: lower black pain.

I want to make perfectly clear that this it in no way Spider-Man’s fault.

I’m saying that right up front. I know people that work at MARVEL, and I don’t want them to think I’m not grateful for absolutely everything.

This was not Spider-Man’s fault. If anyone, it’s probably Joseph Shivers, who can’t be held directly responsible, but is not blameless.

Mr. Joseph Shivers, in 1959, invented a thermoplastic elastomer he called lycra; you may be more familiar of its brand name: Spandex.

And when I was a little kid, a department store in Kansas City realized that Christmas came but once a year, but decided that if they invited another celebrity to come visit during the summer, kids might go for that. So they announced that Spider-Man would be coming to the mall to meet his fans and take pictures.

I was a kid, y’know, so this was right in the pocket of things I was interested in. I’d never met anybody from New York, so that was super exciting. I asked my Mom if we could go and she checked that it was a legitimate store and an actual ad and then said we could.

So that Saturday we went to either JC Penny’s or Macy’s, because those were the anchor stores at either end of Indian Springs Mall. Kids were everywhere, it was a great idea, very exciting, we got right in line. But here’s the thing, Spider-Man THWIPs. He, y’know, thwips, with his webs, and swings, and does action stuff. That’s not what was happening. He was in a big chair, just like Santa, and bewildered midwestern children were sitting on his lap to take photos.

Let’s bury the lead here as quickly as possible; Santa Claus, a benevolent ethereal spirit of goodwill dressed in heavy warm garb protecting from the incredible wind shear of racing miles above the ground at speeds beyond all measurement just to foster worldwide harmony – that guy it’s appropriate to approach in a manner befitting the fact that he carries within him hundreds of years of wisdom; annually he welcomes us to a moment of focus between the past (himself and his vast achievement and experience) and us, the future; nothing accomplished, everything on its way. We sit and we answer what will later be the question we all find most central to our life perspective –

“What do you want?”

That situation of respect for and deference to the incredible, the truly magical, is sacred. And it’s not meant to be the lap of luxury, it is the lap of gratitude, the lap of faith, and wonder. Those 60 seconds a year, conversation with an immortal icon of optimism and generosity, were a childhood balm in a world of slim tenderness.

Spider-Man is a 15 year old kid, and even great admiration for his undeniable courage mixed with sincere compassion for his unfortunate loss did not create an emotional drive to sit on his lap for any reason. Plus, he was wearing Spandex. All over. And my mother, and some other mothers in line quickly determined that the entire enterprise was a bit unsettling, but as their children were still excited about it they didn’t know what to do.

My turn. My mother said “Hey, don’t sit on his lap, why don’t you ask him if you can get a superhero pose with him?” She spoke quickly under her breath to his handler, who whispered something to Peter, who then stood up and kind of … didn’t know what to do. I wanted him to THWIP, but he kind of awkwardly put his arm around my shoulder like an awkward 15 year old and then we stood there, like a set piece from a Wes Anderson film.

Polaroid. “Thanks, Peter.”That was it.

But the kid right after me stood up too, as did the one after that. My mother and I had turned the tide; the cut of Spidey’s suit gained significant relevance once he stood, the non-subtlety of which was captured forever in that Polaroid, which I actually have around here somewhere, but couldn’t find it.

Thus I was discouraged from sitting on anyone’s lap from that point on that wasn’t my mom or my Grandpa. This was not, as previously and emphatically stated, Spider-Man’s fault. There’s just no reason to sit on Spider-Man’s lap.  You can’t just put anybody, not even a superhero, in that chair. It’s not about the chair.

If you’re gonna be in that chair, you need to represent wisdom, not just talent or power or fame, because what we all want is larger than a present: we may never tell Santa directly, but what we want is Christmas. We just want Christmas to come, we want to anticipate it and then have it arrive, and be there, safe, together: because life outside of that 60 second visit is highly unstable. The gift is the day itself, and not even a superhero can get you that. That’s magic. (Ok, well maybe Doctor Strange – seems a bit off brand for him though.)

So that December, at that same place in the mall, I made my case to Santa Claus for conditional delivery of the Six Million Dollar Man Bionic Transport and Repair Station. Humble. Respectful. But standing, lap adjacent.

