Is there a sillier "holiday" than Halloween? Knocking on strangers doors for candy? Or a trick? (What exactly constitutes a "trick," anyway?) Makes the belated celebration of the birth of "the son of God" by going into debt look sensible!
Does anyone actually go trick-or-treating anymore? Here in the City, at least? Rumors - urban legends? - of gang initiations and other craziness taking place tonight have changed our plans so now we're hitting the Museum of Natural History for "loads of Halloween fun, including trick-or-treating, live performances, craft activities, roaming characters, and more!" Sounds like fun, if disturbingly suburban.
Isaac has a cool Frankenstein costume and India will be Blue (as in Blue's Clues). I wanted Isaac to be Batman but they didn't have any costumes in his size. Or so Salomé claimed. Hmm...
This is their first Halloween so it'll be interesting to see how they react to it. So many of these things end up like weddings where it's more about the parents than the kids, I hope they have a good time.
Halloween, 1989, found me in a $200 Batman costume, sweating in the heavy latex mask, at one of the lamest parties I've ever been to in my life, high school included. Friends of my father's, I was the youngest one there by at least 10 years and hadn't yet become a drinker so I was bored out of my mind.
The most fun I had with that costume was standing in my living room window in Staten Island with the lights off and spreading my cape whenever someone walked by. Dork!
Halloween, 1999, we went to a co-worker's house party, complete with rooftop barbeque. I wore a pair of my Army fatigues and crazy makeup and went as a zombie, of sorts. Salomé dressed in all-black and we called her negativity. The party was okay but kind of pointless from a costume perspective. Like with High School reunions, I think Hollywood has given me some skewed expectations of Halloween parties.
If tonight were a movie, the museum displays would come to life and we'd have to battle reanimated dinosaurs, revenge-seeking Haida and Bella Coola, and that big-ass blue whale that hangs from the ceiling. The climax would take place in the Planetarium which turns out to be a portal to the Negative Zone from which hordes of demonic gnomes resembling Dubya make a push to conquer our world. I would find my old Batman costume in a maintenance room and ultimately save the day, but only after letting the Bella Coola kill off all of the Upper Eastsiders and their spoiled kids.
Trick?
Or treat?
Friday, October 31, 2003
Thursday, October 30, 2003
To help me commit to NaNoWriMo, I'm going public with it: http://oniat.blogspot.com
Disclaimer: I will be cheating a little bit by including the couple of pages I've already written of my previously mentioned "fantasy" project.
Disclaimer: I will be cheating a little bit by including the couple of pages I've already written of my previously mentioned "fantasy" project.
Opportunity knocking...?
This is a very cool idea and may be exactly what I need to help me stop procrastinating. With November having 30 days, that would mean writing 1667 words/day. That's tough but not impossible - roughly 5-6 pages/day - especially if I approach it as free-writing and don't bog myself down in editing after every other paragraph!
Anyone else up for this challenge?
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over talent and craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
This is a very cool idea and may be exactly what I need to help me stop procrastinating. With November having 30 days, that would mean writing 1667 words/day. That's tough but not impossible - roughly 5-6 pages/day - especially if I approach it as free-writing and don't bog myself down in editing after every other paragraph!
Anyone else up for this challenge?
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Pumpkin Seeds
1. Last night at Acentos was one of those rare transcendent moments that puts a smile on your face and a spring in your step. I was so jazzed, I played Jordan Knight's Give it to You all the way home, complete with in-your-seat choreography! Mahina Movement, with a new-to-me lineup, was simply amazing. A female Rage Against the Machine, they brought tight collaborations with raw verse and absolutely smoked the mic. The open preceding them was an exciting mix of old and new voices, too, with Fish filling in as host like it was second-nature. Nine months in and they are truly hitting their stride. Kudos to Oscar and Fish. And that new guy, Rich, too! They've got something special happening and I'm excited to be witnessing it from the beginning.
2. Next Tuesday, we get to vote on an important referendum (Proposal Number Three: A Question - City Elections) to eliminate partisan primaries and, like the vast majority of major American cities, change to a non-partisan process where candidates must run for office sans party label with the top two vote-getters facing off on election day. This opens the possibility of two Republicans running against each other or, the bigger concern, that someone could potentially buy their way into office. Gasp! Like that's never happened in a partisan election? Of course, the fact that two Democrats might also face off generally gets mentioned as an aside, if at all. The Op-Ed pages are full of boogeyman stories trying to scare people off the concept. Personally, I'm all for it. It forces people to look beyond a label and actually find out what each candidate stands for individually, instead of assuming their interests are covered by some cut-and-paste party platform. Those that don't bother - sadly, the majority, I'm sure - will have their vote decided for them by the media, which is generally the case in partisan primaries anyway. Howard Dean, anyone?
