Plan Your Halloween Fun & Fright

It's coming, folks. My favorite time of the year. That wonderful day when the barrier is broken between the living and the dead and ferocious carnage ensues to prey on the innocent....

You know, Election Day.

But before that, it's my favorite day of the year: Halloween. And if you're like me, you wanna make sure your Halloween celebration goes as planned to maximize your enjoyment of the most spiritual and mythological of all the holidays. That being said, the good folks here at XC (well... it's pretty much "folk," singular) have created a small list of things you can do to have a happy, appropriately haunting Halloween. Just follow this daily schedule.

Midnight
For maximum scare factor, now is when you watch that everlasting cult masterpiece The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the definitive midnight movie. I mean, if Tim Curry in that get-up doesn't scare you, for crying out loud, what will?! If you live in a fairly isolated locale (as in, a house with a good two or three hundred yards between neighbors), you can crank up the volume and participate as you so choose. But if you're going to do that, you are required by law to do the Time Warp, if nothing else. That's right. Look it up in the Constitution. If you never pause the movie, it will be over at...

1:40 am
Go to bed. It may be Halloween, but you still need your sleep. Otherwise the Great Pumpkin won't come.

Noonish
After lunch, bake all your Halloween treats. Recipes for these will be located in several newspaper sections for the past month and a half. Take this opportunity to get your trick-or-treat stuff ready. If you're handing out candy, put it in the bowl, put the bowl by the door. If you're going out, secure your costume and make sure your flashlights (stress: plural) have plenty of fresh batteries. I know it's tempting with all the paranoia about H1N1, but avoid SARS masks at all costs (unless they're part of your costume). They have to be changed, like, every twenty minutes to be effective.

1:00
Read that immortal, chilling masterpiece: The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. If preferable, listen to it read aloud. But if you live alone, I don't want to encourage that sort of behavior....

1:30
Take this opportunity to watch a good, lighthearted horror flick. Nothing with severe scream value-- it's broad daylight, after all-- but something comic. My recommendations? Shock Treatment (the sequel to Rocky Horror), Young Frankenstein, Beetle Juice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or the best Halloween specials & episodes of serial TV: Peanuts, Garfield, That '70s Show, 3rd Rock from the Sun, etc.

6:00
Expect the first trick-or-treaters, if you're staying at home. If you're going out, leave around this time. If you see a guy in the bushes with a William Shatner mask and a knife, do not talk to him! His name is Michael Myers, and he's... well, he's a bad man.

9:00
The tail end of trick-or-treating. If you're out, come in. If you're in, check for toilet paper and egg innards on the outside of your house. Then lock the door.

10:00
Now's your chance to see something really scary. Conventional classics for this occasion include the Halloween series, but nothing scares me like a good religious chiller: particularly The Exorcist. Rule of thumb: the higher the numeral in a series like Halloween, the worse it probably is. Stick with the 1978 original.

And that concludes our Halloween. Now to Thanksgiving. You thought Michael Myers was scary, wait until you see Aunt Phyllis & Uncle Wally stuffing themselves with turkey and cranberry sauce. You'll run the other way.

71 DP's Led the Big Parade....

We in Washington state need to APPROVE REF. 71.

In recent weeks, I've voted for the first time. It's an awesome feeling, really. But this is also the window of time in which I have heard some of the most blatantly stupid campaigning of all time, done by opponents of Washington state's domestic partnership law, most recently the bill made notorious by the addition of the moniker "Everything But Marriage."

One of these blunders is a radio ad telling people to reject the bill by voting "Reject" on R-71 on the ballot. The ad features two women chatting. One tells the other that the bill should be rejected because it's not the right time. People, she contends, are losing their jobs and homes, and that's really what lawmakers need to be focusing on. She insists that anyone for this is basically encouraging our legislature to be out of touch with the public.

How ignorant can you get?!

People are losing their jobs and homes right now, and that is one of the chief reasons why this bill must be passed! These are horrendously uncertain times (ah, yes, that old cliche), and people need a little certainty. We're not talking about people who are out to destroy everything traditional in this country. We're not talking about people who don't have feelings, for crying out loud.

And we're not talking about people asking to get married! This bill is not about gay marriage, and it would be criminal if the measure was defeated solely because that's what people fear. Key word: fear.

The measure isn't even about gay people, specifically. Domestic partnerships also apply to couples with one person over a certain age (I think it's 62) who can't get married because they'll lose job or health benefits.

Let's take a look at what we're examining here.

