Yeehaw, motherfuckers! It’s another edition of Monday Morning Commute. Oh, you know! The column where I wank-off over what is titillating me on a given week. I’ll level with all you varmints! I’m attempting to churn this big ole pig out before teaching my 2pm class! Thus, if I’m hitting the column with some alacrity, it’s because I’d rather be terse than absent.

Let’s hang out in the comments, after I drop my list on ya’lls asses.

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Hello there! If you’re reading this it means that Frankenstorm hasn’t totally rocked you. Not yet, anyways. Or, if you took the proper precautions as I did, you’re safe in a bunker, leisurely tapping away on a hard-shelled laptop produced in 1995 and powered by a Soviet-surplus generator.

Mother Nature is a powerful woman of antiquity, but I’m a crafty miscreant in the digital age.

Anyways, welcome to the Monday Morning Commute, the weekly meeting at which we confess our darkest entertainment secrets. Can’t tell your boyfriend about that comic book you bought? Come to the MMC! None of your coworkers will appreciate the Japanese import you just got in the mail? Come to the MMC! Pretty sure your wife doesn’t give two buttery squirrel shits about the fact that you’re going to beat Super Mario Bros. 3 without the use of a single warp or whistle? Come to the MMC!

I’m going to get things started. But then it’s up to you to share what you’ll be doing this week. C’mon, it’s electronic show and tell!

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[OCTOBERFEAST is the greatest celebration of the year, a revelry dedicated to pop-culture’s most nutritious Halloween detritus. Plastic screams and artificial sweeteners have never been more bountiful. In the old country, villagers refer to the extended party as Satan’s Snacktime]

The heavy iron gates have been torn asunder. Children howl, fire in their eyes and sugar in their guts. Geezers don masks, chuckling their emphysema chuckles and launching bottle rockets at the Hunter’s Moon. Women hike up their skirts, tempting the menfolk to make decisions most unwise. The torrent of maniacs has flooded the campgrounds – there’s no mistaking this dark carnival for any other event.

Welcome back to the OCTOBERFEAST!

Today’s festivities feature musical accompaniment, a score to facilitate the fermentation of the parishioners’ blood from a vital red to a syrupy orange-and-black. Yes, instead of bat wings flapping and incantations groaned, the revelers tap their toes to a sludgy Gothic manifesto. One born out Brooklyn, no less.

Let us all raise the fist of the metal child to October Rust.

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…If you get the title, and you know what a cream pie is, you’re my target audience. Welcome to the Cult. My raging juvenility knows no bounds. It’s a gorgeous day out, the sun is shining, the window to My Dungeon is cracked open. Life is swell.

It’s probably going to rain tomorrow.

I’ve spent all weekend holed up in the cave, reading shitty Villette. I’m so fucking sick of British Women’s Literature, I could spit! Spit! Fuck.

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide.

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When I met Type O Negative and Peter Steele I was a fat, confused, sixteen year-old. I was beginning to realize that my parents were as fucked up as me, the path of glory led to nowhere but the grave, and rot awaited all of us. In other words, the dude spoke to me. A penchant for the melancholic, his discussions of life and death and fragility and infidelity made a real lot of sense.

Over the years I haven’t listened to them as much as I used to. Mr. Steele and his lamentations have faded into the background of my mind. Steele, much like what used to be my incessant obsession with my own mortality, floated to the forefront every few years only to drift away.

It seems fitting then, in a year that has had me caring for a withering grandmother and once again uncomfortably aware of my own impermanence that Peter Steele would pass away.

Oh, you would do that.

One of my most magical concert moments ever took place at a Type O Negative concert. I must have been a junior in high school, and I went to the show with a pack of friends. During the bridge to Love You To Death, Steele polished off the bottle of wine he had been drinking the entire time and gunned it into the crowd. He then told us to give ourselves a hand, and the quiet bridge accompanied the sound of applause. I don’t know why it’s stuck with me throughout the decade-plus that’s passed, but I’ve always recalled it fondly.

Maybe the thing I enjoyed so much about Type O Negative was their ability to turn the morbid into the beautiful. Their songs about death weren’t nearly as depressing as they were pretty. Steele somehow managed to capture the gorgeous decay of existence.

