Nightmare fuel

Last year my thoughtful wife, knowing I love horror, sent me a Buzzfeed roundup of "16 Terrifying Horror Movies You Can Watch In 20 Minutes Or Less."

Yeah, they weren't kidding. Some of those puppies are friggin' TERRIFYING.

Short film is a busy parent's friend. Got 90-120 minutes to watch a feature-length film in one sitting? Ha! Got 10-15 minutes to watch a short by horror auteur Rob Savage? Indeed I do, thanks for asking!

So anyway: Many of Buzzfeed's picks are unsettling. "Vicious" and "I Heard It Too" are very, very unsettling. I'm kind of afraid to rewatch them this year. That's how much they freaked me out the first time.



And yes, some of these mini-movies rely a bit too heavily on jump scares, as too many horror films in general do. But some of these little bastards set up enough suspense and spooky mood to make your skin crawl.



Happy Halloween!

I dressed as a crossword puzzle for Halloween

When I got to the party, literally there was silence. The music stopped, all conversation halted, and everyone looked at me. It was like something out of an '80s teen movie. On the other hand, there were cute dogs and chocolate-chip pumpkin cake and fancy coffee drinks. And nice people dressed as animals. So, good times.

Pugoween 2009

Made the annual pilgrimage with Kelly, who had never been. Recorded a short video, as usual:



My allergic reaction seemed worse than in past years. Still fighting through it. Pug owners as a group are very sweet but also quite kooky. Don't want to end up a crazy pet person, though I do love pugs and certain cats and can get pretty excited about them.

My life may be about to change dramatically, though I won't get into it now. More information as it's confirmed.

Kelly carves a mean cat-o'-lantern

She and I turned our Jubilee Farm pumpkins into characters tonight. I went with the classic, albeit with a Sloth twist:


Whereas Kelly created a lovingly detailed portrait of her feline housemate, Maggie:


We also drank hot spiced cider and roasted the pumpkins seeds with olive oil and salt. They're delicious.

Amen, sister

My prolific blogger friend Sasha recently had the following to say:

People who are all like “I’m really passionate about fitness and health” can’t appreciate how hard it is to be fit and healthy when you are passionate about neither fitness nor health. Also: how do I not keep chocolate sauce in the house?

Don't I know it, except my "chocolate sauce" is non-whole-wheat pasta. Stuff is like crack/heroin/your favorite trivially invoked hardcore drug. In other vaguely nutrition-related news, here's Sasha's adorable dog Leo in a too-large banana costume:

I rode a motorcycle today!

First time ever! The related Jew-ish.com article, a profile of a local Jewish motorcycle club, should go live the second week in November.

In other news: Happy almost-Halloween, everyone!


The Kibbutz has seven -- count 'em! -- jack-o'-lanterns at this time, and if I want to have a costume, I'd better get cracking. Sarah Palin? The economy? Headless John the Baptist? These are all possibilities.

I've single-handedly derailed the future

Perhaps if I'd carved an Obama pumpkin, this wouldn't have happened.

Party on 15th!

Just got back from a random party in the apartments above the QFC on 15th. Amazing. Every apartment was open, decorated, and decked out with tasty snacks, including homemade cupcakes in one and goldfish crackers in another. And the costumes were incredible. I wore last year's book costume ("Gone with the Wind") and had a very nice time, though it was hard to maneuver through the narrow, packed hallway, and in the apartments themselves. I was really impressed that the people who live in the building all seem to know and like each other, and that when you move in you kind of agree, tacitly or explicitly, to be okay with massive all-building parties that draw all kinds of strangers. (I was invited by a man dressed as Kenny Loggins and his girlfriend, who was dressed as Persephone from Greek myth -- and was handing out pomegranate seeds to prove it.)

Oh, and despite what Kenneth Turan says, "Dan in Real Life" sucks. But Emily Blunt is still my movie girlfriend.

