Slow news day

Well, here I am at work on what was supposed to be a day off. I'm half asleep and really don't want to be here. At least there isn't much going on.

Random stuff running through my head:

• Great, a writer's strike. No new TV. Oh well, at least I can get caught up on Netflix.
• Dog the Bounty Hunter... I don't think anybody would have ever pegged him as a smart man, but now he's removed any doubt.
• Tony Romo... why do I care? Oh wait... I don't.

More later when I'm not so tired...

Happy Halloween!

Well, here's a late posting on the best day of the year (which means that most people who read this... well, it's probably not Halloween anymore)!

Halloween! Man, I really miss having free time and few responsibilities. Hopefully when I'm out of school I can enjoy the holiday a little bit more. We gave out candy to little monsters, but I didn't even have time to carve the jack o' lantern this year (a light-up plastic jack pumpkin had to suffice).

I remember when Raddmann and I lived together. For Halloween, we went nuts with yard decorations. Radd made this great noose and we hung a skeleton from a tree in the front yard. In fact, we were so happy with the skeleton-noose that we put a Santa hat on it and hung it back up for Christmas!

Uhhhh... anyway... Here's today's pumpkin treat followed by an old entry from the archives (a Halloween piece I did for the TCU Daily Skiff).

And now, a special presentation of an old newspaper column...

Well, it’s almost that time of year again. You know, when ghosts and goblins take to the streets in search of candy, “smashing pumpkins” refers to an action instead of a rock band, and many people get upset about exposing children to satanic rituals.

Yes, I’m talking about Columbus Day.

No, I’m not, what am I talking about... Halloween... I’m talking about Halloween!

Halloween was supposed to be, in it’s most recent form, a holiday where kids dress up in something and go door to door asking for candy. Panhandling by children was heartily encouraged and the American Dental Association saw a sharp increase in the number of cavities their patients had.

Now, however, many parents and schools are nervous about all the scary things and have killed the excitement. Something about “satanic rituals in praise of the Dark Lord of Hell” or something silly like that. Never mind that these same parents actually ENCOURAGE their children to watch Barney the Dinosaur and Satan’s best friend, Elmo, from Sesame Street. C’mon parents, it’s all about priorities!

But I depress. Fortunately, there are still people out there who care about Halloween. Who, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. College students, rich people, pagans, bank employees, the entire entertainment profession, makers of fine candy (and not so fine candy... circus peanuts... BLEAGH!), people who need any excuse to drink, and, of course, evil minions of the Devil who will conduct “satanic rituals in praise of the Dark Lord of Hell.”

If you yourself (as opposed to you himself or possibly you ourselves) fall into one of these fine demographics (or would that be demongraphics), then more than likely you have plans for Halloween night. But what can you do?

Well, friends, let me help.

First off, you must have a costume. (SPECIAL NOTE TO CROSSDRESSERS AND TRANSVESTITES: Sorry, that doesn’t count) If you do nothing else, you must have a costume. Even if you just sit at home and watch every episode of the original Star Trek series (you GEEK!), you must at least do it in costume. Just dressing up like someone else can fill your heart with Halloweenness and brighten your otherwise pathetic life.

In order to properly choose a costume, you must consider a few things: Where am I going? How much money do I have? Will my boyfriend/girlfriend/animalfriend approve and/or find me more attractive so I can get lucky later? Can I be arrested for wearing this? Do I really like Key Lime pie, or am I just saying that so that I don’t hurt Aunt Bernice’s feelings?

The most important questions are the first two. You must choose a costume that you can easily move around in as well as afford. Dressing up like Elvis might be fun, but can you afford it? A cardboard box is easy to do, but are you going to a crowded party? A cardboard box might work for your wallet, but it’s almost impossible to do anything in it. Forget about dancing! A suit of armor would be very cool, but it would be expensive AND hard to move around in. So forget it, pin head.

Try and pick something easy, like a witch, ghost, demon, ghoul, Teenage Morphin’ Ninja Thingy, politician, or any other cliché overused costumes. Store bought costumes are usually entertaining if nothing else. But if you really want to entertain people, create something from scratch out of things you find around your house. Use your imaginations for crying out loud! Did Mr. Rogers teach you nothing?

The most basic costume is whatever you happen to be wearing that day. You could say it’s many different things. For instance, you could be a Met’s Fan, an undercover cop, an alien dressed as a human, your best friend, your evil/good twin, or perhaps a college student. If you are actually in college, the last one won’t be much fun since you are probably pretending to be a student already.

Some other easy to put together costumes include: wrapping yourself in aluminum foil to be a lightning rod, cover yourself in paper and become an IRS audit (oooo... scary), or just grab anything you can find and place it on your body. Any combination you can think of! Sure macaroni, paper sacks, bananas, and popsicle sticks look strange, but hey, it’s a costume.

