Fond Memories of a Halloween Long Ago

(A photo of my father taken a few months before diagnosis)


I have always had a love affair with Halloween, ever since I was a little girl. Not only is Fall is my favorite time of the year, but pretty much for me as a child, once you found out the truth that the guy in the red suit was really nothing more than your parents stumbling around in the dark, Halloween pretty much took over as my favorite holiday. It also gives me one of my favorite memories of my father, and serves as one of the best ways to explain where I get my sense of humor from.

In November of 1985, my father was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and at that time was given six months to a year to live, so three years later, just still being alive had already proved the doctors wrong. It was Halloween of 1988, and I was getting ready to go to the store to pick up the last bits of what I needed for my costume, which quite frankly I don’t even remember what I was that year but that is beside the point. My father gave me a list and said to me, “While you’re there can you get this stuff for me?” I told him I would and I looked at the list and instantly figured out exactly what Dad was up to.

Before explaining what was on the list, I have to explain my Dad to you. He stood about 6’3” or so, and was a rather big guy, even after the chemo and radiation had knocked his weight down quite a bit. Add to that what chemo and radiation had done to his general appearance, which is to say, he had no hair left, and when the doctors took a sample of his lymph node for testing, they left a scar on the right side of his neck that actually looked like a zipper. For anyone who has seen “Young Frankenstein” I am sure you already know where I am going with this, and oddly enough that was one of my Dad’s favorite movies and one of my favorites too.

Now the list Dad gave me was pretty simple, find some extra newspapers, pick up green makeup, also some sort of scar type make up, well basically in general, the Frankenstein makeup. On Halloween night, my Dad took an old black polyester suit from his closet, I think it may have been back there longer than I had been alive, and put on the makeup. We stuffed the sleeves and the neck with newspaper, so he didn’t look real, he actually looked like some sort of dummy that you make and put on your porch as a decoration. And that was exactly where he sat, at the top of the porch in a lawn chair, perched in wait to scare the trick or treaters.

We put a bowl of candy in his lap with a sign on it that said, “Happy Halloween, Take one.” The porch light was on, the pumpkin was carved, and for all intents and purposes it just looked like a family that had taken their kids out trick or treating and left candy for the other kids. But that was only what it looked like, not what it actual was.

My mother and I sat inside and watched the kids walk up the drive way and onto the pathway to our front door, you could see the terror in their eyes the minute they laid eyes on the Frankenstein “dummy” on the lawn chair, knowing that if they wanted candy, they had to go near it. And many brave souls did, they approached with extreme caution, constantly looking back to their parents for moral support, they reached their trembling hands into the bowl, took their candy and as they began to leave, suddenly they heard the “dummy” speak. Dad would say random things like, “Aren’t you going to say thank you?” “Are you sure you want THAT one?” and kids went running in terror, screaming down the sidewalk, bags of candy flying through the air, all they could do to get away as quickly as they could from the Frankenstein monster that was REAL!

Our house quickly became a popular stop as word traveled among the parents of my father’s little prank. See we lived in a smaller neighborhood, so people knew that my Dad had been sick for awhile, and they were happy to see him out and taking part in one of his favorite holidays. Dad always made my Mother walk the neighborhood with me while trick or treating as a child because he loved to stay home and scare the kids, and pass out candy. Our house always had the cool decorations, and the good candy too…but that year, we had something else….we had our own little brand of terror.

The next morning we saw the aftermath of the screaming children who ran as fast as they could to get away from my Dad’s Frankenstein get up. (Which by the way, with the zipper looking scar on his neck, he really did bare a striking resemblance to Peter Boyle’s Monster from the “Young Frankenstein” movie.) I think we found several plastic pumpkins, a few bags, and we must have been cleaning candy out of the bushes that lined the path for weeks. People talked about that Halloween for years, but sadly it was no more than about eight months later that my Father would lose his battle with cancer. Even on that Halloween night back in 1988 he was very sick and pretty weakened by all the treatments, but he wouldn’t let even the fact that he was dying hamper his spirit and his love of his favorite holiday.

