The Fall Eating Season II: Candy, Candy, Candy -- I can't let you go.

I love Halloween. I love my wife. My wife loves Halloween more than I love Halloween. I love my wife more than I love Halloween.

What does all of this mean?

My wife is a Halloweenie. It is her thing, her thang. All-year round -- every day is Halloween. Mostly, I find it uber-cool to be married to an old-school goth (albeit a closet-goth for her roles as homemaker, librarian, and room parent). Occasionally, I feel the bats and cats and rats and skulls are all staring at me, trying to psych me out.

What does all of this mean?

In 1992, Halloween was my holiday. I was a graduate student at Southern Illinois University -- where Halloween was celebrated with much drinking and burning of cars.

In 1993, Halloween was our holiday. We were still in Carbondale. We were finalizing our wedding arrangements -- the Interfaith Center, the cake from Cristaudo's, the reception at Fiddler's (gone, but not forgotten), the honeymoon on Miami Beach. A week later, we were married on a snowy Saturday afternoon. A week after that, I was in the hospital for three days with Legionnaire's disease. A week after that, we were on Miami Beach for only fifteen minutes on only one day of our week-long honeymoon while the Legionnaire's disease kept me in bed (in the wrong sense for OUR HONEYMOON).

In 2008, Halloween was her holiday, and has been for years. Not that her version of Halloween is substantially different from my version of Halloween -- but, as far as I am concerned, the day is all hers. I love Halloween, but it's her thang.

I'm contented just to be a patron of the art she creates with Beistle cutouts, plastic skeletons, and monster fur. I still have an important role in the festivities:

I am the candyman.

(If you think that means I want to do something unspeakable to Virginia Madsen...um, well....)

It is my job to pass out candy to the kiddies every year. It is not as simple as it may seem:

• Who? Without even factoring in the weather, some years we get fewer than thirty kids, other years we have had over 150. My first thought is to just say no to the high-school kids with no costume and a used Wal-Mart bag; then, I think of starting November with a busted-out picture window. There are people who drive vans up to our house, let a dozen kids out on the side-street, have those kids trick-or-treat our front door, try to trick-or-treat our side door, then leave the neighborhood.
• What? Chocolate, that's what...and not motherfucking Tootsie Rolls either, you cheap bastard. If you are only giving out a piece or two per trick-or-treater, please please PLEASE make it all name-brand chocolate. If you give more candy than that, mix it up with non-chocolate. I know Skittles are just as expensive as Snickers, but to a nine-year-old Skittles are as much a filler-candy as Double Bubble...or Tootsie Rolls, you cheap bastard. Given the unpredictable number of trick-or-treaters we may have, we make sure there is enough chocolate for 200 really hungry kids.
• When? In broad daylight...nowadays. Check out my blog entry, "I think Barack Obama is avoiding me..." for more on daytime trick-or-treating.
• Where? My front door. I live on a corner. Every year, kids go to my front door, then go to my side door. For some reason, some kids only go to my side door. My house is a slab house of less than 1,100 square feet. My side door is in the breezeway connecting the house to the garage, but it is obvious to anyone close enough to the side door to ring the bell that this breezeway doubles as an ersatz junk-filled basement.Also, I would have thought that the large obvious sign on the side door saying "Please use front door" might help. It gets a little harried trying to answer both doorbells at the same time -- my fat candy-snitching ass huffing and puffing back-and-forth through the kitchen.
• Why? Just before my Druidic ancestor were ransacked by my Viking ancestors, they did something with an oak tree and Stonehenge I think, so now we give kids candy on Halloween. Hey, it's all I've got. That is at least as convincing as the story about the stepson of a Jewish carpenter who was horribly tortured to death in public, so now every year a rabbit hides hard-boiled eggs.