He didn’t mind.

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Winter.

After our eyes experience the blossoming of Spring, our skin the inescapable heat of Summer, and our noses and mouths the World Court punishable assault of Autumn’s pumpkin spice, our ears enjoy the soundtrack of Winter. The silence after a bout of snow, and at the other end, holiday music.

Our official holiday playlist now stands at 4 days and 17 hours long. It has been refined every year, carefully built over decades, migrated through 12 different database configurations, copied to 5 subsequent hard drives. If we begin playing it on a Monday morning, we will nearly make it to Saturday afternoon without repeats. That, is a great deal of merry.

The melodies of winter are my favorite part of the holidays, good or bad, and there are bad ones, you can’t just listen to everything. Seriously, we’ve been curating this list for 30 years; at first it was just a few CDs that we’d burned, then we realized we were missing some individual tracks so we used keywords to search our entire music library.

First we used “Christmas”. Not a lot of surprises there.

Then we searched for “holiday”, a little bit more random because the Madonna song kept coming up.

The word “winter” was good. We do have an album by a man named Paul Winter, but it’s entirely mellow and fits right in.

Proper nouns were not as successful. Santa worked out, but there is no segue between any holiday tune and Johnny Cash’s version of “Personal Jesus”.

There’s barely any reason to carry holiday tunes around this time of year, because they’re everywhere. Where were you when you heard your first one this year? Grocery store? Mine was a bodega down the block, two days after Thanksgiving, they snuck it in after a Billy Joel thing. It was the gateway track, ‘White Christmas’ by The Drifters. Everyone recognized it, eyes rolled a little bit but then our heads started bobbing and we all were very quietly singing along. Then they played ‘Boogie Shoes’ by KC and the Sunshine Band because it wasn’t December just yet.

We bought sleigh bells last year. Honest to goodness sleigh bells. For years we’d shaken our keys, or said just “Ching Ching Ching Ching Ching” which was fine. But I was recording something Christmas-y, and no matter what software combination I used I couldn’t generate or even sample an authentic sleigh bell sound because there’s nothing else that sounds like sleigh bells. Except keys. And saying “Ching Ching Ching Ching Ching” over and over.

Sleigh bells are huge, and you don’t shake them, you hold them with your fist in one hand (they’re pointed down like a bunch of cyber-grapes) and you hit that fist with the other fist. The other way to play them is to have a horse. I have an apartment in Brooklyn. Thus.

So in a world that needs no more holiday music, in a home that also seems to have plenty, I have, in the past, written about a half-clutch of holiday songs – most when I was a corporate boss which I sang at our departmental December gatherings. I wasn’t asked to do this, but I wasn’t asked to stop once I’d started, so every year I’d make up a song about the holidays, careful to sidestep restrictions on trees, candles, and wreaths.

Part of my job was about diversity, so Christmahanasolistwanzaa was born, with carols about all allowable subjects, which were food and bells. Somehow, bells weren’t restricted; they jingled, they were silver, but they weren’t mentioned in any texts of note or apocryphal tales like drums were. Pa rum pa pum pum indeed.

This week I found that recording; as it was made before the kind of digital technology that would allow me to redo it in any way, I was at least allowed to sweeten it at last with the sound of actual sleigh bells. If you’d like to hear it, please click the “play” arrow above; if not, I am totally with ya. Unlike the summer sun, music should not be inescapable.

But if you could use a little ray of audio sunshine, I got you covered.

O, the Bells of Christmahanasolistwanzaa ring ,wishing all the happiness that wintry fun can bring.We can all enjoy the happy wintry tale they tell’cause there isn’t anybody here that don’t like bells.

O, the Bells of Christmahanasolistwanzaa chime,Echoing the glee that we all feel around this time.So no matter what tradition that you celebrateChristmahanasolistwanzaa bells make you feel great.

As we all express excitement at December’s end,we can share a meal together with a few good friends.So the Bells of Christmahanasolistwanzaa bongJust to give us an excuse to sing this little song.