Looking back on that Halloween I think I learned the true meaning of the phrase “live each day as though it is your last”, because that was really what my Dad did. He made sure that even though he knew that his days were numbered, he made each one of the good days count, I guess it made the bad days that much easier to get through.

The Good, The Bad and the Amazing...

So a few weeks ago on a Saturday night a group of friends and I went to see the Electric Six play at the Waiting Room. Now if you have never seen the E6, and you have a chance, it’s worth the price of admission. They are a truly fun band to see. But this is more about the opening act, and how sometimes you underestimate or discount the opener.

For this show, the opening band was a group from LA called Kitten. With a tiny, pint sized lead singer who had more energy and charisma than you see from most front men in bands, she was awesome to watch. Not fake, not playing to the crowd, just pure talent. Seriously, check them out if you get a chance.
But talking about how good Kitten was after the show, many of us talked about the openers that we had seen in the past and how sometimes you get taken by surprise. Sometimes you flat out misjudge based on how a band looks, and sometimes you think it will be a good performance and you suffer through an abysmal 45 minute set only to think, “well thank god THAT is over.”

I have been to hundreds of shows over the years and I have seen the good openers and the really awful ones too. Some that stick out in my memory include the 1991 show at the Peony Park Ballroom with the Smashing Pumpkins and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and this little unknown band opening for them called Pearl Jam. They were amazing, and rightfully so…they did go on to a 20 year career and all.

I remember seeing Tori Amos for the second time at the Orpheum Theater in 1998, the show was alright, not as good as the previous time I saw Tori (that was her first time touring with a band, the previous time was just her and a piano and a harpsichord and 1 guy on bass), but from that show I remember being blown away by the opening act for her, an Irish band called The Devlins. Still have a few of their CD’s and have introduced a few people to them over the years.

Discovered a great band called The Start, who is a blend of Blondie and Missing Persons with an electronica 80’s vibe, when they opened for Front Line Assembly in 2007 at of all places, Knickerbocker’s in Lincoln, a stage that was WAY too small for FLA, but a great show none the less. With the exception of FLA’s fog machine which was made for an arena, or at the very least a club WAY bigger than Knickerbockers.

Now I admit, I have misjudged a few in my day as well. While seeing the Birthday Massacre in 2008 at Sokol Underground they had an opener by the name of Dommin. First, we saw the stage set up, strike one, a roadie was tying red roses to each mic stand with black ribbons and most of us in our group thought, awesome it’s one of those “ooooh, I’m so goth I shit bats” sort of bands. Strike two, they come out on stage looking like 50’s greasers, again…we’re thinking it’s the Hot Topic generation running wild. And then, the lead singer opened his mouth and sang. From his lips came a voice that was a perfect hybrid of Peter Murphy, Peter Steele and Glen Danzig and they were amazing. Trust me, they are another band completely worth checking out, if you haven’t heard of them already.

But for every great opening act you see, you get the bombs. Bands that just make you want to roll your eyes and think to yourself, dear god when will it stop? I won’t name names, but we’ve all been there, we’ve all suffered through them. But just remember, never discount the opening act from the get go, give them a few songs before you make your judgment, you may just be surprised.

September 24, 2008....the day my life changed, again.

It’s amazing the amount of recall that one can have after three years. The ordeal itself started on a Monday afternoon while I was at work. I received a call from my Mother’s nursing home that she was in sort of a down mood and lonely. So I called her and talked to her for a bit, reminded her that I would be up to see her on Wednesday that week before work and would bring her lunch. She reminded me she wanted a strawberry shake, she was particular about her ice cream.

By Tuesday afternoon I had received another phone call from the nursing home. The nurse who took care of my Mom was asking if I had planned to come to see her that night and I told her no, I was coming the next day. She said that was good because my Mother was very agitated throughout the day, very combative and very out of character for her, so they prescribed a sedative and she was sleeping. For some reason I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but by the next morning I would start to put things together.

