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.