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While church was every Sunday, for a lot of the late half of the 1970’s my most consistent (though quasi) religious service happened on Friday nights around 7:58 PM, when at the end of their incredibly popular weekly television program, Donny and Marie Osmond would sing:

May tomorrow be a perfect day May you find love and laughter along the way May God keep you in His tender care ’Til He brings us together again

Then a hearty “Good Night, Everybody!” would send me into a weekend that, according to the song, was gonna be pretty amazing. Keep in mind this was just broadcast tv, there wasn’t even cable yet  - but the next day was Saturday, which for kids had pretty good shot at being a pretty good day. Still, this weekly benediction was an incredibly lofty goal for a 47 minute variety show.

Carol Burnett was on Saturday, and she had a different approach; her closing song was a bit more melancholic:

I’m so glad we had this time together Just to have a laugh or sing a song Seems we just get started, and before you know it Comes the time we have to say “so long”.

Wouldn’t that be prefect to sing at a bar at closing time? You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. This gently lyrical bum’s rush proved lightly jarring after an hour of hilarious comedy (ok, 47 minutes); a bit of a “you’re right it was a terrific party and we should get together again very soon but now I’ve called you a cab and it’s waiting outside ok buh-bye”.

But almost directly between those two, somewhere after cartoons and before the 6 o’clock news, was “Soul Train”, the African-American Bandstand, almost an hour of stone cold jams and for some reason a magnetic letter board.

The host of the show was Don Cornelius, whose smooth manner and exceedingly long microphone now suggests a sort of chocolate Dumbledore. The show was an anchor; black people on tv every week in the same place and not just guest starring somewhere, and the music was incredible, a way to see artists before MTV was even around.

At the end of each episode, Don Cornelius thanked us for watching (or “riding” because it was a…train, in concept) and then, with his microphone magic wand, wished us three things -

Love,Peace,and Soul.

Or “Soooooooooooouuuuuul” if you want to pronounce it correctly.

This seemed more practical.  Late ’70s Earth was not a particularly peaceful place; the end of the Vietnam War was still fresh in everyone’s minds and civil rights was a new and not nearly ubiquitous practice. Peace didn’t seem the natural state of things, so a wish for peace reached everyone. So much effort was being spent trying to attain peace that it did seem that maybe it could only be granted by providence.

Love held the unique quality at being something truly incredible that we could actually afford. We never had have a lot of money, but there were hugs and notes in lunchboxes and help with homework and sometimes a malt at the Dairy Queen. There were band-aids and hot meals and patience, and I was made to feel that it wasn’t just random, but we all deserved it, which I think gave me a little bit of dignity, and I only needed a little bit ‘cause I was just a little kid. Love’s awesome. No argument there.

And soul. The devil could have anything he wants, but he’s obsessed with our soul, so it’s gotta be really, really valuable. And that means that all of us are really worth something, even if we can’t see the soul and it proves entirely undefinable by those in the philosophy trade. To “have soul” was to recognize this worth, and live authentically within it; to clearly stand up in recognition of who you were from the inside out, even when your outside was always pushing you down.

To be even more philosophical, the Three Great Conflicts of one against the world, one against another, and one against themselves was uniquely blessed by the cargo of the Soul Train; approach the world with peace, each other with love, and respect the soul within yourself.

Ok, he also said “Come back next week, ‘cause you can bet your last money it’s all gonna be a stone gas, Honey!” And I have no idea how “stone gas” would work. What’s that…fusion? Don’t need a philosopher for that, you’re gonna need a scientist, and some research grant money.

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[A Quick Note : well, a couple, because this is a song: For any of you who don’t usually listen to accompanying audio, I humbly ask if you could make an exception and click the green arrow above.Enjoy your Thanksgiving, and thank you for your time!]

As of tomorrow, I’m a princess

From a small midwestern town

Who works too much to think of love

’Til an awkward prince comes ‘round

And whisks me off to somewhere nice

Whose name ends in an a

For tomorrow I begin my

Netflix Christmas Holiday.

In a few days I’ll change places

With a doppelgänger queen

To foil the plans of someone who

Looks like us and is mean

Then I’ll meet a knight from out of time

And help him find his way

And fall in love again, of course

This Netflix Holiday.

