I am screaming and punching myself

Tis the season to be leery

2009-12-18T09:00:00-05:00

Every year, some time between mid-October and Thanksgiving, the Christmas Threat Season begins. This is a time-honored tradition J and I have wherein we threaten each other with horrible Christmas gifts.

Our go-to refrain: "What color would you like your Snuggie, dear?"

(I checked out the Snuggie web site, where they suggest that the Snuggie can be worn for, among other things, "Late Night Pub Crawls." That is either the dumbest thing I've ever read, or the best idea since matching shoes. I hereby challenge all my partying buddies to organize a Snuggie pub crawl and take a lot of pictures!)

Thus far this season, I've found the worst potential gift, the Thomas Kinkade Victorian Christmas Carousel. I'll just let the promotional copy speak for itself:

Celebrate the joys of the season in music, light and motion with this magnificent first-of-a-kind Thomas Kinkade musical carousel! Bathed in light, six handcrafted and hand-painted carousel horses bob up and down, showcased within a revolving Heirloom Porcelain™ musical Christmas carousel collectible. Mr. Kinkade's artwork adorns the carousel canopy and base, as well as each horse's blanket, and a warm, glowing light emanates from the lantern carousel topper!
Available exclusively from Ardleigh Elliott, this limited-edition Thomas Kinkade musical carousel plays the beloved melody of "I'll Be Home For Christmas." Dazzling faux gems and raised relief designs lavished in 22K gold make this extraordinary carousel a true holiday treasure - order now!

And it's only $200 with shipping!

On the other hand, J does unnerve me whenever the Time Life Music commercial comes on for "158 original hits from the golden age of country!" He just looks at me and nods as if to say, "Just check your stocking on Christmas morning, my dear, mwa ha ha..."

Of course, I don't really have anything to fear from J, gift-wise. If anything, he's the one who should be nervous. J is the master of giving amazing gifts, of meeting or even anticipating a need and filling it superbly. I... am not.

Let me put it to you this way: last year, we were watching Law & Order and I commented on a scarf that a character was wearing. J went to the L&O web site, checked the fashion blogs and generally scoured the Interweb to try to find the scarf. He didn't find the exact thing but did find a similar scarf in an even better color palette. J gave me that scarf for Christmas. You know what I gave him? A plastic polar bear that poops jelly beans.

(The box identifies the bear as "the sub-zero poopin' hero." I was never sure exactly how the bear qualified for hero status.)

I'm getting a little anxious considering how high the bar is set this year. J has already given me an early gift of having satellite radio installed in my car. As usual, it's fantastic and I love it and I don't know how I got along without it.

But also as usual, I have no idea what I can get him that will be remotely comparable. And in my darkest hours, I ponder the unthinkable. "Hey, it comes in a reindeer version too!"

MST3K: The Creeping Terror

2009-11-17T18:38:04-05:00

At first, I ignored this little gem on the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 collection. (After all, I had Skydivers, by the legendary Coleman Francis, to occupy my attention.)

Then my friend and fellow MYSTie Charles asked what I thought of the ridiculous monster in The Creeping Terror, and I had to go back and actually examine the film.

My verdict on the monster? Well, as Tom Servo put it, it is creeping.

Seriously, this thing barely gets up to 1 mph, yet it consumes humans like M&Ms. Charles said it reminded him of a bunch of folks under a carpet, and that's the best description I've heard yet.

See, 'cause when you've got a bunch of folks underneath a carpet, they can help a victim climb inside the monster:

"Ya got her, Frank?" "Yup. Upsie daisy, here we go."

The monster likes to eat folks headfirst, which results in a lot of these shots:

A lot of these shots.

Which makes me wonder if the director had a "thing" about legs and feet.

Hmmm.

Yyyyeah.

And here's a little something for the ladies:

After a "strange object" lands on Earth, through the miracle of missile launch footage run backwards (no, I'm not kidding), one monster emerges from the capsule while another stays inside it and runs the electronic equipment... or something.

We're told that the law enforcement of Angel County, where the capsule landed, are doing all they can to figure out the situation. What's really great about The Creeping Terror is that all of this is told to us while we watch the conversations take place. (My apologies for the awful video quality. My video editing settings are a work in progress.)

