Has your neighbour's lawn become a graveyard overnight? Do wispy green ghosts float in nearby bedroom windows? Is the little old lady down the block dressed like a creepy, silent serial killer? It must be Halloween! From barfing jack-o-lanterns, to Zoom meeting costumes, and gory DIY illusions using iPads and projectors, Christine and JJ delight in the visuals of Halloween, and share some blood-curdling laughs while they're at it!
Has your neighbour's lawn become a graveyard overnight? Do wispy green ghosts float in nearby bedroom windows? Is the little old lady down the block dressed like a creepy, silent serial killer? It must be Halloween! From barfing jack-o-lanterns, to Zoom meeting costumes, and gory DIY illusions using iPads and projectors, Christine and JJ delight in the visuals of Halloween, and share some blood-curdling laughs while they're at it!
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to Me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashtag in description rich conversations.[Spooky voice] Welcome to talk description to me. I hope you enjoy the show! Mwah ha ha!
Christine Malec:This is our Halloween episode. And oh, I love Halloween. I love the the quirky, liminal playful but slightly frightening vibe of Halloween and I just need to say you cannot cancel Halloween. You can say trigger tradings not on you can tell people don't trigger it, you cannot cancel Halloween, it's not a cancelable thing. Halloween just is. And so we want to talk about some of the visuals around lots of aspects of Halloween. So, JJ, this is a year like no other as in every other episode that we've we've done. But um, can we start with talking about some of the costumes that you're seeing as popular this year?
JJ Hunt:Yeah. So I mean, like you said, You can't cancel it. So people are still putting on costumes. People are putting on costumes just to have zoom meetings, putting on costumes so that they can be dressed up for online class. You know, people are still wearing costumes. And if you go online, you can look up the best costumes for 2020 are the best costumes for this year. And not surprisingly, some of the costumes are very specifically related to the pandemic to lockdowns. So there's lots of different versions of costumes with masks on costumes with the with, you know, surgical masks or COVID masks, lots of costumes that would otherwise have masks so you can still make your costumes accurate. You can just, you know, have them incorporated into your costume. So they're like the doctors and the dentists you know, you can always cover your face for those costumes clearly, and they're you know, it's a good year to wear a mask because you have to be covering your face. So lots of those types of things. Then there's the corona virus itself. You can be a coronavirus.
Christine Malec:Oooh.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, so you can I've seen some images online where people are painting their faces green and then putting those protein spikes all around their head so that their head looks like Coronavirus.
Christine Malec:Woah!
JJ Hunt:I saw someone who dressed as a bottle of Corona beer. But the beer inside was like a frothy green, and bubbly looking. Yeah, kinda gross.
Christine Malec:Oooh.
JJ Hunt:And then there are the costumes that are part of pop culture, right? What's popular in pop culture right now. And people go as, you know, characters from shows and movies and whatnot. There's less new pop culture going on right now that we're not getting a lot of movies at the moment. So there's not as much super popular stuff. So you got to go back a few months. Tiger King was hugely popular. Tiger King was a hugely popular show on Netflix, a true crime series. And the the main character in that was a guy named Joe Exotic. And he is a he a tiger, the sleazy cheesy Tiger Wrangler kind of guy. I wasn't a big fan, I didn't really watch the show, but I certainly know of the character. And so to dresses, Joe exotic a lot of folks online getting that blonde mullet wig and a crushed velvet shirt that's open really low and buttoned quite a ways down.
Christine Malec:Crushed velvet?! Wow.
JJ Hunt:Yeah. Crushed velvet. It's a good costume. And then you got to have a handlebar mustache.
Christine Malec:Okay.
JJ Hunt:And then I've seen a couple of couple costumes where one is going as Joe Exotic and the other is going as a tiger. You know that works well.
Christine Malec:Okay.
