[00:00:00] Halloween family traditions

Lisa Lane: You just started embarrassing them early, okay? I cannot recommend this enough. Because when they’re teenagers, it’s a hack. When you just like, embarrassing my children, one of the many skills I provide.

Andrea Marie: We are Moms Unhinged, a nationally touring standup comedy show. Join us in our podcast as we explore everything from motherhood, midlife, crisis, marriage, divorce, online dating, menopause, and other things that irritate us.

Hello everyone, and welcome to Moms Unhinged, the podcast. I’m your host, Andrea Marie, and I am here with the fabulous and amazing Lisa Lane and Tiffany Burke, some of our wonderful, wonderful comedians on Moms Unhinged. Welcome, ladies.

Lisa Lane: Hi, Andrea.

Tiffany Burke: Hi, Andrea. Hi, Lisa.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, super fun. Lisa is here, based here in Denver in Colorado, and Tiffany is based in Georgia, and we are going to be talking today about Halloween. It’s, we are getting close to Halloween here, and that’s always just a fun time. I don’t know, do you guys have fun memories of Halloween with your kids?

Or was it crazy? What do you remember? What’s your, what was a fun?

Tiffany Burke: Halloween was my favorite holiday before I had kids, so once I had kids, it was just an excuse to turn it all the way up.

Andrea Marie: Yeah

Tiffany Burke: We have a ritual every year. As soon as September, the end of September hits, me and my son, we go to the pumpkin field. We get the biggest pumpkin that we can possibly find, and then we carve.

We love to carve pumpkins. And we’re really eclectic with our carvings. So like the other year, we did Phineas and Ferb.

Andrea Marie: Oh, nice. I love Phineas and Ferb.

Tiffany Burke: My extra… Yeah, and then the second pumpkin was, Perry the Platypus.

Andrea Marie: That’s awesome.

Tiffany Burke: And so like every year we have a theme. We usually do every person in the house gets a pumpkin, so there’s usually four pumpkins at the door.

But we’re pumpkin stencil people.

Andrea Marie: Those are hard. Those are, that is hard work. Those are hard.

Tiffany Burke: Hard, but the kids need it because it’s not digital. It requires drawing and it requires cutting. So I feel like I’m like giving them some analog skills that-

Lisa Lane: exactly.

Tiffany Burke: Never had. Here’s a knife, kids.

Exactly. Cut something, not each other.

Lisa Lane: Yeah.

Andrea Marie: How about you, Lisa? What was?

Lisa Lane: I I grew up in the country, so harvest time was a big deal for us. And I mean, we always had a bigger garden than I ever appreciated when I was a kid. But it was, I mean, harvesting our own pumpkins and carving pump- absolutely love it. My birthday is October 25th, so my mother always had a Halloween birthday party for me.

Costume party. There was always a costume parade. We took it very seriously. But the funny thing is then, so same with my kids, I mean, and my neighborhood where I raised my children, they went hard. But there wasn’t, it was the opposite of stencil carving, and I think that’s funny to me.

I am a potter and I’ve done a lot of visual art in my life, a lot of things that are very careful and time-consuming, and I think because of that, pumpkin carving to me is like, “Nah.” We go fast and we go guts out. Er, er, scrape, scrape, scrapey scrape, and then like I cut three big triangles and a jagged mouth.

I just like it’s fun. It’s transient. It’s ephemeral. It’s gonna get eaten by squirrels in Denver, Colorado anyway if you put it out. I mean, we’ve done all the things. All of it is fun, right? Save the pumpkin seeds, salt the pumpkin seeds, the various things you do. Soak the pumpkin to try to make it last.

But ultimately, we did it last year, and we didn’t have a single kid around. We had like my 80-year-old aunt and uncle visiting. We just carved pumpkins in the kitchen. It’s just like visceral fun.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Tiffany Burke: And you’re never too old for Halloween.

Lisa Lane: Temporary, I think, there’s something fun about that to me. It’s opposite.

I’m a potter. I glaze something in the kiln, it’s forever. It’s metamorphic rock. So there’s something about the temporal part of pumpkin carving that’s just fun with and without kids. about you, Andrea? What’s your pumpkin carving?

Andrea Marie: Yeah, we love the stencils too. We would get into it. We bought the kit. But you have to get it really thin. I’m not super patient, so like I inevitably don’t get the side thin enough. You have to scrape and scrape and scrape, and I’m like, “Ugh, I’m over it,” you know?