I can't figure out what the deal is there, because we have sound for some of the scenes in the movie but not others. Did the sound equipment malfunction? Did the actors do such a bad job that the task of moving the plot forward was punted to the narrator? Or did the filmmakers just patch together a bunch of unrelated footage to try to make a movie, using narration as a kind of cinematic duct tape?

It's a mystery of cosmic proportions. But enough about the goofy-ass dubbing. Back to the goofy-ass alien! After emerging from the capsule, the monster eats a bathing suit-clad couple making out, which is just a given in these types of movies. From there, it moves on to eating a housewife (head-first, we must presume):

Then, it chows down on a little boy and his grandfather, in a sequence that yields one of the biggest laughs in the movie. Grandpa falls into a stream that's maybe 4 inches deep and Tom frantically yells "Let the current carry you away! Swim!"

From there, the monster scarfs up an entire hootenanny, using another making-out couple as an appetizer. It's confronted by the only civilian in the movie to stand up to it. Unfortunately, that civilian is attempting to use as a weapon...

... a guitar. It doesn't work too well.

Now, you'd think the monster would be stuffed by now, unable to eat another bite. But no! This insatiable alien heads for the town dance, apparently held in the middle of the afternoon and attended by people with a median age of 39.

You hear that song in the dance sequence? It continues throughout the whole thing. It's like 7 or 8 minutes long, and it has no obvious verse, chorus, entrance or exit points. To borrow a line from another episode, it's a Mobius strip of song; it continues endlessly to no discernible purpose.

The monster eats a few folks at the dance and scares away the rest. But it only seems to scare them to lovers lane (the scenes feature the same actors), where it eats a couple ... in a really disturbing way.

Then it mauls a dude in a crapped out car and seems to, once again, hump the car in a kind of dominance-celebrating move.

You know, no matter how big the monster supposedly gets, its "head" is always the very size of a dude holding a giant head on a stick. Funny, that.

Finally, the county government wises up and calls in the army.

An Army dude blows up the monster with a grenade, then the doctor guy (we saw him talking with Martin the sheriff; what he was actually saying, we'll never know) sifts through the remains and realizes something urgent. He beats feet over to the capsule, there's an explosion, another alien comes out and mauls him a bit, then Martin beats the crap out of the electronics within the capsule.

The doctor guy dies. The end.

What did we learn? Not much of anything. But fortunately, Mike and the bots can point us to the underlying theme of The Creeping Terror.

Enjoy!

Honey, I washed the cats

2009-11-11T12:15:54-05:00

This weekend, the house was abuzz with preparations for J's dad's arrival. Bob (my father-in-law! eep!) will be staying with us through the week before Thanksgiving, making him the first guest we've had to stay longer than just overnight. Plus, he's a parent, so everything has to be in tip-top shape. That meant raking and bagging 32 giant bags of leaves, pine straw and magnolia cones. It meant giving the house a thorough scrubbing. And it meant washing the cats.

Oh, yes.

I've bathed the cats before, usually to rid them of powerful dander or to clean them up after an accident. (Most recently, we bathed them because Mojo had, as usual, peed on himself from sheer terror at visiting the vet, and you can't just wash one cat without washing the other. There will be reprisals.)

So as J heroically mowed the lawn, I (equally heroically?) gathered old towels and bathmats, got the cat shampoo and "rinsing cup," ran tepid water in the tub and snagged an unsuspecting Mojo. He yowled and tried to scramble out of the tub, but he put up with the bathing without attacking me. Five minutes later, he was wet and indignant. Five more minutes later, so was Emily.

I sometimes wonder if the level of clean that cats experience after a bath isn't so much due to the shampoo as it is to the fact that they obsessively groom every single part of themselves afterwards. Either way, both cats seemed proud of their newfound cleanliness, which is also par for the course. As I guy I used to date put it, "Yeah, they hate it at first, but afterwards, they're stoked!")

