10 - THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
HALLOWEEN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2002
Setting a scary scene with Halloween songs
By Patrick Cady
pcady@kansan.com
Jayplaywriter
Be it a party bent on raising the dead ora soulful seance, music can set the Halloween mood. Here are ten songs and noises to fill the frightful Halloween night air.
10. "Paint It, Black" by The Rolling Stones
This track establishes the night if not the color scheme with a vaguely Arabic melody. Mick Jagger's voice seems to transport the listener to a higher depressive plane.
9. Any piece of carnival music
The calliope organ playing in offrhythms always adds a sense of unease in the horror movie. Check out work by Hal Davis, an artist known for the calliope or a CD of carousel music.
8. "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett
It is cliché, but what a beautiful cliché. This piece has reached the "top 100" three times since its introduction in 1962. 7. "Sonne" by Rammstein
The title of this track from the German metal outfit translates to "sun." It is operatic in its breadth and is a good start to introduce some over-the top-metal into your ghost-filled night.
6. Soundtrack to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho by Bernard Hermann
It was the music to a cinematic classic of suspense. The musical backing to the famous shower scene could be the perfect frame to a speed pumpkin-carving contest.
5. Anything by GWAR
This band is to Halloween like water is to the ocean. Costumes, fake blood and churning metal are part of its live shows, and this spirit exudes onto its albums. It would be a safe bet for any Halloween get together, not to mention a fun idea for a theme party.
4. "Clowns Will Eat Me" by Alice Cooper
Before GWAR there was Alice. This track taps into the universal human fear of cannibalistic clowns and speaks to all who want to celebrate Halloween in style.
3. "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath
There are few songs as heavy, as towering and as bloody rocking as this classic by the creators and masters of heavy metal. Ozzy Osbourne sings of the metal man on a rampage.
This track is guaranteed to liven up a party and send several joints out of socket as people frantically play air guitar.
2. Wooooooo by you or anyone around
To imitate the call of a ghost is, perhaps, the most poetic way to summarize the spirit of Halloween. Alternating the woo from low to high pitches will create the best effect.
Frightfully bad books
1. "Dream of the Witche's Sabbath" from Symphone Fantastique by Hector Berlioz
This piece would be perfect for the more laid back. It was written during the romantic period as sort of a soundtrack to a hallucination of dancing demons and witches as they collect for an infernal mass. Fitting, if not overly intense.
By Henry C. Jackson
cjackson@kansan.com
Jayplay writer
Halloween can provide its fair share of scary material: ghouls, ghosts, skeletons, spiders, witches and this isn't even considering millions of costumed preteens hopped up on sugar.
But for a real fright, you might want to head to your local bookstore. A quick perusal of the bargain shelves will leave you feeling a whole new kind of terror. Book titles such as How to Make Every Girl Want You and Get Laid Without Even Dating can give off just as many cold shudders as a bump in the night. And, these are only the most obvious examples of books so bad you're scared to think of what the publisher was thinking.
Lurking somewhere on a bookshelf near you is something just as scary as an unexplained bump in the night: an awful book hiding in a legitimate book's body. Here are three books that you should read only if you get your kicks from true literary terror.
The Hottest State(1997) by Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke is a good actor. Unfortunately, he is an awful, unoriginal writer. The Hottest State was published in 1997, when the image of Hawke as a young, precocious Gen Xer with talent to spare seemed legitimate. But Hawke's debut novel proved he should stick to acting. Lampooned by critics and the poor saps who paid full price alike, The Hottest State is a semi-autobiographical novel about Hawke's relationship with one-hit-wonder Lisa Loeb. It features lines so bad they should echo in literature for eternity, such as this tender, touching moment Hawke's protagonist shares with his lover: "And I put my hand on her ass, because it
made her feel sexy." After reading The Hottest State, you might well wish someone would use their foot instead of their hand on Hawke's posterior.
The Bridges of Madison County(1992) by Robert James Waller
There are two main problems with this book: one, it's boring, sappy and overly hyped, and two, it is responsible for causing Clint Eastwood, once the man among men as Dirty Harry, to spit out sappy, uninspired dialogue with Meryl Streep in the book's film version. The sappy story is something like this: a world famous photographer (Eastwood in the movie) accidentally ends up in Iowa (doesn't everyone end up in Iowa by accident?), and falls in love with a comely Iowa farm wife (Streep). An English professor consulted for this story nominated this novel by calling it "certainly one of the worst books ever written." That being said, there are many who swear by this book: Amazon.com calls it "the romantic classic of the '90s." Battlefield Earth(1982) by L. Ron Hubbard
Battlefield Earth (1982) by L. Ron Hubbard
It might be unfair to blame this book for the atrocious two-hour John Travolta suckest that resulted from it, but if you can't blame the book, what can you blame? L. Ron Hubbard was an excellent science-fiction writer. His popularity, even today, astounds. But this, his epic thousand-page or so saga of intergalactic warfare and slavery (think Star Wars meets Spartacus) is both too long, and too boring. Granted, space combat is a fun time – but only in doses. A thousand pages is a long space to talk about anything, and rest assured this book has its fair share of sag. If you're the sort who watches the movie so you can pretend that you read the book, you might just want a puke bucket to keep next to your popcorn.
DOCK BOYS
by Scott Drummond, for The University Daily Kansan
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