I estimate that I saw about 125 trick-or-treaters this year. We had enough candy for 200 kids. We had (yes, HAD) a lot of leftover candy. The largest hole in my face is just the right size for Fun Size candy bars. Additionally, we always shop the after-Halloween markdowns. Here's a tip: every year one of the big discounters completely screws up and buys way too much of something good. This year, that was Target. So, here are my two favorites -- my 2008 Favorite Halloween Candy, and my 2008 Favorite Post-Halloween Markdown Candy. Drum-roll, please (no Tootsie Rolls, you cheap bastard):

2008 Favorite Halloween Candy:Nestlé Crunch Caramel

This is a newish variation on an old favorite. It's like a Nestlé Crunch Bar with a Cadbury Caramello on top of it. This is a great texture pairing that work against logic. Like thin-crust pizza with extra cheese, Nestlé Crunch Caramel pairs the crispiest of the crispy with the gooiest of the gooey. The Fun Size bars are not exact miniatures of the full-size bars: the Crunch Bar to Caramello proportions are different, better (I think) in the Fun Size.

2008 Favorite Post-Halloween Markdown Candy3 Musketeers Mint

This is another newish variation on an old favorite. The whipped mint nougat dipped in dark chocolate is even better frozen and cracked like you might do to a Charleston Chew. Target was selling bags of 18 in their Halloween clearance for $1.14, while they were selling the same size bars with earlier expiration dates in the 8-bar packs for $1.29. Mint and dark chocolate sound pretty Christmas-y to me. WARNING: if you ever get heartburn at all, mint and dark chocolate together might just be your kryptonite.

Next Time: More hi-jinks, fifteen years of wedded bliss (not in a row), and more of the Fall Eating Season.

I think Barack Obama is avoiding me...

I voted today. If you know me, it will not surprise you that I voted for this guy:

Barack Obama.

He was "my guy" from the start. I voted for him for US Senate, and I voted for him for President of the US of A. Over the last few years, that is...not both today. I realize that the motto in Chicagoland is "Vote early and vote often," but I only voted for this guy once today.

On May 2, 2008, Barack Obama came to my neighborhood. In the heat of the primary season, he held a town-hall meeting and gave a speech in Munster, IN at Munster Steel -- 3 miles from my house. I could not attend. I was not on the approved list. Although I was a high school friend of Lansing Mayor Dan Podgorski, I have no clout. Lansing takes "municipal home rule" so seriously that local officials do not run as Democrats or Republicans but instead have their own fake made-up parties. I cannot keep straight if Mayor Pod's Community Action Party more closely aligns with Democrats or Republicans, so he may not have any real clout for me to exploit with my non-existent clout. I have heard it said that a local politician is someone whose deepest darkest secrets keep them from seeking higher office -- so maybe I do have some clout after all, Dan. Still, I live close enough to have walked to Barack, but I was not invited to attend.

On Halloween 2008, Barack Obama came to my neighborhood again:

I got five pieces of candy!

I got a chocolate bar!

I got a quarter!

I got Barack!

Wicker Memorial Park in Highland, IN is also 3 miles from my home. My daughter plays in this park regularly. Mid-week last week, the Obama-Biden campaign announced that they would be holding an event in Wicker Memorial Park on Halloween night starting at 6:00 PM. No costumes allowed.

Local Trick-or-Treat hours were from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM. The retired busybodies who set such rules have ruined Trick-or-Treat by scheduling it to start just after they finish their Early Bird Specials -- you know, so they can be in bed by 7:45 on Halloween...on the first, they've got to be at the bank by six in the morning to cash that Social Security check. The extension of Daylight Savings Time has double-ruined Trick-or-Treat by putting this already-too-early event into what any reasonable person would think of as the noonday sun.

Now, 3 miles from my front door is an historic event -- Obama's "closing argument" for the presidency. I should go. My wife should go. My daughter should go. By some estimates, 40,000 people did go. Even if I didn't support Obama, even if my O-baby's Obama O-Mama didn't support Obama, we should attend this historic event in our neighborhood -- an historic event starting just before it gets dark enough to make Trick-or-Treating the least bit fun (or even tolerable for those poor kiddies under twenty pounds of monster fur on a seventy-something degree Halloween).

Not only would we all have to de-costume and de-makeup before we could possibly go, but given the parking options, we would have to walk half of the distance to the rally. To make it there by 6:00, we would have to start getting ready by about 4:00 PM -- so, no Trick-or-Treat at all. Not only would my daughter not get to Trick-or-Treat in her non-Charlie-Brown ghost costume, but we would not be able to pass out the twelve hundred dollars worth of candy we have to buy every year because some years we get twenty kids and other years we get fifteen thousand. Plus, I wouldn't be able to tell if my house was being egged by the candy-less neighbor kids, or by the guy down the block with the McCain-Palin sign in his lawn.