For 11 months reality

Has a vice grip hold on me but

for December (and a monthly fee)

We all get to be royalty

As of tomorrow, we begin

To open up and feel again

No matter how our year has been

Our disbelief again suspends

And all of us are brave and kind

And noble, just and good

And those of us who aren’t are probably

Just misunderstood

So enjoy the beach in Maui

That’s too far for us to go

We’ll be where the snow is made

Of paper and soap bubbles

Twirling ‘round in giant ball gowns

And forgetting all our troubles

In a land of happily ever after

Joy and light cosplay

For tomorrow we begin our

Netflix Christmas Holiday.

(Of course we’re friends, so drop by the castle anytime...)

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The apartment was clean last weekend. Well, weekend before last, actually - we’d done the floors and the bathrooms and the straightening and the dishes and the laundry, totally refreshed both cat boxes, worked all Saturday morning - and then did all the grocery shopping and still had time to watch a movie, after dinner, sitting in our clean apartment.

Then, over the week, we completed another couple of projects that made everything even better - changed all the water filters (including the shower), packed up the Halloween decorations, got the winter coats out, and someone had the bright idea to add a little more storage to the kitchen so the Creuset pan wasn’t in the corner next to the pizza peel with the rolling pin in it! That wasn’t me, I’m not that ambitious right now, though I did institute a quick fix for the mass chaos of the “charging station”; our three-tier wire sculpture of Medusa in her steampunk phase made out of all the cords and plugs we’ve had to buy to power everything (I put it all in a little IKEA square thing with a door on it).

During the week we work a lot, and things organically move around, but you’d think we’d be ready for somebody dropping by; but then we remembered that my mother is coming next week and the apartment… changed. It was like a mirage, all those wavy lines… I mean it looked great before, super spacious and kind of Tardis meets Martha Stewart Living, and clean. But not Mom Visiting clean.

See that? Over there, that bookshelf? See all the books that have been placed HORIZONTALLY on top the other ones? That’s distracting. It pulls the eye. Makes one uneasy. Mom lived through the civil rights movement, she doesn’t deserve that.

And where you stepped down just now… you felt that, right? I don’t know how it got all the way over here but that piece of cat litter under your foot is a boulder. A sharpened stone, like the shard David used to slay Goliath. This woman gave me life, and I endanger hers with gravel? Nay, I say, nay indeed.

And the drawing books and the stuff we got last week for making candles and our new Trogdor board game are on the dining room table in the “ready” position, but 4 people have to eat at the table now so they’re kinda in the way and is that a sock? What is just one sock doing under the couch halfway? And why is there just one sock oh there’s the other one oh those are mine.

It was clean, gorgeous, I swear to you, and this is the that weird time before you put up the Christmas stuff – which covers EVERYTHING; we could have a yak and a pilates reformer in here and nobody’d even see ‘em beneath all our animated snowmen from Hallmark; and twinkly lights are actually really dim lights, and it’s Winter, so we’re not gonna really look at the rug until, like, March.

But NOW? That autumn sun is at just the right angle at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon to illuminate the underside of every piece of furniture and spotlight all the mysterious bits in those divits on the couch with the little buttons sewn in ‘em. Those can’t be are crumbs, because we’re gluten-free and we don’t eat chips!

I’m not stressed, it’ll all get done, we’ll go grocery shopping on Friday and have most of the week-end to really go through everything with a fine tooth comb.

Oh. Comb. Crap. What do I look like? Hold on…

…

…

…

I think I’m gonna have to go grocery shopping today.

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Deep within the science that is family dynamics, directly in between the cold wind of passive aggression and the warm sunrise of honest affection, there used to stand a casual apathy that we each carried with us to holiday functions, along with side dishes in Tupperware containers. This allowed us to observe, casually, as people we didn’t really know said things we didn’t really agree with, also casually. But it was just for the one day, and at the end we took our containers home, washed them in the sink, shrugged our shoulders and said to each other, “Well, you know, that’s family.”