(I think the photo above really captures how our house has become a giant puppy playpen. Evey single toy on the floor is Peach's. The box of pee pads on the ottoman, however, has become Emily's safe haven when Peach gets out of hand. Someday we'll have a tastefully appointed home. Perhaps when J lets me raise a herd of giant Great Pyrenees in the backyard.)

In other cat news, I finally met one of Black Kitty's humans, and asked about the little critter. His name? Blackie. Well, that explains why he comes when I call "Black Kitty." I can also report that he's amenable to being snuggled and that he and I are now best buddies.

Man, it's been all about the cats up in here lately, hasn't it? I'll try to throw some MST3K love at you before the week is out. Maybe The Creeping Terror...

Our Halloween petscape

2009-11-03T10:00:00-05:00

Adding Peach to the mix of critters in the house has made some things more complicated, to be sure, but one aspect we hadn't really considered when we got her back in March was how she was going to fit into the traditional dressing of the pets for Halloween.

See, it's fairly easy to find two coordinating outfits. But once you're dressing three pets, you're creating what I call a "petscape," a thematically consistent tableau of velcro, fur and hate. And that can be a little tricky.

Back in September, J found an adorable Snow White costume for Peach.

Of course, we already had Emily's witch costume from several years ago.

But what to do with Mojo? Creating a Snow White petscape would mean including one of the Seven Dwarfs—and what better choice for our weird little boy cat than...

Here, I think he really lives up to the name:

If that hat he's wearing looks a little weird, that's because I made it. We couldn't find a proper Dopey costume, but I managed to dig up a photo of a hat that Disney Pets used to make with little felt ears and "dopey" embroidered on it. It took me three hours, but I hand-stitched this replica. (It reminds me more of the Underpants Gnomes from South Park than of Dopey, but I was not about to redo that sucker.)

Getting all three pets into the same frame proved difficult; we deleted dozens of blurry shots from the camera that night. Here's what happened when we tried to get Peach and Emily together:

Snow White tackling the witch; there's an alternate ending I could get behind!

We finally got a bit of inspiration when Emily wandered over to the open door and gazed out.

I'm not sure if she's looking for trick-or-treaters or summoning her flying monkeys here. But we took that idea and ran with it, resulting in..

There we go! Of course, seconds later, Mojo beat feet and Peach lunged for Emily again, but for one brief shining moment, we had all three pets together in a Snow White petscape.

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

Black (Kitty) power!

2009-10-30T10:00:00-04:00

There's a house on the corner that we always drive by to get into or out of our little suburban subdivision. And there's a cat who lives in that house that we see fairly frequently, as the little critter likes to hang out on the front porch or driveway.

This little critter.

Seeing the cat reminded me of a column I'd read in college about a student adopting a black kitten. She had seen the sign proclaiming "Free Black Kitty" and had briefly misread it as a political slogan. (You know, Free Leonard Peltier! Free the Chicago Seven! Free Black Kitty!)

So I started chanting "Free Black Kitty!" whenever I saw the little furball. Then I began to chant it when the weather was nice but I couldn't see the cat outside. But then I came to realize: sometimes, freedom isn't a good thing for a kitty. So on days when the weather is crappy, the rallying cry becomes "Enclose Black Kitty!"

(I do hope Black Kitty's humans enclose him or her on Saturday, 'cause I've heard horror stories about stuff done to black cats on Halloween.)

Every so often, J and I ponder going up to Black Kitty's house when the humans were in the front yard and asking to pet Black Kitty. We figure it would be best to leave out the rather elaborate inner life we've developed around the cat.

Prior to last night, I had only admired Black Kitty from afar. Then, on my way to class, I spotted a familiar furry silhouette on the driveway of the house. I stopped the car, put the hazards on, grabbed my phone (hence the crap picture quality) and walked up to Black Kitty, hoping he or she wouldn't bolt before I could snap a pic.

I needn't have worried. Black Kitty trotted up to me, meowing a greeting and nudging my hand. In fact, I couldn't get him or her to stop moving long enough to get a shot that looked like anything other than a vaguely cat-shaped black blur.

And I was very relieved that Black Kitty's humans were nowhere near the house, otherwise they would have seen a car stopped as if for an emergency and a clearly deranged lady holding out a camera phone while telling their cat "Okay, okay--no, back--easy--back it--sit. Sit. Stay. Hold on. Dammit!"