JJ Hunt:RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, very popular for for adults. And for some kids. I've seen some very adorable little kids going as a as RBG which is a great, very simple costume to come up with on your own. So a black robe, black rimmed glasses, you pull your hair back, and then the real identifying prop or costume pieces, the The white lace neck piece. So Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a variety of different neck pieces that would just, you know, go around the the color of her black robe, but the one she wore most commonly was a white lace neck piece. So that's a really simple costume for RBG. And then, of course, there are some costumes that are, again more about the time so not specifically the coronavirus, but the lockdown situation that a lot of us found ourselves in. So I saw some great costume some versions of the costumes, which are basically zoom based. So I saw one costume where someone made a they took a big piece sheet of cardboard, and divided it into a grid. Like we talked about the that Brady Bunch look with it with an image in every square. And so what this person had done was turn every member of their family into a classic Halloween character. So like the Son in the family was Dracula, and the daughter was Frankenstein. And the grandma was Wolf Man, you know, whatever, that kind of thing. And then there was a big hole in the middle of the board, so that the person could put their own head through. So carry around this sign and their own face was right in the middle. And my favorite part of this was that they had left a space open near the top, one of the top squares, and they had actually put a tablet in that square.
Christine Malec:Oh!
JJ Hunt:And with a with a little video on loop. So one of the characters in the zoom meeting was waving and smiling, giving a thumbs up.
Christine Malec:Oh my gosh!
JJ Hunt:Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Christine Malec:Wow.
JJ Hunt:I've seen versions of that for like, Instagram posts. So people just basically make a big cardboard cutout of a cell phone, of a phone, and then the screen is blank. And then you wear whatever you want. And stand in that square and pose as if you are taking an Instagram selfie or posting an Instagram selfie. Yeah.
Christine Malec:And I know that it's probably still true that some Halloween costumes come from really classic horror film, horror film legends like Freddy and stuff. Can we talk a bit about that? Did I say right? Is it Freddy?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, Freddy Krueger. Okay, so Freddy Krueger is from A Nightmare on Elm Street. And, and he's a thin man with burn scars covering his entire face. Oh my God! And he wears a black and red striped sweater, thick stripes of black and red. And he's got a fedora style hat on and he's got one leather glove on his right hand that basically has like knife blades extending from each finger. So it's a slashing glove. Kind of like Wolverine the comic book character or Edward Scissorhands, that kind of glove. That's Freddy Krueger and he's he's a nasty kind of snarling, snarky character. So that goes well if that if that's your personality type. It's a
fun one to be at a party. Jason:Jason Vorhees from the Friday the 13th movies. Another very simple, very effective costume. Jason is a big, lumbering man, silent, usually wears like dirty workman's clothes, like maybe an army green shirt or like a tan or khaki shirt that's really dirty, filthy. And a simple white goalie mask. So this is an oval shaped goalie mask, an old style mask that's got leather straps that go around the back of the head, and there are round holes for the eyes and the mask is dotted with smaller round holes that would normally be for for air for circulation. There's a red triangle on the brow between the eyes. And again the mask is kind of dirty and beat up. It's seen some some wear and tear, taken some punches. And Jason has often got a machete with him. That's his weapon of choice. Then you've got characters like Frankenstein, big, tall, lumbering, boxy, oversized skull, with stitches across the very high forehead. And Frankenstein has heavy brow deep set eyes, bolts at the neck on the side kind of under below the ears, and sometimes depicted with green skin. Dracula got the tuxedo and the cape with black hair that's greased back often there's a Dracula has a widow's peak a little point at the you know down the hairline onto the forehead and long canine teeth Of course, sometimes Dracula has red eyes are bloodshot eyes. And often Dracula the classic Dracula from the you know from the from the old films would would be holding his hands like claws. With the fingers pointed down. [Dracula impression] That's Dracula!
Christine Malec:Hey, you do that well.
JJ Hunt:It's well-practiced, I bust out a lot! And then there are some more classic characters that are more for kids like Jack Skellington the Pumpkin King from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. JACK the Pumpkin King has a long lanky body with super thin arms and legs. The chest and head of jack Skellington are the only parts of his body that aren't pencil things of pencil thin character, wearing a fitted black tuxedo with long tails and white pinstripes and he's got a matching bow tie that's that extends beyond the shoulders and into large bat wings. And jack the Pumpkin King has a as a round white skull for a head with big black eye sockets, and a wide curving mouth that has stitch marks instead of lips. And he's got a very expressive, rubbery face that changes shapes and expressions so that he can look sinister or innocent or playful or furious. And then of course, Charlie Brown from the Great Pumpkin Patch. His ghost costume is a classic. Charlie Brown wears a ghost costume that is a white sheet that's covered in eye holes, because he couldn't get them in the right place. So we had to cut the eye holes over and over and over again. So another wonderful costume for the last minute: get an old sheet, cut a bunch of holes in it, throw it over your head, and you're done.
