Halloween Selfie

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

A Happy Halloween Selfie (Oct. 31, 2026)

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

VOTE !!! (video)

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

I created and uploaded onto my YouTube channel this video to encourage people to vote in the Midterm Elections on November 3, 2026, and to thank those who have voted early. (length: 1 minute, 43 seconds)

VOTE !!! (Oct. 31, 2026)

https://youtu.be/UlSwcveGh08?is=H4h24V66unp7urkb

Oct. 31, 2026

Me as Paul on Halloween

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

For Halloween in 1979, my costume was Paul McCartney from the cover of the 1969 Beatles album Abbey Road. (McCartney is second from left.)

I was 18 years old and a huge fan of The Beatles. I am STILL a huge fan. Yes, that is my real hair combed forward. Notice that I am holding a cigarette in my right hand, just as Paul did on the album cover. (Paul is left-handed.) I also went barefooted (wearing sandals) to a party that night, just as Paul was on the cover, and wearing sandals that day due to hot temperatures. My suit was actually dark blue; the photo has faded over the years.

One of my friends took this photo in my room (No. 214, affectionately know as "Rorer 714"), Wilson Hall dormitory, Northfield Mount Hermon School (NMH), Northfield campus, in northern Massachusetts. (Hello to my fellow NMHers !!!)

Incidentally, I was given my longstanding nickname "Bungalow Bill," "Bungalow" for short, "Bungy" for even shorter, by my dormitory mates at NMH. I was nicknamed after the main character in The Beatles song "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill."

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

"The Captain" on Halloween

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

Let me take you back to Halloweens in the later 1960s into the early 1970s, when I was a kid, and a personal Halloween tradition.

It's Halloween again, and my friends and I are once again deciding if we are going to go trick-or-treating at Captain Kangaroo's house. Bob Keeshan, who plays the captain, lives a few miles from my home on Long Island, New York.

And, as we do every Halloween, my friends and I abandoned this idea. We would either have to get a parent to drive us there or risk our lives riding our bicycles on a busy two-lane highway with no sidewalk. Besides, there is a rather high fence around his house, so we wouldn't even be able to get to his front door. Still, my friends and I always enjoy having our traditional discussion about The Captain every Halloween.

(true story)

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

Italian Halloween Costume

Italian Halloween Costume

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

What was your worst Halloween costume ever? My worst costume was the result of being asked to a party at the last minute when I was studying at the University of Missouri in Columbia in the late 1980s. I put on dark sunglasses and grabbed an unopened box of dry spaghetti from my kitchen cabinet. I went as a Venetian Blind.

Here I am re-enacting that costume for Halloween at my mom's home in 2020. Note that I am wearing my brown "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" T-shirt, which I didn't have back in the 1980s. The glasses and the pasta are, of course, also different.

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

Halloween Story

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

A personal Halloween story from the early 1970s

When I was 11 or 12 years old in 1972 or 1973, I went trick-or-treating with my friends on several streets near my house in West Islip, Long Island, New York. We came to a house where a woman gave every child one piece of candy and one shiny penny. When it was my turn, she gave me the piece of candy and then gave me three pennies. I smiled and went to the next house thinking that I was two cents better than the other kids. You know, that woman sent some kid after me and made me give back the extra two cents. I am sure that there is a life lesson in there somewhere.

By the way, we never went to the house on the left side at the end of that street, only a few houses from where that lady lived. There was a rumor that the guy who lived there was shooting kids with a BB-gun rifle from a second-floor window. I don't know if it was true, but why take a chance, right?

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

Today Is ...

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, I loved magic and practical jokes. For brevity, I'll just mention two incidents at elementary school rather than explain my extensive experiences with my Chinese linking rings and my color-changing handkerchiefs, plus my talking toilet device, my spoon with the hole in it, my sneezing powder, my plastic ice cubes with the dead flies inside, oh, my joy buzzer and whoopie cushion and fake vomit. I had it all.