I'm still unsure of Black Kitty's gender and also of his or her name. For Black Kitty wears no collar. So I have a request for Black Kitty's owners, if by some odd chance they're reading this. Free Black Kitty when it's nice out. Enclose Black Kitty when it's raining or it's Halloween. But most of all, Clothe Black Kitty.

MST3K: Red Zone Cuba

2009-10-27T15:32:54-04:00

Every MSTie has an episode that they can only watch once, The One That Broke Them. This is that episode for my friend Galen; when he loaned me his DVD, he said, "I'm not even sure I want it back."

And to be sure, Red Zone Cuba took its toll on Mike and the bots. As Crow put it, "I want to hurt this movie, but I can never hurt it the way it hurt me."

Personally? I kinda dig it! You could say I find it entertainingly appalling.

See, what you have to understand about Red Zone Cuba is that it's part of the Coleman Francis trio (along with Skydivers and The Beast of Yucca Flats, both of which have also been MST-ified), which means it's going to have no redeeming features whatsoever.

From the moment you hear the theme song, you know you're in for hard time. I mean, after all, it was sung by...

...John Carradine!

As Mike (I think) notes in the clip, Coleman Francis looked a lot like Curly Howard of the Three Stooges. In fact, perhaps he was mistaken for Curly too often, as Francis seemed to work overtime to create a story and a character that were the opposite of the goofy, happy-go-lucky Stooge's image.

Woo woo-woo-woo-woo? I don't think so.

The story begins with Curly—er, Coleman breaking out of jail and joining two itinerant ex-con migrant workers. "We follow da harvest," one of them bleats, and you know that Francis was going for a Steinbeck/Hemingway vibe with that, but instead it just sounds kinda stupid.

The three decide to join up with a force that's planning to invade Cuba, since they're supposed to receive "a t'ousand bucks ta join, and a t'ousand bucks when it's over." The guys don't really take to the training, and who can blame them when their invasion map looks like this?

Nonetheless, they do some activities on a hillside and eventually shove off for Cuba. (To my delight, the constant MST3K response to the movie's use of "shove off" is a cry of "You shove off!")

This, apparently, is Cuba. (Its resemblance to New Mexico is completely coincidental.)

And this, apparently, is Castro! Hee!

After some skirmishes that appear to take place in someone's front yard, Coleman and compadres are captured and imprisoned.

See? Cuba!

They escape and flee by way of...

... the Cuban Air Force!

They land somewhere (we're never told where), and find the restaurant of the damned.

I think this clip really summarizes Red Zone Cuba: the mindless violence, the lack of explanation for anything, the relentless unattractiveness of settings and characters and the total disconnect to what passes for the rest of the plot.

From there, they hop a train and visit the presumed widow of one of their fellow invaders. Back in "prison" in "Cuba," Sargeant Chastain had made the mistake of telling them there was a fortune in pitchblende in a mountain he owned.

Mrs. Chastain is agreeable to the plan.

Now, you see that expression on Mrs. Chastain's face? That's the closest to happy anybody gets in this film—but you wouldn't know it from the music! Red Zone Cuba has the most inexplicably perky incidental music I've ever seen. Here's a montage:

But, of course, such lighthearted shenanigans can never last in a Coleman Francis film, and before long, everyone is arrested, wounded or just plain gunned down.

And on horrible film stock, too.

Is there a moral to the story? Not really, unless you want to count "Don't invade Cuba with only 7 guys." But perhaps a greater lesson can be learned from the works of Coleman Francis as a whole, and that lesson can be taken from a character in City Slickers:

"Lord, we give you Curly. Try not to piss 'im off."

Alternate uses for a cat: Timer

2009-10-23T10:00:00-04:00

It's a well-established fact that cats make excellent alarm clocks, albeit ones that tend to go off well before you want them to. But I have recently become aware that Emily has a uniquely well-honed sense of both how much time has elapsed and how much time should be allotted to a particular function.

Especially when that function takes place in the bathroom. I haven't sat there with a stopwatch or anything, but Emily does seem to enter the Throne Room at regular intervals.

