Boos and Booze

Halloween themed wines! My favorite. I like to stock up and drink them for months.

Dirty pretty things

I'm busy tonight, so it's a link roundup.

First up, crazy painted shoes from a company called Iron Fist:

So many crazy, spooky, awesome choices. I haven't actually bought any yet, but they're constantly on my wishlists.

Next, Gothic Lolita clothes from fanplusfriend:

These are basically cosplay, I know, but I want to buy them and integrate them into my everyday wardrobe.

Finally, if those are a little too out there for you, there's Plasticland:

A little bit retro, a little bit rockabilly, Plasticland is like a slightly more grownup version of Hot Topic.

Even if you're not in a mood to buy, it's always fun to browse!

Don't need no credit card to ride this train...

Happy Back to the Future Day!

Thirty years ago, Back to the Future showed Marty McFly traveling forward in time -  to today! The movie was shot in and around Los Angeles (mostly on the the Universal Studios backlot and the Puente Hills mall), so there were events all over town today, as well as movie marathons all over the country.

I have a day job, so I didn't attend any of these events, but I was still excited. I love all three Back to the Future movies (even the Western one), and my dad and I even used "The Power of Love" as our father-daughter dance at my wedding.

So, in honor of this day, I present to you: Huey Lewis and the News.

Star Wars Makeup capsule review

Even though I'm definitely a Star Wars fan, I have to admit that when "Force Friday" rolled around, I mostly just rolled my eyes. It felt like the worst kind of cash grab. Sure, I love Star Wars, but other than maybe a t-shirt of the poster, I'm not going to buy movie merchandise before I've seen the movie. How would I choose? I don't know which characters will be my favorites or which moments I'll want to watch again and again; frankly, even in an established franchise, I'm not even sure if I'll like the movie.

So I wasn't one of the diehards frantically refreshing Toys R Us and Amazon trying to score a BB-8. Nothing that was on sale particularly interested me. Sure, it's cool that Captain Phasma - one of the main new Stormtroopers - is a woman, and I liked that there were toys of her available from the beginning. But I didn't really want anything. In fact, I wandered into a Target on Force Friday and was distinctly underwhelmed. I bought a can of Spaghetti-Os with Darth Vader on it because I thought it would amuse my husband, and went home.

I was, however, pretty excited about the collaboration with Cover Girl to produce a Star Wars collection. It seemed to reference the franchise as a whole, and I liked that it was a product specifically for women. Despite Cover Girl's near-comical inability to direct me to any site where I could actually purchase any, I eventually found and ordered some from Drugstore.com. Once it arrived though, my excitement quickly returned to disappointment.

I purchased the gold, silver, and red lipsticks from the collection, and one each of the regular and waterproof mascaras. The gold and silver lipsticks are very sheer, so you can't really do a metallic effect at all. The gold one can be used over another color to sort of engolden it, but that seems to be a pretty small range of looks. The silver is sheer as well, but it's in sort of a pale-pink base - it looks solid silver in the tube, but when it goes on, it just sort of obliterates my lips except for a faint shimmer. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't build it up to a little more silver with a heavier coat until I wiped it off - it comes off pale pink with silver shimmer on the tissue.

The mascaras are fine. They have those tiny spiky brushes which aren't my thing, but they darkened and lengthened and seemed to stay. I did not notice a major difference between the waterproof and non-waterproof, but I don't generally have problems with my mascara coming off, so I'm not a good judge of that.

All in all it was pretty half-assed, even the packaging. I wasn't expecting MAC here, but I've definitely had better drugstore makeup. The pigmentation was just not great - the pink base on the silver lipstick is particularly badly chosen - and they seem to have shied away from making the makeup too "costumey". I think that's a bad call, honestly; it seems to me if you're buying a gold sci-fi themed lipstick, you're going to want it to be gold. But Cover Girl has played it extremely safe, making the shades subtle enough you could work them into a "normal" makeup routine. How very unimaginative.

October Movies

At this time of year, you'll find a lot of lists telling you the "essential" or "best" horror movies to watch before Halloween. I'm not a big fan of horror movies - after a while, they all seem the same to me - but I've seen most of the classics, including Poltergeist, Night of the Living Dead, etc. I've also seen most of the well-regarded humor/horror classics, like Evil Dead, Shaun of the Dead, and The Cabin in the Woods. (A lesser-known standout in that category is one of my favorites, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. See that one if you enjoy funny horror.)

