Horror – Brian Ferrari's Blog

Some Thanksgiving Treats For You (2025)

Ok – I admit it: I am one of those people who started playing Christmas music last week. Yesterday the Christmas lights went up. I don’t normally rush this, but this rotted year has really done a job on me. However, I am comfortable enough in my middle-aged fruitiness to freely quote Auntie Mame at you: We need a little Christmas. Now.

One of my favorite holiday CDs of recent years is Tracey Thorn’s Tinsel & Lights – a smart collection of original and non-traditional holiday-themed songs perfectly suited to the Everything But The Girl singer’s melancholy voice.

The lead track, Joy (written by Thorn) has been on repeat in my home every December since its 2012 release. When I first posted this in 2020, the song felt like it was tailor-made for that pandemic holiday season.

The opening lyric:
When someone very dear / calls you with the words “Everything’s all clear.” / That’s what you want to hear / but you know it might be different in the new year. / That’s why / That’s why / We hang the lights so high: Joy.

Now, as 2025 limps to a close, it’s a different lyric that strikes a chord:

So light the winds of fire / and watch as the flames grow higher / we’ll gather up our fears / And face down all the coming years / All that they destroy / And in their face we throw our Joy.

Here are some other Thanksgiving-themed goodies I have previously posted:

When it comes to holiday music, unfortunately Thanksgiving is lost in the long shadow of Christmas. There’s a severe lack of Thanksgiving songs, aren’t there? All we’ve got is “Let’s Turkey Trot” by Little Eva, and even then it is not really about Thanksgiving at all. The song’s title refers to the Turkey Trot, a dance step popular back in the early 1900’s.

“Let’s Turkey Trot” was Eva Boyd’s third single, released in 1963 with the hopes of recapturing the #1 success of her debut platter, The Loco-Motion. It had a respectable showing on the charts, peaking at #20, although it should have been billed as Little Eva & The Cookies, as the backing group is as much a part of the success of the record as the lead. Group member Earl-Jean McCrea delivers solo lines echoing their own hits Chains & Don’t Say Nothing Bad About My Baby, which also featured Little Eva on background vocals.

Here’s an abbreviated performance by Little Eva on Shindig in 1965. Darlene Love and the Blossoms stand in for the Cookies in what must be one of the proudest moments of their career. Gobble Diddle It!

The Dollyrots also covered this track in 2014. Besides using footage of Little Eva’s Shindig performance throughout the video, they also namecheck “Little Eva back in ’63”:

Want some “Mashed Potatoes” with your “Turkey Trot?” Here’s Dee Dee Sharp with her own ode to a Thanksgiving staple / dance move:

Aaaaand some “Gravy” for your mashed potatoes:

Here’s a newly updated and expanded version of a post that originated in 2019: 10 Things You May Not Know About March of The Wooden Soldiers, the Laurel & Hardy classic holiday film that is required viewing on Thanksgiving morning.

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On the darker side… one of the faux trailers from Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse is the hilariously spot-on Thanksgiving, directed by Eli Roth. It is entirely plausible that someone would have jumped on the bandwagon of grade-z holiday themed horror films that followed the success of Halloween. But this one is a fake. In 2023, Roth did put out a full movie version of Thanksgiving. The original trailer retains it’s own seedy charm:

During the Thanksgiving episode of SNL in 1997, Lilith Fair stand-up comic Cinder Calhoun (a recurring character played by Ana Gasteyer) & singer Sara McLachlan paid a visit to Norm MacDonald and the Weekend Update desk, singing the Thanksgiving classic “Basted In Blood.” It would not be nearly as funny if they didn’t sing it so well.

Unfortunately this segment seems to have fallen off the annual SNL Thanksgiving Eve prime time special.

In 2019, Ana Gasteyer released a holiday album: Sugar & Booze. Highly recommended!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some Thanksgiving Treats For You (2024)

Ok – I admit it: I am one of those people who started playing Christmas music last week. Yesterday the Christmas lights went up. I don’t normally rush this, but this rotted post-election month has really done a job on my belief system. However, I am comfortable enough in my middle-aged fruitiness to freely quote Auntie Mame at you: We need a little Christmas. Now.

Baron von Munchausen is ready.

Now, in 2024 as we stare down the barrel of the gun that is the second Trump administration, it’s a different lyric that strikes a chord:

So light the winds of fire / and watch as the flames grow higher / we’ll gather up our fears / And face down all the coming years / All that they destroy / And in their face we throw our Joy.

