Happy Halloween!

...and good evening.

Zombies are everywhere. We must mobilize now.

Learn more about the zombie menace here on NPR.

Image by Robert Kirkman. Published by Image Comics.

Also, to see something truly terrifying... click here.

This weekend I attended the scattering of ashes of my Uncle Allen in Ann Arbor. Allen had died in May. He had been suffering from Multiple Sclerosis for many years. He was a concert flutist before he became ill, and continued to teach music and repair flutes. Allen was quite the character. He carried a large cup of expresso coffee in one hand; he had a large, scruffy beard, fedora hat and pipe wedged in his teeth. There was always a twinkle in his eye.

It was an overcast, rainy fall day. The ceremony was only a few minutes. Afterwards, we went to his favorite expresso bar and raised a glass of coffee in his honor. A fitting tribute. The rest of the family headed up north to scatter the rest of his ashes in Long Lake, near Traverse City.

Curse of the Were-Rabbit!

Yet another favorite Halloween film of mine. Wallace and Gromit are at it again... this time as a pest control service. Just as a sleepy English town is about to host their annual vegetable contest, they are overrun by a terrible menace that threatens to eat their entire crop! Only cheese-o-holic and inventor Wallace and his trusty sidekick Gromit can save the day!

If anything convinces Liam to eat his vegetables, this movie will. "Just a little harmless brain alteration..."

Thriller

In keeping with the holiday, a group in Austin, Texas held the largest "Thrill the World" dance-off, with 881 synchronized dancers. No matter what you think of Michael Jackson these days, you can't deny the impact he's had on the world. Found on Aintitcool.com

The Shining

One can't talk about Halloween movies without mentioning, arguably, the scariest of them all, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Apparently, Stephen King was not happy with Kubrick's take on his novel. 

Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) takes his wife (Shelley Long) and young son to to act as caretakers of the Overlook Hotel, a ski resort which is so isolated in the mountains, it must be shut down for several months in the winter. The caretakers will be completely isolated from the outside world during this period. Jack views this as an opportunity to work on his writing. Jack's wife, meanwhile, is growing concerned about the increasingly strange behavior of their son, Danny. 

The hotel, it is revealed, was the site of a horrific murder/suicide by a previous caretaker of is family some years before, and was built on sacred Indian ground. As winter closes in, the characters slowly begin to fall prey to the same cabin fever that took that family so many years before. Danny, we learn, can read minds and see glimpses of both the past and the future, an ability called "shining." What follows is psychologically complex... is what they are experiencing real or a result of cabin fever? Are there spiritual forces at work? Kubrick leaves it up to the audience.

Kubrick pushes the feeling of isolation by framing the characters so they appear small in a vast space and use of minimal dialogue and soundtrack. Exactingly controlled long shots are suddenly interrupted by flashes of terrifying imagery, usually in Danny's mind. Terror builds slowly through the film not through violent acts but anticipation of these acts as we watch characters slowly unravel.

Outside of the hotel is a full-size garden maze the characters can wander in; the hotel itself is a winding maze of hallways and with maze-like patterned carpets that reflect the psyche of the residents. According to Wikipedia, the pathways and walls of a maze are "fixed, pre-determined." One definitely gets the feeling by the end of the story, that these seemingly random events were predetermined.

The film has been satirized many times, most notably by The Simpsons.

Ohio Second only to Michigan in Job Loss

It was announced in the Plain Dealer today that Ohio ranks second only to Michigan in job loss "...with its 'unprecedented, Depression-level' loss of 496,900 jobs since 2000, or 10.5 percent of its work force, exceeded Ohio's decline of 213,300 jobs." Manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, which has decimated manufacturing areas like Detroit and Cleveland. It's downright scary.

Ohio, Michigan, and the country at large needs to start investing in new technology, like renewable energy – solar panels and wind turbines – and sell that all over the world. After Pearl Harbor, FDR said in a year we would build X-number of planes, and we exceeded that number. All it takes is a little vision. It's probably naive of me to ask, but how hard would it be to convert some of these empty auto plants into windmill and solar panel plants? Create a new industry, new jobs and maybe benefit our environment at the same time.

Additional note (added 1:23 pm): Here is another article at Newsweek explaining, in part, why the unemployment numbers are actually higher than they appear.