Aw, man, the Doobie Brothers broke up!

From the Department of Slow Uptakes: I just noticed, today, after dozens and dozens of viewings over the past six or so years, that the Gabba Gang's outfits on the "Space" episode are quite Zissou.

I do this sort of thing allllll the time, y'all.

The houses that handed out booze were my favorites.

Halloweenies: Notes on the Most Wonderful Night of the Year

• There was a dad at Kid Gleemonex’s school Halloween parade dressed in the orange tux and top hat of Lloyd Christmas (he even had a cane), and it was ALL I COULD DO not to go up behind him and thwap the back of his knees with my umbrella. The only thing that stopped me — and y’all, it was close — was: What if he didn't get it? Like, a friend talked him into a two-person costume he really didn't understand all that well? And here's this crazy lady at an elementary-school Halloween parade, assaulting him for no reason …
• The girls’ costumes at the same event ran about 20 percent Elsa and Anna. The costumes were clearly stratified by price, from the $8.99 grocery-store version (the modern take on the cheapo-mask-and-plastic-bib store-bought costumes of my childhood classrooms) to the fitted, heavy $140 one with a long train, real beading, and a full, flowing satin skirt with lace overlay and real-looking long braided wig. 
• I wasn’t able to stop myself shouting “Oi! Potter!” in my big fake British accent at the dozen or so Harry Potters I saw that day and evening. I am what I am. 
• Rainbow Brite is apparently back. 
• My own couples’ costume idea came too late to be usable (Friday morning): Werewolf Bar Mitzvah. One person is in a werewolf mask and glove/claws, but wearing a suit and a yarmulke and carrying the Torah. The other person is dressed as a rabbi (also wolfed up). I love a costume that like four people on Earth, one of whom is Tina Fey, would get. 
• The kids got a great haul in the spiffy neighborhood we trick-or-treated in, but who were the cheap motherfuckers who were offloading all their Celebrity Cruises pillow chocolates? I’d like to go TP the fuck out of their house, man. Shaving-cream their windows too. 

It's ok. Last year I got saved so I could go on the ski trip.

Here Is A Thing Which You Probably Did Not Know About Me, and Which Will Likely Make You Laugh the Freckles Right Off Your Face If You Also Know Me IRL

I was in the church choir for a not-small unit of time, back in the seventh and eighth grades.

(Might've been sixth-seventh? My mind is like swiss cheez.) ANYway. It wasn't my fault -- me the non-singer with the weak pipes who had a rabid case of performance anxiety despite being a loudmouth in general (maybe I thought nobody was listening?). It was the fault of a person who ... well, I don't know if you could properly call this person a friend; more like -- a person who was in the same class as me, and hung out with me, and did all the usual friend-y shit with me, but who mostly used me as a prop, an extra, in her life. And SHE wanted -- for reasons ever opaque to me -- to be in the church choir. She press-ganged me into doing it with her; the only thing I remember besides her extreme persuasiveness in the matter was that I did like the notion that I'd be seen as a super-extra-Christian if I did it. So.

We auditioned for the music director -- it was an all-volunteer thing, they took all comers; he just needed to see which section to put us in. We were placed, and told to show up Wednesdays at 6:00 or whatever for rehearsal, and 15 minutes early for church on Sundays for a refresher and to get our robes and whatnot. I must say, I adored being welcomed as a "fresh new young voice" by the real choristers, and treated like the Exemplary Christian Teen -- that precise stripe of vanity, rather than a genuine Love Of The Lord or desire to Know His Grace or whatever -- drove about 97% of my churchin' overall. (Sorry, Ma. Truth.)

And we ... well, we did about 60 percent of what was asked. We often showed up to rehearsals, sometimes even on time. We mostly sang what was in the hymnal. We sat quietly during the sermon and whatnot, and you probably couldn't even tell from the pews that we were playing hangman with golf pencils on the backs of our programs the entire time.

Friend-ish Person X got bored of whatever reason she'd had for doing this in the first place and bailed after a few months; I kept going for awhile longer, but then sort of drifted off and finally officially quit when I got a paying gig keeping the church nursery during services instead. And thus ended my gospel singing career.

Now it's back to just stuff where if I give them money, I get products in return. Like from the Gap or Archie McPhee.

For an anxious person, I really am extremely good at finding the silver lining in the clouds -- or, as Ma Ingalls would put it, and I would agree: "There's no great loss without some small gain."

So what I'm thinking about the inexplicable RAIN OF REPUBLICAN SHITBURGERS that was Election Day is: At least I won't be getting an anxious, hand-wringing, chickens-running-around-with-their-heads-cut-off money-begging email every seventeen goddamn seconds from Nancy Pelosi, Act Blue, DCCC, Wendy Davis, Jim Dean, Howard Dean, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood, Organizing for Action, and/or any of the randos involved in comms for any of these people or their orgs. It's been quieter in the old in-box, which is somewhat of a relief at this point, after months of this shit.

You have to learn how to take care of my things, Shelly.

Halloween post coming, but it was getting long (that's what she said) and I wanted to put this somewhere that is not Facebook where my mom will see it and offer some pitying, Jesus-based corrective that I did not ask for: 

I went to put on earrings on Friday night -- cute earrings, lightweight, but on the j-hook type of backing (as opposed to a post or a ring). I haven't worn earrings in ... hell, fff ...ive years? more? could my own wedding actually be the last time? surely not, the holes haven't grown over ... but I actually don't remember when it was. Now, back in high school and jr. high, wearing crazy earrings was My Thing. I had these great long fringy ones, some gigantic fake-jewel ones, root-vegetable ones, all kinds of shit. But I just straight-up haven't bothered in forever. And but so: Friday night, I was like, these Laura Palmer senior portrait earrings are hilaaaaarious, so I put them on -- and after about twelve seconds, I couldn't stand the swinging weight of them -- COULD. NOT. FUCKING. STAND IT. It felt like I had wire coat hangers stuck through my ear-holes, with coats ON the hangers, and I could already feel my too-hi-toned-milady, allergic-to-everything-but-24K-gold-or-sterling-silver earholes fiercely rejecting the lo-class metal of the hooks (I'd forgotten about that, dammit), and I had to take them out with a quickness and apply hydrogen peroxide, stat, to stop them getting seriously infected (again). Boooo.