Families, in general, either get along or don’t get along, and it’s not like they suddenly switch; you know what you’re getting into if you marry a Targaryen or a Lannister… there’s not gonna be a lot of relaxing dinner parties (and probably a great deal of uncomfortable furniture). The closest families I’ve ever seen all live in New Jersey. And they may not all get along, but they are undoubtedly a band, not of brothers but a rock band; when they take the stage at family gatherings there is a downbeat and a power chord and it’s just…on.  As a younger man I was lucky enough to be invited to one of these shindigs, and let me tell you, the wine got poured and the stories came out and the food was passed and it all got real. I’d been invited by one of their most storied warriors, so I was protected but not excluded, so I got to really share in the food and the love and the wine, holy mackerel, so much wine. I appreciated being part of something I wasn’t a part of; it was a multi-layered, wonderful, complicated, and dynamic definition of ‘family’.

The first family story they tell you is Cain and Abel, which, y’know, doesn’t really set too high a bar. From there it’s all Flintstones and Bradys and Simpsons and finally Pritchetts and Delgados. TV families are great for only kids, ‘cause when Something Happens, the parents have to investigate who did it; whereas at my house, any mysterious circumstance could be immediately traced to either myself or our pekingese dog, so subterfuge was a little impossible. So to me, family has always been just a few people, yet, over time, that began to expand. My social media game is not at all impressive, but I remain connected to a few folks who I’d be glad to have over to any holiday dinner. My black 501’s, my hairstyle, and about a third of my manners are due to a tiny phalanx of incredibly powerful and somewhat dangerous people I’ve shared a world with, and they continue to explore the planet, create art, dominate business, nurture children, and ignore boundaries, proving that they are, as somebody once said, exactly who they always were, only more so.

I rarely see these people in person anymore, but I carry them with me in the language, confidence, and courage they’ve inspired in me. Sometimes, if you share time and trust with people, you create bonds that become keystones and bedrock you can build yourself on, because they’re not just people you know, but people who know you. That, to me, is family. Just because you’re related doesn’t mean you have a relationship, but just because you’re not doesn’t mean you’re not related.

I have a lot of cousins that I’m related to, but I don’t know them at all. We didn’t grow up together, save those first, maybe, 12 years when we were all relatively in the same vicinity, just long enough to fill the bingo card of family memories; Fourth of July picnics, Christmas dinner, Thanksgiving dinner, Easter… dinner. But besides about a billion calories, we didn’t share any common experiences; they were athletes and cheerleaders and socio-economically rising and I was, y’know, me. I remember a drive-in movie (midwestern thing), and there was this football game in a front yard once after Christmas dinner in Houston.

My father was related to me, but I never lived with him when I was a kid, and he didn’t drop by ‘cause he was divorced and footloose and fancy free and had a leather jacket. He did give me two presents growing up; one was that football game (he played football) where you put tiny plastic figures on a metal board that was painted like a football field and then flipped this switch and it vibrated and all the pieces went haywire, like toy soldiers on a booming stereo speaker. Then, much later, on he came by randomly to give me a football and teach me how to throw a perfect spiral in like, two hours; then I didn’t see him for about ten years.

But I did use that spiral with my cousins at that football game. Oh they never saw it coming. “Put down your comic book!” they said, “C’mon and play football!” they called, “This should be hilarious!” they openly mocked. And it was. Having already paired up who was going to block whom (because let’s face it, holiday family football is legitimized roughhousing, it’s perfect for settling scores without any traditional consequence) I was given what should have been the coveted role of quarterback.

The game lasted for one play. I called out some random numbers (I would like to think that it was pi or something like that, but it was probably just the number of the garbage masher on the detention level that Luke, Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca were stuck in on the Death Star). Anyway, the ball snapped into my hands, and boys excitedly ran headlong into one other.

I remember this moment because one of my cousins (I think it was the youngest) had made it past the melee and was way on the other side of the lawn, and without thinking I aimed the ball and threw it, not just to him, but to where I knew he would be when the ball got to him. Yes, ok, that’s the point, but it’s me; so ALL of us were very surprised when it went right in his arms, and there he was, in the neighbor’s driveway (that was the end zone).

The sound of underestimation breaking like a giant iceberg was incredible, all the adults came out to see what happened, this mass of shock mixed with somewhat palpable disappointment. Ah. That was great.

