A Hard-hitting Intro to the Game

Square in the right eye. That's where the pitch hit me. (I'm a lefty-batter; so, the right profile got the brunt.) Third-grade, maybe fourth-, I don't recall. What I do recall is crying a lot, then my softball coach telling me to lie down on the bench and hold a glass of iced tea on my throbbing eye.

The only thing worse than the pain, was the humiliation: lying there like a weirdo with a glass of Nestea on my face. Shaking it off pretty quickly - pride overriding pain - I went right back into play, heading to my position, somewhere in the outfield: excellent placement for me, as getting nailed by an underhanded pitch was my best performance ever, on a baseball diamond.

Softball wasn't really for me. Dance and violin were my things. I liked the activity and energy of softball; yet, the uniforms and lack of glitter left me wanting. Ballet, gymnastics and Polynesian dance pulled hard focus at that age. For this eight-year-old, there was no contest between the fantasy of tutus, rainbow leotards and Tahitian skirts, and prosaic polyester knickers and a t-shirt. Bo-ring.

Fortunately for softball, it lost its worst player the day it gave me a black eye. Wait a minute. Was it personal? Did it edge me out with force? In truth, I was bound to quit the sport eventually. Softball just wasn't jazzy enough for the likes of Moi.

My dad seemed disappointed I quit; baseball was an overriding joy for him. He was rather pleased, nay, surprised, I'd made the team at all. I suspect, though, like when I kicked karate (boring outfits, also), one less extracurricular activity and its ensuing expenses had to please him. No matter, there was enough baseball out there for him, even if I didn't play.

Aside: It turns out none of my childhood pursuits would be a match for the sport where I finally did land: Irish step-dancing. Excess makeup, over-the-top bling and Shirley Temple curls?! Yes, please!

Baseball Zen

What I didn't appreciate at the time, about softball/baseball, was the leisurely practice of it: the blue skies, green grass and birds and little critters on the field. What is lovelier than a halted game, dozens of grown men standing about waiting, leaning on their bats and chatting with other players, whilst the whole stadium waits for a lone bunny, or a pair of doves, to clear the field? That, and when opposing players shake hands, hug or pat each other's butts, makes me really happy. The outfield bro-hugs? Just perfection.

Tina Belcher: “I never realized baseball had so much butt touching.”

Louise Belcher: “That’s how they communicate, Tina. It’s like Braille, but with butts.”

- Bob’s Burgers, “Torpedo” (S1,ep13)

All of this Summer serenity was there for the taking … until those explosive spurts of speed and inertia. A body at rest stays at rest, until affected by an outside force: in this case, a bat, another player, or a ball to the right eye.

Baseball is a game of mellow excitement. Maybe that was the draw for Dad. He was a quiet man, a listener. In fact, he was/still is a renowned, clinical and forensic, child and adolescent psychologist, on both coasts: reigning champ of all quiet, listening professions!

“What do you think it means?”

Baseball is a game wherein one can sporadically sit in silence, with little noise but the scritching of a pencil on a stats notebook, maybe the persistent “Let's go, _____!” chant from an excitable child on the Upper Deck, or the distant call of a concessions vendor. Depending on where you're sitting, you might hear the measured rhythm of a groundskeeper's rake or practice pitches, and subsequent catches, in the bullpen.

In the universe of sports, it is relatively chill, akin to golf. Lots of leaning back, folded arms and brief chats with other players on the field or in the dugout … until there's that satisfying crack of a bat, the rip of a fastball and the spontaneous cheers of half a stadium, intermingled with the excited voices of the announcers in the press box. If it's a homerun, there's organ music! Nothing bad happens when organ music plays, except maybe vampires rising from their coffins as the moon rises.

In the stands, there's always enough down-time for friendly conversations, or light-hearted arguments. Sometimes, it’s sweet, baseball-movie charm, like Kiss-cams or cutie-cute Drew Barrymore in the Farrelly Brothers’ Fever Pitch. Sometimes, it's drunky-drunks blasted on grain-alcohol riot-juice and picking fights with the mascot. Hopefully, those folk are far from your seats and tire out quickly.

“Whenever there's a potential riot, I'm getting blasted on grain alcohol!”

- Mac, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, “The World Series Defense” (S5, ep6)

Most stadium experiences are, hopefully, a good memory. Folks just want to enjoy a pleasurable game-day and dream big for their team. A childhood friend started a lifetime of love at Dodger Stadium. There she was on the Jumbotron: all long, blonde hair, cheery blue-eyes, and her wide, brilliant smile. Her husband-to-be saw her, found her and that was it. Baseball is love, sometimes.

Of course, even though there is time for convo, laughter, love and selfies in the stands, for the most serious of fans, that time is spent checking stats, surveying the field and eagle-eyeing all player movements. That fan was Dad, oblivious to all but the theater of the game.

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Do Not Disturb

Today, Major League games tend to run approximately two-and-a-half hours. Pitch-clocks, a timer ensuring pitchers deliver their pitches within a :15-:30 time-frame, depending on how many runners on-base, has shortened games a bit in recent years. Batters and catchers have similar time-restraints today. Games used to run longer, a lot longer, or at least it seemed that way, as a kid. I want to say, four or five hours, but that sounds wrong.

Hours and hours, Dad could spend at a game: overtime, extra innings and, wonders-of-wonders, the double-header (two games back-to-back). Heaven! Even sitting in the parking lot, inching his way out to the main road, was joyful.

In a planetary event, sometime in the 1980s, Mom's worst day and Dad's best day aligned when a San Diego Padres game went into extra innings … twenty-one innings in all. Pleading to leave was useless. Dad was pliable, malleable and patient to a fault, but not where baseball was concerned. “Thank goodness I brought my knitting,” was Mom's only relief. She talked about that “nightmare” for the rest of her life.

There was little difference at home: hours and hours on weekends, sitting in his leather club-chair, often falling asleep, watching any game televised. Two-way conversation was generally futile. Mom or I could chatter on any topic, uninterrupted, for minutes on-end, only to finally demand a response of some kind.

“An ‘ugh’ will do”, mom would exasperate.

Ugh, he would dutifully respond.

I learned then, baseball was a great time to ask for things. Ugh doesn't mean, no.

If he drifted to sleep whilst watching, and we tried to change the channel to, say, “Designing Women” he would suddenly awake and groggily say, “I was watching that.”

Mom said, he needed a hotel “Do Not Disturb” sign to hang around his neck during baseball season.

If he had to be out of the house during a game, sports radio was a faithful companion. Their faces weren't so familiar, but the voices of play-by-play announcers like Vin Scully, Bob Uecker and Dick Engberg were so familiar, it's as though they shared the backseat with my Hello Kitty backpack and me.

In October, after he'd exhausted all World Series analysis, pontification and coverage, he'd watch old games on ESPN. I didn't get it.

“You know who wins,” I'd judge.

“It doesn't matter,” he'd reply simply.

Pitchers and Catchers Report

By New Year’s, he'd start making his annual, happy observation: “Pitchers and Catchers Report” is coming, meaning the date the first wave of players, pitchers and catchers, report for Spring Training. Like a parrot, he would repeat it at regular intervals throughout Winter.

“Pitchers and Catchers Report. Pitchers and Catchers Report. Pitchers and Catchers Report. Squawk!”

When he wasn't working, watching baseball, doing yard work, helping Mom redecorate the house or taking us to Disneyland, or South Coast Plaza, he was reading.

Reading material fell into five categories: psychological books and journals; western novels; American Revolution non-fiction; baseball non-fiction; and, above all, The Sporting News.

Never was there a day I didn't see the old, analog, sports newspaper lying somewhere in the house. Even old ones couldn't be tossed until he gave the go-ahead, that he'd read every single word and stat. The Sporting News was where I first saw “Pitchers and Catchers Report” in-print.

Until recently, I'd always presumed it was a report about pitchers and catchers, not that they reported for Spring Training. Who knew “report” was a verb in this case?

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I’d Do It Tomorrow

It was a lifelong obsession, baseball. As a post-WWII child, a Navy brat, Dad played in the streets of Honolulu, Brooklyn, Birmingham, Puerto Rico and, his eventual, permanent hometown of San Diego.

High school, college and the Air Force all supplied him fields and opportunities to play. Later, in his professional life, would play on the odd, hospital- or government-team. As much as he cherished his psychological work, he would've traded that professional life in mental health for a professional life in baseball, in a heartbeat.

My husband and he shared an affinity for the game: both playing in elementary school, high school and both lifelong, SoCal-team fans. Both had been young dreamers, fantasizing of the Major League life; and both were utterly disillusioned by the Major League players’ strike of 1994/’95.

During one of their regular, ocean drives down PCH, they chatted casually, whilst listenng to a Padres game, on the life of a minor leaguer: the long road-trips on a team-bus, the low pay, cheap motels, bad sleep, and the cruel elusiveness of the Majors.

My husband assessed,"At this point in my life, seeing how rough that life can be, I don't think I'd do it.”

“Oh, I'd do it tomorrow,” Dad replied without missing a beat.

He oft lamented, he just didn't have the talent. “Some guys have an arm and no heart. I had the heart, but not enough arm.”

In the 1990s, Rotisserie Fantasy Baseball became an enthusiastic addendum to his passion. The only time he would go to a bar, would be to meet his fellow owners to draft their teams (whatever that means). I'm not sure, yet, but this is likely not for Moi: so many numbers, so much math. Definitely a game of statistics, which he revered.

The last game he ever saw was a Padres home-game. The walk back to the car was longer than he remembered and he was disappointed the Padres lost, again. He carried the glove he brought religiously to every game - in case of fly-balls - and dissected the game with my husband as they walked slowly. Per usual, he channeled his inner-Charlie Brown and found pride in being a “true fan”, regardless of a team's standing. There was a strange honour in having lost, no matter how often. “Anybody can be a Yankees fan,” he'd say. Although, he did love Derek Jeter: Yankees shortstop from 1995 - 2014.

“Have you ever watched Derek Jeter run? He's so elegant, like a gazelle.”

Charlie Brown's everyman approach to life, baseball and dogs was his purest school of philosophy, and he knew his philosophers. Don't blame the sun for getting in your eyes, Lucy. Put on some sunglasses and “do good catching”.

True fans watch, and play, in the rain, they sit behind a pillar if necessary, and nosebleed seats are great because at least you can see the whole field.

True fans never bet against their team and they don't leave a game early “because of traffic”.

True fans are crushed when their team doesn't make it to the playoffs; or, actually worse, makes it, then fails to advance to the World Series.

True fans can still enjoy the playoffs and World Series, even sans their team, rooting for “the better of two evils”; but they never, ever hop on the bandwagon and buy a new baseball hat, “just for the series”.

In their fifty-six-year history, the Padres have made it to the National League playoffs seven times; they've gone to the World Series twice; they lost both of those.

His theory was SoCal players, including San Diego Chargers football (now, L.A. Chargers) rarely win the Big Prize because “the weather's too nice here, life is too easy”. I never thought that made sense, but he believed it.

For comparison …

In their sixty-four-year history, the Angels have made it to the American League playoffs ten times; they've gone to the World Series once, and won.

In their 124-year history, the Red Sox have made it to the American League playoffs twenty-five times; they've gone to the World Series thirteen times; they've won nine times, including enduring an eighty-six-year drought known as The Bambino's Curse, starting in 1919 when the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth (TheBambino) to the New York Yankees.

So, regardless of his team's performance, at the end of each season, Dad would reiterate proudly, “Well, the Padres have been disappointing me for over fifty years. Go, Pods.”

We're Talkin’ Baseball

My parents call the North Shore of Boston home now. The area was an annual holiday destination: Salem at Hallowe'en is addictive, once you've experienced it. Marblehead is simply perfect. Boston-proper is heartening and exhilarating. It is as steeped in history as its harbor was in tea, in 1773. It is, for this writer, the greatest metropolis in this great nation; yet, that's another post.

So, whilst dad was never a Red Sox fan, the town was something very special to our fam. Moreover, as a Babe Ruth devotee, he respected the Sox’ first claim to The Bambino: 1915 - 1919. (Well, after his brief, inaugural stint with the then-minor league Baltimore Orioles in 1914.)

Sure, The Sultan of Swing graced New York's Polo Grounds/Yankee Stadium much longer than he did Boston's Fenway Park: 1920 - 1934, interestingly, the entire stretch of Prohibition, plus one year. Still, for whatever reason, Dad couldn't bear the Yankees. So, he stuck with The Boston Babe.

Now, as the 2024 MLB official season starts, I imagine Mom's once again talking to an open Sporting News as he reads it in his chair, or attempting conversation as he watches the Red Sox, Angels and Padres, by whatever means available, along the peaceful shores of Salem Harbor. Do Not Disturb.

It's As Simple As That

Like truffles in an egg carton, a child growing up with so much baseball in the air is bound to become somewhat infused. There were spurts of interest: the short-lived, childhood softball endeavour; a brief flirtation with softball in college (only to switch to Model U.N. after a professor proclaimed her disgust that I'd “waste time” on a sport); ball-girl tryouts in college; and, a longer, actual flirtation with Single-A ball (minor league): going to games with a friend, hoping the cute players would notice me in the stands.

I say, “me”, because the friend was a dude, btw: my bestie, at the time, and fellow Disneyland cast member. I didn't need another chick pulling focus. Driving out to watch the Palm Springs Angels was good old-fashioned fun and he was an excellent wingman, helping Moi to “pass notes”, as it were. By the end of that season, I only ever talked to one player; he just wasn't that into me. The Desert League then became boring quickly. I don't like the desert anyhoo, no matter how cute the players.

Eventually, as an adult, baseball was of almost no interest: simply something I associated with visiting Mom & Dad, as it was always on, in some form, somewhere in the house.

Ergo, I'm not a complete newbie to the game; but I'm no Rain Man either. Although, I do admit to mild, OCD tendencies and am a bit of a dork. So, if I return here later this season with reports from my new, statistics journal, don't be surprised.

Also, I do have a bro-in-law bordering on savant where baseball is concerned. Moving to the next level of fandom so I can talk to him at fam events and, more importantly, irritate my sis-in-law, might be well worth the deep dive into America's pastime.

Autonomic-loyalties have lain with the Padres and the Angels, as loyalties to Dad, my husband and my hometowns: San Diego and Orange County. (The Angels, btw, - formerly California Angels, then Anaheim Angels - are an Orange County team, not an L.A. team, whatever they call themselves now. Don’t forget it, kittens!)

Anyhoo, like the Pull-Ups commercial sings, I'm a big girl now, still a California girl; but, for ineffable reasons, a Boston Red Sox girl. I've fielded some squinty-eyed queries and good-natured ribbing over it for the last year. It's been hard to explain, because I don't quite know how it hit me so hard and fast.

Maybe it was Dad's passing and his reunion with Mom in Boston. Maybe I'm taking up the relay baton, carrying on his baseball traditions. Maybe it's just damn fun and it helps me feel closer to him. Yeah, it's probably all that, said the shrink's kid with confidence.

So, I don't need to explain it anymore, to anyone. It's as simple as that.

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Well, if it ain't the Queen of Suffolk County
Yeah, best stay out of her way
Yeah, you know she's here to stay
She don't joke and she don't play
She's tough like a tiger
She's all dressed up
She's soft like a kitten
But she'll still mess you up
Here comes the Queen of Suffolk County
Yeah, she's the Queen of Suffolk County

- Dropkick Murphys, “Queen of Suffolk County”

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I Get It!

 

As I learn more about the game, it's virtues and vices, it's heartbeat and history (Thank you, Ken Burns!!), it's intellectualism and it's most uncomplicated joys, I find myself oft turning to my husband and claiming, I get it!

I get it now, all of it: the gentle drone of a televised game on in the background, the greens and blues on the screen, the speculative chatter of sports-radio bros, the annoying sports-shouting at any given moment on ESPN, the search for any documentary available on your team (i.e., “The Game That Changed Everything: Yankees vs Red Sox, ‘04 ALCS”), the need for “just one more Red Sox tee”, the anticipation of Opening Day, the watching through your fingers during Playoff Season, the groans and cheers, the “What do I watch now?” lull of Winter, and, of course, the baited anticipation of “Pitchers and Catchers Report” and Spring Training.

I may not know fully what it means to be a Red Sox fan, but I'm finding out and having a blast doing so. To boot, being the history dork I am, learning allllll about the Red Sox, back to 1901, is sheer Heaven.

“Regret” is not part of the JennyPop patois. Moi is a strong believer in “You are exactly where you are supposed to be.” Regrets are pointless, as the past has passed. However, regrets can be useful to open windows on worlds you may have missed previously.

If I have one of few regrets, it is not taking advantage of baseball time with Dad. I don't know how deep I would delved into the game when he was alive, but I know now, I would've enjoyed sharing inside-baseball factoids with him, maybe even tracking stats. That is still to be determined …

One postseason afternoon in 2023, I found myself standing directly in front of the TV, hands behind my back, watching a Red Sox game. It hit me, at that moment, that's exactly what Dad would do. I always wondered why he stood there, frozen it seemed, so often.

Commenting on the realization, I asked my husband, “What is this? Why did he do this? Why am I standing here like him? So weird.”

“It's called hope,” he concisely concluded.

Dear Old Dad would be thrilled I'm finally paying really close attention. He’d be slightly disappointed I'm not a Padres fan. Yet, he'd be relieved, at least, I'm not a Yankees fan. Ha!

About two weeks before he passed, he and my husband were on one of their PCH drives. The Beatles were playing on Sirius: Dad's fave band for his lifetime. He didn't recognize the music at all, but commented only, “They're okay.” Keeping the curious conversation going, my husband then switched to MLB Radio, to talk about the Padres. Dad didn't know who they were either.

I don't think I can do The Beatles thing. Sorry, Daddy. I can, however, do the baseball thing and carry your torch.

Go, Sox, 2024! Anything can happen with a new season!! Do good catching, guys.

 

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Tessie” by Dropkick Murphys

 

2 ... 3 ... 4 …
Tessie, Nuf Ced-McGreevey shouted,
We're not here to mess around!
Boston, you know we love you madly
Hear the crowd roar to your sound!
Don't blame us if we ever doubt you,
You know we couldn't live without you,
Tessie, you are the only only only, -ly.

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*Tessie in it's original form: as the Royal Rooters Fan Club rally-cry, at the 1903 World Series, when the Red Sox were still called the Boston Americans. Tessie was adopted from a 1902 Broadway musical: “The Silver Slipper”. Empirically, the alpha version is the Dropkick Murphys’ Irish pub rock anthem of 2004.

Follow all the 2024 season with Yours Truly (@JennyPopCom on IG or right here at jennypop.substack.com) starting with Opening Weekend at Angels Stadium: Boston at Anaheim! Go, Sox! Go, Angels! Go, Padres!

But, mostly, go, Sox!!!

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Dunluce Castle

Sea-sprayed and lichen-coated, the seaside ruins of this 14thC., round-tower fortress rests dauntingly atop the Antrim Coast cliffs. Dunluce claims as residents, a winsome White Lady, ghostly tower dwellers and mischievous spirits who, reportedly, play in the gift shop overnight, rearranging books and turning on radios for the morning staff's arrival.

The White Lady hails from Dunluce's origins, the foundations and two round towers built by the MacQuillan sept in the 1300s. A daughter of the family, the now-known White Lady was forbidden by her father to marry the man she loved. As sad, beautiful, medieval nobles were wont to do, she died of a broken heart soon thereafter. Now, she roams the stones, forever young, beauteous and melancholy: the very best look for sporting a long, flowing, white gown as one aimlessly roams castle ruins, atop a jagged cliff overlooking a stormy sea, in an Irish mist, for all eternity.  

By the 16thC., inter-family usurpations, kidnap and murder plagued the MacDonnell sept, notably Sorely Boy MacDonnell. After his inheritance of the estate in 1556, his brother-in-law Shane O'Neill captured and imprisoned Sorely Boy during the Battle of Glentaisle. Only after Sorely Boy's posse retaliated and murdered O'Neill during a festive banquet, was Sorely Boy installed again as the rightful occupant and heir to Dunluce. 

In 1584, Queen Elizabeth I's Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir John Perrot, attacked Dunluce sans provocation and garrisoned an army there. Once more, Sorely Boy was ousted from the premises and, in this place, Perrot positioned Peter Carey as castle constable. Queen Elizabeth, however, seems to have known nothing of the attack and, upon learning of it, granted Dunluce back to Sorely Boy. Resurrected, again, Sorely Boy celebrated at Dunluce with a lively banquet and a hanging, of Peter Carey. 

As the 17thC. dawned, Dunluce had earned a reputation for desolation and doom. In 1635, Sorely Boy's grandson, Randall MacDonnell, brought his new bride, Catherine Manners, to the castle. Catherine was a widow of the Duke of Buckingham and a dyed-in-the-silk Lady of London. From the moment she stepped onto the Western Isle, Catherine loathed the countryside. The farther north she travelled the deeper her loathing burrowed. The isolation, the placid landscapes and the quiet life set in a madness for the city girl. Most of all, Catherine claimed "the constant boom of the sea drove her to distraction". 