When I was in sixth grade in 1972 at the age of 11, I brought a magic trick to school to show my friends. The problem with that was: my classmate and fellow magician John Bass. John could flip 50-cent pieces all around his long, skinny fingers. He was amazing. So, John saw me performing my magic trick for a small group of classmates and quickly approached me. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and angrily yelled at me, "I'm the only magician in this classroom." I said, "OK," and I never brought another magic trick to school. (true story)

I also once scared my sixth-grade teacher Mr. Carlson. I had a trick pen that made a loud bang when opened. One day, while my classmates were reading textbooks at their desks, I asked the teacher if he could open my pen. He said, "If you can't open it, I doubt if I can." He opened it, and BANG! We both laughed, but him not as much as me. He said, "Ah. You got me." After the bang, all of my classmates looked up from their books for a short moment and then went back to reading. Not one laugh was uttered. Not one word was spoken. Dead silence. (true story)

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

On Halloween in Babylon, Long Island, New York, in the 1960s, when I was a kid, my parents gave out 150 candy apples to the kids, plus regular candy if we ran out of the apples. Trivia: Candy apples are more popular on the East Coast and West Coast of the United States, whereas caramel apples are more popular in the U.S. Midwest.

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

My favorite Knock Knock joke is:

Knock. Knock.

Who's there?

Cantaloupe.

Cantaloupe who?

Cantaloupe without a ladder. (can't elope)

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

I can remember doing the ring-and-run prank once when I was a very young kid in the 1960s, but I don't think it was on Halloween.

From husband Bill, Oct. 31, 2026

Voting

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

Here is a wide-shot photo of myself yesterday evening (Oct. 29, 2026), pretending to "contemplate" my choices for my mail-in ballot for the Midterm Elections on Nov. 3, 2026. Judging by my "MAGA" cap and my "VOTE MALE" shirt, you can quite possibly guess for whom I voted. (I wear my "VOTE MALE" shirt whenever I am completing my ballot and also on every Election Day.)

I have been a political supporter of Trump and the "MAGA" Movement since 2015. "Make America Great Again" !!! I received this cap in the mail on January 24, 2025. I ordered it shortly after Donald J. Trump's presidential inauguration on January 20, 2025. 

I purchased my "VOTE MALE" T-shirt (with a huge logo on the back), along with a white cap with the same logo, in the early 1990s, when I was in my early 30s, working in New York City (from 1991 to 1998). The early 1990s is when I officially became a Men's Rights Activist (an "MRA"), making attempts at preserving and expanding men's rights. I am still an "MRA" to this day and beyond.

(The "VOTE MALE" Movement actually means to vote for men AND women who support Men's Rights.)

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

Halloween At AMI

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

Here we are, the copy desk editors of Globe and National Examiner magazines, wearing wigs in our newsroom in Boca Raton, Florida, in celebration of Halloween on Friday, October 30, 2009.

Of course, that's me on the right, wearing my "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" T-shirt. The woman in the boa (in the back) is not wearing a wig.

From 2002 to 2011, I was a copy editor and page designer for American Media Inc., which publishes the weekly supermarket/gossip tabloids. During those nine years, I edited and designed many pages every week for Star, Globe, National Examiner, and National Enquirer magazines.

In the lower photo, behind me on the wall, are small printed pages of the issue of Globe magazine that we were in the midst of completing. We had an 8 p.m. final deadline for Globe magazine every Friday. We had a 6 p.m. final deadline for National Examiner every Wednesday.

We worked on the pages of both of those magazines at the same time, so we had lots of work and lots of fun.

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

29th Anniversary Of Fendrich

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

Today (October 30, 2026) is the 29th anniversary of the best concert I have ever attended. On October 30, 1997, I experienced an amazing performance by my all-time favorite pop singer/guitarist, Rainhard Fendrich, and his band. His genre of music is called "Austropop," which is pop music by Austrian singers and musicians. During the concert, Austropop singer/guitarist Wolfgang Ambros made a surprise appearance and sang a duet on Fendrich's most famous song: "I Am From Austria." I am also a  fan of Ambros.

The Fendrich concert was at the Wiener Stadthalle (arena) in Vienna, Austria. I enjoyed it with one of my many Austrian cousins, her husband, and more than 16,000 other fans. I was living in Jersey City, New Jersey, at the time. (I now live in southeastern Florida.)