Which brings us to Wednesday morning; I get a call from the nursing home. This time they are informing me that they have called in the “critical care” nurse from the Hospice center as things were not looking good. I told them I would stop up on my way to work and would be there shortly. And from the minute I walked into the room, I knew that sadly, today was the day I would say good bye to my Mother. And that was when I put it together, the comment the nurse made about my Mother’s strange behavior from the previous day, that was how she acted years earlier after she suffered her stroke. And I think that she ultimately had a massive one sometime on Tuesday, which then lead us to the events of Wednesday afternoon.

I had only witnessed death once before, when my Father died in 1989, which is already one time too many in my opinion. I was only 14 years old and was terrified to even go near him, afraid to hold his hand, afraid to even be in the room. You always hear people describe death as a “peaceful” thing, and I can tell you, that’s really a bunch of bullshit. It was terrifying to watch when I was 14, and still just as horrible to watch when I was 33.

When the person who raised you, took care of you, comforted you in your times of fear and panic is suddenly reduced to a barely conscious being that is gasping for breath every few seconds, it’s not the most comforting sight in the world. The only thing that gave me some amount of comfort was that she was not alone. I was there to say goodbye, my brother was there, my fiancé (now husband) was there, her older sister was there and her best friend from the age of five was there, everyone was able to say goodbye and she was surrounded by the people who loved her.

My Mother was a remarkable person. Any lesser person would have been insufferable to be around. For everything that was wrong with her life, she saw the best in the situation. When my Father was diagnosed with cancer, she took it in stride, when he died four years later, she held it together, even though years later she would admit to me how hard it was to know that she would never feel his arms around her again, she wouldn’t trade the 30 years that she had with him for anything.

When she was struck down by a massive brain aneurism that should have killed her at the age of 50, not only did she manage to survive, but despite being left paralyzed on the left side of her body, she managed to become the most capable handicapped person I knew. (Trust me, I had a cat with a broken tail, she broke a few of my toes and I saw her mow down countless people while Christmas shopping over the years…none of it was intentional of course, well maybe the Christmas shoppers, but in her defense, she did say “excuse me” several times.)

She always laughed and had a smile on her face; she always looked on the bright side of things, always put her faith in God and never complained about the hand that had been dealt to her. She always told me that “God never closed a door without opening a window”, and I think that she truly believed that.

But then again, this is the same Mom, who with a great sense of humor also taught me that “it’s always darkest right before you get hit by a bus.”

Not ready for the Football....

Here in Nebraska you can tell when football season is approaching. You start to see red everywhere you go, you start hearing people changing the ringtones on their phone to the Husker fight song, and for me you start to see me get a little depressed.
See my Mother was the biggest and loudest Husker fan on the planet. I mean hell hath no fury like my Mom and her best friend of forty some years watching the game every Saturday and screaming at the screen, and crying when they made the National Championships. Seriously, my Mother was hard core when it came to the Huskers.
There’s an awesome picture of my Mother and I, taken in the fall of 1975, a few months after I was born. Now keep in mind that back in the 70’s, the University was a little behind the times and not quite the marketing machine that it is these days. So long story short, kids clothing in a Husker line didn’t exist. So being the crafty lady with a sewing machine that she was, she MADE me my first Husker sweatshirt.
Through all that my Mother went through in her life, with her stroke, losing her husband to cancer, and so many other little things that would have gotten the rest of the down, she persevered. She never let things get to her and once Fall came around, no matter how bad a week could be….she always had Saturday to look forward to. And she always knew what was going on, from listening to the games on the radio, to watching them on TV, getting pay per views, and my favorite, using her only daughter as a source for information while I was at my first game.
It’s true, they were the dark years in Lincoln, or as some call them the “Callahan years” and when Tim’s family found out that I had never been to a game. Long story short, we had tickets to the Nebraska vs. Texas A&M game. I think it was A& M, anyway…when you listen on the radio you have about a 20 second delay with the Pinnacle Sports Network, knowing that and listening to the radio my cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I answered, “Hello?” Mom’s response? “Is it as bad as it sounds? My response “No, Mom, it’s worse…they just ran the option and scored a touchdown.” Mom starting to yell, “They ran the OPTION? THIS IS NEBRASKA, WE INVENTED THE OPTION!” It kept going like this for the rest of the game.
That was the season of 2007, Callahan’s final season as head coach and then the Pellini era began in Nebraska in 2008. Sadly, she didn’t get to see a game on TV that season, but she did listen to a few. When I spoke at her memorial service I made the comment about how both my Mother and her friend Jeanette (who passed away five years prior to my Mother) always said, that if heaven didn’t have Husker Vision, they were coming back. Seeing as I haven’t seen either of them, the view must be spectacular
Three years have passed since I lost my mother. And I guess it’s still a little too hard for me to utter the words, “Go Big Red”.

