Lily Salter's Blog, page 257

Scoring “Twin Peaks” in real time: “Laura Palmer’s Theme”

(Credit: CBS/Bloomsbury Publishing/Salon)

Though Lynch was not a formally trained musician, he had learned to speak about music in such a way that was musical, conveying to [composer Angelo] Badalamenti the sound he wanted for a piece through a few carefully selected words. From these words, Badalamenti was able to intuit the particular compositional elements required for a piece, such as its tonality or tempo. In late 1989, the pair were commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to stage two forty-five-minute performances as part of the line-up of that year’s Next Wave Festival. With only two weeks to write a theater piece, Badalamenti and Lynch worked quickly and came up with “Industrial Symphony No. 1″: A “triple-exposure dream. A dream of the broken hearted. A dream about floating and falling and rising upwards.” Separated into three sections—“Love,” “Nature,” and “Industry”—Julee Cruise featured prominently in the “Love” section of the piece, performing songs from her Badalamenti/Lynch catalog and even being suspended in mid-air whilst singing “I Float Alone.” Bathed in light and wearing dresses that would not be out of a place at a mid-century high-school dance, it would be a similar role to the one Cruise would be seen playing in the pilot episode of “Twin Peaks” the following February.

Around the same time as the production of “Industrial Symphony No. 1,” Lynch approached Badalamenti to compose music for a television show he had been working on. Describing the show as “’Blue Velvet’ gone ‘Peyton Place,’” Lynch explained to Badalamenti that he wanted to create a piece of music that would encapsulate the essence of the series. So, during one particularly special songwriting session, Badalamenti sat at his old Fender Rhodes piano in the dimly lit office he used as a studio while Lynch sat by his side, and the two composed a piece.

Lynch began by explaining to Badalamenti that the opening of the piece needed to be very dark and very slow, and that Badalamenti should imagine being alone in the woods at night surrounded by the sound of wind passing through the trees. Badalamenti began to play a repetitive C in the murky lower register of the Rhodes that lumbered on each beat as if it were part of a funeral procession. Soon an ominous motif that moved around the notes A-flat, G, and B-flat emerged, a little higher than the C. Badalamenti continued to repeat the motif for a little while until Lynch signaled that there needed to be a change in the music—a beautiful, sad girl was now beginning to materialize from deep within the darkness of the woods. Badalamenti’s motif then began to ascend, transforming into a beautiful melody that he complemented with a lilting accompaniment in the bass. As Lynch exclaimed that the troubled girl was getting closer and closer—each vocalization of “closer” becoming more and more ecstatic, more and more breathless—Badalamenti’s melody followed suit. It climbed further and further up the Rhodes, feeling unending, as if it would keep rising into oblivion. As Lynch reached fever pitch in his direction (Let it tear your heart out, Angelo!), Badalamenti finally allowed the melody to climax on a high E: Laura Palmer had arrived.

In just twenty minutes—one take—Badalamenti composed what was to become “Laura Palmer’s Theme.” Lynch loved what the composer had improvised, and implored Badalamenti not to change a single note: he had captured the spirit of the world that would become “Twin Peaks.” “Laura Palmer’s Theme” appears in two variations on the soundtrack release as “Love Theme from Twin Peaks” and “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” providing the emotional compass for “Twin Peaks”. Though the theme was conceived with Laura Palmer in mind and was initially anchored to her—appearing whenever she is mourned or when the circumstances around her death are discussed—it also took on a second life as the show progressed and new storylines emerged.

Badalamenti was approached to write further music for the show when it was decided that a “Twin Peaks” pilot episode would be going into production, and the personnel from the [Julee Cruise] “Floating into the Night” sessions were retained (with the addition of several other musicians) to record Badalamenti’s compositions. “Falling” had already been flagged in Lynch’s mind as the “Twin Peaks” theme song and it was reworked into an instrumental for the show’s opening credits. Using the original recording from the “Floating into the Night” album, Cruise’s vocal was omitted and replaced by Kinny Landrum performing its melody on his Emulator II synthesizer using a French horn sound.

“Twin Peaks Theme” opens with a bass hook accompanied by reverberant chords on a Rhodes piano and a faint cymbal ostinato by Grady Tate. There have been varying accounts as to the conception of the famous “twangy” bass hook. Cruise recalls that Vinnie Bell down-tuned his guitar to create the sound, whilst Eddie Dixon stated in a 2009 interview with “Twin Peaks Archive” that he performed the hook whilst working on “Floating into the Night.” In Brad Dukes’ comprehensive oral history of the show, “Reflections,” Badalamenti credits Landrum with coming up with the bass. According to Landrum, the sound was created using a retro guitar sample on his Emulator II synthesizer at the request of Lynch, who had wanted a “fifties” sound. Noticing that there was no bass part on the recording, Landrum performed the hook in a lower register to fill out the harmony and Lynch was immediately pleased with the results.

Regardless of its origin, the Duane Eddy-inspired opening of the “Twin Peaks” theme is incredibly effective in that it brings with it certain cultural associations. Eddy was a guitarist who came to prominence at the end of the 1950s through such hits as “Rebel Rouser” as well as his famous guitar riff on the theme for the television series “Peter Gunn” (composed by Henry Mancini). His unique sound was created by playing a lead melody on the lower strings of his guitar which resulted in his signature “twang.” Added to this was a tremolo device he used on his guitar that produced a “growling” effect. So synonymous was he with this sound that he even released a record called “Have ‘Twangy’ Guitar Will Travel” in 1958.

