Welcome to Milwaukee Record’s 66 Days of Halloween countdown! You can find Part I, which covers Days 0-22, HERE. You can find Part II, which covers Days 23-44, HERE.

DAY 66: HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Is this…is this what it feels like to actually finish a 66-day Halloween countdown? It must be, because after two failed attempts in the past four years, I finally did it! It’s day 66! Happy Halloween!

So get out there and enjoy it! Hell, it’s a Friday! My Halloween plans include walking around my neighborhood, watching 1985’s Garfield’s Halloween Adventure with my family (as one does), and probably passing out around 11 while watching an old episode of The X-Files on Comet TV (again, as one does).

Thanks to everyone who followed along with my admittedly random and self-indulgent Halloween ramblings! Will I do this again next year? Probably not. Oh, who am I kidding, I totally will. Until then…

DAY 65: RADIO DEAD TIME

Thursday night at Anodyne Coffee in Walker’s Point, forever-awesome Milwaukee radio station WMSE hosted a show/broadcast/livestream called Radio Dead Time. It featured three fantastic local musical acts—Red Quean, El Sebas, and Seances—and plenty of spooky Halloween vibes. There were decorations. There was fog. There were tons of people. There were tons of costumes. It was fantastic. You can watch the whole thing here:

Oh, and did I mention I co-hosted Radio Dead Time with WMSE’s Sid/Squid Inc.? Because I did! It was an absolute blast, and it served as my first (and probably only) “adult” Halloween celebration of the year. Here are some photos:

Thanks, WMSE, for everything you do! And you can still support the station through Halloween by donating to its Fall Membership Drive!

DAY 64: THE HALLOWEEN TREE

I’m going to keep the tree-related posts going and talk about one of my all-time favorite books: Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree, from 1972.

This book is pure gold. It’s one of those books where a mysterious character whisks a bunch of kids away on a magical adventure and they all learn something along the way. In this case, the mysterious character is “Mr. Moundshroud” (a Jack Skellington-esque character before Jack Skellington was a thing), the kids are a bunch of costumed trick-or-treaters, the magical adventure is a trip through time and space to find the kids’ sick friend (Pipkin), and the lesson is nothing less than The History of Halloween.

Oh, and because it’s Ray Bradbury, the book is chock-full of the author’s delightfully florid prose. Here’s one of my favorite passages. The part about all the soda bottles in the world fizzing over kills me:

Joe Pipkin was the greatest boy who ever lived. The grandest boy who ever fell out of a tree and then laughed at the joke. The finest boy who ever raced around the track, winning, seeing his friends a mile back somewhere, stumbled and fell, waited form the to catch up, and joined, breast and breast, breaking the winner’s tape. The jolliest boy who ever hunted out all the haunted houses in town, which are hard to find, and came back to report on them and take all the kids to ramble through the basements and scramble up the ivy outside-bricks and shout down the chimneys and make water off the roofs, hooting and chimpanzee-dancing and ape-bellowing. The day Joe Pipkin was born all the Orange Crush and Nehi soda bottles in the world fizzed over; and joyful bees swarmed countrysides to sting maiden ladies. On his birthdays, the lake pulled out from the shore in midsummer and ran back with a tidal wave of boys, a big leap of bodies and a downcrash of laughs.

There’s a 1993 Hanna-Barbera cartoon of The Halloween Tree, too. It’s okay (Leonard Nimoy voices Moundshroud! Bradbury narrates!), but the book is where it’s at. I used to read it to my kid every year, and I’m proud to say she can still improvise a dead-on imitation of Bradbury’s writing style to this day.

DAY 63: FINAL TREE CHECK-IN

With only days remaining until the Big Day, I thought I’d check in with that tree again. You know, that tree I keep tabs on throughout the season because it seems to change colors kind of early? Yeah, that tree.

Here it was on Day 8:

And here it is on Day 63:

Ah, the bittersweet change of the seasons, the bittersweet passage of time. Thank you for your service, tree.

DAY 62: MAYVILLE (AND THERESA) TRICK-OR-TREATING

My Sunday was spent trick-or-treating with my family in my hometown of Mayville, as well as nearby Theresa. It was super fun! Oh, and I got kind of trashed! (Fun fact: Milwaukee founder and original Milwaukee mayor Solomon Juneau also founded Theresa!)

Those last two photos represent the tip of the “adult trick-or-treating goodies” that Mayville and Theresa had to offer. So many free shots, so many free drinks, and so many people handing me cans of beer! I emptied my pockets at the end of our three-hour tour, and this is what I had:

Oh, and my favorite part was the fake cemetery across the street from the real Mayville cemetery. I dunno, there was something kind of beautiful about it.

