Spooky Month can never die!
We're switching gears again, kids. No more auditory evils, no more mixes for costume parties, no more ambient soundtracks. We're delving into Spooky TV shows and specials, the kind of stuff that either gets under your skin or celebrates my favorite of all holidays. Today, we're starting back at the beginning. Let's look at something from my childhood that scared the bejesus out of me - Garfield's Halloween Adventure.
I could see where this would be an innocuous thing. I could see how the execs and artistic talent behind this animated special from 1985 could make the assumption that everything presented here would be just fine and dandy for a children's Halloween special. That lazy, lasagna loving cat goes trick-or-treating with Odie and they have a bit of an adventure, a fright or two, throw in a couple musical numbers and a couple commercial breaks, you got yourself some advertising bucks. What ensued still gives me chills. I remember the white-knuckle terror of watching this as a small child, my brain melting at the twisted visuals that were stealthily presented in this cartoon.
One in a series of holiday specials from Garfield, the 80s and childhood staple, this half-hour cartoon was charming and simple on the surface. Garfield experiences Halloween. Jon gets him to carve a pumpkin. Garfield and Odie look for costumes in the attic, then go trick-or-treating. They see a house in the distance, across a river. Taking a rowboat, they find it's an old house that is home to what is clearly a disturbed old man. He tells a tale of pirates who are due to return from the grave that night to reclaim buried treasure. He steals the pair's boat and the two animals hide in the cupboards from some amazingly terrifying ghosts. That is when my brain promptly melted and oozed out of my ears.
Once I reached adolescence, I found reliving the childhood terrors a bit of a thrill. Surprisingly it still gives me the willies. I have to say, the style of animation and the manner in which it so innocuously creeps into what was expected to be a pleasant animated outing is effectively unnerving. I know I love the macabre and the surreal, but just Googling the images for today's post got my heart to race a bit. Some stereo effects kicked in at the wrong moment in my headphones and my pulse skipped a beat. How can this cartoon have had such an intense effect on me at such a young age? It must have been the shattered premise of peace and safety. I guess it was my first experience of the dangers that can come in seemingly innocent packages.
Good gravy, just one post about Spooky TV and already I need a drink. Tell you what, I'll come up for more modern fare for tomorrow's post and you try exposing your kids to the unexpected terrors of Garfield's Halloween Adventure on Youtube. Scar them like I was, it'll put hair on their chest and a surprise in their diapers. Spooky Month never dies!
Let's get less political and more fictional, eh?
Yesterday's Spooky Month post got a little to real for me. I know, I wrote it - I should be able to reign it in. So how's about a whole soundtrack to my favorite month and a bit of cultural zeitgeist from days past? Instead of just a spooky single, let's take a look at a creepy collection of music, one that works from ambiance and subtle hints rather than hit-you-on-the-head heavy handedness. I want to tell you about the musical companion piece to the old cult hit The X-Files, Songs In The Key of X.
There was a time in the mid 90s where my older brother was part of a CD Club. Do those even exist anymore? For those of you too young to know, you join this organization that gets you a whole slew of cheap CDs the first month, then kind of auto-mails you the next CD every month after. Usually people singed up for the crazy deal (20 CDs for 20 cents!) and then got a crummy CD mailed to them every month at cost because they were too lazy to cancel. Not us, though. We got in, got our music and got out. He got tons of good music and let me pick a couple albums with him, then we had to order I think two or three at retail price to get the full discount. He had nothing on his wish list he wanted, so I sorted through the catalog to see if anything stood out. See how quaint this was? Man, iTunes was such a game changer. Anyway, I saw a compilation that listed among its entries Foo Fighters, Filter, Rob Zombie, The Meat Puppets and R.E.M. I was also big into The X Files at the time, so I filled out the paperwork (yeah, I know) and it arrived a couple weeks later as the leaves were turning. Both the impending Fall and the tone of the album have inextricably tied Songs In The Key of X to Halloween for me, and this time every year I find myself putting it on for both enjoyment and nostalgia. Turns out it still holds up, if it appeals in any way.
