just the first half of the episode.  By the end we also get slut, sexy cop, the word Smurf used as a euphemism for vagina and a couple having sex in a bathroom.  A bathroom shaped like a TARDIS.  Because: nerds!  In other words this episode trades on the cheapest and sex-obsessed humor possible.  And don’t get me wrong, I’m no prude but I am frustrated by shows like this that I feel feed on people’s basest instincts.  It’s not just sex; I also take umbrage at the portrayal of nerds, smart versus dumb, women versus men.  To me this show is just a bundle of unfunny stereotypes smothered in jokes about guys building sex robots (one character tried to have sex with her but the cord didn’t stretch far enough.  Har de har har.).

Oh yeah, Buzz Aldrin has a cameo.  Science!

Now let me step off my soapbox and briefly touch on the Halloween elements, which were relatively scarce.  There was one funny scene about the naming of normal foods with “spooky” Halloween names (Night of the Living Garlic Bread, etc.).  And I liked one of the couples’ Smurf costumes.  But that was about the extent of it and certainly Halloween wasn’t the focus.  I think I established what the focus was.  Don’t make me type it again.

Sex Robots.

Happy?!

Recurring Themes: Don’t ask me why but TV writers freaking love Rag Doll Costumes.  In this case we get a Raggedy Ann and a Raggedy C-3P0 when Sheldon and his girlfriend “compromise” on a couples’ costume.

Halloween Quotient: 1

See It, Skip It, Own It?

If you read just one word of any of the above you can guess my feelings on this.  Let’s give it a skip and a “kill it with fire.”

HALLOWEEN

Malcolm in the Middle

Season 7 (2005)

It’s always a fine line in crafting anti-heroes.  They need to be just rascally enough to still be lovable and it’s so easy to go a bit too far and end up with an unlikeable punk.  That was always my problem with Malcolm in the Middle: the brothers just seem like bullies and assholes and I end up just feeling bad for everyone who has to deal with them.  It doesn’t help that “Halloween” is from the 7^th and last season of the show, so they’re not young anymore but rather gangly teens whose “antics” are less of the zany variety and more just mean-spirited.

Yeah, I want to punch them in the face too.

In this episode brothers Reece and Dewey take their youngest sibling trick-or-treating only to egg an old man and then be pursued by him (very, very slowly) for the rest of episode. Eventually he catches up with them (it involves a sticky mattress that traps them in place—don’t ask).  The old man is rather terrifying in his relentless pursuit of the brothers, with his walker and his creepy eyes.  But even more terror is in store.

Insert obligatory Bryan Cranston Breaking Bad reference here.

An under-the-weather Malcolm (and really, Frankie Muniz already looks sickly so Frankie Muniz made up to look sick is even worse) and his dad are stuck home, a home that they recently discovered was the site of a multiple murder.  But the weird sounds and eerie happenings are really being caused by the aforementioned youngest brother, who has crawled into a vent and is attempting to devour all of his Halloween candy.  Bryan Cranston plays scared with aplomb but their scenes are intercut with really disgusting shots of the youngest brother stuffing his face with candy.  It’s torture for the eyeballs to watch saliva and melted chocolate dripping from the mouth of a toddler, replete with disgusting stomach-rumbling sound effects.  And we get more than one scene of this.  Bleh.

Would you accept candy from this man-child?

The strongest scenes revolve around mom Lois and her frustrations with her partying co-workers at the drug store as they drink, make lewd announcements on the PA system and rifle through the customer’s photos.  It made me wish that this show was entirely set in a drug store and was about its wacky employees throwing a Halloween party.  I could so do without the jerky brothers, the creepy old man and the gross candy guzzling.

Recurring Themes: We’ve got the all-time favorite, a Haunting with a Logical Explanation.  Reese and Dewey engage in an Egging Gone Wrong.

Halloween Quotient: It’s pretty holiday-centric but I have a hard time getting over some of the ick factor, so it leverages out to a 3.

See It, Skip It, Own It?

You can skip this one with a clear conscience.  Time is precious and we’ve got bigger and better episodes to watch!

THE NIGHT HE CAME HOME

Martin

Season 1 (1992)

It’s not easy sharing your name with the name of a sitcom.  There must be some sort of support group for us, the Maudes and Ellens and Martins of the world.  I was haunted by the theme song of this show for years.  My high school crush would sing it every time I entered a classroom (but I didn’t mind it so much when he did it—at least he was talking to me!).  But despite having its theme song thrust upon me I’ve always enjoyed Martin, a goofy 90s sitcom with some truly excellent holiday episodes.

Martin loves scaring his girlfriend Gina around Halloween but the tables are turned when, unbeknownst to him, Gina and his friends concoct a story about “Old Man Ackerman,” the cantankerous (and murdered) former tenant of his apartment.  When they gather at his apartment on Halloween they conduct a séance that quickly spirals out of control (thanks to their hidden friend who just happens to be a special effects wiz). 

Tommy is seemingly possessed and man, can this guy bulge his eyes and roll his tongue with the best of them!  Cole gets beat up by invisible “ghosts,” resulting in one of the episode’s funniest moments, in which Martin tries to fend off the invisible assailants.  Gina and Pam eventually disappear while cupboard doors slam open and shut, plates and a vase go flying and a skeleton dummy in the closet comes to life and attacks Martin.  All is revealed as an elaborate prank except when Martin and Gina are making out on the couch afterwards the REAL ghost of Old Man Ackerman shuffles by.

Perfection!  Everything about this episode is done right, from the heavy reliance on many tried-and-true Halloween sitcom tropes to the over the top antics of a terrified Martin Lawrence.  There are lots of black and orange candles and drugstore variety Halloween decorations.  And just in case you forget that this is a sitcom about African-American people in the 90s, Whoopi Goldberg, Rodney King and Chaka Khan are all referenced.

Here’s a bit of bonus Halloween trivia: Tisha Campbell and Tichina Arnold, the actresses who play Gina and Pam respectively, are both excellent singers and appeared together as two of the three chorus singers in the film musical Little Shop of Horrors.

There is one other Martin Halloween episode but just wait until Thanksgiving—that’s when things get REALLY good!

Recurring Themes: We’ve got ourselves a trope bonanza in this episode: a Dark & Stormy Blackout, Prank War, Haunting with a Logical Explanation, Séance and a Real Ghost Shows Up at the End!

Halloween Quotient: Our first 5 of the season!

See It, Skip It, Own It?

Own it and enjoy it year after year!  It’s up on YouTube or available for cheap on DVD.