It seems pretty inevitable at this point that Halloween is going to be the next of long-standing annual traditions and holiday events that are largely going to suffer at the hands of 2020’s never-ending fuckery and, honestly, no matter what your opinion is of Halloween in general, this years’ Halloween season simply looks and feels a whole lot like it’s widely accepted jack-o-lantern symbol – hollow and dead inside.   

While the verdict is still out on how many will actually be participating in the traditional trick-or-treating festivities come October 31^st, doctors and health experts are divided on how safe it all is in practice and are now offering us their “tips” in order to keep us as safe as possible and to thwart the continuing spread of the current global coronavirus pandemic.  Such “expert advice” (including that of doctors, physicians, disease experts, etc.) includes (and I quote):

… the handing out of Halloween candy on the ends of hockey sticks, broom handles, or other such common but lengthy household apparatuses.   

Are these people fucking serious? 

That’s the best they got?

What high level of learning did these people get exactly and how long did it require them to obtain this profound expertise, because if that’s the best these medical experts have come up with so far, well, that’ll be the scariest fucking thing I’ve heard so far this Halloween! 

Having said that, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that particular Halloween think tank session of the CDC:

“Okay, what can we do to reduce the risk of COVID spread this Halloween?”

“How about spraying candy with Lysol?”

“No, that doesn’t sound too healthy.  Plus, it doesn’t really help with social distancing.”

(Nods and agreement all around)

“Okay, how about using slingshots or catapults of some sort to propel the candy to the kids at the end of driveways?”

“Hmm, that sounds a bit dangerous don’t you think?  Plus, we can’t have anyone getting a candy corn in the eye, can we?”

(Vigorous shaking of heads)

“Oh I know!  How about we use long poles of some sort, or something … umm, like a hockey stick!”

“Hey, I think we might be onto something here guys!”

(Lots more nods and agreement)

“We should all give ourselves raises too while we’re at it!”

“Halloween is saved!”

“HUZZAH!!”

Honestly, I just figured that given all the apparent collective “expertise” in the room that they might have been able to come up with something a bit more, shall we say, not stupid? 

For example, they could have suggested we go all Medieval while still sticking within our new modern social distancing guidelines by giving us detailed schematics for the building of a full scale battle trebuchet so that we can hurl the Halloween candy through the sky all the way to the kids in their own neighborhoods.  There will be no reason to even leave the front yard!  Kids can simply get dressed up in their costumes, stand out front of their homes with their empty pillow cases, and simply wait for the candy to begin raining from the sky.  Social distance that, bitches!  How about delivering the Halloween candy by drone, or carpet bombing it from low-flying aircraft, at the very least some elaborate rope and pulley system, I dunno, the point is that I seriously expected that there should have been some more well-rounded ideas based in reality and science on the table open for discussion.

Where did these schmucks get their degrees?

Experts?

The fuck.

However, what COVID seemingly hadn’t already managed to kill for Halloween this year, was the tradition of the late night scary movie. 

No, once again, that was fucked by science too.

It was decided a few nights ago that Hailey and I would enjoy at least one scary movie together this Halloween.  And not just any scary movie, but the scariest movie of them all as determined by science.

Yes, science!

I shit you not.

Recently, 50 participants of different age ranges in the U.K. were all hooked up to heart rate monitors before running the gauntlet of over 120 hours of the best horror films as determined by “critics and experts” which, truthfully, I just simply interpret as “people who give a shit about that stuff”.  Scientists then measured the participant’s average resting heart rate of 65 beats per minute (BPM) against their average increased heart rate during the different films and calculated the difference to somehow come up with the ultimate spooky winner.

Sounds legit, amiright?

It’s science after all!

Anyway, that ultimate winner was the 2012 supernatural horror film ‘Sinister’ starring Ethan Hawke, and let me tell you, science has absolutely no fucking right to be poking it’s warted nose in Halloween’s business.

Needless to say, the movie was lame. 

(You read the part where it starred Ethan Hawke, correct?) 

