We take you now to Grover’s Mill, New Jersey
Halloween is important.
I’ve always loved Halloween, although pre-transition it was mostly an excuse to be anyone but myself (whom I hated). Lately, though, I’ve really began finally liking myself, which is a refreshing change of pace for a mid-life crisis.
Even if I’m not cosplaying anymore, there are still traditions that must be observed, lest we forget our past and fail to learn its lessons.
Lessons like CHECK YOUR FUCKING SOURCES.
So every year, we go to Grover’s Mill, New Jersey in order to remember the greatest Mischief Night of all goddamned time.
I have a whole podcast where I talk about Orson Welles, my best friend. Also, I miss you, Stephen, big hugs.
But first, before you do anything, you gotta get some sandwiches in Princeton.
“I’m gonna hold it like a white boy holds a fish!”
Hoagie Haven on 242 Nassau Street in Princeton, NJ. One sandwich, and your life is changed forever. Possibly due to cardiac arrest.
Then, you’re gonna haul ass over to 218 Cranbury Road, West Windsor Township, NJ, 08550, and pray to whatever god can be bothered that the light at the fucking intersection of Washington Road and Route 1 stays green long enough.
Pictured: Hell
Then, you maybe toddle around the park a little bit.
Maybe you notice that public bathroom is kept weirdly clean and well stocked with toilet paper. Maybe you check out all the stuff about the broadcast put up by the local scout troops. But what you want to do is eat your goddamn sandwich. So pick a table.
Pictured: Heaven.
I mean, look at that shit. New Jersey is fucking GORGEOUS and gets a bad rap, but come the fuck on lookit what I was treated to on a bike ride that morning:
Pictured: Heaven, but a little to the north
But for real, eat at least half of your sandwich while it’s warm.
THE BIG CAT. Burger patties, bacon, eggs, cheese, and ketchup. Orson would be SO PROUD.
A real quote!
Once you’ve defeated your sandwich, or at least accepted a temporary truce with it, go check out the monument itself.
It’s fascinating to think about the panic a regularly scheduled dramatic fictional anthology show managed to cause such a fuss. I feel like '“check your sources” is not something that truly was learned, which debunks Frank Herbert’s “Golden Path” theory pretty handily. I have a lot of thoughts on the subject, to be discussed at length in the not too distant future.
“…So goodbye everybody, and remember the terrible lesson you learned tonight. That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch, and if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there, that was no Martian. . .it’s Hallowe’en.” -Orson Welles, October 30, 1938.
“…And for god’s sake, wear something reflective.” -Dana Gould
