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No, I’m not going to talk about Pong

31 May

I spent the day trying to put words together to express this feeling. I’ve failed miserably.

Everything is scattered. My attention span is running an average of eight seconds. I feel…hungover.

I’m not. I’m just…I don’t know what I am.

It’s just a game, right?

It was a game for which I had extra tickets. There are four in my group, but I was the only one who could go last night. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. But there I was with these three extra tickets.

I could have invited friends who were new to the Timbers or new to the game, folks who might not have otherwise gotten a chance to see the first team. But I didn’t.

One of my tickets went to a 107ist board member, the other two to a capo and her wife. I’m glad they did.

Because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone new to have been with me there last night.

There are those better suited to breaking down the game minute by minute, explaining what went wrong, where to find fault. That’s admittedly not my strong suit. What I saw was a $1 million starting XI playing not for the badge, not for glory, but for…something else. I don’t know what that something else was.

A lot of people are talking about whether the team played with heart. What was the final tally? Forty-three shots on goal. Sure, some of them soft. Sure, some of them insanely misplaced. But 43? In our last MLS match – 14. The one before that? Nine. But did they play with heart?

I don’t know. Maybe. Not as a whole, perhaps, but as individuals. One or two were all in. Others, not so much.

This weird, dysfunctional family fun-time vacation is over. It has been for a while but we’re at the point when it feels like we’ve been in the station wagon a very, very long time. In Death Valley. With no air conditioning.

The kids are crying. Mom and Dad are frustrated. Nobody got to ride the log flume.

We’re all frustrated. We’re all hurt. We’re finding new and exciting ways to bitch at each other. Everyone has an opinion. And, strangely enough, none of us are wrong.

That’s right. None of us are wrong.

Two and a half weeks from now, our club, our boys in green, our beloved Timbers will travel to Los Angeles. The week after that, Seattle comes to us.

In the coming days, we all have some work to do. Get out the frustration. Rant on Twitter and message boards. Write songs. Break things. Whatever you have to do, do it.

When we come back, when we gather again, we come to play. On the pitch and off.

In the meantime, here’s Chris Cooper. His words, in the heat of the moment, come together far better than mine have with 24 hours to recover.

http://youtu.be/5Kr-siNKO9g

 
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Posted by on May 31, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

I just don’t like soccer fans.

28 May

Yeah. Someone actually said this to me today. “Yeah, I know I give you a hard time, but I just don’t like soccer fans.”

I’ve been to four Timbers matches in the last five days: an international friendly, a U23, a reserves match and an MLS derby. I’m tired. My throat is sore from singing and yelling. I have a huge bruise on my knee that I’m pretty sure is from the match on Wednesday. I’ve got a sunburn from this afternoon’s game. In short: everything hurts.

I say this so you understand my mood. My nerves are, perhaps, the tiniest bit raw where all things soccer are concerned.

I can understand folks not liking soccer. They don’t get it. That’s fine. They have other things they understand and enjoy.

Last Saturday, I walked with a team at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Great Strides event here in Portland, a team that included several other soccer fans and Timbers keeper Joe Bendik. When we were done there, a fair few of us made our way to the St. Baldrick’s event where a bunch of other soccer fans, members of the Timbers Army and a handful of past and present Timbers players had their heads shaved to raise money to fight childhood cancer.

Timber Jim, a legend in the Portland soccer community and beyond and a man I’m proud to call a friend, will host an art and memorabilia auction next Sunday benefitting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (tickets available here). The Timbers Army, in addition to all the other charity work they do (Friends of Trees, Oregon Food Bank, American Red Cross) recently committed to raising another $40,000 to fund Harper’s Playground, a playground meant to be inclusive of children with disabilities who might not otherwise have a safe place to play (more info here).

This is just a fraction of the stuff fans in Portland are participating in. There are nineteen MLS clubs, each with a pretty hearty following doing some pretty amazing stuff. (Well, most of them. I don’t know what they do in Seattle other than complain about Portland but that’s for another post.)

