"commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors" trolius and cressida: i, iii

Happy Halloween, kids. This short use to scare the willies out of me as a kid. Enjoy!

"know'st me not by my clothes?" cymbeline: iv, ii

Boy, I sure do love music. All kinds. I wish I could say I was a snob about it, but I'm not, not really. Which isn't to say I'll listen to anything, but there is a wide variety of music I'll listen to with gusto. I really do have a soundtrack in my head all the time. I can remember two Halloweens when I was growing up, I tried to rig up a way to actually have a soundtrack to accompany my stellar costumes. One year, I was "the Sugar Plum Fairy" -- not just any fairy, I was the Sugar Plum Fairy (mind you, I held on to this idea from the previous December when I saw The Nutcracker ballet for the first time). I was nervous that people wouldn't know, specifically, that I was the Sugar Plum Fairy based on my purple leotard, tutu, foil-covered wings, and beautiful makeup (the only time I got to wear lipstick at age 7) and wanted to carry the music with me to sort of clue people in. So I spent an afternoon with my Fisher Price tape recorder, sitting next to the stereo speakers in our living room playing the music from the Nutcracker record we had (this was early October, much to my mother's delight), and trying to record the music by holding the recorder up to the speaker. Trouble was, I'd get halfway through recording the darn thing, and someone would walk in and say something, or make a noise, or I'd drop the recorder, etc. Finally I got through one recording that had maybe only one interruption -- I'd have to just quickly make my appearance and skip away before anyone heard it, I reasoned -- and it was time for dinner so I called it a day, hoping for the best.

On Halloween night, in the excitement of putting on my costume, arguing about sweatshirt-wearing with Mom, getting my glow stick and jack-o-lantern treat pail all together, I forgot the damn tape player!! I didn't realize it until we approached the first house, and by then it was too late. We rang the bell, and the kindly older woman who answered the door oohh'ed at the sight of us in our glory, me as the Sugar Plum Fairy and my sister as ... I'm not sure, but I think she was an alien with a sparkly Star Trek-like outfit that might even have had lights on it. "Ooooh!" the woman cooed. "What do we have here? An astronaut! Annnd, let's see .... a ballerina!"

A ballerina!!! Oh, god, she totally missed it!! Without my music I was doomed to the anonymous, unoriginal role of Ballerina, no doubt one of hundreds who would pirrouette their way up these porch steps!! Crestfallen, I blurted out "NO! I'm the Sugar Plum Fairy!!!!!" The woman smiled condescendingly and said, "Happy Halloween, dear," as she dropped a pencil and a penny into each of our treat pails. Double whammy: incorrect costume identification, non-candy treat. Boo.

The very next year I was convinced that I would not be undone in the same fashion. Without my imagined cinematic entrance complete with the very important musical cues that would let people know exactly who I was, I was doomed to nondescriptness; I might as well just buy a costume at the store!

With the new year I had discovered the rock and roll music. In fact, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up in a school assigment, I put down that I wanted to be either a "doctor for horses" (I knew what a vet was but associated them with cats and dogs and wanted to specify my [kind of snotty, I see now] association with horses, which came from the fact that my dad played arena polo) or a "punk rocker" (I wish I was making my third grade terminology up). Please understand, however, that my idea of punk was about as close to the Clash as Justin Timberlake. My understanding of, ahem, punk rockers was that they wore mis-matched clothing -- sometimes with rips in them! -- had a lot of earrings, all the way up the ear, and, most interestingly to me, multicolored hair. In other words, uh .... er ....

Ok. It was Cyndi Lauper (I spelled it Cindy Lopper). Yeah, not exactly ... you know ... Sid Vicious level punk rock.

So, that was my planned costume. This year, I had it even better, because at (again) the previous Christmas, my uncle (who had been, in his day, a, uh, "punk rocker" himself) had recorded a copy of "She's So Unusual" for me, so I already had my top-notch recording of the song "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." Now, all I needed was that awesome criss-cross haircut that she sported in the "Time After Time" video, dyed bright red!! Well, Mom nixed the cut, but did buy me some red spray-on color. Then, with my "punk rock" outfit (red boat-neck sweatshirt off one shoulder, red skirt, turquoise tights (no rips), red legwarmers), some "crazy" makeup thanks to Mom, I was ready. Oh, wait, one other thing. I decided Cindy Lopper had a pet, who was also punk rock, so I took my Koosa and dressed it up in a similar outfit, and pierced its ear, and drew makeup on the doll with magic markers. Now I was ready. This outfit, pet, red hair, and music would be sure to leave no doubt in any viewer's mind who I was. I was a veritable dead ringer, as surely Cindy Lopper arrived anywhere she went with her punk rock pet and her own music being blasted by one of her lackeys.