On an exceptionally stormy night in 1639, as the family sat to yet another boring dinner in the banquet hall, the north wall of Dunluce's kitchen court crumbled suddenly into the sea, far below. Several of the kitchen staff fell to their terrifying, rocky, briny deaths. From that night, understandably so, Catherine refused "to live on that rock" ever again. As her husband commissioned a new home to be built on the mainland, Dunluce saw fewer inhabitants, less activity, sliding maintenance schedules and, as the years passed, slowly became the spooky, salty ruin it is today. 

Most notably, Dunluce Castle features in the origins of the fictitious O'Connor family, as it relates to Miss Erin Tara O'Connor, a prominent, supporting character in author Jennifer Susannah Devore's Savannah of Williamsburg: The Trials of Blackbeard and His Pirates, Virginia 1718 (Book II in the Savannah of Williamsburg Series of Books)   

*Dunluce Castle is currently closed, due to Covid, but is usually open for admission and self-guided strolls. For updates, visit their website or phone directly at +44 (0) 28 2073 1938   

Carrickfergus Castle

The house that self-fulfilling prophecy built: In the 12thC., Anglo-Normans roamed the Ulster countryside, oot 'n' aboot, king for land they fancied. When they found just the right bit, they took it. In 1185, a Norman Lord, John deCourcy, heard a prophecy that "a white knight from a foreign land, riding a white horse, with birds of prey upon his shield" would, one day, conquer all of Ulster. "Hey!" deCourcy he thought to himself, "I'm a blond knight from France and could totally get a white horse and make a shield with birds on it!" Because audiences were way easier to convince back then, he assembled an army and led a twenty-five year conquest over Ulster. On every chunk of land he conquered, he built a castle. Carrickfergus is one of those monuments to victory and unfathomable confidence. Today, it is one of the oldest, in-tact, stone castles in Ireland. However his conquest was short-lived. In 1210, England's King John claimed it for himself and it served as a government building for nearly 800 years. 

During that time, in the 18thC., consistent military installation oversaw centuries of not only bloodshed but heartache. In 1760, a case worthy of Project Innocence played out at the castle. Infuriated by a duplicitous fiancée, one Betsey Baird, a Carrickfergus soldier known as Robert Rainey rooted out Betsey's illicit paramour, one Col. Jennings and ran him through with his sword. Undaunted and self-satisfied, Rainey returned to his barracks, wiped clean his sword of Jennings' blood, changed shirts and went about his day. Unfortunately, also stationed at Carrickfergus was a soldier named Timothy Lavery. Lavery was a fine fellow who went by the nickname of Buttoncap, for the large, non-issue button he'd attached to his cap. Liked by all, Lavery really had only one fault: he bore a striking resemblance to Rainey. As Jennings lay on his death bed, dying from his sword-wound, he mistakenly identified Lavery, instead of Rainey, as his assailant. Lavery was arrested and sent t the gallows. Claiming innocence to the end, as the noose was pulled over his head and tightened around his neck, he vowed revenge and to haunt the castle forevermore. Today, his sad, vengeful spirit is seen on occasion at a castle well he was known to frequent. It is called Buttoncap's Well. 

*Carrickfergus Castle is currently closed, due to Covid of course - stupid virus - but is usually open for admission and self-guided strolls. Call or visit site updates. Phone: +44 (0) 28 9335 1273. 

Killakee House (a.k.a. Dower House)

Below Hellfire Club ruins, 12 Killakee Rd. Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin, Dublin D16FT51

Ask Stephen King: some pets are just scary, no matter how much you try to love them. If you've ever had a cat that stalked you, and not playfully, Killakee House Restaurant may not be the dining experience you wish to book. Though the main house - a large, gracious, Regency-era, country home built in 1806 by prominent bookseller Luke White - fell into ill-repair over the last two-hundred years, what does remain today is The Steward's House (a.k.a. Dower House), built circa 1750 -1770. Since the early-2000s, it has stood as a casual dining establishment in the dark and moody hills of County Dublin, overlooking the bustling hub of Dublin Town. 

Dower House has been long-reported as haunted. Just above it, up Montpelier Hill lie the wicked ruins of Richard Parsons' Hell-Fire Club. In the 1700s, Satanic and myriad evil events occurred at not only the Hell-Fire, but also inside Dower House. The vile deeds are believed to have included, but are certainly not limited to, devil worship, animal sacrifice and torture (primarily black cats), witch burning, prostitute murders and the deathly beating of a dwarf, as amusement. Evidence of this final "amusement" is the long-forgotten skeleton of a badly deformed dwarf which was found by Dower House renovation workers, in the bell tower, in 1970.

Reported hauntings include sightings of, at least, two ghostly nuns, the spirits of two murdered men, extreme Poltergeist activity, black clouds moving about indoors and various, unsettling, unexplained noises. However, Killakee is best-known for The Killakee Cat. In 1968, Margaret and Nicholas O'Brien purchased the dilapidated Dower House with the intention of refurbishing it into a grand, Fine Arts center and intellectual retreat for writers, dancers and artists of all sorts. In paranormal terms, words like "construction", "renovation" and "refurbishment" are synonymous with "stirring up the spirits". As Dower House underwent renovations, it seems spirits indeed were stirred. Work crews reported, in addition to "general Poltergeist activity", seeing a large, black cat in the gardens. Later that year, Dublin artist and interior decorator Tom McAassey, claimed to see a black cat, "large as a Dalmatian dog" outside the front door.

According to McAssey's personal account in Frank Smyth's Ghosts and Poltergeists, after closing up for the night, one of two workmen on-site with him noted aloud that the heavy, front door was open, even after having locked it. Noticing a dark figure outside the door, McAssey thought it the other workman: the two of them pranking him. He told the figure, thinking it the second workman, "It won’t work, I can see you, so get in". McAssey claimed he then heard a "low voice" reply, "You cannot see me, leave the door open". McAssey turned aroud to see the two workmen standing behind him, well away from the door. In a flash, the two workmen fled the scene in a great fright. Not one to turn tail, McAssey investigated what must be clearly another worker or neighbourhood teen playing a joke. He walked toward the door and, there, now sitting in the foyer, was a black cat, "large as a Dalmatian dog with amber colored eyes" and ears flattened in attack-mode. Thinking the workmen had the right idea after all, McAssey fled out the back door of Dower House, never to see the cat again. Later, as artists do, he painted that which haunted him.

Today, McAssey's famed and spooky Killakee Cat painting hangs in the foyer of Killakee House, greeting guests and workers every day. Some have tried to toy with the painting (or the Cat, one in the same, some say), hanging it upside-down in jest. Yet, each time the painting is vexed, power outages and drained batteries immediately ensue. In a Ghost Adventures episode "Leap Castle & Hell-Fire Club" (S9e4), host Zak Bagans and Killakee House owner (2000 - present) Shay Murphy see a black cat, although domestic-size, dash past the house as they areon-camera discussing the Killakee Cat.

"Now, there's a black cat right there," points out Zak Bagans.

"There is a black cat. Really! Look, look! No way, no way!," Shay Murphy exclaims in true surprise. "No. Genuine. I have never seen that cat before. On my child's life, I have never seen a black cat in Killakee in fourteen years. And yous guys turn up. That is eerie."

"And we're talking about the Killakee black cat. Is it a weird coincidence?" Bagans ponders. "Yes, but we've learned that coincidences also mean something."

Indeed, they do.

*Killakee House appears to be open for lunch and brunch, Thursday - Sunday 11am - 4pm. Dress is casual and restaurant is dog-friendly and offers vegan/vegetarian options for diners. Call to be sure they are open, due to fluctuating Covid-restrictions: IRL country code (353) 14947087.  

Leap Castle

Coolderry, Co. Offaly, Ireland (north of Roscrea on the R421)

Easily boasting the title of Ireland's Most Haunted Castle, Leap (pron. leh-p) is a spirit world in its own league. Archeological evidence suggests Leap's earliest foundations may have been laid for a 12thC. fort. The castle, as it stands today, has its origins in the late-15thC., built under the supervision of John O'Carroll, Prince of Ely. Starting with John's death by plague in 1532, Leap Castle would bear witness to centuries of insidious turmoil, heart-wrenching despair, conniving ambition, unfathomable torture and veritable cartloads of heinous demise. Of course, if we've learned anything from Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist, (1982), building a home on ancient burial/sacrificial/pagan ground is never a good idea.

Legend recounts that centuries before Leap was constructed, sometime after the missionary work of St. Patrick and Palladius, but well before the arrival of John O'Carroll, the land where Leap's main tower stands today, was sacred ground for Druidic worship. Further, it is believed a sect of the High Kings summoned from the Earth during a sacrificial ritual, an elemental: a primitive, malevolent, supernatural being, neither spirit of a passed human, nor minion of the devil, but a powerful, insidious creature comprised of natural elements and which attaches itself to the place of its "birth". Therein lies the basic trope/origin story for any good, supernatural horror film. 

From 1541 to the 1660s, there occurred a slew of intra-family O'Carroll slayings at Leap. Of those slayings, the murder of an O'Carroll priest, mid-mass, by his own brother, Tyne O'Carroll, seems to be of the most lasting consequence. Slain in what is today known as The Bloody Chapel, the priest's murder was just one of many betrayals in an epic, ongoing power struggle amnogst the O'Carroll sept to secure Chieftainship, after the death of Mulroony O'Carroll in 1532. 

Blood begets blood and, in an ill-fated yet unsurprising act of violence, the last-reigning O'Carroll was slain by an Englishman called Darby: the next family to rule Leap all the way through to the 20thC. The Darbys had owned Leap briefly during the English Civil War: the seized property being awarded to Jonathon Darby I in 1649 for his service to Oliver Cromwell and his Parliamentarian army. However, after the Restoration of England's Stuart monarchy in 1660, Leap was returned to the O'Carrolls, in 1664, by King Charles II, for their service and support of his father, the previously ousted King Charles I.

Never a family to be subdued or shamed, the O'Carrolls were nothing if not cunning and vengeful to all whom opposed them, or were simply perceived to be oppositional. The notorious Oubliette in the Bloody Chapel is proof of their mad vengeance and inhumanity. In the northwest corner of the chapel nests a small chamber with a dropped floor. Embedded in that floor is a series of nauseatingly large, iron spikes. Derived from the French verb oublier (pron. oo-blee-ay and meaning "to forget"), it is where the O'Carrolls dumped the dead, dying, living, guilty, innocent and unsuspecting, forever to be forgotten. The lucky ones fell properly on a spike and died instantly. If one was unlucky enough to miss a spike in fatal fashion, one lingered there in pain and obsolescence until infection or madness mercifully ended their suffering. Those who missed the spikes altogether festered away until hunger, thirst or death by shock took them away from their hell. To add some twisted psychology to the torture, the Oubliette had an arrow-slit window, just large enough for the trapped to view all the lively cavorting in a lovely landscape they could never experience again. There were also vents so that tasty food smells wafted up from the dining hall into the dungeon. What a bunch of bastards. Few made it out alive.

One such fortunate soul to escape was the Englishman, Captain Jonathon Darby III (a.k.a. the Wild Captain). In Romeo and Juliet style, but with a happy ending, an O'Carroll daughter fell in love with the Captain, and he with her. Free of any spike-damage, the captain subsisted breifly on food smuggled to him by his love. When it was deemed safe, she would bust him out of there. When she finally did free him, she and her captain headed down the chapel stairwell to ground-floor freedom; yet, on the way down, they happened upon her brother, on his way up the stairs. In a heartbeat, the Wild Captain Darby fatally slew the O'Carroll brother. As the last male heir of Leap, the dead brother's property passed to his sister ... and to Captain Darby and the whole Darby line. Hey, look at that, Karma works sometimes.

Hauntings kicked up at the turn of the 20thC., when Mildred Darby - wife of Charles, last of the Darbys - delved deeply into the Victorian fad of séances, holding several at the castle and dabbling in various occult practices. It is believed she unintentionally invited, amongst a host of other malevolent spirits, the elemental begat by the Druids so many centuries ago.

" ... standing in the gallery looking down at the main floor, when I felt somebody put a hand on my shoulder. The thing was the size of a sheep. Thin, gaunt and shadowy ... its eyes, which seemed half-decomposed in black cavities, stared into mine. The horrible smell ... gave me a deadly nausea. It was the smell of a decomposing corpse ... ," claimed Mildred in an article she penned for Occult Review  in 1909.

After a fire gutted Leap in 1922, reconstruction crews discovered the O'Carroll Oubleitte. Workers removed three horse-carts flush with human bones from the Bloody Chapel's hidden dungeon. For decades, as Leap stood uninhabited - by the living, at any rate - locals claimed to see the Bloody Chapel's window brief cast a bright glow of amber candlelight in the night, seen across the fields. Witnesses described the sudden glow, "as if someone lit a great number of candles, walked through the chapel's upper room, then blew out all the candles and left". Others who dared to explore the ruins at night during this period reported a wandering woman in a long, red, billowing gown. Funny how they're always in a beautiful gown. One never hears of a ghostly lady in yoga pants or bell-bottoms.

Today, a few broken bones and some unsettling "accidents" later, owners Sean and Anne Ryan seem to have earned their keep. Whilst the spirits "may make nuisances of themselves occasionally", they are largely non-malevolent, but very much still present. Perhaps it's Sean's music (he being a professional musician), the friendly, personal tours or the festive gatherings and feasts that have calmed the spirits. Or, perchance, most important of all, it is the atmosphere of a loving and cheerful home, free of fratricide, torture, deceit and violence that has set the Leap spirits most at peace. For,, when you take all the rough history out of it, the Irish countryside is nothing, if not peaceful.

*Leap Castle is generally open for guided tours; although due to Ireland's changing covid-restrictions, please, contact Mr. Sean Ryan for availability. Phone: +353868690547 or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Thoor Ballylee

Nr. Gort, south Co. Galway, Ireland

Sprouting from idyllic, pastoral fields, like the distant focal point of a Turner landscape, stands proudly the 14thC. Hiberno-Norman tower which Irish writer William Butler Yeats called his Summer home. Essentially a ruin by 1917, Yeats shrewdly purchased Islandmore Castle, as it was hitherto known, for a mere £35. Yeats renamed it Thoor Ballylee, Gaelic for "Tower Homestead". As writers love to do, he played with words and the sounds they create, choosing the Gaelic Thoor specifically because, I think the harsh sound of Thoor amends the softness of the rest. One might assume "the softness" Yeats meant, was the tranquil land on which Thoor stands. 

Within two years, in 1919, after considerable refurbishment, Yeats not only inhabited Thoor in the Summer months, but Thoor Ballylee inhabited his spirit, always. A stolid believer in the supernatural and intrigued by the occult, Yeats found Thoor fed that intrigue. With certainty, Yeats was convinced an Anglo-Norman soldier haunted his home. This belief, or concern, depending on your viewpoint, was shared by later residents. This included a woman who reported a ghost frequenting the tower stairwell often enough, she refused to trod the stairs once night fell. Apparently, her dog shared her concerns, regularly cowering from an unseen presence in the downstairs areas of the tower. 

Photographic evidence in 1989 exposes the form of a young boy staring directly at the camera, as a guest took pictures in Yeats' sitting room. The guest, one David Blnkthorne was the only person in the room, as the tower had closed for the day, just as Blinkthorne and his family arrived a bit too late in the day, after a long carride. Blinkthorne entreated the curator to stay open just long enoough for hiis family to take a quick run-through and snap some photos. She allowed the family a few moments as she closed up shop. Blinkthorne's wife and children were in another part of the home; David explored the sitting room alone, or so he believed. The boy has been seen before; he is thought to be Yeats' young son.

Blessed be this place, more blessed still this tower. A bloody, arrogant power, rose out of the race. 

- from William Butler Yeats' "Blood and The Moon", reference to Thoor Ballylee and its haunted staircase

*Thoor Ballylee is generally open April - September for tours tea and hearty welcomes. Failte Thoor Ballylee! As with everything in Europe, the UK and the States, please, double-check for availability and hours.

Phone: +353 (0) 91 631436 (weekdays 10am-2pm, weekends 11am-5pm) or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Happy Irish-American Heritage Month and safe travel to all, when the time time comes again that we may. Sláinte, kittens!

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Princess, Senator, General, Commander

Organa or Skywalker, born to Breha or Padme, a fantasy in gold

Superior, Rebel, Royalty, Huttslayer

A Madonna in white, honey buns iconically rolled

Whip-smart wit and brazen with a blaster

Heart as fragile as her soul rests stolid and bold

In love with a rebel, a rake, a rover

I love you. I know. No need to be told.

Bow down, out of her way, you walking carpets and Nerf Herders

You're in this only for the money, her loyalty cannot be sold

She irritates easily, Aren't you a little short for a Stormtrooper

Fall in line and take orders, Rebel scum, and there'll be no need to scold

Alderaan's not far away, from her heart and soul, never

Solo is closest, though, by the Empire he was taken from us, from her

Now Han and Leia, forever in the stars, Solo and Fisher, lovers ne'er shall grow old

For some folks, summer can mean little more than warmer day

When is $750K a pittance? When it's Hollywood-oriented and gets you a feature-length film, shot over sixty-days and employs no less than the formidable and jauntily avuncular Elliott Gould (M*A*S*H, Ocean's Eleven, Friends). When do you say Mazel Tov? When that film blasts out of the holiday film gate like Seabiscuit on fire and ignites a dynamite line straight to Hanukkah and Christmas movie mainstays.

Switchmas (2012, Von Piglet Productions) is so ding-dang cheerful, so sweet, so good-natured, so family-friendly, so inclusive, so sprightly, so hopeful that one just might puke from its syrupy tinge, if it was not such a fun film. Switchmas is Disney-quality, without the Disney-dollars. Should you find your list of holiday flicks in need of an update, would it kill you to add Switchmas? It slots in beautifully with the other tent poles holding firm in the genre: Elf, A Christmas Story, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Christmas Vacation et al.

Mr. Gould, known lovingly to so many of us as Jack Geller, Ross & Monica's dad, isn't the only point-of-light in the Little Film That Could. David Deluise (Wizards of Waverly Place, Stargate-SG1) portrays Max Finkelstein, an optimistic auteur on the fringes of Hollywood and president of Finkelstein Films: "Making the World You Want To See". Max believes he has everything but "a name" to catapult him to Woody Allenesque fame and respect. (If The Reindeer From Planet 9 can't get him an Oscar, what can?) As Max tells a potential client (art imitates life here), "Believe me! You don't need big money to make a movie with big heart!" When "a name" drops in his lap, Max gets the filmic opportunity of a lifetime. The name appears in the form of has-been, aging, bubble-gum starlet Jennifer Cameo, best-known for her role as Desperate Jane (played by Julianne Christie). I am Desperate Jane! I have fans and a blog and I am in control!, Cameo rants desperately to anyone left in her fan-base. To optimize Ms. Cameo's last gasp for stardom, Max must personally rip out and eat his own son's heart ... metaphorically-speaking, of course.

"Its' the Finkelstein Christmas tree!"

"Finkelsteins do not have Christmas trees."

"Why not?"

"You know why! We're Jewish!"

"Well do we have to be?"

"Ira!"

"I mean at Christmas?"

"You know what? Heritage, tradition, culture. Who needs it?"

Resistance is futile. Therein lies the rub. Little Ira J. Finkelstein wants nothing more than to celebrate Christmas. "He's obsessed with The Christmas!" To assuage this desire, Max and Mama Rosie agree to take him to Aspen for Christmas, land of twinkle lights, snowy windowsills, hot cocoa and Louis Vuitton luggage. Then, Miss Cameo is attached to The Reindeer From Planet 9 and Aspen go bye-bye. "If this goes good, we can go to Aspen every year". Instead, even after a heart-melting plea from Ira about promises and mishpucha, Mom and Dad ship him off, to where else? "Florida, for The Christmas". Now, a holiday with the Flah-ri-dah grandparents includes a dream grampy: supportive, doting and effervescent Sam Finkelstein, played to freylech perfection by Elliott Gould.

In classic, Shakespearean-style though, during Ira's layover at the airport, on his way to "stupid Florida", he meets fellow holiday misanthrope Mikey Amato: a poor, Christian boy of newly-divorced parents who -wait for it- wants nothing more than to spend Christmas on a warm beach with some rich grandparents. Poor little shnook, he's on his way to "stupid Christmastown" for a week of gift-giving, parade-going, snowman-building and cocoa-drinking with his gentle, gentile, WASPy cousins, who, fortunately, haven't seen him in quite a while. Boom! A quick switch of some nerd glasses, an old parka, bangs brushed down and the convenient exposure that even Ira's own grandparents haven't seen him in quite a while either, and voilà! You've got The Switchmas. "That's no Finkelstein! It's a different kid! What, is he blind?!"

There's even a pup. Any good holiday film has a dog. This little guy is Killer, a.k.a. Mistletoe: a big-headed, sweet-eyed pit bull who brings to mind The Little Rascals' Petey.

