Madison, IN

Limbo libido limning limbering liberal limbs.

Bimbo baboons bumping braggadocieros beneath branching bumbling baobabs banishing banshees.

Sheer shanks sharply shaming shaking shampoos, shastas' shadows shrooming

Gnostic gnats gnawing gnocchi nevermore moreover overrun runovers overturn turnovers overcome comforters

Terse turns of verse verily verifying fire defying ingots and bigots and big lots and hot spots and big shots and bragging blahging and blogging and befogging and dogging and goggling and ogling and agogging and..

Stop! Now it is time to stop.

Stop.

*Vicki  Murder mystery that really did keep us guessing.  

Madison IN

Today we walked across the bridge in the fog. In the middle we could not see any detail on either shore. Check, we couldn't see either shore. We passed no one; no one passed us except cars and trucks on the bridge.

There were spider webs still hanging from the railings. A couple of them were almost perfect. All of them were covered in hoarfrost, some with ornamental beads of water. I wondered if this kind of natural phenomenon was the inspiration for lace.

Madison IN

Thanksgiving day we went on a morning walk and were rewarded by good sightings of a great blue heron trying to fish along the river.

Today I walked up to the top of the hill on the west end of the Heritage Trail and ha ha ha the joke is on me!

A few months ago I wrote about a wonderful "sculpture" by the parking lot at the top of the trail which changed shape and created optical illusions as you walked past. A few weeks ago I went by and saw some additions that seemed to be destroying the illusions but waited to see what would transpire.

What has transpired is that the greenhouses are almost complete including heaters!

Ha, ha, ha! What I thought would provide a new experience of perception is going to provide food and or flowers instead. Well, that is okay, too, but I hope you got to see the sculpture before it turned into greenhouses!

On the way home I was getting tired of my walk. Then I turned my head to the left and saw the Lanier Mansion with its very green boxwood hedges and lovely Fall-yellow trees.

I looked toward the Ohio River on the right and saw a kingfisher perched in a small tree by the water's edge. Maybe the second I have seen in my years here!

So far we have had four days of feasting and and abundant leisure - a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Madison IN

All of a sudden Donald Trump is no longer a comic figure. Now he has even more power than he had as a rich man or even a celebrity.

This a danger not only to those who fear white racism, but to Donald Trump, his family, and, I would think, to the tenants of Trump Tower NYC.

The White House, while home perhaps to many, is basically the home of one very privileged and powerful family. Staff may abound, but they are most likely not wealthy and privileged independent of their function. The White House is always a potential target for whoever wishes the President or the U.S. ill.

If Trump decides to live in his Tower, the target moves. If his wife and son stay there the target fades a little or becomes more of a moving target, but it still remains a potential target.

What person who simply wants to live peacefully in opulence and wealth (heh heh) would want to stay there?

The presence of the President might, perhaps, be a little too intimate an invitation to interesting times!

* The Great Debaters  If you can only see one more film before the end of the year, make it this one. Profoundly moving.

Madison IN

I wonder if Trump is going to try to have a TV reality show about being President.

Madison IN

If retailers are keeping track of all our purchases, does that mean they are taking some responsibility for the consequences?

After all, they are using the information to profit from our buying patterns by marketing to us as individuals.

Yesterday my mate was watching CBS sports Pittsburgh commentary when his attention was deflected by an article about a food product recall.

The retailer we bought the product from gave us no warning or even notice of the recall at all even though they give us coupons at least partly based on what we buy.

So, does this information highway through our personal habits only go one way?

Oh, by the way, the recall was for Sabra hummus* because Listeria was found in a processing plant. You can get replacement coupons by going onto the Sabra website.

* Yesterday this said something entirely different, for which I apologize. I blame it partly on my infamous electronic editor, partly on the decades-old lability of the spelling of the word that Sabra has chosen to spell hummus. I, in the future, will try to comply. Nov. 22 (Thanks to my sister who noticed!)

Madison IN

Yesterday I made millet bread by grinding whole millet in a blade coffee grinder. The recipe, one I have made before, is from The Tassajara Bread Book. It is scrumptious!

The word scrumptious reminded me of sumptuous and I wondered why their last syllable would be spelled so differently when they are so similar. It turns out that scrumptious is probably a variation of sumptuous.