"Fright Night" gets a makeover...

From the minute the reboot was announced, most were a bit taken aback. A reboot for the 1985 classic “Fright Night” starring Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowell, really? But stranger things have happened. I mean for god sakes, the reboot of “Conan the Barbarian” is also in theaters this weekend too.
In general, the new movie is a stylized update of the original, which believe me if you have tried to go back and watch the original, it NEEDED it. Not a movie that held up well to the test of time. A few things have changed and the changes make sense. This time around the story moves from small town to Las Vegas, a town where blacking out ones windows and being nocturnal are completely normal. Plus, add to the fact that the housing market is in ruins, which this is addressed in the movie, and leaves plenty of vacant homes and families moving on.

One of the other major updates to the story is the changing of the character of Peter Vincent. In the original, Roddy McDowell played the former actor turned late night horror movie host, and the updated version gives us David Tennant, better known to most as the 10th Doctor on the British television show “Doctor Who”, and this time Peter Vincent is the stylized Vegas act called “Fright Night” which is akin to a Criss Angel type of show. And Tennant is brilliant as the drunken, cowardly jackass who eventually comes to the aid of the story’s main hero, Charlie Brewster.
Charlie, played by Anton Yelchin (also a reboot veteran since starring in “Star Trek” last year) as the teen trying desperately to leave behind the geeky image of his past. Imogene Poots plays Charlie’s hottie girlfriend Amy and Charlie’s mom is played by Toni Collette, who really doesn’t get a lot of screen time. Then again, the mom wasn’t really a major character in the first one either.
And that brings us to Jerry. Yes, the vampire next door, Jerry. A name that is made fun of several times and really it was always part of the joke. Colin Farrell was perfect. Dark, devious, sexy, gorgeous, brooding, violent and yet has excellent comedic timing for the funny moments in the script
And yes, the comedy of the first movie still stays put. It embraces what it was, a slasher horror flick, gratuitous gore, and quirky humor. Plus if you do remember the original, there’s a cameo in it that will have you laughing your ass off.
So, while there are movies that have no business being remade (like “The Crow”….can someone stop that one before it’s made, PLEASE?) this one is a refreshing update and a fun ride.
And yes, it looks like they did embrace the 3D aspect of the film, but we saw it in 2D, because, it really doesn’t change much. In short, great performances from the entire cast and a really awesome vampire movie that didn’t come close to the flaming pile of poo that I was worried it may turn into.

"Just another reason looking for the next because..."

“Just another has been wishing that she never was.” Okay, so that’s simply a lyric from a Birthday Massacre song that was written about Elizabeth Short, but believe me there are some days those lines ring so true to me.

Okay, so for a little back story, I didn’t have the easiest childhood, both parents are now deceased and the only sibling is an adopted brother who blames the wreckage of his alcoholic life on the fact that Mom and Dad had me and ruined his life. But I digress. I don’t regret the way I was raised, my parents did their best, but you don’t come through that life without being a bit f**cked up around the edges.

