A LIST OF COSTUMES SEEN TONIGHT (THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE): Pirate, white guys as a cowboy and an Indian (...really?), kung-fu master (an actual Asian), man-vampire, lady-vampire (unrelated to previous), sexy bumblebee, sexy NYT crossword puzzle, something green on head, trashy black wig, bearded lady or possibly male nurse, Joker, heterosexual jellyfish couple, Captain America, flapper, Red King, a Democrat, possibly a spoiled child???, and my personal favorite, a satyr in a sport coat.

I ALWAYS REMEMBER MELCHISEDEC AS THE RAT WHO WAS A FRIEND TO SARA CREWE...: Oh, this is a lovely tribute to new priests. I didn't cry, because I don't generally, but I made some very pathetic noises at times. We need you! We love you, and at least in my case, even my reflexive anti-clericalism is a form of entitlement mentality, since whenever a priest is actually administering a sacrament I basically forget everything I ever disliked about bishops-in-general.

We need you, priests. Please don't let our uncertain flailing, as we try to find our own vocations, and our rightful criticism obscure that basic fact.

What a beautiful video. Please share it!

I THINK I POSTED THIS LAST YEAR, but come on, no one who loves I Walked with a Zombie as much as I do can possibly pass up this sock-hop REM tribute.

CLICK CLICK:

I grew up loving The Addams Family, without knowing quite why, until one day as an adult I realized: These people are an aristocratic, trad-Catholic homeschooling family trapped in a sterile Protestant suburb!

more!

(and yeah, there's some Cat'lick triumphalism here as vs. both Protestants and Orthodox Christians. I think the piece is still worth reading even if you're in those camps--let Zmirak be Zmirak!--but you know your own annoyance-level best.)

ATTACK ADS OF THE FOUNDERS. Probably via Jesse Walker.

THE MUSIC STOPPED... AND SHE DIED! I'm listening to the first of two (so far) Halloween mixes at World of Wardcrap. My life is awesome right now.

Via Sean Collins.

EDITED to correct the name of the site, and also to note that the second mix is a lot less my thing than the first. The second mix has "Do They Know It's Halloween?" and "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps," both of which are fantastic, but it also does a lot more blending of movie clips with music (at least, I noticed it more), which does no justice to the music. I like "When the Man Comes Around" about three million times more than I like either the silly screams which interrupt it or the gross ironic-faux-Jamaican?-making-fun-of-unironic-faux-Jamaican thing it fades into.

So yeah: Listen to them both, but as an all-night mix I'd prefer the Daymage one.

COTTON-GIN PUNK.

BLOOD OF PALOMAR:

And although biology is obviously among Beto's primary concerns, destiny is the operative word. I don't think the Palomarians have the ability to escape the way the Locas do. Not all of them need to escape, mind you--there's a lot of really warm and adorable and hilarious and awesome stuff going down in Palomar--but whatever walks alongside them in their lives is gonna walk alongside them till the very end.

more

"WHAT'S 'BARK'?"

I reconciled myself to my desire to secure for Gabe and Ana a respectability I myself was fleeing as fast as possible. I thought of all my old Beat friends from college who were now leading their kids off to Sunday School and dance class. I told myself that they--we!--were giving our kids a choice. If later they wanted to reject a middle-class status they could, but ninety-five percent of the world longed for the security and comfort we affected to scorn. And membership in the bourgeoisie was easy to lose but very hard to come by. I thought of all those classes for slum kids in which they were taught to give a firm handshake after a job interview and never lose eye contact during it. They learned to joke easily, combine casualness with respect, call a potential boss by his first name but show deference in surrendering to him the conversational lead, speak clearly and act sincerely--oh, these were all the skills we'd spent a lifetime acquiring unconsciously and now wanted to shed.
--The Farewell Symphony

I would kill for the thrill of first love; but also, for a short story written in exquisite-corpse back-and-forth form by Edmund White and Dorothy Allison. Someone with money, please make this happen.

GOOD LEADERS SHOULD USE THEIR "DARK SIDE": Popularization, but here you go.

IT'S NICE TO TAKE A WALK IN THE RAIN: I finished Slings and Arrows. Not sure what to say to make you guys watch this terrific TV comedy set behind the scenes of a Canadian theater company, but I will say that along with all of the gallows humor (one of the main characters is a ghost and/or hallucination) there's a really compelling portrayal of leadership-through-chaos and its limits. Since this is the only kind of leadership I personally have ever exercised, I loved it!