Here is a video from that concert tour. Fendrich's song "Über meinen Horizont" was the second song he performed at the concert I attended. This ballad, which is one of my favorite songs, is from Fendrich's 1989 studio album "Von Zeit zu Zeit."

https://youtu.be/zNOLTImfadc

I first became a fan of Fendrich in 1983, while visiting many of my Austrian cousins in the westernmost Austrian province of Vorarlberg. This was my second of seven trips to Austria to visit my cousins and also to go skiing in the Austrian Alps. Anyway, I heard one of his songs on the car radio when my cousin was driving me to the airport in nearby Zürich, Switzerland, to return home. I was immediately hooked. I asked another cousin in the car who was singing. She told me, so I purchased Fendrich's second and third albums on vinyl at the music store in the airport. He only had three albums at that time. Several years later, I would discover his first album.

I purchased many more of his vinyl albums and CDs during my later trips to Austria, as well as many more CDs that I bought online. I still listen to many of his albums on my turntable. I have 49 (yes, forty-nine) of Fendrich's CDs, which includes duplicates of two of those CDs and one interview CD.

He writes (sometimes co-writes) all of his songs, which are all sung in the German language. His earliest albums from the early to mid-1980s are sung in the Viennese dialect of German. He soon switched to writing songs in "High German" (textbook German) so that more people could understand them.

I also have a videotape and several DVDs of his concerts and music videos; a photo calendar from 1987; a hardcover biography written in German; and two of his autographs, even though I have never met him. Also, at one time, I was the only non-European member of his official fan club. I lost that title when a man from Japan joined the club.

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

***

Today (October 30, 2026) is the 29th anniversary of the best concert I have ever attended. On October 30, 1997, I experienced an amazing performance by my all-time favorite pop singer/guitarist, Rainhard Fendrich, and his band at the Wiener Stadthalle (arena). His genre of music is called "Austropop," which is pop music by Austrian singers and musicians, all sung in German. I enjoyed it with one of my many Austrian cousins, her husband, and more than 16,000 other fans. I was living in Jersey City, New Jersey, at the time. (I now live in southeastern Florida.)

Here is a video from that concert tour. Fendrich's song "Über meinen Horizont" was the second song he performed at the concert I attended. This ballad, which is one of my favorite songs, is from Fendrich's 1989 studio album "Von Zeit zu Zeit."

https://youtu.be/zNOLTImfadc

I first became a fan of Fendrich in 1983, while visiting many of my Austrian cousins in the westernmost Austrian province of Vorarlberg. This was my second of seven trips to Austria to visit my cousins and also to go skiing in the Austrian Alps. Anyway, I heard one of his songs on the car radio when my cousin was driving me to the airport in nearby Zürich, Switzerland, to return home. I was immediately hooked. I asked another cousin in the car who was singing. She told me, so I purchased Fendrich's second and third albums on vinyl at the music store in the airport. He only had three albums at that time. Several years later, I would discover his first album.

I purchased many more of his vinyl albums and CDs during my later trips to Austria, as well as many more CDs that I bought online. I still listen to many of his albums on my turntable. I have 49 (yes, forty-nine) of Fendrich's CDs, which includes duplicates of two of those CDs and one interview CD.

I also have a videotape and several DVDs of his concerts and music videos; a photo calendar from 1987; a hardcover biography written in German; and two of his autographs, even though I have never met him. Also, at one time, I was the only non-European member of his official fan club. I lost that title when a man from Japan joined the club.

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

Today Is ...

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

I am going to enjoy candy corn today.

I love candy corn, not only for their distinctive fake taste, waxy texture, coating of shellac, and various numbered colors, but also because they contain FOUR types of sugar.

Here are the ingredients for Brach's Classic Candy Corn (my favorite): Sugar, Corn Syrup, Confectioner's Glaze (Shellac), Salt, Dextrose, Gelatin, Sesame Oil, Artificial Flavor, Honey, Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 3.

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

After studying for 2 1/2 years in the pre-med program at university, I decided to change my major to pursue a journalistic career (series of gigs) starting in the mid-1980s simply because I read a newspaper article (New York Post) that stated that male journalists and public relations men were rated the least sexy professionals according to women. (A broken romance added to my decision.)

I was in my early 20s in the early 1980s, so I had already established that I was already unattractive to women. I figured that becoming a journalist was what I wanted to do, and it would make me only slightly less attractive to women.