I was, then, smart enough to get out of the game. I don’t think I was dressed for it, and my Mother very astutely recognized this moment as a fluke which, if continued, would only lead to an emergency room visit, and you know how busy they are on holidays.

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There were no Ewok toys available in 1976, and you know why? Because they were from the third movie, it wasn’t time for them yet, we only had flashlights with color gels and plastic tubes attached and those wonderful little rushed to market figures. It wouldn’t have made sense, because you’d be ignoring the best part, the second part, the “I am your father” and “I love you - I know” and Yoda part! You can’t just skip to the end of everything.

That is why Thanksgiving’s so important.

Ok; we went to Target a few days before Halloween and it was Christmas.

Red and green sweaters, snow based housewares, fully decorated trees, all of the lights including those you can never get because they’re always sold out and you really need them because they match the ones you got a couple of years ago that are your absolute favorites but they’re just too short and you should have bought two or three but you didn’t know how long they were gonna be.

Halloween was now in one little aisle next to the automotive supplies, and there was NO Thanksgiving. We looked for turkey tablecloths, or even pumpkin plates or horn-of-plenty napkins. All was holly. They didn’t have the music playing yet; I suppose the combination of jingling bells and jangling bones is a little too caustic.

Standing, utterly bewildered, surrounded by a plastic flocked forest, my daughter recorded a mood driven social post called “Thanksgiving Gets No Love” about how disturbing all this was to her, that it felt wrong somehow. So I explained to her why The Holidays are in That Order, the same way my mother told it to me. Here are the themes:

Halloween: Things could be worse!

Thanksgiving: Things aren’t so bad!

Christmas: Things can be even better!

The holidays are a journey from pessimism to pragmatism to optimism, and you can’t just skip from pessimism to optimism because that’s jarring and rude and sort of impossible. Seeing the Grim Reaper next to the Elf on a Shelf gives the wrong juxtapositional message.

After Halloween’s “lucky to be alive” vibe, Thanksgiving offers a “good to be you” chuck on the shoulder. And we were not allowed to start thinking of things we wanted for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, because we had to be grateful for what we had before we thought about more. That is our family tradition. The Christmas tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving, kind of a Martha Stewart Boxing Day; we turn on the music and binge a film series and Get Merry.

Sorry about the Star Wars thing, but you get it, right?  It all starts with adventure and peril, and you know it’s gonna eventually work out, but the middle is where all the emotion is, all the relationships and deep history and meaning. It’s the rug that really holds the room together (ok – no, that’s Lebowski): the realities of capitalism may merit preparedness in the face of fourth quarter profits, but life should not be binged; it’s not perfect but I don’t want to fast forward.

Anyway, my daughter agreed with the general premise, including the Thanksgiving as Episode V. thing, and in defiance, we bought a pillow with a jack-o-lantern on it that we found on a top shelf next to the motor oil, then walked right past that box of lights, even though I’ve been looking for them for three years now, because y’know what? It just wasn’t time yet.

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Here lies sit-ups:“25, every day”.

I’ve been alive650 months so far.

This never happened.

It’s bizarre –I bought a mat,a book, an app…

if I lie down,I take a nap.

Simple fitness done half-hearted:Here lies sit-ups,

never started.

Here lies glutenCroissants. Guinness.When’d we last have that stuff in us?

I remember Krispy Kremessweet fat filled cardiologic dreamsbut Twizzlers were my favorite treat(how the heck’s that made of wheat?)

Staff of lifeBut not for me

Here lies glutenPermanently.

Here lies midnight

Much too late

Once a year I’d try to waitbut London’s fireworks are greatand done by half past six. By eightI’m yawning, eyelids not so steady“Hey Year, c’mon, just end already.”

backwards counting clocks are fineboth down to twelve or down to nine…It’s a theory throughly tested.

Here lies midnightbetter rested.

Here liesbackpacking alone

Over there, tequilas prone

That plot there’s a perfect choicefor Ulysses by James Joyce

Time is shortthough days seem long

I don’t know, there’s nothing wrongit’s, just the way this season pulls

all marigolds and sugar skulls

reminds me that, if LabradorI’d probably be on Cycle 4

So I tried some thing new to sharea Calaveras poem this yeara gashlycrumbly little rhymecommemorating spookytime

inspiring things to decomposeold aspirations, habits, clothes –

Oh! Here lies blue in any jean. Yeah.

