Here are some pictures from our recent Halloween "Beggars Night." Ariel is, as you might not be surprised to learn, Ariel the Little Mermaid, complete with crazy red wig. Ruth is some sort of flamenco dancer or something. She looked extremely cute.

Here are the three of us, but preparing to head out into the neighborhood. Ariel decided to forget the wig for the swing around for candy, so I decided to put it on. Call it my tribute to those crazy long-haired, World Champion Red Sox.

How can we make this stop?

Well, Tegan, the girls and I went to the grocery store this afternoon and there I was confronted with this awful image:



As you might guess, I am terribly upset about the thought of this actually coming true. While we waited to pay for our groceries, I thumbed to the correct page and tried to scan the pertinent information.

Apparently, Ben is ready to have kids and Jennifer (according to sources) will say yes as soon as he chooses to propose. She has even gone to visit Mama Affleck.

(sigh)

Anyway, US Weekly, paragon of journalism, displayed three photos for proof of the love between Ben and JG . . . . The first was a photo of him and JLo at a Sox game last year. The two of them weren't looking at each other or anything. Very distant. The second was Ben and someone else at a Sox game, also distant. The third was Ben and JG (also at a Sox game) and they were googly-eyeing each other and everything.

Sigh again.

I know, I can't do anything about it and it doesn't affect me at all, but him and her? I just can't be happy about it.

The REM trip

Tegan and I left around 4:30.

It is impossible to get out of town when you want, especially if you are trying to get everything set for the babysitter, coordinating this and that, changing out of your work clothes into your rockin' clothes.

But we managed.

The trip down to Cincy was fine and there were no real traffic issues. We listened to REM along the way to get in the mood. Little did we know . . .

We found the Taft Theatre without incident and successfully located a parking garage close by. The doors opened at 6:30 and we got there about 6:40. I thought we were going to miss the opening act, but we didn't. We got there in plenty of time to wander a bit, check out the t-shirt stands, notice that the political activists were relegated to the basement level where the bathrooms were (come on REM, where's the swing state love?), and decide not to spend money on beer.

Our seats were five rows back on the first balcony, stage right. Absolutely the best view I have ever had for any concert, much less REM. The crowd was a healthy mixture of college kids, grad student types, early middle-agers like us and people that simply seemed TOO OLD to be rockin'. I swear there was a 60-year-old dad with his college-aged daughter. They were punished by having to sit at the top of the theater.

Speaking of dads, there was a young couple with (I kid you not) a 5 month old baby!! Tegan, I and everyone around us were flabbergasted by this. The kid had to have either been drugged or deaf and mute, because it made no sound everything we noticed it. Dudes! Spring for a baby-sitter . . . we did!

The opening act was Now It's Overhead. A very nice, young group from Athens, GA. They have recently been in Budapest, according to Stipe's intro of the band and were driving to San Diego right after the show. Man they looked young but there were good. This was their fifth and final opening for REM and I think they learned a lot. There were definite REM vibes from this quartet, along with occasional elements of Joshua Tree U2, a bit of Oasis, and something else that I couldn't place. I will buy their album, cause they were good. It put me in mind of the last time I saw REM and the young, up-and-coming Indigo Girls opened for them. I wish these dudes well. They played a tight, quick set of about 45 minutes and then there was a 30 minute pause to reconfigure the stage.

REM kicked off around 9ish. To see the full review, see WWYG?! Omnimedia. The link should be available on my list of good sites, to the right.

AWESOME!!!!

A partial explanation

Well, I don't want to continue the suspense much longer, and judging by the enormous outpouring of interest in my teasers, I start explaining what's up.

Last week I got a fortune cookie with a message inside (as is true of all such cookies). It said: "When you gather your resources together, Goals are accomplished."

Yes, I know the punctuation and capitalization are not correct, but bear with the mystical cookie that is struggling to impact psychic truth via a second language.

Anyway, at the time, I figured it could only refer to the temporary reorganization and reassignment of personnel around the office. I and many others are being shifted to get higher priority projects done in a timely (read "panicked") fashion.

But, then Jack Thunder, who often serves as my muse and my goad, prodded me to embellish the blogging experience around here at WWYG?! Since Jack often has some good ideas, I decided to implement his plan.

Soon some of you (my regular, dedicated readers) will be receiving an invitation to register on Blogger and become part of a new, spinoff website entitled WWYG?! Omnimedia. This site's sole purpose it to allow us all to collaborate and create a website together that does what we do best--criticize and discuss the media in all of its forms: print, visual, musical, cinema, Internet.

I want to give this a try because I am intrigued by the collaborative nature of the venture. It might undercut some of what I do on Why Won't You Grow?! but let's see what happens, hmmm?

So, keep a lookout for your invitation. Don't throw it away.