So, sunshine, what is it that you don’t like about soccer fans?

Is it that we’ve found something that unites us like nothing else could? That we’ve found a passion you envy? That you’re jealous of our flag-waving, scarf-twirling, clever chant-writing abilities? What? What is it?

Here’s where I get all sentimental and repeat things I’ve said before.

Though I’ve attended occasional soccer games for half a decade, it was just a year ago, at a time when I’d lost the identity afforded me by long-term employment or by my status as a student, that I was adopted by an Army. With open arms, I was welcomed. “Here,” the Army said to me. “Come, stand with us. Watch this game. Break bread with us. Become one of us.”

And I did. I bought in wholly and completely. Headlong into the deep end of the pool. I am grateful for every minute of the ride, even the more painful ones.

What is there about soccer fans that pissed this guy off?

I’m not saying we don’t have your fair share of idiots. We do. But for every idiot I’ve encountered, there’s been a dozen really phenomenal folks. The kinds of folks I want to know for a very long time.

The guy who says he doesn’t like soccer fans? Well, let’s just say I don’t feel the same way about him.

Image

 
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Posted by on May 28, 2012 in Timbers

 

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Counting down – We Are The People, even those of us on the other side of the world

10 May

The Rangers family is waiting. Still waiting.

Time and money are running out. There are bids on the table, but it’s anybody’s guess as to whether any of them will keep the club from liquidation. 

I cannot begin to imagine. I just can’t.

Thursday, they said. We should know something Thursday. Well, as I write this, Friday is dawning in Glasgow. Will we know something today? Or do we go into the weekend wondering if Sunday’s match will be the last for Gers?

I know, I know. I’m all doom and gloom. Rangers will go on. They will go on because they always have. 

Believe beyond reason.

We do a lot of that here in Portland. When it looks like there’s no possible way, when we start to freak out (as we are apt to do), one of us will stop, take a deep breath, and say the words. Believe beyond reason.

These are your marching orders, Rangers family, given to you from a member of the Timbers Army. Believe beyond reason.

 

 
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Posted by on May 10, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

A secondary obsession – believing beyond reason

08 May

When I started shopping for a second team, many folks suggested Arsenal. Ups and downs and dramatic turns, they told me. A team that would forever be looking for new and exciting ways to break my heart.

But no, I thought. I don’t want a big English club. Not yet, anyway. I want a club with, perhaps, a little more grit, a storied past, perhaps some controversy. And I wanted a club to which I felt some connection. Soccer is not always neat andd tidy. I didn’t want to go the easy route.

With the arrival of Kris Boyd in Portland, the choice became clear: my second club would be Rangers.

(Here’s where the Gers fans, the diehards, will yell at me that Gers deserve more than to be anyone’s second-place club. I will smile politely and point to the three Rangers who wear Ponderosa green – two players and a coach – and thank them for their passion.)

I’ve been hearing the rumblings about Rangers financial situation, but I set them aside in favor of a club with a vast history and a rivalry that outstrips even the Portland-Seattle rivalry. Aside from the political underpinnings and the violence of the past, the contempt Gers fans and Celtic fans have for one another is something that is, in essence, vaguely familiar to me, though it goes far beyond anything we’ve yet experienced with POR/SEA.

I watched my first Auld Firm match on a taped delay from a bar in Portland on a Sunday morning in March. Fifty thousand people were at Ibrox that day to watch Rangers win and Celtic’s Neil Lennon make a spectacle of himself. I fell in love with the style of play, with the passion of the fans, with the boys in blue. If I had doubted my choice to support Rangers, that doubt was erased before the end of the first half. I started to shop for some blue to supplement my mostly green wardrobe.

I listened to the Scottish Football Podcast from the BBC for updates and discussion of not just the team’s play, but its financial situation. Bids were made. Bids were withdrawn. Sanctions were meted out. Bids were restructured and resubmitted and, in the end, an American – a tow truck manufacturer from Tennesee – emerged as the preferred bidder.