You'll be sitting there, performing a necessary chore, maybe reading something (possibly playing Video Poker on your iPod touch), and suddenly a cat pushes the door open, walks right up to you and gives you this look that clearly says, "You're still here? Really?"

Oddly, she seems to respond to an impatient "Okay, okay, I'll get a move on," and exits the bathroom. But five minutes later, she's back. This time, she not only gives you that look, she usually bites you on the side of the thigh, knowing full well you can't exactly get up and chase her with any hope of success.

By the third visit (hey, the book was good!), she'll just give you the "Get off the thunderbucket!" glare, then go out into the bedroom and make a bunch of loud noise on the metal closet door. That's usually enough to propel you off the john, and as you waddle furiously into the bedroom, she's back on the bed, looking at you coolly, as if to say "Finally, you're out."

I like to think that Emily believes she's helping us save water and electricity, but I know her too well. She just does it for the evil lulz.

Stars, friends, champagne and doughnuts: our New York anniversary trip

2009-10-21T14:42:51-04:00

J and I went to New York to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary week before last. Traditionally, the first year is the paper anniversary, and as it turned out, that was quite appropriate, because we both got each other tickets for stuff.

The impetus to go to NYC in the first place was, as I mentioned earlier, the historic appearance of Kylie Minogue on American soil, right around our anniversary date! (I got the Kylie tickets.)

And what a show it was! It's not often I use the word "extravaganza" unironically, but Kylie's Monday show on Oct. 12 was a freaking extravaganza. Kylie performed 24 songs in a little under two hours with barely a break. There were eight dancers, a live band with a horn section, impressive sets and a group of movable LED screens that augmented the sets and the atmosphere, and kept the spectacle going whenever Kylie and the dancers had to slip offstage for one of six costume changes.

Kylie came into our world as she was lowered on a big shiny skull with an apparent fire in it (?) doing the classic countdown intro to "Light Years." I'm not sure what the deal with the skull was; maybe giving death the finger after surviving breast cancer?

Apparently, the first costume change didn't work properly, so in what I consider to be a typical Kylie move, she came back onstage in her "space goddess" costume and her dancers handed her a big flouncy robe to sing in. So cute. Honestly, though, that might have been part of the show. I'm not sure; I couldn't hear or understand a lot of what she said between songs.

But I heard what she sang just fine, and she sounded lovely. The voice that seems a little nasal in the studio came out as a beautiful, rich soprano in concert, and only seemed to get stronger as the show went on. Before the finale of "Love At First Sight," she led the audience in a soaring a capella singalong of "Your Disco Needs You."

J took a picture of me watching the show and later told me, "You looked like it was Christmas morning." I couldn't believe I was actually watching someone whose music I've loved for years, and who's been something of a personal inspiration, and that I was so close to her. The dazzling spectacle of Kylie's show was appreciated, to be sure, but what mattered most to me was the honor, if you will, of watching a master do what she does.

I still don't get the flaming skull, though.

J had bought us some tickets as well: two fourth-row seats at "A Steady Rain," starring Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. Talk about watching masters do what they do!

The play itself was kinda meh; it would have made a pretty good episode of Law & Order. Two childhood friends grow up to become Chicago cops, and during the course of the play, the role of alpha dog subtly shifts. But, as my friend Gabriel wisely pointed out, people weren't there to see the play itself.

One of my favorite aspects of the play was the casting: it would have been so easy to have Daniel Craig play the bully and Hugh Jackman play the more sensitive lost soul, but they flipped the roles. The result is a Jackman whose showman energy makes him a bad guy you almost hate to hate, and a Craig who seems almost to apologize for his presence. It's fantastic work on both their parts.

Like the Kylie show, seeing Jackman and Craig in person was something of a once-in-a-lifetime event. Now that I think of it, so was our first anniversary.

(When we arrived home, I learned my unemployment benefits would be running out that week, and two days later I got a major case of the flu. But for that five-day weekend, all was lovely.)

Let me know if I start oinking

2009-10-16T14:25:19-04:00

I've got... something. Something kinda flu-ish, with some impressive chest congestion to boot. The thing is, I don't know if what I have is swine flu or just regular (heifer?) flu.

