Tag Archives: Halloween

Spice of Life is Tastiest Ingredient

by Woody

The key ingredient in any dish, from fancy cordon bleu to backyard barbecue, that makes taste buds dance the happiest and sing the loudest is not a mystery spice, rare herb, or secret sauce, but rather, simply, the company with whom you eat.

Indeed, enjoyed with the right person or gathering, a nothing-special hot dog surpasses a perfectly prepared meal in a restaurant gastronomique in Paris.

Which is why, although I am not a regular chowhound of hot dogs, one of my all-time favorite meals was a stadium frankfurter. Actually, about 25 of my favorite meals, that being the ballpark number of Ohio State football games I went to during my elementary days alongside my two older brothers and dad.

The sweetest condiment for a hot dog is the joy of special company.

Frankly speaking, in a blind taste test those ol’ Horseshoe Stadium hot dogs would probably have ranked dead last. Eating them blindfolded would have actually been a good idea because, unlike the Buckeyes’ scarlet-and-grey home jerseys, the wieners, plucked from pots of murky water that looked less potable than a swamp, were grey only.

Add in stale buns, depleted condiment stations, and a Sir Edmund Hillary-like climb back to our upper-deck seats, by which time the wieners were cold dogs, and you had prison-like grub…

…unless you were sandwiched between your two big brothers in the bleachers, in the spring of your life, in glorious Midwestern autumn, in which case it became the standard against which I still measure all hot dogs.

Another of my most memorable hot dogs also involves my oldest brother. It was in New York City, long ago, from a vendor cart. Strolling away, my brother took his first bite and – Splat! – the entire web of sauerkraut fell onto the sidewalk that was grosser than the witch’s brew-like hot dog water in Ohio Stadium.

Rather than turn on his heels and ask the vendor for a replacement bale of sauerkraut or, perish the thought, eat the hot dog naked – let me rephrase that; eat a naked hot dog – he invoked the five-second rule; scooped up the sauerkraut, now flavored with a sullied sundry of sidewalk spices; and gobbled it up with the gusto of Joey Chestnut in Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest.

Ever since, every hot dog I’ve eaten always tastes a little better knowing it isn’t topped with sidewalk-seasoned sauerkraut.

Based on pedigree, it’s hard to top a Dodger Dog. Fittingly, one of my most savored hot dogs was in the Dodger Stadium press box dining room, during a seventh-inning stretch, when my writing idol Jim Murray joined me for a quick chew and chat.

All this thinking about hot dogs was stirred this Halloween when I had another fantastic frank that joined my grand slams of memorable meals. Just as candy tastes better when it’s earned by trick-or-treating on foot, it is similarly true for hot dogs I can now attest.

In addition to sweets for kids, for the past 30-plus years Scott, a friend of a friend, has given out hot-off-the-charcoal-grill chili dogs, complete with all the fixings – sans, thankfully, sidewalk sauerkraut – to adults. Youngsters are welcome to both treats, adding up to few hundred hot dogs served annually.

Scott’s enthusiasm and charisma, assisted by a fun giant wiener hat and aided further by free margaritas and full-size beers, make his hot dogs unforgettably delicious and worth the trip across town.

To be perfectly frank, these neighborhood-famous chili dogs, with the fellowship of my brother-of-a-friend Ken added in, were darn near the equal in my memory to those battleship-grey cold stadium hot dogs of long ago.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Happy For Trick-or-Treaters Return!

by Woody

“If you can blow this balloon up with one breath you win a brand-new Cadillac,” the doctor told me just before I was to have my tonsils removed.

Considering I would not be old enough to get a driver’s license for another 12 years I would have preferred the promise of a toy Matchbox car. All the same, I accepted the challenge and inhaled the deepest breath of my young life . . .

. . . and woke up in a hospital bed wondering when the operation was going to happen.

“It’s all over,” my mom told me. “Do you want some ice cream to soothe your throat?”

I have since had more surgeries than I care to remember – wisdom teeth, kidney stone, entrapped nerve, deviated septum, cervical disc fusion – and each time I emerged from anesthesia’s fog I could not believe time had passed and the operation had already taken place.