To boot, if you happen to have a grandparent-Jonesing, Switchmas can assuage that, too. Mikey's all too-foreign poolside, beachfront, grandparent-sojourn in The Sunshine State is a non-stop party of chocolate geld, fruity drinks, positive affirmations and socks-and-sandals. (To this girl, it sounds equally perfect to my own Christmastown luxuries.)

(Can we talk?) Raised in a beautifully festive Christmas household, as in Mom could teach Martha Stewart a thing or two, I was annually blessed with a pile of presents that would make Santa blush and enough hugs and kisses for a Strawberry Shortcake episode; it was a veritable embarrassment of riches that happily continues to this day. What did I lack, however? Grandparents. Always feeling I missed out on something grand in this respect, characters like Sam and Ruth Finkelstein bring a broad smile to my gentile pearlies. Moreover, my paternal great-grandparents and grandparents were Jewish, hailing from Vienna, Austria and, eventually, New York City (The Bronx and Long Island): Jakob & Irma Gerstl, and Rudi & Rosalyn Gerstle, respectively. Because I never got to know them, my noodle has compensated over the years with a special love for vintage handbags, antique jewelry, The Golden Girls, Agatha Christie novels and Queen Elizabeth II. (What is in Her Majesty's purse, BTW? Did you notice she even has it next to her on the floor in the 4G Royal Portrait? Dying to know. I bet Werther's Originals, a Waterman pen and a surplus of Irish-linen hankies.) As Angela philosophizes on The Office, "Some of us don't have grandmothers. Some of us have to be our own grandmothers."

(Back to the film ... ) Best of all, for those of us endlessly searching Netflix' "Recently Added" queue for the unequaled, quintessentially '90s TV-series Northern Exposure, the fair Cynthia Geary plays Libby Wilson, the beautifully-blonde auntie with the rosy, mountain-air glow who awaits her, fortunately, long-unseen nephew in Christmastown, WA. True, she is meant to look haggard and toiled, the overworked mom of three and neglected wife to an alcoholic, unemployed schmegegy of a dad; but the MUA failed here, folks. Despite the tousled locks and the persistent frown, Geary (Northern Exposure, Smoke Signals) looks as fresh-scrubbed and nature-girl beautiful as she did twenty-plus years ago as Shelly Tambo-Vincour in the wilds of Cicely, AK. (Apropos, Northern Exposure was shot on location in Roslyn, WA; Switchmas was shot in Leavenworth, WA and Seattle.)

As with any good film serving as part-morality play, there are a few direct lessons involved. Unaware of the notable, Jewish contributions to Christmas song and film? Pay close attention to Christmastown's Santa Claus, Murray Lefkowitz. (This means you, Garrison Keillor.)

"A Jewish Santa?"

"Who else would work on Christmas?"

Fretting about the melding of Hanukkah and Christmas on the proverbial celluloid? Meh. Christmas is a mélange, a spiritual and pagan amalgam of millennia stewed in winter celebration, thanksgiving, festivity and bringing a little light to the shortest, darkest days of the year. The Christmas we know today was not celebrated until 4thC C.E., when Emperor Constantine defected from his pagan beliefs and essentially founded Christianity. He declared the 25th as the certifiable day of joy to coincide with the same time during which the ancient Babylonians, Romans, Celts and Norsemen had already been celebrating for eons, knowing full well he would not be able to stop them from said-jubilation and Bacchanalian endeavours.

In the end, I am a wordsmith; words mean something to me and are not to be tossed about hither and thither. Therefore, I refrain from the ignominy of such phrases as "government aid", "literally starving" and, worst of all, "instant classic". However, I am finding it sehr difficult to refrain from the latter. Switchmas might just be that, an instant classic. Only time will tell, and JennyPop's annually-updated, recommended, Christmas and Hanukkah viewing list.

Because this stuff is important, especially if your name is listed:

Directed by

Sue Corcoran

Written by

Douglas Horn

Angie Louise

Sue Corcoran

Cast

David Deluise as Max Finkelstein

Elijah Nelson as Ira J. Finkelstein

Elliott Gould as Sam Finkelstein

Angela DiMarco as Rosie Finkelstein

Justin Howell as Mikey Amato

Cynthia Geary as Libby Wilson

Follow @JennyPopCom #Christmasfilms #Switchmas

‘Tis crisper, cooler, brisker, sharper,

Like a bite from a chilled, candied apple.

The wind and weather now zip through the trees.

Shaking loose leaves of orange, red and gold,

Leaving mere bones and fingers of bark and birch.

Dark Italian roasts, mulled spider ciders and spiced pumpkin lattes,

Perfect complements to all the season’s feasts.

Families are amassing, friends are warming near,

Enveloped and embraced by a fete’s baking, cooking and cocktails,

All warm and sugared comforts, certain to please.

Cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, coffee and wine,

The smells of the season lead us home year after year.

Bringing the best of autumn together, the best of family and friends,

The very best of everything, the very best of us on this Thanksgiving Day.

Happy Tofurkey Day to All!

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Cheers, kittens! So, last Hallowe'en I claimed I would post no blog until I finished the fourth title in my Savannah of Williamsburg historical-fiction series. (Fifth title altogether, including The Darlings of Orange County)

Well ...ta dah!

Okay, 'tis a first draft; but, if you've penned any 400-page novels lately, you will appreciate the effort. Editing is in full-swing and I hope to have Savannah of Williamsburg: Washington, Wisdom and the West, Virginia 1754 in your curious little hands by Springtime. As my cheerleaders inspire me, "Go, monkey, go!"

Besides finishing my first draft, 'tis February and around here, Februārius means three things: my Viking's birthday and both con, and bikini, seasons begin in earnest (86 degrees today on the sand and WonderCon is high nigh). The earliest blooms of con season (comic book conventions) are beginning to bud. WonderCon (L.A. Convention Ctr. March 25 - 27, 2016) is just over a month away and the thirty-day mark sounds the costuming alarm.

Natch, by now my costume is decided - Marvel Comics' Agent Carter, the ABC/Hayley Atwell version - and all components have, mostly, been collected; but the one-month point is the time to double-check fittings, assess extra accessory needs and attend to such necessities as salon visits.  (One must have bouncy hair at a con!) To boot, I just realized, last night even, that Agent Carter, with her trademark red fedora and navy blue togs does not wear red heels ... she sports blue! Duh! Alarm! Alarm! So, I am now on the hunt for the perfect pair of true-vintage, Post-WWII, blue Mary Janes. I deserve them. I know my value.

Well then, if you've missed the feathery whippings of my espresso-tipped quill, like those above, fret not, kids. I feel the stirrings which move me to post regularly again and now I have the time, sans that which I should be using to edit Savannah IV. Conversely, though I can barely imagine, if you have not missed my musings and me, or just don't care for my style, it's a big Internet. Move along, Sir or Madam. You shan't hurt my feelings.

If you are a geek, and, don't kid yourself, you are if you've continued this far, follow me here and at GoodToBeAGeek.com where, every Con Season (WC & SDCC) I post all the geeky, gooey, con goodness you need, including fabulous costuming pix by my partner-in-crime and our own photographer and costume designer Dr. Lucy of Twisted Pair Photography and Sea Gypsy Designs.

Apropos to the continuation of con season, even if you don't follow my novels or regular posts, be certain to check back this summer for SDCC coverage, including Preview Night! (San Diego Comic-Con, S.D. Convention Ctr. July 21 - 24, 2016). BTW, for devoted readers, yes, I am writing another article for the Official SDCC Souvenir Book! This year's theme? 75 years of Archie Comics. My focus? Betty & Veronica, of course! Who's your fave Riverdale gal? LMK @JennyPopCom!

Abyssinia on the Con Floor, Kids!

JennyPop's other Official SDCC Souvenir Book articles on Peanuts, Tarzan, The Simpsons, Hellboy and Catwoman can be found ... here! Read them all or take your pick! Want to read past coverage of WC and SDCC? Just type WonderCon, SDCC or Comic-Con into the search bars at any of her sites!

jennypop.com

goodtobeageek.com (Where I write as Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of The Del)

blogger.com

Perchance online games like Zombie Pop or Candy Kill are befuddling to you. Why would someone spend any valuable time poking zombies or slashing gumdrops? Of course, when powdered wigs and the 18thC. come into play, why, that is clearly time well-spent! If one happens to be an historical-fiction novelist, it can even be classified as research. Yes. Research.

So, finally an app for us fashion/history/research dorks! Courtesy of London's Victoria and Albert Museum ... "Design a Wig" app! If you have fifteen minutes, play with it and amusez-vous bien! (If you do not have fifteen minutes for happy silliness, maybe rethink some priorities.)

Enjoy JennyPop's own digital creation: one I imagine our Miss Savannah of Williamsburg (during her Blackbeard-phase) would adore! Ta! Merry Christmas, all!

@JennyPopCom

Because I find this snapshot of Mary Pickford, washing her hair in a sink, quiet, relaxing and soothing. As comic-convention season approaches (WonderCon, San Diego Comic-Con and all the costuming, writing, socializing and cocktails that accompany this glorious time of the year), a nap in a Hilton sink may very well be in my future.

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Happy New Year to all! 2K15 portends to be as chock full of beachwalks, historical-scribblings, road trips, California wine, cosplay, comic conventions and all the general geeky goodness (at GoodToBeAGeek, of course!) as usual. What 2K15 does not hold, for Yours Truly anyhow, are resolutions. Setbacks and respites may occur, but forging ahead each day, approaching personal betterment and progress with the rise of every lapping tide is a lifestyle, not a temporary, guilt-driven, New year's Eve promise to oneself.

When I was wee, one of my first bookmarks was a homemade deal of Tiffany-blue construction paper, too much Elmer's glue and a Robert Crumb cartoon cut out of one of Mom and Dad's periodicals, probably MAD magazine: the iconic Keep on Truckin'. Five years old, maybe six, and I knew straight away that this was the way to live: mellow, groovy and carefree. Having a mellow, groovy, Norcal, psych-grad school father sporting corduroy, denim and suede desert boots certainly helped set a quiet, reflective and cheerful childhood. Sure later, after college, I would adopt the more Gothic and wary, Addams Family motto: Sic gorgiamos allos subjectactos nunc. Still, the mellow hippy chick is still deeply embedded under the Morticia guise. That would explain my penchant for VonZipper sunglasses and suede floppy hats mixed with Manson boots and jet beads.

For 2015, as for every year I can recall, French and German will always be my second- and third-languages; yet I will always strive to make them as obedient as my mother tongue, English. Writing and researching historical-fiction (Savannah of Williamsburg Series) will always be my metier; yet I will always endeavour to write more like Michener and Twain. Working out and keeping fit will always be second-nature for me; yet I will always fall short of my ideal and that will keep me, happily, working toward physical, and hopefully psychological, success.

As it pertains to conventions (not to mention fitness, so I can select any character to portray I like), cosplay will always be my sartorial love; yet I will always watch the other girls, along with my Con cohort and shutterbug Dr. Lucy, and together we will log new ideas in our noodles for better costumes, this year and beyond, at WonderCon, San Diego Comic-Con and on Hallowe'en: Mirana, the Mad Hatter, Maleficent, a steampunk Han Solo? Who knows?

The inimitable Benjamin Franklin pontificated, "Be at war with your voices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man."

Mom asserted, "There will always be someone prettier, taller, wealthier, more educated, more everything than you. That's true for everyone, even Princess Diana. Just be happy with yourself and do the best you can do."

Daddy advised, "Whether you're digging ditches or you're a hospital administrator, give it a hundred percent."

Miss Piggy claimed, "Moi's hair has natural curls. So does my tail."; but, more importantly, "Many people think money is something to be set aside for a rainy day. But honestly, how much money do you really need for a dozen or so hours of inclement weather?"

Well said, Piggy! Live large and keep on truckin', folks!

To quote Larry Daivd, "It's enough already." Sure, it seems fun: these slow, warm, lazy, final days of summer in the sand and surf. Mid-April of the year, I could barely wait to toss off the Hugh Hefner smoking jacket and J. Crew plaid flares. Now, deep into September (standard SoCal heat wave season) I've donned neither real shoes nor actual clothing in months: the de rigueur uniform for April-September around here is a bikini and a Tahitian bark-cloth sarong. As a rule, unless absolutely necessary, like Kevin Dillon's Entourage character Johnny Drama, I do not venture inland April-October; if I really must, I hydrate well. (Legend has it today was 108 in the Inland Empire. No thank you.)

It's too hot to eat anything and my hair has reverted to its natural, Polynesian-frizz state. I blame Dad's Hawaiian genes. Despite copious amounts of Aveda anti-humectant pomade and Kiehl's "deeply restorative" saffron hair oil, all I can bear to do is whip up my wet blanket of locks into a neat, tight, ballerina bun. In the midst of our current, heinous heat wave, I've given up trying to style myself on any level, leaving me fashioned more like a cross between Rebecca De Mornay in Lords of Dogtown and a wet seal. My preferred, vintage mode of Dita Von Teese-meets-American Hustle shall have to wait. I will concede, however, that nighttime around here smells glorious in the summer, despite being too hot to actually sleep: the evening air conflates with the aroma of bonfires, salt air and suntan oil. It smells like a delivery truck of Hawaiian Tropic SPF2 crashed and spilled all over a Yosemite campground.

Sweet smells of coconut or no, I am done. Done with summer. If you follow my blogs, books and bewildering Tweets regularly (Thank you, BTW!), you know well of my linen-thin tolerance for picture-perfect, postcard weather. To be sure, I can do the bikini & martini thing when the situation calls for it; I can do summer with the best of them! It's just not my altogether gig. Oh sure, to quote Alec Baldwin (commenting on Jerry Seinfeld's charmed life, but apropos here), my life does seem to be "one unbroken boulevard of green lights". 'Tis a grand life, no doubt ... but I need some rain, snow and viable change-of-seasons once in a while. I crave a good old-fashioned, Seattle-style, clam chowder-and-Guinness, incessant kind of rain. Besides, sunscreen is bonkers expensive; my sundry fund needs a break.

Colour me whiny, but this is my traditional, late-summer rant. I imagine fellow Spooky Girls, Kat Kinsman (CNN's Eatocracy writer,) and Rebecca Lane (pretty half-Brit, vintage gal and L.A. actress à la Old Hollywood) understand fully. Right now, in their funky noggins they're scheming Hallowe'en costumes, dusting off Bettie Page cap-toe shoes and shaking out vintage, velvet opera capes, just waiting patiently for the right day to wear it all. (Lucky for Ms. Kinsman, she lives in Brooklyn. She should have cool weather very soon.) Thankfully for us California Spooky Girls, October, and Halloweentime at Disneyland, are only a tad further nigh.

When I can, I will dash to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, to assuage my Gothic and autumnal needs. Film and TV like Sleepy Hollow, Midnight in Paris, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Hocus Pocus, Northern Exposure, The X-Files and Charmed keep my psyche in Gomez Addams-style, Burberry velvet blazers, patent leather boots and vintage homburgs. There's also a score of literature and art to keep Moi excited about an East Coast autumn: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Phaedra Weldon, Anne Rice, Edgar Allan Poe, Tonya Hurley, Katherine Howe and, of course, old, Charles Addams comic books.

In case you're feeling a tad sun-stroked yourself, please enjoy my slideshow above: a smattering of delightfully gloomy and wintry imagery for the sunny/Gothic soul. Snaps of rain, dark skies, puppies in sweaters, Vikings in scarves, cozy autumn mode, Jack-o-lanterns, ravens, ghost pirate-ships, drippy candleabra, black-lace parasols and Johnny Depp ... Spooky Girls always like Johnny Depp.

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For those whom recall my original Grand Canyon challenge to Sugar Belle, as well as my brief follow-up post, please enjoy the following, full-length narrative, on the one-year recollection of a most wonderful trek to the depths of the Canyon (and a surprising, Jennifer Aniston sighting) and, naturally, back to the Rim where a much needed, heartily-earned, hour-long, lemongrass shower and subsequent martini awaited.

The dining hall is virtually empty, with the exception of our small crew and Jude, a kind, slightly bohemian fellow working the Phantom Ranch Canteen. On this ghostly quiet, February afternoon, the Ranch is appropriately named. As there are no other guests to tend, Jude chats with us and asks our story; we return the curiosity, and wonder about his story, working at the very bottom of the Grand Canyon. He brings us some of the best beer any of us will ever imbibe, given its Tao-like actualization, and tells us.

"Working below the Rim is like nothing else, anywhere," Jude claims with a smile that upholds the claim. Even though he hikes in and out on his own time, and his own dime, it's a nature-gig, similar to being a lifeguard or snowboard instructor, well worth the physical effort and light pay. For the mellow dude from Phoenix, just getting to be in the Canyon is enough. It may seem simple, working in a restaurant at a national park, but it's not simple by a long shot. In fact, it's phenomenal when one realizes that, of all the humans of the planet, only a small, anthropologically-insignificant handful has actually sipped where we did that day.

Eight-hundred years after Havasupai tribes slept in pit houses at the Canyon's lowest point, and well over one-hundred years before Jude regaled us with tales and ales, John Wesley Powell, a grandfather of 19thCentury American West conservation, camped along the waters of what is today Phantom Ranch and Bright Angel Campground. In 1913 Teddy Roosevelt made his way to this same spot via mule and slept in the same camp where the Havasupai, J.W. Powell and our little group all slept. Today, it is difficult to imagine there hasn't always been this oasis of running water, summertime ranger talks, pampered mules and all the seven-dollar postcards, vegetarian chili and four-dollar cans of beer your heart desires.

Near the turn of the 20thCentury, in a time noted by Lesley Poling-Kempes in her book The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened The West, there were "no ladies west of Dodge City and no women west of Albuquerque". Architect and noted interior designer Mary E.J. Colter was the exception to this sentiment.

Colter worked under the umbrella of hospitality-pioneer Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe Railway, designing a multitude of hotels, train stations and tourist destinations running alongside the railway's Midwest and Southwest routes. The Grand Canyon was socially and financially vital for both the hotelier from London and the Santa Fe Railway. Scores of the prettily-starched, well-mannered, butler-schooled Harvey Girls would make the Canyon their home for months at a time, bringing not only a touch of glamour and finesse to the rugged West, but tourism dollars and word-of-mouth still seen today.

The queen of the Harvey Girls was Colter herself and, in addition to the El Tovar Hotel, Hopi House, Lookout Studio, Hermit’s Rest and the Indian Watchtower, she was commissioned to create cozy lodging on the ancient Canyon floor. Her task was to "fashion a place of food, lodging and comfort against an austere backdrop". Incorporating local materials, the most logical choice, and influenced by local Native American motifs, her signature, architectural style would come to be known as National Park Rustic: a phrasing that immediately evokes Old West comfort and natural relaxation.

Nearly a century later, I sit in one of Colter's many commissions: the Phantom Ranch Canteen. Had we booked earlier, we might have enjoyed one of her small yet comfy cabins. No worries, though. The Canteen is all the indoors we desire this trip. Camping under the stars, on the Canyon floor is an experience not to be underestimated. Who knew there could be so many stars?

To attain this reward, the stars and bar at the bottom of the Canyon, is no simple journey. A 7.3-mile hike of 5,000 vertical feet is physically, psychologically and spiritually demanding. Of course, as with any journey, it all begins with the first step; and that first step better be in good shoes. Under the care of my Ralph Lauren hiking shoes, my feet emerged pretty happy from the Canyon after a total of six days and nearly eighteen miles over rocky, muddy, snowy, steep terrain.

Once the soles are well-protected, one must prepare the soul, best as one can. This is where a naturally cheerful spirit comes in handy. If you're inclined to grouse about the little things in life, the task of hiking the canyon might not fit your temperament. Then again, you might need the Canyon more than most.

Words like magnificent, breathtaking, awesome, surreal and inspiring are bandied about ad nauseam in description of the Grand Canyon, and with good reason. Be warned, even the mightiest of men are brought to a quiver when sitting atop Ooh Ahh Point and peering to the depths below, or viewing the Colorado River for the first time from a switchback on the Kaibab Trail. Being February, the trail transitions without warning, from crunchy snow to gooey mud to dusty clay and back again. If your toes, thighs and lower back can handle a full day of forward pitch and decline, you will be rewarded by nightfall.

Along the way, the legendary Grand Canyon mules are a very special reward. You will bump into the dark-eyed darlings on occasion, maybe even literally if you're laughing with your pal and not paying attention and don’t hear the lead wrangler call out, Mules. Mules. Mules! As chill as Woody Harrelson sitting on a beach in Cabo and sipping a Dos Equis, these grade-A mules do not spook easily. If you're an animal lover, be prepared to squeal each time you see one and earn yourself an eye-roll or two from a wrangler, but not a startle or a peep from the mules. They react to seemingly nothing, move at their own pace and at their own, oft stubborn will. There's plenty of room to hug a cliff as they pass, but keep in mind and watch your behind, the mules only travel one way: up the South Kaibab, down the Bright Angel. Don't get caught getting goosed by a mule.

