So today I went to the Fireworks capitol of our area, South Pittsburgh, Tennessee.  I visited a fireworks wholesaler for the first time in my life, and let me say that fireworks are a well branded, slick product.  And I’ve got a freelance sorta gig setting up a website for a fireworks retailer.  The purpose of the visit was to take pictures of the product for the online catalog.

So I took a few pictures.  Then found a DVD/CD with all the product pictures on it.  So I probably won’t be using the pictures I took, and really could have saved the trip up there in the first place.  But that’s okay, because I went with a couple of friends and we had a damn good time.

The most disappointing part of the trip?  We went to a wholesaler that packages his own fireworks.  That means no interesting and weird mistranslation by silly underpaid chinese children.  But the American Packaging was still interesting.

Now, I’m going to snark on a few of the product names, but this in no way is snarking on the quality of the product itself.  I’m sure they are great fireworks.  I hope so, and I hope you go to the website and by a elephant dump load of fireworks, since I’m paid on commission of sales.  But you have to look at a few of these names and admit, they are funny.

Take, for example, Exhibit A:

Come on.  Loud and Nasty.  In a plain brown paper wrapper.  Yea, that’s subtle.  No “overtones” there.

Actually, this was our favorite packaging.  It was less…  well, just less.  And kinda intimidating.  There is no good scale in this picture, so you’ll have to take my word for it… it was large.

Now, continuing with the overtones…

yes, Cracker Balls.  Picture framing mine.  Sexual overtone…

Moving right along…

God.  I. Want. This.

Because drinking + fireworks = FUN!

What all the well dressed kids take to school…

Okay, enough fun at a potential client’s expense.  Truthfully, the trip was fun, and the fireworks impressive.  And silly.  And at times a bit naughty.  But overall…  I think I’m gonna like this website.  So make sure to order plenty of them for your new years eve party.  So I can have a happy new year!

Things have been Topsy Turvy!

You may have noticed an increase in posting here.  At least, I hope you have.  I’m secretly (well, not so much anymore) participating in the National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), which means I’m supposed to write a blog post every day this month.  I’m not making a big deal about it, but it has made me think a bit more about the blog and how I use it.

It’s kinda funny, when I wasn’t participating in NaBloPoMo, I’d think of lots of things to write about, but didn’t take the time to write them.  Now that I’m writing every day, I’m finding it harder to find things to write about.  Nature of the beast and all that.

So I’ll just sorta update a few things.  I’ve found it lately really hard to write on my theater blog, Beyond the Boards.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  First, I started the blog and the podcast just days before Mary died.  That has sort of upended my world.  Since her death there have been two award shows (and congrats to the winners) and several shows finishing their run here in town.  Notably was Philip Parker and Josh Olive as Doc and Monster in Frankenstein.  I didn’t get to see it, but heard fantastic things about it.  I also missed Alice in Wonderland, directed by the awesome Sam Marsh.  I’ve never gotten the chance to work with Sam, but think his work is consistently stunning.  His next play is Almost Maine, which has one of my favorite bloggers in it, Sarah Brown.  I’m making a point of NOT missing that one.

But despite the depression and general lack of inspiration, I really need to finish the latest episode of Beyond the Boards and get that blog and podcast into shape.

On another front, a good friend and I have discussed starting a new project that has me pretty excited.  I won’t revel too much, but I think you’ll need to be watching for three geeks and a blog in the news reader of your choice very soon.  It has me a little nervous, one of the “three” will obviously be me.  The other two are both english teachers, and one is also a philosophy and theology teacher. The idea of the blog is that one of us will find something worth writing about, and the other two will respond with a post about that topic.  Sort of a round table of opinions between three dorky guys.  I figure I’ll be routinely ganged up on, but that should make the blog more fun.

I’ve also accepted the position of sound designer for Theatre Huntsville’s May show of To Gillian On Her 37th Birthday.  I’m looking forward to that creative outlet this spring.  And I’m working on a surprise for TH’s Inherit the Wind as well.  More on that next week.

I’m also getting back into the web design project business, hopefully as an attempt to find a little extra cash now that I’m STILL unemployed.  And I need to get the Moohaha website back up and running, or turn Weatherly Manor back into a real site.

So it’s been a month now since Mary died.  No more hiding behind that as an excuse to why I’m not accomplishing anything.  Instead, it’s time to go forward and move ahead.  Get things done.  I’ll let you know how long this new enthusiasm lasts.

