Trick or Treat, Smell My Cigar
Piece of garbage… vile scumbag … smegma for brains… pathetic cretin… lecherous old fool… these are just a handful of the taunts and barbs that are tossed my way every 31st of October and they seem to be getting worse every year.
Trick or Treat, smell my cigar this Halloween!
I can kind of, well, almost see their point – the moms, I mean, you know, the ones who parade their little yard apes from house to house every Halloween. Smegma for brains, okay, that's a little harsh, but lecherous old fool kind of hits the mark. You see, I have a ritual I perform each year and the neighbors of my rural town here in northern New Jersey speak of me almost like some urban Sasquatch legend.
“Oh it's true all right”, claims the old biddy with the whiskey breath, waiting on the supermarket checkout line. “That decrepit shit stain just sits there leering at the moms while their adorable little children just want to collect their piece of candy. Every year the local community complains and every year the authorities do absolutely nothing about him”
Hey now, come on, shit stain? That's kinda rough, don't ya think? I mean, even a piece of garbage has feelings. All right, so I admit that my ritual is a bit odd and may put a few people off, but I have a load of jolly good fun and that's all that should really matter, right?
Okay, you want to know what the hell I'm talking about and why the locals have tried to shut down my little operation for the past decade or so? This is the deal… every year on Halloween I sit in front of my garage door in a crappy old lawn chair, perched up like a guy who's had three or four too many drams of Balvenie Doublewood scotch…and that's probably a conservative understatement. I've got a mammoth stogie hanging from my jaw while the boom box just a few feet behind me is screaming with the heavy metal stylings of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.
There are ashes covering the pavement as well as my shirt and pants. The ball cap cocked to one side of my dome displays the logo of some cigar manufacturer I'm fond of, and there's a half eaten meatball parm hero stuck to the pavement below my chair that I will continue to nosh on during the evening's festivities. Oscar Madison ain't got nothin' on me.
If this sounds somewhat repulsive, well yeah, I guess it is, hence the taunts and barbs in my opening statement. And now you ask the 64 gazillion dollar question that everyone demands to know, and that is WHY… why Tommy Z do you resort to this foul and distasteful chicanery every Halloween season? Well, there are a few answers to this yearly Autumn enigma and I'll start with the simplest answer: It's just one hell of a lot of fun. Come on, can you even imagine the look on those milfy mommas faces when they approach my house with their costume clad kinder in tow?
“But Mommy,” cries the Little Mermaid in her flowing red wig. “What about THAT house?” “We'll, uh, um… we'll come back here later, honey,” says the overly protective mother as she quickly scoots her offspring past the lingering aroma of a smoldering Rocky Patel Cuban Blend. “Come on, Mom,” pleads little Buzz Light Year, as he hops about in a sugar induced, glucose-laden tirade, “they've got Reese's two packs over there!”
And the little scamp is right, I've got a wheel barrow full of confectionary goodness, enough to put a bull elephant into a diabetic coma. And WHY you may ask? Ah, in there lies the method to my Polish powered madness. The bottom line is that the whole thing is kind of like a sport to me. Some fellows shoot skeet at their local club or hunt fox on an Autumn weekend, but I just kind of just dig checking out the local hottie moms. I know, that may sound a bit skeevy and depraved to some, but I assure you it's all very harmless as I actually love kids and I do give them some awesome candy to gnaw on. OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER: Let me make it very clear that I do NOT smoke directly in front of the little ones, always making sure that I'm far enough from the porch. That just needed to be said before the politically correct turds out there send scathing letters to our editors demanding my bulbous Polish head on a platter. Hey wait a minute… I'm one of the editors… never mind, fuck you.
Actually, I do enjoy Halloween time and it is incredibly nostalgic for me. I remember when we were kids, people would answer the door in their boxer shorts with a Marlboro hanging from their lips and a Budweiser clutched in their hand (and those were the women)… But we never minded one bit as the bowl of goodies they held was filled to the brim with Hershey Bars the size of license plates and Peppermint Patties bigger than Frisbees. The pillow sacks of candy that my brother and I brought home weighed 20 pounds each, and that was only half way through the afternoon! We'd take a quick fifteen-minute break to cram a peanut butter and jelly sandwich down our pie holes then head out for round two of our insatiable quest for sugar filled confection.
Back in the good old days there was always a nice old lady or two that had fresh caramel apples set neatly upon a platter, but that came to a grinding halt when various whack jobs and products of Hitler youth started putting razor blades in the apples. And, are you old enough to remember “Trick or Treat for Unicef?” I can't tell you how many of the little bastards I grew up with actually kept the money they collected. But when our appointed rounds were finished after a successful day of pillaging the neighborhood, my mom broke up our candy into various piles and categories and we ate like kings for a month! Ah, the spoils of my youth… and my teeth.
So, let's get back to me in my lawn chair with a 7 x 70 delivering more smoke than a tire fire. This year I've decided to up the ante by purchasing a few decent bundles of sticks and telling the kiddies that cool old Mr. Z is giving out some adult candy for their daddies if they want to swing by. How much you want to bet that I have about 50 cigar-sucking dudes joining me at the edge of my garage this year? I'll do a BYOB Herf of Horror, set up my barbecue in the driveway, and I guarantee it'll be the talk of the neighborhood…once again. Hey, please do your RSVP's now – it's sure to fill up fast and seating is limited!
So the urban legend continues for another year as I prepare the lawn chair for yet another one of my annual Halloween mom-glomming fright fests. Like I always say, the good Lord gave me eyes for a reason, and cigars and scotch to suffice the vice. Damn… “pathetic cretin”might not be too far off.