And I just, and then I try and muscle through it, and it never quite, you know, big chunks fall out. But like, you know, I so it never quite looks like… but we’ve done, like, some fun things like a cat and a moon and a tree and, you know, like, a haunted house looking thing and stuff. We’ve never done like little, little themes.

It’s all been pretty wild. And sometimes like, you know, my son has made his own like you know, he, he gets real into the kinda nerdy type of movies and, you know, video games, and then he’ll make some sort of little theme around.

Lisa Lane: We’ve had many a Star Wars jack-o-lantern in my nerdy.

Tiffany Burke: Yeah, my kids choose the theme.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Tiffany Burke: I have to go along and find something and create the stencil myself.

Andrea Marie: I just realized we’re all boy moms, aren’t we?

Tiffany Burke: Yeah.

Lisa Lane: God bless. All boy moms. Okay. I don’t know we can’t even speak to the girl pumpkin carving times.

Andrea Marie: I know, right?

Tiffany Burke: I came from when I was a girl.

Lisa Lane: Yeah, no kidding. And we had neighborhood stuff. I mean, we really did. It always does feel, to me it does feel like a reason to gather. I mean, when I worked, professionally we would have pumpkin carving parties when we needed sort of a professional development thing, which is fun.

And I mean, make no mistake, I want people who want to go hard and be very specific about it. I want them to have their best experience. I go hard on the tools. I mean, not only those plastic stuff. No, no. There are some like dental tools.

Tiffany Burke: I literally have a kit for carving, and it’s dental stuff. Yeah, it’s my sewing. Like, I’ve gone to places where I go just for the knives.

Lisa Lane: For the little saw thing.

Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. No getting dental tools and pottery tools. I get… and same. So my personal style is no, no, I’m not gonna spend more than five minutes on that pumpkin. But if you want to, and I love, I actually love watching that. I love watching.

Tiffany Burke: And I’m gonna spend five hours.

Lisa Lane: And I love watching b- my husband will do that.

He will carve. He’ll look up a thing, a Grateful Dead thing, and he’ll print out the thing and make his template, and spend so much time on it. And I love that creative expression, but also I’m like, “It’s gonna rot in two days.”

Tiffany Burke: It’s the art. It’s the art.

Andrea Marie: It’s of it. It’s fun.

Tiffany Burke: It’s the illustration, it’s the art.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Lisa Lane: it is. And it’s the ephemera of it. It’s fun. It only exits right in this time, and then it’s gone.

[00:07:10] The stress of Halloween costumes

Andrea Marie: And speaking of art, how about the costumes? What Okay did you was your costume experience? I mean, I found it a little stressful, ’cause you did have to get like sometimes we did some homemade costumes, but oftentimes we were just going store-bought. And you have to get there, you have to get them pretty early if you want the, if you got the size and the type, and they sell out.

So I don’t know. And then the decision, it’s a hard decision. How about you guys? Did you guys have, were you homemade costume or store-bought? What was?

Tiffany Burke: I’m both. We do, it depends on what costume you chose that year. Unfortunately my sons are very eclectic.

So a lot of the things that they choose, there’s no homemade version of that. Or if there is, it no longer fits their size, so I have to come up with something. Luckily my grandma did teach me to sew.

Andrea Marie: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany Burke: So I’ve been doing a lot of that.

But mainly it’s just us, like, creating our own version of the thing.

Andrea Marie: Uh huh.

Tiffany Burke: And then writing what it is.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, letting people know. This is….

Lisa Lane: That’s funny.

Andrea Marie: That’s funny.

Lisa Lane: I found it extremely stressful, and here’s why. Listen, I was in the theater and when I was in college, a costume designer said to me exactly what then I kind of carried with me. She said, “Some of my children’s classmates have parents who are doctors, and lawyers, and whatever, big important things, or airline pilots, and they get to go on vacations.

I am a costume designer. My children will have the best costumes. That is the place that I can show love and shine as a mom.” And I kinda carried that with me because same, same. That is where, that I mean, playing dress-up, my boys were both dress-up guys, as was I. I mean, again, I grew up with a costume parade for my birthday.

It felt like, “This is where I will shine.” And so there was always, like to me, no limit. Like, that’s where I would indulge whatever the fantasies were for my little children. “What do you wanna be? We will bring it to life.” I mean, one year George was Oscar the Grouch, and we got an actual garbage can from Home Depot, cut out the bottom, put suspenders.