This week is one of Thanksgiving for and via food. Who cares where the custom came from? Everyone must eat to live so why not, for one week of the year, live to eat?

After the horrendous election season we have been though, we all need comfort food. Sour cranberries made sweet! Dry flour made flaky! Hard raw potatoes mashed and sweet potatoes buttered up. Turkeys roasted as dressing for stuffing!

And don't starve yourself until the Day. This is the Week! Eat eat eat!

May your very sumptuous Thanksgiving be scrumdiddlyumptious.

Madison IN

When I looked up the idea of a rhythmic palindrome I didn't find anything that isolated it. It exists in combination with words in poetry that is symmetrical around a central word. It exists in music as combination of rhythm and tone.

It exists on its own nowhere, perhaps, except in my own mind. Well, okay, I just invented it as a poetic device called rhythmic palindromes solos. Ha, ha.

I did see some cool poems written as palindromes. If you want complication, look up some of the musical examples. The geometric representations were too esoteric for me. Maybe listening to some examples would help. Hmm...later.

Shredasaurusrex (I don't know his real name yet) wrote a cool movement he describes as rhythmically retrograde -"mirror of remorse." I liked it. You can probably find it under retrograde music or the way I did - rhythmic palindrome. Guitar noise>forum 

There are more possibilities to be found listed by Google but I am done for tonight.

*The Impossible   Reenactment of  the 2004 tsunami experienced by Thailand from the experiences of a visiting family of five. These actors were totally convincing, even -especially! - the children.

Madison IN

So why did so many women - especially college-educated women - vote for Trump?

My theory is that the recent conservative Christian attempts to take over colleges and to start their own colleges has resulted in the graduation of more fundamentalist Christians who have never experienced the major challenge to their beliefs that the college experience used to present to the young.

If you are a Fundamentalist, you believe that men are superior to women or at least accept the fact that they are in charge.

I have been fearing the effect of the total control of right-wing Christian parents over their children's education through home schooling has been more polarization of their attitudes, and the extension of this control to include the college experience would have devastating consequences to that education that the parents claim to value.

I'm wondering if this possible increased submission to the dominant male system is part of the seemingly inexplicable rise of Trump.

Madison IN

I've heard a lot about the big supermoon lately, and that got me to thinking about the wonderful line

"Did you see the moon last night?"

I associated it with the musical Oklahoma, but I am not sure. At any rate, I was musing about why it affected me so strongly and I realized it was bilaterally (or should I say bitemporally?) symmetrical.

It is like a rhythmic palindrome, I thought. Is there such a thing? So I looked it up. 

There sure is! And what do you know - it is called - rhythmic palindrome!

I didn't spend long researching this. After all, there is morning-stuff to do! What I saw had more to do with music than with words and hell, I have heard of retrograde music. My dad, musicologist Newman W. Powell, told me about that and played examples.

I never thought about it in relation to words alone until now.

I'll research it as a poetical device and get back to you.

Later!

Madison, IN

Maybe the measure of a society is how bearable life is in and of itself.

My mother was a young woman who had suffered as an orphan through the Depression (economic, 1930s) with books. Her great Aunt Mary started the library in the town where she lived, so my mom had books. Lots of access to books. As Emily Dickinson observed, they were an escape. There was a lot to escape in the world back then.

As a girl I grew up in a small town and read books. Then, when I was around eight, we got a TV. That new form of escape did more or less the same thing as books. TV introduced us to events both better and worse than what we were experiencing first hand. (Probably nothing less boring, we evidently thought.)

Now I credit the Internet with allowing people to control their exposure to the world so much that they are out of touch with where they live until, as in the case of teenage bullying, the world reaches out and slaps us in the face.

Well Reality has reached out and slapped us in the Face.

I want to blame the new hand-helds for the election of Trump - the proof of our social decadence - but maybe I should blame books, for giving us all a reality we think we can endure - until we can't.

We have rejected Mom for a wicked old worldly Daddy who appears to have ways and means to help us, but does not and will not.

In fact, come to think of it, we didn't reject Mommy -we chose Mommy! It's just that Daddy cheated and weaseled around and got control of the whole family.

