The Balazs family’s elaborate lights-and-music Christmas decorations have been featured on NBC San Diego and described in a Los Angeles Times blog and The San Diego Union-Tribune.
With 30,000 lights and garage-based FM channel — and a memorial message raising money for charity — what’s not to like?
But this year, his next-door neighbor’s yard bears a sour message. A lighted sign says: “SHOW OFF.”
Who’s the Grinch of Roe Drive?
Michael Balazs himself.
Having posted a “DITTO” sign on his northern neighbor’s house last year, the 32-year-old Navy man asked his southern neighbor if he could post the self-deprecating “SHOW OFF” sign.
“Sure,” he was told.
In fact, Balazs donned a Grinch costume Saturday for the benefit of visitors. It’s also a first-time affair in the seven-year tradition dedicated to the memory of his father, Dean Scott Balazs Sr. of Mobile, Alabama, who lost his battle to cancer in 2009. (The show is called “DB Lights.”)
A little after the lights-and-sound show came on at 5 p.m., his friend Jeff Neitzel of La Mesa applied a green prosthetic face to the Afloat Training Group sailor.
Neitzel, a 40-year-old makeup artist and props builder who does Scream Zone work at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, was watched warily by Michael and wife Amber’s 4-year-old daughter, Charlotte.
Cash donations, which can be left in a sidewalk-side box, go 100 percent to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Balasz said, and a big box accommodates toy donations for Santee Santas.
Michael Balazs isn’t done poking fun at himself, however.
Next year, he says, a house across the street will bear another lighted sign.
It’ll say “BAH HUMBUG.”