The only scary thing was Ethan’s weird beard and the fact that his central character never took off his beige cardigan for, like, the entire movie!  Seriously, from beginning to end the guy simply does not take off this sweater.  It must have reeked to high heaven, and perhaps was the subliminal proof I required had I looked hard enough that the entire movie was inevitably going to be a complete and utter stinker.

Scary?

My ass!

Fuck you, science.

So where does that leave us all for Halloween this year?

Well, personally, I plan to turn out my lights completely and simply hole up inside with a huge bag of molasses kisses and all my Nick Cave albums and dwell on another possible four years with the Great Orange Shit Gibbon at the helm of the free world once again because, baby, that’s some truly scary shit!  And, really, the very thought of ever having to see that play out once more is definitely scarier than any Halloween movie you could show me any day!

And nevermind science, that’s just reality!

God help me.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve taken to tinkering with things out in the garage in lieu of, shall we say, “Healthy lifestyle activities” over the past few months of my self-induced “COVID-quarantine” away from the rest of the world.  And by “tinkering”, I mean actually trying to restore, preserve and then make look nice again old rusty things, all without further ruining them and, believe me, ‘you win some, you lose some’.

Suffice to say, that I’ve been on a rather interesting learning curve for the past six months of becoming familiar with tools in my garage.  And if being alone with my new tools has led me to realize anything important about myself, it’s that I have absolutely no fucking idea what I’m doing.

At this point, I feel that your average sea sponge might have better common sense when it comes to tools and building shit.  And when I use that term “building shit” both figuratively as well as literally in that, 1) I wouldn’t say that my current skill level really allows me to brag that I’ve “built” anything per se, and 2) everything that I’ve somehow managed to (*ahem*) “build” has been pretty much shit.

I give you Exhibit A:

Essentially, my foray into using tools was nailing a metal sign into an old 2×4.

Cool?

Absolutely!

Craftsmanship?

Not so much.

Then I decided to get clever.

Exhibit B:

I incorporated both a power drill and glue into the mix and made this bird feeder.

Totally bad ass, amiright?

Note the creative use of recycled drink lids.

How about Exhibit C:

That’s right, folks:  I used the drill again to make two holes large enough for the metal bolt “hangers”, and for whatever reason, glued a birds nest and a metal brush to a piece of wood.

Not even Jesus himself could excuse this as anything claiming to be “carpentry” and I’m pretty sure St. Joseph sees me more or less as a lost cause.

Then there’s Exhibit D:

Here I get real fancy and actually use a drill, orbital sander, glue and a screwdriver.  Neanderthals have nothing on me and, really, I’m just lucky I haven’t severed any digits yet.

But, seriously, how did I get this fucking inept?

I’m a smart guy.  Surely just being a male, I should have some basic mechanical aptitude shouldn’t I?

Isn’t this supposed to be in my DNA?

My grandfather was a mechanical engineer and even had a small woodworking shop in his garage.  On weekends he’d invite me in to watch me make stuff but, apparently, I was more interested in watching the squirrels in the backyard or something else entirely because, honestly, I clearly learned nothing* as I wouldn’t know a Philips screwdriver from a pair of Michelle Phillips nail clippers.

I figure I should have learned more and I’m genuinely trying to make up for that.  Every chance I get, I am across the street knocking on my neighbor Danny’s front door asking for either a specific tool I never anticipated needing, or how to use a tool I never anticipated needing.  Usually, it’s a healthy combination of both.  But in all instances, Danny is patient and understanding and resists the urge to bludgeon me to death with one of my many unfinished projects every time I call across the street in a panic “Hey Danny!  You got a minute?”

(Full disclosure:  it’s never a minute.)

Most importantly, he never begins any of his responses with “are you fucking serious dude?”