Here are some other Thanksgiving-themed goodies I have previously posted:

The Dollyrots also covered this track in 2014. Besides using footage of Little Eva’s Shindig performance throughout the video, they also namecheck “Little Eva back in ’63”:

Want some “Mashed Potatoes” with your “Turkey Trot?” Here’s Dee Dee Sharp with her own ode to a Thanksgiving staple / dance move:

Aaaaand some “Gravy” for your mashed potatoes:

Here are 10 Things You May Not Know About March of The Wooden Soldiers, the Laurel & Hardy classic holiday film that is required viewing on Thanksgiving morning.

Unfortunately this segment seems to have fallen off the annual SNL Thanksgiving Eve prime time special.

In 2019, Ana Gasteyer released a holiday album: Sugar & Booze. Highly recommended!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Playground Swing

“I have been working on this piece for years.”

That’s what I told myself. When I went back to look for earlier drafts that I was sure I had started, I discovered that there were none. I never wrote anything down – I only thought about sharing this story. For years. Until now.

“Do you have any real ghost stories?” is a fun question that pops up occasionally in social situations. My go-to response is the story of The Playground Swing – an unexplained occurrence from when I was in the 6th grade. Whether or not it is an actual ghost story, the memory has stayed with me for 44 years.

Just as the clear, cool weather of an early September day can evoke memories of 9/11, the story of The Playground Swing always comes back to me on crisp October mornings. It sneaks in sideways while I’m going through my morning routine, or while I’m commuting. It evaporates before I ever sit down and type it out. There’s not a whole lot to the story, really. It’s that unexplained simplicity that makes it a bit anticlimactic in the telling.

It was the fall of 1980 and I was in 6th grade at Bowling Green Elementary school in East Meadow, New York. We had moved into my grandmother’s house the year before, after a year of unrest following my parents’ divorce. I was happy to be living there, in the cozy house my mother grew up in. I looked forward to going to the school that my parents, aunts, and uncles had all attended.

Once upon a time, I had been a popular kid, but this was our second move in under two years. I remember hearing that it was a bad age to be uprooted and have to make new friends. Obviously many kids maneuver their way through it successfully. I didn’t.

5th grade had been bad, but I did have a couple of new friends to help me get through it. When we got into 6th grade, they were in a different classroom on the other side of the school. In my class, there were no allies. It felt like they were all against me. Looking back now, I would have to say that, among those in my class, I was met with 50% aggression and 50% apathy.

I was a chubby kid in need of a shower and a haircut, with big eyes and thick lashes that caused me to be regularly mistaken for a girl. My class picture says it all: This is a photo of an 11-year-old who was misgendered by the photographer moments before he snapped the picture. When I rolled my eyes and said, “I’m a boy,” he sputtered “Oh, uh… I was talking to that girl over there.” Now smile! *Click*.

For years, my memory was this: One day, my entire class gathered after school to confront me as I walked through the playground towards home. I’m sure it wasn’t ALL of them but when faced with an angry mob of your peers gathering around you, well… I didn’t stop to take attendance. It was a lot of them.

What was their plan? To beat me up? What would that accomplish? I don’t think they actually knew either, and in that disorganization I was able to run away. My best defense was that I could always run fast.

My mother called the school to complain and I was allowed to stay home the next day. The vice-principal went and spoke to the class, asking why they were picking on me. The response landed me in his office for a lecture: I had a bad mouth. I cursed at everyone. This is what he was told. I was the problem. No mention of the taunts and name calling that were the catalysts for my colorful language.

Fuck them, I thought.

My teacher was Mr. Dillon, a soft-spoken beanpole of a man who had been teaching there since my parents attended in the 1950’s. He kept his Vantage cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt, and another teacher would stop in to watch the class while he went out for smoke breaks. He had lost his wife a few years before and seemed sad, defeated, and waiting to retire.

In the Bowling Green student handbook that nobody reads, I found that if I brought a note from my mother, I could go home for lunch. I don’t know of anyone else who did this or wanted to. Teachers and staff would look at me funny when I presented my note and told them I was heading out. I would run home to avoid the lunchtime awkwardness of where to sit, as well as any potential playground altercations.

We went on a field trip that year to the top of the World Trade Center, which I loved. Two things stick out about that trip: Standing up against the glass and looking down. It was dizzying. I also remember that when it was time for lunch, I sat with the teachers. They seemed puzzled.

