KATRINARITA GRAS, February 2006, by William Joyce (via Reading Rockets, a terrific source for interviews, and http://www.williamjoyce.com/)
If you are exposed to it as a kid you will never be quite like other people. How could you be?
You’ve watched an entire adult population, your parents, your aunts and uncles, your teachers or your school principles; all your authority figures, suddenly transform into Poseidon, or Mae West or a cross-dressing Santa Claus. Everyday life becomes an overnight Technicolor fever dream. Schools close. The daily schedule is thrown out for a new schedule of parties and parades that become an unending delirium where it’s not inconceivable but in fact highly likely that you might look out the den window at any given moment and see several dozen men and women dressed as Yogi Bear drift nonchalantly by in a papier-mâché galleon.