You see, Danny is what you might call one of those “handy” types of guys; a guy who knows a little something about a lot of different kinds of shit – someone you can genuinely learn from.  Case in point, he once took my pathetic, sad-excuse-for-a-lawnmower and after an afternoon’s worth of pounding, grinding and hammering on it in his garage, he returned it looking almost good as new.  In fact, I’m pretty sure he even installed a flamethrower that I haven’t figured out how to use yet and I’m now considering entering in the next Battlebots competition as it doesn’t so much cut my lawn anymore as it pulverizes it into submission.  Now, if I tried to do such seemingly general maintenance on that mower myself, I likely would have taken out my entire neighborhood with an enormous explosion after crossing a live monkey wrench with an inverted flux capacitor or some shit.  Whatever, you would have seen the mushroom cloud on the horizon from great distances and the newspaper headlines the next morning would have read:  “Local Man ignites Neighborhood while Fixing Mower”.

Not exactly the touching epitaph I had in mind when my time comes to shuffle off this mortal coil.

I also once asked Danny to help me install a cat door on Hailey’s bedroom door.  By “help” I really mean “watch” and maybe hold the door while Danny did all the actual work but, hey, it was another watershed moment as he deftly maneuvered his jigsaw through the contours of the bedroom door with the skill of a true artisan, that I realized ‘Holy shit, I can probably do that!’.   It is even worth noting here that I have borrowed Danny’s jigsaw on a few more occasions, and while I wouldn’t say that I yet have mastered Danny’s skill for fine cutting (in truth, I butchered both my cuts but managed to cleverly cover them up enough so as to be not too noticeable, or shall we say, “rustic”), I did manage to complete my projects without causing any major bodily damage to myself so, hey, maybe I am beginning to finally learn something after all.

However, over the past few months there have been some successful projects requiring the actual use of tools, which only goes to show that you can teach an old dog such as me new tricks.  Now I’m not saying I’ve turned myself into the next Bob Vila over these past few months of “tinkering”, but I will say that I have undergone quite a bit of a transformation from that of a ‘completely incompetent’ handyman to that of a ‘mostly incompetent but won’t kill himself’ kind of handyman and that, folks, is positive forward progress!

Since then, I have managed to build a pretty kick ass floating bird feeder and I’m currently working on making a small outdoor garden bench out of some other found and repurposed items.  And where I have no idea at this point what the future holds at this point in my whole “tool development” (wrenches, socket sets, Robertson screwdrivers for God sakes – stars the limit!), I’m sure hoping it doesn’t involve any surprise self-amputations because, I kind of think tools are cool and I’d like to keep using them and maybe even develop enough of a basic proficiency with them to do other cool stuff like building “Killmowers” and installing simple cat doors.

God help me.

*It’s entirely ironic that I now include trapping squirrels as one of my professional skill sets.

Usually through the winter and spring months, I am up early in the morning to fit in a few laps before work, or maybe a session with the heavy iron and then after work, I’m usually eager to get home so I can get out on my bike.  And while I admit that I’ve largely fallen off the weekly tough guy Ironman program the past year or so, I was just about to begin getting back into the swing of things this past March (or so I was telling myself at the time), but then whole global COVID pandemic hit and, yeah … that all came to a screeching halt.

At that exact moment in time if you recall, all the gyms were shut, the public pools were closed, schools and restaurants were shut – shit, absolutely everything was fucking locked up tight.  Sporting events, concerts and a whole hosts of other industries were completed devastated and many people lost their jobs and were required to accept the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) handouts.  We were all encouraged to stay home and avoid contact with absolutely anyone and everyone outside our own immediate family, so this meant that even all my regular weekly cycling groups were dissolved as per provincial social distancing regulations.  And if anyone should ever so much as sneeze out in public, or God forbid, cough, everyone in the near vicinity would automatically commando roll away for fear of contracting the dreaded coronavirus.

It was scary times indeed.

One of the positive upshots in all this COVID-related madness, however, was a suddenly boom in the fitness world with all the newly homebound armchair athletes suddenly all getting motivated to get outdoors and get active. 

And I should have been one of them … but I wasn’t.

I took up drinking beer instead, and picked up a shovel.

Yessir! 

