wacky tacky: Trick-or-Treat for Halloween

I love Halloween. I love it even more as an adult than I did as a child. It has less to do with candy and costumes than the simple fact that in comparison to holidays like Christmas and Easter, Halloween requires very little from me. I used to think Thanksgiving fell into the category of easy holidays simply because no gifts were exchanged, but after all of the grocery shopping, preparation, cooking, cleaning, and last minute trips to the grocery store for forgotten items, Halloween feels like a vacation. For me, Halloween just isn't Halloween without some of my favorite, standard, spooky programming.

I hate, repeat hate, scary movies. I am of the opinion that the world in which we live is about a scary as I can handle and I don't need demented clowns forcing me to amputate parts of my own body keeping me awake at night. Nor do I need an angry, burn victim with knife-hands terrorizing me in my sleep. One year I went to a friend's Halloween party and in a continuous loop, the television displayed "best of" clips from some of the most famous horror franchises. I am haunted to this day. As much as I detest horror/slasher movies, I love mildly-spooky, Halloween programming with 5-to-10-year-olds as the target audience. Gimme a good cartoon and I am happy. No surprises here - I refuse to let a Halloween pass without watching Disney's Ichabod and Mr. Toad. Who doesn't love the Washington Irving tale of the New England school teacher chased through the woods by a headless horseman? Who doesn't get a kick out of the heavily-Mary Blair influenced animation? Who doesn't want the opportunity to let the mellow "boo-boo-boo-ing" of Bing Crosby's mellifluous voice ingrain itself into the soundtrack of another holiday beyond Christmas? I ask you, who? To get you in the Halloween spirit, here are some pieces of Mary Blair's (it is never too soon to feature Mary Blair again) concept art for "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the finished cartoon in three parts.