Fun Halloween Tip

[tortoise]

Closed on Account of Rabies: Poems and Tales of Edgar Allen Poe

If you're looking for some creepy fun this Halloween season, I can whole-heartedly recommend this double CD collection of several of Poe's works, read by some amazing voice talents. I picked it up a few years ago, and I dig it out every Halloween. The entire collection is incredible, but some highlights include Christopher Walken reading "The Raven," Iggy Pop reading "The Tell Tale Heart," Diamanda Galas reading "The Black Cat," Gabriel Byrne reading "Masque of the Red Death," and Ken Nordine reading "The Conqueror Worm."

I'm a HUGE Poe fan, so your mileage may vary if he's not your cuppa tea, but otherwise I highly recommend picking this up.

 

[tortoise]

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! 't is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly --
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!

That motley drama! -- oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased forever more,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! -- it writhes! -- with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out -- out are the lights -- out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, 'Man,'
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

 

[sunstruck]

Shut UP! I play that every halloween! My favorite is Jeff Buckly reading Ulalume. I love his voice.

 

[Ginny]

<lil shudder>

omg.....i remember hearing The Tell Tale Heart as a child.....talk about a creepy, suspenseful story......mmmmmmmmm Halloween fun.......cool on Iggy Pop reading it......

 

[unclej]

poe rocks...when i was in high school is used to do the speech/drama thing and competed in the UIL stuff doing the tell tale heart. won district twice and state once using it. great story.

of course you could always do what i do on halloween...i go trick or boozin'. stop by friends houses and beg a beer or two and then go to another friend, etc. of course i would never suggest drinkin and driving. nope, not me.

 

[Ginny]

well speaking of fun halloween tips....hey there my favorite lil cockpig......let's just get a white sheet wrapped around ya.....make ya a lil ghosty with a yummy cocktip....

 

[tortoise]

Shut UP! I play that every halloween! My favorite is Jeff Buckly reading Ulalume. I love his voice.

Buckley rocks.

Tell me you don't just about pee your pants when Diamanda Galas reads the first paragraph of The Black Cat. The epitome of skin crawling:

"FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not --and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified --have tortured --have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror --to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place --some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects."

 

[tortoise]

<lil shudder>

omg.....i remember hearing The Tell Tale Heart as a child.....talk about a creepy, suspenseful story......mmmmmmmmm Halloween fun.......cool on Iggy Pop reading it......

His voice is just PERFECT for it. He lets the tension build on its own. I'll definitely have to send that track to you, baby. You and the lil miracle can listen and squeal.

 

[tortoise]

of course you could always do what i do on halloween...i go trick or boozin'. stop by friends houses and beg a beer or two and then go to another friend, etc. of course i would never suggest drinkin and driving. nope, not me.

What costume does one wear for trick or boozin?

 

[Ginny]

horny cockpigs.....so i've heard....just toss on a sheet.....leaving their cockslit exposed for beer slurping....<nodding>