If you're lucky, as the mules pass, one might pause and nudge you with his muzzle. You'll freeze, afraid of what to do and certain you'll be the cause of the Canyon's next environmental tragedy. Fret not. The wrangler will simply, curtly instruct, "Pet him. He wants a pet." Do so and he'll be on his way. If you're extra lucky, one of those wranglers will be a dead ringer for Jennifer Aniston and you'll do a double-take, wondering, "So this what she does between gigs?" Sadly, by the time you think all this, she's already around a switchback and you can't tell for sure. You'll never be sure and think what a great rumor to start, about her being a mule wrangler at the Grand Canyon.

As the day wanes and the mules and Jennifer Aniston have long passed you by, it becomes necessary to start the mind games and get yourself to your campground. You still have a few miles to go, dark is setting in, the trail is thin of fellow travelers and you're beginning to wonder what it would be like if you had not checked out of the Bright Angel Lodge this morning. You'd still have that great Rim view, but you'd be eating spinach enchiladas and sipping green tea at the restaurant right now, and looking forward to sleeping in your little cabin, in the bed. Like the mules, however, you must trudge forth. As one in our group said, "I'm just walking on the ground. That's what I'm doing today, walking." So we are.

Focus. One foot in front of the other. Focus. Correct walking stick placement, forming a three-point stance on the ground at all times. Think of Gen. George Washington and French Commander Rochambeau. They marched their troops from New York to Virginia 1781. White Plains to Yorktown in shoes of the wrong size, shoes of no size or maybe even no shoes at all, just pieces of leather and cotton tied loosely with rope to the bottom of bare feet. If they could do that, I can do this. Think about the Havasupai walking this trail in bare feet altogether, in the height of summer no less and without any REI water packs. Think of the Trader Joe's Block Red Shiraz at the bottom of your backpack: a box of wine equal to four bottles! (Ah, yes, that's stirring something!) Think of the Starbucks Via packets in your backpack, which will bring your everyday cup of morning brew new meaning when sipping it alongside Bright Angel Creek at sunrise. (Yes, yes! It's working!)

Toward the end of the South Kaibab Trail, just when we were feeling pretty chipper and excited about campground wine and the resting of the bones, the last two miles set in and did their best to break our spirits. This was no longer a walking path; this was a jumping path. Do not let the last two miles win.

Do not think of your knees or your bruised toenails as each jolting, nine-inch step down the final mile, wood-railed steps dug into the trail for the mules, makes you want to toss every piece of hardware you're carrying directly over the next ledge. Do not think about the mountain goat eyeballing you. Do not think about the mountain goat now trotting down the slope directly toward you. Do not think. Run! Do not turn your back on him. Step away from the ledge. Brace yourself! Phew, he turned. He just wanted a different view. So do I. Think about the wine, the coffee, Washington, the Havasupai, the mules and what Jennifer Aniston's next gig might be and eventually, you shall arrive. You have to. There is nowhere else to go.

Think about the silence, the river, the ravens, the deer, the glorious lack of electronic media and the fact that you are one of a mere handful of bipeds fortunate enough to ever experience the pit of the Grand Canyon, a hole on the Earth, half the age of the Earth itself. Think on that, not the screaming pain in the balls of your feet. Also, if you're afraid of heights, do not think about the Kaibab Suspension Bridge coming up, swaying some 65 feet above the Colorado River, depending on the river's changing level. You have to cross the river somehow; this is the only way tonight.

Finally stumbling in on nothing but thankfulness to be alive, we reached Bright Angel Campground well after dark. The downside to arriving at a campground at night is this; it is dark. One cannot see anything, least of all the best site to choose. We blindly fumbled down the campground path until we found an open spot and threw down our packs like they had fleas. Despite trail promises, we were too tired to savor our wine. Granted, it was a wonderful treat, but merely a tasty sleep elixir. By morning though, the sunrise cup of Starbucks Via Italian Roast kept its trail promise to be simply astounding.

After coffee however, we saw the crucial error of our late-night ways. We chose a campsite decidedly not on the creek. Powered by Starbucks and moving like the law was coming for us, we hauled our tents and gear to an open site directly on Bright Angel Creek. It might not seem much difference, those few yards, but it is indeed a world of difference. It is like living at the beach, just across the road from the sand; it's Heavenly, but there's still a row of houses across that road, directly on the sand. That's where you really want to be, but who can afford the taxes?

Once the camp was reestablished, it was time: Phantom Ranch Canteen-time. The canteen is a short walk through the ranch, including a stop on a small bridge to check for fish in the creek and another stop to read a National Register of Historic Places plaque: Trans-Canyon Telephone Line Built in 1935. If anyone deserved a cold can of beer, it was those early Mountain Bell workers. Of course, since they weren't there, we were the next most-deserving.

Grand Canyon Brewery White Water Wheat was the brew of the day. True, my inclination tends toward Guinness and, as a rule, do not generally drink anything from can. Had I known it was an option, I would have preferred the Brewery's Starry Night Stout. Still, at this moment, the light wheat ale is pure perfection. Elsewhere in the canteen sit shelves of board games, Dominoes and cards, waiting patiently for the analog gamer; shelves of books, for purchasing or borrowing, also lie in wait. Even a surprisingly well-stocked sewing kit, in an old, Danish cookie tin, rests dusty and unused on a lower shelf. This proved helpful after purchasing a Phantom Ranch patch, available only at the Canteen. That night, by headlamp-light in my tent, I sewed it onto my ritual, camping, Boy Scouts shirt.

Even better entertainment than an old chess board is the complete lack of entertainment. There are no televisions in the Canteen. There is no electronic gaming. There are no smartphones, laptops or tablets below the Rim; at least there's no use for them. Signals are few to none and batteries die instantly, as if there's a ghost nearby feeding on your power supply. Sure, you could try to check the weather on your device, but it won't change your plans. You could try to check the news, but you don't care. You could try to check your email, but why did you come here in the first place?

I made the grave mistake of bringing a Kindle, thinking I would read loads of Mark Twain. Nope. By the time I plopped onto my sleeping bag at night, I had just enough energy to flip through my analog, Simpsons comic books. Thank goodness for pack-out mule service available at the Canteen. My pink Kindle and twenty-eight more pounds of poorly-planned, unnecessary gear gathered from amongst our crew made its way back up the canyon walls, via mule, and waited for us topside across from Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon National Park Mule Barn.

Looming over our ground-floor serenity, is the niggling realization that we still have to get out of here somehow. Because it's nearly ten miles and 4,500ft up and out, egress is best broken into two days, with an overnight at Indian Gardens. Thinking the first day would be the easier of the two proved wrong. Though it was just under five miles, it was primarily steep, punishing switchbacks. Moreover, on this rare February day, it was bright, sunny and hot. The overnight respite at Indian Gardens proffered little help. Cold and uncomfortable, it was nothing like Bright Angel: no trickling creek, no deer sipping in the streams, no ravens conversing in the trees and certainly no canteen. Indian Gardens is just a place to hang your pack, some hard dirt to sleep upon and fresh water to get you going in the morning. Worse yet, the Rim overhangs your campsite and mocks your every nighttime movement and effort to sleep, reminding you of what awaits you tomorrow.

Happily, the second day out was almost as exhilarating as the day at the Canteen. Marked by two rest houses (1.5-mile and 3-mile), the last leg is nicely split up into psychologically manageable treks. To boot, because it is a common day hike from the South Rim there are far more hikers on the road, offering safety-in-numbers peace-of-mind. Further, knowing we would not only survive, but that hot showers with lemongrass body wash awaited us at the Kachina Lodge and martinis at the El Tovar, we kicked up our paces like a herd of horses headed back to the stables. It is also the day Jennifer Aniston smiled at me, atop her clippy-cloppy mule along the trail, which is apparently what she does in between gigs.

Eventually, we made that final mile, which is steep, brutal and exhausting. Shuffling past friendly Austrian and Japanese tourists at the trailhead, we crossed under the final arch at the South Rim and reached Kolb Studio: former home, studio and business of adventure-photography pioneers and brothers, Emery and Ellsworth. It's a Grand Canyon fixture since 1904 and today serves as a gallery and bookstore. It also serves as a world-famous, scenic lookout, perched precariously on the Rim and with a mind-blowing backdrop. Needless to say, the path at this point is clustered with cameras.

We politely squeezed past large groups of large tourists getting their pictures taken and, once past them, crossed into The Village: a shopping and dining compound encompassed by the park hotels and bordered by the Rim itself. In an instant, we are surrounded by more humans than we have seen in a week. Our noodle-legged shuffles morph into strong struts. There are not suitable words to describe the pride of accomplishment, walking through The Village at that moment amidst the day-trippers, shoppers and shutterbugs. With the satisfied look of the overconfident, unwashed, underfed and freshly-spewed from the mouth of the Earth, we march toward our rooms, showers and, eventually, El Tovar martinis.

Before heading into the lodge, we stand at the Rim for one last look, that day anyway. Walking sticks in hand, 35lb-packs now seemingly weightless, we silently take it all in together. Being part-human, a few stinging tears tried to breach. Being in public, I fought them down successfully. In the truest sense of the word, it is stunning. If I just did that, if I just went down there and clawed my way back up, I can do anything. Really.

At the turn of the 20thC., the Harvey Girls were already legends in their own time. Floating effortlessly and elegantly through the Grand Canyon hotels and restaurants, their stark-white aprons, headbands and bows starched to perfection, the Harvey Girls greeted and cared for guests, top to bottom. That included the bottom of the Canyon. With their fresh smiles, brightly rested eyes and manicured nails, even Phantom Ranch was a respite of rustic luxury amidst the harsh elements. Today, sadly, the Harvey Girls are no more and travel reviews will offer the spectrum of great-to-rude Xanterra service experiences. For our part, Jude was our Harvey Girl of the Phantom Ranch Canteen.

Jude the kindly bohemian lacked only the starched apron. His manner was professional yet affable, like Mark Twain filling in for a friend working Morton's Steakhouse. He could sense when we wanted a ripping good yarn and when we wished to be left to ourselves. The fare was first-rate, with prices to match and beer was cold, which is just what one wants, even in February. Overall, the experience was exactly what one wants on the way to Middle Earth.

In 1903, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt stood at the Rim and grandly stated the following:

I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel, or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.

There are a number of buildings now, a lot of summer cottages, a few hotels and more. To boot, I am pretty certain, Jennifer Aniston is an off-season mule wrangler. I wonder what T.R. might think? In the end, I wish I could sum up my winter expedition better than Lawrence Kasdan in his 1991 film Grand Canyon. I cannot. So, I charge Simon (Danny Glover) to do it for me:

When you sit on the edge of that thing, you realize what a joke we people really are, what big heads we have thinking that what we do is gonna matter all that much, thinking that our time here means didly to those rocks. Just a split second we have been here, the whole lot of us. That's a piece of time so small to even get a name. Those rocks are laughing at me right now, me and my worries. Yeah, it's real humorous, that Grand Canyon. It's laughing at me right now.

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Hazel, Gladys, Dessie, Melvin, Ira and Edgar: all names most notably evoking an elderly relative, correct? What about Madison, Britney, Ashley, Declan, Wyatt and Cody? Too hip, too 2010s zeitgeist? Okay, then how about Nancy, Michele, Shannon, Gregory, Mark and Michael? Like it or not, the hipper your name, the surer its generational adhesion and popular decline; as you age, so will your chic and contempo cognomen. Did Mom & Dad name you in a trend? Enter your name into BabyNameWizard.com's Voyager to check; if you see a Matterhorn-spike, you're a trend, or at least were.

Apropos to Moi, a Jennifer, a recent article on Huffington Post highlights the Matterhorn-spike that was my name. It's my website, my name, so I get to write about me. Hello, Narcissus.

• Between 1965 and 1985, everyone named their daughter Jennifer, and now, no one does. So Jennifer was officially a Name Fad. What this means for all the Jennifers of the world is that while they've enjoyed spending most of their life so far with a cute, hip, young girl name, they are on their way to having a Your Mom's Friend's Name. A few decades after that, Jennifer can look forward to having an Old Lady Name, which happens when a name belongs to lots of old ladies, but no one under 75.

For you, gentle reader, the name Jennifer evokes whom? Aniston, Lawrence, Hudson, Garner, Saunders, Tilly, Grey, Jason Leigh, Devore? In fact, one of the very first, famous Jennifers was Queen Guinevere, the beauteous yet cuckolding wife of King Arthur. Legendary meanings of the pre-Jennifer sobriquets float from "white fairy" to "fair beauty" and "white ghost" (my fave). Today's more popular "Jennifer", a Franco-Norman derivation, finds its classic origins in the Celtic-Cornish language with "Gwenhwyfar"; this eventually morphed into Guinevere. Already considered old-fashioned and Mumsy by the dawn of the 20thC., the name Guinevere itself was dethroned and gave way in popularity to Jennifer, in the 1930s, and remained one of the top girl's names for the lion's share of the past century. Since then, we fair Gwennys have been riding high and happy the wave of Jennidom ... until now.

Fads ebb and flow, but your name is always yours. The test of how much you love your name, like your wedding ring? Do you still love it? Indeed, do you love it more so, as time goes by? Would you change it? Are you embarrassed by its passing fancy? Or, do you flaunt it proudly, happy to share it with the world, regardless of how thoroughly modern or ghetto-fabulous others' may be?

Yours Truly was almost Amy Clementine, Clemmy for short, Mom tells me. I also recall being pea-green with envy, at the age of five, of a school chum named Chandelier. Happily, like my curls,  I have grown into my name and would not change any of it for the world.

We Jennifers, according to HuffPo, are Your Mom's Friend. To boot, as everybody's Mom, Mother Nature, dictates, we will also be Old Ladies one day. Speaking pour Moi, I am my name and whether I am 8, 22, 37 or beyond, life is Camelot, minus the cuckolding, of course; and as the eternal white ghost, I plan to flit through my days, now and into infinitum with a Jennifer name plate on my Sadie Schwinn and Happy Birthday, Jennifer! painted on my cake with pink icing and pink roses.

Take note, Aubrey, Lindsay, Chelsea and Brooklynn with two Ns; be your name, embrace it and love it, no matter what they say when you hit 80. Not only will you be a Your Mom's Friend one day, you will also be an Old Lady. You, too, Ryder, Ryker, Kyler and Axel. Dig it and don't let the kids laugh at you when you're a professor emeritus at UC Santa Barbara or the oldest bartender in Dublin. See you one day in The Summerland, kittens!

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Even the walruses have gone. Summer here in ~sigh~ perennially sunny San Diego is a fait accompli and so commences the greatest, worthiest, am besten time of year: autumn!! Automne, Herbst, Fall, Høst, Autunno ... whatever you may call it, call it verily the loveliest of seasons: time for Pumpkin Spice Latti, tall boots, wool fedoras, fingerless gloves, empty beaches, ghostly harbors, Poe, Agatha Christie, Midsomer Murders, and so much of that which demands a fireplace-warmed and foggy eve in Bar Harbor, Salem, Seattle or Monterey. 'Tis also the time for prepping one's Hallowe'en costume!

Yes, many of you know well, I have a costuming addiction. From tossing on togs for a bike ride (Last week, I pretended I was in Amsterdam, so I donned my plaid, Banana Republic newsboy cap, Heidi skirt and Juicy Couture, cotton halter top to peddle to a fave coffeehouse. Serious cyclists always strike me as so tense and uncomfortable as they whizz past; I much prefer cruisin' in my Miss Marple shoes and bobby sox.) to deciding what to wear to a fantasy football party (Yes, I went to a footballesque gathering ... sort of proto-autumnal. Plus, there were Bloody Marys.) to selecting just the right vestments for an airport pick-up (depends on the airport), I just plain ol' enjoy the art of the ensemble. Naturally, this culminates each year with the Hallowe'en selection ... this year, I'm flat busted for ideas.

Maybe it's because I've been overdoing the holiday for x-number of years; I've been everything. (Hey, that would be a cool, seasonal, Weird Al-style version of Johnny Cash's I've Been Everywhere.) Short of making a bulleted list, which I do love to make, I was all the generics, as a child: black cat, bunny rabbit, witch, pumpkin (as an infant) etc. Later on, costumes ranged from saloon girls to Civil War nurses, 17thC. cavaliers to pirates, Raggedy Ann to Medieval princesses and varied historical and/or Disney figures. As of late, I've tended toward the ladies of Tim Burton: Mrs. Lovett, Mirana the White Queen and such. Now, I'm tapped out, mostly.

I toyed with Sally from Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas; although, I don't know about dying my hair that red for one night, and I find red wigs to always look like bad yarn. Wednesday Addams is a natural, but almost too much so. Friends would say, "Why no costume this year?" Plus, all my dolls are in storage (Yes, I have a sizable doll collection, mostly Barbies.) and I need a baroque doll (which I do have, yet can't get to easily) so I can pop off her head. You know, as in Wednesday's Marie Antoinette doll?

I even pondered Princess Leia in the Gold Bikini: too slutty. (Plus, I can't see that costume anymore without picturing Ross Geller's mom. "Okay, here we go. I'm Jabba's prisoner ... Come on, sweetie. You're like, freaking me out here.") Apropos, I do like the idea of Han Solo (in theory as well as cosplay); I think I can pull it together, minus the holster and Mauser blaster. Of course, if one is going to go SW, one has a moral responsibility. Also, one does not want to fuck with the Rebel Legion and their costuming standards. Really. I can't just sew some red ribbons down my trousers; they have to be Corellian bloodstripes: 1" x 1/4" with 1/8" in between stripes. My holster, blaster and belt have to be correct and I'd better find the proper droid caller to affix or I am in deep bantha poodoo.

I've also considered Jim Morrison; I have the curls, the Concho belt, the chambray shirt and the sunglasses, but no leather pants. I think some years, Napoleon; I have the breeches, boots and could fashion a jacket, but no hat. Additionally, I've always loved the French gendarme uniform; yet, I'd have to mug a cocktail waitress at Paris in Vegas for the gear. I don't know what to do.

Any ideas?

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"All the French I know, I learned from my perfume bottles."  -Miss Piggy

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All I know about being a girl I learned from Miss Piggy. Sure, mix in some stuff I learned from Mom, Scarlett O'Hara, Jane Austen, Wonder Woman, Veronica and Sally Ride. Yet, Piggy passed on to me tenacious lessons of immovable, stalking-love, perfecting the hair-flip, sprinkling one's conversations with French and always being ready for the camera. She also imbued the beauty of a well-timed karate chop. Hiiiiiya!

Though, it was not just Miss Piggy who helped me become the half-woman/half-TV character I am today; every loyal subject of Jim Henson and Muppetdom guided me through infancy, childhood and into a very cheerful and dorky adolescence, wherein my Muppet DNA ran so fiercely and powerfully through my cells that I was immune to the fear, peer pressure and derision experienced by mere, common teenagers. No fear on Sesame Street or The Muppet Show, no fear in "real life". Right?) The Henson clan held my felt hand and steered me straight on course for a ridiculously happy, borderline reality-impaired, adulthood.

~insert Kermit's The Muppet Show opening cheer, skinny green arms akimbo~

Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, clearly the brains behind the worldwide DNA infusion (Can you see it? A double-helix of Muppet DNA, all made of felt and spinning, laughing, dancing and dipping glamorously to ballroom music? Yeah, I can see it.), exposed the explosive dangers of the lab to me and, accordingly, I kept away from a hard science major in college. Ditto for the Swedish Chef; I fear the kitchen, and knives, to this day: not to mention human hands. Gonzo urged me to love even poultry; I have been a vegetarian for too many years to count now. Gonzo also enlightened the world that labels are unnecessary. Gonzo was, and still is, a creature of unknown lineage and he rocked it. Lew Zealand illustrated that fish don't need water, just hugs and pets. Beauregard was sweet and chipper, though just a janitor, and with his plaid flannel shirt was Grunge way before Kurt Cobain was. Scooter knew how to focus on a task and how to manage a production with nothing more than a clipboard and a headset, all while sporting that dynamite lime-green satin jacket. Fozzie the Bear. Well, what can one say about Fozzie? Fozzie proved there is no line between comedy and irritation. If a joke doesn't work, extrapolate another from that failed one and keep on trucking until the giant hook comes for you. (Damn, that thing is hard to dodge.)

Every Muppet was born with a quality worthy of academic study. There isn't a bad apple in the barrel and Jim Henson knew that. Even Oscar the Grouch isn't bad; he's just crafted that way. Every creature is worthy, worthier sometimes, than humans of anthropomorphism. Rats love margaritas and moonlight buffets on Caribbean cruises just like everyone else. Cockroaches, shrimp, peas and cauliflower are people, too, and deserve respect. This is where the deepest and best lessons lie. Like any superhero, there is an everymanimal quality with which all mortals can identify. Like Charlie Brown, Spongebob, Bobby Hill, Winnie-the-Pooh or Anderson Cooper, there is a positive, optimistic charm that flows endlessly and makes us say, "Hey, man. No worries. It's all good." Pigs in Space and Veterinary Hospital exhibited humor and gravity, or lack thereof in the former, can go hand-in-hand. They also taught me to listen to bold, narrative voices coming from the skylights. (Was there ever a hotter pig than Link, btw?)