I mean, walked around with… like.

Andrea Marie: My God.

Lisa Lane: Just… And I know it, like, it sounds mental when I think about it now. It’s like, no, that’s just what we did, and it’s how

Tiffany Burke: Amazing. Sounds amazing, amazing.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Lisa Lane: Well, and then, yes, and then, and like you say, Tiffany, it was kind of an amalgamation. Sometimes there was just a store-bought thing we had to have.

[00:09:53] Homemade bat costume disaster

Lisa Lane: So it was always that, and then the boys kind of went in and out of interest. But I was always just there. If you need a costume for homecoming or whatever, Mama, that is my whole love language. And then I will never forget kindergarten. My oldest son, Augie, he’s going to kindergarten. This kid was in love with bats.

He wanted to be a bat biologist. We would go to the Denver Zoo and just go to Tropical Discovery and look at the bat cave for an hour. Bats, bats, bats. I made him a homemade bat costume. I mean, we talked about it. He was there for… It had wings that spread, okay? And my mother hand-sewed all of my costumes as a kid.

So again, this is legacy. I’m very proud of it. It was so cool. I went to school for the Halloween party and the school parade, and he refused to be in the parade because he wanted a store-bought Pokemon costume, or Yu-Gi-Oh!, or whatever the thing was. He hated his homemade bat costume, was absolutely horrified by it, and cried, and wouldn’t wear it, and was embarrassed.

And I think that for trick-or-treat, again, this is how I indulge my children. I think for trick-or-treat, like two nights later or whatever, I did have another Goodwill trip where I made him a little makeshift Yu-Gi-Oh!. “Okay, fine. You wanna be Yu…” ridiculous. Ridiculous.

Andrea Marie: That’s amazing

Lisa Lane: Halloween is a real mixed bag of mothering for me.

It’s all the things.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Tiffany Burke: But do you… So I don’t, my question is do you, cause it doesn’t matter what the kids do every Halloween, I choose my costume in the summertime.

Lisa Lane: Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Burke: Like last year was K-pop demon hunters.

Andrea Marie: Oh, yeah.

Tiffany Burke: So for Halloween I was one of the Suju boy aunties. Like I went hardcore and found all of the things. Yeah, I think I’m more dedicated to Halloween than my boys are.

[00:11:46] Halloween costume regrets

Lisa Lane: Yeah, I think I was too. And there was only one misstep that I made one year. The whole neighborhood picked a theme, and the boys were kinda only vaguely involved ’cause they were in high school, but I was still going hard.

And the neighbors, and they had little kids, and so we all dressed. Anyway, that year, out of character for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t my first choice, but something wasn’t there at the store, and I made a decision.

And I remember actually kind of thinking, “I think I have a fever.” And then I got sick. I wore a sexy costume.

Andrea Marie: Oh.

Lisa Lane: And regretted it so hard because, like, my boys were in late middle school. I got there and went, “I don’t know what I was thinking. This is so terrible.” I went home and just changed.

Tiffany Burke: I don’t belong here.

Andrea Marie: It’s so hard. The thing that makes me crazy about women’s costumes is that it’s all sexy. It’s all like, you know, it’s not just sexy nurse, it’s like, you know, sexy dragon or you know, like, everything is all, it’s always sexy something. I’m like, “I just wanna be a regular thing.”

Tiffany Burke: What if I wanna a messy dragon?

Andrea Marie: I know.

Lisa Lane: Right. Well, and that’s the thing. I mean, again, first time in my li- I was in high school. I would go hard or go… And it was just always ugly. One year I went, it’s hard to explain, I went as tooth plaque. It doesn’t, I’m just saying like I was not the sexy costume girl.

And one, like I said, I made a misstep, and it was that. I just wanted to be Alice in Wonderland. It was to, I was gonna be the adult version, and our friend, who looked like me, she had the thing. I was just looking for the regular Disney, and it was, they were sold out. So I ended up with the sexier version, and I just felt so stupid.

And again, it was, I was so in the thick of mothering that I think I just thought, “What? I deserve to go out and look nice. I’m gonna, you know, my husband will love this. I’m just gonna, it’ll be a little sexy.” And I just went, “What the hell have I done?” I went right home and changed my.

clothes. Okay,

Tiffany Burke: I’m still stuck on tooth plaque, and I immediately, it made me wanna be, I wanna be floss now. Like now.