I was a journalist from September 1982 to April 2017, when I was forced to retire due to medical issues. I would like to mention that I wasn't one of those loony liberal journalists. I have been a politically far-right guy for my entire life who has always kept his political bias out of his profession.

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

I like the breadsticks at Olive Garden. (Yeah, I have been there, but don't usually go there). However, as I have aged, I have developed a taste sensitivity to salt, so they tend to now be too salty.

From husband Bill, Oct. 30, 2026

Selfie

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

Selfie following this evening's (Oct. 29, 2026) haircut and shave (house call)

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

Ballot Completion

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

Here I am this evening (Oct. 29, 2026), pretending to "contemplate" my choices for my mail-in ballot for the Midterm Elections on Nov. 3, 2026. Judging by my "MAGA" cap and my "VOTE MALE" shirt, you can quite possibly guess for whom I voted. (I wear my "VOTE MALE" shirt whenever I am completing my ballot and also on every Election Day.)

I have been a political supporter of Trump and the "MAGA" Movement since 2015. "Make America Great Again" !!! I received this cap in the mail on January 24, 2025. I ordered it shortly after Donald J. Trump's presidential inauguration on January 20, 2025. 

I purchased my "VOTE MALE" T-shirt (with a huge logo on the back), along with a white cap with the same logo, in the early 1990s, when I was in my early 30s, working in New York City (from 1991 to 1998). The early 1990s is when I officially became a Men's Rights Activist (an "MRA"), making attempts at preserving and expanding men's rights. I am still an "MRA" to this day and beyond.

(The "VOTE MALE" Movement actually means to vote for men AND women who support Men's Rights.)

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

Blood Oranges

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

This early afternoon, I enjoyed one of my favorite fruits: blood orange. I ate two of them (photo) because they are small. Blood oranges are seasonal, December to May, so I'm not sure if these are early or late. They are most probably early because they are smaller than the typical blood orange.

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

Today Is ...

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

I like oatmeal, preferably steel-cut, with chocolate chips and/or berries (never strawberries ... YUCK !!!), sometimes with real maple syrup, and sometimes with brown sugar. However, I prefer grits with butter and a little white sugar for crunch. Shrimp and grits is a favorite dinner of mine.

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

I am absolutely a hermit at heart ... and by design and practice. I am perfectly comfortable being alone at home: (well, with my wife).

I grew up as an only child (with a few close friends); and was without female companionship from age 20 to age 40, and not by choice, including 414 rejections by women in 18 months with a video-dating service in the mid-1990s. (I did have a few dates.)

However, being with people is sometimes better.

I have led a rather nomadic existence, having lived in six states: New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Missouri, New Jersey, and Florida.

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

Cats are OK, but I prefer dogs, who are my kindred spirits, at least the big, slobbering ones. I am as faithful as an old hound dog.

From husband Bill, Oct. 29, 2026

Candy Review: "Aplets & Cotlets"

From husband Bill, Oct. 28, 2026

I created and uploaded onto my YouTube channel this candy review of "Aplets & Cotlets." (length: 4 minutes, 42 seconds)

I have not eaten this candy since the 1960s, when my age was in single digits. Recently, the thought of them popped into my head, so I decided to get some.

Candy Review: "Aplets & Cotlets" (Oct. 28, 2026)

https://youtu.be/g5icMj7A5-4?is=WGH7414eFDx6e8MV

From husband Bill, Oct. 28, 2026

Today Is ...

From husband Bill, Oct. 28, 2026

I like dark chocolate because of its bitterness. My favorite candies are chocolate-covered orange peels and chocolate-covered marzipan.

From husband Bill, Oct. 28, 2026

Between March 2022 and May 2026, I endured nine surgeries: 1 open-heart (quadruple bypass), 2 chest (sternal screws loose, infection, opened, then closed a week later), 2 spine (abscess removal and titanium rods attached), 1 right ankle (fractures), 1 both legs (artery bypass, right to left), 1 left foot (2nd and 3rd toes amputated), and 1 left leg (angioplasty). 

From husband Bill, Oct. 28, 2026

I agree with comedian Bill Burr when he says that first responders are actually second responders who have been notified of the disaster by the first responders who are at the scene of the disaster already.

From husband Bill, Oct. 28, 2026