While everyone else was out jogging, riding their bikes, or otherwise being out in nature, enjoying the fresh air and getting healthy, I was digging digging holes in my front yard, spreading soil and mulch, and for God only knows what reason, attaching old bicycle handle bars to fence posts in the back yard.  I even smashed up our old, rotting picnic table and repurposed it into a large square (yes, a square) to surround a section of my back yard that I nick-named “No Man’s Land”; essentially an un-mowed patch of grass that a provided a safe feeding zone for all our local neighborhood mice, voles, rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, etc..  No one has ever accused me of being the next Mike Holmes, that’s for sure, nor are the editors of Home & Garden likely to come knocking anytime soon.

What it did do though, was allow me an opportunity to burn off all my pandemic anxieties, albeit in a very unexpected and – for me – unorthodox way.  Remember, I’ve already professed to not exactly being a yard work kinda guy (click HERE) but, still, in the absence of all my other normal physical activity, the risk of me spontaneously combusting in an instant and committing homicide after listening to Kelly crunch Scotch mints for fifteen minutes was definitely high, so I absolutely needed some sort of “mental health” outlet.

So I dug holes instead. 

I spread dirt and mulch.

I ripped out tall grasses and replanted them. 

I painted nice things to put on display in our new garden.

 I sanded, stained and treated an old wheelbarrow as a base for a cute flower display. 

I build rustic-looking bird feeders*.     

I fixed a pair of handlebars to my fence.

And I drank a shit ton of beer, for as it turns out – “projects” are more fun with a refreshing alcoholic beverage in your hand.

Who knew?

And as our positive COVID case numbers rose drastically through April and May, so too did my waistline.

You see, while others were quarantining – I continued to work as an “essential resource”.  Of course, my job is stressful enough already at the best of times, but go ahead and throw a global pandemic in there for shits and giggles and, VOILA!, instant nightmare.  Couple that with my new claustrophobia issues with the advent of masks now being an everyday requirement and, yeah, it’s pretty safe to say that I had lots of pent-up anxiety by the end of the work day.  In fact, I was literally lapping up everyone’s stress like a sponge for eight hours a day, five days a week, and then trying to cope with my own. 

Not good. 

Lord knows that had my wife not stopped me, I might have dug that hole in our front yard clear through to China.

So while I’ve managed to lose all my Ironman fitness and developed a beer belly, there is a positive upshot to all this:  OUR HOUSE HAS NEVER LOOKED BETTER!  After nearly a decade then of neglect on my part, finally, we have a front yard that is not immediately cringe-worthy; something that our neighbors don’t immediately shake their heads at in disgust.

Hallalujah!

Sure I might be a bit fatter, and I might grunt a bit more when I bend over but, hell, at least I’m still sane and nobody has died as a result of my mounting frustration.

GOD HELP ME.

*Actually just a big stick that I attached a hook to at either end and with a upturned plastic drink lid that I glued to it to hold the birdfeed, and strung it up with a piece of cord from a low-hanging branch.  That’s some real craftsmanship there, amiright?

It’s no mystery that I have a serious love-hate relationship with antiques and “collectables” that has developed over the years, and largely thanks to a rather unique and odd upbringing that I have already waxed on at length about HERE.

Suffice to say: I sure loves me some old shit.

As previously discussed, it was my mother that the particular keener about all the weird old shit and it was from her that I’ve largely taken my inspiration from over the course of the last seven months of my self-imposed COVID-19 quarantine.  Like my mother, I find interesting pieces on the cheap (free is best, of course) that, for whatever reason, capture my fancy, slap a fresh coat of colorful eye-catching paint on it and throw it out in the front (or back) yard for everyone else to behold and marvel at.  At least I’m pretty sure that’s how my mom saw it, and I suppose that I do now as well.

One of my favorite hunting grounds for interesting items is the Marketplace feature offered through Facebook.  Sure Mark Zuckerberg might be one of the biggest bastards on the face of the earth but, DAY-UM!, do I ever dig that online Marketplace site!  So much so, that this site might just be the tipping point on where I begin to transition officially into a hoarder.  It may just be step stools and small machinery parts and hand tools right now, but it’s already well established, that it’s a slippery slope to saving all your recyclables in the kitchen and bottling your nail trimmings in Mason jars.  Remember, I also collect and proudly display in huge glass jars, all the bread clips that I have painstakingly amassed over the years, so I know I’m definitely on the hoarder spectrum.  At the very least, I’m a massive obsessive-compulsive disorder waiting to happen*.