Andrea Marie: I need a photo. I need a-

Tiffany Burke: Like I need, I need to know who accompanied you.

Lisa Lane: Thank you for normalizing.

Tiffany Burke: Was there toothpaste? Yes, There was a toothbrush, and it’s, hard to explain, but thank you for yes and-ing that so hard, ’cause it’s just hard to explain. But please do be my dental floss girl.

Amazing because I was like, “Plaque?”

Lisa Lane: Thank you so much.

[00:14:12] Andrea’s Halloween crossing guard costumes

Andrea Marie: That’s so funny. Well, my kids are used to, my kids are used to being a little bit embarrassed by me because I was the crossing guard at their school for 11 years in a row, volunteered. That was my favorite volunteer job, ’cause it was like I didn’t have to talk to anybody, it was done in an hour.

Lisa Lane: Andrea, I love when you say it’s the most visible.

Andrea Marie: It’s the most visible volunteer. Everyone was like, “Thank you.” I was a hero. They would… I did almost get hit a bunch, so it was truly. But like, people would, you know, at, holiday times they’d be giving me all these gift cards. You know, the person who works on the yearbook doesn’t get gift cards.

They’re just in their basement. My shift would fall on Halloween every year. And if it didn’t fall on Halloween, I would switch so that my crossing guard was on Halloween. So I would go crazy and dress up. I was, Maleficent one year. I had big butterfly wings one year, ’cause that was a fun for a crossing guard.

I would be like, whoo-poof. And then I had, and a crazy purple wig, and then I had, I was, Elphaba the Witch, and then I was… What else did I? I went as grapes one year. so I, they’re used to me, like, dressing up in weird costumes. But it was kinda hard to, like, I’m like, “Well, I can’t be this sexy,” you know, there’s a bunch of kindergartners going by here.

I’m not gonna be sexy Elphaba, or whatever, you know?

Lisa Lane: Well, see, I, first of all, when I remember seeing a reel or a carousel of those photos like you did of memory kind of before I really knew you very well and just going, “Oh, I love this chick.”

[00:15:56] The art of embarrassing your kids

Lisa Lane: And the other thing that I would just like to point out, to all the listeners, Moms Unhinged, you did such a smart thing.

You just started embarrassing them early, okay? I cannot recommend this enough. Because when they’re teenagers, it’s a hack. When you just like, embarrassing my children, one of the many skills I provide. And if we all are just laughing ’cause when they’re in kindergarten they’re proud of you, they think it’s adorable and cool that you’re…

I mean, maybe. My kid, who knows? But like, and then I just think it’s brilliant, and I think that is a hack, and you, as always, lead the way, Andrea. Because that’s so smart. They’re just used to you being a goofball, and then when they could melt into the floor when they’re older, it’s just part of the thing, it, that’s a part of our vibe.

Andrea Marie: They’re already like, “That’s just mom. Whatever. She’s doing her thing.”

Lisa Lane: Mm-hmm. And that makes you a better parent of teenagers because honestly then when they’re teenagers you can show up and, you know, just whatever, all the things that you do that they find so very cringe, you’re like, “Yeah, well, ha ha, that’s what I do here.”

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Tiffany Burke: My kids finally think it’s cool, so I’m excited.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. It is. They come around. They come around, thankfully. They’re like, “Okay, yeah.”

Tiffany Burke: ‘Cause every year, no matter what, that week I do different costumes. I’m always Carmen San Diego at least once.

Andrea Marie: Oh, yeah.

Tiffany Burke: I’m big on that.

Andrea Marie: That’s awesome. Yeah, I

Tiffany Burke: That’s my only store-bought.

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[00:18:20] Trick-or-treating with the kids

Andrea Marie: And then how about what did you guys, what was your guys’ experience with trick-or-treating? What was that like? That’s a whole thing in itself. I always had to have a little, little, little wine to go with that.

Tiffany Burke: So with the boys, it’s always been the fight of who’s gonna take them, who’s gonna stay.

Andrea Marie: True. Yeah.

Tiffany Burke: So we always roll dice.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Lisa Lane: Amazing.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Tiffany Burke: And whoever got the highest number had to take the boys. Whoever got the lowest number got to stay at the house and give the kids candy. So some years I got to go. The last couple years I’ve been winning, so I stay at the house.