If marriage really is a religious institution, then it has no business being a federal institution. We in America have a right to worship God as we please-- but God/Allah/Buddha/Jehovah/whoever don't belong in our capitol buildings and our courthouses. This is not a theocracy. This is a Republican democracy based simply on governmental principles that have absolutely nothing to do with religion. Ergo, religion must be kept separate from the powers of the state.

I know for a fact that marriage is not a religious institution, however. I know this because heterosexual "civil ceremonies" are legally recognized as marriages.

Marriage is not a legal contract to produce children. If it were, sterile couples would not be allowed to get married. Nor would elderly couples or couples who make it clear they never want children-- these are not the case.

For those reasons, I believe gay marriage should be legalized in every state in this great-although-massively-wrong-in-the-head nation.

But for the zillionth time, the word "marriage" is never once mentioned in this bill. Domestic partnerships merely allow people who want to spend their lives together to do so with some semblance of that traditional bond.

As for the people who fear that even domestic partnerships will ruin the meaning of their marriage, I have a simple question for you: have you (or anyone you know) ever been married in Vegas?

I don't even consider the fact that one of the law's chief opponents is a known wifebeater and divorcee. Some marriages don't work out.

But it seems to be fairly common knowledge that relationships aren't perfect. The reason for these partnerships is security and love. From what I've witnessed, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender people deserve the one and are more than capable of the other.

Don't hold centuries-old, wrongly-translated religious dogma against them.

Vote "Approve" on Referendum 71.

This message was paid for by that little nerve in my head that goes off every time stupid people in authority decide to wave that abused authority in the face of anyone who's different.

Because Hitler died 64 years ago.

From Vinyl to Celluloid, Please!

In recent weeks, I've found myself listening to the soundtrack to that eternally stench-ridden 1978 dud, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a movie based on an album of the same name by the overrated Beatles. It's not much, but the music itself is pretty... not bad, even when chewed up and digested through the Robert Stigwood machine.

It really got me to thinking. Why was Sgt. Pepper such a lousy movie? It's from the same producer (Stigwood) who made two great films from successful rock albums-- Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Tommy (1975). Like Tommy, it uses contemporary figures from the music industry (Aerosmith, Earth Wind & Fire, Peter Frampton, and the depressing Bee Gees) as well as well-known actors (Donald Pleasence) and living legends (George Burns, for whom Las Vegas was shut down following his death). And, as I've said, the music wasn't bad. Taken without the pictures, it provides some good listening, actually.

Aha! "Taken without the pictures." That explains it. The film is tacky, overproduced, nauseatingly gaudy, dreadfully miscast... and when it comes to story, I don't think anybody gave it much thought. With Tommy and Superstar, the story was built right into the album, so there was no concern over what it should be about. Also, neither of those films had singing robots, Frankie Howerd, or a character named-- yep, you're reading this right-- Strawberry Fields.

So who decides what albums would make good movies? I think it's obvious we can't trust Stigwood anymore. So I actually came up with a few suggestions. They might not work nowadays, but it's fun to imagine what they would have been like back in the golden days.

2112 by Rush
The actual suite "2112" is about twenty minutes long. You'd need serious embellishment, or other Rush music, but it could be done. Also, it probably wouldn't work as a musical. Have the music performed by a real-life band (and don't give them a stupid name like "Future Villain Band"!), and cast great actors to deliver dialogue in between the anthems.

Cassadaga by Bright Eyes
Love them or hate them, you have to admit Bright Eyes doesn't lack intelligence (although that name is eerily reminiscent of Charlton Heston's ape-given nickname in Planet of the Apes). And the 60 minutes of music on this modern classic of theirs all fits together really nicely, almost like a full-fledged (if a tad episodic) storyline. Film it as a musical, set in the Florida town of the title-- a place filled with mediums and other psychically-inclined individuals. And use the same mysticism of production design and cinematography found in the album's artwork.

Quadrophenia by The Who
All right, so this already is a movie. A good one, actually. But for a movie based on an album by The Who, it relies too heavily on the music of other bands-- all from the mid-60s-- and, of course, it's a nonmusical. The story of Jimmy-- a rebellious young Mod who has four competing personalities in his head-- needs to be told with the same operatic narrative style that worked for Tommy. Maybe a cameo by Twisted Sister's Dee Snider, singing the "he man drag" verse of "5:15"?

Other advice for filmmakers out to succeed with these projects? Just don't do anything like Sgt. Pepper. Worst of all, don't end it with that film's lame, irritating, infuriating magic-wand ending that renders the past two hours' viewing pointless. And Bob... you might want to sit this one out.