Midlife Crisis Hawaii

It’s time for the obligatory Halloween post.  Are you ready?

Halloween falls on a workday (Wednesday), so are you planning on dressing up?  If so, as what?  Me, I start a class on Wednesday so I don’t want to show up in costume on the first day of class – so I won’t be dressing up.

Although… this past Saturday (during the tsunami), The Beat’s Disguise was going on over at the C’est Si Bon.  And Paula and I did dress up for it.  As soon as I can locate a picture of Paula in costume, I’ll edit this post to include it.

So, I leave this open to everyone to talk “Halloween”.  List your favorite memory of Halloween.  Maybe it was a certain year you went trick or treating.  Or maybe it was some college Halloween party.  Or maybe it was the time you and your friends went out on Halloween night to make trouble.

Remember in elementary school when we used to have to take a paper bag to school and we’d cut out the eye holes and decorate the package?  And on Halloween day, our grade would have a Halloween parade so everyone could wear their package/masks to show them off.

How about listing your favorite Halloween song:

What was your favorite Halloween treat or candy.

Got any ghost stories to share?  Sally loves ghost stories.

Halloween jokes!

Here’s a Halloween commercial:

So have a safe and fun Halloween and post something – even if it’s just a Happy Halloween message.

Oh, as for me – what did I dress up as at The Beat’s Disguise?  he,he

Do you really want to hurt me?

UPDATE 10/30/12  Additional pictures:

Aunty Paula as an 80′s chick  -  Photo courtesy of JonT Media Hawaii

Yoshi and wife as MLC Super Heros  -  Photo courtesy of Superman808

Happy Halloween MLCers!

Open forum time! (in other words – I got nuttin’).  So post what you like but keep it clean.  Any Halloween jokes out there?

***********************************************************

Since Sally mentioned our Halloween costumes from The Beat “Disguise”, here’s the pictures:

Mahalo to Irwin “Superman” Santos for the pictures!

Sticking with the Halloween theme, volleymom2 suggested the swag we used to score from trick-or-treating.

Mark’75 previously wrote: I remember getting Dum Dums lollipops, Lifesavers, Sugar Daddies, and my favorite: candy corn (yellow, orange and white corn kernels). That’s all that comes to mind right now.

I remember coming home from trick-or-treating and dumping out the whole bag sorting through the treasure.  The individually wrapped black taffy and orange taffy candies would get thrown on the side looking for the good stuff: Reeses peanut butter cups, Nestles crunch, Bit-o-honey, and the Pixie sticks that weren’t broken.  Anything licorice went to my dad.  He was the only one in the house that would eat licorice.

Of course part of the standard operating procedure was grinding the good candies while sorting out the rest.  Then finding the big glass mayonnaise jar to stash them all in – while planning out the attack of which candies will be eaten for breakfast.  And which ones will be stuffed in my pocket to take to school.

The Halloween stash would last one week max.

What Halloween candies do you remember getting?  Did you parents let you eat the candy right away or did you have to wait until the next day?  And did they set a “candy allowance” limiting your candy intake or was it a free-for-all like in my house?  How about treats other than candy?  I remember my neighbor giving me a popcorn ball once – about the size of a softball.  That was one of my best Halloween memories.

* Check out this MLC Halloween Treat bag.  Thanks for the photo Sally!

Halloween is coming up fast.  Anyone for a costume party?

Come out in “disguise” and join us!  It’ll be a retro night at, get this – C’est Si Bon Ballroom.  How’s that for a throwback!  Contact me if you need more information.

Now, if I only had some idea of what to dress up as…  Any ideas MLCers?

Speaking of which – volleymom2 brought up yet another great blog topic – what kind of Halloween costumes did you dress up in as a kid?  Or a pre-teen.  Or even as an adult?

I remember having a Tweety costume – yellow mask and all.  It was store in the top shelf in my closet.  I remember that because every now and then I used to take it down and put it on.

Then later after I outgrew it, my Halloween costume existed of some clothes from the rag box, some Halloween make up, a long stick with a round bandana tied on the end.  Yup, I went as a hobo.

I know there must’ve been other costumes I had.  I just don’t recall them.  Mostly because the costume was just a prelude to the CANDY!  Woo Hoo!  Free candy!

Share your Halloween costume memories with us.  And if you want to join us on the 29th at Disguise, just let me know!

Oh yeah, this past weekend was the annual big Halloween costume party at Aloha Tower Marketplace.  Check out this picture of Shauna from the Odds & Ends blog.

Queenie as a seaman.  Er… sailor.

Reprinted from Oct. 27, 2008

As Halloween week falls upon us, I thought this would be a good time for readers to share their spooky stories and other eerie experiences that happened to them.  Some of these stories were already told in the original post, but feel free to list them again as that entry was over a month a couple of years ago – and you know us MLCer’s with our MLC memory.

I know a few cops and they always have at least one story of spooky calls.  One friend of ours told me a story about when he was just a rookie and received a call of screaming going on at a house at the end of a skinny lane.  He parked outside the lane and started walking in.  As he passed a house midway in the lane, their dog ran up to the fence and started barking at him.  As he walked further down the lane, the dog followed and kept barking until he reach a certain point.  At that point, the dog stopped barking and retreated back to the house – even though there was more yard for the dog to follow him and continue yapping.

