SOUNDTRACK: THE HOOTERS-“All You Zombies” (1985).
WXPN played this song on the day after Halloween and the DJ said she couldn’t believe they hadn’t played it as part of their Halloween show.
It made me laugh about what people consider a Halloween song (and I know I need to let up on this). Like so many other songs, the simple fact that there’s a monster reference in the title does not make the song a Halloween song.
Indeed, this song is about as far from a Halloween song as you can get.
The song itself is catchy as anything. A great guitar riff and some tension-building synths support these rather dramatic lyrics:
Holy Moses met the Pharaoh
Yeah, he tried to set him straight
Looked him in the eye,
“Let my people go!”Holy Moses on the mountain
High above the golden calf
Went to get the Ten Commandments
Yeah, he’s just gonna break ’em in half!
No one ever spoke to Noah,
They all laughed at him instead
Workin’ on his ark,
Workin’ all by himself
Only Noah saw it comin’,
Forty days and forty nights,
Took his sons and daughters with him,
Yeah, they were the Israelites!
The Hooters guys say there was no explicit message to the song. A 1985 interview with the Chicago Tribune, co-writer Eric Bazilian (with Rob Hyman) said
We really weren’t thinking at all when we wrote it. We were working on something else, and, true to the spirit of the song, it just came to us, like a vision. We were sitting there working on another song, and all of a sudden we started singing, ‘All you mmm-hhhmm-mmm.’ Then I heard something about Moses in my head, and I started singing, ‘Holy Moses.’
We just chased it down. We stopped what we were doing to go after this thing, and an hour later, the song was written, start to finish. We’re still trying to really understand the song. People ask us what it’s about, and while there’s a lot of heavy stuff in there, the weird thing is we didn’t consciously put it there. Who knows? Maybe in some bizarre way it came from somewhere else through us.
Interestingly, it got banned on several stations and there were some Christian stations that refused to play it.
So, not Halloween-related at all, but super catchy and lyrically unexpected.
Also interesting is that Hyman and Bazilian went on to work with Joan Osborne on her album Relish, with Eric writing “One Of Us” another religiously themed song.
[READ: September 2, 2019] Dead Weight
I haven’t read a graphic novel by Oni Press in a while. They were once my go-to comic book publisher.
Then they stopped doing single issues and started publishing only graphic novels. Nothing wrong with that but I had been collecting single issues back then, not books, so they fell off my radar. I have to get them back on my radar because I really do enjoy their books.
I didn’t know what this was about, but the title and cover art appealed to me, so I grabbed it.
This story is set at a fat camp–Camp Bloom. We meet many of the kids who are there for the summer as well as the counselors who are there to help them get through the summer.
The story begins with Jesse, a teen who would rather be at Fashion camp. She is not happy to be there. It’s her first time there. Most everybody else has been coming for a few summers. There’s Tony, a boy who doesn’t want to give up his social media while at camp (but who we find out later pays his own way because he wants to get in shape so badly). There’s also Noah, a large, good-natured kid who really inspired by Athletic Director Jim. There’s also Kate, a rather angry looking woman who has been coming to the camp for years. There’s also Ben, a somewhat flamboyant gay teen who is in good shape bit is “gay fat.” Everyone reasons for coming to camp are valid.
The Counselors include Cory who lost 85 pounds since lat year and looks amazing. Steve is second in charge. Gwen is the nurse. Ryan is the chef. Athletic Director Jim was always the most in shape guy a camp and is maybe a little jealous about Cory’s weight loss. There’s two junior counselors Lance and Cecily (who are an item) and finally Loretta the head of the camp (and a woman who looks like maybe she could use the advice of the camp).
Suspicious things happen right from the gt go. We hear counselors whispering about something that won’t happen for a month. We see a counselor slip a note in another’s pocket and then we see nurse Gwen smoking. When Cecily tells Jesse that she hopes to lose fifteen more pounds this summer, Jesse tells her she looks fine. This rubs Cecily the wrong way for some reason. Later that first night we see Gwen and Cory arguing about something.
At the campfire one night all of the campers are invited to share their story–a nice way for us to know them better.
The dieting sucks and the kids are kinda miserable but–perhaps surprisingly–chef Ryan is willing to sell them all candy bars–for a price of course. One night Noah sees Jesse heading over there. As he goes to talk to her, they both witness something horrible–the sub-titular murder at Camp Bloom!
The victim is Cory but they can’t see who the murderer was.
Jesse and Noah (it turns out they go to the same school but never really talked to each other before) don’t know what to do. Noah thought the world of Cory and wants this solved. Jesse wants to stay out of it. But when Noah tells his friends (much to Jesse’s anger), he enlists the help of Tony (because he’s so good at technology) and Kate–because she knows the camp better than anyone.
The next day Loretta tells everyone that Cory had to go home early–the kids assume she’s in on it. In fact, when they think about it, all of the counselors could be guilty (the murderer had a Counselor’s bandanna on). They decide to work together using each other’s strengths and they find a few clues–clues that, unfortunately still seem to implicate everyone.
Then some truths start to come out and some alibis are formed (for surprising reasons–counselors are people too, huh?). It also seems like no one knows that Cory has been killed yet. But just as they get on to a clue, another counselor is killed. This time there are more clues. Unfortunately the clues–a cigarette and a whistle–send two very different messages,
What’s somewhat groundbreaking about this novel (well, not really groundbreaking, but unusual) is that the fat camp setting doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. It’s just a setting and an opportunity for the artists to draw plus-sized characters in a non judgmental and non-mocking way. Which is pretty awesome. Indeed, when the characters talk about their stores they really just how different people can be and can feel about their bodies. The other nice thing is that there are a few LGBTQ+ characters. This impacts the plot in a way but again, not in a judgmental way or a way that makes them seem bad. And, it’s cool that the main character Jesse is Hispanic.
Terry Blas and Molly Muldoon set out to create an exciting story an d to make their characters not like every other book. And they succeeded. Perhaps more impressively, with all this going on, the authors still manage to keep the story appropriate for Middle School.
The illustrations by Matthew Seely are fun and vibrant and the characters are all unique and uniquely shaped–a nice change form big breasted super heroines and triangle-shaped super men (even if two of the characters are somewhat triangular.
I really enjoyed this.
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