Now that you have put together a costume, you have to find a place to show it off, assuming of course you aren’t one of those geeks watching Star Trek. Since you are probably an adult now, your options are limited. You could go trick or treating, but be careful, some places have laws against anyone over a certain age doing this. If you can go trick or treating, here are a few tips.

First, wait until later, say around 8 or 9 o’ clock. This gives all the REAL children a chance at getting some candy. Also, some candy givers get a little perturbed by overage people going door to door. So be extremely curteous. Going later in the evening has some real advantages as well. By this time, people usually have a lot of candy left over and are eager to get rid of it. Chances are, you can make quite a haul off of just one street, although, you should expect to get a lot of Tootsie Rolls.

If trick or treating doesn’t sound like fun, you could do other things. One idea is to find a party to go to. Preferably, it’s a good idea to find a party that you’ve been invited to. But, since you’ve got a identity hiding costume, it’s very easy to crash parties. Nobody knows who you are! Now, go spike the punch.

If parties aren’t your thing, perhaps going to a “scary” haunted house would be more entertaining. Here, you can pay exorbitant amounts of cash to see people in rubber masks jump out of a closet and yell “BOO!” Some people find this entertaining.

You could go rent a movie like Friday the 13th Part 95 or Saturday Night Fever and sit at home and relax. My personal recommendation: get a movie with the Olsen twins. They are extremely disturbing.

If you are at home, you can hand out candy to children. Children like candy. As for those pesky overage people who shouldn’t be trick or treating but are anyway, I suggest handing out little packets of ketchup and mustard. Better yet, give them a nice big helping of water from the hose.

I hope some of these suggestions help make your Halloween a little bit more fun. Remember, if you can’t be scary, be silly. Oh, and nobody likes those crappy popcorn balls and don’t backwash when bobbing for apples.

Mmmmmmm.... beer....

Today's pumpkin entry is actually 4 entries. 4 "pumpkin" beers to be exact. 3 of these were from last year. The thing about pumpkin beers is that they really don't taste like pumpkin. They're MADE with pumpkin, but they don't much taste like pumpkin. Regardless, I keep trying.Going from left to right:Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale (Anheuser-Busch) 5.5% - "Ale Brewed with only the Finest Barley Malt, The Choicest Hops, Pumpkin and spices." Pretty much a typical pumpkin ale. Taste like an ale with some stuff in it. Not bad, but there are better beers if this isn't gonna taste like pumpkin.The Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale - No % listed and a warning sign: "MALT Beverage with pumpkin spice added." It's been a year since I had this, but the memories are coming back.... this tasted like soda water with some pumpkin flavoring. It actually tasted like pumpkin, but lacked any beer qualities that I pretty much disqualified this one. The artwork on the label is quite entertaining, though.Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale (Blue Moon Seasonal Collection) 5.6% - "The flavor of vine ripened pumpkin & spices with traditional crystal malt." This is the one I got this year. It's a good beer (but then, I just like the Blue Moon line), but again, not a major pumpkin flavor explosion. I'd recommend it for parties just to go with the theme, but if you want a seasonal to just drink at home, try the Blue Moon Winter Ale.Dogfish Head Punkin Ale 7% - "A full-bodied brown ale brewed with real pumpkin, brown sugar, allspice, cinnamon & nutmeg." If you are at all familiar with the Dogfish Head line of beer, then you know that it is made up of beers that are heavy on flavor and heavy on alcohol. This one fits the bill. To be honest, I don't remember exactly how this one tasted, but I can remember that I felt quite relaxed after drinking it. Pumpkin flavor or not, shotgun one of these and you'll have no problem going to sleep.For those of you that looked at/can see the picture associated with todays post, you may notice there are in fact 5 beers displayed. This is true. The fifth beer is not a pumpkin beer, rather, it is the beer that was unanimously voted at the Chris & Liesl Logan Beer Tasting Festival as THE WORST BEER EVER!!!!This is the Left Hand Brewing Company's Milk Stout. There is no alcohol percentage listed, but I can tell you that it isn't enough, whatever the hell it is. I bought this with the intention of of maybe winning best beer or weirdest. I like stout and I like milk stout and I thought, hmmmm.... this looks interesting. Plus, there's a cow with hand-print spots on the label. That cow wouldn't steer me wrong (no pun intended).That cow drove me into the biggest cow patty ever ejected from bovine buttocks. A general consensus was that the beer tasted like an ashtray. As such, it easily won worst beer and I earned the prize of a book about the "most evil" people in history.It was my own fault. I broke rules regarding good beer selection. Mainly, NEVER BUY A DOMESTIC STOUT! I don't care what you think it might taste like, if it was made by some hippie indie brewer in the US, then it's crap. Period.