Honestly, I could be the next Edmund Trebus in training.

Anyway, I have noticed, however, during my evening browses through this online old shit paradise, that nearly everything now is listed as “vintage”.  Regardless how old something actually is or whether it’s even from the actual era it’s claimed to be from, if that item has in way aged, or has that “well used” look to it, you can just label it as “vintage” and jack up your asking price to ridiculous amounts.  You see, apparently, the word “Vintage” comes from the Sanskrit equivalent for “KA-CHING!” or something, because it’s either that or many of these people selling shit over the online Marketplace are delusional that I’m ever going to drop fifty bucks simply because something looks old and, therefore, “vintage”.

I have inquired with some online sellers about “vintage” items in the past only to learn that the items really weren’t old, per se … just old looking.  I recently inquired about a “vintage wooden ironing board” only to find out that it was from this century.

“What makes it ‘vintage’?”, I asked the seller.  “It’s less than twenty years old.”

Honestly, I have t-shirts older than that.

The reply: “Well, it’s wooden.  It looks much older.”

Okay, so old isn’t necessary old?

That’s some fucked up shit.

Leave it to the Millennial’s to ruin antiquing.

But this ploy apparently works well as most items don’t last long on the site, usually selling in a few days or less.  Seemingly, you could slap a ‘vintage’ tag on a listing for a “vintage dried duck turd” and someone will inevitably spend $15 on it to hollow it out and use it as a bong, or possibly make it into a bird feeder, who knows, the point is: ‘vintage’ absolutely sells.

Now I believe in many things, including that there should be a ‘chicken and waffles’ flavored ice cream on the retail market, but I also firmly believe that if you’re going to call something “vintage”, that that item had better exhibit a certain quality, or qualities – preferably the best – associated with or belonging to whatever specific era it’s claimed to be from.

And, YES, it actually has to be from that period!

That’s what makes it fucking “vintage”, you douche.

GOD HELP ME.

*I have also kept every fortune cookie fortune that I (and others) have had for the past two decades or more.  I keep them in a rinsed out Grey Poupon jar beside my bed (click HERE).  Now is that some weird shit or what?

No one is likely to argue with you that I don’t have a genuine terrible case of “COVID Hair”.

What is “COVID Hair” you ask? 

By “COVID Hair”, I’m referring to those grown out, unkempt and home butchered mops of hair that people started to suddenly sport in light of all the beauty salons, hair dressers, and barber shops being closed during the first onset of the coronavirus pandemic back in mid-March. 

You remember those, right? 

Everybody suddenly looked like either Courtney Love or Bobcat Goldthwait.

I am no one to point fingers though.

During the darkest days of the global coronavirus pandemic, when any buildings deemed anything other than “essential” were shut to the public indefinitely, I relented and allowed my wife to cut my hair as most husbands did.  One of the residual effects of the COVID pandemic back in those early days if you remember – besides The Tiger King that is – was the inkling for wives and girlfriends to cut their significant others hair.  I have no idea why this became a thing, perhaps some over-riding sense in females to nurture, including ensuring that their families and loved ones have nice snazzy haircuts but, whatever it was, social media was suddenly all a lit with these “home-styles” gone horribly wrong. 

Kelly was no different – she hinted and hinted to cut my hair.  She even went so far as to purchase those fancy little hair cutting scissors, as if this was somehow going to impress me enough to relent and allow her to sheer my proud masculine locks. 

“Oh wow!  You have the fancy scissors!  Why didn’t you say so?” 

Eventually her subtle hinting turned to outright pestering, and then deliberate threatening.  Of course, she watched a YouTube video (or two) which, naturally, more than qualified her in her mind to cut hair professionally so, yeah, I finally did the good husband thing and let her cut my regal mane.  I mean, honestly, considering that my reflection each morning started to resemble something you’d see as a mug shot attached to a news story beginning with “Florida man apprehended and charged with …”, how bad could it turn out?