An American from Tennessee.

This blew my mind. A club with the history of Rangers possibly being owned by an American? In my mind, this is akin to selling the Packers to France. It just didn’t make any sense to me.

But what do I know? I’m still considered relatively new to soccer as a passion. I’m lucky to have found that passion here in Portland, Oregon, Soccer City, USA. We have a team with about as much history as you can find in U.S. soccer. We have an owner, though his knowledge of soccer has occasionally been questioned, whose passion for his club, his city and the fans that is unmatched in North American soccer. We have a supporters group that is almost wholly responsible for Portland’s ascension to MLS.

Rangers deserve the same passion.

Bill Miller, the American bidder for Rangers, does not have that passion.

I know, I know. His decision to retract his bid after being named the preferred bidder by the club’s administrators was mostly due to the club’s financials, but his comments about the ire of the fans toward an American bidder are the only thing I see right now.

Soccer, despite the opinions of many American sports fans, is not for sissies. It has been called the Beautiful Game though it is often rough and physical and dangerous. I’m thinking of the Sanna Nyassi hit on Portland goaltender Troy Perkins two weeks ago in Montreal. I’m thinking of Perkins holding a towel to his bloodied face. And I’m thinking of the fire that was still in his eyes as he walked off the pitch.

I doubt Rangers would have ever seen the same fire from Bill Miller, a man who, in a statement released upon the retraction of his bid to buy the storied club, essentially blamed the club’s fans.

Yes. He blamed the fans.

I blame Miller’s sensitivity. If this is how he reacts to the unkind words of a few when the vast majority of Gers fans – including legendary Ranger Sandy Jardine – supported the bid, then he has no place in soccer and never did.

This isn’t baseball, Mr. Miller. This isn’t the NBA or the NFL or the NHL. A soccer club is not just a business proposition, it is a responsibility. We fans are not timid. We do not back down. We support our clubs to the very end and beyond. Anything less than that is unacceptable.

There are those who say this may be the end for Rangers. The one viable bid has been withdrawn and both time and money are running out. But I believe in miracles and, with any luck at all, but the time I post this online, another bidder – one with heart and passion and an understanding of what it means to own Rangers – will have already stepped forward.

 

 
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Posted by on May 8, 2012 in Timbers, Uncategorized, World stage

 

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Stumbling into an obsession: RCTID, May 2012

06 May

Something happened a while back. I didn’t see it coming. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened. I just know that it did.

 

My world became one divided. Two camps. Two sides, not necessarily opposed, but wary of each other. Unsure.

 

On one side, friends I’ve known for years, decades. People who knew me growing up, saw me through the awkwardness of high school, my seemingly never-ending college career and beyond. People who’ve seen me though touch times and epic adventures. People who truly, truly knew me.

 

On the other side, the Timbers Army. A ragtag patchwork of people from every walk of life. Artists and doctors and winemakers. Accountants and lawyers and kids not old enough to buy beer. Young families and retired folks and me.

 

Sure, there are a few from the first group who’ve crossed over to the second but, for the most part, they keep themselves separate. It seems to those closest to me the longest that the second group is completely out of character for me. And they’re right.

 

I’m not a joiner. I’m more likely to watch things from a distance than I am to jump in with both feet and get really excited about things. But there’s something about the Timbers and the TA and the links between the two and their extension out into the community that has drawn me in. I struggle to explain it to people who don’t get it.

 

Because I don’t get it, either. Honestly. I have no idea how this happened. 

 

I think I can track back to my first Timbers match in 2006. But it might have been 2007. I don’t know who we played. I don’t know what the score was. I know I had a good time. I know I was entertained (is bemused a better word) by the Army. But, at the time, I just didn’t get it. 

