Halloween '09

As per tradition, I was out in my home suburb of Edmonds to celebrate. My friend Kris who teaches music at the University of Taipei came all the way across an entire ocean just to scare the neighborhood kids. The scene was Kris' mom's house. Kris was in charge of the yard. I got pumpkin detail. I had to carve them indoors because it was raining so hard. Kris also had to take a break from decorating, but by dark, everything was done. Here are a few of my pumpkin creations:

Eye pumpkin...


Evil pumpkin, lights on...


Evil pumpkin, lights off...


Not my best work, but I was just getting warmed up.

Here are some of the yard decorations/obstacles:

General view of the yard from the street...


Scary fake operating table with various body parts on it, accompanied by my creepy music...


Ghost 1...


Ghost 2...


Fake mini-skulls in low light...


Fake severed head in low light.

Funny thing, by day, all of these items look fake and cheesy. Add darkness and some black light and bingo, they're really creepy. And on top of that, have guys like our friend, The Man, out there in a Tor Johnson mask jumping out at kids and the house becomes the terror of the neighborhood. Oh, and here's how I looked when I was handing out candy:

In all, we got nearly 200 trick-or-treaters, went through 14 bags of candy and scared a few dozen youngsters completely shitless. Mission accomplished. So yeah, it was a fun suburban Halloween. When we'd watched our last scary movie and taken everything down, I returned to Belltown. The place was overrun with all manner of drunk people in costumes. It was like a Village People rebellion. In conclusion, life is full of contrasts.