Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: October 2005
Contest Pimpage
Demented Michelle has posted all entries to her Halloween Prank Challenge here. Head on over, read ’em, and vote for your favorite. You’ve probably already read my entry, but what the hey, read it again. I know y’all can’t get enough of my hacky sack.
Elsewhere in the ‘osphere, Invisible Lizard is hosting a challenge (details here) for NaNoWriMo participants. As I understand the rules, contestants who fail to complete their 50K words must clean the toe jam from those of us who finish. Yeah. Something like that.
D.
Technorati tag: Halloween, NaNoWriMo
Okay, I’m kidding about the toe jam . . . but I still can’t make head nor tails of the rules. My brain is still fuzzed over from the move, I suppose.
Weird Halloween
Not what I’d call my first choice for Halloween. Only decent stuff I could find at the viddy store: Evil Dead, Reanimator 2, and Ringu. And what does Jake want to watch tonight? To Kill a Mockingbird.
Um . . . not scary?
Maybe I’m in a bad mood because I’m using my kickass new gas range/oven and the house smells like natural gas. That’s not right, right?
At least I figured out how to use my kickass new dishwasher.
Halloween never used to be my favorite holiday. That would be Hannukah, for obvious reasons; second favorite, July 4th. Call me a revolutionary at heart. That, or a pyromaniac. What is it with me and incomplete sentences today? I seem to be hung up. On them.
Maybe I’m gearing up for a month of crappy speed-writing.
Here’s what I remember about childhood Halloween: almost nothing. My only costumes were cheapy store-bought rigs with simple gowns, masks held in place with rubber bands that always broke way too early. If I have my goody sack in one hand and I’m holding my mask to my face with the other, how do I knock? With my foot, naturally. Some neighbors objected to my door-kicking technique.
I watched the Charlie Brown Halloween Special every year. I don’t know why; I hated every aspect of that show, from Charlie Brown’s pathetic “I got a rock,” to idiotic Linus’s Great Pumpkin religion, to Snoopy, who nowadays makes me think those dog-eating cultures have the right idea.
I carved unimaginative pumpkins, mostly for the seeds. Yum. Soak in brine, rub off most (not all!) of the stringy orange guts, then roast in the oven until crispy. Chew up whole. Your colon will thank you for the fiber load.
No, I had to hit adulthood to fall in love with Halloween.
My favorite Halloween: second year of med school, Karen and I held a Reanimator Halloween party. We played a video of Reanimator for our friends, who were told to bring food shaped like body parts. Our friend Dean brought a chocolate cake shaped like feet. Karen carved out a watermelon, made it look like a head (pumpkin-style), filled the shell with fruit salad, and stuck a bunch of yellow Gatorade-filled hypodermic needles into the watermelon rind.
I have to finish cooking dinner. Nothing fun, unfortunately: pork chops, yams, and broccoli.
D.
Technorati tag: Halloween
What to watch on All Hallow’s Eve
I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that Halloween is our favorite holiday. When Jacob (now ten years old) announced he didn’t want to go candy-raiding this year, it saddened me. I didn’t ask him why, mostly because I dreaded the “I’m too old for that now” response. It might have more to do with his lack of a costume, but that pushes the issue back one step. Why didn’t he pester me about the costume months in advance, as he’s done for the last seven years?
He hasn’t even asked to carve a pumpkin. Damn it, I’m going to get choked up if I keep thinking about this.
On the other hand, I’m also relieved. Thanks to the move, I’m sore as hell, and there are a lot of other things I should be doing besides crafting a cool costume, buying a pumpkin, or blogging. Nevertheless, I’d like to do something special.
I think we should rent a movie.
Here’s my short list of films to watch for Halloween. I dislike slasher flicks, so you won’t find any of the usual recommendations here.
3. Reanimator (1985) Even stuffy Pauline Kael, a critic who never liked a single Kubrick film, loved Reanimator. Based loosely on H. P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West, Reanimator, this film sets the bar for all humor-horror films. Jeffrey Combs gives his best over-the-top performance as West, David Gale (who’s a dead ringer for Senator John Kerry — watch it and tell me I’m wrong) as the evil Dr. Hill, and Barbara Crampton as the Dean’s daughter and winner of my Best Movie Breasts Ever award. Reanimator gives new meaning to the phrase giving head. Who says you need a penis to satisfy a woman?
2. Dead Alive (AKA Braindead, 1992) Ever wonder what Peter Jackson was up to before he got all cozy with hobbits and elves and such? Rent Dead Alive, the funniest zombie flick ever filmed. Engaging young Timothy Balme plays a young man with amorous intentions towards the beautiful Paquita (Diana Penalver). But will his domineering mother (Elizabeth Moody) let him out from under her thumb? Featuring the dreaded Sumatran rat monkey (one bite and you’ll be feasting on brains), interesting new uses for your lawnmower, and the largest vagina dentata ever committed to film. If Karen were writing today’s blog, this would be number one. Come to think of it, it should be number one, but I’m too lazy to change things now.