I actually checked the CDC website earlier today and read: "The symptoms of 2009 H1N1 flu virus in people include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people may have vomiting and diarrhea." But that doesn't really help me out.

Apparently, the achiness and diarrhea/vomiting are what really set swine flu apart. Unfortunately, they're also both fairly common aspects of my life. As a 38-year-old behemoth who does Muay Thai kickboxing 3 times a week with the ferocity of a teenager, I'm in a near-constant state of achiness and mild fatigue. And as a woman with PCOS who takes Metformin twice a day to help with the insulin resistance... well, let's just say that my lower intestinal tract could reasonably be called "tempestuous."

Fever-wise, my internal thermometer is going from one extreme to the other. I'll feel cold, so I'll snuggle into something fleecy I got at Target, but then I get over-hot so I'll turn on the fan or open a window and before long the cycle repeats itself. The cats are clearly losing patience with me. Just not enough to move to another room.

I've also got my most telltale symptom of illness: the overwhelming desire to snuggle everyone around me (and maybe cry a little as I do so). My mom used to theorize that this behavior was some sneaky evolutionary trick developed by whatever virus I had to ensure its spread throughout the population.

So that's me today: sneezing on the regular, coughing up some truly unsettling stuff, coated with a mild sweat from my last temperature cycle (special to my mom: no, these are not hot flashes), and having my usual achy muscles and tetchy GI tract. And demanding a hug.

It might as well be swine flu, 'cause I'm wallowing in it.

Worshipping at The Church of Kylie

2009-10-13T15:00:00-04:00

By the time you read this, J and I will be on our way home from New York, where we spent a 5-day weekend celebrating our 1-year anniversary, the dear friends we have in the area, the fact that Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are on Broadway and the show I never thought I'd be able to see: Kylie Minogue in North America!

The video quality is about what you'd expect for a concert, but dude! She sang while dancers were holding her above their heads in a split! That's a level of showmanship (and athleticism!) that I can only genuflect before.

I've been a Kylie fan for years now, but I came to The Church of Kylie relatively late in Our Lady of The Insured Kiester's career. My first Kylie album was Fever; I had to go into the back catalog to discover the wonder that was Light Years.

J and I went to the Monday night show, while my beloved friend Gabriel caught Sunday's show. Since we heard of her tour in early summer, Gabriel and I have been "squee!"ing to each other over Facebook. He posted a set list from her Oakland show last week, so I was able to put together an iTunes playlist for concert preparation.

And as I listened to her signature brand of dance-pop, I realized part of what makes Kylie so special: there's a fundamental sweetness to her musical persona. Even when she's singing about sex, there's nothing sleazy about it; it's all vague wantings and desirings. She'll lick her lips, but it's with a smile rather than a pornulated pout.

Plus, you get the sense from listening to her songs that she'd be so much fun to be around, that she'd make as good a friend as a lover, if not better (Kylie's musical persona has a history of broken relationships, I'm afraid).

Now, I realize that all of this is part of her job as an international pop star and gay icon. But Her Holiness does that job better than just about anyone else on the planet. That's what makes her divine.

What's better than owning one puppy?

2009-10-09T11:00:00-04:00

Owning one puppy and having a neighbor acquire another puppy!

For a few weeks now, J's been agitating about getting Peach a little brother or sister. No matter how many times I wearily tell him, "Baby, we are barely holding it together with one small dog and two elderly cats," the notion of having a playmate for Peach has enchanted him.

But we've dodged the new-puppy bullet! The family whose backyard abuts onto ours recently adopted a tiny beagle named Dixie, so now Peach has a new playmate ... that we don't have to feed, clean up after, spay/neuter, vaccinate, etc.

They get along smashingly. Little Dixie is only 10 weeks old, so right now she's smaller than Peach, but she'll eventually get to be about twice Peach's size. Since she doesn't have the advantage of mass, she uses her breed's signature sound (and the element of surprise) to get the jump on Peach:

I love the very beginning, when Peach is clearly startled by the noise coming out of Dixie. (I apologize for the volume of the noise coming out of me on that video clip, but hey, a $150 video camera don't come with a boom mike.)

