Total Eclipse Of My Brain

Schlocktoberfest 2006

Ever zone out while listening to music? It usually happens when something comes on that you’re not too interested in listening to but you don’t feel like surfing through the stations – like today, when Total Eclipse of the Heart came on the radio as I was driving. That’s not as hazardous as I’m making it sound! I don’t care much about the song one way or the other; but I’d just come back from looking at Halloween stuff, so my mind completely went off into its own thing. Why mention something so random? Because, it is seems now like the official start of Halloweenakkuh, the “eh, whatever” phase of the retail business!

In a marriage that only Tim Burton could conceive of, Halloween and Christmas merchandise appears side-by-side, merging into their own freakish holiday chimera. They’re even starting to make Halloween decorations in Christmas style now. I’ve been unloading freight for the last few months to earn some extra money. That’s where I came across some black jingle-bell door chimes in the shape of giant spiders, complete with orange ribbon. I geek out over stuff like that: everything from candles shaped like mummy hands to the nutcracker witches we sell at Home Goods.

I’m not even weird and Gothic. I don’t paint my toenails black and wear gauze or anything. This is just my time of year. Soon, my three favorite holidays will come one after the other – leaving months and months of empty nothingness behind them…

Anyway, my Muppet-inspired daydream may have given me some appreciation for this song, which I could otherwise take or leave. I was on my way home from looking at Halloween stuff. The music started, and I somehow pictured this corpsey mask I bought at Walmart last year – only he’s a Fozzy or Rolf-like Muppet (with the moving mouth and little ghoul hands playing a piano, beneath his tattered black cloak).

He sings the “Turn around” part and is soon joined by The Bride of Frankenstein – who sings a tortured love song about a man she once cared for before a mad scientist turned her into the walking dead. Cheerful. The setting is shown to be a castle chamber – possibly an abandoned lab? – with a large, moonlit window…

“Turnaround”, Every now and then I get a
little bit lonely and you're never coming around
“Turnaround”, Every now and then I get a
little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears
“Turnaround”, Every now and then I get a
little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by
“Turnaround”, Every now and then I get a
little bit terrified and then I see the look in your eyes
“Turnaround bright eyes”, Every now and
then I fall apart

“Fall apart” – get it? Because she’s been sewn together by a madman! There are some good lyrics that actually conjure up images like that.

And I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you'll only hold me tight
We'll be holding on forever
And we'll only be making it right
Cause we'll never be wrong together

“Forever”, because she’s dead and stuff. She claims they’ll “never be wrong together” because he won’t care if she is all zombie-ish. She’s soon joined by soulful singing ghosts (Kind of like that Alice Cooper bit on The Muppet Show) for the big chorus.

I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark
We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

At this point, she begins sparking, since she was brought to life with electricity.

Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

You can bring a really morbid and literal interpretation to that part if you want – which I do!

Anyway, let’s skip ahead a little. This is the sort of sad part, where she flashes back to her happier non-undead days:

“Turnaround”, Every now and then I know
you'll always be the only boy who wanted me the way that I am
“Turnaround”, Every now and then I know
there's no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you
“Turnaround”, Every now and then I know
there's nothing any better and there's nothing I just wouldn't do
“Turnaround bright eyes”, Every now and
then I fall apart
"Turnaround bright eyes", Every now and
then I fall apart

Once we get to the bridge, there’s this thumping sound for percussion, that I interpreted as the villagers storming her castle and trying to batter down the door. The Bride is just too desperate and depressed to really do anything, so she continues her pleaful singing.

And I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you'll only hold me tight
We'll be holding on forever
And we'll only be making it right
Cause we'll never be wrong together
We can take it to the end of the line
Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time

As the angry mob bursts in, the man from her photograph swings in from the window and holds them off. Meanwhile, The Bride backs towards the window ledge, still singing. Hey, it’s her video! Those pirates never stopped Cindy Lauper from singing “Good Enough”.

I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark
We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks!

She sparks again, this time shooting lightning to drive off the attackers. The two lovers swing from the window by the dude’s grappling hook, or however the hell he got in, and they land in a shady grove across the river. They slip into a moonlit clearing and meet up with the singing ghouls – who escaped somehow. The ‘quiet part’ at the end is The Bride retelling her story to the man:

Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

Then, there’s another, angrier “Turn around” sequence – which I imagined is him telling her it doesn’t matter that she’s a monster. The final duet is, obviously, them. Annnnd…fade.

Morbid? Yes. Romantic? Yes. A bizarre hiccup of my brain, and minutes of your day that you can never get back? Hell yes!

Damn, I want to see this in production now! Somebody get on that. Try this yourself sometime. Get a hold of the song and picture all this stuff if you can. All of this was only 2 minutes of my day; so it’s not like I spent hours trying to imagine this or anything. This is only a flavor of things to come…but hopefully less weird. Stay tuned.