That is sort of how I feel about the past year and half during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like it was spring of 2019 and I took a deep breath of anesthesia and suddenly I have awakened to autumn 2021.

Instead of having my tonsils or a kidney stone removed, I had birthday celebrations and holidays gatherings, concerts and vacations, all removed from the calendar. I bet you feel likewise.

Perhaps the best example I can give is a wedding of some young friends. One day my wife and I were ready to go to the big event and the next thing you know we were attending the reception for their pandemic-altered marriage ceremony that had actually taken place on Zoom over a year ago. And yet at the grand and greatly belated in-person celebration it seemed as if they had just said their vows minutes earlier.

I don’t know about you, but one of the biggest events I missed while being under pandemic-thesia was Halloween. Perhaps more than any holiday, Halloween is a time machine that transports me happily backwards. Hearing little voices sing “trick-or-treat” reminds me of walking my own two kids around the neighborhood.

Halloween also magically transports me to my own youth. Indeed, seeing a tiny Batman makes my mind flash back to when I taped a yellow bat insignia on a black sweatshirt and pinned a bath towel around my neck to go trick-or-treating when I was six. Age seven, too, for I loved Batman.

Trick-or-treaters at my front door pull up memories from a couple years later when my best friend Dan and I finished our rounds and then changed into second costumes before going back to the houses that were giving out full-sized candy bars.

Even my bad Halloween memories have become good ones with the passing of time. Like when Adam stole my pillowcase loaded with sugary bounty. To clarify, Adam wasn’t a boy bully, he was a black Labrador the size of a grizzly who lived in our neighborhood. Even though he was a gentle giant, when he came running at me I dropped my loot instead of taking any chances with his sweet tooth.

Because of coronavirus, not unleashed Adams, no little princesses and superheroes and goblins came knocking on my door last Halloween. Happily, this promises to change Saturday evening because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has given children the green light to again go trick-or-treating.

I cannot wait. My porch light will be welcomingly on and I’ll have a wheelbarrow’s load of full-sized candy bars ready to hand out, two at a time, to make up for last year.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and  “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com

 

Sweet Treat Follows Halloween

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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A Sweet Treat

Follows Halloween

Out of precaution, but with small expectation, we bought a single bag of candy bars in case any trick-or-treaters came by Halloween evening. In years past we have handed out 20 bags.

Coronavirus kept our doorbell silent as a tombstone.

It’s easy to jokingly snicker, “Great! I’ll just have to eat all these Snickers myself.” But the truth is I felt empty because autumn’s annual parade of kids singing “Trick or treat!” as their goodie sacks and plastic pumpkin buckets fill up, fills my heart.

Imagine the cutest costumed child of the night knocking on your door after the porch light has been turned off and you get an idea of what happened to me. In this case, it was a day later and two young girls were dressed up as themselves – as the cutest two siblings imaginable.

I am guessing their ages to be 3 and 5 and they were at a local park with their parents enjoying a late-afternoon picnic. Meanwhile, I was on my daily run and seeing them each half-mile loop around put a smile on my face and extra spring in my stride.

I wish you could have seen them. The girls played catch with their dad and tag with their mom; played by themselves while their parents snuggled on the spread-out blanket; joined mom and dad for a snack, and a hug, before racing off to pet a dog on a leash; and on and on their fun went.

Just as Halloween is a time machine that pulls us back to our own childhoods, these two children sent my mind racing in reverse 25 years to when my daughter and son were about their ages.

Instead of on a blanket in a park, our young family of four was having dinner at a charming Italian restaurant. After the spaghetti and meatballs disappeared, and scoops of ice cream too, our waiter vanished. The kids grew antsy as we waited for the check. Ten minutes became thirty and my wife and I became impatient as well.

“Where’s the check?” I grumbled softly.

“Where’s our waiter?” my wife mumbled.

“Where’s the bathrooms?” the kids needed to know.

Our waiter remained AWOL. Eventually, finally, at long last I caught the attention of a different server and asked if he could please get our check.

Instead of the check, our original waiter brought us a heartwarming explanation: Two elderly gentlemen at a table across the room had paid for our dinner, but requested the waiter not let us know until after they left – hence the long delay.