 

I went to a couple matches each year after that, usually knowing when the team had a winning or losing record, but little more than that. I watched from a distance as the first MLS rumors began. I watched from that same distance as the MLS to PDX movement grew. I got a forwarded email asking me to write to the Portland city council about funding the renovation of then PGE Park and I did.  I considered marching on City Hall when the votes were held (for which we still have not forgiven Amanda Fritz and probably never will), but, as previously stated, I’m not a joiner.

 

Joiner or not, I put down a deposit for MLS season tickets the first day they took them.
 

Even then, I didn’t get it. I recognized that this team, this club, had come to mean so much to that core group of people who stood in the North End and sang and danced long before each match started and long after the players had left the pitch. That? That I could appreciate: the ability of the Timbers to bring people together was magical.

 

With the move to MLS, the magic is still here. I think that’s what people who haven’t given the Timbers a shot are missing. They don’t see the magic. They see a team with a losing record. They gleefully ignore the team’s move to MLS and still refer to them as a “minor league” team. They sometimes go out of their way to get under my skin when I talk about my boys in green (which is often). Perhaps they’re still cranky about the loss of Beavers baseball. Well, you know what? I’m not apologizing for that anymore. You want to bring baseball back to Portland? March on city hall. See if you can get Amanda Fritz to vote for you. Best of luck.

 

I told someone the other day that I don’t often get super excited about stuff because, when I do, I seem like I’m completely manic. That’s how the Timbers make me seem to all my old friends. They think I’ve gone completely bat-shit-crazy. Maybe they’re right. But I’m not apologizing for that, either. 

I feel lucky to be where I am. I’m a Timbers season ticket holder at a time when Timbers tickets are the hottest ticket in town. I’m a member of the Timbers Army, an organization that donated over $40,000 to different charities in Portland over the last year and donated thousands of hours to the Oregon Food Bank, ACPortland and Friends of Trees, among others. 

 

It’s 1 a.m. Hours ago, I was at Jeld-Wen Field, part of the 22nd consecutive sold out crowd since the jump to MLS. My voice is shot, I’m still cold and my shoulders are going to hurt for days from waving my giant Scotland flag like a maniac.

 

My club played well, but the game ended in a scoreless draw. That’s right, non-soccer folks, a scoreless draw. A few years ago, I would have left disappointed. Tonight, I left happy. Happy that my team played well. Happy to have spent a few hours with my beloved Timbers Army. Happy to have stumbled into an obsession that I don’t ever want to give up. 

 

So, if you don’t get it, and I certainly don’t expect you to, I urge you to take a chance. Keep an open mind, come to a match if you can get a ticket. If you can’t, come join us in one of the many (MANY) local bars that show the games. Heck, I’ll even buy you a beer. 

And if you can’t keep an open mind or refuse to take a chance, well, shut up and get off my lawn.  

 

 

 
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Posted by on May 6, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Okay, so here’s March.

20 Mar

For those of you who’ve followed along over the years, you recognize the pattern: I post something about writing more and then there’s a long pause.

There’s a long pause because – guess what! – I’m not writing anything.

This is a problem for me. Writing is mostly a solitary business, done under the cover of darkness, separate from those around me. When I’m focused, I live mostly in my head. I can shut everything else off and the words just come.

But I’m finding it increasingly difficult to turn everything off. Maybe it’s the excitement of the first few weeks of the new MLS season. Maybe it’s the stress of not knowing if I’ll have a job a month from now. Maybe it’s the popping noise my left knee keeps making. Perhaps it’s the lack of a muse. Could be any or all of these things.

I’m a slow writer at the best of times. I consider it a victory if I can settle down long enough to write a couple hundred words for a blog post every couple months. The only time I really knuckle down and go for volume is in November, when I know my community of writers is all working toward the same goal. I know that if I don’t show up for a write-in, they’ll call me on it. And I can’t fathom the embarrassment of not making my wordcount for NaNoWriMo.

