What a Depressing Hallowversary

Halloween is my favorite holiday.

I'm not sure when it started winning over Christmas, but I do know I was fairly young. I have many many memories of very happy Halloweens as a kid. Hell, my mom announced to me and my sister on October 27th 1994 that she and dad were getting divorced and I still managed to have a happy Halloween that year. It would have ruined Christmas.

Halloween 1997

We grew up with ALL the animated Halloween specials. The radio stations play Vince Guaraldi Trio's "Linus and Lucy" at Christmas time but that's how It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown starts. It will always be Halloween music to my ears. I learned the origin of the word "Halloween" from the 1970s special The Halloween that Almost Wasn't. And who wouldn't want a night rollicking with a slightly crazed witch like in Witch's Night Out? Plus good luck hearing "Werewolves of London" outside of October.

Then, in my mid-twenties when I became a pagan, Halloween took on the spiritual significance that had always been the only thing missing from the day. My favorite holiday becomes a double holiday? Sign me up! Samhain is, for many pagans, our spiritual New Year. It's a good time for me to make a resolution or two considering National Novel Writing Month starts the next day.

In 2006 I was still working but my health problems were becoming a work problem. I went home early from work at the candy store that Halloween. For the first time I was really, truly depressed on my favorite holiday. I didn't even dress up for Halloween. My poor, terrified,  ex-Jehovah's Witness husband got stuck with handing out candy that evening. I sat down in front of the TV and worked on a little decorative box on which I was trying to recreate the sky from Great Pumpkin (impossible, by the way, unless you're an actual artist).

We had started watching MSNBC earlier in the year because CNN was driving me nuts and MSNBC seemed to have a little bit of sanity on it. And that night we flipped over to MSNBC during the 8pm hour. In 2006 at 8pm on MSNBC was Countdown with Keith Olbermann. 

There are several reasons why this moment of first finding Countdown is stuck in my head forever. If we tuned in very long before the Worst Persons in the World segment, I wasn't paying much attention. But it was Halloween and when Toccata in D, which had always been Dracula's Theme in my head, started I paid attention. What stuck even more was what the guy on my TV was saying. He was calling out hypocrisy, and general douchieness. No one on TV did that except Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and they were comedians! This was on an actual news channel!

The next night I wanted to see more of this show and see if the Worst Persons bit had just been for Halloween. Of course, it hadn't been. I was hooked, my husband was hooked and we have been ever since.

This year we're losing the house we bought with a predatory loan in late 2005. The house is barely decorated because I couldn't see the point of unpacking stuff that would just need repacked when I was already packing the rest of the house. I'm not dressing up, though I do have a witchy outfit planned for handing out candy. And this year I won't close out trick-or-treat by watching the election and hurricane recovery coverage on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Tonight I will be lighting a number of candles for friends and for all those affected by the storm, and we will be donating to storm relief efforts.

Good Bye, Donna Summer

I found out a little while ago that Donna Summer, Queen of Disco, has died at age 63.  Aside from the fact that that is just too young (younger than my parents!) in a year that's already been full of iconic deaths, this one really hits me.

I was born in 1981 and meaning no disrespect at all to MCA, while my friends were listening to The Beastie Boys, I was listening to music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  And unlike my angsty male counterparts, I wasn't listening to most older prog rock, either.  If it was uncool to listen to at the time, I was probably unintentionally into it, so of course that meant I love disco.

My parents are a bit older than most of my sister and my friends' parents.  So while friends grew up listening to more contemporary music and followed that line, my sister and I loved listening to Dad's "little records" - 45rm.  He had everything from Buddy Holly to Cyndi Lauper in that collection, though most of it was the older stuff.  And our parents have wide ranging musical tastes, so we listened to The Ventures one weekend and had a family sing along with the Peter, Paul, and Mary albums the next.  Dad wasn't the disco fan, though.  That's mom.  And since Dad was a firefighter working a 24 on/ 48 off schedule, that meant that she had evenings when she would play the albums Dad wasn't as crazy about. 

That was how I was first introduced to Donna Summer through Mom's Best of Barbara Streisand album.  I quite literally can't remember a time in my life before I knew the song "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)" - a duet between Summer and Streisand.  For one it's a great song for belting out, Mom has a great voice and so my sister grew up belting it out along with her.  Who could hold the super long notes the longest?  Eventually I caught up and surpassed Mom, though to be fair she's a smoker.  When we were getting on Mom's nerves and she would tell us, "That's it.  Enough is enough!" my sister or I would diffuse the situation by continuing to sing "enough is enough is enough is enough...!" and laugh.

Skip ahead 9 or so years to when my parents are divorced and Mom is living in a clean but depressing apartment.  There was a movie rental place not far from the apartment so often when Mom would pick us up to come visit her we'd rent a movie on the way.  One time we rented the movie "The Full Monty".
Aside from it being a really funny and really heartfelt movie, it has some great music in it and one particular scene that for Mom, Sis, and I - all we have to say is the name of the movie and we know this is the scene we're talking about!

We love that scene (and the song "Hot Stuff") so much that at my rather unconventional wedding my sister, the Maid of Honor, and our Best Person danced their way out onto the floor when they were announced at the reception.  And they did do that twirl.

Of course there are so many other great songs Donna Summer did that I love.  But these are the moments where her music was a memorable part of my life.  Am I a Donna Summer fan? Who isn't?  Even Dad likes her stuff!

Rest in Peace, Donna Summer.  The angel choir is so jealous right now.