But around Halloween, I have a couple of other movies I like to watch each year to get me in the spirit. One is a zombie movie - but it's more an action comedy than a horror film, and even better, it's about people on a journey. Road trip movies are among my favorites.

The other movie is probably not on most people's Halloween lists. It is about witches, but it's really more of a romantic comedy than it is supernatural. But I love it for the relationships between the sisters - all three generations of them - and for the very end, when the town that has shunned and feared the witches for a hundred years finally overcomes their superstitious prejudice and comes together to help them out. For me, the theme of this movie is: People suck, but sometimes they come through for you anyway.

And that's not such a bad lesson. In the words of the film,"there are some things I know for certain: always throw spilt salt over your left shoulder, keep rosemary by your garden gate, plant lavender for luck, and fall in love whenever you can." 

Witchy Woman

It seems like an LA tradition to attend a performance at the Hollywood Bowl every summer. I didn't make it this year, but with temperatures out here still in the 70-100 degree range, going last night seems to count. Actually, it ended up being the first time I'd ever been to the Bowl that I made it through the entire night without even putting on my jacket! (Climate change seriously sucks. We never got much in the way of seasons, but 100-degree weather in October is just exhausting.)

We went to see Florence and the Machine, and she was amazing. Dressed in what was basically a white leisure suit with a bronze-colored floaty blouse underneath (and barefoot!), she seemed to transport us all back to about 1972 on a wave of love and shared-consciousness. In the past, I've said that when you see Springsteen live in concert, he takes you to the Church of Bruce; by the same token, this was the Orgy of Florence.  She encouraged us to "get as high as we possibly can"; to hug our neighbors, touch their faces, tell them we loved them; and to take off an article of clothing, wave it like a flag, and jump up and down. And we did. Carried along by Florence, we celebrated each other and our town and life and love.

I'm a science girl: I don't believe in crystals or homeopathy or psychics. But I do want to believe there are things out there we just haven't explained yet, and I feel like the energy you experience as part of a crowd must be one of them. We went to see Florence, and for all the energy she put in to give us her performance, it felt like we were giving it back to her as well, in cheers and applause and breathless attention.

So here's some energy for a lazy Sunday, in the form of a song Florence told us was inspired by, and dedicated to, this crazy, frustrating, wonderful town of mine.

Haunt My House

After actually doing a decent amount of cleaning, it's time to decorate! Excitement levels this year remain at an all-time low, so I've decided to go small, with a couple of dedicated display areas instead of trying to spread the Halloween spirit all over the house. Also, we have so many geeky toys and knickknacks around the house already that it's hard for Halloween-specific things to stand out.

I kind of want to go out and buy new fun decorations to make my displays, but I know that's a waste of money. I try not to spend money on frivolous things when I'm depressed, in case it makes me feel better. That seems like a bad habit to get into, you know?

So I'm stuck with what I have, which is not inconsiderable. And I can always augment with old costume pieces and props, which helps. So I guess it's time to play around and see what I can do!

And.. there it is. I guess 'cluttered' is my aesthetic this year. Oh, well. I also put some (artificial) pumpkins here...

and there...

Maybe at some point we'll get a real pumpkin, too. But until then, Happy Halloween!

Almost But Not Even Close

Last night I attended a college production of John Cariani's very popular play, Almost, Maine. Apparently, this play has recently surpassed A Midsummer Night's Dream as the most-performed play in American high schools. Having now seen this play, I find that statistic immensely depressing.

This play is terrible. It occurs over the course of one Friday night in the unincorporated township in far northern Maine: the "Almost, Maine" of the title. The play is made up of nine vignettes between two people (one does include a third person), all of them romantically linked in some way. The play is most often compared to Love, Actually, for its multiple-intertwined storylines and clear, sentimental focus on love. This is a bad and unfair comparison, because this play is terrible, and so cliched and one-dimensional that I am forced to assume the playwright has never experienced or observed real love, and has instead relied on an extensive library of pulp novels and sitcoms to create this work.

The transitions between  each vignette use the northern lights as a device, and that, combined with the remoteness of the setting, are meant to evoke an unreality that allows the play to use magical realism extensively. In "Her Heart", a woman carries the pieces of her literal broken heart in a bag; she currently uses an artificial heart, which pumps her blood but is incapable of love. In "Getting It Back", another woman drags in bags containing the love her boyfriend has given her, in physical form. In "Story of Hope", a man shrinks noticeably in size because he has lost a lot of hope.