It's available on Netflix Instant Viewing so if you're in the USA and have a decentish Internet connection you are in luck.

OH RIGHT, I FORGOT ABOUT: "She’ll defend Catholic moralists one moment, but defend prostitutes and bad girls the next."

I knew I liked her for a reason. Now praise drunks!

SUSIE THEN REMOVED HER MASK/AND CAUSED A MIGHTY STIR: Just so everyone's clear, 1. Here are some of my favorite posts by Helen Rittelmeyer. These posts in no way exhaust her awesomeness; they merely give you what Lady Holliday in The Great Muppet Caper would call "a soupcon--Marie, I don't think we should chew gum!"

"Decadence, Christianity, And Oscar Wilde's Conversion to Catholicism." My own senior essay changed my life. If mine hadn't, hers might've.

"Toward a Bioethics of Love"

In defense of shame (my post against; but you should read hers first)

A review of three books I read (in part) because she owned them.

All my posts tagged w/her name

2. Apparently Todd Seavey lived twenty-and-some years without ever meeting an agent provocateur until Helen. His naivete, while potentially endearing when played by Joseph Cotten, should in no way impair your reading of her actual work, which is much more Marlene Dietrich than Anne Hathaway.

Since his humor never overturned his preconceptions it didn't take him or his listeners by surprise; no, it was a local affair, just a snarl in his mental traffic, not an accident.
--The Farewell Symphony

"THE GREAT UNWEAVING": I have a long piece at Inside Catholic:

I'm sitting outside a downtown Starbucks with two George Washington University undergraduates, talking about sex, politics, and religion. Michele Walk and Conor Joseph Rogers fit my stereotype of contemporary American college students. They're sincere, confident, and hyperaware of the ways in which they're different from their parents.

Michele and Conor also represent a growing demographic: They consider themselves both pro-life and supporters of gay marriage.

more

TODAY'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS: 1. Taking the GRE;
2. Finally, after years of frustration, understanding what "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" means.

I feel I can recuse myself from adult responsibilities for the rest of the evening.

I said, "My novel is purely autobiographical. Everything in it is exactly as it happened, moment by moment--sometimes even written down moments after the event. The main character bears my name. I'm writing it in order to persuade the love of my life to come back to me; I'm afraid it's going to be a very long book. That's the avant-garde technique I've invented: it's called realism."
--Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony

KITCHEN ADVENTURES: DON'T BE SCANTY WITH THAT SCAMPI! So peeled and deveined shrimp are on sale right now at my local Whole Foods. I realize that you may scoff at this shortcut, but both of these meals were so delicious that I find it hard to care. Ridiculously easy, too!

First batch: Set oven for 375. Put baking dish inside to heat. Finely chopped garlic and rolled it in butter. Chopped one or two plum tomatoes and finely sliced about... half?... a yellow onion.

Baking dish came out. Shrimp went in, with tails on. Dotted them with the garlic butter. Tomatoes, onion, a splash of white wine, a splash of extra-virgin olive oil, and a few good squeezes of a lemon half also went in. That all went back into the oven.

Cook cook cook. When I heard it sizzling, I stirred it and added shredded fresh basil. Also put some slices of baguette in the toaster oven, toasted them, and buttered them.

About the time the buttered baguette was done, the shrimp was also pink and everything else was cooked. I combined everything and devoured it like a starving monster. (I discreetly piled the tails on an old receipt.)

Second batch: Second verse same as the first, except that I set the oven for 400, I used sourdough rolls instead of baguette, and I added dried oregano, salt, and a very small amount of peeled and finely-chopped fresh ginger to the mix. The result was phenomenal. The ginger was intriguing but not at all distracting (I used about a quarter-inch-by-quarter-inch knob, peeled and minced, for a quarter-pound of shrimp) and the sourdough was just delicious with the sweet shrimp and rich olive oil. I also cooked the veg for a bit longer, so the tomatoes started to shrivel back from their skins a bit; this was a good choice.

Note: My oven tends to heat MUCH faster than recipes think it should, so if I were you, I'd consider switching the 375 to 400 or the 400 to 425 or even 450. You want to be able to shrivel the tomato chunks a little bit before the bread finishes toasting.

"THE MONSTER YOUR MAN COULD SMELL LIKE." Posting this for Ratty.