Boo! Hurricanes, Halloween, and Haints

Screencapped from this link -
http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/goescolor/goeseast/overview2/movie/latest_ref.mov

I've been stuck inside all day riding out the hurricane.  I could have gone over to my momma's when I had the chance (and I think she'd have been happier had I done so) but I had some projects to work on and didn't want to come home tomorrow night to my apartment covered in cat vomit.  What can I say, the felines get a bit spiteful if I'm gone for more than a day.  Must be all that toilet water they drink.



So I (sort of) finished up a writing project (I'll post a link to it when it's finalized), washed a bunch of dishes that were starting to resemble archaeological ruins, and managed to watch like 12 episodes of 30 Rock on Netflix.  Yay for productivity.  As I type this, Sandy's about to make landfall and has already taken out a crane in midtown and the big lobster on the Lobster House on City Island, among other things.  (I'm actually quite worried about my friends there and in other various Zones A.) So my power could go at any minute, in which case, boo.  I'll have to crochet by candlelight.  How very Little House in the Big Woods (no joke, I loved that book).

(And what did I learn about myself today? That half the stuff in my fridge needs to go even if I don't have a power outage, and that I have cans of soup that expired in 2009.  Yes, 2009.)

Speaking of "boo," between sessions on the aforementioned writing project and before Frankenstorm's monster started creeping up the Eastern seaboard, I had been working on (read:  procrastinating with) a post  that was partly about the change of season, but particularly about Halloween and this strange house around the corner from my apartment that I had come to regard as the Bronx's answer to the Radley House when I moved here.  I also wanted to talk about this badass Haunted House I visited with Jenn and Cheech the other day.  So, in the spirit of Frankenstein/storm, this post is going to be cobbled together from bits of other ill-fated posts.  I only hope that no actual lightning becomes a part of this experience, because my computer will probably get fried in the process and, well, to keep with the theme - boooooooooo.

"Boo Radley's House" by Joseph Cooper from WebAgent - Columbia College on Vimeo.

I have an interesting mix of spaces in my neighborhood.  The area is sandwiched in between an enormous park, 2 major parkways, 1 major highway, some residential space, and industrial areas.  You walk 10 minutes in one direction and you're within view of Long Island Sound, Orchard beach, and some serene park space and hiking trails.*  You walk 10 minutes in another direction, you're on an industrial strip of Westchester Avenue with the Hutch south zooming beneath you and the 6 train screaming above you.  I like this mix of spaces.  It keeps things interesting.

My block is a little bit of a microcosm of this kind of mixture.  On my street, it's all apartment buildings - 4 floor walkups on both sides of the street, some smaller apartment houses on the northeast corner.  Around the block however, things are completely different.  It's a tree-lined one-way street with single and two-family houses, some attached, some free-standing, several different styles from cottage to townhouse.  People have stoops, porches, balconies and backyards.  Some houses are modern brick structures, others are older with wooden siding.

And then there's the Radley house.

Nobody named Radley actually lives there.  Well at least not that I know of.  (Damn, it'd be weird if that were actually the case.  I'd either brag about having psychic powers or immediately stop calling it the Radley house and try to find some other smartass nickname for the place.)  It's just, well, if you've ever read Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird  ("as opposed to Bram Stoker's To Kill a Mockingbird?" is what you're supposed to be thinking right now) you'd see this house and admit that it could be the very home Lee described, where that famous ghostly recluse and Robert Duvall look-alike made his lonely existence.

The Radley house stands by itself behind a fence, and is adjoined by a yard that takes up what would otherwise yield two separate lots for two reasonably-sized homes.  There are several towering trees on the property, mostly oak and one enormous conifer.  And the whole structure must be extremely old, because the sidewalk on this street comes to a halt at the edge of its property line and gives way to a gravel path that resumes at the other end of the property line. So there must be some kind of grandfather clause that allows the house to have that.  It has wooden clapboard siding that's aged and kind of dirty, but I'm sure it was beautiful at one point.  There is some detritus on the property  - tarp-covered appliances, black plastic bags - that could either be markers of poverty or the accumulated property of several generations living in the home over the last century.  There's a long porch that runs the width of the house with some chairs on it.  I have repressed the urge to run up to the screen door and smack it.