In the hands of a more deft, dexterous writer, these literalisms might become intriguing. Removing the metaphorical value of "love" and "hearts" could allow for giving the concepts a new symbolism, a greater nuance. But none of that happens here. Instead the author allows the show to become carried away on a tide of puns and coincidences. A married couple, tiring of having the same fight over and over, but unsure how to walk away, ask no one in particular what they are waiting for. In response, the wife's missing shoe - the metaphorical other shoe, obviously - drops from the sky. Another couple, coming shyly to terms with the transition from friends to something more, begin falling down repeatedly, uncontrollably. They are falling in love, you see. The lady with the broken heart finds a new romance with, who else, but a repairman? The man who shrank from a deficiency of hope actually lost Hope, which is the name of his high-school sweetheart.

It's possible that some people could overcome and even enjoy the saccharine-sweetness of this play. Who doesn't love Love? But underneath the cloying banality, the show has deeper problems. Its cardboard characters perpetuate a number of lazy stereotypes that do no one any favors. The women want marriage, of course, because "it's time", and "everyone says so". The men are all Nice Guys, and as such, they deserve good women. This is made clearest in the vignette "Sad and Glad", where a bewildered young man, who after a number of months still does not seem to understand that his ex-girlfriend is not, in fact, still interested in being his girlfriend, finds out that said ex-girlfriend is engaged to another man. This is very sad! And clearly unfair to the young man (though we are given no context as to why the relationship did not work out), who in a fit of despair has branded (literally tattooed) himself a villain. Unfortunately, though, the tattoo artist has misspelled it as "villian", adding to his depair. Worry not, though. After his unfeeling ex has returned to her boisterous bachelorette party (having only felt obligated to sit with him for upwards of ten minutes in an attempt to cheer him), he calls over the waitress for another round. The waitress, it turns out, has an unusual name -  Villian.

All common sense and deeper truth is swamped by the tide of romanticism run amok. Some of the characters hint at darker pasts - a battered wife, an ASD-symptomatic man, a sexually-stunted tomboy - but these themes are forgotten as soon as they're touched upon, or worse, "fixed" by love-at-first-sight kisses. Kissing, in this show, is always the answer - even when the person being kissed has specifically requested not to be kissed. It matters not, because love conquers all, especially pesky irritations like consent.

The show ends with a scene where the original couple reappears. The woman has walked all the way around the world, because of the man's theory that when sitting next to each other, they were actually as far away from each other as it was possible to be, along a line drawn from the person on the left to the person on the right, going to the left. Having made this journey, the woman and man are finally, happily, reunited. But it would have been better for everyone if she had just kept walking.

Black and Orange DIY Manicure

It's hard to tell in this photo, but the glitter is a bright copper that really pops against the black.

I bought both shades at Sephora a couple of years ago and I use them every October.

Photobombing Halloween kitty! He's actually named after a demon. Although, is it photobombing if you're asleep? 

Still asleep. But at least my nails are dry.

Spooky Sweets

I like to make fancy, complicated baked goods when I have the time, but sometimes those just aren't right for the occasion. A carrot-cake cheesecake with piped decorations is fantastic for a dinner party, but way too complicated to serve and eat at a potluck with not enough seats. In this case, I wanted to make some treats for my husband to take to work and share with his coworkers, so I needed something easy to share and eat. But I still wanted it to be just a little bit fancy, and Halloween-appropriate. So: Pumpkin Pie Jack O'Lantern Cookies.

You'll need:
4 store-bought pie crusts
1 cup canned pumpkin
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
3 eggs
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
Pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter

Open packages of pie crust. On a clean, floured cutting board, roll it out until it's slightly thinner than how it came out of the package. Use a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter to cut out as many pumpkin shapes as you can fit. Roll out the scraps again and cut out more pumpkins. Divide the pumpkins into two equal piles. Take the pumpkins from one pile and carefully cut out basic jack o'lantern faces on them with a sharp knife. Leave the other pile alone.

Mix the pumpkin and all other ingredients until smooth. Lay out the uncut pumpkins on cookie sheets. Place about a tablespoonful of pie filling on each pumpkin and flatten it a little, making sure to leave the edge bare. Carefully lay a jack o'lantern face on top. Use a fork to pinch together the edges of the top and bottom pumpkins.