The problem that I didn't foresee was my mother's unwillingness to tote my tape player around. Weirdly enough, between the jackets she would be carrying for both me and my sister, the flashlight, and no doubt my Koosa as I got tired of carrying it, she didn't want the extra baggage. Huh, weird - she didn't want to be my stage manager. Go figure. Well, I didn't want to ruin the effect by carrying it around myself (not very punk rock to carry a Fisher Price tape player, even I knew that), and it was getting late -- soon all the good loot would be gone. And I didn't want to throw a fit, lest I be sent to bed with no trick or treating at all. So I surrendered the soundtrack for the second year, against my better judgement.

And at the first door, the kindly older man looked down and said "Oh! What do we have here now? Ahhh, a cheerleader!! Very nice." And dropped a penny into my treat pail. Double, double whammy.

"what revels are in hand?" a midsummer night's dream: v; i

*Sigh* It's never a good thing when I start yelling back at the radio on my way home from work. I won't get too much into what it was that made me yell at the innocent NPR reporter who was simply delivering the news that I found so abhorent -- in fact, insert your own yell-inducing topic if you like. But it got to the point where I was actually yelling - not in my head, but out loud, directing my gaze at the radio as if it could hear me and might heed my anger, changing the news it was telling me. Some people call it passion, others call it fucking bonkers. When I realized what I was doing, it felt like the latter. So I turned the channel and settled into the thrall of pre-programmed Corporate Radio, those fucking bastards. Oh, right, I forgot; I Have Opinions on that, too. I'm glad my work week is over; put it that way.

The upside of today was that there was a big crate of pumpkins outside the store today, which means it is almost time for my favorite holiday; you guessed it, Arbor Day.

Haha, no, no, of course I'm just kidding; everyone knows Arbor Day is in April. Of course I'm talking about Halloween. I. Love. Halloween. Sadly last year I did not get to "do" anything for Halloween because of work, but even on the years when I don't get to do anything, I still love it. I love the feeling of fall at that time, I like the first few weeks after we change the clocks and it gets dark early (I get tired of that pretty quick though). I like the feeling of Halloween being one of the last nights of outdoor revelry before we all hunker down into our homes for the winter. I'm a dork. I know it.

More than anything, though, I love the stuff that has to do with Halloween itself - the pumpkins on all the stoops, which, a day or two before the holiday, sprout glowing faces; the scarecrows in the yards, those all-out folks who build a whole horror story in their yards, and the costumes. Oh, the costumes!! I'll tell you something about my childhood - my birthday is at the end of August. With no real holidays between my birthday and Halloween, I would often spend the whole of September and October dreaming about, brainstorming for, and building my costume for Halloween. I never had anything super spectacular, but it was always well thought out and, well, my parents always said my costumes were neat. It was doing the work that was fun. Sometimes I would finish my costume well before Halloween and I would get bummed out, having to look at it wasting away in the corner of my bedroom, waiting for that one glorious night when it would get to shine!! And then it would all be over too quickly, one fleeting night, sometimes even so cold that the costume was obscured by the sweatshirt my mom would make me wear. Actually, after a while, I started thinking of costumes that would work well with a sweatshirt.

Recently, the most fun I had for Halloween was when my husband, one of our dear friends, and I decided to hit the town as the I-Don't-Care Bears. Instead of the warm and fuzzy Care Bears, with character names such as Cheer Bear, Friend Bear, Wish Bear, or Do Your Best Bear, we were their ne'er-do-well cousins: Boozy Bear (my husband), Druggie Bear (our friend), and Special Bear (me). Boozy Bear was all black, with a belly emblem of a variety of alcoholic beverages, realistically rendered with eye-popping detail on the martini's olive spear and the beer's foam. Druggie Bear was in all purple, with a belly including a syringe and a lifelike bag of a suspicious crystaline substance. As Special Bear, I was dressed in all yellow, and on my belly was a short school bus. The topper on my costume was the helmet I wore, with stickers on it proclaiming that "God made me special." No doubt I, if not the three of us collectively, are going to hell for that one.

