30 October 2013 (Wednesday)

The day before Halloween -- today's theme was "candy" and "scary songs". Spoiler alert: the last video we watched was Thriller! 5 students today -- a small class.

I started the class by playing a couple of American "classic" Halloween songs: "Monster Mash" (video, lyrics, song info) and "The Time Warp" (video, lyrics, song info). The latter is from the movie "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (info), which is an underground favorite of young people across America. People love that movie and it is traditionally shown at midnight in a theater and the audience come dressed like the characters in the film. I have always wanted to take my students to see it, but haven't been able to coordinate it yet. One day I'll show my students this uniquely American experience!

However, none of the students today were very impressed with either of those two songs. So I quickly asked them which songs they had in mind.

The first song was the "Piano Duet" (video, song info) from the movie "The Corpse Bride" (info). That was a good choice!

It reminded me of the animation in the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (info), which is by the same director. We watched the song "This Is Halloween" (video, lyrics, song info) from that movie.

We then talked for a while about traditions in the students' countries for honoring dead relatives.

I asked the class if they like scary movies. Most of the class are not big fans of scary movies. But they said Japan makes great scary movies, like Ring (video, info). The Japanese movies are scary because they build tension, which is a different kind of scary than American movies which seem to rely on blood.

The next song chosen was "Cemetery Gates" (video with lyrics, song info) by The Smiths (info). The student who chose this song said he likes how it is about the lives of all people in a cemetery, as opposed to being sad they are no longer living. I personally love visiting cemeteries for that reason: I think of all the lives there within my sight.

The next song was "Beheaded" (video with lyrics, song info) by The Offspring (info). This was a great choice for Halloween! But it's pretty gross! I only know the hits by The Offspring (ex. "Pretty Fly For A White Guy" (video, lyrics, song info) and didn't know they had such a hard song.

The last video of the day was, naturally, "Thriller" (video, lyrics, song info) by Michael Jackson (info). We've all seen that video a thousand times and the beginning can be a bit boring so we skipped to the zombie dance, which *never* gets boring! :-)


With that class was over for the day. I look forward to hearing what adventures the class had over Halloween. Theme for next week's class is... no theme -- let's just listen to any songs you have been listening to lately!