Halloween at the undergraduate radio station didn't always come across as the big deal that one might think it would. One might think we would spend all our time "spookifying" the station both in looks and sounds to give it that haunted edge. I think about it and assume the reason we didn't go too wild was because we were students and needed to focus our time on other things. Halloween was just one day – one night, in reality – and to go into all that prep work just to give ourselves that satisfaction, however small, probably wasn't worth the overall effort.
I seem to recall a few people dressed-up here and there in costumes, but no costume really stands out all these years later. There were some girls in the department who liked dying their hair green or magenta year-round but when October 31 rolled around we didn't know if it was part of their costume or just a fresh scalp recoloring. No Thriller dancers, either.
We did try to find songs or music groups that had a certain "autumn" feel to them. We didn't go as far as playing Monster Mash (...though that might have been an interesting idea...) but I know a few of us tried to ensnare the Smashing Pumpkins into the mix. That's the band, mind you, and not broken pieces of gourds.
Which reminds me that I did have a roommate at one point who thought it would be cool to see what kind of damage he could do with a pumpkin and a screen-less fourth story window. His name was Benjamin Hale and I think he thought himself pretty slick in pulling this "trick" off. He might have gotten away with it, too, had it not been for a few things he overlooked. One was the fact our window was the only one without a screen. Not an earth-shattering point, I know, but these old aluminum frames were locked on to the window so they couldn't be removed precisely for this reason. And since every other window in the housing complex had an outside screen, it wasn't going to take long for even the dimmest Resident Advisor (that being Carlos Maña, the third floor RA) to figure out what happened.
Ben's second problem was not something immediately noticed because it did not present itself until after the fact. Fact is Ben had gotten a fairly large pumpkin. More so, I think Ben had stolen this large gourd from one of the outside displays at Conglomo and smuggled back into the room with the "assistance" of our neighbors, Artie and Jerry, with the full intent of tossing it out of the window. Allow me to insert another small point: Ben liked it warm in the room and kept the heater on. So by the time Ben got up the nerve to throw the thing out the window, it had been subject to many a warm day and night and gave me another reason to dislike the taste – and smell – of pumpkins.
I chose to be elsewhere the fateful night – probably across the street at the radio station – and therefore missed what I heard turned into a bigger mess than expected. Because of the pumpkin's size and weight, Ben's attempt to lob the thing didn't quite work the way he wanted. First, it snagged our air conditioner unit. Then, because it didn't have much in the way of forward motion, it fell straight downward – directly in the path of the air conditioner unit below us. A large metallic clang echoed throughout the parking lot, I was told later. That didn't help its trajectory, nor did the two air conditioner units on the first and second floor. Thankfully each hit did worse wear to the pumpkin than the air conditioners.
The next morning all the evidence of autumn was there for all to see: the tell-tale orange marks from the fourth floor window downward, and the foul-smelling remnants of a pumpkin directly below our window. Ben, at least, had the decency to take responsibility for it and saved me for paying the damage fee (something like 10 or 20 bucks to clean up the mess and replace the screen).
Elsewhere...nobody wanted to dress up like Billy Corgan. I thought it would have been fun for someone to shave his (or her) head and walk around all angst-ridden though still trying not to be confused for Kowalczyk or O'Connor or Stipe. I never gauged my peers to figure out whether people were into the Smashing Pumpkins or not, but I think a lot of people were perplexed at the amount of music he could create that just sorted of droned on and on and on....
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Today
(Corgan)
Smashing Pumpkins
From the album Siamese Dream
1993
Today is the greatest
Day I've ever known
Can't live for tomorrow,
Tomorrow's much too long
I'll burn my eyes out
Before I get out
I wanted more
Than life could ever grant me
Bored by the chore
Of saving face
Today is the greatest
Day I've ever known
Can't wait for tomorrow
I might not have that long
I'll tear my heart out
Before I get out
Pink ribbon scars
That never forget
I tried so hard
To cleanse these regrets
My angel wings
Were bruised and restrained
My belly stings
Today is
Today is
Today is
The greatest day
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you
Today is the greatest
Today is the greatest day
Today is the greatest day
That I have ever really known.