If Piggy, and Mom, taught me a girl can never have too much jewelry and a karate chop is okay if you've been offended, and Gonzo showed me love knows no species and chickens deserve pearls and not to be eaten, and Fozzie proved spirit, grit and determination can get you through even the toughest of crowds, Kermit was the real Sensei. What Kermit endowed in me cannot be spoken, written or shared. Like Yoda, Linus, Mulder, Serious Jerry or Daddy, Kermit imparted wisdom that just, is. Honor, truth, patience, kindness, tenacity and love.

Daddy loves to tell of the day Sesame Street first aired. I was two years old and he would become a child psychologist years later. He plopped me down in front of the television and watched with me as we learned a new letter and a new number with the help of a funny, furry, puppet-type thing that morning. He thought it was the greatest thing since pants. From that day onward, 123 Sesame St. was a daily destination and, like a good American child, I soon craved any and all merchandise associated with anything Jim Henson touched. I still have my Grover hand-Muppet and because of Super Grover, I would never be so afraid of the monster at the end of this book, that I would not continue to the end of the book. Wocka, wocka, wocka!

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If I could say it all better, I would. However, Kid Rock, Sean Penn and director Jameson Stafford have done it far better than anyone with their short film: a PSA titled Americans and originally shot in 2K12, on the real cheap, for FunnyOrDie. Produced as a tongue-in-cheek approach to combating the vapid, uneducated, ignorant, checkbox-stereotyping of political opponents, it serves as a fine, philosophical approach to keeping alive friendly debate and tolerance of opposing Weltanschauung ... regardless of which party you support.

Today's political climate objectively bites; so, I dedicate this to all my dirty, hippie, commie, weed-smokin', vegan, lib friends and my uptight, conservative, dogmatic, hillbilly, moonshinin', red meat-eatin', GOP pals alike ... you know who you are! Rock on, Americans! Embrace thinking differently and share a bit o' booze with a pal on the other side of the aisle!

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'Tis rare I cannot find that which I seek: spiritually, commercially or otherwise. Now, I need help! Thanks to a presumably charming girl with a sense of style close to my heart, I am left without an ability to purchase what are only knownto me as "Cat Face Stockings For You".

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Just a wee summat for the Disneyana geeks: my latest vintage acquisition! 'Tis an authentic, 1957 Disneyland lunchbox complete with mint-condition, Mark Twain Steamboat Thermos, already put to fun and fab use as my Springtime purse! To keep things in perspective, this lunchbox was produced a mere two years after Disneyland's Opening Day on July 17, 1955.

Take a peek at the side-views. Tomorrowland and Frontierland were as Spartan and bare as the Moon and the Wild West themselves. To boot, there are even teepees in Frontierland: long since removed, a no-no due to sensitivity issues. (This Native American gal has no issues with it, BTW, as long as the teepees are accurate to local, Orange County tribes. More Juicy Couture, less raw leather, I believe.)

Fifty-plus years later Disneyland is even more magical and glorious than it must have been Opening Day. Want a wee bit o' the Park's history? My birthday ode to Walt Disney: This Used To Be Alllllll Orange Groves!

Have a SuperCALIfragilisticexpialidocious Day!

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As a very brief follow-up to a previous post, wherein Sugar Belle Gets Served, and to respond to those curious as to whether or not I am indeed alive ... my Winter Grand Canyon adventure is a fait accompli: eight wild miles down the mouth of the great beast and ten arduous miles straight back up said-beast!

Where there are "no ladies west of Dodge City and no women west of Albuquerque", yours truly emerged with tootsies in tact (thanks to my remarkable, pink-and-brown, Ralph Lauren hiking shoes and surprisingly steadfast Bubble Gum-pink polish by Wet 'N Wild), skin refreshed (thanks to my faithful, pink, Dresden VonZipper sunglasses and Rx-grade sunscreen) and my mind clear as crystal (thanks to a respite from most media, all devices and replaced with great convo, the sounds of nature and some analog Simpsons comic books).

Fret not though, friends. A detailed, Mark Twain-styled, Peter Mayle-inspired, Bill Bryson-worthy, Jenny-length recounting of my Western episode, plus glorious slideshow, shall post soon, after my mind and body doth recover. It may take a while, though; for, besides scribing my Grand Canyon post, I am also prepping for WonderCon and, as of last week, am still coming to grips with Julian Fellowes' cruel decision to dispense with our dear Matthew Crawley of Downton Abbey. Why, Julian, why?!

Until then, just FYI, life below the Rim was life-changing. More to come ...

An open Christmas greeting to Nordstrom, in Haiku form:

Grand Dame of the North

Nordstrom brings festive Christmas

Thank you, Seattle!

Yeah, yeah, I know. "Shouldn't you be working on Savannah Book IV?" Yes, I should. However, like Ken Burns or Anthony Weiner, when something strikes my fancy, I attend to it. Last week it was the need for a shiny pair of red heels for the Holidays. Ca-caw! Ca-caw! (Done, BTW. Thank you, Jessica Simpson and Cap't. Bloodstone!) This week, it's Christmas shopping for others ... and a nice little harlot dress to go with those Jessica Simpsons for a Christmas partay!

As it pertains to reading, writing and even TV & film, I'm always in the mood for a good mystery, usually British and hopefully Victorian. Of course, in a video interview about The Darlings of Orange County with fellow author Natalie Wright, I admitted my brain doesn't seem to be wired for mystery writing; I have to watch the same episode of Poirot or Midsomer Murders over and over to recall who dunnit. Although I do know Maggie shot Mr. Burns. Ergo, I feel the need to challenge myself and do just that, write a mystery.

So, I've started a little something. It's still mise-en-scène in Colonial Williamsburg, but just a bit different. Want to see it? It's just page one, but here it goes!

Excerpt from Old Dead White Guys: The Colonial Williamsburg Murders (working title) by Jennifer Susannah Devore

“How many times a year do you see a dead colonial?” Agent Bruce looked up into the blinding January sun, her Ray-Bans doing nothing to block the glare bouncing up under the shades from the January snow that coated the oyster shell driveway.

“Depends which year,” Officer Hillstrand scratched behind his ear as he surveyed the crowd kept at bay by mounted police, a line of four horses standing stoic and still, their riders equally perfectly postured and unfazed by the dozens of cameras, attached to news teams and curious tourists alike, trying desperately to get a clear shot of the freshly deceased through a sizable gap in a series of white partitions placed around the crime scene.

“This is pretty damn bold,” Agent Bruce stood up with an audible groan, bracing both knees as she did so. “Smack dab in our face,” she placed her hands on her hips, her right hand instinctively upon her holster, and swiveled slowly to scan the crowds. “I guess the university dumpsters and the woods below The Green Leafe just weren’t flashy enough,” she snarked.

“This is flashy alright,” Hillstrand cringed as he looked at the body. “Where’s the other damn partition?!” he suddenly yelled. “Get that shit covered up now!” he pointed to the gap which opened slightly onto the Palace Green.

This time of year was actually excellent for a murder. The day was a bitterly cold one, hovering just around twenty-degrees. This was helpful on two fronts to the investigators: cold weather works like a walk-in freezer to preserve a dead body and nobody goes to Colonial Williamsburg in January. The gawkers grew in number, but nothing like the circus this could have been had this happened during the summer; not to mention the body would have been much worse twelve hours into rigor on a ninety-eight-degree Virginia day with ninety per cent humidity. Hillstrand shivered at that thought as he walked around the body to get another view from the backside. As he looked, he rubbed his neck. It was like sitting in the front row at the movies. He’d be happy once they could finally cut down the body. For now, he rubbed the growing crick and lolled his neck back and forth as he pondered the tempered, theatrical rage it took to stage this.

The body hung, dressed in full , British-colonial regalia: woolen knickers, a handsome, yet worn, frockcoat of a rust hue, white stockings and well-trod black clogs. A healthy fellow of about six feet and two-hundred-plus pounds, his sturdy frame swung awkwardly in the morning breeze on the front gates of the Governor’s Palace, one of Colonial Williamsburg’s most popular and photographed landmarks. Facing out toward town and the long Palace Green lawn, his hands were tied behind his back with his canteen straps. He hung by the neck exactly in the middle of the grand wrought iron gates that led into the Palace, where the two halves came together, suspended by his own leather mandolin strap; he was a musician, a strolling balladeer meant to give the living history museum an air of levity, entertainment and authenticity.

His mandolin remained strung to his body, but hung at an odd angle as it was still attached to the strap, securely ringing his neck. He also wore a smaller leather strap around his hips: a thin holster for his tin whistle. In fact, the whistle itself found a more intimate home where it now rested. The whistle had been rammed down his throat; but enough still emerged so that it made a sickening whistle when the winter breeze caressed and swung the body just right.

“Can we get this poor bastard down, yet?” Agent Bruce barked, just as what sounded like an A-sharp pierced the air.

“Just waiting on the M.E. He’s driving in from Richmond. I think he was fishing up there,” Officer Hillstrand offered.

“Fishing? In this kind of cold? Why? What the hell do you fish for in Richmond, anyway? Carp in a fountain?” Bruce, a San Diego native shrugged and pulled her Burberry scarf tighter.

Officer Edgar Hillstrand, himself a Seattle transplant and a passionate fisherman answered authoritatively, “Uh, the Chickahominy River runs up there and today’s the very last day of striped bass season.”

F.B.I. field agent Albie Bruce, who had started to walk away in search of hot coffee, turned back and raised her palms at Hillstrand, silently giving an all too clear, “Big whoop.”

“Well,” Hillstrand mistakenly took this gesture as a request for further information on local fishing, “see, today’s the last day you can fish for striped bass. After today, it’s illegal. Most likely, he’s doing his best to throw a few more hooks while he can,” he smiled, satisfied he’d offered up something pretty valuable.

Bruce didn’t look impressed or pacified and snapped, “I don’t give a crap what today is. I don’t care if it’s the last day to catch a damn mermaid and make her his personal love slave. We got a dead Robin Hood or whatever blowing in the wind here and I want him down. The longer he hangs here, the longer this whole case is compromised.”

Right on cue, the wind blew and the victim’s neck hit a nauseating C-minor. Bruce winced and looked at her victim. With a spark of pity for the method of demise, appropriate sorrow for the family members whom had yet to see the crime scene and a healthy bit of professional admiration for the killer’s attention to irony and detail, she shook her head and wondered why a grown man would dress up like Peter Pan, or whomever he was supposed to be, and run about with a bunch of other grown-up fools singing and strumming all over this overpriced, colonial Wally World?

She turned away from the body, then after a glance at an attentive Hillstrand whom was clearly awaiting instruction or query, watched as a couple of local law enforcement officers, bass fishermen she mused, finally secured the gap in the partition. She could hear audible disappointment from the Palace Green crowd and, disgusted, taught the oyster shell path a lesson as she crunched it mercilessly beneath her navy, Ralph Lauren, work pumps. She left the body and headed toward the temporary command center that was set up in the courtyard. She refilled her stainless steel coffee Thermos from one of the two large, metal coffee pots on a folding table. She splashed a dash of half-and-half inside, turning it the shade of Beyonce, screwed on the top, shook it, then unscrewed the top and filled the Thermos lid with steaming, bland comfort.

“First Colony coffee,” she scrunched her face in revulsion at the Virginia brew as she took a hearty yet vile gulp. “What a bunch of crap. Why can't I  get any damn Peet's in this town?”

As always, all material copyrighted and not permissible for copying, for commercial or private use. Cheers!

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Mr. Snowman has been patient, all the autumn through.

Now he’s ready to vogue and pose and preen,

To oversee your snow angels, powder fights and frolics.

Pine boughs and incense, cinnamon and peppermint.

Sugar cookies and gingerbread, snickerdoodles and milk.

Pfeffernüsse and Gewurztraminer, spice cookies and mulled wine,

Of all the holiday making, the baking and cooking call us home best.

Fairy lights glitter and dance in the fireplace glow,

As they hug the tree and adulate the dearest décor,

That box of precious, priceless family adornments,

Waiting patiently through the year, much as Mr. Snowman.

Presents tied with velvet bows and wreaths wrapped with grapevines,

Garden gnomes with Santa hats and carriage lights ringed with pine,

Welcome all whom enter, those we hold dear and those we wish to know.

‘Tis Christmastime and no season’s more special with cheer,

Than that which brings us all home at once,

Than that which brings us all love at home.

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In the spirit of the holiday and being the Hallowe'en freak I am, it occurred to Moi it was time to read one of the essentials of Western literature, one of the earliest titles ever printed, a book, at the height of its popularity, outsold only by The Bible. Whilst I knew well of this tome and do ever so enjoy speaking its mellifluous name, I had not ever read The Malleus Maleficarum. "What, pray tell, is the Malia Whatch-a-ma-callit?, you may ponder. Well, 'tis really more of a Witch-a-ma-callit. Ha!

No laughing matter when it was written by Heinrich Kramer & James Sprenger and first published in 1486, it served as a guidebook and reference source for the Christian community, church leaders, nosy neighbors, municipal courts and the official Inquisitors of the Inquisition. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

The Malleus Maleficarum was written as a guide to seeking, identifying and prosecuting, thus vanquishing and dispatching of, witches. Didn't believe in witches? No worries, disbelief itself was at best heresy, at worst a sign of a witch. Being a redhead (Well, we all know my feelings on those Redheads! Ha!), having moles or birthmarks (Oft sought by town elders, always male, upon the nude bodies, usually female, of suspected witches for hours and hours of probing, poking and pinching.), possessing a quiet nature, possessing a rambunctious nature or cultivating a belief in the burgeoning fields of science were all excellent, possible signs of a witch. I highly suspect Gladys Kravitz, beauteous and spirited Samantha Stevens' crotchety old neighbor on Bewitched, had a copy on her windowsill. Something other than Heaven help you if you were found guilty.

Whilst the final, waning days of the witch trials peaked here in America with our very own Salem Witch Trials in 1692, the two and a half centuries previous ran Amok, amok, amok! across Europe with figures, dazzlingly varied but horrific even on the lightest-end, numbering 600K - 9Million men, women and children burned alive, drowned, stoned, hanged or tortured to death as witches. With too many specifications to sift through, sometimes the Inquisitors could simply rely on the time-tested generalizations of those "who did not fit within the contemporary view of pieous Christians", "old", "Jewish", "gypsy", "outcast" or the old standby, "a woman".

With such a verifiable and terrible history of inhumanity around which to wrap our modern brains, all one can do four-hundred-plus years later is make a joke or two, produce quirky films about the period (Hocus Pocus, for one, rocks!) or, like yours truly, travel to Salem, Mass. to celebrate Hallowe'en, dress up like Abby Sciuto or Bellatrix Lestrange , stay in the Hawthorne Hotel and blog about it all in November! (I could also work it into a future Savannah of Williamsburg title: maybe a 1600s prequel to the series?)

As a good friend stated sagely upon learning My Viking and I were headed to Salem with the Parental Units for the holiday: Salem Witch Trials? Oh, yeah? Might as well capitalize on that shit, right? True dat, pal.

On the jokey side of this vile and embarrassing era of Western civilization, I came across this "review" of The Malleus Maleficarum on Goodreads. It was such an out-of-the-box review, I couldn't believe Moi didn't write it first. Damn. Oh well, credit where credit is due, I had to share!

A Review by R:

"Why is your son dressed like a pilgrim?"

"Oh, it's a phase he's going through."

"Why is he piling up all that wood?"

"Oh, it's a...a phase. We're pretty certain it's a phase. You know kids, ha-ha."

"Ha-ha. Why is he tying your youngest, his brother, to a pole? And...a gasoline can? Matches??! Is that a phase, too?"

"No. Witches. You can't suffer them to live."

"I suppose you're right. You can't."

"No. You really can't."

"For a second there..."

"Yeah, I know. But, no. Witch. Well, warlock, to get technical about it."

"Your youngest, though..."

"Yes, I...I know. Don't think it didn't surprise me."

"Thank God your oldest is going through that phase."

"Tell me about it. Saves me the job, you know."

"Ha-ha!"

"Ha-ha! Ha!"

Review by R, just R. Head on over to Goodreads and give his review, your review!

By the by, as I read R's review, I instantly envisioned the scene with very specific actors: Tina Fey as Talbot's cardigan-donned Mom, those off-putting, strange little Children of the Corn twins on "Everybody Loves Raymond" and Steve Martin as the casually well-dressed, Brooks Brothers-sporting neighbor across the Marblehead, autumn leaf-laden, stone fence. Who did you envision? Tell R!

Happy Hallowe'en, all!

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Because you know j'adore mes Barbies as much as j'adore Hallowe'en, voila! The first in a series of Hallowe'en Barbies! Haunted Beauty Ghost Barbie by designer Bill Greening. Oh, mais oui, SVP!

Now, as the other Holidays are fast-approaching and my long sought-after, annual, Christmas list is currently brewing amidst zee leetle grey zells ... ~ahem~

Dear Sandy Claws,

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Me: What? You're nuts! Everyone knows about Disneyland at Halloween!

My Viking: No, they don't. Not everybody goes to Disneyland once a week.

Me: Okay, still. Everybody knows about The Haunted Mansion at Halloween!

My Viking: No, they don't. Hey, maybe that should be your next blog post.

A recent discourse of somewhat heated debate, the suggestion indeed made sense. I've been on a perpetual Disney mission since I could talk, so why not entreat anyone I can to experience the magnificent transformation of The Happiest Place on Earth into The Spookiest Place on Earth: Disneyland's Halloween Time?!

I write specifically of the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. The entire park gets a bedeviling, magical, spooky, pumpkin-bedecked makeover. Nyquil trip-worthy, giant Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy Jack O'Lanterns greet you at the main gate and welcome you into a fall fantasy. 'Tis best to go at night. It is still a tad warm here in sunny California to achieve a true autumnal glow, not counting that glow which comes from insisting on wearing a newsboy cap, silk breeches and woolen stripey stockings to the Park. October 1st temp this year? 100 degrees in Anaheim! Of course, maybe that's why we SoCal Disney dorks love Halloween Time so much. Disney is fantasy, after all. Weather fantasy is a beautiful thing. You know my thoughts on too much summer!

From Main Street's straw-adorned gas lampposts to Space Mountain's surprisingly heart-stopping Ghost Galaxy (I screamed with such true terror, without the ability to ever catch my breath in between banshee calls, I exited with a monster headache and a shredded, sore throat. Gnarly, awesome fun!), everything is infused with an orange-and-gold, haystacks-and-scarecrows, SpiderCider n' pumpkin muffin kind of elan. Even the popcorn boxes are anew with Gothic imagery. You'll find ghostly and spooky, seasonal offerings from Jack O'Lantern lollipop cakes at the Jolly Holiday Bakery Café on Main Street, to Jack Skellington hoodies and studded belts throughout New Orleans Square.

The Haunted Mansion, above all, receives a dressing up one simply must see in person. Whilst divine and inspiring on its most average day, the manse brings new awe to the darkly-humoured and sartorially gothic flutterbys whom tend to use the manor less as an amusement park ride and more as an interior design sketchbook. September through January, the Mansion looks like the aftermath of a Tim Burton Army's coup d'etat. Using "The Nightmare Before Christmas" as its seasonal overlay, the neoclassical Victorian estate recounts the tale of pauvre Jack Skellington and his empirical quest to understand himself and his raison d'etre. 'Tis a Samhain switch that would make even Kafka proud: creepy crawlies, existential confusion, brooding philosophes and all. The chateau has been overtaken and rechristened Haunted Mansion Holiday here in Anna's House (Anaheim) and Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare at Tokyo Disneyland for my Japanese pals, Yoshiko, Akiko and Aii. Konnichiwa, guys!

Jack and Sally, Zero, the mayor of Hallowe'en Town and his loyal citizens, evil Oogie Boogie and his miniature minions Lock, Shock and Barrel and, of course, Sandy Claws have made the palace their own. Doom Buggies carry Nightmare devotees whom will not only spy favourite replications and vignettes from the holiday mainstay film, but whom will search over and over, enduring sadistically long and serpentine lines to get inside, for details and surprises hidden nicely in plain sight for the more obsessive fans. (Moi? I found a creepy Christmas cadeau laid out and tagged For: Jennifer!) Haven't had a chance to get inside, yet? No worries. Allow Moi to offer a wee Holiday Haunted Mansion slideshow!

Apropos to those devilish lines, there are plenty of visual stimuli outside the Neoclassical Italianate dwelling to keep one's creative centers electrified as you shuffle forward at an imperceptible speed: impaled Jack O'Lanterns on an ivy-laden hillside, scores of flickering candles, skull-festooned, black-ribboned Christmas wreaths and a plethora of tombstones, cemetery statuary and goofy epitaph puns. (Crave an archivist's details about the original architectural impetus for the manse: the 1803 Shipley-Lydecker House in Baltimore? Voila ... Disneyland Nomenclature.)