The Samaritan pair had seen a happy young family, our waiter explained, and simply wanted to anonymously do a random act of kindness. Ever since, I have occasionally tried to repay those kind men when I have seen happy young families in restaurants.

And so it was that I wished I could have paid the dinner check for the two girls and their parents at the park. Instead, all I could think to do was stop by before I left and tell them something they already well knew – what a lovely family they are!

This led to a brief social-distanced visit where I learned the sisters are inseparable, even sharing a bed by choice, and that a third sibling is on the way.

As I jogged away into the early arriving darkness, the two girls sang out in sweet harmony: “Have a nice day!”

“Thank you!” I shouted back. “You, too!”

What I thought was this: “Thanks to you, I already have.”

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Out-of-the-Box Costumes

by Woody

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: @woodywoodburn

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These Halloween Costumes

Would Be Fun To See

Spoiler alert for what will come knocking on your front door this Halloween. According to Google search information compiled by marketing trends provider SEMrush, the 10 most-popular Halloween costumes this year promise to be: Fortnite, Spider-Man, Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Deadpool, Harry Potter, Catwoman, Pennywise and Kim Kardashian.

I have to admit, I thought “Fortnite” must be a character from a Shakespeare play but it turns out to be a popular video game. Pennywise, I assume, is Dollar Foolish’s sister.

Speaking of dollar foolish, according to the National Retail Federation, U.S. shoppers this year will spend $8.8 billion – $86.27 per person – on candy, decorations and costumes. This includes costumes for pets with Pumpkin, Batman and Lion being the three most popular for our four-legged friends.

Instead of trendy ready-made costumes from a box, here are some outside-the-box Halloween outfits I’d like to see ring my doorbell this Thursday evening . . .

Every shelter dog and cat dressed up as a Pumpkin or Lion and sleeping on an adopted lap.

Amazon’s Alexa costumed as a helpful librarian and vice-versa.

My laptop computer as John Steinbeck’s Hermes Baby typewriter.

The Dodgers, dusting off a 32-year-old costume stored in an attic trunk, dressed up as World Series champions.

The iPhone11 Pro Max in a costume as a rotary rPhone1961.

Similarly, a family out for meal in a restaurant dressed as Amish Mennonites without everyone having his or her attention focused on a smartphone screen.

Ojai climate activist Kristofer Young in a costume as Greta Thunburg.

John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success dressed up as the USDA Food Pyramid and the Food Pyramid dressed up as a Fourth of July red-white-and-blue paper plate stacked with hotdogs and potato salad.

Every cancer patient dressed up as cured.

Ventura County’s brown hillsides in a costume as Ireland’s emerald landscape.

Firemen, nurses, cops and teachers dressed up as Justice League heroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern.

Every drunk driver dressed up as a taxi, Uber or Lyft passenger.

Camarillo’s Mike and Bob Bryan, the greatest doubles team in tennis history, dressed identically as the Wrigley Doublemint Twins.

My former Star columnist colleague Colleen Cason dressed up as an author with a book on The New York Times Best Sellers List.

Lakers’ dynamic duo LeBron James and Anthony Davis as Batman and Robin.

Ventura County, with its amazing collection of craft breweries, dressed up as a famous mirco-brew destination like Bend Oregon or Denver.

Jack In The Box pitchman Jack dressed up as Ronald McDonald; Ronald Mac in a costume as Conan O’Brien; and Conan as The Great Pumpkin.

Tom Brady in a costume as Father Time.

Ageless Venturan running legend Ed Wehan, finisher of more than 120 marathons (with a PR of 2 hours, 36 minutes at age 40) and dozens of ultras (including seventh place in the granddaddy Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run four decades ago) dressed up as an inductee of The Ventura County Sports Hall of Fame.

Throwaway plastic milk jugs dressed up as “Leave It To Beaver” milkman era throwback returnable glass bottles.

Singer Ed Sheeran as Prince Harry and vice-versa.

Meanwhile, according to Google Freightgeist, the least popular candy – “vehemently hate” is the description used – handed out this year promises to be the same as it was when I was Trick-or-Treating in the 1960s: candy corn.