The thing about this album is that it's not really a proper soundtrack to the wonderfully twisted TV show. It's more a loose collection of songs that fit in theme or tone to the paranoid and twisted, the conspiracies and cover ups. The iconic theme song, haunting as ever, opens the album. From there, though, it branches out into appropriately weird territory. Alterative legends Soul Coughing turn in the fun and bizarre 'Unmarked Helicopters', a buzzer of a song that bears all the signs of the decade. Sheryl Crow sings the heartbreaking 'Standing On The Outside', which creates an air of noirish isolation with sparse, reverb-drenched guitars and walls of harmony. It's actually a beautiful, if mournful, tune. Foo Fighters cover 'Down In The Dark' by Gary Numan, adding to the paranoia and weirdness with the hypnotic head-bobber of a track. Filter, then still known more for 'Hey Man Nice Shot' than 'Take My Picture', offer a strange and squiggly little acoustic number with 'Thanks Bro'. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds make their indelible mark with the always spooky 'Red Right Hand'. This song screams Halloween, with its chimes, plucked strings and dark, dramatic vocals.
While the paranormal and off-kilter exist in harmony here, things sometimes get more off kilter than paranormal. Show-casing the more quirky side of the show are numbers by P.M. Dawn, R.E.M.'s collaboration with William S. Burroughs or Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The Meat Puppets are all alt-pop with their lyrically relevant but sonically cheery 'Unexplained'. Elvis Costello pairs up with the ambient genius Brian Eno to make a wonderfully weird addition with 'My Dark Life', which fits both in tone and theme. Rob Zombie teamed up with progenitor Alice Cooper to deliver some blisteringly evil metal with 'Hands of Death', showing how the student became the master in their shared genre. Also, in another bizarre sign of the show's influence, rewinding the album behind the first track brought out two more songs, another from Nick Cave and Mark Snow. This under-utilized trick of the medium blew my mind when I first discovered it back in 1996, just as Chris Carter would have wanted it to.
This album, while not a soundtrack in the proper sense, is nonetheless a soundtrack to my Fall and Halloween every year. I adore the creeping and strange sounds, the light and the dark of the pop and alt, the sad and upbeat sounds playing off each other so well. The tunes may not all have appeared in the paranormal procedural but they fit the tone in spirit, creating an air of mystery for my favorite time of year. If you miss this iconic show or just want some music to give you pause while you walk through the leaves collecting on the sidewalk, go dig up this gem. There's an artist for everyone here, I guarantee it.
I haven't forgotten about doing these.
It's been a while since I've written any Warm Fuzzy Viewings. Not wanting to dilute the content of the site, I've held off until I felt I should contribute to a different section. So how about something that only seems to make sense at night? Maybe it's because it is set during the night, or because I watched them late at night in my parent's basement when I was in high school, whatever the reason - it wouldn't be right to watch it in broad daylight. I'm talking about the Meteor Shower Trilogy, also known as the Lost South Park Movie.
Originally broadcast as three separate episodes in the summer of 1999, the Meteor Shower Trilogy has the main cast of South Park split up into their own stories. Cartman's story involves his abusive babysitter (and his obsession with the dated misfire that was Wild Wild West) while his mom attends a party at the Marsh's house to observe the titular meteor shower. Stan's episode is centered around the events of the party, where he's sequestered to the basement with a few other kids (including Butters!). At the party, a misunderstanding entices the involvement of the South Park police force, setting up a parody of the Waco incident in 1993. Kenny gets lumped into Kyle's story for an episode about camping and his Jewish heritage that gets weirder and weirder as the plot unfolds. None of what happens is intensely dramatic or of any permanence to the overall mythology to the show, it's just some bizarre and funny stuff. It's all set over the course of a single night, the three episodes occurring simultaneously.
I had wondered, when I saw the episodes ten years ago, if you could splice them all together into a single story. You may or may not recall my adoration of Fan Edits and how they re-contextualize stories with which we're already familiar. See where I'm going with this? Yeah - provided you know where to look on the ol' interwebs, you can find what's referred to as The Lost South Park Movie or The Meteor Shower. It's pretty loose and not to big on overlapping stories due to the way the individual episodes were written but it's still a very cool concept that only makes sense for me at night. I remember vividly the Sunday nights lying on the couch in the basement and howling at these episodes, loving the fact that they all took place over a single night. If you're interested, take a look around the web and see if you can dig 'em up. It's a cool concept.