Halloween: Best. Day. of. the. Year.

"marvellous sweet music!" the tempest: iii, iii

I'm not going to be shy about admitting that I am a child of the 80s. I was born in the late 70s and my predominant childhood memories are all in the 80s. Since I wasn't a teenager in the 80s, my perception of being a teenager in the 80s was shaped by the movies and music and television that was all around me. My babysitters all watched MTV - yes, we were able to be transfixed even though "all they did" was play music videos. By the time the 90s had rolled around, I was already well into the world-weary preteen years, already looking back at what I thought was my wasted childhood and my inability to return to those halcyon days. The 80s were a simpler time, a time when technology still seemed to hold the keys to the future, when we could still say "cool!" when we saw a computer in someone's house, but it was the turning point, too, a time when somehow there was a balance between naive wonder at the world before us as well as a new understanding of the problems of our world, and how we as a generation would have to face them, and use the new tools at our disposal to try and make the world a better place. Even though every generation says this, it was a unique time that shaped my view of the world today.

(Oh, a side note before I continue. To the very sweet, very friendly, very young people that I seem to encounter a lot lately as the new school year gets in full swing: You are adorable. You are fresh-faced and naive, and your determination and upbeat attitude is refreshing to me. My only advice to you in dealing with folks of "my generation" -- who, let's face it, are really only about 8 to 12 years older than you -- is this. If you're going to ask my age, that's fine, I will answer gladly; I'm not one of those women who won't reveal her age. But when I reply gamely "Twenty-nine," try to avoid widening your eyes and saying "Wow!" It tends to be off-putting. And the half-hearted follow up of "you don't look twenty-nine" barely covers things. Just letting you know.)

Well, back to my original point. I'm a child of the 80s, and my perception of life has been shaped by that fact. So, it is with a little trepidation and a fair amount of embarrassment that I admit the following fact about myself: I often think in music montages. That's right, you know those scenes popularized in the teen flicks of the 80s where, to get the point across of some kind of dynamic action taking place over the course of time, the only sound is a catchy song with lyrics that barely tie into the plot and the scenes show the progression of action happening quickly so we can get to the happy denoument. Well. Sometimes - ok, a lot of times, and it happens even more now that I have an iPod - I'll be doing a very normal, everyday thing, such as laundry, and I'll imagine it all going down as a musical montage. As I pull up to the laundromat, the opening riff of Adam Ant's "Goody Two Shoes" will play in my head, and every mundane action as I do my wash will appear in my head as a cut shot in a montage set to that song. It's .... well, let's face it, it's a little pathetic.

The culprit for this disorder is one of two movies:

The Breakfast Club, "We Are Not Alone" (Karla DeVito). This one was key because it was about teens and high school, and I was very influenced by anything I thought older kids were doing. At first glance, this scene doesn't seem quite so much a montage as it is just a crappy dance scene, but it skyrockets into montage range when they do the cuts of different characters dancing on the railing. Highlights include Judd Nelson dry humping the sculpture, Molly Ringwald showing off her super-cool princess outfit as she dances on the landing, and Emilio Estevez playing air guitar in all his stonewashed-jean glory. These kids didn't have much in common, but crappy pseudo-rock brought them to new levels of understanding.

The Karate Kid, "You're the Best" (Joe Esposito). Possibly the gold standard by which all movie music montages must be judged. It has a lot going for it, from the clenched fist of approval from the Cobra Kai Sensai, to the twitchy-classic-jock-neck-cracking performed by the bleach blond Cobra Kai lackey before he enters the ring with Daniel-san, to Mr. Miyagi's passive onlooking, joined by a chipper Elizabeth Shue. What makes this montage so spectacular is that they show the match officials moving Daniel-san's name placard up and up on the tournament standings chart, to indicate him moving effortlessly through to the championships. Most important, they chose a song that really kicks it into the next level through the use of switching between major and minor keys, really building up the tension and getting you ready for the all-time classic Sweep-the-Leg Moment ("Put him in a body bag, yeah!") that follows shortly after. You can't beat this top-notch montage.

In any case, this problem is one I'm going to have to live with. So, fresh-faced youngsters, if you catch me bopping my head and singing to myself as I carry out an everyday task, just chalk it up to the fact that in my head, I'm living it up in the old days. Just try not to say "Wow."