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It would be an injustice to the season and my family not to make this week\u2019s installment of Only Noise all about Halloween, the greatest holiday on earth. The only holiday that you aren\u2019t required to sit at a large table with family you may or may not enjoy being around, stuffing yourselves with unnecessary amounts of food, or packing into a cheesy restaurant to eat a pre-fixe menu priced double the everyday value, or pretending you are extra<\/em> in love with your partner.<\/p>\n

On Halloween you can be vulgar, clever, \u201cslutty\u201d (whatever that means), non-participatory, an adult-child, and more importantly, anything you damn want to be. In 1989, my parents got married on Halloween, only 15 days before I entered this mortal coil. My dad didn\u2019t do it up for the holiday, donning slacks and a tweedy sports coat, while my mom wore an emerald green tunic with florid gold embroidery at the chest. She topped it off with beads, fake gold jewelry, and a dangly chainmail headband. It wasn\u2019t a costume per se, but it certainly wasn\u2019t a wedding dress. But the piece de resistance of their wedding in my humble, nostalgic opinion was the cake. It was a black cake. A black bat cake, with orange icing script.<\/p>\n

Growing up I never equated my parents\u2019 anniversary with Halloween, but now thinking back it makes a little more sense as to why they celebrated the day with such zeal. Halloween seemed wildly more important than any other holiday in my family, even more so than Christmas, which to many of the evangelical occupants of our rural town, must have made us seem like pagans. Maybe we were.<\/p>\n

My parents, sister and I would spend days vandalizing the house with lengths of cotton fiber \u201cspider webs.\u201d We\u2019d hang a sheer, fine mesh net from the ceiling and toss plastic spiders and centipedes into its canopy. We\u2019d make a big paper tree to go up the wall adjoining the living room and kitchen, and affix bugs to that as well (bugs went on pretty much everything). Stuffing my father\u2019s gardening clothes with newspaper, we\u2019d prop a carved jack-o\u2019-lantern on the makeshift scarecrow to greet guests.<\/p>\n

With the help of a children\u2019s cookbook entitled Gross Goodies <\/em>\u2013 one of many finds at the school book fair, my mom and I would belabor an enormous menu of foul-looking treats such as \u201cPumping-Heart Tarts,\u201d and \u201cOpen Wound Teacakes.\u201d The party was a potluck, but the menu was exclusively Halloween-themed, putrescent looking food. Our table\u2019s centerpiece was a miniature guillotine made by a family friend. Lying upon it was a decapitated Barbie doll \u2013 not the first in our household. She wore a green gown, with red nail polish encircling her open neck. Her blonde head rested in a basket before her.<\/p>\n

But what is a party without music? In the same way the Christmas season makes some people want to go caroling, Halloween made my family want to do \u201cThe Time Warp<\/a>.\u201d My mom, a longtime fan of the 1975 musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/em>, made it an annual tradition that when the clock struck midnight, all guests would meet in the living room to reenact the synchronized dance moves for the film\u2019s most famous song. I didn\u2019t actually watch Rocky Horror<\/em> until I was in fifth grade, which is a strange age to take in something like that with your mom, but I knew every wink, step and bar of \u201cThe Time Warp\u201d since before I can remember. I don\u2019t recall being taught it, just doing it.<\/p>\n

Our playlist often found inspiration from other movies as well; cuts from The Nightmare Before Christmas<\/em> (my mom\u2019s motivation for leaving the Halloween decorations up until X-mas), \u201cJump in the Line\u201d by Harry Belafonte for its association with Beetlejuice<\/em>, and the bizarre numbers from a beloved little claymation flick from the \u201860s called Mad Monster Party<\/em>. The film\u2019s voiceover cast includes Boris Karloff, Phyllis Diller and Ethel Ennis. The songs are odd to say the least, but the animation and performances are ace.<\/p>\n