He thought nothing of it and went to the house at the end of the lane to investigate.  Turns out that the house was abandoned and no one lived there.  He walked back out the lane where a few other cops were waiting for him.  They asked him what’s going on and he said there’s nothing there but an abandoned house.  Then they asked about the barking dog that barks only partway down the yard then retreats.  He said yeah, he thought it was kinda strange that the dog didn’t follow him until the end of the yard.  Then the other cops told him that they often get that call but know better than to venture down there – because there is nothing there but an abandoned house.

Another police friend of mine told me about a call they got from a Filipino family and reported that their normally calm teenage daughter was acting strange and talking any kine.  They had attended a funeral earlier in the day and said that the spirit of the deceased person entered the girl’s body and had come home with her.  The cops asked what they can do to help and the family said that they need them to take the girl back to the graveyard to free her of the spirit.  So they loaded up this disturbed girl into the back of the squad car and headed to the graveyard.  As soon as then entered the graveyard, the girl became calm as the spirit left her.  Then they high-tailed it out of there and took her home.

For me, nothing really stands out.  We didn’t test fate and mess around at the Chinese cemetery in Manoa or look for the moving statue at St. Andrews priory.

But there was this one time when we were in high school.  About 5 of us was packing in my friend Jon’s dad’s Dodge dart.  We were on the way home on the pali and as we were making the horseshoe turn – on a wet night – we played that game where we all lean into the turn and smash the poor guy who just happens to be sitting by the wrong door.  When I think about it now, how dangerous that was, risking our lives on the lock of the door that could’ve given way and toss 3 of us out on the side of the road.  But as we were doing that, maybe the shifting weight of us threw off the traction and the car started to fishtail. Luckily, Jon got control of it and we headed on.  That should’ve been an omen but we were young and stupid.

So we headed over to “Morgan’s Corner”.  Now some say that Morgan’s Corner is on the old Pali road while others contest that Morgan’s Corner is at the bottom of the Pali, behind Pali golf course.

Well, we were at the one below the Pali and we were headed to the “blood tree”.  As we drove down the back road, we saw the tree in front of a maintenance yard.  It’s a big tree with red paint thrown on it.  We turned the car around and as we headed in the opposite direction, the car’s headlight partially illuminated the tree.  We couldn’t see the purportedly devil’s face so we told Jon to move is car so the headlights pointed directly at the tree – which he did.  As he pointed the car lights right at the tree, Jon and the front seat passenger sat still as the three of us in the backseat pulled out heads together to the middle of the front seat to get a view.  We all stared quietly for about 4 seconds.  The almost in unison, we all said, “Ok!  I see it!  Go Jon!”.  Jon stomped on the gas pedal and flooded to carburetor for a second as the car sputtered, then lurched forward.  He quickly made a U-turn and dug out of there.

Needless to say, the car ride home was a very quiet one.  Each one of us recalling what just happened and questioning ourselves whether we really saw it or not.  Me, I saw it.

We never went back there again.

Word has it that if you wrap your arms around the tree as far as they can go, you’ll feel another pair of hands grab yours.  Anyone want to give it a try?

How about you Big Island folks?  There are tons of stories from the Big Island.

When my brother was working at the Kona post office, he heard a lot of stories from people who grew up there.  I vaguely recall him telling us a story of how a lady friend and her son were fishing at the end of some lava fields when they ventured inland to go back to their car.  But as they were walking back to their fishing spot, a huge rainstorm started where they couldn’t see where they were going, but they kept walking as they guessed which way the ocean was.  After the rainstorm finally passed, they noticed that they were in the same exact spot where they were when the rainstorm started.  Yikes.

Those are the only spooky stories I have.  Now, your turn.  What spooky stories do you know?  Whether they happened to you or someone else.  Or even stories you’ve heard from friends.  And make um spooky.

Since it’s Halloween week, I thought we’d discuss costumes.  Can you remember what costumes you wore when you went trick-or-treating?

If memory serves me right, I once went as Tweety.  And another year I went as Casper.  Full on one piece costume and mask.

Of course since the mask blocked out my whole face, I was sure to greet the neighbors by name: “Trick or Treat!  Hi, Mrs. Correa!“.  Because it was usually followed with: “Who is that?“.  At which point I was sure to lift up my mask to reveal myself.

Why?  Because it was usually followed with: “Rodney!  Here, I have a special package treat for you.”  “Thank you, Mrs. Correa!“.

Then as I got older, I remember going as a hobo.  Just some Halloween make up to draw on a dirty face and throw on something from the rag box, and the long stick with a stuffed bandanna on the end – and I was good to go.

And last year, Paula and I went to Hawaiian Brian’s for our first time (has it been only a year?) since sally invited us.  Since we didn’t know too many people, we weren’t going to dress up, but at the last minute we headed down to Savers and built our costumes – Japanese tourist.

I had a bright colored aloha shirt, side comb, camera, and an over the shoulder Pan-Am bag.  Paula had on a bright colored dress and the iconic slippers with a big flower on each side.  And to top it off, we had on a couple of fake florescent flower leis.

And wouldn’t you know it – we got stopped by a police roadblock on the way home.  But that’s no problem (remember?  I don’t drink).  Since our costumes didn’t phase the cop – we must’ve looked authentic!

Do you remember what kind of costumes you wore as a kid when you went trick-or-treating?  How about later in life – what was some of your most memorable costumes?  Or maybe a costume that someone else wore?