Eddy’s Gretsch guitar stylings and the genre of rock ’n’ roll and rockabilly they are associated with immediately signify the world of 1950s Americana to most contemporary listeners. This is owing to a multitude of films and television shows produced retrospectively that have been underscored with such music, resulting in audiences unconsciously bringing preconceived ideas of musical meaning whenever they subsequently encounter classic rock ’n’ roll or rockabilly music. It is because of these associations that listeners/viewers immediately make a connection to Americana the moment the first bass note of “Twin Peaks Theme” resonates from the soundtrack ether. And it is a connection that is warranted. The world of “Twin Peaks” celebrates cherry pie, saddle shoes, love songs, and surly bikers. It has its origins in the wholesome Americana of “Leave it to Beaver” and Lynch’s own 1950s childhood in Montana just as much as it does in the supernatural or the dark underworlds of 1940s film noir and gritty mid-century whodunits—a thematic ambivalence Lynch also navigated in “Blue Velvet.” The theme’s subtle associations with Americana are further emphasized when it is coupled with the images of the rural Northwest shown in “Twin Peaks’” opening credits: a native wren, industrial smokestacks and machinery, and the town’s Welcome sign.

How the U.S. tax code bypasses women entrepreneurs

(Credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

As Republicans in Congress put the finishing touches on a tax plan that’s aimed at overhauling the system, there is one other reform they should consider: making the U.S. tax code fairer to women entrepreneurs.

Currently, federal tax incentives targeted to help small businesses grow and access capital either effectively exclude or bypass altogether the majority of women-owned firms, according to groundbreaking research I conducted on how the tax code affects women business owners through American University’s Kogod Tax Policy Center. For the first time, my research considered specifically whether women business owners can (or do) take advantage of tax breaks intended for small businesses.

Our findings uncovered a significant blind spot when it comes to women business owners and the U.S. tax code. In fact, our survey data — together with our review of existing tax research on the topic — suggest that many women-owned companies are unable to fully access more than US$255 billion worth of tax incentives Congress has designed to help small businesses.

My question for lawmakers is this: Will Congress seize the once-in-a-generation opportunity to pass comprehensive tax reform that recognizes the challenges women business owners face and how we can help them through the tax code?

A growing economic contribution

Since Congress last overhauled the tax code in 1986, the number of women business owners has spiked from 4.1 million to more than 11 million at the end of 2016, making up more than a third of all U.S. businesses. They employ 9 million people, contribute $1.6 trillion to the economy and nearly every single one is a small business.

More recently, their ranks have swelled at a rate five times faster than the national average for all businesses, surging 45 percent from 2007 to 2016 – a period that included the Great Recession.

Even more impressive than their rate of growth is the fact that women have achieved all of this without the full benefit of tax breaks targeted to small businesses.

Tax myopia

Over the years, Congress has done a number of things to promote women’s business ownership by passing legislation targeting discriminatory lending practices and promoting federal contracting and counseling opportunities for women business owners.

For example, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 outlawed discrimination in granting credit based on sex or marital status, and the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988 supported women small business ownership and established the National Women’s Business Council.

Also, the Small Business Reauthorization Act of 2000 set up a program to help women-owned businesses access federal contracts.

But lawmakers have been myopic in terms of the severe disadvantages women face accessing capital to grow their businesses, even as they’ve repeatedly targeted this common problem among small business owners in the tax code.

Earlier this year, the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy issued a report that found that women-owned companies consistently lag behind in terms of revenue and employment. Other congressional research has found that just $1 of every $23 in conventional small business loans goes to a woman-owned business.

For my report, “Billion Dollar Blind Spot: How the U.S. Tax Code’s Small Business Expenditures Impact Women Business Owners,” I worked with Women Impacting Public Policy — a nonprofit trade association devoted to promoting women entrepreneurs — to survey 515 women business owners and analyze how they use four key tax expenditures designed to foster small business growth and investment:

Section 1202 allows an exclusion from capital gains tax for any profits from a sale of certain qualified small business corporation stock. The provision, which is expected to cost taxpayers $6.2 billion over the next five years, expressly excludes service companies from qualifying (most women-owned businesses are in the service sector).
Section 1244 allows investors in small business corporations to treat any losses as ordinary losses. It’s estimated to cost $500 million over the next 10 years.
Section 179 is an accelerated equipment tax deduction for investments tangible personal property with a price tag of more than $248 billion over the next five years.
Section 195 offers a $5,000 deduction for startup costs and is estimated to cost at least $400 million over five years.

The results were illuminating.

The first three provisions are so limited in design that the majority of women-owned businesses simply can’t use them, making accessing capital through tax breaks impossible for these business owners. The rules either explicitly exclude service companies or effectively bypass any business that isn’t a “C corporation” or that has few investments in capital intensive equipment and can’t claim the deduction.

This is problematic because 61 percent of women-owned businesses are concentrated in service industries, while the majority of all small businesses are organized as something other than a C-Corp. This makes it a lot harder to attract investors.

Our survey data confirmed these findings: very few respondents said they had ever taken advantage of sections 1202 (less than 1 percent) or 1244 (less than 6 percent), while we found that more than half aren’t fully benefiting from section 179.

As a result, women business owners are potentially missing out on the more than $255 billion in aid the U.S. will spend over the next few years on these provisions. At the same time, our survey data confirmed that when women business owners could take advantage of a tax break, they did. Almost 60 percent of our respondents claimed the startup deduction, for example.

Equally troubling is that we found a complete lack of government research on how the tax code affects women business owners. To date, the House and Senate tax-writing committees have never held a full hearing on the challenges of women business owners and whether the tax code’s small business tax incentives are operating as intended with respect to these companies. And there are scant data from relevant government agencies on these critical questions. The Internal Revenue Service, the Treasury Department and the SBA don’t even track tax data on women-owned companies, which make up almost 40 percent of all U.S. businesses.