If desired, beat the egg and brush it over the tops of the cookies to promote shine. Bake at 400 degrees for 12-20 minutes or until golden (check often). Remove from oven and sprinkle with sugar immediately.

Then, enjoy!

Halloween dress

Since I don't have costumes to make for Halloween this year, I've found myself with an overabundance of time on my hands (see also: this entire blog). I miss doing Halloween things, but at the same time I don't want to go overboard with decorations and treats and crafts, because then I'll only be more disappointed when nothing materializes on the actual holiday.

I did find some super-cute Halloween fabric, though, so I decided to make a dress. It's not technically a costume, and I'll be able to wear it lots of times (although, mostly in October, I guess), so I was hoping it would help cure my need to sew, without adding to my despair about Halloween night. And this way I'll have something special to wear on Halloween, even if it's not a costume.

I was careful to follow all of the instructions, and even self-lined the bodice with more of the
"Boo" fabric. I used the pattern size that corresponds to my measurements, but unsurprisingly it still came out quite a bit too big. (Simplicity patterns contain a ridiculous amount of wearing ease; I usually go one size down from my measurements, but since this was a "vintage reproduction" pattern, I was afraid that would end up too small. Guess not.) I gave it a quick try-on before I put in the zipper, and subsequently took about 3 inches out by taking in the back seam. I also shortened the straps quite a bit.

It came out pretty well! At least, until I tried it on. While it basically fit, it was way too large in the bust, almost comically so. I tried it on with my most padded pushiest of push-up bras, and it was still nowhere near enough. Taking in a princess-seamed bust - when the back is finished and the bodice is lined - is no picnic. To do it correctly I would have to take most of the dress apart, and I... just didn't want to. So, instead, I sort of shoved the extra bust material up under the front ruffle and sewed the ruffle down. And now, it mostly fits. It's a little wonky under the arms, but I think I'm just going to live with it.

What do you think?

Dress for the job you want...

Well, at least I'd be dressed as Batman. :) Although usually I prefer to dress as Batgirl. Or Poison Ivy. Or Zatanna. I'm pretty sure my work would frown on all of those, though. And I really can't complain - besides costumes, the only other things I'm not allowed to wear to work are shorts and flip-flops. Considering the average temperature in my office is an over-air-conditioned 65 degrees, I'm not itching to wear either of those things.

The relaxed dress code is also what allows me to accomplish my 31 t-shirts of Halloween (well, really ten t-shirts combined in different outfits). Follow me on Instagram to see if I'm succeeding.

Sunday Sadness

When work hasn't been going so well, it's hard not to dread Sunday evening.

So tonight it's Zombie Zin and The Walking Dead.

Wishing everyone a better week than they expect.

JPL Open House

So, once per year, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory throws open its gates to the public. For one weekend a year, you can drive out there and visit without a security clearance or previously-scheduled tour. It's completely free and no tickets or reservations are required. So, of course, about 20,000 people take advantage of it every year. It's basically Nerd Disneyland.

They really go all out, with hundreds of their researchers on hand to explain what they do and how they do it, and glossy printed brochures of all of their projects to take home with you. Every single employee I met was friendly, excited to answer questions, and most of all really passionate about the work they were doing. It was truly, truly inspiring, and made me wish I'd continued in science after getting my B.S. in chemistry.

Among the most popular exhibits were the "highbays", observation galleries allowing you to look down on the sealed clean rooms where they actually build spacecraft. We were able to look into the room where they built Voyager (launched 1977), and where now they are building a new technology called a starshield, meant to go to outer space and help us locate planets.

We also saw an entire exhibit entirely about Voyager. It was originally designed for a mission projected to last 12 years, but Voyagers 1 and 2 have now successfully been exploring and sending back data for over 30 years, and the NASA scientists have hope that both will last until the half-century mark.

When we were talking to the researcher about Voyager, he mentioned that many of the technologies JPL developed for Voyager and the subsequent deep space missions had made their way into consumer electronics and other applications. "But not weapons," he stressed, "nothing we make here is weapons." I was both proud and touched by his insistence. He also observed that Voyager and its compatriots are exploring where we'll need to go, when our sun dies. It will be thousands of years from now, but it will happen. And when it does, we'll need to go to the stars.

In that moment, I reconsidered my stance on having children. I've never been sure if I would be a good parent, or if I want to make the attempt. I'm not saying that this visit to JPL swept all these concerns aside, but it did make me think. What is the point of life, if not to contribute to something bigger than ourselves? I want my descendants to go to the stars.

