Boo! Halloween is definitely one of my favorite holidays. Yeah, I know that we don't get it off from work and that there are no presents or tasty meals, but it's the most playful and fun of the holidays and candy can be a meal if your tooth is sweet enough. I have fond memories of dressing up and heading out into the night to gather candy. For a few years in a row, I was a rather convincing Paul Stanley from KISS, while my younger brother made a great Ace Frehley. We had this KISS makeup kit and used it until it was gone with the great costumes our Mom made for us (none of that cheapo store bought crap for us). Sadly, our brothers were too old to join us as Gene and Peter.

These days I enjoy handing out candy to kids after they ring the bell. My dog doesn't care for the holiday as much and her booming bark drowns out (thankfully) the Monster Mash as it bounces around in my brain. And I always get a laugh when a very tall (and obviously too old) ghost rings the bell and holds out a bag without the customary "trick or treat" - though sometime I'll get a deep-voiced "thank you" after the candy is given. I guess some people want to act like a kid on Halloween even more than I do.

I've been dogsitting the past week for one of my brothers, and this little cutie is named Celia (the dog, not the girl). Believe it or not, this photo has not been retouched. Instead of redeye, her eyes are glowing yellow in every photo in which she looks towards the camera. I thought it was a bit odd that the glow would extend beyond her eyes, so I took a look at photos taken around the same time and found they were all a bit soft and had that dreamlike look that photographers achieve by wiping vaseline on a filter lens. So I took a look at the lens and as I suspected a fingerprint was covering the entire lens (it seems I'm quite the sleuth - let's break out a game of Clue).

So Celia is not a mutant canine from space after all. She is a really super-cute dog though; because of a small brain defect she still has that puppy clumsiness and snuggliness. She and her partner in crime Spencer have been living it up with my Jazzy this week. Sadly, it's rained every single day since they've come, so we've all been cooped up in the house except for those lovely walks outside to the doggy "bathroom."

Smurf update: It appears the UN is using Smurfs in an anti-war video...

Names are a funny thing when you really think about it. I don't even know what my last name means, though like most it was probably based on something at some point (job, geography, physical characteristic). First names are even less meaningful and are just plucked out of thin air because of how they sound or are recycled to honored recent ancestors. And then there's the trendiness (aka "sheep" factor) where people pick a baby's name because it's popular at that moment. With that in mind, I think we should all use smurf names, which are much more descriptive and relevant. Get your new name now, because the Smurfs are coming back. Until next time, this "Very Tall Smurf" is signing off.

Where's my supersized foam mallet?
Believe it or not, this image is a photo (sorry about the lack of quality) of the opening credits for the new TV show Ghost Whisperer. Yes, those are dead people rising out of those perfectly round holes for what looks like a giant game of whack-a-corpse! When I first saw it I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. I don't know who gave the okay for that, but they should be fired (or at least made to try digging perfectly round holes in the back lot of the studio). I'm serious, the whole intro is really, really cheesy.

The show itself is pretty good so far. While the title suggests an unlikely merging of Ghost with Horse Whisperer, it's actually a blatant knockoff of The Sixth Sense. Well, except that the character that can "see dead people" is a woman instead of a little boy. And the actress playing her seems to be reading lines off a cue card while Haley Joel Osment is a gifted actor. That said, Jennifer Love Hewitt is certainly nice to look at and the stolen premise is a great one. I fear it won't be a long ride though, as there has to be a limit to the number of problems dead people have (besides not being alive, that is).

Speaking of which, we went to the movies this weekend to see Corpse Bride. Now, I'm not a huge Tim Burton fan (he co-wrote but did not direct), but this movie is actually quite good. On a side note, I noticed that the father of the (living) bride reminded me a little of Danny DeVito's Penguin from Batman Returns. Fortunately just in appearance and not in action. Anyone that has seen Batman Returns knows that the Penguin is one of the most disgusting character in film history. Just awful to watch... hmmm, the same can be said of the the Batman sequels that came after Returns, though for different reasons. In any event, Corpse Bride does well with a fairly clever story, excellent animation and decent writing. I give it 3 stars (out of five).