Random musings and pumpkin tarts

I've decided that Britney Spears, within the next two years will either:A) Become a born again Christian who has discovered the error of her ways, finds Jesus and starts making terrible records like "Confess, baby, one more time" orB) Be dead

She's just that messed up. Those are pretty much the only options for somebody that wacko. If it's "B", maybe we'll get a lucky trifecta and Brit, Paris, and Lindsey will all be out in an SUV that rolls into a ditch and blows up.Today's pumpkin review is for the Archer Farms 4" Pumpkin Tart. Found this one in the Target bakery for $2.99. It's 6 oz of tasty pumpkin goodness (with dollop of cream and a chocolate stick). Don't look at the Nutrition Facts (especially since this thing is supposed to serve 2).It has a good pumpkin flavor but I can't say this is fanamatastic since it largely tastes like a mini-pumpkin pie with extra crust (not that I mind... I like crust). It was good and I'd recommend it, but it isn't the pumpkin find of the year. 4 out of 5 pumpkins.An aside: it went quite well with the Blue Moon Winter Ale (Target was out of the BM Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale, which will be reviewed later). Both were consumed while watching another dandy episode of Reaper.

Stop! Pumpkin time!

Well, it's pumpkin season again. This year, I fully intend on doing a better job of reporting all of the tasty pumpkin treats. So far this year, there has been a new pumpkin beer, pumpkin pudding, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin tart, pumpkin milk, and pumpkin curry soup. I have a pumpkin cake recipe to try and some pumpkin cream cheese in the fridge. Reviews and pics will follow as time allows.If you happen to find a pumpkin flavored something, let me know so I can try it.And now, for no particular reason, stuff I'm enjoying:Music: Kings of Leon, The Killers, Feist, The Hereafter, The Fratellis, MU330Books: Currently reading, Calendar by David Ewing Duncan and Don't Know Much About the Bible by Kenneth C. DavisTV: Reaper, Supernatural, Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, House

Gal's Panic on You Tube

As an addition to last night's post. there are currently four video's on you tube from GP's show at Emo's. Just search "Gals Panic Emo's". Two cuts of the first song "The Pit" and one each (with not so great audio) of "Skoliosis Skank" and "Mummy Cops"

The "Skank" vid hives you a shot of stupid Ireland shirt boy on stage. My arm is visible throughout "Mummy Cops"

Tag.... Tag you're it!