1. Parents (1989) In what might be described as the dark side of Leave it to Beaver, Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt star as the eponymous mom and dad of darling moppet Bryan Madorsky. Madorsky plays Michael Laemle, a child who develops increasingly paranoid fantasies about his folks. Are his parents extraterrestrials? What are those leftovers made of?
The film was billed as an SF comedy, but horror seems a more apt genre for this nugget. By the way, Karen does not endorse this recommendation. She warns that it’s depressing and disturbing.
Happy Halloween!
D.
Technorati tag: Halloween
Behind the NYT Select firewall
Today’s New York Times Op-Ed lineup features Nicholas Kristof, Frank Rich, and David Brooks. In brief: Kristof calls for Dick Cheney’s resignation, Rich charts the Cheney-Bush Administration’s far-reaching deception and manipulation of the American public, and David Brooks calls us lefties a bunch of paranoid wackos.
A moving experience
Freshman year at Berkeley, I lived in a boarding house. I took breakfast and lunch at the International House, and my house mom fixed me dinner Monday through Friday. On the weekends, I had to fend for myself. More on that some other time. For now, let me leave you with one suggestion: bran flakes do not make a tasty crust for ling cod.
NaNoWriMo approacheth
We’re moving tomorrow, in case you missed my poem, so I doubt I’ll have time to blog until the evening. Only then will you learn what body part I accidentally crushed/flayed/pierced in the act of unpacking.
(Yeah, right — like I’m gonna finish unpacking tomorrow. Dream on.)
Three days left to plan for NaNoWriMo. My muse is attacking this task with all the fervor of two Mormon boys on bicycles being told, “Park those bikes, boys, come in, and set a spell.” Note that my muse is so taxed by NaNoWriMo that she has no energy left over to craft humorous metaphors.
Here’s a glimpse.
Working title: Get Well Soon
Blurb: An ambitious young alien plots to make his fortune by abducting Earth’s finest greeting card writer.
Main character: Pip, a Benevolent*.
Highlights: Hollywood snark, clever digs at cyberpunk, surprising plot twists, a hard-as-nails love interest, lots of action, kinky extraterrestrial sex, and more!
D.
*For everyone out there who is not Debi or Maureen, the Benevolents are Whitley Strieber-style aliens (you know — Communion?) who have an obsessive fondness for human culture and Earth contraband.
This is not schadenfreude
As I and millions of other Americans await Pat Fitzgerald’s announcement this morning, I want to point out that my barely restrained glee is not schadenfreude. This is not partisanship, either. The atrocities committed in America’s name in Iraq began with Bush 41, continued under Bill Clinton, and achieved maximal evil fruition under Junior. Junior is merely the ripe-to-rupture pustule on a boil that’s been growing for some time now.
Ends and odds
First the ends,
For my Republican friends,
And now the freakin’ odds.
For we’re moving this weekend
(What a pain in the rear end!)
Not lounging like lazy old sods.
Yes, we’re changing our digs
We’ll be squealing like pigs
Cuz that’s how much we love U-Haul.
That’s a lie actually
I drive trucks into trees
And low-slung concrete garage walls.*
Karen’s learned from experience
To keep me at a distance
From lifting and driving and sharp stuff.**
What I do best is opine
And occasionally whine
While the movers do all the hard puff-puff.
Our first home we’ve remodelled
But we must have been addled
To think we could do it on budget.
No countertops or floor covers
Bathrooms still ugly buggers
And yet we’re near broke. Oh, fudge it!
It tires me to the bone
To abandon this home
Even if it’s to go to one better.
Only one silver lining —
Stopping most of my whining —
We left all of our really good porn there.
D.
*Karen swears I have driven trucks without crashing them into concrete beams or tree branches, but I have no memory of such successes.
**Once, while unpacking, I shaved off half a fingertip on broken glass. Ever hear the saying, “Humans have no memory for pain”? Bullcrap. I remember every second of that experience. My favorite part: the way every last paramedic and nurse had to unwrap my finger to look at the damages. That hurt.
Harriet Miers, WIP
Withdraw in peace, Harriet. You’ve been a trooper from day one; with your blog, you have faithfully kept us posted as to your struggles.
Harriet Miers, Dubya’s A-number-one fan and top pick to be the new kid on the Supreme Court block, withdrew her name today. Yahoo News has a neat quote from Senator Trent Lott: “Let’s move on. In a month, who will remember the name Harriet Miers?”
D.