Saturday 9: Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Welcome back, S9ers!

Looks like we'll have a fun time this month. Link up  here if you want to play along with us!

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Saturday 9: "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" Theme

This week's song was chosen because this is the last Saturday 9 before Halloween. Are you unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.


1) The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, was born in England. Name another pop culture contribution England has made.

 

 

I got stuck on the Beatles, of course, and my brain wouldn't let go of that thought to let me think of anyone else. But then I jumped to Sir Elton John, and I had to go with him. Boy George, George Michael... I could (now) go on and on.

2) This week's song is recognized as the theme to Hitchcock's long-running TV show, but "Funeral March for a Marionette" is a classic piece written for piano in the late 1870s by Charles Gounod. Do you often listen to classical music?

 

♪♫♪♫♪♫... I've put that on right now. I listen to classical every chance I get. I usually put it on YouTube on my phone and then ChromeCast it to the TV in order to annoy a certain three teenagers. Of course, to annoy is not my point. I learned in 9th grade Biology that playing classical music during any kind of thinking time for students helps encourage broader and higher levels of thought processing in the brain, so I put it on when I feel the kids will least object. I prefer Vivaldi's Four Seasons the best, but lately they've wanted more Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. And they still always complain. (Now we have Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata playing.)

3) Janet Leigh's shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho is considered one of the scariest sequences ever filmed. What's the most frightening movie you've ever seen?

 

 

When I was seven years old, in April, my mother died. My father lost all the parenting sense he probably never had and basically forced me to watch Children of the Corn. That same month, I think if not that week! And later, all the Freddy Krueger movies. And after that, Silence of the Lambs. And more. I do not enjoy that stuff. I have had plenty of scary things happen to me in the dark. I do not like purposefully subjecting myself to more.

4) Hitchcock admitted that he "never trusted birds," and he took that fear and turned it into the movie, The Birds. Is there a member of the animal kingdom that just gives you "the creeps?"

 

 

Yeah. Home sapiens. Too damn many of us, making too damn many horrible decisions. Soon, we're going to be using up more Earths than Earth has left to give us. It's scary, and not enough people care.

5) Halloween will soon be upon us. Will you carve a jack o'lantern this year?

 

Yeah, but we probably won't even get our pumpkins until Halloween itself this year. I want to do something like this skull one!!

 

 

6) What candy will trick or treaters get at your house? 

 

I haven't decided yet. I give out good candy, not like apples or pennies - I got a lot of those as a kid and was not a fan! Ha. Hallowe'en, to me, is (partly) a day for kids to just let loose, have some fun, and eat a shit ton of stuff that's bad for them. Rob and Chloë say we got fewer than a dozen last year, so I really want to give out full-size candy bars this year. In Virginia Beach we got hordes of kids every year and sometimes had to put out a sign that we'd run out. And I bought a LOT of candy to prepare. That's more more fun to me.

 

7)  When you went trick or treating, did you prefer fantasy costumes (like a storybook character) or scary ones (like a monster)?

 

Whatever people wear, I prefer interesting costumes.

 

8)  Which candy was your favorite? Which one were you disappointed to find in your trick or treat bag?

 

 

Let's just say, if Reese's Pieces Cups had been a thing when I was a kid, I'd be in serious trouble with diabetes right now. I never liked finding pennies and apples, as mentioned above, and I hate(d) Milky Way and 3Musketeers bars. Gross.

9) Which do you find scarier -- cemeteries or haunted houses?

 

 

I've always found graveyards to be beautiful and peaceful. I never mined being in them. Haunted houses, on the other hand, I don't even like now. I don't like bad things coming out of the dark and grabbing me. It's terrifying to me.

 

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And now I think we might watch Children of the Corn. Just to get that memory out of the shadows and out of my worries for good.

 

Fin.