Dates: Tuesday, October 29th OR Thursday, October 31st

Location:  Online! Check your email for details!

This week we are talking about all things Halloween! I love learning more about the holidays we celebrate and finding out new bits of trivia. The beginning of this reading might feel familiar - I do love starting out with some classic Halloween songs (let’s be honest, there aren’t THAT many). 

After that, the bulk of this week’s reading is almost a ‘choose your own adventure’ in the form of a quiz. As always, it works best when you take the quiz online, but you can also keep track and read the answers below. Each answer includes a link to a video or website where you can learn more about that particular bit of trivia. I can’t wait to hear what you think is the most interesting! 

Tune in this week to learn more about the origin of some of our favorite Halloween candy and how it became inextricably linked with Trick or Treating!

This 1962 Halloween hit was written and released by Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and his bandmate Lenny Capizzi. Pickett was an aspiring actor at the time, and his band, The Cordials covered the popular hit “Little Darlin’”, originally sung by the Diamonds. 

During the cover, Pickett did an impromptu impression of Boris Karloff (the famous ‘Frankenstien’s monster’ actor during the song and the audience went wild. 

Capizzi encouraged him to expand on it and Monster Mash was born! The two writers recorded the song with a number of artists who billed themselves as “The Crypt-Kickers” for the track. That year it knocked the Four Season’s song “Sherry” off its five-week run at the top of the charts! However, the monster love wasn’t quite universal; the song was banned in the U.K. the year it was released for being ‘too morbid’. It did not get played in the U.K. until 1973, where it soared to number 3 on the Top 40 Singles chart in October of that year. It remained a popular hit, especially in October, and would go on to be covered by many big bands. In fact, the Beach Boys loved covering the song in their live shows and their fans went crazy for it.

The 1960s gave rise to another Halloween sort of icon on the small screen in the form of a weird, kooky, family. The Addams Family began as a one-panel cartoon strip in The New Yorker, drawn by Charles Addams. The family crept into homes in 1964 and have not really left since; cartoon versions, reunion shows, and even a trilogy of films in the 1990s has kept this gothic family around. They have even inspired Broadway shows, video games, and even a pinball game. 

Can you still time the snaps correctly? The original show actually only aired 2 season, from 1964 to 1966 for a total of 64 episodes but it remains a pop culture favorite! If you’re interested in watching, all 64 episodes are available on Amazon Prime.

Here’s a couple of other fun facts about this iconic show and its beginnings:

• John Astin played Gomez, but he originally auditioned for the butler role, eventually named Lurch. Thankfully, producers saw that he would make a better cigar chomping, Morticia loving father!

• Speaking of Gomez, prop-makers actually lined the breast pocket in his suits with asbestos! The character was often seen chomping on a cigar (likely a nod to Groucho Marx), and he often pulled cigars from his pocket already lit or put his still lit matches back in the pocket! His cigar habit was also likely a result of Dutch Masters Cigars sponsoring the show.

• If you listened to the show theme song from the video above, you might be surprised to learn that that is actually just 1 person signing! The studio didn’t want to hire multiple singers, so the song writer just recorded himself singing the song multiple times!*snap* *snap*!

If you play along below, you can find the answers and the links after you submit your answers!

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/storytelling-x/

https://storynet.org/what-is-storytelling/