Chicken Soup for the Lost Soul

Halloween isn't all about reminding your relatives that the land they're sitting on may be part of a Viking burial ground - or that intensley freaky things happen 365 days a year in Bridgewater. There are also fuzzy holiday memories. Not quite "fuzzy" in the way Thanksgiving or Christmas are - kind of werewolf fuzzy. Maybe even giant, man-eating spider-from-hell fuzzy. Or even my favorite, "do I need to work on my grammar" fuzzy. Of course, it snowed today, two days before Halloween. So, in a way, it sort of is Christmas-fuzzy.

Halloween conjures images of cheesy primetime specials from the 80's, those little sonic ghost things, and lots and lots of those paper cut-out things on the windows. That's me in the picture above, circa 1985. That's definately a very old picture, because it doesn't have that animated witch that's dominated our living room window since before I could even spell Halloween. Also, these photos seem to predate the knowledge that using a flash in front of a window makes for a very crappy picture. Still, it doesn't take away from the old girl's glory - which is now long since faded. Even those generic monster faces of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and The Grim Reaper that you can find everywhere appear below in their prime. There's a certain quaint cuteness to the witch that I seemed to miss as a child - because once her evil green eyes lit up, she'd scare the pants off of me!

What made her freakier as I grew up is that she looks EXACTLY like a high school teacher I really hated. I wasn't sure if it was just me at first, so I had my friends check it out and they all agreed. Or maybe it works the other way around: I knew there was something off about her that made me uneasy, but I didn't know what. Maybe if her eyes turned green and she started shaking like she had palsey and made really annoying motor sounds I would have made the connection sooner...and probably have never left my house or gone to sleep again in my natural life. At any rate, all she does now is smell like battery acid - and the witch has seen better days too! (Sorry)

When you have three kids of different ages, Halloween starts to lose its magic very slowly - meaning me and Glenn kind of did our own thing the last few years of trick-or-treating. One thing everyone always got into was decorating. We were huge on it. When I was a kid, no inch of the house was left without some hideous ghoul or broom-riding witch. The main feature was our vampire couple, who always made their honeymoon our front yard on Halloween.

"I told yuz, yous cahn't be doin' that in my house! Get a room already!"

Remember what I said about kids not being creative anymore? Well, it's in the last post if you don't. Here's a great example of the sort of ingenuity that parents just don't have these days. That's John in mom's trademark "Wonder Bread" costume, which was recyled so we all had the "fundignity" of wearing it. Of course, nobody could really tell what it was; which I don't attribute to mom's sewing skills. I think it has more to do with the fact that my family was apparently smarter that most of the people I went to school with. Also, I'm not even sure Wonder Bread is still around anymore; they may have been swallowed by that evil little girl from Sunbeam.

Here's a detail of the bread costume. "Wonder" is right, this thing is certainly an enygma. I'd guess one of those playing card guys from Alice In Wonderland or a festive tampon before I came up with - "Oh, he's a loaf of bread!" Franlky, I'm more concerned with what the hell my dad is supposed to be. Was that a stocking on his head? At any rate, as you can see above, the little white thing chewing on my mittens is my grandmother's old dog Susu - the best dog ever. She certainly never puked on my bedroom floor, unlike some other dogs I can think of.

Here's another picture of us with the neighbors. We often got together and formed a party while trick-or-treating, like we're from Final Fantasy of something. I guess that analogy works; every few steps we met a monster, and at each crucial stage we successfully passed, we got a reward of some kind. Personally, I like the old couple who gave out books of Burger King coupons instead of candy. It counted as money; and while the candy would be eaten only a few days later, the coupons held the promise of free food in my future. I suppose if you try to give out something like that now, you're asking for an egg-pelting. I don't get kids anymore, really; no imagination.

Suddenly, I feel old. Good thing John had that sudden muse to inspire him to transform our front porch into a creey foyer - complete with a stuffed figure that wound up looking like Saddam. The best part was, everything we used was actual old furninture from our grandmother's basement. It only took a few hours to put up the plywood false walls and create our inner porch. A nifty gizmo I bought that flickers the lights in response to sound was also a nice touch. We tried to photograph our eerie masterpiece, but this was before John got his awesome digital camera, so nothing came out.

I hope to rekindle some of that holiday magic this year. There may be some wierd magic going on already, as it turns out. Halloween is supposed to be mild and in the 60's this year. Meanwhile, it's snowing like Christmas Eve outside, so who knows? I hope to keep up the festive atmosphere I've always had and not just rely on old memories like the one below.

"Yeah, well screw your pumpkin - I've got a string!"