I bought myself a JPL shirt to commemorate the day. On the front, it just says "NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory". But on the back, it has a picture of the Curiosity Rover, with the words "Dare Mighty Things".

Humanity is going to the stars, and JPL scientists will get us there. Dare mighty things indeed.

The Starks Were Wrong

Winter is never coming. At least not to southern California.

It's 11:15pm. The forecast has it in the mid-90s all weekend. So much for pumpkin patches and spiced cider and sweaters and tall boots.

Throwback to Thursday

Well, I was supposed to have something kind of different and fun to do tonight, but it didn't happen. By which I mean I raced across town in rush hour traffic, got very dressed up and re-did my makeup, fought my way back out to the event venue, stood in line for an hour in the inexplicable 90-degree weather (climate change is real, duh), and... got turned away. Because even though I was an hour early they'd overbooked by about 300% and there was no room. So, that sucked.

I'm not saying what it was, not to be mysterious, but because I don't feel like promoting their badly-managed event even inadvertently. Anyway, this post was supposed to have been full of excitement! And pictures! And joy!

But instead all I have to offer is frustration. So instead, enjoy some links to things I enjoy on the internet when I'm irritated.

http://xkcd.com/

http://www.smbc-comics.com/

http://www.welcometonightvale.com/

http://fashionablygeek.com/

I'll be curling up on the couch with this and some TV. Back tomorrow.

Cleanliness is next to...

Clinical depression, for me. If I ever tell my husband I've been seized by a wild impulse to deep clean our apartment, he'll immediately assume I'm joking, high, pregnant, or in the throes of a mental health crisis.

And yet the apartment still demands to be cleaned on a regular basis. Usually I'm a master of ignoring this need until I come home one day to find that my husband has vacuumed everything and cleaned the kitchen, but around the holidays I'm a little bit better. After all, even I will concede that you can't decorate a dirty house. (I mean, clearly you can, but what's the point of decorating if you don't want to show it off?) So autumn cleaning is on the agenda!

I'm going to do it in stages, since more than 90 minutes of cleaning without a break just makes me cranky. Tonight I did the couch and entertainment center portion of the living room, which also covers the semi-annual dusting of roughly 100 geeky toys, statues, and stuffed animals, and roughly 1000 DVDs. So... that's done, and the living room looks very nice, and I'm trying not to think about how each of those knickknacks is once again gathering dust right. this. minute.

Friday I'll move on to the other bookcase of tiny dusty geeky things and the windows. We live in an apartment, so the exterior windows are not our responsibility, but the interior sides could use a once-over... especially because last Halloween I got frustrated that none of the suction cups for the window decorations would hold, and just taped them to the windows. Which worked really well, until I went to take them down and discovered that 31 days of the sun baking them into the windows had pretty much fused the tape into the glass. Oops. I scraped some of it off but I'm pretty sure some residue is still there.

I haven't decided how to affix the window decorations this year. I'm running a little late in general - normally I like to decorate right away so I can bask in the Halloween all month - but the end of September left me a little disorganized and demoralized, so I didn't get to it. But I've perked up a little now and I'm ready to get in the spirit.

I was on a bit of an upswing, but the capper to it was coming home to this:

If you haven't seen it yet, go out and buy it immediately. I think it's my favorite thing Marvel produced this year.

Tune in tomorrow for something hopefully more exciting than cleaning my apartment. And, continue to follow me on Instagram, for #31daysofHalloween and costume pictures!

Monstrous Music for a Spooktacular Soundtrack

When October rolls around, it's time to pull out the battered old CD labeled "Halloween" from wherever it's been lurking for the last eleven months. (This year it was in the CD case in my glove box. Admittedly, not actually in a CD sleeve, but hey, points for effort.)

I'm pretty sure my then-boyfriend, now-husband must have burned it for me, because it contains a few songs I'd never heard of before I met him. But my college roommate seems to have had some influence as well, since it also includes a couple of songs from the Scooby Doo (2002) soundtrack, and I never saw that movie. Since I've been listening to this particular mix for a decade now, I've become quite attached to it despite its randomness. So with no further ado, I present my own personal soundtrack to the season.

1. Monster Mash - The ultimate classic. For reasons long forgotten, this one actually appears on my CD twice.

2. The Man with the Hex - I love this song; it makes me want to dance. It also appears on several of my workout playlists.

