It was in the theater–YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN–I first fell in love.  My cousin and I sat in the very first row at the Coral Theater, way up close, and I watched Terri Garr’s six feet of cleavage in wonder and awe.  I felt I could let go of my seat, free fall into that heavenly, inviting crevasse.  Sticky popcorn butter and Ju-Ju-Bees held my feet down.  Arms wide and leaning like a ski jumper, post-Halloween candies whizzed past, ahead of a wave of laughter.  My cousin, two whole years my senior, caught me just as I was becoming airborne and hit me until my knees buckled, proclaiming my dorkhood in angry hisses.

My youngest is 4 right now and he’s convinced ghosts live in our basement. This isn’t one of those creepy instances where a kid sees a ghost that the adults can’t; he thinks ghosts look like the ones from Pac-Man and confuses them with the lights from passing cars, so I’m pretty sure I’m not dealing with a Sixth Sense deal here.

I mean, wuddaya suppose to do wid a dead cat inna city? Not like you can dig a hole in yuh backyard and berry it. I got a small apahtment, on Wess Fourf street in Brooklyn, near duh bus that takes you tuh Canahsie. I don’t go tuh Canahsie. Dat place has changed, and not for da better. I stay right heah in Gravesend where I belawng. Good place wid good people. I can get my kwaffee and my newspapuh right on duh corner for tree dollars still, like innee old days. You can’t say that for a lotta places these days. Times has changed, for sure.

It’s true: 2020 Halloween will suck, and the world will be poorer for it. Luckily Winslow and Little Winslow have a plan.

I would have liked to be born a very dramatic, very unnecessarily serious human being in Victorian England, but have instead found myself in the 21st century, which is so devoid of castles through which I can run screaming and moors onto which I may throw myself as I cry. Modern America doesn’t allow for histrionics, so I have instead crafted a life for myself that is very mundane and stoic and not at all theatrical or hokey.