Celebrities: Their Childhood Halloween Antics
by Danny Tyree
My seven-year-old son Gideon has a year-round obsession with Halloween, and I sometimes wonder how that will manifest itself in adulthood.
Of course, there’s also the flip side. How did today’s movers and shakers behave back in their younger days when they were MOVING apples in a tub and SHAKING plastic skeletons? My well-placed spies tell me this is how it went for the following celebrities:
President Barack Obama: “Trick or…hold on, waiting for the ol’ teleprompter to boot up…TREAT!”
Fred Phelps, leader of Westboro Baptist Church: “No, I’m not crying because I’m scared of the cemetery. I’m just sad because of all the funerals I missed. And I’m frustrated that gullible people buy all this ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ jazz. She was just to throw us off the trail! Something tells me that the Monster was a little light in the…well, not the loafers, but whatever those clodhopper boots are!”
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann: “No! Please don’t x-ray my candy at the hospital, Daddy. I have good anecdotal evidence that it causes mental retardation.”
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: “I feel deeply honored to receive the Best Costume award. This award IS effective for a lifetime, isn’t it?”
Facebook co-creator Mark Zuckerberg: “Golly, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you host the best Halloween parties in town. I feel so comfortable hobnobbing with friends at them. Everyone raves about them. Next year, why don’t you change things completely?”
Tiger Woods: “Split my candy with my cousin? THAT’LL be the day, when I hand over half of everything to somebody else.”
Rick Perry: “I refuse to wear a hand-me-down costume. That’s not how we do things in Texas. I’m not going to debate this, Mom. Or not very well, anyway.”
Rupert Murdoch: “No, I’m not going to make any prank phone calls. It’s tacky, it interferes with people’s peace and quiet and I need the phone to eavesdrop on the dog catcher.”
Herman Cain (having the same bad luck as Charlie Brown): “I got a ROCK. But with some hard work and business savvy, I can turn that rock into a restaurant franchise. Good thing, too– because I’ll really work up an APPETITE after a morning’s exertion like that.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger: “Princesses, uh huh. Cowgirls, okay. Don’t any of the girls in second grade know how to wear a MAID costume?”
Lady Gaga: “I started out wearing a Princess Leia costume made of Oscar Meyer Lunchables; but I forgot about the neighbors’ dogs, so I’m going as Lady Godiva instead.”
Speaker of the House John Boehner: “Will you teachers quit yelling, ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!’? I’ll bet even Dracula would’ve gone for a healthy tan if it wasn’t, you know, fatal.”
Sarah Palin: “So he was just a hairy dude instead of a werewolf? And here I’ve blown a year’s allowance on silver bullets.”
Mitt Romney: “Uh, no ma’am, I wasn’t at the head of the line. But everyone KNOWS it’s my turn.”
Attorney General Eric Holder: “Halloween? I didn’t know anything about Halloween. Why didn’t someone send me a memo?”
Happy Halloween! In the haunting words of the adolescent version of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: “Better not toilet paper the trees, fellows. I’ve got a feeling EVERYTHING’S going into the toilet.”
©2011 Danny Tyree. Danny welcomes reader e-mail responses at [email protected] and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades”. Danny’s’ weekly column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. newspaper syndicate and is licensed to run on TMV in full.