Alice in Wonderland 2010

Halloween is over and I'm glad and sad.  Glad because doing what we do requires a lot of work but sad because this is our last Halloween in Lafayette so we'll likely never have the opportunity to do this again.

I could write pages and pages of hilarious Halloween night anecdotes that no one but me would read, or I can post pictures.  I think I'll go the picture route this time.  You can read about what we do in a little post called Burger King and The Cleavage Queen.  Basically, we just overdo Halloween to benefit the hundreds of inner city kids who trick or treat in our neighborhood every year.  We love on them, we let their mamas take our pictures with them and we give them a little Jesus in the form of some kind of very tasteful, non-cheesy tract or doodad.

This year we had an advantage over previous years since we were given some props to use by a friend who rescued them from their destiny with a dumpster.  They were Alice in Wonderland themed cardboard cutouts that were bought from one of those prom supply places.  They worked perfectly for us and saved us a lot of work.

Before we knew we were getting the cardboard props, we did make a few things ourselves: some mushrooms and props for the Mad Hatter's tea party






The TV station showed up and wanted to do a live interview which makes me nauseous. I told the reporter guy that I'm much better in print and I asked him if I could just write him a note.  He stared at me as if I had just spoken to him in Japanese so I took that as a no.  Fortunately they edited out most of the interview which you can see here.

Watching myself on TV reminds of when they show footage from a tornado.  They interview the people at the trailer park, because it's always a trailer park, and there's always a woman wearing a house coat that snaps down the front, curlers in her gray hair, and a cigarette with a 2" ash dangling from between her lips as she talks.  This is me.  Maybe I don't look like her and maybe I don't smoke but I feel just like her.

And she'll say something like, "Me an Earl was jus sittin thar watchin Wheel uh Fortune an we heard this noise like a freight train headin our way.  Earl tol me to grab the shotgun an head straight for Dwayne's cellar cuz a storm was comin.  When it was all over, we came out the cellar an they weren't nuthin left cept our green Frigidaire that got blowed 4 lots down.  The good Lord knowed we was gonna need them TV dinners".

We always try to give away a little Jesus every year so this year we put stickers on 300 poker cards.  We ran out of Jesus in 25 minutes, if that gives you an idea of how many kids come through our neighborhood.  We estimate that we get about 600 trick-or-treaters every year.












As usual, we grossly underestimated the amount of candy we would need for the evening.  An hour into trick-or-treating, we sent friends to the store for more candy and were glad to see they were able to find something other than Tootsie Rolls and that sugar free candy for diabetics.  Things started to get a little ugly while we waited for the candy to arrive and I was afraid we'd have to raid the pantry to find something to give out while we were waiting.  I had a fairly good stash of canned goods as well as a big Sam's size box of instant oatmeal packets and if we got desperate I was willing to go through some old purses to see if I could find a stray mint or two.  You just pick the lint off and they're fine.

We saw some interesting costumes this year including a couple of Michael Jacksons and an Avatar.  Dora the Explorer was popular although I thought this particular Dora looked more like one of the Supremes.  Hulk Hogan struck up a conversation with Jayson and wouldn't leave.


We'll be really sad next Halloween when we're in Houston where we'll be lucky if we get a handful of trick-or-treaters.  Maybe we won't let that deter us and we'll do it up big again. 

Someone suggested we do a Christmas theme next Halloween which would actually be smart since we could just leave up the decorations and get a head start on Christmas.

Another suggestion was a Rocky Horror theme which I absolutely love, but it might be hard to work a little Jesus into that theme.  But not impossible.  I like a challenge.  Hhhhmmm...