day of the dead and bloated iii

Halloween is over -- which is pretty much like the end of summer for me. Now we only have the cold, dismal drag that is the "holiday season" to look forward to.

This year I went as Hitler on laundry day -- well, technically I went as "German army officer," which is what the package said, but I've never actually seen a depiction of ANY German having the Chaplain mustache EXCEPT Hitler. I guess writing "Hitler" on the outside of a $1.95 mustache package would cause the apocalypse.

My costume kept falling off (once into my root beer).

Didn't do a movie this year for the first time in three years. I'm plenty tuckered out and out of ideas.

Movies I watched and appreciated this year were The Serpent and the Rainbow, Suspiria, An American Werewolf in London, Insidious and The Fly. I'm not talking about the old Fly, which I've never seen (but DO know that the transformation scene where he sees the chick screaming through his compound eyes is absolutely brilliant). Well, The Fly I'm talking about is sorta old. It's from 1986 (a quick check of iMDb reveals that the original version of The Fly came out in 1958 (which means it was 28 years between that version and the one I'm talking about (and 25 years from the one I'm talking about to today (!)))). Anyway -- it's creepy and gross. Mission accomplished. I think it's about the horror of the creation of new life -- or an allegory for the horror of having children. Most horror movies are a horror allegory of romantic love (or sex), but the horror of new life in the world is even scarier (and a lot more pus-laden apparently). Anyway -- check it out on your Netflix streaming.

Anyway, on to the point. I didn't get half of my Halloween stuff done, but J.R. and I finally completed this year's Halloween CD. Playlist please!

1. "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?" by NAHPI (North American Hallowe'en Prevention Inc.)
2. "A Song From Under the Floorboards" by Magazine
3. "The Cat With Two Heads" by The Aquabats
4. "Jack the Ripper" by Morrissey
5. "She's in Parties" by Bauhaus
6. "Little Sister" by Queens of the Stone Age
7. "You Make Me Feel So Young" by JonDis (a Jon Madsen original interpretation)
8. "Shankill Butchers" by The Decemberists
9. "Night Time Demons" by Arrested Development
10. "One of These Days" by Pink Floyd
11. "Dead and Bloated" by Stone Temple Pilots
12. "Rawhead and Bloodybones" by Siouxsie & the Banshees
13. "The Widow" by The Mars Volta
14. "Stolen Roses" by Karen Elson
15. "The Ghost of You Lingers" by Spoon
16. "I Can't Smile" by Bruce Lee Roy (a J.R. Fillmore original interpretation)
17. "I Believe It's Magic" by Mick Smiley
18. "In the Year 2525" by Visage

Notice that this is my third blog post titled "day of the dead and bloated" (you probably didn't notice), but it's the first time that "Dead and Bloated" actually made the Halloween CD. Today, November 1st being The Day of the Dead and then the title of the STP song... yeah. Just a little Jon's Blog trivia for ya.

If you'd like any of these Halloween tracks, I'll email them to you. As an added bonus, each track is mixed in with bonus audio from either last year's Community Halloween special (where Greendale Campus is overrun by zombies) or the episode of Star Trek called "Catspaw" (which is pretty much the original Star Trek Halloween special from the '60s). They're mixed quite well if I do say so myself.

Magazine, Bauhaus, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Mick Smiley and Visage are pretty sweet '80s acts. The Visage song, in particular, is a cover of an old '60s song (which is very prominent in the movie Gentlemen Broncos if you ever saw that). The Mick Smiley song we used is a remix known only during a pivotal apocalyptic scene in a certain movie about guys who bust ghosts.

Pink Floyd, of course, is very '70s -- although "One of These Days" sounds more modern than when it was released (1971 -- surprisingly before Dark Side of the Moon).

The Aquabats, Morrissey, Arrested Development and Stone Temple Pilots are, of course, stuff we listened to in the dark days of the '90s.

Queens of the Stone Age, The Decemberists, The Mars Volta, Karen Elson and Spoon are, more or less, contemporary (the Karen Elson CD is so brilliant by the way). The North American Hallowe'en Prevention Inc. was, I guess, some sort of "Band-aid"-like charity group featuring such celebrities as Beck, Feist, Arcade Fire, Devendra Banhart, Elvira, David Cross, Rilo Kiley, Wolf Parade & Thurston Moore.

J.R. and I hilariously composed a couple of spoken word versions of "happy" songs and sort of Halloweenized them. I don't have mine uploaded anywhere, but I'll post it later. Like the others, I can email it to you if you want.

Of course Halloween is over (sigh). Perhaps you can get started on next year.