Halloween

Hope everyone had a good All Hallow's Eve. Mine was pretty quiet. I spent it wearing my leather mask, listening to Skinny Puppy (there's no other music more suited to Halloween) and handing out candy to kids in football jerseys way too old to be trick-or-treating. But it's better I get the candy out of the house, so I doled out the Paydays and Reese's Cups in large handfulls.

I did do a couple of things over the weekend that were quasi-Halloween related.

Saturday night Miss L and I ventured to the AFI theatre in Silver Spring, Md. They were running old silent horror movies and using musicians to play new scores for the films. We saw Der Golem, an old German movie based on the Jewish Folktale the Golem. Music was written and performed by Baltimore's own Yeveto, a quartet composed of guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion and cello. Kind of an interesting mix of indie and experimental rock with chamber music and film scores. Edgy, gritty but often still melodic. The style often reminded me of other indie-rocker instrumental groups like Mogwai and God Speed You Black Emperor, but the overall sound was more diverse and dramatic. Their material complemented the film nicely, and I'll be curious to see what non-film score work they develop.

Last night took a very different turn. One of my co-workers, a 50-something self-described bear of a man, is obsessed with Cher. Okay, more than obsessed. Somehow he also holds the talent of imitating her singing voice. Last night he made an appearance at a bar dressed in full Halloween witch regalia, belting out such Cher winners as Dark Lady and Half Breed. For each song, you got a free drink from the bar. So by the end of the evening CherBear was pretty lit, prancing around the bar and enjoying himself like I've never seen. It was nice to see him so comfortable and relax, even if the music isn't my typical taste.

Tomorrow is day one of NaNoWriMo. Unless I really get into a flow, I don't actually expect to pull together a full novel in a 30 days. Not even the short novel of 50k words most are shooting for. I'm pretty much aiming for an average of two pages a day, a more realistic goal for my normal writing speed. If I get that much I'll be pretty happy with myself. The website is interesting. There are number of forums set up so people can ask quick research questions from all the members, as well as forums for people just to bitch about their lack of progress. In some ways, the website almost seems designed to give you more ways to avoid writing. But we'll see how it goes.

I'll probably be posting complaints and updates at various points over the month. I may or may not keep a running word count here, just to stick my face out completely for public ridicule.

Excelsior.