Halloween in June

We don't celebrate Halloween in June but every hundred years, and after witnessing "666" this week in Hell (Michigan), we're going to squeeze more blood from the turnip and conjure up another post. It was a macabre mix of fake dimestore blood and real (who knows?) skull and bones dug up from who knows where. Some of the folks that showed up were dressed like ghouls and ghosts for the simple festive fun of it. Other folks, who looked like week-old road kill, probably dress that way all the time. It was easy to differentiate the two groups: one smelled of beer and brats from the food tent and the other smelled of rotten possum and dead reptiles.



Over by the old hearse collection, a skeleton in a body bag was parked on the grass. It'd be easy to assume it wasn't real (we couldn't tell), but for the fact that human skeletons are so remarkably easy to get. Numerous sites (including ebay) legally sell old skulls and skeletons (this $1000 fetal skull is rather unsettling. Whoever would buy such an item is one sick pup. But those people are out there. Some people collect Beanie Babies and duck decoys. Other people collect deformed brain carriages. It's a strange world we live in). If Mr. Bones here was fake, they did a damn good job making him look real. If this was real, somewhere out there is an empty grave.



Also bizarre and noteworthy was this collection of embalmer tools. Anyone who would collect an assortment of tools used to pull out yer innards is a little off. Not as much as the whack who collects fetus skulls, but still a little off. What's wrong with collecting baseball cards and old fishing lures? Or old Playboys and license plates? We've never understood the obsessive nature of the hard-core collectors. We once knew a 6'6", 350 pound tattoo artist in Ohio who collected gumball machines, skulls (he had hundreds of skulls ranging from field mice to hippos), and the artwork of serial killers. He had several originals from the likes of John Wayne Gacy and Henry Lee Lucas. Collecting wierd shit was his mission in life. Apparently, writing about it is ours.

On a lighter note, behind the ice scream shop, Dead Elvis was belting out his tired collection of Halloween songs. Ugh. How many times must we suffer through "The Monster Mash" and "The Addams Family Theme"? When he did a rap version of "Hootie the Boo Owl", we threw up in our mouth a little. He had an audience of maybe three people at any given moment.

Needless to say, the kids weren't exactly digging his act. They were amused by it, but with the kind of funny-pity amusement you get while watching a doofus embarass himself in public. The kind normally reserved for, hmmm, karaoke night at the local bowling alley. You're laughing, but not because the song's funny.

The best costume award had to go this thing, whatever the hell it is. And with temps in the high 80's, no doubt it was hotter than hell under all that rubber and fur. That alone deserved a prize.