Whew. Well, Happy Halloween.

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Someday I’m going to have a holiday special.

I used to think it would be cool if it was filmed someplace sunny, then broadcast when it was really cold outside, like Christmas from Tahiti, but I’m actually more partial to a classic studio route; elaborate set, comedy sketches, musical guests, extremely bad dancing.

(This was actually one of my very first goals in life, along with writing a book and helping that world peace thing happen.)

There are tons of Christmas specials already, and Thanksgiving has the parade and the dog show, but a few years ago, I discovered a magnificent lost treasure from the American Broadcasting Company: The Paul Lynde Halloween Special.  It is not a great thing to watch; probably dated more than a bit, written by Bruce Vilanch, a comic genius in his very early days right before he wrote (hold on to your hats) The Star Wars Holiday Special. He went on to win several Emmys… y’know, years later.

The significance is both its Halloween theme and Paul Lynde himself. When I was like, five, I only did a few impressions - there was Ed Sullivan,  John Wayne (but y’know, every kid had a John Wayne), Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde.

You probably have an image in your head right now, and it’s probably right. If you don’t, let me help you out a little bit.

Paul Lynde was a comic actor from the ‘60s and ‘70s. He was best known for his portrayal of Uncle Arthur in the TV series Bewitched and his permanent placement as the acerbic and quick-witted center square in a game show called Hollywood Squares; which was a giant tic tac toe sort of thing where people quipped for quick cash. I watched both of these shows at my Grandmother’s house when she was air quote baby sitting for me, and the impact was tremendous, because in both roles he could say three syllables and make everybody laugh.

So the idea that he had an hour long show was intriguing. Not really good, but intriguing - it’s mostly famous for the first time that the rock band KISS was on television (mainstream at least). In any case, it opened up the door for me to clearly imagine my own holiday special, “Jd Michaels - The Nearly Halloween Kid.”

See, due to some fervent wishing and impromptu exercise, I was born about a week earlier than my original due date, which was October 31st.  My mother employed gentle yet purposeful calisthenics to hasten my arrival, and was somewhat relieved because she thought that a Halloween baby would be just too spooky.

Admittedly, it has proved a better option; no cakes with black icing, no cards saying Happy Boo-thday, but I’ve still always felt a little like a Halloween kid, filled with a specific pull toward the mysterious. Life’s always been between the expected and the impossible, filled with that specific anticipation one gets right before you go trick or treating, when you don’t have any idea of what you’re going to see out there (but you know it’s gonna be weird), or maybe that moment before the end of a magic trick when you think you know what’s going on but you don’t.  Between what’s known and what’s unknown, between now and just a couple of seconds away from now, that’s my jam. I really like it there, which is great, because my life pretty much flows right in that pocket. More often than not.

We all know people whose lives work out like a math test you actually studied for; well-planned outfits, hairstyles still as perfect as they were when they settled on them in high school. You meet them and everything makes sense – their whole life flashes in front of your eyes, past and present… goals achieved, vacations taken.

That’s not me.

I’m a Nearly Halloween kid. My best laid plans are pudding quivers filled with zen arrows. I’ve followed paths whose maps were written on Etch-A-Sketches. On my roads most traveled you most likely hear a hearty chorus of “lions and tigers and bears oh my!”.  It’s a great show…kind of a nail-biter, but not bad for 55 seasons. The cast is delightful.

So a Nearly Halloween Special would be slightly off kilter… a requisite pumpkin or two, maybe a rubber bat, but mostly a feeling of adventure and excitement. I know, Yoda said that Jedis aren't supposed to like all that, but I’m more of a Browncoat anyway.

So an opening song (“Witchcraft.” Natch.), a couple of crowd warmers, a comedy sketch about either pumpkins or bats, a cooking segment with Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg (both guests), a medley of spooky music with Chris Thile, a tarot card reading with Diva Zappa, another sketch about bats or pumpkins, a serious reading of The Raven with live Japanese sumi-e ink painting and the Mark Morris Dance Troupe, then an orchestral everybody-sings finale of Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party”.