But what about now? Middle of March. No accountability in sight. Except, maybe, for the eight of you who read this blog.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start on the goal I had been considering for this year. I’m starting three months late. Because I like a challenge.

A thousand words a day, on average, for the year. 365,000 words in total. The blog doesn’t count.

I’m already 80,000 words behind. This should be ridiculously entertaining for everyone.

 
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Posted by on March 20, 2012 in Grand Announcements, Master Plans, Writing

 

The January Curse

19 Jan

Well, here I am.

I should just expect that the cosmos will punch me in the gut each January, steal my keys, clean out my bank account and crap in my kitchen.

I thought this January might be different. I thought I might make it through without any major crises or catastrophes. I was wrong.

Last January, I lost my job of seven years and, almost immediately, had my wisdom teeth pulled. In fact, I had a dentist appointment less than an hour after I found myself unemployed.

The January before? Gall bladder surgery. This followed a month and a half of eating rice and drinking chicken broth because, well, the results of eating anything else were a nine on the pain scale. Fun!

The one before that was a really good one. I woke up New Year’s Day barely able to walk. Herniated disc. The neighbors had to carry me to the car to go to the doctor. That’s right. They carried me.

A lot of you have carried me over the years, both figuratively and literally. For that, I’m forever grateful. As it happens, it looks like I’ll be leaning on you a little more in the near future.

As I see it now, in the haze of “how am I gonna pay my bills?” and “I wonder if I’m still eligible for unemployment compensation?” and hours of looking at Craigslist job postings, I can go in two different directions.

This was the conclusion I came to last year, after several months of mopey unemployment (early retirement?). I can continue to grieve for opportunities lost or I can make new opportunities.

I wrote a lot last year and didn’t finish a single project. Not one.

So, unemployed again, I can’t help but see this as a second chance to get it right. Use the time, the cosmos tells me. Use the time to create something.

Funny that. As I sat at my desk today, doing someone else’s work, I thought to myself,”I’m not making anything. I’m not creating anything. I’m not putting anything into the world that will outlive me, that will be my legacy, that will carry my name when I am gone.”

I’ve wasted a lot of time. I’m not going to do that anymore.

I’ve got another week at this job but I’m not going to wait that long before I start putting the words together again. I’ve got plenty of editing to do on last November’s NaNo project. I’ve got the little Valentine story I started about this time last year that became a story about werewolf royalty (you read that right). I’m thinking about writing fairy tales since they seem to be all the rage in Hollywood right now and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

I’ve got lots of words and lots of time. I just need to use them both wisely.

 
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Posted by on January 19, 2012 in Grand Announcements, Master Plans, Writing

 

A new day dawning…

31 Dec

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art (write or draw or build or sing) and I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. – Neil Gaiman

This has been a whirlwind of a year.

Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do today? Lament how quickly this past year has left us? Then we’ll talk about all the wondrous things that await us in the new year.

We’re creatures of habit so here goes:

2011, we hardly knew ye. 2012, I am looking forward to meeting you.

For me, 2011 started off sideways. I lost my job of seven years immediately after the new year dawned. It was a job, looking back, that pretty much sucked the life out of me. My workplace defined my identity, became the center of my world. This might have been okay if I’d been doing something I was passionate about, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t saving the world or curing cancer or creating something beautiful. I was being passed over for promotions and not getting a raise for four years.

I had some truly, truly phenomenal coworkers over my years there, many of whom I count among my friends. And, I might add, many of whom escaped following my departure. Chapter closed.

And then I had my wisdom teeth pulled. Because being suddenly unemployed didn’t quite suck enough. Did I mention that I was fired by my Secret Santa? Worst. Secret Santa. Ever.

So, lost job and lost wisdom teeth. Happy January. The year was shaping up to be a bust already.

But I’m blessed by an abundance of good friends who reached out, offering encouragement and support and words of wisdom. I reconnected with many I hadn’t seen for a very, very long time.