Positive signs

Notwithstanding this current state of affairs, there have been some positive signs in recent weeks that lawmakers will not ignore the questions raised by our report. Members in both the Senate and House have reviewed our research and are considering the importance of its findings.

Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen cited our report during a committee hearing in June, and I testified before the House’s Committee on Small Business earlier this month.

However, the absence of government data and congressional oversight on these small business tax expenditures deprives lawmakers of vital information and raises unanswered questions about whether these tax provisions are operating as Congress intended. Academic and government research have consistently identified access to capital as a barrier women business owners encounter.

Congress simply doesn’t have the information needed to make decisions to help these 11 million small businesses overcome existing barriers to growth. This flies in the face of the commitment Congress made in 2016 to pursue evidence-based policymaking. Policymakers have opportunity to act on behalf of the nation’s women business owners as they prepare to overhaul the U.S. tax code.

Caroline Bruckner, Executive in Residence, Department of Accounting and Taxation, American University

AMC’s Fear Fest is back! Here are the most terrifying movies on TV this Halloween

"Nightmare on Elm Street" (Credit: New Line Cinema)

It’s that time of the year again, where grown-ups get to dress up, kids go crazy on candy, and in houses everywhere, families put on their favorite scary movies and scare the living daylights out of each other.

To keep the frights in full force, we give you our top picks of this year’s Fear Fest horror marathon. Kicking off Monday, October 23, on AMC, Fear Fest serves up a week of non-stop horror flicks, including some all-time cult classics, and is available on cable TV providers such as DISH.

Child’s Play (1988)

TUE, Oct. 24, at 6:00 p.m.

The original cult classic that spawned six killer-doll sequels. A single mother gives her son a doll for his birthday, only to discover it’s possessed by the soul of a serial killer. The moral of the story? Never mess with an evil doll.

Cult of Chucky (2017)

TUE, Oct. 24, at 10:00 p.m.

In this world TV premiere, series creator Don Mancini returns to direct the seventh helping of the demon-doll slasher series. Watch Chucky settle scores with old enemies, with the help of his homicidal girlfriend. Fresh ideas and strong performances make this one of the best in the series.

Annabelle (2014)

Wed, Oct. 25, at 8:00 p.m.

In this prequel to the highly rated hit The Conjuring, expecting newlyweds Mia and John experience terrifying supernatural occurrences involving a rare vintage doll, shortly after their home is invaded by a pair of satanic killers. ’Nuff said!

  Carrie (1976)

Wed, Oct. 25, at 10:15 p.m.

A chilling adaptation of Stephen King’s horror novel, featuring director Brian De Palma at the top of his game, Carrie is a story about a bullied misfit who wreaks havoc on prom night, unleashing her telekinetic powers on anyone who gets in her way.

Predator (1987)

THU, Oct. 26, at 3:00 p.m.

Rambo meets Aliens in this perfect mix of biceps, bombs, and bravado. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as the cigar-chomping leader of a special forces team that’s dropped into the jungle on a classified mission only to be hunted by an alien creature who makes trophies out of men’s skulls. 

Piranha (1978)

THU, Oct. 26, at 10:00 p.m.

In one of the most beloved and well-regarded Jaws knock-offs, genetically modified, flesh-eating piranhas are accidentally released into a summer resort’s rivers. The guests become their next meal.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

FRI, Oct. 27, at 10:00 p.m.

There’s something horrible happening in Springwood. In this remake of the 1984 classic, Freddy Krueger rises once again, this time to haunt the children of the parents who murdered him, taunting and stalking them in their dreams. Just remember not to sleep… or you may never wake up.

Halloween (1978)

TUE, Oct. 31, at 7:30 p.m.

John Carpenter’s Halloween forever changed the face of horror. The genesis of the slasher movement, this horror classic has been admired and imitated for over 30 years, earning the reputation as one of the scariest movies of all time. There’s nothing better to watch on Halloween!

Why aren’t we curing the world’s most curable diseases?

Once upon a time, the world suffered.

In 1987, 20 million people across the world were plagued by a debilitating, painful and potentially blinding disease called river blindness. This parasitic infection caused pain, discomfort, severe itching, skin irritation and, ultimately, irreversible blindness, leaving men, women and children across Africa unable to work, care for their families and lead normal lives.

But the recent discovery of a drug called ivermectin was about to change it all. Not only was ivermectin cheap and easily synthesized, but it was also a powerful cure: With only one dose a year, it was possible to completely rid patients of disease and even halt the progression toward blindness. In short, ivermectin was a miracle drug – one whose discovery would lead to Satoshi Omura and William Campbell winning the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2015.

There was no time to be wasted. Recognizing that the populations most at risk of disease were those least able to afford treatment, Merck & Co. pledged to join the fight to end river blindness. Thirty years ago this October, the pharmaceutical company vowed that it would immediately begin distributing the drug free of charge, to any country that requested it, “for as long as needed.” It was the final piece of the puzzle: an effective drug for a tragic and completely preventable disease. And we all lived happily ever after.

Only . . . we didn’t.

Merck’s generous offer should have been the final chapter of a brief story with an upbeat ending – the eradication of a tragic and preventable disease that had plagued humankind for centuries. But such was not the case: 30 years later, in 2017, river blindness rages on across the world, afflicting as many as 37 million people, 270,000 of whom have been left permanently blind.

Neglected tropical diseases like river blindness stand in stark contrast to those like tuberculosis, which is estimated to affect a third of the world’s population due to the increasing prevalence of highly antibiotic resistant strains.

In short, tuberculosis has stuck around because medicine has run out of drugs with which to treat it – which is why, as a molecular biologist, I am researching new ways we can finally defeat this stubborn disease.