That’s a tight 42 minutes. It’s coming along.

And y’know, since I started practicing when I was five, I have pretty much perfected Charles Nelson Reilly’s laugh, which has never been really useful in any social situation or direct conflict, but I still think it’s good to have in your back pocket. I’m sure it’ll be useful someday.

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The world is terrifying, but I’m just not enjoying it as much as I used to.

It used to be we’d have a good long stretch of sunshine clear blue skies with the birds all tweeting and kids playing outside in the yard and glasses of fresh cold lemonade and then BLAMMO!  Disease! Inflation! War! Disaster!

Now it’s just terrifying all the time. It’s a given; I wake up every single day KNOWING it’s gonna be terrifying somewhere and they’ll bring it right to my pocket to make certain I can’t miss it. I don’t want to sound unappreciative for the miracles of the digital age, but I think I like my fear more analog, ‘cause this is like living in a haunted house.

I mean the idea of a haunted house makes sense, scare-wise, when someone accidentally visits, but if someone’s just living there, the co-habitating wraiths unfinished business pales in comparison to the incredibly bad decision making of their warm-blooded roommates. Don’t move into other people’s houses. It’s rude, even if they’re not alive.

Also unless it’s a total accident, why visit? Disney had this incredible children’s record, “The Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House” – were you lucky enough to have a copy of that? I played it like a lost Beatles disc. I can sing all the ghost sounds like a mescaline fueled opera. It is the absolute best because it is the only record on the planet that begins with the words:

You are a bold and courageous person.

And I was! I am! Laura Olsher’s voice rang in my head, a definitive precursor to my passion for the work of Laurie Anderson, as she told a tale that went pretty much downhill from there, as some egotistic idiot decides to go into a dilapidated house to investigate a light on the uppermost floor. Moron.Don’t visit other people’s houses when they didn’t ask you over. Again, super rude. Many ghost problems can be solved with simple courtesy.

The last haunted house I went to was in Kansas City; they have the absolute best ones there, entire abandoned department stores that take 9 months to prepare, where every floor has a different theme and people not only jump out at you but there’s a 5 story tall slide at the end that sends you hurtling out into the street. Each of these is a masterwork in theatre art, and right after I got married I took my wife to one.

But when I got there the “house” wasn’t as haunted as I was by my 10 year old self; horror filled my feet and though my eyes saw that all the ghouls were disaffected teens scoring early holiday money, my brain was that of a fifth grader.

I am not proud of all the screaming, though I will not deny that it happened. My wife was able to hear it with absolute clarity since she didn’t scream once. While I was shuffling through a pop art hellscape, she was an urban archeologist touring a converted pre-war building.

The apex of my shame was when we realized that the management had seen me coming on the night vision cameras (they use those to pick out there real rubes in the crowd). I was the talk of the event for a few minutes. By the time we reached the werewolf village a couple of the guys had gotten up the nerve to tell Zoe what time they were leaving work and ask her out to some party all the performers were going to. Every time I tried to interrupt they just snarled at me and I yelped. And cowered, there was some pretty good cowering.

Very very politely, she told the werewolves she’d just stick with me.

I knew someone whose family suddenly developed a predilection for religion one summer and decided that Halloween was a forbidden holiday; they lived in one of those nice neighborhoods with porches and fences, but that Halloween night they turned off all the lights and pretended they weren’t home. She remembered peeking out of her windows to watch the trick-or-treaters slow down and stop in front of the house, discussing what could possibly be the matter before reluctantly moving on. She said it was a great Halloween because since her mother wouldn’t let them turn on any lights they effectively were all ghosts, haunting their own house.

Houses can be haunted, people’s eyes can be haunted… haunting is the past trying to encroach on the present, so anywhere that memory can go, ghosts may swiftly follow. The only thing that can’t be haunted is the future, but people are terrified of that too. It’s not so bad, I mean it’s impossible to be brave without fear being involved, and every living person is a ghost in training, trying to finish our business so we don’t have too much homework left to do when class is over.

I mean, of course she stuck with me, I mean they were tall and young and one of them flexed a bicep, but I’m, y’know, lucky, that’s what I am, I see that now.

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