Weatherly Manor, Our Haunt

Halloween this year was full of good news and bad news, and I’m not sure which one won out.  On the good news front, we got to set up our haunted house twice, which is our goal each year.  On the bad news front, it rained right up until Halloween morning, meaning we didn’t start setting up till mid-morning on Halloween instead of the night before like we planned.  But with the help of a few friends and family, the house went up in record time so all ended well.

We had fewer visitors this year, but the house across from us had a record showing.  We estimate that somewhere around 350 people went through our house.  That’s slightly down from last year.  The neighbors across the way had 880 counted visitors, a 20% increase over last year.  The kids found fewer houses offering candy this year, but got better candy than last year.  (I know, because I raided their haul.)

Bob.

We had better scares this year.  Jim, my partner in crime, counted 2 pee-talities.  The first group in ran screaming right out the front door.  The screaming sounds of success lasted all night long, and we only made a couple of kids cry.  We even managed to scare two separate people who refused to go inside.

But now, in the post-halloween mess, Jim and I have some hard choices to make.  Do we want to go pro?  Do we want to stay yard and small?  Do we want to toss out the current facade and start fresh?  Keep using the bulky, overworked and rusting metal shelves that we climb all over, or find something new?  Do we set up that hanky tent one more time, or invest in something new and better?

The Moaning Lisa

More importantly, will we actually start early enough to accomplish something this year instead of waiting till the last moment again?

The next year will tell the tale.  A part of me really wants to go pro, and try to build a Haunted House for Huntsville worthy of Greystone Manor in Killan, or Slaughter on Meaghan in Gadsden.  But that initial move toward a pro haunt is scary, costly and riddled with doubt.  What’s the venue?  Insurance?  Employees?  Volunteers?  So much to think about.

Part of me wants to stay yard.  But we’ve pushed “free or cheap” about as far as it can go.  Do we really want to keep zip tying cardboard together?  Do we want to spend 10-15 hours setting up for a 3 hour scare?  I’m just not sure right now.

I’m in the post Halloween blues.  And Lord knows I’ve enough elsewhere to be blue about.  So I’m probably not in the best mind frame to make ANY decision about next Halloween.  So it may be a month or two before we do anything firm.  But these are the dark thoughts running through my Halloweenie mind.

Carol,

I’ll never forget the first time we met.  The look on your face was priceless.  You took in my 6′3″ frame full with 500+ pounds of blubber and folds and just shook your head.  How were you gonna turn that mountain into a baker?

It was 2001 and the play was Christmas Carol.  My part, the baker.  Your part?  Finding me a costume.

You did it.

Then, you did it again a few years later when I became one of three trolls in The Hobbit.

Then you gave me a wonderful gift.  You taught me to sew.  You gave me a skill I still use and showed me how that mysterious machine my grandmother sat at worked.  Now I have my own machine.  And my own people to sew for.  Thank you for that happiness.

We shared something special, you and I.  No, we were never “close.”  Not like that bond you have with so many other theater people.  But we had a shared event, a shared pain and a shared gift.  I’ll never forget your kindness and encouragement when a very small and fragile Sean showed up backstage at The Hobbit, expecting me to take care of him for the rest of his childhood.  You knew what that was like, and you shared your own stories with me.  You touched me with those stories, and your care and affection for the child stuck backstage, unexpectedly.

So Carol, who gave so much to this community and to me and my family, I can only say thanks.  And goodbye.  And godspeed on this, your final journey.  For whatever else may be true, you’ve left us.  Left pain, left sorrow and left us behind.  And as you move on to your new place, I hope the peace you shared with us during life will find it’s way back to us in your death.

Godspeed, sweet lady.  Rest well.  You’ve more than earned it.

Yesterday, Carol Morris passed away.  She was Huntsville’s best costumer and just an all around great lady.  I can’t begin to guess the number of people she put into a costume, made a special dress for, or otherwise took care of at Fantasy Playhouse.  I know times are tough, but if you see a pretty dress… think of Carol.  If you knew her, think of giving a bit to Fantasy in her memory.

I’m not the only one that will be missing her.  While the comments on facebook are growing, here a few links to blogs saying goodbye.  If you know of another, put it in the comments and I’ll add it here.