Christine Malec:Can we talk jack o' lanterns? Are you seeing any innovative ones this year?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, the jack o' lantern game in the last few years has really gone up. So the classic jack lantern from when we were kids, of course, take a pumpkin you cut the top off your scoop it out and you cut all the way through, jagged mouth and eyes that maybe pull up a narrow at the corners so that the when the light a candle inside the light comes out to the eyes and the mouth holes, right? Very, very straightforward. Classic. You still see lots of those. The eyes can be different shape, maybe the mouth is cut so that it looks like stitches like that jack the Pumpkin King stitch mouth. That's really cool. Then things started gets to get more elaborate, right? Like, have you seen the barfing pumpkins?
Christine Malec:Oh my god, no!
JJ Hunt:Thpse are great. So what you do is you keep the guts you keep this stringy orange guts.
Christine Malec:Oh no!
JJ Hunt:You make the jack o' lantern and then you put the guts back in it so it looks like the guts are coming out of the pumpkin. Ya, that's kinda fun.
Christine Malec:Oh brutal! Okay, that's really good, though.
JJ Hunt:It's a good one.
Christine Malec:Yeah, that's a good one.
JJ Hunt:I had some friends whose kids took the the egg carton cups off of an egg carton tray and used those to make googly eyes on their jack o' lantern. Kinda cute.
Christine Malec:Oh, that's cool.
JJ Hunt:I also saw one where someone took the top of the jack o' Lantern, they cut the whole top off and put a smaller white pumpkin inside so that it was rising out of the top. And then they carved squiggly lines in the white pumpkin so that it looked like brains. So it looked like the jack o' lantern had the top of its head cut off and you can see the exposed brains. That was pretty cool. But what's really interesting, in the last few years people have been scraping the thick orange skin off of the pumpkin but not cutting all the way through the flesh.
Christine Malec:Oh!
JJ Hunt:And by doing that, when you light the light inside you get a translucent glow. And you can kind of create anything you want with different shades of orange depending on how thin you leave the flesh of the pumpkin. So you can create really intricate pumpkin art so you can create portraits. That's what a lot of the Donald Trump's are, is these scraped away portraits. They're really lovely. You can do scenes, I've seen cabins on top of hills, like a lonely cabin on top of a hill with the moon in the background. And maybe the moon is the only thing that's cut all the way through. So it glows a bright orange and everything else is more muted and translucent. Or you get howling wolves or gnarly trees. They look really cool in this in this pattern as well. And then the other thing that I love, that I'm probably going to miss almost as much as Halloween this year is the pumpkin parade. Have you ever been to a pumpkin parade or heard of this phenomenon?
Christine Malec:I've never even heard of one.
JJ Hunt:They're so great. A couple years back, it's probably longer than that now, people started to get this idea: What do you do with your pumpkins the day after Halloween? Everyone just chucks them in the compost, or throws them in the garbage. And so community groups started to say bring your pumpkin to the park and we'll create something with all of these pumpkins. So there are some parks that have pathways through them and they line all of the pathways with everyone's jack o' lanterns from the neighborhood. Or they have fields where they put all of the pumpkins in so you get hundreds and hundreds of pumpkins all at once. Or they create fake graveyards and put all of the pumpkins in these graveyard parks. And someone comes along and lights them all in there. Sometimes there are competitions and contests, the funniest, the creepiest, the whatever, and you know, prizes, but mostly, it's just about, on the day after Halloween, everyone getting together, dropping off their jack o' Lantern, and seeing what everyone else created. And you end up with wonderful parks full, absolutely full. One of my favorites is Sorauren park in the West End of Toronto. I mean, it started to get crazy! The number of people that would bring them! It was hundreds and hundreds of pumpkins that absolutely filled the park. It's really quite fantastic and delightful.