Should you be fortunate enough to live near Disneyland and even more fortunate to be an annual passholder, get thee to The Spookiest Place on Earth forthwith. Plan on long lines, especially at Space Mountain's Ghost Galaxy and The Haunted Mansion, buy some popcorn to kill time and take some pictures whilst you wait. I do! Pirates of the Caribbean is usually a pretty mellow wait and though it's not got a Hallowe'en rework, it's still pirates. You have to do pirates for Hallowe'en!

If you're not a passholder, expect a terrifying ticket price into the park. Of course, you can always put that admission toward said-pass and imbue yourself with the heady incense that is Disney all year long. They'll apply the ticket-price to your new pass and for just a minor monthly stipend, Disney will own your ass forev ... I mean, offer you endless entertainment for years to come, plus parking. (Fair warning: If you plan to have a pass for the long term, it is best to renew your pass every year, prior to the expiration date. You can upgrade easily, with a slightly higher, modified, monthly fee; but there are often renewal discounts. Also, you maintain your monthly debits, keeping cost management of the pass pretty regular, minus upgrade costs. If it expires, even by a day, you will be required to buy anew; that means a one-day ticket price/down payment of about $80.00.)

If you do have a pass, besides the useful 10% to 20% dining and merchandise discounts you'll receive, depending on the pass, you'll get $18.00 off most nights to Mickey's Halloween Party, excepting Oct. 30th & 31st. What? You don't know of Mickey's Halloween Party?! It's a special, ticketed event ($54.00-$69.00) throughout the month of October. The park closes early to make way for a fab, private-ish party! You may dress up if you like (within guidelines) and experience a whole new Hallowe'en overlay throughout the place: a spooky, blue, ghostly Mark Twain and Pirate Ship Columbia drift atop the fog-laden Rivers of America; costumed Disney characters pose for pictures; safe and healthy trick-or-treating stations await your little ones; and Halloween Screams Fireworks explode over a multi-hued Sleeping Beauty's Castle! Dates are plentiful, but tickets sell out fast! Learn more here: Mickey's Halloween Party!

Fun fact? Did you know The Haunted Mansion opened on my birthday when I was just a wee, wailing babe? That might explain an existential thing or two!

Hurry back and don't forget to bring your, death certificate. There's always room for one more.

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All slideshow Disneyland photos courtesy of fellow Disney dork, Loren Javier

When the moon glows full and the brisk wind howls strong,

The night for all spirits, faeries and fiends comes alive.

The party is set, the festivities draw near.

Witches, pirates, werewolves and beasts prepare themselves fierce,

For an o’ernight feast and fete, they’ve been awaiting all the year.

Spiced pumpkin lattes, caramel apples, black witchy shoes and stripey socks appear.

Cinnamon, nutmeg and spiders fill the creaks and corners

Of haunted houses and mansions, from Old Salem to the California shores.

Samhain, Hallowe’en, All Hallows’ Eve, Harvest Moon or Mischief Night.

Whatever you may call it, set your senses high.

For amidst the purple, the black, the red and the orange,

The goblins, ghouls, ghosties and gremlins are out and about and waiting for you!

Happy October, Everyone!

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As I have written time and time again, I oft enjoy indulging in self-pity where the proverbial costuming monkey on my back is concerned. True, it's fun to be the Zooey Deschanel "New Girl" of most gatherings, minus the frequent outbursts of song. Hallowe'en, however, is its own beast. I don't mind being the overdressed dork in the Greta Garbo hat at Trader Joe's; I do mind being alone in my cosplay efforts on Hallowe'en night. It's a milder rerun of the high school horror wherein I'm the only one dressed up, except it's worse when six full-grown adults gaze upon you as though they've shared a tub of yoghurt well past its expiration date.

Last year, my Viking declared it unfair for me to be deprived of such fantastic needs and whisked me away to a land where not only will I never be the only one dressed, I just may be the most under-dressed. I knew I was in the right place when three other Bacchants argued over whether or not the spell I was invoking, as my character Bellatrix Lestrange of Harry Potter notoriety, was being pronounced accurately. Fear not, it was resolved: Crucio! the Cruciatus Curse which brings extreme pain and torture. Duh.

For one such as myself, I'm thrilled if someone just knows who I am supposed to be, vaguely. Watching Invader Zim, a tavern wench and a Steampunk vixen debate not the spell itself but the final syllable thereof ... well, it's rare I feel so at home whilst wielding a wand and bodice dirk. I only wish I could use my wand, and dirk for that matter, daily. The wand has an illuminated tip which lights on and off as one swishes it through the air, importuning spells, of course. The dirk is just v cool.

Where is this land o' plenty o' dorks, you wonder? Northern California, of course. Wine country, in fact, and home to the only other costuming freaks I know: my brother-in-law, a.k.a. Captain Maurice Bloodstone or, for last Hallowe'en, Ellis Harwood, Victorian undertaker; and my sister-in-law, a.k.a. , Dr. Lucy Devereaux, cohort of Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel del Coronado.

These are Faire people, as in Renaissance Faire players. Whilst it has been some years since I've attended Faire, like a Montessori education or LSD (so I've read), once you get a little it sticks with you, embeds in your fat cells and you are forever "Faire people". Napa Hallowe'en 2K11, I was surrounded by my own kind and like a guest panda in an established habitat, they shared their bamboo and sake with me and we lolled and rolled around happily until the wee hours of the morning until the zookeepers sent me back to my home base.

As I gleefully snapped shots all night, especially of the two Viking brothers, I kept saying, "Boy, did your mother do a number on you two!", anxious to send her said-photos as we like to give her a hearty laugh, entreat a quizzical glance and a head scratch as often as possible.

Now, in excited anticipation of 2013 Hallowe'en activities, I begin the annual, autumnal obsession of What to Wear? I need two costumes this year: one for a family trip to Salem, MA and a stay at the famed Hawthorne Hotel; one for another Wine Country bash. Bellatrix might work nicely for Salem: pretty apropos and family-friendly. Yet, for Napa? IDK. I'm toying with Eva, the Indian-captive prostitute-turned-prairie wife from AMC's "Hell on Wheels". After all, I do have my very own Mr. Swede. I'm open to suggestions, too.

As I go through last year's Gallery of Magick Reflections, I think to myself, "Magnolia, boy did your mother do numbers on you!".

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INT./EXT. RANGE ROVER/SEATTLE ROAD, VERY EARLY A.M.

Frasier DRIVING with Martin, Daphne, Niles and Eddie

FRASIER
Niles and I thought this would be quite the soulful replenishment. Sleeping under the stars, cooking on an open fire, communing with Mother Nature, eeking out an existence just as the Snohomish Indians must have done a hundred years ago.

MARTIN
Oh, yeah. I'm sure the chief and his warriors all piled into the Range Rover when the fish counts dropped and toddled over to the next inlet, grabbing some Peet's Coffee on the way.

DAPHNE
What's that thing around your neck, Dr. Crane?

NILES
Oh, this? This, is a turkey whistle.

MARTIN
You mean a turkey call?

NILES

Really, Dad. How simple do you think I am? Why would I want to call a turkey to our campsite?

MARTIN
Support group?

NILES
This is to ward off any wild turkeys lurking near the site. I just blow this ...

Niles BLOWS into the turkey call, much to everyone's irritation.

NILES (continuing)
... and off they scamper. Apparently, they carry rabies and fleas.

MARTIN
Of course. How silly of me. Did the salesman at Bob's Camping World tell you that?

FRASIER
Yes, actually. He was rather helpful. He also warned us about a creature called a night crawler. He said if one bit us we must suck the blood from the wound, then drown the wound and the beast in a cheap merlot.

NILES
Got it right here.

Niles RAISES a bottle.

FRASIER
Well, Niles couldn't bring himself to buy a cheap merlot. But, it is an Arizona wine.

Niles and Frasier laugh heartily.

The above is an excerpt from a spec script I wrote years ago when Frasier was in production. I copied the above-content to make a point: even the prissiest of Pollys can camp! See, I was called out recently by my very dear, very beloved sister-in-law. We'll call her Sugar Belle. Whether or not she recalls, Sugar Belle called me out publicly at a recent, family get-together. She stated very matter-of-factly over a cocktail we call the Speed Freak (Grey Goose and Starbucks White Chocolate Doubleshot) that there was no way I could cut it, camping. Like, real camping and hiking. In fact, as the Speed Freaks multiplied, she challeneged me specifically to a hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I say, "Bring it on, Sugar Belle!" (Just not in triple digit-heat!) I do believe a wager is in order, though. You think about it. I'll wait.

See, I dig camping, hiking, sport and such. Tuolumne Meadows Yosemite is as familiar to me as is South Coast Plaza. Yours truly was even a geology major in college ... for like a second. I then learned I may have to spend a lot of time in grad school researching in the Mojave Desert. Ick. I loathe the sun and I loathe dirty hands. That was the end of that. I ended up studying PoliSci and French. Turned out there was a great market for that! Needless to say, despite the dirt -that's what Swiss hiking gloves are for- Sugar Belle called out the wrong Polly Prissy Pants!

 

 

 

True, I may prefer a National Park to just pitching a tent hither and thither; I like a clean lavvy, cheerful, Disney rangers and smooth, shaded, spacious sites. I like a secluded campsite, but I need it within screaming-distance of other campers in case of bears, serial killers, Bigfoot or hippies. I also prefer a gift shop nearby where I can buy a new piece of amber jewelry to commemorate the trip. I also do not prefer, but require, wine, Guinness, camembert and a baguette, my mini, camping espresso maker and my green, Speckleware demitasses. My camping togs might be old, holey, trashed Ralph Lauren pieces and vintage Boy Scouts shirts; my hiking shoes might be vintage Italian climbing boots. Still, that doesn't mean I can't scale the terrifyingly steep face of Mount Lambert (done that), live on Nature Valley granola bars (peanut butter flavor!) and Cup o' Noodles, take a cat bath or wash my hair utilizing the baby powder-and-braids method for a week.

 

Sugar Belle, it's time for a friendly wager. It's on, Princess Sami!

Update: 10 December 2012

As of this week, the Grand Canyon hike is officially set in stone; although, ironically, it seems Princess Sami has yet to respond to this challenge, verbally, casually, written or otherwise. Though, we have shared more than a few Grey Goose Cape Cods since I first scribed this friendly challenge. I shall, nevertheless, be tromping up and down the Canyon this coming February with my Viking, a fave hippie pal and said-hippie's young microcosms. The Italian, red-laced, hiking boots (as seen above) have yet another adventure at hand! Join us, Sami my love, won't you? I love you, man!!!

 

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Like any junkie worth her weight in used hypodermic needles, I take my news any way I can get it. Anywhere, anytime and from anyone with the goods: Fox News, CNN, WSJ, KFI talk radio (Trustworthy, up-to-the-minute L.A./O.C./CA/national news, plus the likes of Rush Limbaugh, John & Ken, Mo' Kelly, Tim Conway, Jr., The Fabulous Lisa Ann Walter, George Noory and so many more!), BBC News, CNN International, Financial Times, France 24, Daily Show, Rolling Stone and whatever else my gritty nails can scratch up in a train station cafe or a rest stop outside of Richmond. I used to get a serious fix from Chris Matthews. Then, circa 2008 he turned weird, rude, subjective and totally unaware of himself. I still watch on occasion, hoping he'll come back. When I do watch, I think of David Letterman in a 2009 interview with a bearded and seemingly addled Joaquin Phoenix. Letterman ends the interview with, "Joaquin, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight.". Chris, I'm sorry you couldn't be here.

Simply because I occasionally lean to the right on various issues, some friends and fam erroneously presume my news and political intake must come solely from Fox News. As Dwight Schrute would say, "False." To boot, even if it did, Fox News' reporting and anchors -not their primetime, opinion programming- are as viable and objective as anyone's coverage. The fact is, I consider myself to be largely Independent/Libertarian.

So, as of late, across the political media landscape, in the frenzy of RNC and DNC convention coverage, I cannot help but notice a dichotomy, an almost schizophrenic division of Democrats, amongst themselves. I don't mean a philosophical division amidst the party, I mean a Jekyll and Hyde division within core individuals. Fighting their own common sense and arguing with themselves, à la Liz Lemon or Larry David in vicious mirror-fights. Hilarious on 30 Rock and Curb Your Enthusiasm, sad and querulous on national news.

To cite a few:

Former president Bill Clinton backtracked on his praise of Mitt Romney and his qualifications to hold office. First stating, “this is good work…there is no question that the man has been a governor and has a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.” Bubba quickly recanted this. He also "refined" to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, comments about renewing Bush tax cuts and praising private equity companies, including Romney's Bain Capital.

Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, NJ also praised private capital investment, admitting to David Gregory on Meet The Press that attacks on Bain and private equity were "nauseating", made him "uncomfortable" and offended him on a "personal level". He enacted takesies-backsies very quickly via his own YouTube video.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's organic claim on Face the Nation that "We are not better off after four years ..." was walked back forthwith and all too quickly on CNN's Starting Point said, “We are clearly better off as a country ..." Politicians seem to spill their souls on Sunday morning talk shows, only to retract those souls on Monday morning. Sunday nights in D.C. must be tough.

Most glaringly, with steady eyes and an Obi Wan-like mind hold, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed, clear as a bell on audio, “We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.” She then denied having quoted the ambassador, after Oren himself said he argued no such thing. Wasserman Schultz added a double-scoop to her cone of lies and further claimed, with indignity, “I didn’t say he said that. And unfortunately, that comment was reported by a conservative newspaper. Not surprising that they would deliberately misquote me.” The odour of mendacity is strong with this one.

Watch the following videos and tell me what you see. Do you see reality? Or, as Anderson Cooper calls yet another of Wasserman Schultz' misspeaks during an interview about the controversial, convention vote to add "God" and "Jerusalem" to the Democratic party platform, do you see "an alternate universe"?

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It's all so Alice in Wonderland. Such a Mad Hatter's Tea Party! Wild hats and all!

Mad Hatter: Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Alice: Riddles? Now let me see... why is a raven like a writing desk?

Mad Hatter: I beg your pardon?

Alice: Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Mad Hatter: Why is a what?!

March Hare: Careful, she's stark ravin' mad!

Alice: But it's your silly riddle. You just said...

Mad Hatter: Easy, don't get excited!

March Hare: How about a nice cup of tea?

Alice: "Have a cup of tea," indeed! Well I'm sorry, but I just haven't the time!

Ironically, if you do a man-on-the-street segment, I'm willing to bet almost no one will even know who Debbie Wasserman Schultz is, let alone recognize her blatant inability to tell the truth from moment to moment. On the flip side, every single person you ask would know all about Clint Eastwood and his empty chair.

The legendary actor's-actor and director's-director deigned to bring a little theater to a rather stale RNC convention -a standard tenet of classical drama and philosophy, the empty chair as symbolism- and he was not only splattered across every mainstream website, newspaper and broadcast of popular note, but labelled therein as a "kook", "unhinged" and "losing it". Rachel Maddow snarked, "That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen at a political convention in my entire life.” Piers Morgan said Eastwood was "going bonkers" and asked interviewees, "Weren’t you in pain while he was up there?”. Andrea Mitchell, a once-serious and -objective journalist, in serious danger of going the Chris Matthews-way sniped that the speech "was exceedingly strange. It just seemed like a very strange, unscripted moment."

That's because it was unscripted, Mrs. Greenspan. Clint Eastwood is an actor and an improvisor and despite advice from "everyone but the janitor" on what to do, he went his own way and it was brilliant. He wasn't scripted, he didn't have crib notes and he sure as hell didn't use a Teleprompter. I understood his technique; I got the symbolism. It was an eloquent method to dramatize his point. In fact, there were three:

“I had three points I wanted to make,” Eastwood said in his first après-convention interview with Paul Miller of The Carmel Pine Co

ne. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.”

Still, this is how modern Democrats and supposed-, pseudo-journalists fight. Dirty, personal, uninformed and way below the belt. Mental disease, aging and cheap name-calling are the tools they use? It's shameful. NPR called former Democratic Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm's DNC Howard Dean-styled convention speech "high-spirited"; ABC News called it "rousing" and CBS News said "energetic". If Rush Limbaugh calls her an unstable wackadoo, they'll tr

y to run him out of town like, well, the way they try to run Rush Limbaugh out of town on a regular basis.

For that matter, if Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, George Will or Bill O'Reilly called Ms. Longoria "a smart cookie", as Piers Morgan so insultingly did after conducting an interview about, not her upcoming speech, but her dress and shoes at length, well ... I am loathe to think of the misogynist-oriented attacks and repercussions therein.

Whether in vitriol-soaked anger or polite, intellectual discourse, when one waxes negative about a Democrat, specifically those nicely boxed into liberal platform-designated, "minority" groups, the critic is instantly labelled a racist, a misogynist, a sexist, a bigot and so on. Counterpoint: are those individuals flinging slings and arrows at Mr. Eastwood, ageists? That's pretty low: making fun of the elderly.

Eva Longoria, by the way, spoke before Obama, much in the same programming design as Clint Eastwood did before Romney. Remember what she said?

Exactly.

Sick of it all, regardless of whom is saying what? Don't give up altogether. There is another candidate, running as the B Party candidate. Check her out! She's an absolute doll! Yes, we glam!

P.S. Need a little onus probandi and freedom of the press refresher? Voila! Book III of my Savannah of Williamsburg series of historical-fiction! Savannah of Williamsburg: Ben Franklin, Freedom & Freedom of the Press.

Even more fun than the Name Game itself, is playing with someone whom is, as yet, unaware. Funny enough, there's an unspoken etiquette to the game, even to the uninitiated. If the cohort in question becomes slightly confused upon hearing you proffer your alias upon the requisite, " ... and your name?", most will simply shoot a sly, sideways glance and never say a word. My sisters-in-law are exceptionally respectful of this rule. They've heard all my Starbucks names, rarely bat an eye and have never once said, "That's not your name!". Beware, he who calls out the charade! For shame!

My Starbucks names are varied, but few: Lourdes, Hannah, Veronica, Brigitte and, one time, Saffron. Lourdes is my standard. Hannah and Lucy were de rigueur for my sister-in-law and Moi at Comic-Con this summer. Occasionally, I'll go with Veronica, mostly at Orange County locations. Initially, I adopted Veronica in an effort to promote my latest novel The Darlings of Orange County. My bright idea?  All my friends and fam in the book should use their character names as their Starbucks names. "Lorelei" tried once, but got all nervous, stammered, then just blurted out her own name. "Ryan" did it a few times, to amuse me and "Pardo" seems to have chickened out altogether after getting all nervous at a La Jolla Starbucks, à la Lorelei. Pardo? Quad shot over ice? Pardo? See how nicely that works, especially at an Encinitas store, where his character resides. I go for café often with Pardo and Ryan; both refuse to amuse me anymore.

My first Starbucks name was Brigitte, which I happily used for nearly a year, until one too many baristas misspelled and/or mispronounced my name. It's bri-ghee-tah. Not Bridget. Brigitte, with the final e pronounced strongly, as in Porsche. (Yes. Please, people, Porsche is a family name, a German name. In German, that trailing e is pronounced, strongly. Not Porsch ... Porsche. I know from firsthand knowledge. I speak German, not as well as French but better than Italian, and can get by adequately. Ist es nicht vertig, meine Hiltrud? Also, mein Vater owned a couple of the great, rumbly beasts. The first one he bought, he accidentally drove in reverse when driving it off the lot, waving goodbye to the sales staff. It's clear where I get my dork genes.)

Lourdes, my go-to go-by, proves difficult for many a barista as well: Lordis, Lotus, Lortus, Loordin, Lorus, Lordus and so on. Still, it's easier than Brigitte. To be fair, a barista in Portland, Maine not only spelled it correctly, but called it out in the proper, French pronunciation: no s. Cheers, Portland!  

There once was a fellow I knew named Pete. Pete was a tall, uberkind, Dutch-type and a veterinarian from Aliso Viejo. He patronized a Starbucks just down the road in Laguna Hills and there, he was known as Pedro and he was not a veterinarian, but a construction worker. He did drive a pick-up truck (large animal vet, by training and education), but was a snazzy dresser and very Norlander-looking. How he pulled it off effectively each morning, I'm not sure.

Now, to be fair, one of the original Name Gamers is my brother-in-law. Zim, we'll call him. Zim has used the name "Lord" for ages. Like Cher or Madonna, it's just Lord. For full disclosure, he is in fact, an English lord of sorts: an occurrence of title which happened well after the Starbucks fun had commenced. Not nearly as romantic, historic or posh as a royal grant given a family ancestor under the auspices of Charles II or some such nonesuch. Yet, not in an altogether different manner than many a nobleman throughout history, he bought his way into a title.

Zim purchased a wee bit o' land yonder and, voila! ... is now Lord Devore, really. He still eats bisquits and gravy like an animal, but he's an English land-holding lord nonetheless. There is probably little effect day-to-day, however whenever he books a Virgin Atlantic or British Airways flight, he can verily tick "Lord" in the Title-dropdown box when entering his name. Now, that might get him early boarding and perchance an upgrade, if space is available. I've always deemed this Lord business of Zim's as a wildly fun divertissement. I very well may follow his lead. I may have been born an Only Child, but not a contessa, and I should have been. I blame my ancestors. Zim, if you're reading, be a doll, give us a link or two. Contessa Devore has a very nice ring indeed. Together, we could rule Christmas.

Why do all this, you ponder? What kind of wackadoo not only makes up a fake name for café, but then writes about it? A writer. Nice to meetcha! I love names, I always have. When I was very wee, preschool-wee, I had a fave doll whom I named Miss Anais Thirinkous Ornistinous. She was Greek, apparently. I had a Hawaiian rag doll Daddy bought me on vacation and I named her Penina Noelani. (Noelani is actually one of my middle names. Hmm. Maybe that's where I get it. Maybe it's innate, as I do have three middle names.) I name my laptops (Farfel, Charlie Brown), my luggage (The Judson T. Welliver Society), my pets have all had middle names (Ichabod Wolfgang Crane, Catrina Tituba, Onyx Treacle, Bella Lugosi, Constanze Wolfy) and, like any good, California girl, I've always named my cars: in order, Gidget, Gromit, Petra Petrovich, Adm. Horatio Jameson, Lord Kilwillie. I even named my Starbucks cards, really: the original is Little Jerry Seinfeld, whilst my Starbucks Gold card is C-3PO.

Now that you know, in case you were one of the uninitiated, will you play the Starbucks Name Game? What will your Starbucks name be? Already play the Name Game? Who is your alias? If you're patronizing, or working at, a SoCal Sbux and hear a barista call out, or perchance you are the barista, "Iced Venti Americano with two pumps of raspberry?" or, in the autumn, "Pumpkin Spice Latte made with soy, no whip?" for Veronica, Lourdes, Hannah, Saffron or maybe even Magnolia, for I sometimes call myself Magnolia, look around ... it just might be Moi!

Tchuss!

P.S. If you are a Darlings of Orange County character, especially when in the O.C. (don't call it that), be a mensch, use your Darlings name pour Moi? That's you Kieran, Ceasar, Chet, Lorelei, Dr. Mandy, Tucker, Sasha, Astrid, Pardo and Sugar Belle. In fact, you don't even need to be a namesake. Feel free to use any of my character names for your Starbucks name! I'd love to hear Pardo, Astrid or Sugar Belle called out one day!

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Prairie purveyor Harriet Oleson, might well turn up her nose at the bottled, dried and otherwise preserved mammalia in the curiosity cabinets of Dr. Watson’s Steampunk Odditorium. Of course, that would be the well-bred, prim, Victorian in Mrs. Oleson: posh country-wife to Nels and mother to the precocious and glorious Nellie Oleson. The sales-savvy, shrewd Mrs. Oleson, the pioneer proprietress of Little House on the Prairie's Oleson's Mercantile, would covet and embrace San Diego's newest emporium of steampunk ephemera. She would see a thriving capitalism, bordered and framed fancifully by ruffles and feathers of gilded, Victorian-era proportions in the mighty powerful, contemporary trend that is Steampunk. A steadily growing interest in Victorian-tech and word-of-mouth about this beachside bazaar are both running at locomotive speed, headed straight for each other and powering Dr. Watson's, and its formidable owner, straight into hogsheads full of 21st C. gold nuggets and peer popularity.

Having recently covered San Diego Comic-Con for GoodToBeAGeek.com, I naturally went in costume. It’s what I do, as many of you long-time readers know. Amidst the fervor, chaos and unrelenting joy that is Comic-Con, my cohort and I fielded the same question ad nauseam: “What is steampunk, anyway?” Imagery from Sherlock Holmes to Jules Verne, Wild Wild West to Copper were invoked and, despite the seemingly enthusiastic discussions, most glazed over midway, stole a few snaps and moved along toward less taxing, more easily explained cosplay like Catwoman, Doctor Who, Bender and Duff Man. Whilst overall, steampunk was a rarity, my cosplay partner-in-crime and I found a smattering of, if not small, worthy steampunk folk about the Con. League of Steam, for one: "Victorian-era Monster Hunters Serving All Your Supernatural Elimination Needs Since 1884". (Check back here at Hallowe'en; I shall be posting a League piece during the season!) Still not certain what this damned steampunk is? Voila … a succinct introduction.

During my quest for further sartorial inspiration in the final weeks before Comic-Con, I ventured up the beach to Dr. Watson's. A personal recommendation plus a bit o’ Bing searching lay the leather-and-mechanical path to whimsy. Mise-en-scène amidst one of San Diego's most eclectic populations -marines via Camp Pendleton, surfers and skaters, tatted rockabillies, Bettie Page wannabes, wealthy property owners, hippies, retirees, vacationers, Real Housewives, the homeless, shadow immigrants and so much more- Oceanside, California is just the fragmented and funky community to welcome this proctor of peculiar paraphernalia.

Dr. Watson's is part-natural history museum, part-western general store and all saloon decor. It is run by one Tracy Scheidel, best described as an AntennaTV-worthy, feisty-yet-soft-hearted protagonist, an amalgam of Gunsmoke's Miss Kitty, Little House on the Prairie's Harriet Oleson and Dukes of Hazzard's Boss Hogg. I'm guessing if she likes you, you're in good shape about this town. Owning a fair swath of property and store-frontage along famed PCH, (Body Piercing by Tracy and About Face Tattoo, to start) Tracy Scheidel is an affable, intriguing and inquisitive conversationalist. Possessing a quality so few have, yet so many covet, hers is a social talent leading the visitor to believe of their utmost importance in her day. What you want, she has. What you need, she’ll attempt to satisfy. What you love, she loves. In another life, she might have been a formidable madam, saloonkeep or politician.

The Odditorium is sentried nicely by a charming, bombilating black-tressed, pale-skinned, rouge-lipped, saloon girl-slash-manageress called Miss Celeste. What you need, she also wants for you and will go to lengths to get it. She will also ask, sincerely, "How did you hear of us?" As eager and positive about the Odditorium and its livelihood as is Madame Tracy, Miss Celeste also maintains the shop's Facebook page, posting photos, articles and upcoming events.

Like a welcoming saloon after days on a lonesome desert ride, Miss Celeste and Madame Scheidel, in this surfside museum-cum-mercantile, amidst the shrunken heads, dried bats, vintage Playboy magazines, leather top hats, feathered baubles and mechanical goggles, will have you nestled nicely on their inviting divan. From there, you can watch a private fashion show, your special girl model striped, Victorian bloomers, Betty Grable-inspired bathing suits, Dita Von Teese-styled tap dance shorts, Sherlock Holmes-worthy plaid trousers and Lonesome Dove-ready cotton chemises. All the while sipping gratis coffee and noshing from an assortment of Little Debbies. Before you know it, just like that oasis saloon, you’ll have happily and easily spent a few hours and a few more dollars. Makes me think a steampunk saloon, along the lines of Old School Vegas, Fremont Street's Golden Gate Hotel & Casino, might not be a bad idea, for Madame's next venture.

Dr. Watson's Steampunk Odditorium, proprietress Tracy Scheidel

421.A South Coast Highway

Oceanside, California 92054

760.757.6628

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Madame Scheidel, may I suggest adding the Hello Kitty Moustache collection? How could you not?

Some are born Geek, some achieve Geekness and others have Geekness thrust upon them. For those of us whom are verily Geek-at-Heart, we shall not be shedding the title as quickly as a West Hollywood hipster sheds his iPad the moment Apple bids him so. Whilst many will claim the title of Geek, as to be Nerd/Dork/Geek/Wonk is très chic, it is a dangerous, double-edged lightsaber ... wait, they're columnar in shape. Anyhoo, we may live blissfully in our own, little biospheres; yet we are easy targets, like a wounded dolphin, or the only kid dressed up like a pilgrim the Wednesday before school lets out for Thanksgiving Weekend.

From sea to nerdy Cameron-submersible sea, forest to dorky Bigfoot forest, Skywalker Ranch and beyond the solar flares, this proudly pale populace has some serious ideas about what is fun and what is not. Summer is here and it can be a tough time for us, what with the sun, the outdoors and the prospect of a proper, dress-up holiday still months away. Never mind all that; we know what makes for real summer fun and with all due respect to the rest of you, to quote The Big Bang Theory's Dr. Sheldon Cooper, "You're having fun wrong."

Summer can be a bit of a free-radical situation for us: left to fend for ourselves amidst the plains and savannas of a deconstructed season, fighting against the harsh summer sun and the expected, traditional, normal outdoor activities of the average, summer reveler. In adult-life, as in school, just because it's summer, doesn't mean the wedgies cease. In such situations, it is only natural to seek the like-minded. When the broad landscape is dotted with the frequently unavoidable herds of roaming, aggressive, beefy, sunny, beachy, geek-squashers it is often necessary for the more fragile, the proverbial 98-pound weaklings, to gather and move in clusters. The sand-kickers can’t get us all if we move as one.

If it is entirely plausible that you could spend a joyful afternoon at Peet's Coffee having a serious debate about whether Han or Greedo shot first, you just might find the following summer alternatives to beach volleyball, backyard BBQs and 5K mud runs great fun indeed. I cannot advise on alternatives in your backyard, but as a Cali Girl, I will gladly walk you through some of my Golden State's finest, oft air-conditioned, cerebral, summer dork attractions.

• San Diego Comic-Con: Certainly a toss-up, as to whether this should take the number one or two spot. In the end, it had to be crowned as supreme. Comic-Con is Mecca for con geeks the world over, even the new breed of geek: the poseur. C-C has become the new Studio 54. Few at the 1970s, iconic, NYC discotheque probably actually loved disco. Today, it's questionable how many Comic-Con attendees even read comic books, let alone have a passion for the medium. Still, decades after Richard Alf et al gifted the Geek World with the original SDCC and after all the poseurs have moved on, when The Big Bang Theory runs its course, the real fans will still faithfully flood the San Diego Convention Center each July, giving the San Diego Fire Marshal four sleepless nights every summer.

• Disneyland: Like Salieri to Mozart or Sean Penn's Emmet Ray to Django Reinhardt, were there no Comic-Con, Disney would clearly reign on this list. If you’re fortunate enough to have an annual passport, chances are good you can’t get enough of Star Tours and its fifty-some possible scenarios, The Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones, a Johnny Depp-frosted Pirates of the Caribbean and browsing ad nauseam the Capodimonte-laden glass shelves of Main Street's Disneyana. We Disney devotees do enjoy the occasional, audible snort of derision at new attractions and additions and love to regale newbies and family first-timers with behind-the-scenes Park trivia (especially those of us whom worked there). Overall, it is our church of sorts and if you don’t like Goths, stay away mid-September through January, for The Nightmare Before Christmas overlay at The Haunted Mansion is really, honestly, to die for, kids.

• Renaissance Pleasure Faire: This one’s the original, yon friends. It's usually over before summer solstice hits, but you'll find plenty of other faires up and down the state. Yet, prithee, this is the Hamlet of Renaissance festivals. Oft simply called "Southern" or "Ren Faire", it’s been around since what feels like Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh were playing footsies behind hogsheads and if you’re well-acquainted with Faire, then you know the tacit rules of conduct: no polyester, no real names, no Victorian Gary Oldmans from Dracula, keep your tongue in character and do not ask us if our costumes are hot. It's almost always 100 degrees and with the exception of our cleavages, we're swathed head-to-toe in leather, velvet, suede and fur. What thinkst thou? Faire is no place for steampunk and there’s also an internal, heated and on-going debate about Captain Jack Sparrow, because he’s a "made-up pirate". Of course, most of the pirate guilds are themselves comprised of made-up pirates. I give you geek.

• Conan: Deserving of a Larry King suspenders & glasses/Arnold sausage snap combo-pantomime, this day trip can’t be beat, even by the Masturbating Bear. Whether you're a lucky local of beautiful downtown Burbank or saving up your game tokens for a Golden State sojourn, a Conan taping is probably the second best taping you can attend in The Valley. Tickets are free, but the online lottery is hit 'n miss. Still, if you can nail a date and don't mind being in Burbank on a weekday, you’ll be better than just about everybody back home on the farm.

• Huntington Library and Gardens: Word nerds, book geeks and art history-snarks, this is your perfect afternoon, except Tuesdays and only from 10:30-4:00 in the summer, 12-4 otherwise. Of course, if you want to miss traffic getting out of the Pasadena-area, you’d best try to be out of the parking lot by 2:30, 3:00 tops. Home to a Gutenberg Bible, an Ellesmere manuscript of The Canterbury Tales, scores of early-Shakespearean papers, Audubon folios and a selection of 18thC. French and English decorative arts that would make Sofia Coppola swoon, the quiet and hidden treasure of L.A. museums is clandestinely tucked away in upscale, residential San Marino, an old money suburb of Pasadena. If you’re drawn to English incunabula, powdered wigs, French Lace roses and think Joshua Reynold's Sarah Siddons as Tragic Muse is just downright hot, then you’d better get going. Traffic will be a total nightmare in about forty minutes.

As a bonus, I must toss in The Hotel del Coronado. Though not a geek-oriented destination in and of itself, unless you’re bonkers for Victorian architectural detail, it is home to our favourite geek ghost, Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of The Hotel del Coronado. What?! You don’t know Miss Hannah Hart? Zowie!, as she would decry! Best get yourself over to GoodToBeAGeek.com and introduce yourself to this sassy and brassy, 1930s, Old Hollywood dame whom finds your casual wardrobe and slack-jawed vernacular a disgrace. Boyz-o! Does she have some opinions about you!

Clearly, because we are Geek, I rest assured many of you will disagree with my list, if only to dispute its hierarchy. Moreover, I expect others will rant and rail over omissions and inclusions. Please, do share @JennyPopCom or @GoodToBeAGeek. Like learning a Hotel Del ghostie girl is as bonkers for Carl Barks comic books as I am, it's always a thrill to learn where more of my own kind roam at will, without threat or fear of a good swirly.

 

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For all of you whom wanted to go but can't make it, either because you were unsuccessful in nicking a badge through the Con's wonky, mad, digital dash for online purchases, or it was just never in the cards for you to get to America's Finest City this summer, I shall be your big eyes and perky ears throughout Geek Mecca.

Directly from the San Diego Convention Center floor I shall be Tweeting and Facebooking only the choicest gossip and sweetest pics: hot Manga girls, celebrity sightings, bonkers cosplay, even that guy who absolutely should not be wearing Spandex. If it's worthy, I shall be covering it for JennyPop.net and GoodtobeaGeek.com., under my pseudonym Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of The Hotel del Coronado.

• 2 Grand Prize Goodie Bags Incl. one official Comic-Con Souvenir Book, autographed by author Jennifer Susannah Devore on her article, That Other Jane: 100 Years of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, Heartbreaker , plus a collection of goodies from random floor vendors as well as some official Comic-Con Schwag  Bag contents. (Note: fewer than twenty writers appear in each year's Souvenir Book. Getting a signed one is a rare treat indeed. Keep yours mint; Jen's getting bigger by the day! Fan-wise, that is.)

• 3 Goody Giveaways per convention day (Goody = one promotional item from random convention floor vendors) I don't even know what these are, yet! I'll be Tweeting them live from the floor. Trade shows and conventions are chock full of awesome tidbits ranging from coffee mugs and comic books to games and anime key chains. Who knows?!

How to win? Easy Peasy! Just Tweet or FB the following during the SDCC dates of July 12th-July15th!

• 2 Grand Prizes:

1. One Facebook Fan: "Like" Savannah of Williamsburg on FB and post a quote from one of Jennifer Devore's Savannah of Williamsburg books. (Don't have a book? Get a free Kindle or Nook sample at Amazon and BN.com. Every quote gets you an entry!)
2. One Twitter Pal: Follow @JennyPopCom and Tweet a short quote from any of Jennifer Devore's Savannah of Williamsburg books.

• Daily Goody Giveaways: Follow @JennyPopCom with a Tweet containing  #SavannahofWilliamsburg and #SDCC, or "Like" Savannah of Williamsburg on Facebook and post a Comic-Con greeting on her wall!

Abyssinia at the Con, cats!

All prizes will be mailed after SDCC 2K12. All winners shall be selected at random from qualified entries. In the event of any dispute whatsoever, I will be the final arbiter of final judgement under any circumstance. There is no cash value. As a condition of entry, entrants are expressly prohibited from making any claims whatsoever. No third party shall bear any responsibility whatsoever in relation to this promotion, including but not limited to syndicates, partners and affiliates. This contest is held solely by jennypop.com. This contest is held solely for fun. Have fun!

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"I still don't get it, Jennifer. What the heck is Steampunk?"

Voila, the de rigueur response from most when hit with a steampunk reference. Nebulous, querulous Steampunk. Briefly? 'Tis an anachronistically-based, alternate-existence, period-shod, fantasy world wherein steam power industry mixes bombastically with the funky, sharp vibes of modern technology ... plus a lot of airships, corsets, leather tophats, octopi (weirdly), 6" granny boots and fingerless gloves. "Quod the quod?", you cry. No worries. It doesn't actually matter. It's just a bit of stylish fun.

Steampunk is a weird and wild wedding of fashion, decor and technology flanked by the bridesmaids of science-fiction and fantasy. It's a mad, mad, mad, topsy-turvy swirl of Victorian-era British Colonialism, the American West, 19thC. Industrial Revolution and NASA. If Charles Dickens, Gail Carriger, Jules Verne, Walt Disney, Dr. Michio Kaku, Edward Gorey and Tim Burton co-recreated a Gilbert & Sullivan musical, you'd have Steampunk, sort of. Lift your opera glasses and have a peek at Xerposa: All Things Steampunk.

For a more intellectual exploration, take a few moments and treat yourself to Science Channel's Prophets of Science Fiction, specifically the Jules Verne episode. Dr. Kaku himself will help guide you through the leaves and pages of Verne's Victorian-futuristic literary themes.

Anyhoo, whilst Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B., Vivienne Westwood, Betsey Johnson and Ralph Lauren have been giving us teases n' tastes of the Victorian-fantasy look for years, Prada, with the help of Gary Oldman, Garrett Hedlund, Jamie Bell and Willem Dafoe, now gives us a four-course, sartorial feast with the Fall/Winter 2012 line of menswear ... steampunk inspired, clearly. After viewing the dapper, magically digital spectacle above, spot a bit o' ladies' steampunk through your spyglass at Clockwork Couture.

Need an altogether visual? Portlandia, as it does with all its targets, spoofs it best: Steampunk Convention. (A little too spot-on!) What's your fave steampunk mode: literature, film, fashion designer, photographer, or artiste otherwise? Share with Moi!

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Inspired by a simple yet beautiful Instagram photo, by fashion and design superstars at Demu Label, I add my own voice, echoing historical scriveners, to the present paradigm of writers, designers and sketch artists everywhere. I declare, "La plume et le papier ne sont pas mort!" The pen and paper are not dead!

Like a garden shed or one's shoe closet, the journal is a storage unit of sorts: a private spot where one gathers, collects and organizes one's thoughts before committing them to the exposure, sunlight and scrutiny of the harsh outside world. Combined in perfect unison and in complementary usage throughout the creative process and stages, the pen, the journal, the lone bits of hotel notepad paper, plus all necessary digital mechanisms can trudge forth as one. Vive le tablet, vive le laptop, but longer vive the pen and the paper! (Waterman pens, especially :D Thanks, Mom!)

Happy Scribbling!

With the exception of Del Mar, bits of L.A. and Laguna Beach on a Saturday night, Southern California is fast becoming a sartorial desert, at least south of Melrose. If it's not a bevy of cookie cutter, polyester, primary colors, Real Housewivesesque maxi dresses and oversized -just plain over- leather, studded handbags, it's a dusty and prosaic, coastal desert landscape speckled with naught but jeans, hoodies, beanies and Old Navy tees. Enough of the desperately casual look already ... especially when I know darn good and well your hobo get-up cost far more than my weird, New Girl ensemble. Just because economic times are in a downturn, doesn't mean you have to look like a Dust Bowl survivor. Then again, they looked pretty good, considering. Heck, Ralph Lauren did an entire spring line around 1930s rural, migrant style. Certainly, my pal, Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the 1930s herself, has a thought or two on the downgrade of American fashion. Big shock, right?

I'm not so stuffy as to head down George Will's "no blue jeans" road:

Today it is silly for Americans whose closest approximation of physical labor consists of  loading their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed for driving steers up the Chisholm Trail to the railhead in Abilene.

True dat, George! I like the unapologetic snob in George Will and I appreciate, if not completely agree with, his further advice:

For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don’t wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

I dig my Bebe jeans, bikini tops, sarongs and tattered espadrilles and played, Justin Timberlake dancer fedoras; but I get his frustration, even if it is a bit stiff. It's a reaction to a national theater of drudgery. Does everyone have to look like they're forever taking a break from cleaning their garage?