Yes, we have no banana (costume)

Sadly, I didn't get the chance to look like this gentleman last night at the annual Big Blue House Halloween party. My banana costume, which was supposed to come from Halloween Express at Kirkland's Totem Lake Mall, belonged to someone else by the time my loyal compatriot got there. Instead, I wore a rather sketchy-looking wig that was part of a transvestite vampire costume last year. Oh, and some small black wings that started to really irritate me halfway through the night. I took them off, leading quite a few people to wonder what I was supposed to be. One particularly inebriated young woman speculated that I might be My Little Pony, which was a very generous assessment. And another young woman, this one outfitted in a colorful monster suit she'd made herself (it was a friendly, "Monsters, Inc." sort of monster, rather than a scary one), told me I had the best costume she'd seen all night. Which was a bizarre instance of flattery. In any case, a good time was had by all, even though the residents of Blue House never did reveal what was in the green punch, which tasted suspiciously like licorice, and even though I accidentally caused a YouTube video to temporarily merge with the playlist, creating an unintentional iTunes/YouTube mashup. Best costume of the night? Maybe the young, beardless Lenin, probably the robot with a joystick for a phallus. Honorable mention: the giraffe. I guess, as they say, you had to be there.

Ran some errands this morning and early afternoon, albeit in a sleepy state -- went to bed far too late last night, despite my warnings to myself not to stay up so late. Ah, well. Looked at my future glasses today -- with magnetized snap-on sunglasses! -- and got a couple of things for the house. Also checked in on Angela's cat, Max, the cutest orange cat in the world. Will be seeing the new Steve Carell movie with Kate today, followed by dinner. It's such a nice, crisp fall day; even just doing errands on Broadway was lovely. And tomorrow morning, brunch at Coastal Kitchen with Kate and various others. And hopefully, tonight, tons of sleep.

A quick post from within a dress shirt

Yes, I'm all dressed up with somewhere to go tonight. Seattle P-I blogger Darnell Sue, aka Girl About Town, is throwing a party at Veil with Nathaniel Hollywood of Natharbi, aka Seattle's Premier Couple. So that should be fun. Angela will be my loyal companion; she's just as much a fan of Mr. Hollywood's work in Active Singles Life as I am, and together we should make a good team.

A couple movie notes: Saw Tony Kaye's "Lake of Fire," which Michael deemed one of the best movies he's seen this year. Can't say I disagree. Everything from the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography to the tremendously moving arc following a Minneapolis woman from the beginning to the end of her abortion procedure -- the movie's about abortion, and specifically the controversy that continues to rage in American society -- was extremely well done. And Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz will likely win a whole new legion of fans based on their appearances in the film. It's very refreshing to find two of the country's most renowned thinkers saying, essentially, that abortion is a complex issue, and that keeping that in mind is more important than which side of the debate you happen to favor. (Though as one critic noted about the movie, the anti-abortion activists did come across as nuttier, on the whole, than the pro-choice people. Nat Hentoff was the token exception to this rule; he explained that if you're going to be anti-abortion because killing is wrong, hey, why not oppose capital punishment and, you know, war while you're at it. Lovely.)

Also good: "The TV Set," Jake Kasdan's smooth, funny, extremely likable satire of network television's inner workings. David Duchovny has honestly never been more endearing -- not even on "The X-Files" -- and Justine Bateman is a wonderful surprise as his wife. (Not having seen her since "Family Ties," I found the lines on her face pretty moving; funny how the actors who populated the shows you loved in childhood mysteriously grow up during the two decades you've been apart.) It's just 88 minutes long -- the rare movie about which I can unequivocally say: I wish it had been longer.

My night About Town beckons. Will be at Big Blue House tomorrow night for their Halloween party, spending time with Kate on Saturday, and going to Pugoween at Bitter Lake Community Center on Sunday. If you're interested in joining me for any or all of these exciting events, please drop me a line.