{"id":2703,"date":"2013-01-14T00:00:18","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T06:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.walkingwithcake.com\/?p=2703"},"modified":"2013-01-14T06:36:30","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T12:36:30","slug":"sallys-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.walkingwithcake.com\/?p=2703","title":{"rendered":"Sally’s Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the holidays, we let the boys watch a few classic Christmas movies, and they fell in love with The Polar Express<\/em> and The Nightmare Before Christmas.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>I quickly had my fill of Tom Hanks and that holiday train, but I could watch Jack Skellington and his misfits all day long.\u00a0 I was in high school when the film was released, and I remember how cutting edge it was back then.\u00a0 (If that doesn’t show my age, then nothing does!)<\/p>\n

But the animation and the story are really timeless, I think.\u00a0 Plus, the characters in the opening song sing, “Tender lumplings everywhere, life’s no fun without a good scare.\u00a0 That’s our job, but we’re not mean, in our town of Halloween,” so nothing is scary when you can see what’s really behind it, as I like to remind James and Rhys.<\/p>\n

Right now, I’m especially smitten with Sally (played by Catherine O’Hara<\/a>), the beautiful rag doll who shares Jack’s restlessness, but knows that his quest for change will only lead to sadness and destruction.\u00a0 She alone understands him and tries to stop his terrible plan to overtake Christmas, but Jack refuses to listen and the results are disastrous.<\/p>\n

Sally’s song, sung as Jack flies off on Christmas Eve, is haunting and beautiful, and it’s stuck in my head at the moment.\u00a0 (It also reminds me of this song<\/a> from Popeye<\/em>, sung by Shelley Duvall.)<\/p>\n