Which reminds me of what a friend once told me about the proper way to eat candy corn: tear the package open, dump it in the trash can, and then have a Milky Way.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Halloween Suggestions

by Woody

STRAW_CoverWoody’s new book STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter is available for Pre-Order HERE NOW!

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Trick-or-Treaters I’d Like to See

Spoiler alert for tonight. According to Google Freightgeist, the 10 most-popular Halloween costumes nationwide this year are: Harley Quinn, Star Wars, Superhero, Pirate, Batman, Minnie Mouse, Witch, Minions, Joker, and Wonder Woman.

Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn

I don’t know about you, but this list raised a couple questions for me, the first being: Who, or what, is Harley Quinn? A new motorcycle? After a Google search I learned that Harley Quinn, aka Dr. Harleen Frances Quinzel, M.D., is a DC Comics character and adversary of Batman.

As for her why her costume ranks No. 1, well, I’m guessing adult women more than girls account for this as Quinn is basically The Joker version of The Sexy Nurse costume.

My second question: Isn’t it redundant for Google Freightgeist to list “Superhero” when Batman and Wonder Woman are also ranked? And where in he world is Superman?

Google Freightgeist also has an interesting map showing popularity by region and city. Ventura does not appear, but Santa Barbara’s Top 5 are: Sexy Pirate, Sexy Snow White, Sexy Lion, Sexy Gray Wolf, and Sexy Doll. (Note: I added the Sexy after Googling these costumes that are obviously marketed for women.)

Indeed, unlike when I was a kid, Halloween has become a national holiday for adults, too. If you can believe it, pets now also get in on the fun with Batman and Lion being the two most popular costumes this year on eBay.

When I was a kid, no one bought Halloween costumes for their pets or children. You made do. For example, my Batman costume consisted of thermal underwear as Bat-Tights and a bath towel pinned around my neck.

In that same spirit, instead of sterile costumes from a box, here are some outside-the-box Halloween outfits I’d like to see come knocking on my door tonight:

Real superhero firemen, paramedics and nurses dressed up as cartoon superheroes with capes.

Teachers, and most especially special-needs educators, same as above.

Superman, Batman and Iron Man dressed up as Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, the three American tourists who helped thwart a terrorist gunman on a train bound for Paris earlier this summer.

Vin Scully wearing a headset as a guest in Fox TV’s broadcast booth for the 2015 World Series.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia dressed up again in a Dodgers uniform.

The 2015 New York Mets dressed up as the Amazin’ Mets of 1969.

The Cubs dressed as World Series Champions.

Malala Yousafzai dressed up as the future President of the United Nations.

Donald Trump dressed up as a mime and Dr. Ben Carson as an over-caffeinated high-energy TV pitchman.

Bernie Sanders as, of course, Larry David.

Every presidential candidate in both parties dressed up as someone taking a lie-detector test.

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who put a 5,000 percent markup on a lifesaving drug, dressed as greedy Mr. Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Or as a thief in jail stripes.

Kobe Bryant dressed in his rookie Lakers uniform, complete with young, springy legs.

Tom Brady in a costume as a deflated football.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell dressed up as a concussion patient.

1tricktreatA family out for dinner in a restaurant dressed as Amish Mennonites instead of everyone having his or her attention focused on a smartphone screen.

No one in costume as Caitlyn Jenner.

Mrs. Figs’ Bookworm owner Connie Halpern dressed as Oprah because she’s equally effervescent and a book reader’s best friend.

Roger Thompson, Venturan author of “My Best Friend’s Funeral,” dressed up as a New York Times best-selling writer.

Drew Daywalt, local author of two children’s books currently atop the NYT Best Sellers List with “The Day The Crayons Came Home” at No. 1 and “The Day The Crayons Quit” at No. 3, dressed up as, of course, a crayon.

The USDA Food Pyramid dressed up as a Fourth of July red-white-and-blue paper plate stacked with hotdogs, bacon and cold cuts.

KVTA radio early-morning host Tom Spence dressed as The Tonight Show’s late-night host Jimmy Fallon because Spence is funnier.

Every drunk driver dressed up as a taxi, Uber or Lyft passenger.

Lastly, my wife as Harley Quinn.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.Wooden&Me_cover_PR

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”