But this only increases the urgency for river blindness and other widespread diseases for which, unlike tuberculosis, science does have effective cures – and inexpensive ones at that. Even with all the necessary tools, the world has failed to cure the curable.

Turning a blind eye

One-and-a-half billion people across the world suffer from neglected tropical diseases, a group of infectious diseases that prevail in tropical and subtropical countries lacking good health care infrastructure and medical resources. These diseases typically do not kill immediately but instead blind and disable, leading to terrible suffering, creating losses of capital, worker productivity and economic growth.

Thirteen diseases are universally recognized as neglected tropical diseases. At least eight of these diseases, including river blindness, already have inexpensive, safe and effective treatments or interventions.

For less than 50 cents per person, the United States could cure a fifth of the world’s population of these severely debilitating and unnecessary diseases. In spite of this, the United States allocates nearly as little to treating and preventing neglected tropical diseases around the world as it does to drugs for erectile dysfunction.

The forgotten fevers

Consider dracunculiasis, or Guinea worm infection, which occurs when people consume water contaminated with fleas carrying parasitic worms. The worms mature and mate inside the human body, where they can grow to be two to three feet long.

Adult females eventually emerge from painful blisters at the extremities to lay eggs in stagnant water, where offspring will infect water fleas and begin the cycle anew.

No drug exists that can cure Guinea worm, but because of a cohort of mostly privately funded public health efforts, the number of Guinea worm infections worldwide has dropped from 3.5 million in the 1980s to only 25 in 2016.

Funding from the U.S. and other countries could help in the final push to eradication, and some argue that funding from the individual countries themselves could help.

Another example, albeit more grim, is the group of soil-transmitted helminths, or worms. Roundworm, hookworm and whipworm collectively affect over a billion people across the world, all in the poorest areas of the poorest countries. All these worms infect the human intestines and can cause severe iron deficiency, leading to increased mortality in pregnant women, infants and children. Furthermore, hookworm infections in children retard growth and mental development, leading to absences from school and dramatically reduced labor productivity.

However, soil-transmitted helminths can be expelled from the body with a single pill, each of which costs only one penny. What’s more, preventing infection in the first place is completely achievable through increased awareness and sanitation.

The purse strings of nationalism

Without drastic increases in funding and public awareness, the plight of people affected by the neglected tropical diseases is unlikely to budge anytime soon.

The U.S. spends over US$8,000 per person per year on health expenditures, compared to countries in Africa that spend around $10. While this opens the door to a critique on efficiency, it’s far more indicative of the disparities in health resources.

Less than 20 percent of the world’s population lives in some of the most developed and economically high-functioning countries, including the United States – and nearly 90 percent of the world’s total financial resources are devoted to the citizens of these nations. And yet, low-income countries bear the majority of the world’s infectious disease burden. In short, the rest of the world does not suffer the same diseases the United States does, and Americans are doing little to nothing about it.

At first glance, this is not so surprising. As a whole, the world suffers – but how many neglected tropical diseases currently penetrate American borders?

Some experts predict that eliminating or controlling the neglected tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa alone, which shoulders over 40 percent of the global burden of neglected tropical diseases, could save the world $52 billion and over 100 million years of life otherwise lost to disease.

Conversely, some global health experts estimate that for every dollar spent on neglected tropical disease control, we get back over $50 in increased economic productivity. By increasing awareness and funding of neglected tropical disease eradication, the United States will be making one of the best global investments possible. The rest of the world has waited long enough.

Katherine J. Wu, Ph.D. Candidate in Microbiology, Harvard University

How to protect our children from victim blaming

I can still feel his finger inside me. If I think about it. Which I try not to.

I was nine years old. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to put their finger inside me, so I wasn’t repulsed, just confused. And it was quick, so quick I can’t believe I can recall the vile sensation more than thirty years later.

I’ve never considered myself a survivor of sexual assault. I didn’t think that brief moment defined me. And yet, each new story of a famous man abusing his power pulls my focus from whatever task I’m supposed to be accomplishing. I have to wonder, what would be different if that man hadn’t violated me?

I was in the swimming pool at the college where my father worked. My older brother and I were playing in the shallow end. I was practicing underwater flips because I liked the way the water felt around my body as I twisted through it. Then I moved onto handstands.

I grew up on that campus and was allowed to roam freely, but it was also the age of “Stranger Danger.” As kids we were taught to “Run, Yell, Tell,” right along with “Stop, Drop, and Roll.” We all knew the story of Adam Walsh, the six-year-old who was kidnapped and murdered in Florida. I can still picture the photo of him with his red baseball cap and bat. When my cousin and I walked from her house to the local strip mall to spend pocket money on makeup and hair ties, we held hands as we ran past the windowless white van that was always parked in her neighborhood.

We were raised on a steady diet of fear. We were taught not put ourselves in situations where we could be harmed. But when the man approached me and my brother in the pool, no alarm bells went off. He looked like all the other students on campus–some were our babysitters, some were my brother’s soccer coaches. The man talked to us for a bit as we splashed around. He told me my legs could be straighter in my handstand. To prove him wrong, I dove under the water, planted my hands on the pool floor and pointed my toes towards the concrete ceiling. The man gripped my thighs and straightened my legs. Then there was something inside me. When I remember it, legs crossed as they are as I write this, I think of it as a knuckle. I really have no way of knowing if it was a finger or a thumb.

As soon as I could flip my body over, I told my brother it was time to leave. To his credit, he didn’t ask questions, he just followed me out of the pool. I never told my parents, despite having a close relationship with each of them. I never understood why I kept it from them until this most recent rash of allegations against high profile men.