In the interest of full disclosure I'll share why I had an off kilter posting schedule this past weekend.
I was out with the better half to visit my parents in Wisconsin, having not seen them since our wedding. It was a fantastic time, lots of good food, a spin in their boat down the river, we all hung out and watched a movie together. It was a really great, relaxing trip out there, although I would have like to stay longer. The place they have is where I spent the majority of my high school years and the off time during college. I have a lot of memories of watching movies late at night in the basement, rehearsing with my band in their garage and generally trying to make the most out of living in the country despite not being the outdoors type. In hindsight I took advantage of the solitude and tranquility of the location, the fact that living where they do affords privacy and peace. This lies in sharp contrast to living in the middle of the city in the heart of Uptown, surrounded by rabble rousers and nightlife. Neither one is better, I've found, just different. I could see myself enjoying the isolation, given the proper circumstances.
I know the grass is always greener, but you never really can go home again. There was a lot in there house that reminded me of who I was and where I've come from. I flipped through old yearbooks, found old dressers with some of my clothes, even walked some trails I used in high school to sneak the odd cigarette when I was young and stupid. While the memories would flood back in, they were accompanied by equal parts nostalgia and saudade. I could delude myself and say things were so much better when I had fewer responsibilities and the freedom to be a teenager but I know that I was unhappy with who I was then and feel like I had to experience what I did to become who I am. I can go back and visit my parents, even sleep in my old room and read the same books, but I can't call it home. I haven't lived there in a long time. It was a strange experience but I enjoyed it, despite the unstoppable progress of life, realizing a chapter has closed. Still, a new one has opened.
Do I really need to tell you this?
Dude, it's Saturday night and I have to tell you what's up?
Alright, well...here's the deal - I'm getting married and have little time. My DVR is handy but fills up too damn fast. Really, it's mostly full of shows preferred by my better half. While I have little free time to kick back, especially in the coming weeks, it is important that my time be consolidated and used wisely.
What's happening?
How are you?
I completely credit my better half for introducing me to Arrested Development, which still stands tall among the best created fiction in visual mediums of the last 20 years. An astoundingly funny and audaciously intelligent show that gave the viewers far more credit than we deserved. Everyone complains about its demise, yet no one is thankful that we got 3 (THREE!) seasons of the Bluth family. I still love it, and like anyone who has seen it and really connected with it, Arrested Development becomes part of your lexicon - no exaggeration, if my better half is around when the word 'Catalina' is uttered, we both a smile. But there's an unspoken integral element that gets little credit for the quirky nature of the show - the superb score and incidental music that gave life and set the mood for the absurd, bleeding edge series.
Day four of writing while in AZ, and I'm fairly confidant that the sun has fried my brain. I'm feeling stupid and burnt. In retaliation I will write about something both simple minded and charmingly intelligent despite it's basic appearance. Something I have been really enjoying since it's debut, whose smiling disposition and jaunty soundtrack are a breath of fresh air in a television landscape that is too often grim, dour and unnecessarily dramatic.
Bob's Burgers! How have you not been watching this show? Starring Jon Benjamin, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schaal, the series was created by Loren Bouchard. Bouchard is the genius behind such animated treasures as Dr. Katz and Home Movies. The show has the fairly standard premise of a man and his family trying to get by while running their burger joint - pretty standard stuff. Where the show shines, though, is it's witty writing, pacing and sense of humor. Many great shows use a pedestrian backdrop as a means to tell a bizarre story, the concept just being a launchpad of sorts.
The series is a standout this year among Fox's Sunday night lineup, easily filling the spot King of the Hill left behind. There's something so real and natural about the dialogue that just makes the show. The voice acting is phenomenal and super funny. I really can't say enough about this charming, outrageously funny show. If you can't catch it on Fox find it on Hulu, I guarantee you'll find something to strike you the right way. This is the best thing about Sunday nights by far