Christine Malec:That does sound really striking. Which sort of brings me to Halloween decorations. What are you seeing around that?
JJ Hunt:Some of the things that people decorate their houses with these days, a lot of store bought decorations are really popular. So you got everything from hanging ghosts and ghouls. So these would be two or three foot tall plastic characters, you know, with cheap fabric cloaks, or whatever. Zombies or witches or whatever. And you can hang them off your your porch roof or you can hang them off your trees or whatever. Or fake limbs like hands and feet. Severed hands and feet that might have exposed bones at the ends of the hands or, or maybe zombie hands that you half-bury in the ground, or skeleton arms and hands that you can half-bury in the ground so that they look like someone's coming up from a grave on your front lawn. And then they are the giant inflatables. These are, I guess they're cheap, and they're big. So they're impressive looking. But you have these huge inflatables, that can be like six feet tall, seven, eight, ten feet tall, huge inflatable characters that have little fan engines at the back. So they're constantly sucking in air and keeping them inflated. And they tend to be more cartoon characters because they're big and puffy. So you everything from ghosts, and pumpkins and mummies and things like that. I also really like the lighting, there's a lot of interesting lighting choices that are available in stores now. So you can do the classic; take out your regular front porch light and put in an orange bulb, or maybe a dark blue bulb, those look really cool. Atmospheric lighting for your front porch. But then you can take it a step further, maybe you get light strings like you would have on a Christmas tree. But each bulb has a little plastic case for a ghost or a jack o lantern or things like that.
Christine Malec:Oooh!
JJ Hunt:And then there are the projector lights. These are really cool the last few years. So projector lights, they're just like they sound they they're lights that project an image. And sometimes they're like a shadow image. So there's a light in the center of this unit, this lighting unit. And there's a painted image on the glass surrounding the bulb. And if it's stationary, the light shines through and the painted image casts a shadow on whatever, your garage or the front of your house or whatever. And sometimes those move, the glass around it rotates. So you end up with a little shadow scene that plays over and over again, as the light shines through the moving painted glass. That's kind of neat. Or you've got projectors that are projecting short films, essentially. And they can project them either from the inside of your house onto a window, or from the outside onto the front of your house. And sometimes they're abstract, like, like a spooky night with some clouds and maybe a moon and some and some stars but it's more atmospheric or, or like a bunch of skulls that dance around or a bunch of witches that dance around. But they can also be very, very precise like for a for a very particular effect. I seen really cool effective green ghost projector lights where the ghosts are green and translucent. And you you put them inside your house and shine them against your window and project them onto your window. And it looks like there's a ghost hanging in the window, hovering in the window of your house. Really effective. And then of course some houses go all out. So they'll turn their whole house into maybe a graveyard so put up a temporary rickety wooden fence and and put up gravestones in the front yard. Maybe their store bought or maybe their plywood painted to look like old stone. Then they've got those zombie parts that are emerging from the lawn like we talked about, maybe some plastic skeletons or those or fabric ghosts hanging from trees. Or then you can turn your whole house into a haunted house using those lights, some spooky music, and and a few simple props. If you've got the lights in the music, a few little props can really make your house look like a dilapidated haunted house very easily. You put some caution tape up around your front porch, maybe there's a cauldron with a dry ice machine. Sometimes there's a couple of houses in our neighborhood. I love these folks. They're awesome. They dress up in very scary costumes and terrify the children. So there's one guy who dresses up in like Jason from the Friday 13th movies. You know, he puts on the goalie mask and won't say anything. He's a huge man. And he'll just walk right up to kids as they approach the house and stand in front of them. And he holds a plastic banana like a dagger.
Christine Malec:Ha ha!
JJ Hunt:So it's just a banana. And someone coming that close to you with that goalie mask, a big, large person who won't say a thing.
Christine Malec:Yeah.