It's not tough, folks. Pulling on a skirt or a stylish blouse is as easy as pulling on those Kohl's stretch pants or Wal-Mart tee. Heels are easier, in fact, to slip on than tennies. You don't have to have crazy cabbage in the bank to dress up a bit, either. Recession has nothing to do with it; thrift stores are amazing places to scoop up an entire season's gear for less than a month's worth of Americanos. Even better if you're in an area where the hand-me-downs started out at Neiman Marcus, Anthropologie and Barney's. Go, Moi! Plus, eBay gives you a chance to be green a bit by recycling already produced clothing and it's a bonkers vintage marketplace! Yesterday, I was wearing Gucci sunglasses from Israel, a vintage dress from some island off Florida and my newest eBay find: a pair of patent leather Bebe slides I've dubbed my DitaCorsetFeet.

Mix it up, use your imagi-naaation. Toss a vintage, Maggie the Cat slip over those jeans or pair that frowsy tee with a pair of plaid, city shorts. Dolling up, even a little, is a fab way to whisper, "I respect you." to those throughout your day, that simply being around them is special enough to make an effort. It's also a fab way to grab a little self-respect. Now, there is still a handful of folk whom know how to don the goods: Dita Von Teese, Gwen Stefani, Donny Deutsch and Zooey Deschanel to start. Then, the Europeans ...

University professors. We love them, we loathe them: the personal stories, the idiosyncrasies, the elbow patches, the tenure, the old corduroys with rubber bands around the ankle, the power to crush souls and foster dreams, the tattered, Indiana Jones briefcases, the sit down bicycles with the tall orange flag. They have a cache about them, cushioned and propped up by years of extended study, education and a narrow, selective slice of exposure behind them. Oft so myopic in their scope, they can serve as one's personal guru, the know-all and be-all of Micronesian anthropology, nitrate film preservation or marine invertebrates; or, they can be the guy who has no idea who The Bluth Family is, who the Kia Hamsters are or the fact that the Haunted Mansion switches to a Nightmare Before Christmas overlay at Hallowe'en. Sad, really.

No worries for these citizens of the quad; they have the benefit of rarely, if ever, being told they're wrong. Similar to the Green Blazer of Augusta, university professors, even the lowly associate professors, are bequeathed the Cloak of Pomposity: a golden shroud of turgidity that protects the wearer from the slings and arrows of correction and opposing viewpoints. College offers great opportunity for intelligent, sharing discourse and confidence building that gives you a priceless carriage and posture of character that will serve you through life. It can also beat you over the head with a sock full of condescension and feelings of inadequacy, especially if you're a nervous and shy sixteen-year old doing her best just to find the right classrooms and fight all her instincts to hide in the library until graduation. Walt Disney said, "With every laugh, there should be a tear." Professors dole out both with great efficiency.

Be they wizards of political science, studio arts, cultural anthropolgy, graduate psychology, French architecture or, Heaven help you, English lit or Italian film theory, they can tell you the sky is plaid with a imperious certainty that leaves no room for debate and a strong desire to switch to STEM studies: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Sure, those can be some of the most brazen and haughty of all species of professor; but numbers and science don't lie, usually can't be fudged and don't take kindly to touchy-feely, social interpretation. If it is, then it is; if it ain't, then it ain't.

Don't mistake me, I love the college professor-as-animal. Dear Old Dad spent more than a few years teaching undergrad and graduate psychology at Chapman University, University of LaVerne and University of Miami: student teacher there, I believe. Note to all freshmen, he loathed you most of all. "Always with an excuse," he'd say. "Hey, Dr. G, I'm like, so tired 'cause of last night.", or, "I have midterms for all my classes this week. Could I maybe, like, take yours later?" Charmers one and all, each more brilliant than the last. As kind, supportive and helpful as he and his elbow patches were, and are, he was also rarely wrong, and still is. Proffer an opposing political view? He'll smile, pat me on the head and say, "Where did I go wrong?"

Case in point wherein not all professors are always correct. My husband, many of you know him as the Viking, endured a veritable bumper crop of the cocksure whilst pursuing both his B.A. in Radio, TV and Film and his M.F.A. in Film and Television Production. No Flashbacks was a strict tenet of one screenwriting professor, a fellow whom had had some success writing for Little House on the Prairie. "Contrived, bad writing," according to Dr. D, was the hallmark of the flashback sequence. Years later, it's still one of the silliest rules of media writing either of us have ever encountered. To date, it brings us regular joy and laughter as we watch countless films and television productions which generously employ flashbacks. Thank you, Dr. D, for years of recurring and evergreen, hearty chuckles.

One final thought: pondering going to your fave prof with an idea that will change the world? You have the next gene splicer, the next data scraper, the next drive-through cataract eraser? You might want to fund your venture privately and then apply for that patent yourself. Depending on the institution, products and inventions, including intellectual property, nurtured under the auspices of a university staff and resources, may very well become property of the school in question. How do you think universities end up with so many patents? (Check with your own family attorney. This is not legal advise and I am not an attorney. I do know a bunch of good lawyer and judge jokes, though.) In the words of Donald Trump, Trust Your Instincts. Want an example? I have one. Wanna see it? Here it goes.

Picture it. Orange County, California. 1988. A young, energetic, tow-headed undergrad approaches his Communications Law professor wit

h an idea that would time shift television. The idea? Pre-record to an external hard drive everything coming into a television; play TV off the hard drive and skip the commercials. The would-be adviser in question claimed succinctly and with a sureness only a uni prof could posses, "They would never let that happen." Today, They call it Tivo. Trust your instincts.

Notably Flashback-based Films

Amadeus

Interview with the Vampire

Hugo

The Hangover

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

My Last Five Girlfriends

Riding in Cars with Boys

Hannah and Her Sisters

Forrest Gump

Slumdog Millionaire

Titanic

Moulin Rouge!

127 Hours

Ditto for TV

Doctor Who

How I Met Your Mother

Lost

Once Upon a Time

Family Guy

Poirot

Highlander

Clearly, there are scads of others fine, and poor, examples: vintage as well as contemporary. Hit me back with your fave flashbacks!

Looking for more film and TV talk from Moi? From Cecil B. DeMille to Bob's Burgers, I dig it and love to write about it. Hop on the H-town Celluloid Express and head to JennyPop's Film and TV Review tab!

So, it was a road trip of rugged proportions. Dr. Lucy, her pet octopus Onslow, my Little Lindy and I finally made it to see the yeti crabs and the ghost octopi of Antarctica! It took some planning, but natch, any road trip does. As far as those energy miles I’d saved up, this trip was a doozy. Sorry, Dr. Harvey & Hildy, your little girl ain’t headed home to Beantown this Christmas. I’m stuck at The Del for a while now. Energy spent or no, our Jules Verne trip into the deep absurd was well worth being pinned here for a while. No worries, though; been to the Hotel del Coronado lately? Not a bad place to spend eternity, especially the Resort Suites, Wheat!

As far as the trip down south, try spending two weeks under the sea at some six miles down. Sure, the sea vents are warm. Yet, I think I’ve said it before; when you’re a ghost, you’re always cold. I was just as cold at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean as I am at the hotel pool. The difference in the water is one of speed: water slows us down a bit. There’s also the matter of pressure: 16,000 heady lbs. per sq. inch, if you’re counting. Downright nasty, but in the end just a gnarly headache for we ghosties and worth it for all the curious little creatures we saw down there.

Photo: NOAA

Onslow and Lindy made some friends in the deep and Lucy and I had a cheery old time messing with the “brave” crew of the HMNZS Wellington: a New Zealand tugboat on which we hitched a ride to our final dive spot. Nice folks, but skittish. It’s pretty creepy that far south at sea, even for me. Of course, a little ship haunting kills the time and you’d be shocked at how high a seaman can jump when goosed during a quarterdeck midnight patrol. Ha! Pranks aside, record-depth, deep sea exploration isn’t for everyone. Don’t you mooks try this at home: a sure brodie if you do! Now, if you’re two firecrackers named Richard Branson and James Cameron … what a couple of butter and egg men!

As of late, the adventure-lit of Edgar Rice Burroughs has captured my interest with a pleasant focus. The travel narratives of 19thC. adventurers have forever suited me well: Mark Twain, Richard Henry Dana, Charles Darwin, Henry James and Thomas Jefferson with his 18thC. accounts of Italian and French sojourns. To that end, contemporary travel essayists fill a healthy portion of our nearly 2,000 volume library: Bill Bryson, Peter Mayle, Hunter S. Thompson. Perhaps these travel writers and novelists have fueled my Wanderlust; perhaps I am drawn to them because of said-lust.

I have certainly been intrigued by adventure-lit since I first flipped through a fave and well-dogeared volume of Mom's 1940s  I Married Adventure by Martin and Osa Johnson. Tales of a 1930s power couple, he a photographer and contemporary of Jack London (another childhood fave of mine), she the devoted and steel-spined wife and protective riflewoman, they travelled South America and Africa well before the likes of Margaret Mead, Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall: all ladies whose works were also regular reading material about the house. (Mom was an anthropology major when I was wee and I suppose the lure of travel, questions of man's origins and the eternal quest for social knowledge set in early. Her degree was largely focused on Southeast Asian Studies; but I always thought it was Southy Station Studies, as in people who rode trains in the South. Silly girl.) Natch, I could go on here ad nauseum about all this twaddle, but I must save zee leetle grey zells' work for my current endeavour ... which brings me to the animal-loving Brit in the loin cloth.

Motivated by this year's themes for San Diego Comic-Con -for which I am anxiously awaiting press passes for the purposes of reporting from the convention floor for GoodtobeaGeek.com, as my alter ego/pseudonym Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame- I have dipped my feathered quill and now sit pensively, pondering my submission to the official Souvenir Book, my inky nib aloft and hesitating just inches above my parchment. My theme of choice? The 100th anniversary of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes.

I utilize this casual canvas, similar to my previous post wherein I gathered some Savannah of Williamsburg thoughts -how to formulate my fourth book in this series- as a sounding board to crystallize some free-radical ideas in my noodle. It seems to be working; I feel the gears moving, like one of Dr. Lucia Devereaux's steampunk contraptions sputtering to life. (If you read Hannah, you'll know of Dr. Lucy.) Some of you may know I was published in the 2010 Comic-Con Book: lead story even for the 60th Anniversary of Peanuts segment! My task at hand this time is considerable. These Tarzan geeks are tough competition.

Now, being the weird combination of she whom reveres original fairy tales -Grimm (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel und Gretel), de la Fontaine (The Grasshopper and the Ant, The Tortoise and the Hare), de Ségur (Blondine), etc.- yet also adores the Disney reiterations thereof, my Viking and I ventured to Disneyland to get my noggin revving and skittered amidst the branches of Tarzan's Treehouse in Adventureland. In fact, the attraction used to be the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse and far superior ... to the Tarzan Treehouse, not superior to the Robert Louis Stevenson book. Ha! It was a subtle homage of vintage suitcases, silver hairbrushes and antique china to the durable and genteel, accidental survivalists from the mind of the man from Edinburgh. Happily, some of the props have remained in place.

Once again, merci pour écouter, thanks for listening; I think I have some ideas brewing. I imagine, alongside reading more of Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs, a few more trips through the treehouse may very well be in order.

Update to Post: I did indeed come up with an article for Comic-Con 2012 and it was published in the annual Souivernir Book. Read it here!

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Valentine's Day issue of Skirt! 2009  Photo by Eleise Theuer

Apropos to the fervid and flirty month of Fevrier, the above snap is an excerpt from a St. Valentine's Day issue of Skirt! magazine, featuring yours truly and Monsieur Yours Truly during our sojourn in the Old Dominion. A women's lifestyle publication available nationwide with regional, mostly Southern, emphases, this particular issue of Skirt! highlighted "strong women" -aw, shucks- and I was chosen from amongst a bevy of Virginia lassies, to share a Valentine's musing or two.

By way of introduction, I present to you the chanteuse and lyricist, Miss Jannie Funster, Yellow Rose of Texas. Jannie's tagline? Writing songs and singing for donuts and beer! How do you not like a gal like that?! Songbird Jannie brings to mind, in an instant, the bistro stylings of France's Femme Premiere, Mrs. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, with a little Disney princess tossed in to flavour. Miss Jannie and I became aware of each other one fateful, cyberday when her blog and mine rattled sabers on the subject of Mrs. Cindy McCain. In fact, the clash was sorely mistaken; for it came to be known we both shared an opinion of Miss Cindy and it was a favorable one: It's her beer money ... don't Cindy-hate!

Serendipitously, Miss Jannie and I found each other to be weird and unorthodox free spirits and though we have differing views on music (she-Rolling Stones/Bob Dylan; me-Weezer/Marilyn Manson) and SPAM (she-likes it; me-puke) we both agree having a wine drinking-tree is a fine idea and that pets and husbands make the best friends ever. We also agree yoga and Guinness are equally good for you, museums and book stores are an excellent way to spend a day and that a random row of yellow Mini Coopers is worth stopping to take a snap.

Well, it seems to me the girls are everywhere fun and free spirit is to be found, wherever a life is free of concern, but full of care. They are in Austin, San Diego and Napa: NorCal home to Miss Bonney's girl, the one with the banana seat soul whom gifted me Miss Sadie Schwinn. Though they don't allow bicycles through the hallowed gates of Disneyland, when one is there the banana seat souls cycle down every sparkling inch of Magic Kingdom paths. If you have a banana seat bicycle soul, I urge you to join the odd and fantastical Janniverse. If your soul is not of the banana seat ilk, maybe Jannie and I can help you!

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#summertime #songs #SPAM

First of all, a very special thank you to my dear pal, Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel Del! Since Christmas, I have had limited ability to connect with the outside world. When I have been able to, I've seen that Hannah took excellent care of all my friends and even took a stab at writing some guest-posts. Thank you, Hannah! Of course, she writes of her own spectral adventures at another site: GoodtobeaGeek.com. Her latest is a lovely tribute to Edgar Allen Poe and his secret admirer: Inspector Hannah: The Curious Mysteries of the Poe Toaster & the Antarctic Ghost Octopi

Zowie, babies! I'm Hannah, nice to meetcha!

Well, I, Jennifer Susannah Devore, have returned and for the most part, after reading Hannah's guest-posts, starting with the initial accounts of my mysterious whereabouts titled Meet Miss Hannah Hart, reports were mostly accurate. I have been indisposed and though exact memory escapes me, most of my missing days were spent inside Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland with one overnight, marathon spinning on The Mad Hatter's Tea Cups and a New Year's Eve party to die for inside the Haunted Mansion. Forgive the pun. Lazy writing, I know. Cut me some slack, though. I barely recall where I live or what I do. I think that pirate in the mud with the two pigs slipped something in my grog and I know that Madame Leota gave me some bad Jujubees. By the way, that ballroom bash going on 24/7 in the Haunted Mansion? Man, that bash is bonkers once you're actually in on the party! As Hannah would say, Zowie!

It's a strong lead and we've got the proper authorities on the case. Author, blogger and dorkette Jennifer Susannah Devore, best known for her Savannah of Williamsburg Series of Books and soon-to-be-released novel The Darlings of Orange County, is reported to be lost somewhere on Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. At last report, a longtime resident of Rivers of America, a rather animated mallard named Theo, said he saw a woman of her description head into the Pirates attraction with a Viking and a strawberry blonde of questionable moral fiber, sometime prior to Christmas Day.

No comment

Disney waterfowl and cast members familiar with Jennifer have been searching the ride day and night; thus far, if they are inside, they are blending in remarkably well. Volunteer investigators have been instructed to keep an extra sharp eye around all Captain Jack Sparrow audio animatronic displays. Reports from The Happiest Place on Earth shall continue. Please report any findings or post any possible lead photos from inside Disneyland to Twitter@JennyPopCom.

Meanwhile, Miss Hannah Hart, ghost dame of the Hotel del Coronado is still covering the paranormal lifestyle and travel desk for www.goodtobeageek.com .

Latest report from Pasadena's 2012 Tournament of Roses Parade ... kind of.

For those of us robbed of a snowy holiday season in California, aliens landed last night and planted lei-bedecked Christmas rock-trees to proffer us a tropical holiday ... or, to distract us and divert our attention while they commence colonization.

Psst ... they must be the aliens. It appears they have divined the sculptures in self-portraiture.

Merry Merry to All!

(Hannah Hart here, btw and still looking for Jen ... maybe lost somewhere in Disneyland? For the continuing stooory of moi, Miss Hannah Hart, ghostdame of the Hotel del Coronado, jazz on over to my geek site! There's been a change of my holiday plans; I also intend to check out the Rose Parade this year. Check back at www.goodtobeageek.com.)

Like scribing Christmas, Hanukkah or Thank You cards, or even a Trader Joe's shopping list, birthday greetings can be difficult to jazz up when looking at one after another, crafting unique and heartfelt sentiments. Yes, even within a T.J.'s list, this can be a task. This is not to be taken as a chore, nay; for I adore sending cards, notes and general howdies. (Not to be confused with Gen. Howdy, commander of plush forces at Snoopy Western Town.) It is important to me, however, to send a fervid and friendly message, not just a mere signature.

More whimsical and, depending on whom you ask, more controversial in its history than Paramount, Universal and Warner Bros., the Walt Disney Studios were manageable, cheerful and welcoming. Naturally, there were the de rigueur struggles of any studio going on behind the magic; but it certainly didn’t seem that way to Veronica and Ryan as they were waved through the gates by a smiling guard whom had first scrutinized, then validated their Mickey parking permit.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Disney!

(Wondering what the squirrel reference is in the caption above? Why, Jennifer Susannah Devore's Savannah of Williamsburg series of books!)

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Photo courtesy of Colin Swan

Bon Anniversaire, Buon Compleanno and, most importantly, in the language of the Woody Allen's Woody Allen, director Ingmar Bergman, Grattis på födelsedagen! As the venerable auteur has become almost as much a European filmmaker as a New York filmmaker, I offer birthday greetings representing his claimed homes-away-from home of late: Paris, Venice and Stockholm.

Keeping this post short is a necessity, as I am wont to ramble, gush, babble and adulate ad nauseum given the space. If I do not reign myself in, I shall serve only to embarrass myself as I drool sycophantically on my silk sweater.

Ergo, as heroes go I have an extremely short list. I generally look to myself for inspiration and work diligently to outdo said-self where I can. Still, whether one seeks them or not, one tends to have luminaries. At the risk of offending some not on the list, I have to say my Viking tops the list; after that fall, natch, Daddy and, in no particular order, Bill Gates, Benjamin Franklin, Jim Henson, Walt Disney and, yep, Woody Allen.

Whilst I do hope to jolly up at The Carlyle in Manhattan, where every Monday night Woody Allen & The Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band delight local cats and gators with their sassy, swaying syncopations, thus far I have only seen Mr. Allen once, near New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It was June, so the pavement was hot like melty Velveeta and even though I'd chosen cork wedges for the day, the five-inch heels felt as though they were sticking to the asphalt with each step, like a happy, perky sinosauropteryx oblivious to its coming demise in the Upper East Side Tar Pits. The entire island sagged under a unique kind of humidity that only occurs in summer metropoli, capturing and cooking slowly everything within its concrete ovens. Hindering my movements somewhat, some side streets branching off Fifth Avenue were blocked, clearly a large-scale film shoot in play.

Spying the flimsy, paper, No Parking signs posted up and down a three- or four-block stretch of Fifth Avenue, I noted the standard film permit with all the usual information: dates of shooting, prod. coordinator contact info., NYPD info., permit number, etc. What I also spied immediately was Director: Woody Allen. Fortunately for my dignity, it was too hot to jump and squeal; so I merely nodded to myself and said, "Oh, very cool!" I also saw Title: Untitled. After one reads every biography ever published on the man, every New Yorker piece written by him and viewed most every second of documentary, interview and news report available, one knows he does not name his projects until finished; at least, he does not release the title to the press or public until then. He is very private, which is why even writing this wee salutation is totally anathema to whom he is. Oops. (Thinking back on the date, by the way, I believe they had to have been shooting Melinda and Melinda or Anything Else.)

After clomping down Fifth Avenue for a few blocks, doing my best to raise each step semi-elegantly out of the black oatmeal and hoping to nick a glimpse of the Gilligan-chapeau'd, bespectacled icon, I eventually ended up at The Jewish Museum: beautiful collections, amazing gift shop! Hours later, swamping back down Fifth Avenue, two Jewish charm bead bracelets nestled happily in my pretty, new gift bag, I happened upon a mellow area of the production: few people, one production truck and little movement overall.

They appeared to be shooting B-roll: second unit footage of the neighborhood, background extras, streets, capturing ambient noise, etc. I saw no Woody, no Christina Ricci (if it was Anything Else), no Chloë Sevigny (if it was Melinda and Melinda). Still, it was very cool and as I passed the closed set, open with just enough space to see a production assistant or two and, what I assumed was the second unit director of photography, a nice-looking, slim fellow with a light meter around his neck spied my museum gift bag and, giving me a thumbs up, a cool smile and a hearty chin nod, said, "Thanks for supporting the cause."

Always, man, always. Shalom, brother.