Steele passed away this week. So it goes.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Don’t give me the standard “Uggh, Valentine’s Day, it’s completely made-up” argument. Yeah, it’s completely fabricated. As is every holiday (Wha? Jesus wasn’t born in snow-covered manger on December 25^th?!?).

If you’ve managed to fool someone into loving you, spend some time with `em today. If you don’t have anyone special in your life, go find someone.

And if you’re going to sit inside sulking all day, at least eat a heart-shaped box of chocolates. The shape makes the candy taste better (it’s been proven – by science).

To get you in the mood, a love song:

In the last few decades, the scientific community has come to a general consensus regarding OCTOBERFEAST: Goth-kids love Halloween. While their dark wardrobes, crummy poems, and pasty complexions are usually frowned upon, Hallow’s Eve provides Goth-kids a rare chance to flaunt their woe-is-me approach to existence. I guess this is a good societal release valve, providing a safe outlet so that real mistakes are not made.

So sure, we concede a bit of a loss during OCTOBERFEAST. We allow each teen inaccurately diagnosed with depression to wear a different Nightmare Before Christmas hoodie every day. We put up with thirty-one days of ghetto-blasters blaring Boys Don’t Cry and overzealous students begging us to attend the Drama Club’s performance of whatever. And for an entire month, we understand that staying out of Hot Topic is a decision made to ensure physical safety.

But all these concessions are made so that the inmates don’t overtake the asylum that is OCTOBERFEAST. In reality, there is some pretty cool Gothic-inspired shit in the world. In addition to his rampant alcohol and drug abuse, Edgar Allen Poe should be commended for his body of work. Despite writing in the Gothic style, Poe gave us fucking classics like The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven. So by giving the weirdos a month-long recess, they can be marginalized the rest of the year; and as result, they don’t completely taint the world of Gothic entertainment.

While Poe is one worthy representative of the American Gothic, he is trumped by a Brooklyn-based powerhouse. This entity has demonstrated that you can be into glum shit without being a totally despondent a-hole. The band at hand manages to sing about girlfriends’ girlfriends, asking a girl to be a druidess, and being set on fire in a strangely energetic and uplifting manner.

In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m referring to Type O Negative.

Type O Negative’s special brand of metal distinguishes itself by incorporating morbid lyrics into doom-and-gloom music. For instance, the creepy keyboards sound more like an old-school organ played in a cathedral where priests trains for exorcisms. On top of these are guitars that vary between ambient, groovin’, chuggy, or even thrashy. But perhaps most identifiable are Peter Steele’s low, brooding vocals.

Take all of the above attributes and use them to serenade a Goth girl. The result?

Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)

This is one of Type O Negative’s most well-known tunes, and with good reason. Musically, the eleven-minute track oscillates between straight-ahead verses, poppy sing-a-long choruses, hard hitting sections of hate, and truly beautiful bridges. Oh, and they also manage to sneak in the theme to The Addams Family.

Most appropriate for the OCTOBERFEAST, however, are Steele’s lyrics. At times, Black No. 1 seems to be a real love fest for freaky-ass, pale girls. And then, the song turns on a dime with declarations that loving the woman in question “Was like loving the dead/ Was like fucking the dead.” Surely, not what I’m planning to drunkenly croon at my wedding but pretty fucking awesome.

For a better idea of the song’s theme, check out this excerpt:

I went looking for trouble
And boy
I found her…

She’s in love with herself.
She likes the dark
On her milk white neck.
The Devil’s mark.

It’s all Hallows Eve.
The moon is full.
Will she trick or treat?
I bet she will.

She will.

Happy Halloween.

She’s got a date at midnight
With Nosferatu.
Oh baby, Lily Munster.
Ain’t got nothing on you.

Well when I called her evil
She just laughed.
And cast that spell on me.
Boo Bitch Craft.

Yeah you wanna go out
’cause it’s raining and blowing.
You can’t go out
’cause your roots are showing.

Dye ’em black.

Fuck it, I’m making a huge decision: consider Black No. 1 the official theme of OCTOBERFEAST. So in the next few days, take every opportunity to blast this tune as loud as possible while stuffing candy corn into your face.

Albeit an abridged version, check out the music video for Black No. 1: