Monday, October 26, 2009

Dogtoberfest!

Get it?! It's a dog festival in October!! The second annual in Austin, in fact, and man was it fun! Matt and I met up with some friends just in time for the costume contest. When Matt heard that there was a costume contest he was a little reticent on coming. "What do we do? Dress up as dogs?" When he learned that it was the dogs who were competing with their costumes, he was all for attending. My goodness, it was a good thing we did. Otherwise we would have missed out on one of the most festive events of the season. It was a good time for all. Take a look...

Get it?! The dog is dressed up as a chicken!

Apparently this dog only needed a hood to pull off Chebacca.
Yappy dogs were even worth interacting with when they had on a costume.
In between rounds of the contest, the dogs decompressed by socializing,
getting a few belly rubs,and even dancing!Of course, what would be a dog costume contest without Wiener Dogs dressed up like a hot dog or a banana?
Is this cute or really upsetting? I'm not sure what yet...

And the grand prize winner, for good reason, goes to the Mad Hatter.
Such dignity.
What is great about this event, is that it turns out that dogs are not at all camera shy. Granted, they get easily distracted by things they can sniff and reeling in people who could potentially pet them, but they are easier to photograph than a happy group of children. Not only that but no body thinks you're a creep for wanting to photograph how great they look. Yep. This event was a marvelous idea. I can't wait until the 3rd annual Dogtoberfest! I think I will rent me a dog to dress up just for the evening....

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Be Prepared! for a good Halloween season...

When Mr. Swirly Patterns came for a visit last week, I was struck once again with cult classic fever. There is not one person who can better help you catch the "Ed-Wood" bug than my brother. It's a good thing that he came in time for Halloween season.

For me, this is the most wonderful time of the year; but I have found that in order to experience the depth that Halloween has to offer, eating Abba Zabbas and Bottle Caps is just not enough. Lets be honest here, in addition to the candy and a costume, there needs to be some other things in order to assure a complete Halloween season. I have found that I need substantial time spent in drugstore aisles looking at bad makeup and rayon costumes. I also have found that including something pumkiny helps a great deal too. This can be applied in many ways (ie pie, cookies, bread, carving, seeds, gourds, etc). And of course, viewing at least one terrible (or very dated works too) Halloween flick is a necessity. I'll play viewer's advisory media librarian a moment here and recommend a handful:

- Shaun of the Dead
- The Fearless Vampire Killers
- Ed Wood
- Ghostbusters
- Teen Wolf (but not Teen Wolf Too - unless you are going for terrible and dated)
- Lost Boys
- Sleeper
- Revenge of the Body Snatchers
- Plan Nine From Outer Space (I don't have to have seen this one to know it should be on the list)

I have no doubt that you all would have some good suggestions to add to that list too. Feel free to fill in the gaps I have left. I think I have my main monsters covered here, except for trolls. Okay, I suppose I will throw in Troll 2 just to keep my bases covered.


And for good measure, I thought I would share some key insights we public library folk are trying to share with our community about how to survive a zombie attack. The teen users are particularly receptive to this information at our various "ZombieFest" events. Still, I thought all you "adults" out there might be interested in getting some tips about this too. I mean, you just never know when this information will come in handy...

1. Organize before they rise.
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don't need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto a bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert.
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone but the threat lives on.