one last halloween costume shot

I actually laughed out loud at this costume.

Cumbersome? Clearly. Hilarious? Oh YES.

Sundance Stompede Halloween

The Sundance Stompede is almost a month later than usual this year, and started with Sundance Saloon's Thursday night kick-off dance landing on Halloween.  Great fun and a start to the weekend.  Welcome back all my wonderful dancing friends!






























Full set on Flickr.

okaley dokaley!

I didn't snap photos of costumes this year, but walking past the Carl & Cole stop I couldn't resist:


Ned Flanders.

Spell Block Tango

Love this. Toderick Hall produced the "Cell Block Tango" from the show Chicago featuring Disney's villains in the "Spell Block Tango." And my word those playing cards from the Queen of Hearts. So hot they're criminal too.



So well done.


For reference, see also the original:

treat or treat

If I eat Halloween candy with both hands does that make me ambidextrose?

oooh. that sounds scary.

Movies use nonlinear sounds and sound effects to evoke our primal survival fear.



Or as Joe Hanson (It's Okay to be Smart) puts it, movies use sounds to scare us to death, as our brains use these sounds to scare us to life.

The Hitchcock Hallway

My workplace has an events staff that arranges all sorts of so fun things throughout the year to engage the different populations and units together into a larger community. Each year, they sponsor Halloween parties at each campus with a costume contest and department door decorating contest. You may see where I am going with this. I love Halloween and design and can tend to get a little competitive. I still think we were robbed last year as the judges were swept up in World Series fever and gave prizes to the Giants doors.

At the end of last year we said that this year we would turn the hallway into a diorama of Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves. When we brought it up at a staff meeting in September, the idea was nixed as the term "gypsy" is now considered pejorative. Which I do recognize as true, but so also are "tramp" and "thief." But I take the point and I wasn't all that keen on the idea anyway. Especially after the office decided I should dress up as Cher. And once I got the Turn Back Time video stuck in my head, I was on "No."

After a nice internal stream of consciousness brainstorming walk around the building, I came up with this: The Hitchcock Hallway, representing a dozen iconic images or references to the most popular films from the Master of Suspense. This is what I sketched out:


My co-conspirator did some excellent sourcing of off materials such as wall banners, and I found some black bird wall decals and fake feathered birds. Once presented at the department meeting, everyone was enthusiastic and we were able to build on the ideas and make construction a team effort. This is, after all, about team building, right? (No, it is about winning. And being awesome. And well yes of course some team building. But mostly about making something really cool happen. And maybe a little winning.) And my boss is so totally awesome that she supports these things whole-heartedly and gets enthusiastic too.

From sketch to reality, it really came together quite well:




And in detail we have:

Rear Window

Psycho

North by Northwest



Rope


The Birds



Vertigo

The falling man is actually mounted about two inches in front of the poster so there is some parallax as you move your head, and the poster itself and the black backing are both off kilter just enough that your brain tries to correct them visually and it actually makes you dizzy when you look at it. I love this.

Dial "M" for Murder (My favorite.)


(My Co-worker) Rebecca




Ken Jennings as The Man Who Knew Too Much



Portrait entitled "The Day We First Met," when we were Strangers on a Train


The 39 Steps


And finally, Lifeboat


I also learned that Alfred Hitchcock's first movie as a director was a 1927 silent film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, which was a sort of Jack-the-Ripper tale. This film is in the public domain now and available from The Internet Archive. We're projecting it through one of the entry windows onto the opposite wall with film facts and synopsis. I don't have the accompaniment, but we are playing the score from Vertigo at the other doorway.


This has been a frightful amount of fun, and I'm so happy that so many people are enjoying it, and taking the time follow the clue the clues. Happy Hitchcock Halloween!

meet me in the stacks...

...with a stake.

Before there was Giles: The Open Education DataBase has started posting lists of Libraries and Librarians in Horror Movies.

Spell-binding.

Halloween leftovers

I forgot I had saved these little Halloween treats: 

Sure, some may find this a little offensive, but I think it mocks the trendy of the Occupy movement more than anything else.  Frankly I think it is clever.  And subtle.  And funny in a dark way.

This second photo is priceless to me.  My cousin Clark, who lives in Berlin, his young son wanted to do a mashup costume this year and he came up with this himself:  Darth the Pooh.

When questioned regarding his costume choice, the lad looked up at his father and deadpanned: "Do not underestimate the power of the dark side of the honey."

Win.

Bring out yer dead.

As has become our custom, Kevin and I attended the Day of the Dead celebration in the Mission together. Unfortunately it has gotten so big I think next year it might be out of control. I did love how most everyone was very into it, both in the respectfulness of the day, and into the wardrobe/makeup.


It was such an intoxicated, street-glogging revelry that I started calling it "Dead Pride."








At one point I turned to Kevin and said, "You know, we're just any number of mullets away from this being a Kiss convention."

There were some beautiful altars, and all of them heartfelt, and some more evocative than others. This year someone built an elaborate tribute to Neil Armstrong.












On our walk over, I did say to one guy in full skull makeup, leaning against a building on an empty street corner, seriously inhaling on his cigarette, "You know, smoking will kill you."

Thoughts and prayers to those passed, and a not-so-silent thank you to scenes like this one:


Blessed be.