Back to The Playground Swing. Our classroom overlooked the playground and on this one sunny and clear October morning, all of us began to notice this one swing moving back and forth, high and steady like a metronome. It was empty. There was no wind and all of the other swings were completely still. I don’t know how long this went on – it seemed like an hour.

Mr. Dillon tried to redirect our focus back inside the classroom. His voice had a nervous quiver to it that I had never heard before. He could see the swing too, and there was no visible explanation. There were no nearby structures for someone to hide in and pull a string to create this effect. It was a freestanding swing set in the middle of a flat asphalt playground.

By the time the lunch bell rang, the swinging had stopped. We all headed out into the hall, where the kids from the classroom next to ours were similarly perplexed – they had seen it too. There was talk of it being the ghost of some kid who died the year before I moved there, but I don’t remember the name, and surely I would have heard about this before.

Nobody had an explanation, and it never happened again. And that’s the story of The Playground Swing.

The school year went on. The bullying continued, although somehow I managed to avoid another angry mob scenario. One of my main tormentors was this butch brute of a gal who treated me as her physical and verbal punching bag. My mother once again called the school to request that she stop assaulting me, which resulted in her getting called to the vice-principal’s office. We were in music class when she returned. As she walked past where I was sitting, she grabbed the top of the back of my chair and slammed it towards the floor. I fell backwards, landing flat on my back with a loud crack. Everyone gasped. And nobody did a thing.

I got back into my chair, buried my head in my arms and sobbed uncontrollably. The feeling of hopelessness was overwhelming, with one thought repeating in my head: “This will never end. This will never end. This will never end.”

Our last day of school was a needless half day with nothing to do. Mr. Dillon, who could barely maintain control of his class on the best of days, was losing the battle. Kids were killing time by throwing things, yelling and walking around, waiting for dismissal. I’d had enough of this scene and decided to make a move.

While Mr. Dillon was trying to catch a kid who had wandered down the hallway, I went to his desk, opened the drawer, found my report card, and walked out the door. Once outside the school, I heard someone yell out the window “He’s coming after you!” So I ran. I ran through the playground – past those motionless swings. I ran away from that school as fast as I could, faster than ever before. I would continue running away from that place for years.

I would like to say that I didn’t look back, but I did. Every once in a while I would think about what I could have done to navigate those waters more successfully. While I can go back and forth with ideas about how I could have improved my social game, there is one thing from that year that had no explanation or variables: What was up with that swing?

If it was a ghost revisiting the playground to have one last turn on a swing, that’s less frightening than the abuse I suffered at the hands of my classmates.

I just wish I had more stories about benevolent spirits and less about wretched children.

Zombie Divas

Marlene Dietrich is slumped in a wing back chair chain smoking in the corner of our living room. She is clad in her trademark top hat and tuxedo, although the ensemble is far from crisp and clean. I am on the leather settee across the room, drinking my second cup of coffee while reading the Sunday New York Times. I embraced technology and began to read the newspaper on my iPad last year, but recently I had to switch back to the hard copy. Marlene is strangely drawn to the light of the iPad. As soon as I open it, she starts hovering around, trying to paw at it. She got her hands on it once when my partner Tim carelessly left it open on the credenza. This resulted in considerable damage, which of course I had to pay for. Now I keep it locked in my briefcase and only use it for work purposes.

Sometimes Tim and I talk to Marlene, but she rarely responds. When she does, it is with incoherent mumbles shrouded in a thick German accent. Most of the time she just sits there, staring off into space with a look that might be described as profound sorrow or excruciating boredom. It’s open to interpretation. What is certain is that she is constantly smoking cigarettes. She smokes like a … well, like a fiend. There’s no other way to put it.

The constant smoke is pretty offensive, even if it does simulate that hazy effect in which she was photographed for her films. When Tim and I realized that the acrid smoke was masking a more ghastly smell of decay, we stopped complaining about it. Tim always liked to burn incense and scented candles anyway; now he has gone full-throttle with air fresheners, perfume oils and room deodorizers. There is an apothecary on Lafayette Street that sells $150 cheesecloth bags of a special potpourri blend created specifically to eradicate the stench of the divas. Tim visits there pretty much every week, although I can’t help but think that Emiliano, the part-time model behind the register might also have something to do with the frequency as well.