My parents taught me how to keep myself safe. Of course they did, they loved me. But they never told me if I got hurt, it wouldn’t be my fault. That day in the locker room, as I changed quickly into my dry clothes, I imagined the questions; I asked them myself. Why was I talking to someone I didn’t know? Because I talked to people every day who I didn’t know, I was friendly. Why did I let someone I didn’t know touch me? I didn’t know he was going to until he did. 

The problem with a steady diet of fear meant to protect you is that it puts the onus of safety on the potential victim. But it’s more than “victim blaming” because it starts long before a violation occurs. “Stranger Danger,” despite John Walsh and our parents’ best intentions, became its own kind of victimization.

In the aftermath of sexual abuse, assault or harassment, when victims speak out, they are asked why they are making a big deal. When they don’t speak out, they are faulted for letting a criminal harm someone else. When they speak out “too late” they are asked why they didn’t speak out sooner? All of these demeaning replies center on the response to the violation and not the violation itself. For anyone raised at the height of “Stranger Danger” the groundwork for this kind of blatant “missing the point” was laid when we were kids.

As a parent, I want a safe, healthy life for my kids. What parent doesn’t? We’ve talked about how to respond if someone they don’t know approaches them. We’ve talked about what to do if they get separated from us in a crowded place. We use proper language to talk about the parts of their body and we tell them they don’t have to hug anyone they don’t want to. But in response to my realization that I had been blaming myself for being sexually assaulted at nine, I’ve added a new line to our parenting arsenal.

“If someone hurts you,” I told my eight-year-old daughter this weekend, “it’s not your fault. People make bad choices and their choices are not a reflection on you.”

She looked at me blankly the way she does sometimes when I introduce a new concept. When I asked her if she had any questions she shook her head. She knows this won’t be the last time she hears about this, but she probably doesn’t know how hard it was for me to say.

I’ll never know how much of what followed in my life is a result of what happened in that pool, but I do know this: At nine years old I had already internalized the message that when a man violates you, it’s your fault. Very little in my life has contradicted that, but I’m determined my kids won’t feel the same way.

Jamie Beth Cohen is a writer, storyteller and community organizer with a secretarial job to pay the bills. Desperate to make the world a better place for her kids and people everywhere, she is over-committed and under-rested. Jamie writes about difficult things.

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An economist explains how to get the most candy on Halloween

(Credit: Leena Robinson via Shutterstock)

Halloween is here, the night every year when children dress up in costumes and go “trick or treating.”

On the surface, that activity appears to be a relatively benign one. What could be more innocent than cute youngsters collecting sweets?

Halloween, however, is actually one of our only holidays based on extortion. When children scream “trick or treat,” they are essentially demanding candy in exchange for not doing a prank or something else that is nasty.

Some children on Halloween are learning how to ask strangers for candy. Learning to interact politely with strangers is a valuable lesson. Other costumed kids, however, are figuring out how to shake down people for sweets and that threats of mischief are sometimes effective ways to get what you want.

Is there a better way than extorting people with tricks to get more treats?

A number of years ago when my children were young, I ran a simple, economic experiment to find out. We wanted to discover a way to maximize the amount of candy they could collect without threatening adults.

The experiment

The experiment was important to my children because I tried to never buy them candy. Thus their primary source of candy was this one holiday. If they got a large enough haul at Halloween, they would have enough candy to last till the following one.

We lived in a small Ohio town that was perfect for experimenting. The town was divided into three neighborhoods separated by large and busy main roads. The north neighborhood had mansions and millionaires. The central neighborhood was middle-class. The south neighborhood, where we lived, was the poorer part of town.

What made the town great for experimenting was that it was possible to walk to all the different sections in a single night if you were interested in answering the question, “Where do you go to get the most candy?” By visiting all the neighborhoods in one evening, variables like weather, economic conditions and the particular day of the week were all taken into account.

One year, I was able to convince my children to test all three neighborhoods. At first I tried to persuade them that finding out the answer was important for understanding where in future years they could collect the maximum amount of candy. Even as children of an economist, they were unimpressed by this argument. I ended up promising to buy them enough candy to make up any shortfall if they went along with dad’s wild idea.

The results

The results of the experiment were pretty clear.

The rich homes offered the largest and nicest pieces of candy. However, there were two problems with ringing doorbells in the wealthy part of town. Relatively few people were home, which meant few places to ask for treats. Additionally, the distance between houses giving out candy was quite large. This meant it took a long time to collect any meaningful amount of candy. Since the rich part of town was clearly a bust, we all agreed to try a different neighborhood.

The poorer part of town was also not great for collecting candy. My kids recognized some of their friends, but they felt the candies being given out were not the kind they really liked or wanted to eat for the rest of the year.

This is not surprising since Halloween candy is expensive. Americans are expected to spend US$2.7 billion on Halloween candy this year, according to the National Confectioners Association. This means the average U.S. household will be spending $22 on just candy alone. This is about twice as much as the typical poor family spends on food per day. Buying that much candy could cost a low-income household two days of meals!

The children loved the middle-class neighborhood. The distance between houses was not that large and many of the houses were giving out all of my children’s favorite candies. The haul was so much they had enough candy to easily last an entire year.

Is there a better way?

So, what lessons did I learn from our little economic experiment?

First, extortion isn’t necessary. Instead of letting kids shout “Trick or treat,” encourage children to say “Happy Halloween.” Removing the threat of a trick will likely make no difference to the amount of candy collected since it is an idle threat anyway for (most) children.

Then take the kids to the neighborhoods with the highest ratio of candy to steps between homes and have a great time. I just ask one small favor. If you or your children get a bellyache or toothache from eating too much candy, don’t blame me.

Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State University

Here’s what Donald Trump should have said about opioids instead

Donald Trump addresses the United Nations General Assembly (Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer)

My Fellow Americans,

Families, communities, and citizens across our country are in crisis due to the dramatic escalation in opioid overdoses. While some other countries are struggling with increased overdose rates, the problem is far worse here. And it’s time that we ask ourselves why: Why is it that after billions of dollars spent on trying to stop illegal drugs from coming into the US, today opioids are as plentiful as ever? Why is it that decades since Nancy Reagan urged American kids to “just say no,” demand is as high as ever? And why are so many people dying?

A big part of the answer is that the war on drugs has failed to deliver on its promises.

Arresting and locking up people who use drugs has only driven them underground, making it less likely they’ll seek help when they need it. The lack of meaningful public education about drugs, their real effects, and the concrete risks around them — for example, that the risk of death goes up when opioids are mixed with alcohol — means that those who try drugs are likely to do so in riskier ways. The criminalization of drugs means it’s impossible for people who use drugs to get their supply tested, and to find out whether it’s adulterated with unwanted substances like fentanyl.

The billions of dollars we have poured into going after the drug trade, both abroad and at home, have only enhanced the profitability of the drug market for organized crime. As a result, criminal groups have near-limitless financial resources to develop ever more inventive methods to keep the supply going, to corrupt authorities, and to ruthlessly protect their share of the market.

The “collateral damage” of this unwinnable war? Devastated families across the US.  Not just the families of the 64,000 people who died of an overdose in 2016, but the countless others, particularly in communities of color that have been aggressively targeted by police, whose loved ones have been locked up or deported for low-level drug offenses. Abroad, the cost has included hundreds of thousands of people killed in countries from Mexico to the Philippines.

Rather than solving problematic drug use, the war on drugs has metastasized into a decades-long national and global disaster. It has criminalized a public health issue and inflicted death, incarceration, and untold billions in wasted US tax dollars on multiple generations of Americans. Enough is enough.

I’m here to propose a different approach.

Today, I am officially declaring the opioid crisis a national public health emergency under federal law.

We will never be able to stop all people from using drugs, and we shouldn’t try. Our goal should be to minimize the harms — like overdose — that can flow from drug misuse, while avoiding causing greater harms in the process.

We will take immediate action to prevent overdose by funding community-based programs to provide the life-saving overdose-reversal medication naloxone, working to lower its price, and removing barriers to accessing it elsewhere. We will work with states so they improve, pass, and implement Good Samaritan laws, and stop  prosecutions of people who are present at the time of an overdose. Nobody should be afraid to call 911 to save a life.

We will not coerce people into treatment through criminal justice tools or drug courts, as too often that only does further harm by landing people in prison. For those who want it, we will increase access and eliminate red tape around evidence-based treatment, including the medications methadone and buprenorphine, which have proven far more effective than other options. We will put resources into researching and evaluating new treatment and pain management modalities, including medical marijuana.

We will promote mechanisms that have proven effective to reduce the harms associated with drug misuse. That includes safe consumption facilities, where people who use drugs can consume them under the supervision of trained professionals, who can monitor them for overdose and refer them to treatment or other support as needed. We will provide free drug checking services in communities across the country, so people who use opioids can ensure they’re not adulterated in ways that increase their risk.

Rather than resort to fear-mongering, we will equip our young people with knowledge, warning them about the risks of drug misuse in a realistic and scientifically grounded way. We cannot control all their choices, but by treating them with respect and giving them sound information, we can ensure they have what they need to make good choices for themselves.

Right now, we will stop putting law enforcement resources into arresting people for drug use and possession. We must stop treating people who use drugs as criminals, and stop using the war on drugs as an excuse for persecuting Black, brown, and immigrant communities. Instead, we will invest those resources in addressing the many other needs of the communities that have been worst hit by the war on drugs — particularly among people of color.

It will take many years and even decades to undo the terrible harms wrought by the war on drugs, but we must start in earnest now.

The harm stops here.

 Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Adopting the right dog to fit your lifestyle

(Credit: Shutterstock)

October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month, and in light of the event, puppy Kermit, 4-year-old dog Rosie and Rena Lafaille, administrative manager of the ASPCA adoption center, joined Salon’s Alli Joseph on “Salon Talks.”

Lafaille offered some important tips on things to consider before adopting a pet from a shelter.

“Talking to your entire family, or talking to whoever lives with you in the household,” she said, is the first step. But perhaps the most pressing question is: “Are you ready to take on basically this lifetime commitment — anywhere from a year to 20 years — of taking care of this living thing?”

The next step is to consider your lifestyle, Lafaille said. “Do you have a more active lifestyle, where you like to go out and hike, you’re more outdoorsy?” she continued. “Or are you more of an indoor person? Do you like hanging out on the couch more, watching sports or Hulu or Netflix, whatever it may be?”

An important aspect to think about when evaluating the “lifetime commitment,” Lafaille mentioned, is “how much you’re going to actually invest in this dog or cat, because they do require usually annual check-ups.”

The last thing is if you have children, to make sure the animal is compatible with young ones.

It may sound like a lot, but Lafaille says it’s important to not make an error when it comes to adopting an animal. The ASPCA estimates 3.3 million dogs enter shelters every year in the U.S., and adopting a shelter dog actually means saving two lives: the dog you take home and the dog that can then occupy the space that opens up.

Watch more of Kermit, Rosie and the full “Salon Talks” conversation on Facebook.

Tune into Salon’s live shows, “Salon Talks” and “Salon Stage,” daily at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT and 4 p.m. ET / 1 p.m. PT, streaming live on Salon and on Facebook.

The Curious Case of “The David S. Pumpkins Halloween Special”

"The David S. Pumpkins Animated Halloween Special" (Credit: NBC)

The scariest thing to the mind is the unknown. There are exceptions to this statement, mind you. One of them is David S. Pumpkins.

