Halloween

Today is Halloween. We are at home, waiting for darkness to fall and the trick or treaters to arrive at the door. Any moment now the bell will chime and some witch, vampire, or superhero will be there begging for candy. One of my colleagues at work spent much of the day wrapped in toilet paper as the mummy. 

 

Mummy

The first few have arrived as I write this. Our first pair must have been five or six, a princess and a vampire.

I picked up additional candy before coming home and whilst in the line to pay I heard a woman say, ” I just need to go and get some blood and make-up” I am glad to say that is not something I hear on a daily basis.

I suppose I should tell a scary story to go along with the spirit of this oddly pagan day of celebration. How about the following:

Cindy wakes up on Wednesday and says to her husband, “Good Morning, Mr President elect.”

Conspiracy

 

 

I blogged a while back on my Geek blog about VR5, one of several great shows that never made it their first season. A comment on the post made mention of “The Lone Gunmen’, a one series spinoff from “The X-Files”. I add the first disc to my Netflix queue and watched the pilot episode earlier in the week.

 

The Lone Gunmen

 

 

The episode was first broadcast in March 2001; the date is relevant. It concerns a government conspiracy to stage a terrorist outrage to create the climate for an attack on an unspecified dictator. This is obviously implausible; people would not be so gullible as to be manipulated into supporting an invasion of a country that had no involvement with the attack. What is really strange is the nature of the planned outrage; flying a passenger plane into the World Trade Center in New York.  Remember this was broadcast six months before the tragic events of 9/11.  I am amazed that I had not heard of the show given the subject matter of this episode; granted the actual drama was not especially good, despite the chilling subject.

Who Is Next?

David Tennant has ended months of speculation by confirming that he will leave Doctor Who once he has filmed the specials due for broadcast next year. We will thus be faced with a clean slate in 2010; a new show runner in Stepehn Moffat, a new Doctor, and depending on the specials a new companion. I will miss Tennant, who was as good a Doctor as Pertwee and Tom Baker, the only two actors to have played the role for more years than Tennant (Five and Seven respectively to David’s Four)

Let us start wondering about who will be the eleventh Doctor ( I nominate Jack Davenport)

I Want My MTV

There was a time when MTV played music videos, before it became home to reality TV shows so poor that they had been declined by Fox. You can now relive those times at the MTV website which has an extensive set of videos. As a Brit, there are some glaring omissions; where is Vienna, or anything by Ultravox for that matter. Vienna has one of the most bizarre and pretentious videos of all time, a song deprived of the number one slot by “Shaddup Your Face”. So, while the MTV website is worth a look, I offer you its most obvious missing jewel right here.

But here is one classic video, albeit for a not so good song that they do have.

HDR

Amonnyte has posted about HDR images before and I came across this page with some pretty impressive examples of the art form

Women on Street Corners

I have noticed that in our neighbourhood young, attractive women stand on street corners attempting to attract your attention. Sometimes they gyrate their hips as they loiter. These women do not come out as the shadow of twilight falls, but are out in broad daylight. Their intention is obvious, to attract customers and send them to houses or clip joints.

Before you jump to conclusions about us living in a red light district, I should clarify that the clip joints are bona fide hairdressers and the houses are model homes in housing developments. These women are holding signs advertising businesses and not doing anything lewd.

Internet Rumours

I have posted previously on the excellent burgers served by In N Out. Yesterday was the 60th anniversary of their first restaurant opening. They remain a family owned company with no franchise stores and a menu that consists of just burgers and fries. There has been a false rumour circulating on the net that on October 22 prices would revert to 1948 levels. Although we knew that we would pay regular prices a dozen or so of us from the office went to our local In N Out for lunch. For two of the party this was their first taste, one had the excuse of having only recently arrived out West from the Deep South. Neither seemed as impressed as I felt was the diner’s due.

Misleading Movie Trailers

I have blogged before on how movie trailers can contain the whole film in just a few minutes. They can also be misleading, especially with comedies where putting all of the gags into the trailer can give the impression of a far funnier film. The trailer below takes misleading to a whole new level as it uses scenes from Mary Poppins to describe a totally different film.

It is not rounders

In the UK people dismiss the US pastime of baseball as just being rounders, a game played by young girls. This is a gross defamation, for facing a ball thrown at over 90mph is not the same as dealing with a softball delivered underarm. I have been watching quite a lot of baseball, particularly in the last few weeks as the post season has got underway. The passion, the excitement, and the strategy become increasingly apparent. The LA Dodgers lost in five games to the Phillies. They are the last of the sixteen teams in the league at the start of the World Series to take the title; it took them 77 years. The American League Championship series is still underway at the time of writing. On Thursday 3-1 down in the best of seven series, the Boston Red Sox were losing 7-0 with two men out in the seventh inning. They won 8-7, in an amazing rally. I missed this game. Last night they tied the series, forcing a winner takes all game against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Oktoberfest

We went to an Oktoberfest in the park in Concord. I suspect any passing German would have been shocked at the manner of the beer serving. In place of large steins, or even the half pint and pint glasses used at UK beer festivals, we were sold a 5oz glass and three tickets. Thus the three beers were a little over 3/4 UK pint. There was no option but to obey the posted instruction to drink responsibly, which does seem to defeat the object of Oktoberfest

The best of the three beers was a dark chocolate hop heavy drink from a local brew pub called EJ Phair

The music was unfortunately of the accordion heavy Germanic style, we left just as the music switched to blues.