JJ Hunt:Wonderfully terrifying. And I actually saw something, I've never seen this in person but I've seen this online, it's really cool. Some people make their house itself look like a monster. It works really well if you've got a symmetrical house with a front porch. So what you do is you take giant teeth, and you put them on the roofline of the porch coming down, and maybe a few at the bottom steps coming up as well. And then you take eyes, giant cardboard eyes or something, and you put them in upstairs window. And so what you have to do is step into the mouth of the monster in order to come and collect your candy. I also saw someone who did a really cool costume they rigged up, they put an iPad or a tablet, under their clothes, and rigged it up in such a way. So that was hanging over their belly. And they would open up their shirt like "Hey, kids, can I show you something?" and they open up their shirt. And there would be a beating heart or a wound or a giant or an alien that's coming out in a video.
Christine Malec:Ah ah!
JJ Hunt:Those are really awesome. So there are things like that, where there can be little moments of fear and moment where you do have to summon a bit of courage. It's funny how it works with these houses like that. You can walk past them in the day as your neighbors are setting up like you know, hey, Nancy setting up for Halloween tonight. Yeah, and then you come by later and Nancy's you know, dress like a serial killer and she's somehow still terrifying. Even though you just waved hello to her.
Christine Malec:Ha, right.
JJ Hunt:So one of the places that is genuinely scary in a way that I'm not sure they intended it to be are the haunted houses at carnivals. Those are places that are genuinely scary even though they are cheesy and gaudy and tacky in every way. They can still be genuinely scary experiences. Have you ever gone through one of these Carnival haunted houses or fun houses?
Christine Malec:No, no.
JJ Hunt:So sometimes you walk through them, sometimes you ride through in a cart, and maybe they've decorated the cart to look like a like a miner's cart, or a barrel, like a like a big wooden beer barrel or something like that. And on the outside, these haunted houses are truly gaudy. They're covered in creepy paintings and decorations with like the lettering for creep show or haunted house in dripping blood letters, and paintings of evil characters and demons and monsters and vixens in skimpy costumes that were spray painted on the front of the the flat building in a style that looks like it comes from a 1980s heavy metal album, or maybe the the side of a stoner van. Like this kind of airbrush, spray paint demon look. And then you got to pay the carny. And that's really the scariest part of the whole thing to hand that that carny your ticket. And you've got to walk on and you get into your little cart. And then you start going through and the cart goes along these tracks. And then there's a clackety noise as you go in to this series of... I mean, they're basically trailers, like truck trailers that have been all attached together. It's a modular system so the whole Carnival can drive away, but they attach these trailers together in such a way that you go through a long tunnel of dark spaces. And as you approach one section or another, you're probably going to come to a pair of doors that looks like, again, it's been spray painted to look like a steel door of a jail cell, or maybe maybe it looks like the entrance to a crypt or something. And they don't open until the very last minute. And then the doors fling open, they clang open, big tin and steel noises as they slap open. And then inside, everything is dark, and the dark is key. Because if you actually saw what these things look like in the light of day, you wouldn't be afraid at all. Everything is dark, you only see things in flashes, maybe strobe lights, a little flashing here and there that are timed with noises. So scary noises, you know, the Wah Ha's and the crash noises. And then inside are these very simple animatronic creatures that have glowing eyes, and they'll lurch toward you, timed out with one of these screams and a flash of light, or maybe there'll be a jail cell that your your cart will go by. And inside the jail cell is a horrid creature, maybe someone who's supposed to look like a deranged inmate, you know, grabbing the bars and slight, you know, screaming and maybe there's a graveyard Tableau that's in a flash of, you know, lightning or something like that. Again, you go through these doors all flying open at the last minute. And there's maybe a giant spider on the floor, or one that comes dropping down on a chain overhead. So you can hear it and see it coming flying down from overhead. But I mean, all of those things are scary in and of themselves. But there's something about the clanking of the cart on the track the special effects that are coming through really tinny speakers, and all of these moving creatures that are really simple and old. So you hear the clanking and the clunkiness of these creatures cut out of sheets of tin, and the hydraulic wheezes as they're move, right? And the whole thing feels unclean and unsafe.
Christine Malec:Ahhhhh.
JJ Hunt:And it's disconcerting in a way that genuinely adds to the nerves and the anxiety. Th that is really I mean, that's I it's not, it's not something they would intention, like let's make it really cheap and terrible so that it's even scarier because you think you're gonna get tetanus!
Christine Malec:Ha ha ha!
JJ Hunt:It's funny how that plays into it. Mwah ha ha ha!
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