Well, over the weekend, the wife and I went down to Austin to catch a showat Emo's. One of my favorite "local" bands from the 90's was having a reunion gig... Gal's Panic! So, as my birthday present, we drove down for the show and stayed overnight. Here is the synopsis of the events of the trip:
Saturday afternoon, loaded up the VW and left the pups with the sitter
Arrived at the hotel around 4:30. Started noticing way too many motorcycles around
Checked-in. Went to room. Sat around trying to decide what to do next.
Left the hotel to go get dinner. The Dog & Duck pub. It's one of my favorites. Does a swell job of looking and feeling like a real pub AND serves food. Fish and chips are damn tasty. Good beer selection too. Had a Belhaven Scottish (tap) and a Blue Moon Belgian White. MMMMMMM!!!! Saw Arsenal fan. Found out that the Dog & Duck might be no more in about six months cuz some stupid people want to build condos. BOOOO condos!
Drove to Book People, the largest bookstore in Texas. It's nice. Lots of books. Found a book about John Lydon and decided to buy it.
Went back to the hotel. Dropped stuff off.
At this point, realized that the bikers were all in town for some rally/convention/gathering. It was a ROT (Republic of Texas) Biker Rally. Strongly recommend avoiding locations where this is. Motorcycles everywhere. This means there were numerous overweight, sleeveless, hairy people (and the women who love them) all over town.
Headed back out. Discovered there was some stupid parade that was blocking our path to the club. Had to take detour and saw many, many bikers.
FINALLY found parking spot. Walked to club while keeping a wary eye open for ne-er do wells.
Got to club. Checked name off will-call. Nobody there yet. Decided to wander outside.
Stopped at Bull McCabe's Irish Pub. Had a Guinness. It wasn't bad. Not too cold and no stupid shamrock drawn into the foam. Very pubby feeling inside. Mocked silly youth wearing the tweed snap hat, green Ireland t-shirt, and chain bound wallet... you know... every pub has one.
Headed toward 6th street. Saw what might've been a drug deal... or just four people who were crazy
6th street was blocked off to traffic and was covered with loud motorcycles of all kinds. Street and sidewalks were packed. Very Bourbon street feeling. Walked up to the Driskill Hotel. Checked for ghosts. Picked up loose change on a couch and rested for a few minutes.
Walked back down 6th street. Saw the beginnings of what might have been a domestic violence incident. Saw small children amonst the crowd. Saw bike's getting towed. Saw all manner of inappropriate and nauseating clothing on overweight, hairy bikers (men & women)
Arrived back at the club. Went inside. The first band was playing. Got a Blue Moon and stood at the back and listened.
Band: The Catfish Hunters. Jerm Pollet band #1 for the evening. A slower, bluesy, piano lounge, country thing. Enjoyed it. Jerm played piano and made ridiculous comments in between songs.
Browsed the merchadise booth
Moved to the other side of the bar where there was a good view and a stool.
Watched Jerm walk away in a sport coat and shirt and return momentarily in a t-shirt and pink pants.
Talked to Jerm at the merchadise booth. Told him I drove all the way from Ft. Worth and that he and Lance had better not f*** it up! He assured me they wouldn't. Bought four CD's - The "Footloose" audio commentary by The Sinus Show, the afore mentioned Catfish Hunters debut CD, The Total Foxes, and Missile Command. Paid with check. Jerm gave discount for buying in bulk. (Thanks Jerm!)
More Blue Moon
Next act: The Tricker Treats. This was a one-man act. Dan Potthast (of MU330 fame) did some entertaining songs. KKK adopts a highway song was very funny. He wore black leather pants. Could not have been comfortable. Will have to buy CDs from his website. Perhaps this shameless plug will help.
More Blue Moon. Watched silly young drunk girls hit on Dan at the merchandise booth.
Next act: The Total Foxes. Jerm Pollet band #2. They were fun. Jerm is always amusing. Here he gets to play guitar and sing. Have had one of their songs (Retirement Community) on the iPod for a year or so. Jerm makes unfavorable comment about bikers. We laugh and nod in agreement.
Watched as the crowd got bigger. Saw stupid Ireland shirt boy from McCabe's on the other side of the bar. Watched people. Saw guy with really bad haircut. Briefly saw Lance Fever through the crowd.
Watched Jerm disappear and re-emerge wearing a leather suit, feather boa, and oversized sunglasses. Must have been more uncomfortable that Mr. Potthast's leather pants.
One more Blue Moon.
Moved to the side of the club, out of the way of traffic.
Finally: Gal's Panic.
Started with "Pit", then my favorite, "Ketchup". Quickly burned off buzz by yelling and waving arms in air.
Show continues. Lance's parents are pointed out. I move up a little bit to test my mutant power. Back in the day, we always joked that I could start at the back of the club and before the last song, I would be front and center.
Start feeding off the crowd energy. Yelling/singing more. Bouncing a bit more.
"Skoliosis Skank" The pit starts up. I move in. Within a couple of songs, I'm dead center against the stage.
The rest of the show is awesome. Except for the smoke machines. Lance gets really sweaty and takes off his shirt.
During the show, stupid Ireland shirt boy keeps climbing on the stage and trying to help Lance remember the lyrics. Or perhaps he was just showboating. Or maybe he was just drunk. At any rate, he becomes highly annoying with his repeated visits to the stage. Jerm and Lance put up with a lot.
Main set ends. Band pretends to be done. We all know better. There were no Mummy Cops and the theme song hadn't been played yet. Girl to my right, who had been helping me yell the opening to Mummy Cops, shakes my hand and yells something in my ear that I do not understand.
Encore
Finally... Lance taps the microphone and we get the awesome words "You guys look tough... you guys look mean... but you don't scare me." Look out... it's the Mummy Cops!
Gal's Panic is played. High Fives to the front row. Jerm throws water (or spits, I can't remember now) at us. Bouncer finally comes to retrieve stupid Ireland shirt kid.
Show winds down... I move to the back where my wife has been standing. I stay there for the final song "We've only just begun"
I go say "Hi" to Lance. See Jerm and tell him they didn't suck. Retrieve setlist from the Total Foxes (Jerm wrote it on a paper plate).
Get pen from wife. Return to get Lance to sign it. Lance Fever by the way is also known as Lance Myers and he does computer animation. He worked as a lead animator on "A Scanner Darkly"
Took plate over to merchandise booth. Got Dan to sign it and leave his website
Got Jerm to sign plate. Try not to look at Jerm's butt crack which is now visible from his unzipped leather suit.
Realize I am soaked in sweat. Wife won't hug me. I don't blame her. Need a shower. Suddenly feel somewhat stupid for being a 32-year-old in a mosh pit.
We leave.
See kid puking on street corner. He is smiling.
Retrieve car
Drive back to hotel
Shower (YAY!)
get ready for bed
try to go to sleep to the peaceful sounds of jerky bikers in the parking lot revving their bikes at 3 AM
Wake up. Get dressed. Pack. Leave hotel.
Go to Chez Zee for brunch. Croissant with strawberry butter, dutch chocolate milk, gingerbread pancakes, and country potatoes. Stuffed face. Couldn't finish.
Get on the road. Bypass exciting new toll road. Try and avoid jerky bikers who can't follow traffic rules.
Stop for gas outside of Waco. See chihuahua wearing a San Antonio spurs cap.
Arrive home to happy pups!