So I ignored the call of history-in-the-making.

At the last moment, the Obama-Biden campaign moved the rally forward to 7:30 PM.

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Fuckers.

And now, some shameless grandstanding in pun form:

• GObama! Yes we can! For More Years of the Bush Agenda? No we McCain't.
• Biden's opponent is Palin comparison.

Next time: More hi-jinx, and the next event of the Fall Eating Season.

The Credible Shrinking Man

If you know me, you know that for a while now I have been fat. In my skin-tight, 2XL navy blue work uniform, I have been mistaken for Violet Beauregard, and the Oompa-Loompas have tried to roll me to the juicing room more than once (I really do chew gum constantly).

This was me the week before Halloween 2007:

It would be convenient for me to say that emotional eating took over my life when Mom died last July; by that point, however, I was already superfat. At Mom's funeral, I was wearing this monster of a shiny grey suit with about 27 buttons down the front. I bought it at a thrift store and I think it had been previously owned by Bruce Bruce (the host of BET's Comic View). It was very urban churchy. On any normal-sized man, this would have looked like David Byrne's giant Stop Making Sense suit. For me, it was tight through the middle.

By Christmas, I was nearly 300 pounds. 5' 8" and 300. Almost 300 -- 298 and change.

I needed a change. I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but January First was a convenient date for me to make some lifestyle changes. Then, on January 31, I turned forty. Four-oh. I have not been to the doctor for the big four-oh physical. When you are forty and you go in for your checkup, they send you to the proctologist. The proctologist essentially takes a plumber's snake with a webcam on the tip and jams it straight up your ass. All the way up your ass. Slowly probing and twisting. Is this making you horny? WTF is wrong with you. Yeesh. So that isn't kinda hot, in a way? WTF is wrong with you. Yeesh. As I say, I have not been. I am not ready to pay a millionaire to tell me that I am way too fat, and then send me to pay some other millionaire to also tell me that I am way too fat and while feeding a roto-rooter up my rectum. Rectum? It nearly killed 'um. Bah-dum, ching. About his own probative event, comedian Robert Schimmel said, "I taste metal." I couldn't possibly suffer the indignity of it all with Greenpeace simultaneously trying to push me back into the sea.

I was already getting smaller in March of 2008, when The Learning Channel aired British DJ/hypnotist Paul McKenna's I Can Make You Thin. This provided me with a couple of strategies: step counting and distracting myself from cravings.

• Step counting. I hate exercise for the sake of exercise. I love physical exertion in the name of something practical, but athletics and the gym are not my bag. I have maintained for years that I have a very active job which should completely make up for my hate of sports and workouts. It turns out that I was right. Paul McKenna reccommends 10,000 steps per day. My workday averages 12,000 to 15,000 steps. If I am a few steps short one day, a walk up to the grocery or the drugstore usually makes up the difference. My wife Tracey easily doubles my average daily steps, that showoffy skinny bitch. My Dad scoffs at all this walking...as he drives his Cadillac the few blocks to the drugstore to pick up his meds for type-2 diabetes and high blood-pressure.
• Distracting myself from cravings. Paul McKenna uses this rapid succession of hand movements, tappings, and vocalizations to scramble the brain a little bit and disrupt the craving. It helps. So does green tea. So does a frothy Metamucil smoothie. So does MGD 64 (I blame my b-sis Beck's mention of this redo of MGD Light for getting my alcoholic beverage average over 1 per month -- yay booze).

This is where I am now, the week before Halloween 2008:
This year, so far, I have lost 75 pounds. An XL is now a pretty loose fit, and much of the time I wear L. If the additional notches I've drilled in my belt are to be believed, I have lost 8 inches off my waist. Still, I am around 225. I am at a plateau. I have hit diminishing returns. Poopie. Nothing is ever good enough.


I would like to make it an even 100 for the year -- but Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are realistically going to knock me off my pace.


Next time: more hi-jinx, and a look at the start of the New Fall (eating) Season.