I spent mornings in coffee shops with Layn, also unemployed at the time, talking books and movies and music and zombies. I spent afternoons with Sean, discussing writing and world affairs.

I wrote. A lot. Sean sponsored my entry into the NYCMidnight short story contest and I came in fourth in my group in the first round, a pretty good finish for someone who writes as slowly as I do and has never entered such a competition before. But where I placed seems inconsequential to me when I remember that someone who knows my writing was willing to step up and say,”Hey, I believe strongly enough in your ability to string words together that I’m willing to put money on it.”

Sean will be on the acknowledgments page if this book ever gets published. He won’t be the only one. So many of you have encouraged me this year: Heather and Laura, Dora and Jennifer, Patrick and Jeanette and Richard. That sweetheart bartender at the Horse Brass who remembers I like cider and rye toast with my breakfast. Aaron and Stacy and all those who offered me space to write (or didn’t fuss when I showed up, disheveled and crazy, looking for a quiet space in which to put the words together). I sincerely offer thanks to each and every one of you.

As a news junkie, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention some of the big stories of the year: Gabby Giffords, the Japan and New Zealand earthquakes, the Joplin tornado, the royal wedding and the uprisings in Egypt, in Syria, in Libya. The downfall of several world leaders, the deaths of terrorists and dictators. That crazy World Series game. The Occupy movement.

I watched them all happen, from the comfort of my home, and was grateful for all that I have.

I saw a few shows (opened the year with Social Distortion and closed with Shed Culture Live) and more than a few movies. I read a few books, though fewer than I would have liked. I sent out hundreds of resumes. I spent a couple hours in the presence of Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer who inspired me and reminded me that it is possible to find love in the unlikeliest of places with the unlikeliest of people.

I volunteered with the Bus Project, at Sock Summit and at the Oregon Food Bank. I spent an October day in Oregon’s wine country making wine and spent Halloween night in a graveyard as a guide for the Tour of Untimely Departures. I performed two weddings. I completed NaNoWriMo, 50,000 more words for the novel, all written in November.

I joined the Timbers Army. This turns out to be the best decision I’ve made in the past year.

At a time when it would have been easy to curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep, the Portland Timbers’ first MLS season began and I found myself caught up in the current of green and gold love flowing through the City of Roses and through the world’s soccer community.

I’d put down my season ticket deposit years ago when the idea of MLS coming to Portland was little more than a dream for a faraway future. I went to matches occasionally but wasn’t a true supporter. I usually knew if they were winning or losing, but that was about it.

But MLS did decide to come to Portland and the time came a year and a half ago to fully commit: I bought two season tickets, not knowing if I would go, or if anyone would go with me, or if I would just sell those tickets later if I decided I wasn’t into it.

As it turns out, I was into it.

I bought in wholeheartedly. I got caught up in the excitement of the game and the love of the Timbers Army for their club, their city and all of Cascadia (minus the rave green encampment to the north).

I met some fantastic people through the TA: writers and artists and winemakers and more IT guys than you can shake a stick at. I marched in a parade alongside them, packaged food for the hungry with them by my side and, yes, managed to find myself in an episode of Portlandia. I watched home matches from my perch high in 221, the prefect vantage point to witness the Timbers Army in their native habitat, the North End of Jeld-Wen Field. Sharese, who had the good sense to buy my second ticket, and I had our pictures taken for the We Are Timbers campaign and, in addition to having said pictures hanging on the concourse, our likenesses are also sold in the team store. We’re all in.

We’re moving to the North End with the coming season where we will be yelled at by Pong and where Barnacle Brian will spill beer on us and where we will jump and sing our way into the playoffs surrounded by the greatest soccer supporters group the world has ever seen.

So, that’s my year in a nutshell: I lost my job and joined the Timbers Army. Lots of other stuff happened, but those are the two events that will forever define 2011 for me.

What’s on the horizon for 2012? More time with friends. More opportunities for creativity. Perhaps a little more financial stability.

