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With a Scary Precision: The A-Team Factor
I've realized why I like building haunted houses so much.
For the past several Halloweens, my staff and I have built a haunted house inside our after school program facility, and while the experience is fulfilling on a community-service level, something else about the process has tugged at my heartstrings, and I haven't been able to put my finger on ( Read more... ) -
An Inner Child's Manifesto: Things You Shouldn't Pass Out on Halloween
A few years ago, I posted a list of things folks should not pass out on Halloween. In these few rare, quiet minutes between shopping for candy and setting up our Haunted House at work, I'd like to re-post and add two more items to the list:
1. Apples. First of all, they're heavy, and they take up valuable bag space. I mean, the surface area of an ( Read more... ) -
"Are You In?" or, "Reading at the Poetry Open Mic for the First Time"
I've been speaking or performing in public for as long as I can remember -- from as early as age five and six, singing Monkees songs for my parents' friends on the staircase stoop in our living room, to as recently as two weekends ago, when I M.C.'ed an auction for work at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. I've become the go-to guy for ( Read more... ) -
KaraokeFanboy 101B
A few months ago, I celebrated 100 posts on my other blog, so I thought to begin the next hundred with “KaraokeFanboy 101,” a treatise of my general belief system. As I was writing the first two of these four perspectives, I decided to divide the diatribe in half, mostly because I was due to meet my old buddy Booth and his wife for dinner in the ( Read more... ) -
Climate Change to Believe In
The Southern California sky pulled a Two-Face this morning, clearly divided between the bright morning sun and the thick gray clouds that held it back like sober friends in the midst of a bar fight. The sun got a few licks in, though, and the result was a spattering of multicolored raindrops that unearthed that wet cement smell that takes us all ( Read more... ) -
R.I.P. LeRoi Moore
August 15, 1995. Red Rocks, Colorado. LeRoi Moore had me at "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," before I ever even knew the Dave Matthews Band existed.
It's a stupid little thing, really, but Moore ended his four minute saxophone solo during the song "Lie In Our Graves" with the choral notes from "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I don't know if he'd ( Read more... ) -
In other words . . .
The X-Men paid for our hotel room. Not often I get to say that! -
I'm Not What You Are
This weekend I turned down a surefire booty call.
Today, I sold a small but significant portion of my action figure collection to pay for part of a weekend getaway with my gal.
What is this thing that I've become . . .?
Everything I've always wanted to be. -
It's All About Me
One of the best things about having a new, significant person in your life is the necessity of constantly "explaining yourself" -- a phrase often negatively assigned to apologetic exposition. "You're an hour late! Explain yourself!" No, in this case, I'm coining the phrase quite literally; a new, significant person in your life wants to know who ( Read more... ) -
Writer's Block: In the Event of a Zombie Emergency
I was going to post something else, and still might, but when I saw this writing prompt, I had to respond, because I think every geek has secretly thought about it. Yes, "it" -- the inevitable zombie outbreak. Heck, you'd think today's earthquake in Southern California was the portent of such doom, the way the news covered this casualty-free, ( Read more... )