Rather, he was. These days the Magical Halloween Man is famous enough to merit his own holiday cartoon, “The David S. Pumpkins Animated Halloween Special,” debuting at 11:30 p.m. Saturday on NBC. That’s right: One of the weirdest and possibly least explicable characters in “Saturday Night Live” history, played by Tom Hanks, demonstrated enough of a draw to partially preempt the legendary sketch series in the midst of a new season. The special is followed by the hour-long “SNL Presents: Halloween,” which starts at midnight.

A bit of background for those unfamiliar with the guy: David S. Pumpkins (the S is for Simon, by the way — no relation to the creator of “The Wire” and “The Deuce”) was introduced to the world on Oct. 22, 2016, as the main character in the four-minute “Haunted Elevator” sketch created by “SNL” cast members Mikey Day and Bobby Moynihan, and writer Streeter Seidell.

In the sketch, David Pumpkins is the most baffling creature in a fright night ride that features ghouls, a chainsaw-wielding psycho and a wraith. He’s just a grinning man wearing a suit festooned with pumpkins who waves his fingers around while flanked by a pair of dancing skeletons who he occasionally spanks. His catchphrase: “Any questions?”

Here’s one: Who would have predicted that the world would go all in on David Pumpkins? Not Day and Seidell.

Conjuring four minutes of fun out of a thin premise is an accomplishment by itself. Extending it over a half-hour special presents an altogether tougher challenge. Day and Seidell knew they couldn’t make the “Haunted Elevator” conceit work for 30 minutes. Instead, the special places the character (voiced by Hanks) and his skeleton b-boy crew in a small suburban town, to take a brother and sister on an adventure to discover the true meaning of Halloween.

“Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage guest-stars in the special, which also promises that none of the children’s questions will be answered. “[David Pumpkins] has kind of a ‘Cat in the Hat’ quality,” Day explained to Salon in a recent interview, “where he just sort of shows up and creates chaos.”

What we can explain is some of the character’s bizarre history. David S. Pumpkins was born out of a gag that has no discernible purpose beyond utter goofiness, partly inspired by the truly terrifying retro-ditty known as “Holiday Rap.” “There’s a fun little breakdown in it, this breakdance-y, synth-pop beat,” Day said,  “and we were working on a few different sketch ideas on how to incorporate that into a scene.”

Then, the hour grew late and their minds began to wander. “We were thinking about that Tower of Terror ride at Disneyland and how that would be a great construct for a sketch, with the doors opening. It was basically, ‘What’s something really dumb, that those doors could open on during a fright ride?’”

This is how the Academy Award-winning Hanks ended up stiffly popping and locking in a cheap suit covered in tiny jack o’ lanterns.

Hanks, who hit his ninth time as an “SNL” host with that 2016 broadcast,  has played his share of legendarily silly characters over the years — Mr. Short-Term Memory, the Girl Watcher and the world’s worst Olympic figure skater among them.

But David Pumpkins is the first to go viral overnight. As of this writing the sketch has racked up nearly 10 million views on YouTube, and will likely surpass that number by the time “The David S. Pumpkins Animated Halloween Special” airs. A year ago, Day and Seidell recall, David S. Pumpkins became a popular Halloween costume, likely owing to its simplicity.

And that may explain some of the affection viewers have for what is basically an incredibly strange and pointless four minutes of late-night television. David S. Pumpkins is the mascot for all of those people wearing costumes nobody gets. We’ve all been there. Some of you are reading this and know you’re going to be answering the question of “So, what are you?” a lot this weekend. And the confidence Hanks exudes in committing to this visual non-sequitur is utterly endearing. David S. Pumpkins, he tells a flummoxed couple played by Kate McKinnon and Beck Bennett, is his own thing. And the skeletons are . . . part of it!

With a bit of distance, however, Seidell has formed a different theory.

“When the sketch came out, the election was right around the corner. The rhetoric was heated on both sides, everyone was arguing, no one could agree with anyone on the other side,” he recalled. “And then this silly, stupid thing plops into their laps. There’s no political overtones. It means nothing, and I felt like people were just relieved to have something fun that they could talk about without it leading to like an argument or a serious discussion. It was like a pressure valve.”

Mr. Pumpkins has also proven popular among a demographic that isn’t old enough to vote, and these are the viewers for whom the Halloween special was made. “A lot of it came from seeing how kids responded to the character,” Day said. “They would dress up and some would reenact the sketch in its entirety and it got us thinking about those Halloween specials we’d see on TV as a kid, and we just thought David Pumpkins would work perfect for sort of a throwback nostalgic Halloween special.”

“There really hasn’t been a new one, or at least a new one that’s resonated, in 50 years,” Seidell pointed out. “And you know, if you watch the sketch there’s really nothing adult about it.”

Except, maybe, the skeletons’ pseudo-erotic sighing after their respective dance solos. Reminded of this, the pair paused.

“I guess I forgot about the sex noises,” Seidell admitted. “But I don’t know that a kid watching that would understand what that is.”

In case parents have concerns about the special, Day and Seidell enlisted their young children as a test audience. Seidell said his son enjoyed it but “at the end his only question was, ‘Are the skeletons David Pumpkins’ only friends?’”

“That’s such a sad, depressing thought,” Day replied.

Seidell said told his son, “’I don’t know. That’s a really good question.’ It got me really thinking about the essence of this man’s life.”

“Whistle, and I’ll Come to You,” a horror story about self-deception, seems about right this year

(Credit: BBC)

One of the joys of being a perpetual horror fiend — of the perpetually above-ground variety — is sussing out great works of terror that either generally avoid detection or else have receded from the memories they once happily haunted.