The house sticks out, and is pretty striking in its difference.  And I love walking past it.  There's an oak tree in front of it that has a perfect knot in the bark, just like in front of the real Radley house.  I always look to see if there are two little soap dolls or an old pocket watch stashed there.  I read To Kill a Mockingbird twice for school and countless times after for funsies, so the Radley house gives me kind of a dorky fangirl thrill when I walk by.  And the fact that I can't remember ever seeing people going in and out really adds to the mystery of the place and just makes it all that much better.  I can pretend I'm Scout when I walk in front and hold my breath until I get past it because, you know, haints.  ('Tis the season, after all.) On the other hand, holding your breath is a bad idea, because then you can't appreciate how it also smells different when you walk past the house, especially just after a rainstorm.  For a few seconds, you really could be someplace entirely different and very far away from the Bronx.

I'm actually really worried about the Radley house right now and anyone who lives there, because I've seen some of those big tree-clearing trucks go down that block today and hope that it's nothing too devastating that's happened.

'Tis also the season for haunted houses.  I went to one this one with my friends Jenn and Cheech (and a couple of their friends as well) this past weekend, and it did not disappoint.  I had been to one a couple of years ago with Jenn that was focused on Vampires, but this year's production - Serial Killers - was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.  (Plus, and I know this is weird, but I'm really feeling the sideburns on the guy in the ad poster.  Yeah, yeah, I know he's supposed to be Jack the Ripper and I shouldn't admit things like this, but there you have it.)

First of all, it's a walk-through experience where you go through a series of rooms and scenarios recalling famous serial murderers including H.H. Holmes, John Wayne Gacy (clowns, why does it always have to be clowns?) and Elizabeth Bathory to name a few.  As disturbing as that is by itself, you could also let the actors know that they could interact with you, i.e. grab you to scare you, pull you into the scene etc. by letting the staff paint a bloody "X" on your forehead before going in.  So our little group was down for this, and let one of the staff members brand us.  But this guy was very method about it, and made you say "I would like to be touched," before he painted your forehead.  So, yeah, I told some strange man that I'd like to be touched and he painted an X in stage blood on my head and that was a huge part of my Saturday.  Mine was extra-drippy.

Yeah, that stayed on for the rest of the night.
Even when we went for drinks and Mexican food later.

It was awesome.  I was damn near terrified because I startle VERY easily, and believe me, this has a whole lot of people jumping out at you, grabbing your ankles as you walk by, and suddenly getting up and coming at you when you thought they were a dead dummy.  But the best, most terrifying part was in the Jack the Ripper room (disappointingly not Mr. Mutton Chops from the poster).  So Jack is walking down the line of people in the group, stops in front of me, gets all up in my grill and says, "Can I have a moment of y'time, luv?" and drags me over to the dummy dead prostitute corpse.  In front of all my friends and the rest of the group, homeboy starts whispering to me and stroking my neck like he's fake-slitting it (cuz y'know, bloody X) all like, "Do you know who I am?  I'll be seeing you later..."  And as I'm leaving the room with my arm entwined with Jenn's and gripping her hand, he's all, "Good evening, luv...Rosie..."

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Also - awesome.  And his breath was minty.  Yeah, he was that close.

Anyway, screamed a lot that night, had no voice to speak of (ha! sorry!) the next day, but I'm glad I got my Halloween on early because it looks like the actual holiday is going to be buried under fallen trees or partially underwater.  Glad I got upstate to go pumpkin picking with Charlie, Nin and Lizz earlier this month, so I don't feel like I missed out on too much of the season.

Pumpkins don't sleep.
They wait.

And now that I'm getting tired and winding this post down, it seems like this has been a hell of a storm and isn't getting any better.  (By the way, the woman doing the sign language translation of all of the mayor's speeches - LOVE HER.)  The news reports all day have been quite a sight.  Bronx 12 managed to find the douchiest guys in Throggs Neck who bragged that they were gonna spend the whole day getting drunk (for some Throggs Neck guys, let's face it, that's every day) and they interviewed a guy by the Vincent Avenue sea wall and identified him as "Sal - concerned Bronxite" which is hilarious on its own, but I originally read it as "Sal - cornered Bronxite" and I was like, what, he's still got time to get out, doesn't he?

The best has been the crawl of info along the bottom of the screen, because it produced this: "Bronx Zoo taking extra measures to protect animals from Sandy."  And I just pictured my friend Sandy chasing the polar bears with a murderous glint in her eye.

But in all seriousness, I hope whoever reads this is safely riding it out, or if you read it later, have come through it ok.  If you and your loved ones are from some of the places getting hit badly, this cornered/concerned Bronxite and her cats on the mainland are thinking of you.

And happy early Halloween.

I posted this video at the beginning of hurricane season, so I hope we can say that even though the season has got a month to go, this storm marks its unofficial close.

*Also a great place to dump a body.  So I've heard.