Now, don't get me wrong, Peach is no slouch in the cuteness department, but Dixie is working her own brand of magic here.

Awwwww.

And here's a scene to melt your heart...

...until you realize, as we did, that what they're sniffing is a pile of poo left by an itinerant neighbor cat. (Puppy kisses were sharply curtailed at that point.)

On that note, have a great weekend!

Furry. Wobbly. Deadly.

2009-10-06T12:38:34-04:00

Who doesn't love a raccoon? They've got those little masks and those little hand-like paws... and those little sharp teeth and an uncanny ability to organize into packs. Just ask an elderly Floridian woman:

I've had my own run-ins with raccoons, too. When I was living in Austin, I kept a dish of cat food on the outside landing of my second-floor apartment for the two strays I dubbed "The General" and "Little Red." (I had hoped to befriend, trap, neuter and find homes for them, but they never even got close enough for phase 1 of that plan.)

Of course, a dish of cat food is like a flare in the sky to a raccoon, and one night I opened my door to find not a rusty tortoiseshell nor a bedraggled Russian Blue but a big, round raccoon nibbling at the Iams. It and I were both startled, and it wobbled off down the stairs.

However, when I looked down to the first floor, I saw the critter walking past the ground floor apartments toward the other stairs, and I realized that it was just going to make an approach from another direction. The little bastard. I had to be more intimidating. But how?

At this moment, a conversation that I'd had with a downstairs neighbor came into my head; she'd talked about her concern over our local pack of raccoons, noting "One of them chased my husband!" I promised myself that I wouldn't run from a mammal that didn't even come up to my knee (reptiles, as always, are another matter altogether).

I also recollected snippets of information from my best friend, who'd taken a class on camping to satisfy a phys-ed credit requirement. According to her professor, the best way to scare away a bear was to raise your hands above your head, make yourself as big as possible and intone in a booming voice: "Get away, bear!" (Someday, I hope to try this out on annoying co-workers to see if it works in an office setting.)

So as the raccoon bumbled up the stairs, I walked towards it, stood on the landing and spread my limbs out (in what I believe is known as the Voltron position). Rather than using words, I decided to use that weird space alien noise Mojo makes when he's had about all he can take. It's like an agitated meow with some throaty noises and some high-pitched spikes in it, and it is freaky.

There I stood, limbs splayed (with a spatula in one hand, if I recall correctly) and howling like a demented tabby. The raccoon paused, looked past me to the cat food, looked up at me (I had redoubled the yowling) and decided that even premium cat food wasn't worth messing with the crazy spatula-bearing giant housecat. It shot me one last look of pure resentment, then went back down the stairs, and never came near the dish again.

Then my neighbor Camille flung open her door and asked "What the hell was that?!"

Overall, we got off very easy in that apartment building: one chased husband, one temporarily freaked-out neighbor and one moment of utter absurdity. Of course, we only had the one raccoon to deal with. If they'd been in a pack, I'm sure I'd have fared no better than that poor woman in Florida.

Let's talk raccoons. Tell me your tales of masked woodland creatures in the comments. (Seriously, if you ever want to get creeped out, check out an apartment dumpster the night after Thanksgiving. Just don't get too close.)

A bicycle built for two(ish)*

2009-10-02T11:00:00-04:00

In his role as Ultimate Doggie Dad, J recently acquired a nylon carrier that can be mounted to the handlebars of a bike, creating a high-tech version of Toto's basket in The Wizard of Oz. We hoped Peach would like it, and we're pretty sure she did.

Based on our (admittedly biased) interpretation of her expressions, she was concerned at first, but grew more reassured as time went on and she didn't fall out.

We took her around the block, and she was thrilled to be interacting with her neighborhood fan club at face level. I'm not kidding about the fan club, either: a group of four tween girls ran up to us breathlessly asking "Is that Peach?" while nearby tween boys looked on enviously.

Next up, we decided to try Emily, knowing her to be the more malleable of the two cats (at first, anyway).

Emily's reaction seemed a little muted, though; she did that meow quite a few times as we took her around the block.