Now keep in mind as a kid, I was a painfully shy kid. Most barely remember me, and those who have known me long enough wonder what the hell happened to me. As I made it through high school I began to take an interest in writing, and shortly after high school I finally had the guts to audition for my first show.

I spent the better part of my life trying to hide, reading books, keeping to myself and such, but now I found that it was much easier to hide in plain sight, on a stage, with an audience. Never in my life did I think that I could pull that off, but not only did I (sometimes in little more than underwear, earning me the runner up title “bimbo of the ‘belt” Jenny was the first…it was term of endearment for us both, I SWEAR), and I also got some pretty good reviews from the press. But more importantly for me, I met a wonderful and motley crew of friends and discovered a major part of myself. I discovered that one of the best ways to hide in plain sight was to become someone else.

No, I am not talking about identity theft or something like that, but if you ever ready the Kurt Vonnegut short story, “Who Am I This Time”, you know what I am talking about. What I am speaking of is the ability to become someone other than you for a few hours, may sound weird, but it’s oddly relaxing. I stayed involved for several years when I managed to stumble my way into a job at a radio station on air.

And so ended the acting a career of Christina Frans, and so came the birth of the radio dj known as Christina Cooper. First starting as a side kick on the Tainted 80’s on 93.3 The Point, then onto a few overnight/early am voice tracking shifts and even made it through a format change from Hot A/C to Alternative Rock and K-Rock 93.3 (for those Omaha folks keeping track, that was second coming of K-rock, not ‘Ranch Bowl’ K-Rock). I spent the better part of my mid to late 20’s throwing everything I had at my career, except the inevitable moving to another city to further it.

See, when you have a raging alcoholic for a sibling, who while is 10 years your senior, mentally he’s about 15 years my junior and a mother who while didn’t need constant care, did need a sober kid to take care of her sometimes. And then there was me, I may use my Mother’s paralysis as an excuse, but really my panic and fear kept me here in Omaha, too frightened to spread my wings and fly, too frightened to be alone.

So, I pushed many things aside, relationships for one, for many years and before I knew it I was on a collision course with the big 3-0, which is a horridly dismal and frightening number until it’s in your review mirror and you realize the REALLY scary numbers are still ahead, but enough about that, back to approaching 30, and being alone. Well I finally gave in, met a guy who at first was nice, then not so much, then a real drunken asshole who was starting to remind me of a certain sibling, and that’s what told me it was time to leave.

I would have thought that would have been the most terrible time in my life leaving a relationship of almost five years behind, but instead it was one of the greatest. To feel free, to feel in control, to feel truly independent and to love what I did for a living and have a beautiful sanctuary of an apartment to show for it. But, somehow….some way, I let that one slip by. I regret that I have now, but we all have regrets don’t we?

After twelve years in radio, I had made it to a very cushy position. Working five or six hours a day, voice tracking for some 45 stations across the country and making a very good living at it, and then the bottom fell out. First, we knew the company would be moving to Denver, and I knew that I didn’t want to live there for my own reasons, and then managed to get laid off in one of the many “waves” of downsizing prior to the move.

You’d think with a resume that has over twelve years of experience on it another radio job would be easy to find, yeah….not so much. See the fun thing is, while Sirius and XM didn’t kill the radio game, it was companies like the one I used to work for and the rise of the internet and personal music devices that have slayed the job market I once called home. So, everyone is running a skeleton crew, a hodgepodge of part time employees and a few lucky people still managing full time employment and most everyone is on a hiring freeze with no end in sight.

So, I don’t get paid to be creative at work anymore, I don’t have the theater as an outlet anymore and am searching for a new outlet. A friend suggested a blog, so here I am, pouring out my life to random strangers on the internet.

Hopefully you enjoy it, or it may bore you. Either way, I guess it’s something to keep me busy.