To start, several authors and celebs have put up stories in six words HERE.

Here’s my attempt at a story in six words:

Dante,

You left your wallet.

-Luci

And now, on to the featured presentation . . .

First off, I just got a call from UIS about my epic poem thesis (which you might remember was picked to represent the English department for consideration as Outstanding Graduate Thesis of the Year). And . . . 

. . . it won out against all the other departments.  I’ll have to check, but that might be the first bit of fiction to do that at this school (as I’ve heard, fiction doesn’t usually even make the cut in the English program).

And now . . . we do the dance of joy!

The awards ceremony will be either January 22nd or 29th (I’ll hear soon, either way) and I think I have to make a big speech about my epic poem/novel, Souls Unsure.

And . . . what went on during my Halloween?

 

Well, last week, the lovely Torrie made the arduous journey from Springfield, just to celebrate the Halloween season with me (she’s nifty-cool like that).  To start, we shared some spooky coffee.

We listened to an audio tale of Neil Gaiman’s short story, “October in the Chair.”

 

Then she, Nick, and I went into Chicago to brave the reputedly only “adult” HAUNTED HOUSE in the city.  It was adult, and very gory (including a leather faced guy in high heels getting a hummer from a corpse)…but not the best I’ve seen.  Still, all in all, it was fun and it had a bar inside.

 

Then the three of us went to THE RED LION PUB for some drinks.  We looked at a picture of a ghost that haunts the bar, drank copiously, and discussed the practice of autographs, and a vow of a certain tattoo to be placed on a certain ass, later.

 

Flash to Friday . . .

Nick and I again reprised our rolls as Jay and Silent Bob.  Last time we did this, we won several hundred bucks at a costume contest at Excalibur.  So we thought maybe we could repeat this year (especially with their new movie being out).  So we hit a club and met up with a few friends.

Justin was looking especially evil that night . . . 

Everyone loved us.  We stayed in character the whole time.  Several groups of people stopped to chat, or get their pictures taken with us, or otherwise bullshit with Jay and Silent Bob.  The problem…the place we were at had no contest.  Bummer.  So we left for greener fair.  Nadda.  Every other place we visited either had no contest, or it was already over.  So we marched back towards the car, still in character, ready to drive and find a place that still had a contest.  People on the streets got a kick out of us.  And then things got even more surreal . . .

 

We pass an alley, between two bars and two cops are arresting two perps.  They have them against the wall and are slapping on the cuffs when one of the perps looks over, and (even though he’s being arrested) gets the biggest grin on his face and yells, “Hey, look, it’s Jay and Silent Bob!”

 

Now all the perps and cops are looking in our direction.  We maintain character.  Nick, in his Jay voice, yells out, “Snoochy Boochies!”  They yell something back and Nick replies, “Keep it alive, brothers!”  At this point, the cops cannot keep a straight face and they’re smiling and laughing and the perps are laughing and it seemed everyone was having a good time and I think, had this been a musical, we would, the six of us, started dancing.

 

Instead we moved on a little further into surreality and met up with the cats from Sesame Street.  There were several of them.  In big, professional looking costumes.  I’m not sure if they were doing it for fun or for some promotion, but it’s a strange sight to see the characters you grew up with turn to you and go, “Hey, it’s Jay and Silent Bob!” and then follow us around wanting to party.  I imagine it was a stranger sight for the people seeing the whole group of us marching down the street.

“Yeah, punk, we’ve been selling blunts on Sesame Street for years.”

But happy stories go bad sometimes.

 

We get back to the car and it’s been broken into and my MP3 player and transmitter have been stolen.  That was an important gadget to me, the ability to take my music with when I go to write 😦

 

On top of that, the savages took my poor little brother’s jar of homemade jam he had gotten from a friend.  Nick was quite angered by all of this.

 

Saturday . . . found us in Bloomington, LARPing at Jeramie and Amy’s place.  Sunday, we lazed around their house for a bit, and I got to hang out with my goddaughter and she has definitely learned how to smile and she’s not afraid to show off that talent, and it’s cute as can be.  Before heading home we hit the CREATURES CRYPT, one of the better haunted houses in Illinois.

Monday . . . I headed to THE RED LION PUB for another addition of TWILIGHT TALES.  It was an open mic night, with the featured theme of “Monsters.”  I read my short story, “The Halloween Tree,” and it went off well.  So well, that the organizer came up and told me he wanted me to come in, in December, to read as a featured reader with some published authors.  I’ll be reading for 30 to 40 minutes on those nights.  I should have some dates soon to give everyone.

 

And Halloween…

 

Nick and I took on the guise of Jay and Bob again and hit another club.  This one had a costume contest.  We worked the crowd before then, shaking lots of hands and getting in lots of pictures (I’m sure we’re haunting dozens of blogs that we’ll never see).  Even the DJ saw us and mentioned us over the mic.  However, come contest time, they had everyone pack onto the dance floor and some judges would pick out twenty people.  They never spotted us.  Even when the winners of round one wee being marched up on stage, a judge noticed us and told us what awesome costumes we had.  Nick, as Jay, asked why we didn’t get a ticket for the next round and she said that she didn’t see us.

 

Sigh.

 

I’m sure we would have won, from pure love from the crowd, had we gotten past the initial round.  There was a cool costume that definitely deserved to be up there though, a guy dressed up as bender – he even had light up eyes – and I wish I had a picture of that.

 

Finally, Neil Gaiman wrote a cool and chilling article on Halloween for the New York Times and you can read it HERE.

And that concludes this overly long Halloween post.

 

Pleasant dreams.