Sarah Lena says goodbye…

I played a fairy godmother in a show where the costumer.. for whatever reason.. outsourced my costume.  Carol jumped in to make it for me.  We talked about her daughter’s wedding, her new grandbaby, all of the things that she was excited about.  I loved talking to her about her life.  She was just easy and loving.

Year two of the big house was a success, but more important to me the act of Trick or Treating was a success.

It’s no secret to those of you who read my blog regularly that I love Halloween.  That I build crazy stuff to scare people on this great day, and that I perhaps go a bit overboard, building a giant, semi-portable haunted house not once, but twice every year.

This year’s house used last year’s basic construction, but the inside was completely different.  And we scared people, oh yes we did.  But it wasn’t about scaring people that makes me do Halloween.  It’s something else entirely.

It’s all about patriotism.

Now before you click away thinking I’m gonna go all right wing extreme and tell you about my hell house and if you don’t turn away from the evil ways of the left you’ll end up as a permanent exhibit in my house, think again.  This isn’t the flag waving kind of patriotism I’m talking about.  It’s much deeper and more fundamental.

It’s about community and responsibility and shared burden and shared joy.  It’s about a fundamental trust that American can and should share with their neighbors.  And by neighbors, I’m not talking about the guy next to you, but the community at large.

Think about it a minute and you’ll quickly see that there is nothing more trusting in a community than the act of trick or treating.  Here is a planned activity where you take your most prized possession, your children, and send them out into the world on the trust that the ghosts and goblins aren’t real, and that they are safe in the company of strangers.

You send your children, either on their own or from the street, to the doors of often complete strangers.  You expect that the person you do not know will open their door and give your children a small treat that is perfectly safe and mostly harmless (aside from caloric or dental damage) and will then send them away, to go to a new door of a new stranger to repeat the process over again.

And millions of American children did that this past weekend.  Went to strangers doors and got candy or pennies or something else of little worth but representing great fun for the child.

And that, dear readers, is basic American Patriotism.  The community coming together to celebrate a night of fun and foolishness, of helping each other out and being, for a brief moment, a community.

And now, for the dark side of Halloween.  The part I hate.  I hate “Hell Houses” that try to take the haunted out of Halloween and instead “scare” kids and parents alike into a religious belief.  I hate “Fall Festivals” designed to kill Halloween altogether.  Personally, I think Churches that plan so called “Fall Festivals” with the intention of enticing kids away from trick or treating are more than just misguided, they are pulling a great evil on us all.  They are subtly telling us that trick or treating isn’t safe, that such a wonderful act of trust, freedom and community is somehow wrong and should be stopped.  That the ghosts and goblins are real and need to be avoided instead of faced down and overcome.  I could never support a church that attempted to “replace” Halloween.

Now I’m not against parties or festivals in general.  I love our trunk or treat, which has NEVER conflicted with Halloween’s trick or treat.  I love fall festivals that are early enough to end with plenty of time to allow for trick or treating.  And I support the idea of private Halloween parties where the trick or treating is part of the fun.  But the idea that Halloween needs to be replaced is to suggest that America is not a safe place.  That the news has won and there is a child abductor on every street corner and a child molester under every street light.  And that simply isn’t true.

In fact, the chances that something bad happens to a child on Halloween is pretty low.  The scare of the 80’s with razor blades in apples and poison in candy turned out to be false, plants by parents seeking publicity and fame. Halloween is good, clean community fun punctuated with scary masks and fun costumes.  And on one street in Huntsville, Al a ghostly mansion that rises out of the mists of time to swallow children whole.  For about a minute.  Before giving them candy and sending them on their way, bragging that they weren’t scared.  And I’ll never let anyone know that the 12 year old boy that fell to the ground crying this year also wet his pants.  Really, I wont.

I need your help!

The rain is threatening to cancel our haunted house this year, but the latest forcasts show it should be past us by the time the Trick Or Treaters start begging for their candy.  So I need some help from you if I’m to get the house set up in time.

Here’s what I need.  Four people (more is better) willing to take orders and pitch in and work quickly to set up the house.  I need you for 2.5 hours from 3:30 to 6pm on Halloween.  I promise to cut you loose at 6pm so you can make your own parties or take your kids on their annual candy begging tour.  (Or bring the kids over, the neighborhood is awesome for Trick or Treating)

The plan is for Jim and I to work all morning, rain or shine, doing the hard stuff.  We need people to throw at the haunt in the afternoon to do the easy, but time consuming, stuff.  It will involve hanging curtains, hanging plastic, lifting sheets of cardboard and other simple but vital tasks.  And in the end, you’ll get our eternal gratitude and can claim you helped build Huntsville’s best yard haunt.