3. Let the Bodies Hit the Floor - I love the double entendre. Massive amounts of death, or a packed dancefloor? It couldn't be more Halloween.

4. Get Ur Freak On - Bow down for Missy.

5. O Fortuna (remix) - Opera remixed with techno, perfect for Halloween clubbing.

6. Freaks Come Out at Night - It's from the Scooby Doo soundtrack. It's a cover by Uncle Kracker. Everything about it is terrible. But it's insanely catchy.

7. Transylvanian Concubine - Haunting and beautiful. I first encountered it on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show) soundtrack.

8. Thriller - I trust this one is self-explanatory.

9. Ghostbusters Theme - I wonder how, or if, they'll work the theme into next year's reboot. I was initially against it, but the cast and crew have been so charming and funny that now I'm looking forward to it.

10. Disco Inferno - Another one to get you dancing. I'm especially into it this year after all the disco on The Martian soundtrack.

Bonus video: Lindsey Sterling - This one isn't on my CD, but if you haven't heard of Lindsey Stirling, you should check her out. She's a badass violin player who's also a cosplayer, and her videos are basically every geek's dream. The one below is Dracula, for the theme, but her Dragon Age and Lord of the Rings videos are even more amazing.

Bonus Bonus video - I can't believe I almost forgot this one! It's my husband's favorite thing ever - Dark Lord Funk.

Scents of the Season

One great thing about October is that often there are some great spooky movies released during it. Often they're your basic classic/slasher/serial killer types, which are not my favorite, but I still appreciate their contribution to the season. This year, though, October brings a more Victorian-inspired offering - Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak.

I don't know much about the plot, but that's usually for the best with horror movies. I do know that Guillermo del Toro was involved with two of the creepiest movies I've ever seen, Pan's Labyrinth and The Orphanage. Both were creepy in a way that only deepened after I'd walked out of the theater and really had time to think about it, and both were deeply poignant and gorgeously shot. I have high hopes for Crimson Peak.

One of the coolest things about it so far, though, is some of the merchandising they've done for the film. Instead of thousands of mass-produced toys and cheap t-shirts, they've chosen to work with some smaller companies to do more creative, limited-edition products. First came the alternate posters from collector's darling Mondo, which io9 rounded up here.

But then, and far more exciting to me, came a line of scented oils from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. I've loved their stuff for years. Everything they make is made from natural ingredients, cruelty-free, and unique. They maintain a catalog of inventive and original scents, but they also sometimes produce limited-edition lines timed to coincide with events or seasons. The limited-edition lines are made in small batches, and when they run out, they run out.

For Crimson Peak, they've created scents to wear, scented candles, and room "atmosphere" sprays. I attended their monthly event at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, where the scents were available to try but not buy. I liked several of the scents, including All That I Possess, Edith Cushing, and Fairy Tales and Lies, but the one that I'll be ordering as soon as it goes on sale is the movie's eponymous scent, Crimson Peak. It was spicy and smoky and just a little bit sexy, and I can't wait to wear it - and see the movie!

Halloween Costumes and Gender With a Dash of Non-Related WTF.

I am preaching to a very loud and vocal choir on this one, but I don't really care.  It needs to continue to be said.

This is my 4 year old on Halloween last year:

Darth Vader costume? Check.  Star Wars light up shoes? Check.  Penis? Nope.

See, this adorable little Sith is a little girl. A year ago, when this costume was purchased, it could only be found in the "Boy" section of the Disney Store, or on their website.  Disney has finally altered their labeling this year, tossing all costumes under the "Kids" moniker, and making a lot of people happy.

Unfortunately, this also has a different effect - namely, making bigoted, misogynistic homophobes incredibly angry.   When Target removed gender labels from their toy sections earlier this year, if you  read any number of blogs or news articles, you would have thought that they had started offering free sex reassignment surgery to 5 year olds in the Lego aisle.  People went absolutely cuckoo bananas at the thought that a doll or Matchbox cars do not have genders. I hope they all followed through on boycotting Target, because it will really make my shopping there more pleasant.

