Self Help Radio 103114: Halloween 2014 - Mummies!

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It was hard but rewarding to find two hours worth of songs about mummies but find them I did & that was today's show.  I did have to break into a pharaoh's tomb to get some of the music, but you & I know that those curses are a bunch of hooey, right?  Right?  Oh no.

The show can be listened to at the Self Help Radio web page now & well past Halloween.  Hey, & if you want to hear some of my previous Halloween shows, they're at the top of my Self Help Radio archive page for today - shows about hell, haunted houses, graveyards, nightmares, & zombies are there - in addition to the mummy show I did today.  Maybe perfect for your Halloween party?  Probably not.

Have a safe one & thanks for listening - the mummy songs I played are below.

(part one)

"The Mummy" Bob McFadden & Dor _Songs Our Mummy Taught Us_
"The Mummy" Marshmallow Overcoat _The Very Best Of Marshmallow Overcoat_
"The Mummy's Bracelet" Lee Ross _Bomp In The Night_
"The Mummy" Uncle Vin _Boo_

"The Mummy" The Naturals _The Mummy_
"Homemade Mummy" Aesop Rock _Skelethon_
"The Mummy's Ball" The Verdicts _These Ghoulish Things: Horror Hits For Halloween_
"When I See Mommy I Feel Like A Mummy" Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band _Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)_

"Me & My Mummy" Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & The Crypt Kickers _The Original Monster Mash_
"Mummy Beach" Hot Lava _Lavalogy_
"My Mummy" Mel Calvin & The Kokonuts _My Mummy_
"My Daddy Is A Mummy" Richard Thompson _RT: The Life & Music Of Richard Thompson_
"The Mummy" Benji Hughes _A Love Extreme_

"The Mummy Piece" William S. Burroughs _Best Of William S. Burroughs: From Giorno Poetry Systems_
"Sarcophagus" Telephone Company _The King's Surprise?_

(part two)

"Mummies" Toyah _The Blue Meaning_
"The Mummy" Jad & David Fair _26 Monster Songs For Children (A-Z)_
"Mummy Walk" Bo Diddley _Hey! Bo Diddley_
"The Mummy's Monkey" The Eastsiders _Halloween Oldies But Goodies Of The '50s & '60s_

"The Mummy" The Slackers _The Question_
"The Way Out Mummy" Bob Ridgely _Lost Treasures! Rarities From The Vaults Of Del-Fi_
"The Mummy" Black Time _Midnight World_
"Mummy's Curse" Luna Vegas _Second Shot_

"The Mummy" 4Corners Crew _Show Me The Lighta EP_
"Bad News" Spooklight _Spooklight_
"Mummified" Future Clouds & Radar _Peoria_

"King Tut" Steve Martin _A Wild & Crazy Guy_
"Tutankhamun" Dynasty _The Electric Asylum, Vol. 3_
"The Mummy's Revenge" Wade Denning & Frank Daniels _Monster Mash (Sounds Of Terror!)_

Whither Mummies?

I have a hell of a thing going with these Halloween shows.  I don't like to repeat myself (well, except for anniversary shows); even the shows I do every year that are about the same - like the Christmas show - I try to play stuff I have never played before.  So if I'm going to do a different Halloween show every year, at some point, I'm going to run out of Halloween icons, right?

Here's what I've done so far in my twelve long years on this show:

2002: general Halloween songs
2003: ghosts
2004: (no Halloween show)
2005: vampires
2006: monsters
2007: zombies
2008: witches
2009: werewolves
2010: haunted houses
2011: graveyards
2012: nightmares
2013: hell

I've complained about this before - I'm running out of scary things!  With mummies, I believe, I've finished off the golden age pantheon of movie monsters.  What can I do next year?  I don't know!

Please listen to my ridiculous mummy show tomorrow from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm.  & I'll put it up in time for Halloween if you so desire at the Self Help Radio website.

Preface To Mummies: Run For Your Life, Charlie Brown!