Maybe they exist, still, at the corner of those recollective spaces, awaiting their chance to be moved back to the center, to have away at heart rates and neck hairs anew. Better still if this horror item in question is readily shared with others, and even better yet if it has dominion on the past from which it comes, and also relevance on the world where it has reemerged.

One of the best examples of this, for me, and something that will give you about 40 minutes of mega-high Halloween value, is the 1968 BBC film “Whistle and I’ll Come to You,” which was made, strangely, for a documentary series called Omnibus. Suffice to say, this does not fall into that category, but there it is all the same. Let us call it a documentary of personal terror, then.

The film gets its marching orders from the story called “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” — Robert Burns having provided the line — by M.R. James. You can find the piece anthologized everywhere, since it’s one of our half dozen or so best ghost stories, but it first appeared in James’ 1904 collection “Ghost Stories of an Antiquary,” the end-all, be-all for spook-based round-ups. James was a provost and medieval scholar, a classic English academic, but with an unexpected hobby: scaring people out of their bleeding minds. At school, he’d invite a few favorite students and some of his colleagues into his room at Christmastime, where he would read aloud his latest ghostly opus.

It is no small boast to make on behalf of the 1968 film to call it a work richer and more resonant than what I have no problem saying is James’ best ghost story. As I watched it again this autumn, I also couldn’t believe how minatorily relevant it is for the world we live in now. Michael Hordern is Professor Parkins. If you know this actor, it’s probably because once a year you’re one of those people who make a point of watching the 1951 version of “A Christmas Carol” — released as “Scrooge” in England — starring Alastair Sim. Hordern plays Marley, and the scariest Marley we have at that in all of cinema, the ghost who comes to visit, but in “Whistle” he is the professor who is visited upon by terrors that emanate from his own lack of self-awareness.

The film opens with two maids making a bed — and much show is made about how punctilious they are in this endeavor — in an English seaside resort town. The soundtrack is comprised of the flapping of sheets, the tucking of corners, the tread of shoes on polished floors. Everything looks and feels white, wide-open, blank parchment awaiting whatever is to be writ upon it.

I think we can look at ourselves this way, especially here in 2017, in a world where it is not so much reality that holds sway, at the level of the individual, but whatever narrative a given individual is going to manufacture, which they will in turn call reality, though it rarely proves congruous with actual reality.

We all know people like this. Chances are, we are a person like this, though few of us have the unblanched courage to assess this state of affairs straight on and course-correct accordingly back to actual reality. But we see this in others often enough, so much so that we can be concerned, voicing these concerns to mutual friends, tut-tutting all the time about what so-and-so might do to shed their illusions.

That’s what this film is about, a kind of ghosting of one’s true self. Hordern’s Professor Parkins is a man who clings to a desperate view: that he has most of himself figured out. He is not a joyless man, but the nature of his jokes are little asides under his breath as he unpacks, as though his joviality could only come in sub-rosa moments, when he is the only person there to listen in.

The crisp black-and-white photography, like the chiaroscuro version of a bracing late autumn afternoon, underscores the lack of grays in Parkins’ life. He is getting away after the end of the term for a golfing weekend. A professor friend has asked him to check out an archeological site if he gets a chance. Parkins happens upon it, without even having planned to spend any time there, and discovers a whistle of sorts. The implication, with this late-in-middle-age bachelor, is that he is gay, but would never allow for this, not even to himself. As such, Parkins is essentially asexual, not so much through choice as fear. His life is a series of postures, which, taken as a whole, construct his identity for his peers and his students, and, most importantly, for Parkins himself.

Back at his room, Parkins blows the whistle. Tough to miss the symbolism of that. This summons an entity who, shall we say, makes Irving’s Headless Horseman look like a manageable opponent, as all you need to do to escape his clutches is to haul ass across a covered bridge. But the terror that comes from the knowledge that one has so rarely dealt squarely with one’s own identity? That is a terror that can end a life. Not in a literal “Now I’m turning to dust” sense, but in terms of moving forward aligned to actual truth, rather than what had been the security blanket of falsified narrative.

Back outside, racing along by the sea, Parkins is pursued by the manifestation of his own internal terrors. They come from the past, they hunt in the present, they threaten to destroy all forms of a future. The creature, whatever it may be, gains ingress to Parkins’ room. There it befriends, let us say, his bedsheets, and Professor Parkins has a real problem to contend with. The faster he runs, the less distance he creates between himself and his pursuer.

But, we’ve all experienced this, haven’t we? That’s one reason James’ story remains so effective, and this film, which makes terror visible, perhaps more so. We all have our Professor Parkins-type stuff going on, with parts of our truest nature that we’ve cobwebbed over because we don’t want to deal with it. In an age of great, mindless, soul-sapping homogeneity, where appearance is Superman and reality Clark Kent — or so it can seem — our stage management of what we are trumps what we actually are.

Or does it? Because that’s the thing about actual reality — it always makes its inroads. Sometimes that’s not at the forefront of our minds, and in “Whistle,” reality is not at the forefront of Parkins’. But in that portion of our brains that possesses that voice that never goes away, that speaks incessantly, calling out the truth involuntarily so that we sometimes fight, most voluntarily, to shut it the hell up, the real reality is always there. That truth can be a terror. It can haunt us like nothing, living or dead, could haunt us. It can drive us out of our minds, make us depressed, make us mentally ill, eat up our sense of peace with ourselves like some zaftig Halloween monster with a sugar addiction.

Is Parkins going to survive his trip to the seaport? Well, I’m not going to tell you that, as you can find out for yourself. Which, coincidentally, I would say is the overall directive of “Whistle.” So, put your fingers to your mouth, and blow away.