TalKing of the Hill - Hilloween
Added 2021-04-16 04:01:00 +0000 UTCIt's a classic battle of Good versus Candy on this week's TalKing of the Hill, as Hank's favorite holiday gets threatened by an Evangelical Christian with a hatred for Halloween. Listen in and learn all about Mega Lo Mart's generous hole-punching policy, why backspin is so important when it comes to throwing toilet paper, and how a hate crime can be when someone hates you, specifically. So sit back, and remember: it's just liver—it's not going to KILL you!
Comments
The Satanic Panic seems quaint and "oh those wacky people" now, but it was taken super serious in a lot of the US. Police Forces actually had task forces looking for Satanists and hucksters going around claiming to be former Satanists were selling their services to police through the local churches. Even if the local cops didn't want to have anything to do with it, the Junie Harpers of the local Evangelical groups would harass and threaten them to take on some one who will point to Satanic Evidence at crime scenes like pentagrams, skulls and the words slayer or Zeppelin Rules spray painted nearby. It wasn't just something your annoying churchy neighbour won't stop talking about, it was more than a moral panic, but it effected actual peoples lives. The McMartin Preschool Trail is the most famous, with the West Memphis Three along with it. But many other people were accused and even arrested and it had real effects on their lives. A lot of it comes from the idea that many Evangelicals have that everything is a struggle against Satan and Jesus. If they like it, its Jesus, if they don't, Satan. There's a bunch of hilarious in retrospect but taken seriously at the time videos that were used for training to investigate Satanic activity.
twistedmentat
2021-04-22 04:15:04 +0000 UTCAs someone who also lives in PA, I agree with this. I don't really participate in trick or treating in my town because I have no kids and I don't like most of my neighbors. I did have a Halloween party over zoom since most of my friends are scattered in different places in the Philadelphia area.
Angel
2021-04-19 10:33:36 +0000 UTCThis episode hits close to home. When I was 18 I fell into a fundamentalist pentacostal church. I definitely related to luanne. I wish my pentacostal days were as short as hers but sadly I was in that cult for 8 years. I'm not proud of that part of my life but this episode definitely brings back memories.
Luis Benitez
2021-04-18 00:49:34 +0000 UTCI have to brag about my black cats! My wife and I exclusively take in strays, and a majority have been black cats. The best part is naming. We have had Null, Void, Arkham, and stark. My favorite though was a rust tented black cat we named FeO, the chemical elements that make up Iron Oxide.
JJMArtwork
2021-04-17 16:57:35 +0000 UTCNormal trick or treating still does totally exist,despite all those attempts to change, at least PA and the broader northeast where I’ve lived, where people have a strong “fuck you I won’t do what you tell me” energy. Even with the pandemic they still managed to do some socially distanced trick or treating albeit with considerably less people. Lots of people just built elaborate tube contraptions or other fun creative or spooky ways to stay far away and give out candy. My fiancé parents, for example, sat on their porch, which is far back from the street, and put a bunch of folding tables out with candy spread out on it, and enforced a “you touch, you take” sort of rule. Long story short in my entire life I feel like there’s always been some neighborhood or some group of parents who have tried to enforce that doing Halloween not actually on Halloween thing and the rest of the neighborhood has always collectively said nah we’re not fucking doing that, but thanks for asking.
Andrew Giachetti
2021-04-17 12:25:05 +0000 UTCMan I'm glad I never had to deal with any of this God-bothering bullshit when I was a kid.
Andrew Gillies
2021-04-17 11:15:23 +0000 UTCMy home town in Texas had elaborate hell houses during Halloween. It was an annual semi-interactive play where the audience walked through rooms for each scene. It always involved some sort of crime that pulls the lead away from God, a breakdown of faith, a courtroom scene, and the climax was at the gates of heaven where one character was granted entrance; but the villain was dramatically denied at the golden gates by St. Peter with a dramatic sword move.
CMatt
2021-04-17 07:12:13 +0000 UTCGet out of my house! Exodus.
Dan Z
2021-04-17 01:27:04 +0000 UTCMy mom would raid our Halloween candy constantly so my siblings and I would save the stuff with peanuts in it last since my mom was allergic (she wasn't epi pen bad, just couldn't eat it). When she caught on she said we were mean.
Alex Forsyth
2021-04-17 00:52:35 +0000 UTCI didn't have hell houses exactly but in Indiana we had something called "Drug House Odyssey". It was basically a hell house. I was 10 when my parents took me to it and it scarred me for life. It started by you waiting in a line outside and seeing a scene where someone buys drugs, and the drug deal goes bad and they get stabbed. Then you go through a big scene where someone decided to drink and drive, and it all winds up in the piece de resistance at the end where they pulled a mangled car from a junkyard and created a "Crash site" where this person's car was wrapped around a phone pole and the person was splayed out and bloody. Cut to them being rushed to the hospital where they were pronounced dead. Then the funeral where they talked about if only they had known god this never would have happened. I am sure had I been old enough I would have recognized how corny it all was, BUT I WAS 10! I will never ever forget it and I'm sure it did service it's purpose of keeping me from drinking and drugs, but I wish I had learned it some other way.
Joey Joe Joe Shabadoo
2021-04-16 23:54:09 +0000 UTCAmerica really has regressed since the 90s. I think even the most politically conservative Arlenians in this episode think Junie Harper is a hypocrite and a nut. She just gets her way by threatening to sue. If this was real life, most of them would be sharing her Q research posts on Facebook now.
Cody
2021-04-16 23:44:00 +0000 UTCMy strongest Halloween memory involved a weird house owned by some old child-hating couple on the end of my street. They would basically never leave their homes but did keep a large and very aggressive dog that scared the shit out of everyone, and every year around Halloween they'd leave a bowl of candy on the doorstep but also leave their very unfriendly dog outside, so they clearly knew what they were doing and were just being assholes to the neighborhood kids. What they hadn't counted on was my older brother and his whole group friends coming by one year, beating up the dog and then taking the entire bowl for themselves.
Professor Gascan
2021-04-16 22:09:47 +0000 UTCI was lucky enough to never really deal with any fundamentalists until I went to college (in Texas), but I do remember talking to a kid in 5th or 6th grade asking me if D&D was "satanic" and when I told him no, he said something like "maybe the devil sent you hear to tell me that?" and I was taken aback by how stupid a worldview that was.
Chris Dobson
2021-04-16 20:42:43 +0000 UTC