Andrea Marie: Yeah

Tiffany Burke: So, I don’t know. It’s been fun, but having the age gap, my oldest really does a great job of always taking his brother, and he- they had decided the last couple years that they didn’t want me to come anyway.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, it gets to that point where you’re just slowing them down, you know?

Tiffany Burke: That’s what they said. That was the quote, was, “You walk too slow.”

Andrea Marie: I know. Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Lane: We grew up, I raised my boys really in a city, and it was really during the era where we didn’t even, like nobody even tried. It was a lot of trunk-or-treat, and every little, you know, every little retail street in Denver had Halloween. And then the high schools. And then my boys participated in that various, like, sports teams or student council doing the…

They were the teenagers, and they did the trick-or-treat street for the little kids. You know? They would have themes and games and hand out candy. It was very cute to see them, sort of give back in that way when they were teenagers. So yeah, we just did, like, kind of all of that amalgamation. You know, we went to a lot of…

it seems like we went to a lot of retailers when they were little kids.

Andrea Marie: Yeah

Lisa Lane: But it’s a funny little thing. What a weird little thing we teach.

kids.

Andrea Marie: I know, right? It is weird. And I love.

Tiffany Burke: To go ask strangers for candy.

Andrea Marie: I know, that first time we took my, you know, my one son, he wanted to go, you know, he wanted to go in every house. You know? Someone opens the door, he’s going in. You know? He’s like it was so cute. We had to tell him that, “No, no. You gotta stay out. They’re just opening the door to give you candy.” But he was trying to get in to every house. I mean, I think we.

Tiffany Burke: That was me. I wanna see what your house look like.

Lisa Lane: so fun. Yeah, right, that also weird, right? It’s this experience of, yeah, like just knocking on stranger, like your neighbor’s doors and like, “Hmm, who lives in there? I never see any of this.” Well, when we were kids, we trick-or-treated, like, for UNICEF, right? We carried around a little cardboard box, and people did…

I mean, in my era, that was a real thing. They gave you a candy, and they gave you a few coins for UNICEF. I think the whole thing is so funny now when I just think about door to door, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Like we also used to go actual door to door in our neighborhood selling Girl Scout cookies.

And now in the age of Ring doorbell, last year, my husband and I live in a new neighborhood and a suburban neighborhood for the first time in a long time. And we went door to door inviting people to a neighborhood party. And we didn’t have any other way, we don’t have mailboxes that we know who they’re assigned to.

Anyway, there was really no other way to get the word out. And people greeted us with such a measure of, such a mix of suspicion, correct, yes, disdain, and almost fear.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Lisa Lane: And watched the whole thing on the Ring doorbell. I mean, it was hilarious. And at one point we had left a little flyer, and one of our neighbors, it was December, again, in a snowstorm.

One of our neighbors came running out, yelling our names ’cause we had signed our name to the thing, saying, “Oh, oh, sorry, we thought it…” Well, they thought it was unhoused people looking for a place to stay ’cause it was snowing out, and we were covered with snow. And they thought we had been walking for a long time.

And to that, they did not answer the door. So we were curious about, golly gee, we used to ring, we used to send children alone.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Lisa Lane: Sending, and your children, like alone out on Halloween, just alone out to knock on.

Andrea Marie: Door to door. Yeah.

Lisa Lane: That doesn’t happen anymore.

Andrea Marie: That is kinda crazy. We had a really funny experience when I was trick-or-treating when I was young, me and my friend. It was getting towards the end of the night, and you know, people start turning their lights off to indicate they’re not.

But like for some reason we were trying to get every house, and there was a house that didn’t have their lights on, but we heard, you know, we rang the front doorbell and nothing, and then we heard him coming out the side door. And we run over there, we’re like, “Trick or treat,” and he’s looking at us clearly like, you know, a, you know, young dude, lives alone probably.

He’s like, “Uh, uh,” and he goes back into his house, and he comes out with a butternut squash that he gives us.

Lisa Lane: Amazing.

Amazing

Tiffany Burke: That’s always the ones that I hate. Like,

Andrea Marie: Thank you.”

Tiffany Burke: I get real mad. It’s like, you giving me carrots, son? Bagged carrots?

Lisa Lane: My mother, there was a year, and I remember specifically being embarrassed because maybe people would talk about it at school. And again, we lived kind of in the country, but still there were people walked this little kind of alley lane, and we gave raisins. You could-

Andrea Marie: Raisins.

Tiffany Burke: I’ll take raisins. I’ll take raisins. Raisins are okay. That’s a sweet fruit.

Lisa Lane: It’s a sweet fruit, but it’s still-

Tiffany Burke: Sweet, dried.

Lisa Lane: It’s healthy. It’s bullshit.

Tiffany Burke: It’s a healthy.

Lisa Lane: It is bullshit.

Tiffany Burke: on the other hand.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, carrots, that’s bad. that’s insane. That’s insulting. Terrible.

Tiffany Burke: like, where’s the candy corn?

Lisa Lane: There’s A whole thing now, right? And there is a thing in the era, people… I watched it last year too. I think it’s like a TikTok trend where it’s give a rock or give a squash or something, and very Charlie Brown. One year actually, my husband-

Tiffany Burke: Very Charlie Brown.

Lisa Lane: He did give one of our neighbors whom we loved, and they loved our little boys, and they loved watching them dress up, and we did trick or treat at their house.

And he set the neighbors up because we had watched The Great Pumpkin, and Charlie Brown has that line, line, “I got a rock.” He did set our neighbors up to put a rock in the thing. But like my boy, whatever, they got it, it was in context. But I think that’s a whole trend now.

Andrea Marie: Wow.

Lisa Lane: And then get the response of kids. But it also feels like if it’s a TikTok trend, the kids already know it’s ha- you know, you can’t punk anybody anymore.

Andrea Marie: I know. Kids know everything. They really know everything. My parents used to give out a quarter.

Lisa Lane: That’s sexy.

Andrea Marie: I know. They c-

Tiffany Burke: That was my grandparents. They would give out troy ounces. They collected silver troy ounces, and my grandpa would buy, and he would give everybody a silver troy ounce. And people like, I don’t think kids like were getting what they were getting. hadn’t clocked to them. And one of our friends came back to our house and was like, “Hey, your grandpa got any more of them silver troy ounces?”

Lisa Lane: At least as a kid you could understand that 25 cents.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, buy candy. In our age, you could buy something at the drugstore. You could buy a candy bar.

Well now, you know, nowadays I don’t even get this, the whole like buy it back kinda, you know, you get all the candy, and then the dentist buys it all back, and the kids can’t even have it. I’m like, “Who are we giving this to?”

Lisa Lane: It is a churn. Isn’t it the weirdest? It’s just like a churn. And in, I don’t mean to speak from my privilege, but I don’t think a lot of kids today in, like, our neighborhoods are lacking in their access to candy or sugary things.

Do you know what I mean? Like, it used to be a treat when we were growing up. I think now it’s a fight to keep sugar out of your hamburger.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Out of your hamburger. I know. Would you?

Tiffany Burke: I would notice that my son, the thing that he loves the most, and that’s another thing, it really depends on the kid, because my youngest, he hates sweets.

Andrea Marie: Mm.

Tiffany Burke: So he really gets excited when we go to a house and they have like I notice certain neighborhoods in our house have like, a stencil pack or they’ll-

Lisa Lane: Yeah, or Little Eraser.

Tiffany Burke: Toys or things. He gets off on those. Those make him like the most excited because he and his friends, they’ll trade. He’ll be like, “Hey, I’ll give you my candy. You give me Yeah. the toys.”

Lisa Lane: is so funny. I’ve heard that too. Like you say, some kids are super into that, like, “Give me a little Squishmallow eraser top,” or whatever. I would’ve dug that.

Tiffany Burke: Yeah, he loves that gooey stuff that they.

Andrea Marie: Oh, slime stuff or?

Tiffany Burke: He loves to make his own slime, and he loves to get people slime.

Lisa Lane: Slap bracelets and junk like that. But what a funny, but what a funny tradition, right? That still we’re going door to door and little children asking strangers for treats.

Andrea Marie: Food.

Lisa Lane: and it’s adorable.

I don’t why, but I still think it’s so cute. Last year in our, again, new neighborhood, so we didn’t know what to expect, so we got candy, and there were a few trick-or-treaters, very cute, but then our neighborhood is kind of like, it’s a lot like us like empty nesters. I think it’s, like, maybe gonna flip.

We have one baby on the street. I’m being the creeper. I do know there’s a baby on my street.

Tiffany Burke: Being a creeper.

Lisa Lane: All right, anyway, no, we were amazed. At a certain point at dark, there were families and pickup trucks with flatbeds, and they had all the kids and the parents were, like, on the flatbeds, and they had actual, fireplaces on the flat- like, propane, like a fireplace.

And so they were having a little campfire, and they were playing spooky music, and they ha- it was like a parade, only at dark. So we ended up taking our trick-or-treat candy out and throwing it at them like a parade. It was so cool.

Andrea Marie: Oh, how fun.

Lisa Lane: I guess that happens in our neighborhood.

We were just… I remember screaming to my husband like, “You’ve gotta come see this,” and he kinda missed it. He didn’t hear. I mean, it sounded like something was wrong. So yeah, maybe there’s a new tradition.

Andrea Marie: That’s so fun.

Lisa Lane: Can’t wait to see.

[00:28:22] Haunted houses have gotten too scary

Andrea Marie: Yeah, how about like, speaking of traditions, how about other tradi- did you guys do the haunted houses and the pumpkin patches and all that stuff?

Tiffany Burke: Always a pumpkin patch. Always a haunted house if I could. Lately, I’m gonna be honest, the new haunted houses freak me out.

Lisa Lane: Yeah, they’re so dark.

Andrea Marie: They’re scary. I don’t, I’m having nightmares here.

Lisa Lane: They make you question serious things in your soul and they’re too… I’m with you. I wanna touch some grapes that might be eyeballs.

Tiffany Burke: Maybe.

Andrea Marie: That’s it.

Lisa Lane: Walk through a spider web.

Tiffany Burke: Bob for some discombobulated apples. Right?

Andrea Marie: something weird on a plate that might look like brains. I don’t know.

Tiffany Burke: I took them on this haunted house hayride

thing, yeah.

Uh huh I was petrified. Like.

Almost cried two times. Like I was like, “Get me, get me out of here.”

Lisa Lane: There’s a real trend for that. If you watch back like, on, like, sitcoms and stuff for a while, the Halloween episode in Modern Family, for example. But almost, like, every, there’s kind of this, I think even like, Parks and Rec, there’s this vibe of, “Let’s make it as scary as we can.

Let’s really freak out the neighborhood.” And I am with you. Like, it has gotten so too dark for me. My brother famously in our neighborhood would turn the garage into a haunted house all during high school, and my parents indulged it. And it was, but it was like that. Like, he would hang stuff from the ceiling so that you could do a jump scare, and it was, you know, walking through a spiderweb, and somebody would come up from a coffin.

Ah. But I mean, right. And I, when I was in college, and I know this still goes on. I have a young friend who just did this in her college days. I, in the Chicagoland area, we did a haunted trail, like, at a botanic gardens or something. So I was like a, whatever, where they dressed us up and we just stood there and basically did zombie…

Yeah, exactly. I did banshee noises or did a jump scare, and you know, they would walk through. But again, it was like, it felt wholesome and not, like you say, like, I am going to have nightmares and question my existence.

Tiffany Burke: They

have real, like, what do you call those?

Lisa Lane: Yeah, chainsaw.

Tiffany Burke: They had a real one but-

Andrea Marie: God. They had a real chainsaw?

Tiffany Burke: It didn’t have the… I was like, “Dude, please don’t get close to me with the-“

Lisa Lane: I remember that feeling and you can feel the… I didn’t understand that you could have a chainsaw, whatever, and like you could-

Tiffany Burke: I didn’t know you could have a chainsaw without it cutting, so when he got close to me.

Lisa Lane: Yes. You can feel the air moving. Yes.

Tiffany Burke: I didn’t I almost, I hit him, so.

Lisa Lane: Well, that’s my thing is that isn’t that interesting? In the age of I swear to God I’m pretty sure that my sons understand what consent is, and I need to believe this.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Lisa Lane: Oh, how interesting is that maybe that’s why like in the age of consent, like, truly, and in the age of we’re all aware of neuro divergencies and diversity. You know what I mean? Like, sensory issues are such a thing. Every airport you go to has a sensory room. Uh, I saw the other day a barber shop has a, ” Hey, on Tuesdays we turn off the music.

It’s really respective of nobody…” It maybe that has become, like, such a forbidden thing to touch people and invade their personal space that the haunted houses have gotten so intense.

Andrea Marie: I don’t know.