3. Comic book Wednesday is fun! Even if none of the titles I buy are released in a particular week, it's a creative stimulant to scan the covers and skim through random issues, looking for something new and interesting. I came across The Losers that way, now one of my regular favorites, as well as the intriguing Heaven's Devils. Gotham Central is still my overall favorite, while Teen Titans, Spectacular Spider-Man and New Mutants are my other regulars. Sadly, Micronauts was cancelled with issue 11, though Devil's Due promises they will return next year in a new series, and the new Batman story-arc looks lame. Killer Croc as a pimp?!?! Ultimate Six and 1602 are pretty good mini-series that I'm following, but I wasn't all that impressed by Supreme Power or the long-awaited JLA/Avengers crossover.
4. Three chapters in to The Glass Mountain and I'm happy to say that Rydill has deftly picked up Annat's story. Hoo-ray.
5. On a related note, the Dollar-to-Pound conversion sucks on this side of the Atlantic! Some allies THEY are. ;-)
6. The Yankees fired their hitting coach, Rick Down. (Daily News headline: One Down) Ah, scapegoats! If only Joe Torre had the self-respect to tell Steinbrenner to take his job and shove it. Of course, he's the guy that said, "If you're going to take [Steinbrenner's] money, you've got to take his guff," so there's not much hope for self-respect winning that battle.
7. Napster is back and I'm vaguely tempted. The co-branded Samsung YP-910GS looks very cool. It's on my wish list. Just sayin'...
8. Smallville tonight. Perry White shows up. I'll be there.
1. Last night at Acentos was one of those rare transcendent moments that puts a smile on your face and a spring in your step. I was so jazzed, I played Jordan Knight's Give it to You all the way home, complete with in-your-seat choreography! Mahina Movement, with a new-to-me lineup, was simply amazing. A female Rage Against the Machine, they brought tight collaborations with raw verse and absolutely smoked the mic. The open preceding them was an exciting mix of old and new voices, too, with Fish filling in as host like it was second-nature. Nine months in and they are truly hitting their stride. Kudos to Oscar and Fish. And that new guy, Rich, too! They've got something special happening and I'm excited to be witnessing it from the beginning.
2. Next Tuesday, we get to vote on an important referendum (Proposal Number Three: A Question - City Elections) to eliminate partisan primaries and, like the vast majority of major American cities, change to a non-partisan process where candidates must run for office sans party label with the top two vote-getters facing off on election day. This opens the possibility of two Republicans running against each other or, the bigger concern, that someone could potentially buy their way into office. Gasp! Like that's never happened in a partisan election? Of course, the fact that two Democrats might also face off generally gets mentioned as an aside, if at all. The Op-Ed pages are full of boogeyman stories trying to scare people off the concept. Personally, I'm all for it. It forces people to look beyond a label and actually find out what each candidate stands for individually, instead of assuming their interests are covered by some cut-and-paste party platform. Those that don't bother - sadly, the majority, I'm sure - will have their vote decided for them by the media, which is generally the case in partisan primaries anyway. Howard Dean, anyone?
3. Comic book Wednesday is fun! Even if none of the titles I buy are released in a particular week, it's a creative stimulant to scan the covers and skim through random issues, looking for something new and interesting. I came across The Losers that way, now one of my regular favorites, as well as the intriguing Heaven's Devils. Gotham Central is still my overall favorite, while Teen Titans, Spectacular Spider-Man and New Mutants are my other regulars. Sadly, Micronauts was cancelled with issue 11, though Devil's Due promises they will return next year in a new series, and the new Batman story-arc looks lame. Killer Croc as a pimp?!?! Ultimate Six and 1602 are pretty good mini-series that I'm following, but I wasn't all that impressed by Supreme Power or the long-awaited JLA/Avengers crossover.
4. Three chapters in to The Glass Mountain and I'm happy to say that Rydill has deftly picked up Annat's story. Hoo-ray.
5. On a related note, the Dollar-to-Pound conversion sucks on this side of the Atlantic! Some allies THEY are. ;-)
6. The Yankees fired their hitting coach, Rick Down. (Daily News headline: One Down) Ah, scapegoats! If only Joe Torre had the self-respect to tell Steinbrenner to take his job and shove it. Of course, he's the guy that said, "If you're going to take [Steinbrenner's] money, you've got to take his guff," so there's not much hope for self-respect winning that battle.
7. Napster is back and I'm vaguely tempted. The co-branded Samsung YP-910GS looks very cool. It's on my wish list. Just sayin'...
8. Smallville tonight. Perry White shows up. I'll be there.
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