To my wife’s credit though, her home-style didn’t end with either of us in tears. 

That was May 17^th, and not long afterwards public buildings began to open once more, albeit with much stricter and stranger regulations for operation; life as we once knew it was over for the time being.  All that was nearly five months ago and, despite hair dressers and barbers being opened once more, the COVID-19 virus still runs rampant over the planet, drinking bleach is now a thing, and we’re all locked up in the great “mask vs. anti-mask” debate while two aging dinosaurs duke it out over public media in a total high school slapfest of an electoral campaign in order to be the next President of the United States and, once again … I need another fucking haircut. 

So, essentially, the world is still a total dumpster fire as the second wave of the coronavirus looms over us as our numbers once again rise proportionately so that we’re all more or less sitting around in our PPE’s – Lysol wipes in hand – waiting for fate to once again dry fuck us in the ass with another viral cactus but, thankfully, I can still go to a barber shop for a haircut.

But hold on …

One problem:  as per normal operating business restrictions, any and all visitors to any public building are now required to wear a protective mask over their face.

Now that’s all swell and good, sure, and rightly so I might add.  However, unlike it was back in May, I am now dealing with a near crippling case of anxiety caused (I’m guessing) by the onsets of claustrophobia brought on by wearing masks over my face for any length of time.  My current “time to beat” is sitting somewhere around the 7 to 8 minute mark before I completely lose my shit and start throwing elbows looking for an exit.  If there’s no exit available, believe me – I will make one.  And even then, that 7 or 8 minutes is rather subjective seeing as how every single second feels like an eternity as the oxygen is being sucked from my lungs and my pours begin to leak out so badly that the resulting sweat stain will literally ebb its way across my work shirt in a mini tsunami of smelly grossness in seconds flat.

Yeah.

Awesome, amiright?

So while those services are available to me – vane needs as they may be in this case – I am still in no way able to access or benefit from any of them successfully given the hoops that I will inevitably have to jump through and endure.  And as of yet, I doubt there’s a decent hairdresser or barber alive that can offer a decent haircut in 8 minutes or less so, hence, I’m begin to look like Andre Agassi’s homeless half-brother.

As it stands then, you could pretty much use my mangy bouffant as a barometer by which to measure how shitty our 2020 year has been so far.  If there has ever been a true measure of stress and anxiety in this world, it is reflected in this sad, tangled birds’ nest that sits on the top of my head.  By the peak of the inevitable stresses that go along with this oncoming second wave, I’m likely to resemble a life size Troll doll and, believe me … that’s some scary, scary shit.  Like, nightmare inducing shit!  It’s as if my body has somehow channeled all my pent-up pandemic frustrations and concerns into growing the worst follicle disaster in known history.  Soon, I’m even going to make the Great Orange Shit Gibbon’s hairdo look like Vidal Sassoon.

But, seriously, my awful COVID hair answers nearly all the important shitty questions:

How long has it been since we’ve all been quarantining?

How long have we had to wear masks in public?

How long since we could safely walk into public buildings, including hair salons and barbers?

They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words” but in my case, that picture really all comes down to one word:  LONG. 

Long and shitty!

But I digress …

I guess the obvious question then is why? 

Why not just forget the barber altogether and just let your wife go through with the whole ritual sheering once more?  She loves it and, hey, it turned out pretty good the first time anyway.  The thing is, I’m not so sure why I’m so reluctant this time if I’m being honest.  At this point, it’s almost like my bad hair has become some sort of weird living tribute to this whole train wreck of a year we’ve had thus far; an ever-growing, ever-shifting topiary of shame and disappointment.  While everyone else abandons their common sense in lieu of their vanities, I’ve decided to hold firm in an ongoing vigil and choosing to not go forth into that neon-lit hydraulic barber’s chair … no sir!

What else can I tell you?

Not all heroes wear capes.

Now, ask me how long it’s been since the gyms have been open?

But that’s an entirely different story.

GOD HELP ME.