DAY 61: PUMPKIN FARM AND CORN MAZE

Yesterday was Saturday, and good grief did I have a good one. It began on a pumpkin farm, wound its way through a muddy corn maze, got something to eat at an area mall, found itself playing pinball at a local bar, ambled over to a local venue for a fantastic show, and ended by zooming home on one of those damn electric scooters. Not too shabby!

For the purposes of this countdown, however, let’s focus on the pumpkin farm and corn maze. (The fantastic show was the always-fantastic Kathleen Edwards at Vivarium, and I totally ate at the Bayshore Rocky Rococo.) Creekside Valley Farm is located outside of Mequon, and it’s one of those pumpkin farms where you wonder if you’ve been there before—not because you have, necessarily, but because all pumpkin farms are kind of alike, and Creekside Valley Farm is as pumpkin farm-y as pumpkin farms get.

I took my kid, and was accompanied by a bunch of other parents and friends. The kids went through the corn maze themselves; after a few minutes of standing around in the light rain, the dads and I decided to give the maze a shot ourselves. It was filled with directions in the form of random bits of animal trivia. Did you know that pigs can’t look straight up? Now you do!

Anyway, Creekside Valley Farm was great. Did I miss out on Bay View trick-or-treating later that night? Sadly, yes. Did I make up for it by taking top leaderboard honors on the Dr. No pinball table at Landmark Lanes? You’re damn right I did.

DAY 60: MUSEUM TRICK-OR-TREATING

As promised, my family and I did some family-friendly trick-or-treating at the Milwaukee Public Museum last night. And, as promised, here are a couple of photos! It was a great time, and the edible bugs were especially gross this year.

Depending on when MPM closes its doors before the big early-2027 move to the new museum, this may have been the final year of trick-or-treating in MPM. Ugh. I can’t deal with that right now.

Oh, one extra thing: At one point last night, I found myself standing near the infamous “Quest For Beaver” exhibit. Suddenly, a guy yelled out, “Milwaukee Record! Are you, like, always here?” He seemed blown away, like he had spotted a Bigfoot chilling next to a “Bigfoot crossing” sign or something.

And yes, I ended my night with Joe Bob Brigg’s Splatterween, live on Shudder! Let’s take a look at those Drive-In Totals:

DAY 59: JACK-O’-LANTERN T-SHIRT

For all my love of Halloween, I’m not much of a costume guy. Costumes seem like so much work. Coming up with an idea, finding all the stuff, and executing the idea? That’s simply a trifecta of spooky skills I don’t possess. It’s like the old saying goes: Those who can’t come up with a cool costume on their own, buy a pre-made costume at Spirit Halloween. And those who can’t buy a pre-made costume at Spirit Halloween…

…buy a cheap jack-o’-lantern T-shirt at Michael’s and call it a day! Yep, this is my outfit for tonight’s kid-focused trick-or-treating at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Good enough! Expect photos tomorrow!

DAY 58: HALLOWEEN COUCH

Here’s a picture of my couch! I’m calling it a Halloween Couch because, well, it has Halloween stuff on it!

DAY 57: GO TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS

Remember Amazing Stories? No, not the 2020 reboot on Apple TV+ that absolutely no one remembers, but the original series that a handful of people remember. It was a (mostly) family-friendly fantasy/sci-fi anthology show created by Steven Spielberg that ran on NBC from 1985 to 1987. It featured a who’s-who of ’80s directors and guest stars, and it had a kick-ass intro with some early CGI and some original music from John Williams:

I don’t know that I’ve seen most of Amazing Stories‘ original 45 episodes, but one episode in particular has stuck with me for decades: Go To The Head Of The Class. Directed by a fresh-off-of-Back-To-The-Future Robert Zemeckis, and starring a similarly fresh-off-of-Back-To-The-Future Christopher Lloyd (and Mary Stuart Masterson and Scott Coffey), Head Of The Class is a perfectly goofy and creepy Halloween-y treat. A horror-obsessed dork and a sexy coed determined to put a curse on their sadistic English professor? Check. A ritual that involves listening to a heavy metal record backwards and then skulking around a spooky graveyard? Check. Copious footage from a public domain horror movie (in this case, the original House On Haunted Hill)? Check. Some nifty practical ’80s special effects? You better believe it.

You can watch Go To The Head Of The Class (and the rest of Amazing Stories‘ original episodes) HERE, albeit horizontally flipped. It’s worth it!

DAY 56: THE FINAL STRETCH

This is it! The final 11-day stretch! DON’T GET SCARED NOW.