We also thought she'd enjoy interacting with folks in the neighborhood, because to Emily, every stranger is just a minion you haven't met yet. But there weren't any kids out this time and all we got were a few looks of utter confusion from passing cars (we think we saw someone ask "Is that a cat?!").

Finally, we were down to one remaining pet. When I said, "Come on, let's get the Moj," J's response was: "Wait—you're serious about that? I thought you were kidding!" Oh, honey. I never kid about alarming and humiliating our big boy cat.

We were expecting a replay of what happens every time Mojo goes to the vet: puffiness, hissing, urinating out of sheer terror and a yowl of purest rage. Instead we got:

As with Emily's neighborhood tour, we didn't see any people out (but did startle a few drivers). And as we rode, instead of biting J's hand as we had feared he might, Mojo gently nudged it with his nose, a sign of what passes for happiness with our strange little dude.

Well, he's really not so "little." Mojo was outside the 13-lb. weight rating of the basket, and J said he could actually feel the carrier creaking a bit. Still, I doubt that will be the Moj's last bike ride.

It might be Emily's last ride, though: later that evening, she peed on the bathmat as J was in the shower, then overnight, she threw up in the middle of the kitchen floor. (It's her ability to visualize consequences and plan accordingly that really scares me.)

But in terms of positive pet experiences, two out of three ain't bad.

*You can't really count a small dog as an extra person (although Mojo comes close).

MST3K: The Starfighters

2009-09-30T13:55:52-04:00

No celebration of the wonders of Mystery Science Theater 3000 would be complete without a mention of one of my personal favorites, The Starfighters.

It's about planes. And the Air Force. And flight safety. And refueling. And an awkward, contrived romance. But mostly it's about refueling.

And the really great thing? It's almost a musical! Seriously, there's so many orchestral arrangements that at one point Crow is compelled to ask, "Are all the other armed services as easy-listening as the Air Force?"

During that last refueling scene, Mike even picks up Tom and the two dance... well, to the extent that a dude holding an inert puppet and moving around can be called "dancing."

But the songs kick into high gear when a certain piece of rescue equipment is introduced. No sooner does the flight instructor say "poopie suit" than it's like Christmas for Mike and the bots.

I like to call the above number the "Poopie Suit Hop," while the valedictory scene is treated to the more solemn (yet less dignified) "Poopie Suit Anthem."

In a truly strange coda, in a recent episode of "Bones," bodies wearing black nylon uniforms were exhumed and examined. To my utter astonishment, I learned that poopie suits are actual Navy-issue equipment. I would say "art imitates life," but under no circumstances could "The Starfighters" be called art.

Pre-Halloween festivities

2009-09-25T10:30:00-04:00

As the recession continues to hang around like an unpleasant odor, retailers have stepped up the holiday merchandising more than ever. Many shops have begun putting Christmas diggity out already, and Halloween stuff has been in the stores since late July. Fortunately, this has given us a chance to plan out our Halloween pet-scape, and we have high hopes for the reveal. And while that will have to wait, here's a little costumed-pet taste to tide you over.

One of the benefits of owning a small dog is that she can share a wardrobe with her feline "aunt." Who do you think wears the summer sundress better: Emily...

... or Peach?

I will say this: Peach certainly enjoyed wearing the dress more. After we had taken it off of her and put it in the little "costume bin" on the wall of the cat room, Peach would run in the room and look longingly up at the bin.

Of course, that might have been her fascination with the newest addition to our costume collection. It seems that J and I were ahead of the curve in dressing cats, and now the folks at PetSmart have caught up with us. For last weekend, we found this glorious bit of headgear in the cat aisle:

(The shot is blurry because J was laughing so hard at the "indignant bunny" look on Mojo's face.) Best $6.99 we ever spent.

Here, Festive Sir Mojo hisses at his doggie "niece" who's just trying to reach two of her favorite things in the world: Uncle Mojo and his shiny new headgear.

And here, we have the only-at-our-house moment of a dog in a dress trying to approach a cat in a jester hat.

Lest you wonder, none of these costumes will figure into Halloween. We just felt like riling the pets up and taking pictures. 'Cause that's how we roll.