One October, twenty-something years ago, I was a five-year-old boy sitting at the kitchen table staring at a pumpkin. By the end of the night, I would have a jack-o-lantern to call my own. There was no such thing as a child-friendly pumpkin carving knife in the early 1980s, so the most that I was allowed to do was draw a face on my pumpkin, and leave the actual carving up to my grandfather.

Not understanding the strategic disadvantages of drawing on a pumpkin with a ballpoint pen, I did what kids do and gave it a go with the first pen that I could find. Even as a child with a five-year-old sense of aesthetics, I was severely disappointed with my efforts. The triangle eyes were lopsided and round. The triangular nose was centered, but was equally awkward. Worst of all, though, was the mouth.

My intention was to give my jack-o-lantern a wide grin with vampire fangs. I started with the top half of the mouth and drew two prominent fangs that any vampire would be proud of. Then came the bottom half. I started on the left side of the mouth and carefully formed the bottom lip of the smile. As I was arching the pen underneath the top half of the mouth, my pen slipped at the most disastrous moment, and my pen stroke scribbled through the sharp angle that was supposed to be the first fang. I stared horrified at my disfigured jack-o-lantern and slowly came to accept the fact that Halloween had been ruined. Forever. Angrily, I stabbed the ballpoint pen back into the rogue mouth line and scribbled haphazardly with disgust, great frustration, and kindergarten angst. I threw my pen down onto the table and stormed out of the room.

My father let me cool down for about twenty minutes and then called me back into the kitchen. When I reentered the room, my brother Jonathan was still designing his own jack-o-lantern, and my grandfather was seated across from him, busily carving the pumpkin that I had so furiously abandoned. After a few halfhearted attempts to stop my grandfather, the pumpkin was carved, smiling defiantly at me with its hideous grin. I didn’t have the verbal or emotional vocabulary to express this at the time, but as I stared at that orange sphere of immortalized failure, I was overcome with a mix of feelings. I was ashamed of my terrible illustration, and I was embarrassed that my grandfather had so lovingly interpreted my ridiculous scribbling as an honest and credible attempt at self expression. That jack-o-lantern was just as much a testament to my temper and my propensity to quit as it was a testament of my grandfather’s support for his grandson: the young, budding artist who would one day embark on an earnest quest for true inspiration.

Of course, I was five at the time, and I didn’t have the capacity to express all of that effusive sentimentality. I was just a kid staring at the most sarcastic jack-o-lantern in the world, trying my best not to punch a hole through that stupid, taunting face. I guess I’m old enough to say this now, so I might as well say it. When I look back on that day as an adult, I remember those moments with good humor, and with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Thanks, Grandpa. Happy Halloween.

Posted by KZ on 10/30/08

I spent an afternoon helping my buddy, Josh, set up an animated Halloween prop outside his house. It’s a sound-activated Grim Reaper on a rope that makes creepy noises and travels back and forth across a chord.

Sadly, we learned later that afternoon that the device is a piece of crap. It only reacts to relatively loud sounds (like clapping hands from a short distance), and it doesn’t move too well across the chord.

I made this video to mock it.

Posted by KZ on 10/29/08

I give in.  After four years of dating my girlfriend, I’ve come to accept a simple truth: Octobers belong to Diana.  Because Halloween is her favorite time of year, Diana always insists on packing our October weekends with Halloween-related activities.  We spend a lot of time watching terrible and tedious horror movies, carving pumpkins, shopping for costumes, setting up decorations, and paying people to scare us in all of the local (and not so local) haunted maze attractions.  In the vernacular of Halloween connoisseurs, those haunted maze attractions are simply known as “haunts”.

I’ve grown to tolerate haunts over the years, but I still can’t love them.  I’m still a little sour on the idea of paying money to be hassled by screaming wackos who  get in your face and threaten to touch you, but who never do.  If I wanted to spend money to experience that level of abusive frustration, I’d be much better off visiting my neighborhood S&M strip club.  At least there, they touch you a little after you pay extra.  Speaking of which, part of the reason why I’m a little uncomfortable with haunts is that they subject me to the same kind of mental and moral dilemmas that I experience in strip clubs, but in far more hostile settings.

There’s a similar element of dehumanization involved in haunts as there are in strip clubs.  In either setting, people place themselves on display for your amusement, inviting you to regard them not as people, but as scenery — as props in an elaborate stage production. A stripper on stage transforms herself into an object of sexual desire, and your enjoyment of the show depends on your ability to objectify the performer. The show seems a lot less fun when you you start looking the stripper in the eye instead of staring at her curves, and you imagine her applying your folded dollar bills towards her rent or next month’s car payment.

In an oddly analogous way, your enjoyment of a heavily staffed haunt also depends on your ability to suspend a portion of your human empathy. Within the confines of those haunted mazes, cast members become monsters, beasts, and supernatural fiends. They pop out of dark corners with intimidating growls and screams, or they stare at you blankly in the center of a room beneath a macabre layer of fake blood and graphic wounds, forcing you to find a path around them. When these cast members confront you, you have a choice between recoiling in fear and fleeing the “monsters” at your heels, or laughing with good nature and smiling at the cast members — the people who are placing you in this ridiculous and socially awkward situation. Those who cringe and flee suspend their disbelief just long enough to believe in their tormentors’ lack of humanity. On the other hand, I feel a little guilty for laughing and smiling at the cast members because it almost feels like I’m celebrating my own dignity at the expense of others who would willingly sacrifice a little bit of their own dignity to frighten me. Those are the kinds of situations where I feel like I can never win. I’ve never walked out of one of those haunts feeling anything else other than relief that the ordeal is over.

Halloween approaches fast this year.  Soon it will be the 31st, and then it will be November.  I just need to hold out a little longer, and the whole ordeal will be over.  Freaking Halloween.  What other time of year can you walk down the street armed with a chainsaw and a bloody hatchet and people will regard you with smiles of approval?  I’m just looking forward to better days, when the only people whom I will overtly objectify are strippers and exotic dancers.  Man, that’ll be sweet.

Posted by KZ on 10/27/08

A common age and a common name, how low we bow
to common pains, the like mistakes
dictated by complacency, familiar trembling aches
decaying the root of reason, the tides of time sweeping
swooning plops ashore in granite rhythm
sea of the wincing stewards of change

Past we roll, oblivious to the bloody sky
on common grounds, a constant state
Unsteady peace, fear into pieces
ambassadors of nuclear rage
particles bursting apart in frenzied glee
shrapnel, rusty screws, ball bearings
indignance and human decency
the cries of righteous suicide
as we rely on steady orders from unflinching leaders
ordained by rite
by authority of warring deities

Fear not, child
The ashes are bequeathed to the meek

-Kevin Zing

Posted by KZ on 10/14/08