A freaky fiesta

At midnight tonight, my favorite holiday begins. Here, some tips for throwing a ghoulishly spooktastic shindig that's really something to howl at:

Eat: Potato Ghosts, Creepcake Cupcakes, and lots and lots of candy corn

Drink: Eyeball Highballs and Pina Ghouladas

Watch: The Five Cheesiest 80s Horror Films or the Spike Jonze-Kanye collab ... one of the creepiest things I've ever seen.


Listen: The Zombie Danceparty Mix, Fever Ray's Halloween podcast, Dana's spooky playlist, and of course, Nightmare Revisited (a Nightmare Before Christmas cover album featuring Marilyn Manson, Rodrigo y Gabriela, RJD2, Devotchka, KoRn, and more).

Trick or treat yourself to the best Halloween ever!

Ready, set, type!

November is National Novel Writing Month, and if you register over at nanowrimo.org, you can race the clock with thousands of scribes across the country scrambling to write 50,000 words by November 30th. If you succeed, you'll receive a Winner's Certificate and Web Badge, and join the ranks of Times #1 bestselling author Sara Gruen, who wrote Water for Elephants during the challenge!

Meet Dana

Maaaaaaad props to my BFF Dana, whose carefully-executed inspiration board of a fashion blog is now being recognized for all its (and her) style and beauty by the Free People clothing company. Read the interview, check out her blog, and recognize!

Walt Whitman for Levi's

Is it just me, or have ad campaigns gotten way, way cooler since the effects of the recession clawed their way into the American conscious? I guess the whole involuntary post-death spokes-celeb thing could be conceived as a desecration of Walt's work, but since Levi's were around long before the Whit-man, and this commercial is more or less a piece of art in its own right, I think we can give the complaints a rest. Chris Farley for DirecTV feels far tackier, anyway.

From the Levi's Go Forth campaign (the first is a recording of Whitman reading "America," and the second - which I prefer - is an actor's recording of "Pioneers! O Pioneers"):




Directed by Cary Fukunaga, the man responsible for Sundance favorite Sin Nombre.

Devour those dumplings

Today is the 6th Annual Chef One Dumpling Eating Contest, but more importantly it is the first-ever NYC Dumpling Festival! Noon to five in Sarah D. Roosevelt Park (East Houston and Forsyth), hundreds will gather to consume the cutest of appetizer-sized pocket foods. Dumplings from all corners of the earth - the Chinese bao, the Polish pierogi, the Italian gnocchi - will be celebrated and consumed. I'll be cheering on the competitors with a $5 sample plate in hand.

Klosterf**ck

Man, oh man, first draft of a very exciting screenplay is in the works: The Hold Steady's Craig Finn and Letterman writer Tom Ruprecht are teaming up with one of my favorite authors of our day (that'd be Chuck Klosterman) to bring his 2001 memoir, Fargo Rock City, to the big screen. Fargo is the story of Klosterman's experience growing up in North Dakota as a monster heavy-metal fan. The guy could make Kanye like country music, if he tried. This one's gonna be a dorky teen movie for the ages.

For the french fry connoisseur

Famed French chef Alain Ducasse judges New York's french fries (my guilty pleasure food of choice) for NYmag. Glad to see neighborhood fave Pommes Frites made #2!

It was a monster mix

Props to Flavorwire for sharing their ghoulishly creeptastic Halloween mixtape. Ctrl + left click + save as on each song link, and do your best zombie dance.
They're missing one important tune, however:

Sweet Civil War

That's right, a Civil War reenactment with marshmallows. In Dumbo (where else?) on October 24th. BYO mallows & weapons. For more, go here.

Jonze gets it right

I saw it Saturday - Where the Wild Things Are, that is - after reading Dave Eggers' deftly-handled novelization (which aligned very closely with the screenplay). The film was visually stunning, shot mostly in Australia (in and around Melbourne). Spike Jonze did an incredible job of allowing the viewer into the mindset of a 9 year old child, lending depth, pain and poetry to the adaptation of a much-loved classic. Karen O's score, the voices of James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, and Forest Whitaker, the ever-radiant Catherine Keener, and perhaps most of all, the raw talent of first-time actor Max Records (yes, he's really named Max), set Jonze's creation firmly in that most-difficult-to-enter of worlds: a successful print-to-screen adaptation.
Meet my own Wild Things - pumpkin cupcake monsters with cinnamon buttercream frosting.