I tried to explain to Tim that we can’t afford this extravagance – the nightly news suggests that a simple $1.49 box of baking soda would do the trick. But as with all matters financial, he doesn’t like to talk about it. He seems to think that as long as our credit cards are not declined, then we have the money to pay for anything.

I go to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup. Tim is standing at the stove, scrambling eggs. His shoulders are tensed halfway to his ears, his mouth a taught crimson bowtie as he shuffles the eggs around the pan, shaking his head slightly.

“She drank the rest of the gin.” he says curtly.

“How do you know it was her?” I ask. I turn to the sink and begin to nonchalantly rinse out the crystal goblet which I had used for the previous evening’s nightcap.

“Just look at her.” He nods towards the corner by the garbage can, where Edith Piaf is rocking back and forth on her feet, twisting a tortured handkerchief in her fists. The empty bottle of gin is lying in the recycle bin next to her, right where I left it the night before. She will burst into song shortly, most likely “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rein.” It was quite jarring at first, but now we see the signs: first the rocking starts, followed by the handkerchief twisting, then the low, guttural moans begin and eventually form the familiar tune that used to flood through our home on many a Sunday afternoon. I have grown accustomed to it. Tim, however, has not. “Fucking lush,” he mutters.

From the living room, I can hear the sounds of Marlene on the move: Every day, like clockwork, she heads out on a quest for cigarettes – dragging her filthy shoes across the antique Persian rug. Tim and I used to be fanatic about trying to maintain all of the fine furnishings we had purchased when we moved into this apartment together. Here, we had created our dream dwelling: a chic little paradise with an art deco design scheme. We were setting the stage for an endless series of sophisticated cocktail and dinner parties that never materialized: these are different times. Besides, we were working too hard to even think about entertaining. And then the divas showed up. Now there are stains and cigarette burns and everything is hopelessly caked with mud and ashes and god knows what else. Our broken Dyson vacuum lies in a heap underneath the baby grand piano.

“Why doesn’t THAT reanimate?” Tim cracked. I thought it was funny but I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t in the mood.

I return to my newspaper with a fresh cup of coffee. “See you later Marlene,” I say with faux exuberance. She flicks her hand over her shoulder as a sign of vague acknowledgement. At the front door, she softly begins warbling “Fawwing in wuv again… nevuh wanted tooooo….”

Theories abound as to the cause of this phenomena – 24 hour news channels devote considerable programming to speculative hypothesis involving a century of electronic sound, radio, and television waves intersecting with static electricity and wifi hot spots or possibly some other random factors that resulted in these reanimated corpses taking on the forms of our dear departed divas.

The idea that the subject has to be deceased is cause for even more speculation. There are no reports of Madonna, Britney or Cher zombies. It’s those that have been mourned and continue to be revered. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day.

I should also explain that these are not your garden variety “shoot ‘em in the head to kill ‘em” movie type of zombies. Go ahead and destroy your Lena Horne – by dawn the next day, another one will be back in a glittering pantsuit, angrily shout-singing “Stormy Weather” around the apartment.

There’s no point in maiming them, either – our friends Thomas and Ed had a Dusty Springfield that kept gesticulating wildly, smashing knickknacks and bric-a-brac with every dramatic swoop. They accidentally tore off her arms while trying to restrain her before she destroyed every last piece of their precious mercury glass collection. The next morning they awoke to a ghostly rendition of “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” as a fully intact Dusty zombie hurled, one by one, the remaining contents of their china cabinet down the hall towards their bedroom.

Our Judy is perched on top of the dresser in the corner of the master bedroom – she wears a fedora, black tights and a dress jacket…. eternally snapping her fingers to the intro of “Come On Get Happy.” She rarely ever sings, but ya gotta give credit to that corpse: she’s got rhythm. Even as the flesh wears away on her fingers and falls onto the floor, she keeps steady time.

It’s not really them – we have to remind ourselves that. And some of these zombies are cast wildly against type for the roles they are now inhabiting. I saw a TikTok of a little old Asian Mama Cass that really had the moves down. But it’s not the same.

Our divas disappeared – often prematurely, tragically, suddenly. What we were left to comfort ourselves with were their images, movies and recordings – these are the trappings that most likely brought them forth in their most stereotypical and obvious incarnations. Now that they have been among us, even in these imperfect decaying forms, we can’t go back to having them at arm’s length. Not anymore.

Category: Horror

Some Thanksgiving Treats For You (2025)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some Thanksgiving Treats For You (2024)

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Playground Swing

Zombie Divas

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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