Friday I beavered away on the book, and then prepared a blog post which, late in the day, sparked an uncharacteristic thought: 'This kinda sucks."
On to Plan B, Saturday being Oct. 31: mine the bottomless archive for Halloween columns such as this, back when the column filled a page. Did you remember that Christian fundamentalists lobbied to suspend trick-or-treating because Halloween fell on a Sunday? They did. Or that the Tribune wrote an ode to a mild British obscenity, referred to in rhyme in the second headline? It did. Or that it had a "Woman News" section and printed 600,000 copies of its paper back then. Apparently. That last item, well, I don't think I'd speak to that woman now, or write about it if I did. Times change. People too.
Opening shot
Halloween is almost here. My 9-year-old is dressing as a ghoul with horns. His little brother is a bloody skeleton. When we went to Party City to buy the costumes, I of course was concerned; I had set myself a limit of $30 per boy, and their outfits, what with the bony-hand gloves and the death's head battle axe, nudged us slightly over that. But heck, Halloween comes just once a year. I wanted them to be satisfied.
Oct. 31 this year falls on Sunday, a day that not so long ago was observed with commerce shutting down so people could focus on church. This coincidence was used by fundamentalists across the country, desperate to claw their way back to those lost days and drag us unwillingly along with them, to try to push municipalities to ban trick-or-treating, which they view not as a way for youngsters to fill plastic pumpkins with free sweets, but as the devil incarnate served by the degenerate secular culture they fear and hate.
That is their right, of course. I wouldn't dream of stopping anyone from dimming their lights and holding prayer circles in the basement while disappointed Spider Men and fairy princesses mash their doorbells in vain and peer sadly into their darkened windows.
That isn't enough, however. Christianity never seems happy unless it is on the march, and why be satisfied practicing your faith when you can also try to impose it upon others?
In my view, it is a particularly perverse twist of mind to, on one hand, teach your children to believe in an actual Satan, a living Beelzebub, King of Darkness, hot for your soul, served by his attendant demons and presiding over a fiery Hell where all those who don't believe exactly as you do roast for eternity, while on the other grousing to your local officials that permitting children to wear fright masks and visit neighbors to plea for mini Butterfingers is a slide toward true evil.
On the blunt front, the Trib punts
In the third act of Hamlet, the melancholy prince concocts a play to tweak the guilty conscience of his murderous uncle. The court assembles to see it. Ophelia is there and Hamlet approaches her.
"Lady," he says, "shall I lie in your lap?"
"No my lord," Ophelia answers, mistaking his intent.
"I mean, my head in your lap," Hamlet says, clarifying.
"Ay, my lord," she says.
Hamlet settles himself comfortably against her, asking, "Did you think I meant country matters?"
That's a pun, one certain to set the groundlings aroar 400 years ago. There's nothing like winking at a dirty word to draw a laugh (if you don't get the reference, read Hamlet's last sentence slowly).
The Tribune, as you might have read in our business pages Thursday, pulled 600,000 "Woman News" inserts because higher ups objected to an article they learned about — too late! — examining the popular culture usage of the word Hamlet was referring to.
Though I recognize that readers' sensibilities must be respected, no coarse Germanic vulgarism strikes me as half as offensive as the idea of creating a separate "Woman News" ghetto in your newspaper. Though I can't crow too much — a risque phrase was cut from my column Wednesday, with my approval — the words "mouth-watering Black Forest dessert," which would have been a lot more racy in context than here. The difference between how the two papers handled their brush with the naughty is this: At the Sun-Times, the low and the high all labor together, putting out a newspaper, and these issues are handled immediately. All interested parties became aware of the questionable material in my column within the span of 10 minutes, a decision was rendered, and life went on. At the Trib, the verboten article became lost within the layers of assistant editors and sub-managers and Grand Viziers and Keepers of the Royal Hounds, so that qualms did not get raised until 600,000 copies of the section were already printed. People here may not dab the perfumed hankie of sophistication to our lips the way they do at the Trib, but at least we know the time to make these judgment calls is before the newspaper gets printed, not after.
Neil the avenger
Every day it becomes more difficult for me to ride Metra. The problem, I believe, is that I can't sink myself into the Zone. You know the Zone. You drop your head, you disappear into your thoughts, and tune out your surroundings, protected by a mental fog of privacy.
I can't do it. I'm always looking up, at my fellow commuters, shuffling in lockstep up the stairs at Union Station like the workers in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I notice things, and give strangers names in my mind.
Some are good guys — Hat Man, for instance, a young guy in a Dick van Dyke fedora. Brave of him. I shoot a supportive look in his direction as he strides, oblivious, by.
Or villains, their leader being the infamous — to me — Pig Woman. The Pig Woman, so named for snout and her obvious selfishness, represents no less than a grave threat to the social order. When we get off the train at the station, we all line up to climb the ammonia-scented stairs out the Madison Street entrance. Orderly as sheep. Except for this one woman, in her 40s, a face like an Iowa sow. She pushes by everybody, shamelessly, working her way to the front of the line, where she cuts in. It offends me to my core. I keep waiting for somebody to notice, to call her on it. But the other commuters are in the Zone, docile as slaves, and squeeze to let her by.
Usually I see her in the morning — she always seems to be in my range of vision, even outside the station, until she ducks into 20 N. Wacker.
But the other night, I caught the 5:50. There she was, sleeping. I couldn't help myself. I woke her up.
