All Hallow's Eve

Happy Halloween!

I don't know what I'll be this year, but I know what I was in The Past.

In 1978, I was Casper The Friendly Ghost.

In 1993, I was Aladdin Sane era David Bowie (though this was really a masquerade party for my & Sarah's birthday).


In 1999, I went as Mick Fleetwood from the Rumours album cover (made more sense when I posed with Stevie Nicks).



Any suggestions?

I might just go as Sirotan.

Ten Miles Of Bad, Bad, Road

This week has been Buffoonville around here. Now, I don't read the news or anything so I'm not sure what this "economy" problem is people are referring to, but apparently they're not buying books and somehow this affects me. What-ev, I say.



When things get bad, I look to my toughie role models. Sometimes I think WWJCD?, as in What Would James Cagney Do? What would he do, you ask? He'd smoosh a grapefruit in the face of everyone who crossed him.

And sometimes I think, WWCJD? What Would Cleopatra Jones Do?

Cleopatra Jones is one of the best movies ever, starring Tamara (Who?) Dobson and Miss Shelley Winters. It came out at the tail-end of the blaxploitation era, and while Ms. Dobson is no Pam Grier, she's pretty fantastic, and as her tagline says, she's ten miles of bad road.

Miss Shelley Winters plays a lesbian crime lord, kind of like a more-mannish version of Barbara Stanwyck in Forty Guns. Instead of racy double-entendres of pistols going off in faces, she shouts bizarre epithets and wears a big red wig.

All I know is, I want people to think of me as 6'2", and all of it dynamite.

Canada vs. America, Doppelgänger-style

Now, imagine my surprise when I discovered this blog here. I mean, who knew there was a guy named Chris who posts about cute kitties and Canada?

I'm not quite sure what this fella does for a living, but he seems to earn his keeps by posting funny pictures of cats, going to Canada, and accepting applications to be his assistant. So, I guess I'll start accepting as well!

Here's a funny bit he did about the differences between Canadian kitties and American kitties. With his little horse.



Thanks, funny stranger!

First We Take Your Birthday

One thing is clear from the past year's worth of posts, I love Birthdays. I wrote about this a little bit back on the 8th, and I meant it.

Today is the birthday of my good friend from school, David. Back in April, I went to see him in Charleston. Next month, he's going to come up to NY for Thanksgiving, and we might just take a little road trip then.

When I first met David back during our freshman year at UC Sunnydale, we both had long hair. Inexplicably, people used to get us confused. I still don't quite understand that, but no matter.

The Signature Style of our friendship is Road Trips. In college, we would pile into his Saturn (hee hee) and drive all over creation, playing Leonard Cohen real loud the whole time.

Once, we went to Graceland. You can see us down below with all our loot, which we then used to decorate our dorm room.

On that same trip we stopped by Tupelo and visited Elvis' birth place. I still have this shirt, and wear it as jammies.


The following year we drove through Pigeon Forge, TN and stopped in Dollywood. One of the best parts was tuning into WDLY Radio once we were in the city limits: "All Dolly, All The Time."

I have to say though, this one here was probably the strangest trip we've ever been on.

Many happy returns, David!

Birthday Blog!

Where does the time go?

It was just one year ago that Amber & I decided to have blogs. 4,265 visits from 70 countries later, here we are.

What do I like about blogging so much? Well, I like being creative, or at least trying to be, and I like knowing that my friends are checking in and hopefully are getting some enjoyment out of visiting here. I'm also really proud of me & Amber for keeping these up so much.

I also like it when strangers find their way here by accident. By Google Analytic's count, 127 of my visitors came here because they were looking for "interesting things about Australia." Here's hoping they learned a lot from my Australia posts. Another 86 of them were looking for the plural of something, notably the plurals of chicken, christmas, friendship, holy, hotdog, parrot, and puss. 63 of them were trying to find out the free day at MoMA San Francisco, and about two dozen of them were looking for Doris Day, Barbara Stanwyck (two of them specifically for her leather pants and her boobs!), and Ruth Wallis.

The list to the right of this post is my search engine traffic from the previous week. Here are my favorites from the past 52 weeks:

• aphasia club
• backdoor bea
• butt internals
• charleston local fauna
• cheeseburger in der dose
• cheetos and chex snack mix recipe
• feline internals
• free baby marmoset
• george washington fish house punch
• heaven's birthday cake
• is the spy capable or not
• le chat ennui
• marmoset there'd be days like this
• master soft & delight
• monster big butt
• shove in your clutch
• slicins
• toppussy

What are Slicins? Who is looking for Master Soft & Delight? Who are these people googling these things?
God Bless, the Internet.

Sirotan!

During my long stay in Tokyo back in May, I learned a lot about Japanese Culture. Rumors abounded that there was soup in the vending machines, but I never saw that. There was a fun store at the airport though called "Mother Garden." That's where I discovered Sirotan.

When I came back to America, I found a picture of Sirotan on this blog here.

Sirotan is, near as I can figure, a cat-seal that wears different disguises. Why he has a cat face and a seal body, I have no idea. The cutest iteration of Sirotan that I found sure was this one where he pretends to be a turtle. Why pretend to be a turtle? Why not pretend to be a turtle!


I knew then and there that this was a little buddy that my little buddy, Zach, could appreciate. And so I whipped out my corporate card (ウェブ全体から検索 looks like it could say "Grande Latte," right?) and snatched him up.

And at the end of the day, Z sure loves his new friend. God Bless, Sirotan!

Couples, Crimes, & Acoustic Strips

Now, I sure like Vanity Fair, and I don't mean the big boring book. I always used to buy it at the airport before a long flight, and this year my parents got me a subscription for Christmas. Jolly good.

One thing I like is the articles, and one article I recently liked was James Wolcott's "Little Big Screen" article on TV Programs. I liked lots about it, but mostly I liked how many nice things he had to say about Bones.
Series such as ... Bones ... lay down an acoustic strip under the alphabet-soup techno-jargon that correlates to a mental hum, as if the shows were thinking along with us (whereas so many movies are thinking for us, bringing the word down from on high).

How great is that? Laying down an acoustic strip under the alphabet-soup techno-jargon. I think I almost understand what he's saying. I think it means that even though they talk about bones and other boring things, it's fun to watch them chat.

Later he said:

The intimacy of television offers an ideal frame for the sort of teamwork at which Hollywood once excelled, from Nick and Nora in the Thin Man series to Rock and Doris to Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Them days are gone. The rapport and banter have migrated to television, whose matched sets include ... David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel on Bones (the dynamic between Boreanaz’s James Garner aplomb and exasperation and Deschanel’s Gene Tierney–ish fine-etched beauty makes for the most interesting evolving relationship on TV)...

Now, that's a lot of text, but I sure do agree. In fact, except for Asta, they're really all one and the same.


God Bless, Bones. And Asta.