So pitch in, will ya?  Help a haunter out.

Email me at totalriot13 at mac dot com and let me know you can help.  That goes straight to my phone, and I’ll respond ASAP.  The haunt is set up in south Huntsville near the Wal Mart.

Thanks in advance.

Once again I set up my Haunt.  Due to various things, very little of the structure changed this year.  But the effects and scares… very different.  Plus a few surprise donations by a theater friend resulted in one of the most interesting set ups we’ve ever done.

For the first time, the haunt was set up indoors at the gym at the church.  Building the haunt was an absolute practice in frustration.  Building indoors threw off all sense of proportion.  I had no idea how the final product would end up looking.

We started the build on Friday, with the pre-Halloween event on Saturday.  The first step was to put together the “Dot Room” which is the second part of the haunt.  Trying to figure out some of the things about the tent became a bit of an obsession for a while.  The tent is a regular hexagon with 6 foot sides.  I now know more about the geometry of hexagons than I ever thought I would.

With the tent up, and looking smashing and scary too – don’t you think?, we could move on to the more important parts of the build.

Lunch!  Yum!  Then one more quick trip:

Then we could return to building…

Things picked up once we started putting the facade on the house.  Which is cardboard and stitched together with zip ties.  So that goes up pretty quick.

Nearly finished!

There!  At this point it was just dressing it out to be as scary as possible.  Jim, my partner in halloween crime, took some pictures of the finished house, glowing in the darkness.  When I get them from him I’ll include them here.

Want to see what happens inside?  We’ll be in the neighborhood behind the south parkway Wal Mart this weekend.  Turn left on Bell Road as you go up Hobbs from the Parkway, and you can’t miss us.

So visit, if you dare.

I’m posting this from my new favorite oasis in Huntsville.  Okay, it’s not really new, and it’s actually been my favorite for a while.  I’m at Angel Island Coffee.  And I hang out here most mornings after dropping the kiddo off at school.  Why?  Cause it has great coffee and free wifi and I can surf job sites (and make the occasional blog post) from the comfort of a big leather couch.

And because Angel, the owner, is the perfect business woman, she sees me coming in the store and more often than not has my coffee ready for me at the register by the time I walk up to it.  Yea, that speaks a bit to my own predictability, but also to Angel’s innate sense of people and business.

I don’t buy her more expensive drinks.  I buy her coffee.  Fresh brewed and smelling so heavenly.  Almost always… no always the dark roast.  And its a little peice of heaven.  So she has every reason not to like my cheap spending habits, but she continues to deliver the same wonderful experience every time I visit.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep this up.  My severance from getting laid off runs out in another couple of weeks.  At that point, the $2 for coffee, $10 a week will have to be re-evaluated along with lots of other choices.  Like keeping the phone charged, I’m afraid.  But till then, Angel Island has offered me something more than good coffee at fair prices.

It’s been that place I can go and get away from the swirling storms that are my life.  It really has been my oasis and my refuge in a time of turmoil and I’ve been grateful.  Ask my twitter and facebook friends.  They’re all tired of seeing Angel Island in my morning status updates.

So this is just my personal thank you to the place that has given me so much without doing a thing more than give the city’s best coffee while also giving the best personal service.  Thanks Angel.

Bill Found Some Trash

I got back in the kayak this past weekend, but if you’ll read my Week From Hell post, you’ll see why this one is late.  The Splash for Trash was really a fun event, one worthy of a write up.  So it may be late, but here it goes.

I convinced my buddy Bill into going along with me for this altruistic excuse to paddle down my favorite river.  I don’t really need an excuse, but I had one this time and it was a good one.  The Splash for Trash is an event where a bunch of boats float down the river and collect trash they find along the way.

Bill was a trooper, and went down the river in my Old Town Guide 147 canoe without me.  A youngster named Josh joined him and they made quite the hall.  I took my yak, a Old Town Voyage 10XT, and didn’t collect as much as help out those who had bigger boats in which to toss stuff.  Which was fine by me, since I didn’t want too much junk in my boat.  Bill and Josh got lots of trash in their boat, and eveyone found a bunch of tires.  Tires in the river pisses me off.  There is no excuse for it.  Cans and bottles might be an oversight, or perhaps lazyness.  Some things, like the deck chair we found, might have washed into the river due to recent floods.  But tires?  No, that was a deliberate attempt to pollute.