I’m not one to make resolutions. Resolutions are nice, but they set you up for failure. Me, I’m just going to wait and see what happens next.

As for you, I offer you the above wish from Neil Gaiman and add my own:

May you know love and laughter and joy this coming year. May you see a place you’ve never before seen, may you meet someone who makes you laugh, if even for a moment, and may you raise a glass and toast to your past as you look to the future. Your past is what brought you this far, but your future is where you will shine.

Much love to you all.

 
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Posted by on December 31, 2011 in Master Plans, Timbers, World stage, Writing

 

Full immersion October – October 31, 2011

31 Oct

Some years, I’ve struggled to get words for October organized and onto the page. It’s been especially difficult the last few years as I’ve been working a full-time day job and taking classes three or four nights a week.

At times, I’ve felt like I’ve missed the very best of October because nearly every minute of my time was scheduled, spare moments were spent on homework or mundane things like laundry and I didn’t really have the chance to go out and see or do all the October-y things I write about.

Not this year. This will go down in the books as a full immersion October.

October this year, for me anyway, started in the middle of September with a trip to the pumpkin patch. What a wacky day that was: pouring down rain, lost in the corn maze and what do we hear? The unmistakable sound of a chainsaw. It only got better from there.

I’ve been out and about collecting (and consuming) samples of some really fantastic ciders and I’ve been lucky enough to have a day in wine country actually participating in the winemaking process. I think I ate an entire apple cake.

I’ve participated in gatherings of new friends and old, many fueled by the comfort foods of fall and those dark, heavy beers that I’ve grown to like over the years.

I spent some time at the stadium at my high school, a homecoming of sorts, and at Jeld-Wen Field. I went to a costume party, was totally freaked out by a haunting in a decidedly non-haunted place and am spending at least part of Halloween night in a graveyard.

Full. Immersion. October.

It has been said before and it will, no doubt, be said again: Halloween is that time at which the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest. The transition from summer to harvest to barren field is nearly complete and we confront the mystery of our own mortality.

I consider myself lucky in that I count among my friends those from a multitude of faiths. Today, tonight and for the next few days, they will collectively celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, All Saints Day and el Dia de Los Muertos; very different faith traditions all honoring similar themes.

Me, I will remember those who have gone before us and I will celebrate those who are still with us. And I will offer a prayer of thanks for all each of you has given me.

Thanks again for following along and indulging me and my October habit.

Happy October.

If you came in just for October, the blog will continue but certainly won’t be updated nearly as often.

 
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Posted by on October 31, 2011 in October 2011

 

Soundtracking October – October 30, 2011

30 Oct

I’ve started this three times so far and have yet to get past a few lines before this particular house of cards collapses.

So, instead, we go to the soundtrack.

I can’t remember (and am too lazy to go check) if we talked about what music is most appropriate for October. Van Morrison, of course. And I know we covered a little bit of Warren Zevon’s catalog.

There’s one more big one for me and I hate to admit that I waited this long to put it in the cd player.

That’s right, kids. I finally dug out the Concrete Blonde.

I’m not sure how this happened, but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen this video before. It looks exactly like Interview should have looked. Stupid Tom Cruise.

Johnette, by the way, is on Twitter. I learn something new everyday.

I also found a couple places that suggested that, somewhere in the universe, there’s a Rob Zombie cover of The Vampire Song, but I can’t find the actual song anywhere.

Instead, I’ll give you this one:

Dragula, it ain’t, but it has a guy dancing around with a pumpkin on his head.

And, as a bonus, the film White Zombie in its entirety:

That should keep you busy long enough that you’ll forget that I didn’t actually write anything.

Okay, one more thing for the film history dorks:

Alright, one more and then we’re done for today:

Happy October.

Disclaimer: none of these pieces of film belong to me. They are reposted here from Youtube for educational and editorial purposes only.

 
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Posted by on October 30, 2011 in October 2011

 

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