Dylan Bolin

It’s Bay View, nighttime Trick or Treating time again.  When I was a resident of Bay View, I was happy to participate, and gave myself over 100% to the event, even going so far as to dress up myself.  There was a real sense of community about it.  Unfortunately, I no longer live in Bay View.

The thing is, I haven’t moved.  Believe me, if I had moved, I’d have mentioned it here.  In fact, I didn’t know that I no longer lived in Bay View until one day, when I was out walking my dog, I came across this spray-painted on the sidewalk:

I live on the upside-down side.

Trust me, this took some getting used to.  From then on, when people asked me where I lived I said:  “I live in Bay…(sigh) I just live in Milwaukee.”

But here’s the thing:  Come Trick or Treat time, Bay View graciously extends their border to include the home where my wife and I live.  Never mind that I now have to participate in both Milwaukee’s daytime Trick or Treating AND Bay View’s nighttime Trick or Treating.  Such is the bane of being a Bay View Ex-patriot.

I have a question however:  Who decided this?  I mean, Bay View is not an actual city like Wauwatosa, Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, St. Francis or Cudahy; it’s a community, a made up construct like, say, Riverwest.  When you call the Fire Department in “Bay View,” it’s a Milwaukee truck that shows up. 

And the criterion of “Bay View” is certainly not a “view” of the ”bay;” that would be a narrow strip of the city roughly two blocks deep.

But it’s apparently official enough to spray paint it on the sidewalk.  Believe you me, I’d get arrested if I spray-painted this on the sidewalk:

And it would be a Milwaukee cop doing the arresting.

I guess nothing says “Bay View” like spray-painting the sidewalk to let others know that they aren’t.

Stay classy, Bay View.

-Dylan

As promised, here’s the short list:

First, there are Circus Peanuts.  Thankfully, Circus Peanuts are hard to find.  If you’re not familiar, they are basically marshmallows molded into the shape of a large peanut.  Most people never experience the horrible taste because the color is enough to keep it from being consumed.  Much like many insects have bright coloring to warn predators that they are poisonous, the unhealthy, fleshy color of the circus peanut provides a similar defense.  They look like the benign polyp of a Florida retiree that rubbed off and fell into a puddle of spray-on tan.

Second, we have the Good and Plenty.  For kids anyway, the reason that there are Plenty is because they aren’t very Good.  Sure we adults might appreciate the many subtle flavors that comprise black licorice or, as the Italians call it, Anisette, but to kids, it tastes like tree bark coated in WD-40. 

In a similar vein is Number Three, the Mounds bar, not to be confused with Almond Joy.  Almond Joy’s got nuts, Mounds don’t.  As kids, we laughed ourselves silly at the fact that Almond Joy was clearly the boy candy and Mounds was the girl candy, and I know I run the risk of sounding sexist, but the Mounds bar is a far inferior candy…although I do think it deserves equal pay for equal work.  The problem with the Mounds bar is the shredded coconut.  Watch a child eat a Mounds bar for the first time and you’ll see what I mean.  They dive in with the appropriate youthful gusto, but then they experience the texture of the shredded coconut.  At first, they’re confused, but then the confusion gives way to disgust, and, finally, that look of utter devastation.  As if, twenty years from now, they’ll be discussing the Mounds bar incident with their therapist.  Even as an adult, I have trouble with coconut.  The only time I truly don’t mind it is when it’s mixed in with batter, wrapped around a shrimp and deep fried, but it’s not recommended that you pass out coconut shrimp for Halloween.

Fourth is candy corn.  At first, I didn’t understand this.  Personally, I like candy corn, but the more I thought about it, I discovered that I liked candy corn more as a decoration than a confection.  It’s like that dark green leaf that occasionally appears on your plate at a restaurant.  Not lettuce, but that other thing.  Sometimes it’s got some red in it.  It’s never included in the description of the thing you’re ordering, so you probably shouldn’t eat it.  For instance, the menu description never says:  “Baked, honey-glazed chicken, a twice baked potato, green beans almandine…and a dark green leaf of some sort.”  Anyway, that’s like candy corn.