Lisa Lane: But also it’s like they’re psychologically scary, and that’s no.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, no, I don’t need that in my life.

Lisa Lane: Mm-mm.

Andrea Marie: I’ve already got enough of that going on in just walking around in real life.

Lisa Lane: Yeah

Andrea Marie: I’ve always been a little bit scared. I don’t, I’m not into the scary movies. I’m not into like, you know, super anything super scary.

But we, our, at our pool, growing up, they turned that pool area into a haunted house, and I’ll never forget, we went in with my mom and my sister, and I came out holding a stranger’s hand.

Lisa Lane: Oh, oh, oh.

Tiffany Burke: ‘Cause you were so scared.

Andrea Marie: I didn’t know. I thought it was my mom, and I look up and I’m like, “Oh, whoops.”

Lisa Lane: By the way, how old were you? Because at a certain age, that is the scariest thing there ever could be.

Andrea Marie: I think I was, I think I was, like, maybe I was nine. I was gonna say 18.

Lisa Lane: I know. It’s funnier.

Andrea Marie: I was nine. I was nine, I think. So yeah, it’s, I’ve never been up for that. So if you-

Lisa Lane: So we really are like the three… There’s probably other Moms Unhinged moms who are all, like into the scary and into the gore and freaking people out, and we’re, like, kind of the type. Love the pumpkin-y parts of it.

Andrea Marie: Pumpkin patches, that’s where we go.

Tiffany Burke: That’s the thing. I love a good scary movie. I just don’t want it in real life.

Lisa Lane: Oh, in real life, no.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Lane: I was just thinking about that. I don’t even know if I love a scary movie, ’cause I’ve really never watched one.

A friend of mine.

Tiffany Burke: I like it. I love them because you know what? I can mute it and I can fast-forward through the parts that scare me.

Lisa Lane: And then feel safe at the end, ’cause it’s gonna be fine. Yeah. A friend asked me did we watch something or other together, and I was like, “I don’t think so.” I just, I never, ever, ever… Like, probably saw a scary movie and went… Listen, the ads on the television for The Exorcist when I was a child gave me nightmares.

Andrea Marie: Oh. Yeah.

Lisa Lane: The commercials made… So I’m a scaredy cat.

Andrea Marie: Commercials. Oh my gosh, this has been so much fun, you guys. Thank you so much for coming on, talking about Halloween activities, fall stuff. It’s just… And if you’re a mom listening in, share with us your funny Halloween story, funny costume story, anything. We’d love to hear what, how you guys deal with the Halloween holidays.

And Lisa and Tiffany, why don’t you let people know where they can find you? Tiffany, why don’t you go first?

Tiffany Burke: You can find me on Instagram at therealtiffanyba, and you can also find me on my website, www.therealtiffanyba, and I usually list my shows, My Moms Unhinged and my other shows. I’m always traveling around the country.

And also I’m on Boss Up now for the Black Watch, so we’ve been watching a lot of movies and breaking them down, and I know we have a lot of scary movies that are coming up for the holiday season.

Lisa Lane: Fun.

Andrea Marie: Well, we’ll have that, that link in the show notes, those links. And Lisa, how about you? Where can And I am at lisalanecomedy.com and everywhere else, Lisa Lane Comedy.

Lisa Lane: You can find me there, Instagram, Facebook. I probably should get back onto the TikTok, but I sure haven’t lately. And of course, you can see me on Moms Unhinged all around the country. Got some great shows coming up. It’s good to be back, isn’t it?

Andrea Marie: I know, very fun.

Lisa Lane: it’s like back to school, back to Moms Unhinged. Yeah, it feels good.

Tiffany Burke: Andrea, you gotta put me and Lisa on a show.

together

Andrea Marie: Know, right? It’s always like, I’m always like, “Oh, you guys haven’t been on a show together.” It’s like I need a little combination and permutation.

Lisa Lane: And we just have had that this fall where that thing happened where like the out of town Moms Unhinged comics come to Colorado and I’m not here ’cause I’m in their town.

I mean, that’s how it happens. But hey, we know each other. I stalk you online, Tiffany.

Tiffany Burke: I’ll stalk you some more next week.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Lisa Lane: Thanks, Andrea. Happy Halloween.

Andrea Marie: Happy Halloween.

Lisa Lane: Happy spooky season.

Andrea Marie: Thanks for listening and make sure you subscribe, share, and follow us on the socials to get more comedy clips.