"You're the woman who always cuts in line," I said sternly. "Why is that? Explain yourself! Where are you going in such rush? Why can't you wait like everybody else?"
She didn't say a word, and I turned and hurried away. You'd think I'd feel good, standing up for decency and social order like that. But I didn't feel good. I felt like I had become some kind of lunatic, hectoring strange women on the train. Perhaps I'm losing my mind.
Opening shot
Halloween is almost here. My 9-year-old is dressing as a ghoul with horns. His little brother is a bloody skeleton. When we went to Party City to buy the costumes, I of course was concerned; I had set myself a limit of $30 per boy, and their outfits, what with the bony-hand gloves and the death's head battle axe, nudged us slightly over that. But heck, Halloween comes just once a year. I wanted them to be satisfied.
Oct. 31 this year falls on Sunday, a day that not so long ago was observed with commerce shutting down so people could focus on church. This coincidence was used by fundamentalists across the country, desperate to claw their way back to those lost days and drag us unwillingly along with them, to try to push municipalities to ban trick-or-treating, which they view not as a way for youngsters to fill plastic pumpkins with free sweets, but as the devil incarnate served by the degenerate secular culture they fear and hate.
That is their right, of course. I wouldn't dream of stopping anyone from dimming their lights and holding prayer circles in the basement while disappointed Spider Men and fairy princesses mash their doorbells in vain and peer sadly into their darkened windows.
That isn't enough, however. Christianity never seems happy unless it is on the march, and why be satisfied practicing your faith when you can also try to impose it upon others?
In my view, it is a particularly perverse twist of mind to, on one hand, teach your children to believe in an actual Satan, a living Beelzebub, King of Darkness, hot for your soul, served by his attendant demons and presiding over a fiery Hell where all those who don't believe exactly as you do roast for eternity, while on the other grousing to your local officials that permitting children to wear fright masks and visit neighbors to plea for mini Butterfingers is a slide toward true evil.
On the blunt front, the Trib punts
In the third act of Hamlet, the melancholy prince concocts a play to tweak the guilty conscience of his murderous uncle. The court assembles to see it. Ophelia is there and Hamlet approaches her.
"Lady," he says, "shall I lie in your lap?"
"No my lord," Ophelia answers, mistaking his intent.
"I mean, my head in your lap," Hamlet says, clarifying.
"Ay, my lord," she says.
Hamlet settles himself comfortably against her, asking, "Did you think I meant country matters?"
That's a pun, one certain to set the groundlings aroar 400 years ago. There's nothing like winking at a dirty word to draw a laugh (if you don't get the reference, read Hamlet's last sentence slowly).
The Tribune, as you might have read in our business pages Thursday, pulled 600,000 "Woman News" inserts because higher ups objected to an article they learned about — too late! — examining the popular culture usage of the word Hamlet was referring to.
Though I recognize that readers' sensibilities must be respected, no coarse Germanic vulgarism strikes me as half as offensive as the idea of creating a separate "Woman News" ghetto in your newspaper. Though I can't crow too much — a risque phrase was cut from my column Wednesday, with my approval — the words "mouth-watering Black Forest dessert," which would have been a lot more racy in context than here. The difference between how the two papers handled their brush with the naughty is this: At the Sun-Times, the low and the high all labor together, putting out a newspaper, and these issues are handled immediately. All interested parties became aware of the questionable material in my column within the span of 10 minutes, a decision was rendered, and life went on. At the Trib, the verboten article became lost within the layers of assistant editors and sub-managers and Grand Viziers and Keepers of the Royal Hounds, so that qualms did not get raised until 600,000 copies of the section were already printed. People here may not dab the perfumed hankie of sophistication to our lips the way they do at the Trib, but at least we know the time to make these judgment calls is before the newspaper gets printed, not after.
Neil the avenger
Every day it becomes more difficult for me to ride Metra. The problem, I believe, is that I can't sink myself into the Zone. You know the Zone. You drop your head, you disappear into your thoughts, and tune out your surroundings, protected by a mental fog of privacy.
I can't do it. I'm always looking up, at my fellow commuters, shuffling in lockstep up the stairs at Union Station like the workers in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I notice things, and give strangers names in my mind.
Some are good guys — Hat Man, for instance, a young guy in a Dick van Dyke fedora. Brave of him. I shoot a supportive look in his direction as he strides, oblivious, by.
Or villains, their leader being the infamous — to me — Pig Woman. The Pig Woman, so named for snout and her obvious selfishness, represents no less than a grave threat to the social order. When we get off the train at the station, we all line up to climb the ammonia-scented stairs out the Madison Street entrance. Orderly as sheep. Except for this one woman, in her 40s, a face like an Iowa sow. She pushes by everybody, shamelessly, working her way to the front of the line, where she cuts in. It offends me to my core. I keep waiting for somebody to notice, to call her on it. But the other commuters are in the Zone, docile as slaves, and squeeze to let her by.
Usually I see her in the morning — she always seems to be in my range of vision, even outside the station, until she ducks into 20 N. Wacker.
But the other night, I caught the 5:50. There she was, sleeping. I couldn't help myself. I woke her up.
"You're the woman who always cuts in line," I said sternly. "Why is that? Explain yourself! Where are you going in such rush? Why can't you wait like everybody else?"
She didn't say a word, and I turned and hurried away. You'd think I'd feel good, standing up for decency and social order like that. But I didn't feel good. I felt like I had become some kind of lunatic, hectoring strange women on the train. Perhaps I'm losing my mind.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 29, 2004
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