The fifth and final candy on my incomplete list of horrible Halloween candies are the heinous things in the black and orange wrappers:   The Peanut Butter Kiss.  Not since Judas Iscariot has a “kiss” been associated with so much betrayal. The only redeeming quality of the Peanut Butter Kiss is that if your child accidentally eats one, you can give him a second Peanut Butter Kiss to induce vomiting.  If you’re considering handing out Peanut Butter Kisses for Halloween, save yourself the money and just clean up after your dog with black and orange baggies and hand those out.  At least it’s more sincere.

Happy Halloween!

-Dylan

It’s here again; my favorite time of the year.  I am of course talking about Halloween.  This wonderful time of year when you walk around the neighborhood, leaves crunching under your feet, and stop at a particular that has been painstakingly decorated in honor of our favorite Druid holiday.  Most people don’t know that that’s what they’re celebrating, but Halloween has it’s origins in the Celtic New Year as far back as two thousand years; that’s like thirty-five hundred years metric. 

Back then, they used to celebrate with bonfires and animal sacrifices, but today Halloween is a $6.9 Billion Dollar industry.  And if you’re anything like me, when you heard that figure you thought:  “$6.9 Billion?  That’s Chump Change.  Heck, $6.9 Billion won’t even buy a Golden Parachute.”  And then you pulled the covers back over your head. 

But this year my wife and I decided to do our part and contribute, so she sent me out to buy some Halloween decorations.  Now, even though we’ve only been married about two and a half years, normally my wife and I communicate very well.  One notable exception is the phrase:  “Please clean the bathroom.”  With this phrase, it’s like one of us is speaking another language, like Druid. 

For me, cleaning the bathroom is just an ongoing process of attempting to improve my aim.  For her, it involves no end of scrubbing.  Get this, she actually scrubs THE SHOWER.  All that we ever do in the shower is get clean.  Hot water, soap, shampoo.  Doesn’t that automatically make it the cleanest place in the house?  Did she actually expect me to know that I was supposed to go in and clean the one place where all this cleaning already occurs?  Your honor, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case! 

Well, apparently the second phrase with which we don’t communicate very well is:  “Why don’t you go get some Halloween Decorations?”  Of course I didn’t know this when I went to get Halloween decorations, and she went to off to a baby shower.  Sure, I suppose I’ll have to scrub that shower, too. 

I’m sure when my wife said:  “Decorations,” she expected to see hay bales and cornstalks, a wreath of colorful leaves and a miniature pony perpetually pulling a tiny wagon around the yard full of gourds and rosy-cheeked children.  Imagine her surprise, then, when she returned home and I proudly showed her what I had bought:  A plastic pumpkin and a rubber bat. 

By the way, when I showed her, the wind had blown the plastic pumpkin into the yard and up against the fence like it was trying to escape.  But the bat came with this little metal ring so I could hang it up right where that wooden wind chime thingy had been.  My wife’s shoulders slumped and she went back inside while I went to collect the run-away pumpkin.  I’ll know better next time.

But what I lack in decorating, I think I make up for in my costume.  I’m one of those guys who puts on a costume and takes a very active role in the Trick or Treating transaction.  Without giving it away, it’s not a particularly scary costume, but it’s definitely not something that a child would expect to see as he bolts around the corner, and I’m about seven feet tall.  So while I’m not terrifying, I certainly do freak out a kid or two.  And I’m not ashamed to admit, I kind of dig it.  I think we all do.  That’s why we decorate our yards with headstones and skeletons and motion-activated monsters.  It’s why we put huge ghouls on pulleys, hang them from trees and drop them when the moment is right.  We love to hear the screams of frightened children; their fear sustains us.  Of course we buy the right to do this with candy.  And in the process, we teach them a valuable lesson:  Once you get past the terror, life can be pretty sweet.

Stop by tomorrow for some advice for prospective Trick or Treaters and the makers of the candy that they love so much. 

-Dylan