Now that Disney is following suit, a quick perusal of comments sections on various sites shows that people are still ranting and raving about this marking the end of times.  (Yes, I know that comment sections are full of troglodytes and people who probably never passed 4th grade grammar, but they offer an insight into how much of the world thinks, which I forget sometimes, living in my blue state intellectual bubble out here in LA). In addition to apparently causing incredible confusion for shoppers looking for a costume for their son (or daughter), this also stands to potentially turn children gay!  Or - and this is going to be helpful for you bigots out there - it can help IDENTIFY which kids will be gay.  Because if your 5 year old son is curious about wearing some fairy wings, it is clearly indicative of his sexual preference.  So, remember parents, this year on Halloween, keep an eye out for kids wearing the "wrong" gendered costume, as it belies some nefarious goings on.

Sarcasm aside, I generally am capable of understanding where people come from on most issues, even if it's not something I agree with. In this case, I simply do not have the ability to understand.  How on earth is labeling a costume for "kids" in any way damaging? How does it make shopping more confusing? Let's say your child wants to be a princess for Halloween.  You go to a store.  Instead of asking where the girl costumes are, you say, "Where are the costumes?"  Or, even "where are the princess costumes?"  If you have a modicum of a brain in your head, you will be directed to said costumes, where it should be quiet simple to determine which one is a princess and which one is not. It hurts absolutely no one to remove gender labels.  It isn't a case of political correctness, and is not because of Caitlyn Jenner or gay marriage. It's because the imagination of children is an incredible thing, and being able to express it through costume is one of those magical things about being a kid. And now, when my daughter wants to be Kylo Ren for Halloween this year, she doesn't have to worry about being told "that's for boys." She can happily revel in the Dark Side.

Sidebar: My 4 year old's obsession with the Dark Side of the Force is by far the only vaguely disturbing thing about her Halloween costume choices.  

I could rant about this for hours, but I don't think I'm breaking new ground here.  Until someone can offer me a logically sound reason that the removal of gender labels for toys and costumes is detrimental in any way, I will continue to happily enjoy Target (and now the Disney Store) without your presence.

And now, for something completely different...

I have recently heard a lot about Bone Broth.  This is relevant because it is October and skeletons are Halloween-y and skeletons are made of bones.

If I see one more pseudo scientific health guru or website ramble on about the benefits of Bone Broth, I might pull out my hair.  BONE BROTH IS BROTH.  It has been around since cooking was invented.  Have you ever heard of soup? It's often made with broth.  WHICH IS GENERALLY MADE FROM ANIMAL BONES.

Broth is good for you.   Broth made with a bullion cube is clearly not going to be as healthy or nutrient full as one made at home with actual bones.  If you don't know this, you may want to Google "sodium."  At any rate, this is not a new invention or fad.  It's broth.  If I find out anyone I know is paying exorbitant prices for this garbage, we are going to have a serious chat.

Look, you can get 48 oz of Chicken bone broth for.... $33.75. This does not register as sensible to me. Buy a whole chicken and throw it in a pot and boil it for a while.  Voila.  I just saved you $30.

(But please, do not buy this.  This is a travesty, and I would rather you purchase 3000 oz of overinflated chicken bone broth than this.)

Vampires and lovers and zombies, oh my!

Fall TV is finally starting to come back into full swing. Tonight Showtime's The Affair returns, FX's The Strain finales, and it's the final episode of Fear the Walking Dead.

My husband and I have been waiting for The Walking Dead to return, but in the meantime AMC has been filling the void with the six-episode spinoff series, Fear the Walking Dead.

Which is, unfortunately, terrible. The show follows a blended family - mom, drug-addict son, "good" daughter, stepdad, his ex-wife, his sullen son - living in East LA as the zombie apocalypse causes the collapse of civilization as we know it. It could be a fascinating premise; as an Angeleno for over a decade, I was initially interested to see what fault lines the city would fall apart along first. Would race or class provide greater division? Would neighborhoods with strong cultural identities pull together or tear themselves apart? Would money buy safety or cease holding value entirely?

But the show has chosen not to address any of these issues at all. Instead we follow this one unremarkable, unlikeable family as they discover zombies, and then huddle in their neighborhood, cordoned off into a safe zone by a protective military presence. They are told the rest of the city is dead, but we don't see it. I'm not expecting waves of zombies, but there are more than 3 million people in LA. Dead or alive, where did they all go?

And frankly, living here, you get a feel for the city. I'm not saying it's right, but I find it hard to believe that when civilization collapsed, we sent the Army to protect... Boyle Heights?

Anyway, if you need a zombie fix to end your weekend, go with a classic like Dawn of the Dead. Or Shaun of the Dead. Or just make your roommates stagger around groaning "braaaaaains". It'll still be more entertaining than this show.