Our Guide From NACK

We started at highway 72 and floated down to Little Cove Road.  I personally find this stretch of the river my favorite.  You start on a rocky bottom portion of the river, float past 300 foot cliffs and end at the muddy plains.  About mid way through is a cave that is fun to explore.  This time around we had a guide from North Alabama Canoe and Kayak, and I wish I remembered his name.  He was awesome and he knew that cave point better than most.  He showed me a hole in the ground that he’s put kayak’s down and explored an underground lake.  Of course, now I so want to do that as well.

But we did get to climb up into the cave, which was cool.  I’d been to the cave before, but never gone very far into it.  This time we did explore it deeper, and I’m glad for that.  It turns out that the cave is really a switchback, and you climb into it a bit, and just before it gets too dark it flips back and you climb out on top of the entrance.  We didn’t find much trash in it, but we did find a good time with some good people.  Following are a bunch of pictures from the cave exploration.  And we all swear we were looking for trash.  Really.

The tail-enders explore the cave

Bill on top of the cave

Me, at a cave

From the cave, the river goes on down into the plains and there is a high tension power line that crosses at a series of sharp bends.  I call it Three Wire Pass.  The river actually goes under the straight wires three times, and the water flows fairly quickly.  I got there first, and found my way into an eddy so I could turn around and take pictures as these canoes full of trash and tires tried to make the turns.  Okay, so I was hoping someone would lose it and I’d get pictures of them spilling all their trash into the river.  Sue me.  But it didn’t happen.  At least not there.

Bill and Josh shoot Three Wire Pass

A little while later, just after Three Wire Pass, the river runs shallow and fast through a wooded area.  Normally there are two ways around this section, but not on this day.  The western most section was dry, and the eastern most section had a tree down.  That three caught one boat, but I wasn’t there to get the picture.  I did get pictures of other boats attempting to pass under the tree.  It was fun to watch.

The fallen tree that tossed trash back into the river.

I had absolutely no trouble passing under the tree in my kayak.  I just glided right under, unlike the other boats that struggled through the pass.  So I found it enjoyable.  Except for the older couple that showed up as we were unloading boats to pass under the tree.  I helped them get under the tree, and they ended up passing us heavy loaded junk canoes.

I also, for the first time, found it difficult to keep up in the kayak.  As the canoe’s got heavier, and they were all longer, they moved faster and faster in the water.  Me, staying light and short I suddenly had trouble keeping up.  Plus I was going back and forth from the front of the group to the back of the group.  So I pretty much paddled the river twice.  I was tired, but good tired, by the end of the trip.  It was a most enjoyable day on the water!

Picking Up Trash on the River

I think it is safe to say I’ve had the worst weekend in a long long while.

It started Thursday, and I’ve thought of Thursday as the first day of the weekend for a long time now, when with no warning and no discussion, I was called into my project manager’s office and laid off then escorted off NASA property.  They didn’t even have the decency to come to my office to do it, so I could just load up and go.  No, I had to drive across post to be told, then escorted back to my office to load up my stuff.  I’m sure there is a very good policy reason why it was done in this way, and I’m sure that to them it made sense, but to me it was just humiliating.  I never should have left my last job, I suppose.

So if you know of someone who needs a content creation guy, let me know.

Then I went a little nuts Friday and saw Zombieland.  Good movie.  Good time.  Glad I got to go.

On Saturday, I thought things were looking up!  I got to go kayaking, I did a good deed and cleaned up a river, and I went to watch the Auburn-Tennessee game, which went well for Auburn, with my Mother-In-Law who had recently had knee surgery.  Saturday was a pretty good day!

But then Sunday it all went to hell.  On the way to church we get a call that my mother-in-law was being rushed to the hospital.  She was declared dead minutes later.  Blood clot killed her.  Boom, gone.

Within 15 minutes of getting the official word, although he knew before she got put in the ambulance,  my father-in-law had a series of minor heart attacks.  That left my wife in charge of the family affairs, a position she did not enjoy nor did I enjoy having her there.

So now funeral arrangements must be made.  Decisions must be made.  I’m so tired I don’t know what to do.  And it’s only Monday.