User CitizenWolfie has created a fabulous collection of Schulz-inspired Halloween creatures which he calls Run For Your Life, Charlie Brown!  I have included above, appropriately, his "Linus as the Mummy" drawing above for your pleasure.

Visit the link!  They're all great!

Is It Cater-Corner Or Kitty-Corner?

This might not be a question they ask in England or Australia - I've heard people with accents pronounce the "cater" in "cater-corner" like the word "cater" as in "I want to have a vegetarian restaurant cater my Thanksgiving" or "I won't cater to your whims, human" (which is something my cats say to me all the time).

But in the States, we say "cater-corner" as if we're saying "cat" in the "corner."  Which is why I think some people say "kitty-corner," since "cat" & "kitty" are both names for those fickle beasts to whom we give our love, only to watch most of them treat our hearts like crippled mice, & play with them.

Sob!

The great Word Detective, who you can read at word-detective.com, & who'll get you addicted to etymology, tells the story of this weird word here, which I will reproduce below:

"Cattycorner" does not actually have anything to do with cats, although cats are notoriously fond of sitting in corners and staring at the wall (at least mine are). The proper word, in fact, is "catercorner" or "catercornered." The "cater" is an Anglicization of the French "quatre," or "four," and "catercornered" originally just meant "four-cornered." To specify that something is "catercorner across" from something else is to stress the diagonal axis of an imaginary box, as opposed to saying "directly across" or just "across."

According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, our great national repository of English as real folks speak it, "catercorner" first appeared around 1883 in the South, and originally meant "askew" or "out of line." The "diagonally across" meaning soon took over, however, as did the transition from "cater" to "catty." Linguists call this process "folk etymology" -- people replacing an unfamiliar element in a word or phrase ("cater") with a familiar one ("catty" or "kitty"). "Cattycorner" has remained purely an Americanism, so don't expect folks to understand the word if you use it on your next trip to London.

Now, I know other countries are familiar with this word, or at least the brainiacs in the Lucksmiths do, since they use it (pronouncing it with a long a) in the song Midweek Midmorning.  Nyah.

I miss the Lucksmiths.  That's a brilliant song.  I remember when I bought the single way back when.

Why am I thinking of this?  Because as I sit here working on my next show (the Halloween show, about mummies, this Friday), I can hear the sounds of children screaming.  That's a daunting sentence, implying horrors, with the words "Halloween" & "scream" so close together, but actually, I live with a daycare-in-a-church catercorner from my house, & children scream when they're playing, mainly to annoy me.  My dogs & cats, who doubtless have more excellent hearing than I do, seem unfazed, but it alarms me every time one of them lets out a particularly screechy shriek.  I think the people hired to watch over them (who, I found out, have the inflated title "teachers") wear earplugs while the kinders play.

Anyway, I answered my own question by going to the Word Detective: it's catercorner.  Not even a dash!

Forget I said anything.

A Comedy Of Terrors

You think you're so clever, making a pun on a Shakespeare play (& referencing something your wife has taken to saying when the pets do something funny) & then you check on it.  You discover (naturally) that this simple-to-make pun has been used probably since the first critic of the play.

"Master Shakespeare's new play is not so funny; indeed, one might call it a comedy of terrors!" - The Stratford-On-Avon Times

Check it out: it's a horror film with Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, & Vincent Price (using the article "the" instead of "a"), & also a Bollywood film that has a little infamy because it was sued by Warner Brothers for apparently ripping off Harry Potter (although it seems to have mostly ripped off Home Alone).  Plus it's an eBook & also someone wants to make it a role playing game.  Now it's the title of one of my dumb blog posts!

Shakespeare's play is about two twins separated at birth that end up in the same city & hilarity ensues.  The Comedy Of Terrors is about an undertaker who kills people to get more clients.  Wouldn't it have been more fun to have Karloff & Price be two killers who were separated at birth?  A real opportunity was missed there.

I can't imagine there'll be much comedy in my show this week, or do I mean terror?  There are quite a few songs about mummies (it's my Halloween show!) & a lot of them are novelty tunes.  I suppose I'll talk about that a bit more as the week wears on.