The battle of the sexes goes on and the chief weapon was Genesis.

Remember, the serpent was a He.

***

So now I (while reading this aloud to my partner) realize that this piece has twisted around like a serpent itself.

My mate points out that Mommy cheated, too.

Okay, true. But Daddy cheated more!

This society is pathetic. We are still acting like children running between Mommy and Daddy while the movers and shakers are living the high life.

Well, I don't think I want the high life, but neither would I want to work in corporate America. (I have had a taste of it and I found it too too bitter.)

Bring on the books!

No, on second thought, I'm gonna need my Kindle Fire.

Madison IN

Beginning to get back on an even keel after post-election reeling. Don't have much to say today.

Maybe I am just in denial about how bad this is getting set to be.

*Love in the Afternoon  Audrey Hepburn in a strange romantic comedy with altogether too much Fascination. Good antidote to reality these days.

Next morning second thoughts. Decadent antidote to a decadent current reality? What rot!

Madison IN

I'm still obsessed with the election and its immediate aftermath but I am beginning to calm down.

Maybe calm down isn't the phrase for it because I have been more or less normal out in public.

I think today is the first day, though, that I have gotten back to my usual two squares of dark chocolate ration.

Of course, on the other hand, I had half a small bottle of hard cider today so maybe that's why.

Some stupid website got me upset. It wanted us, the Facebook public, to see if we were as well-traveled as its fourteen-year-old daughter (who has been in fifty-seven places that are not in her native continent of Australia.) Is the person behind this questionnaire insane?

And the other thing that continues to bug and nag at me is that people like Susan Sarandon say that women "shouldn't vote with their vaginas" when they are talking about not voting for Hillary Clinton.

What does that even mean? When we say (well, when you say, (I don't say it)) "Men shouldn't hire with their penises" what is meant is that men shouldn't hire a woman just because she is good-looking.

So, I could understand if these people meant women shouldn't vote for someone just because he is a good-looking guy. But they are saying we women shouldn't vote with our vaginas about voting for another woman.

It's awfully insulting... and senseless to boot. Nothing like being insulted by a confused idiot.

So today, which started out quite foggy and mystical and magical with fall leaves drifting down and deer sightings through the dim light and streaky frost meltings through the misty cemetery turned into just more freaky post-election stupidity.

Is this horror going to go on for the next FOUR years?

Are we going to be bombarded with news about people bullying minorities and painting swastikas and burning crosses on purpose just to terrorise and well, while we're at it we're also showing we don't believe in global warming?

"I'm rich! I've taken my 14-year-old daughter all over the world while you stupid plebes hung around in the same old place working your butts off!"

Yeah, well, I'm obviously still stressed.

Where the hell is the damn chocolate?

Madison IN

John McPhee in The Crofter and the Laird (at least I think that's where I read this) tells a wonderful Scottish story about a laird who had a giant black mastiff who ate hugely and did nothing else but hang around and sleep. Then, one day the black dog's master came under attack... and since I want you to read this wonderful book I won't tell you what happened.

I will say this, though. The Electoral College reminds me of that dog, just lazin' around and getting underfoot. What the hell is it good for?

Well, maybe it is time the Electoral College sprang into action.

I'm just sayin'....

Madison, IN

So it turned out that the Republican candidate who expressed four years ago that the Electoral College should be abolished is the one who benefited by its existence this year.

The Democratic candidate who expressed a similar opinion in the past probably wishes she had worked hard to abolish it. Maybe she did, I don't know.

It's one of those pesky inconveniences that we only notice when it is too late - like a leaky roof in a dry climate.

Some Democrats want the Electoral College to do what they (Dems) think is right and proper and vote for Hillary in spite of the system. The argument would be that they wouldn't be faithless to the person they would change their vote from, so much as faithful to the spirit of the Constitution, since the Constitution specifies the president should be well-qualified.

At any rate, the Electoral College is highly unlikely to choose a Democrat for the Presidency. No, I am afraid a Republican it would be.

People who live abroad, if you knew how much discussion there is online and how little discussion there is on the streets of this small town, you would not think this is the same country!

Maybe I know how three people (besides my partner) voted, but I couldn't swear I would be correct.

The land of free speech and the right to bear arms!

I swear there are more people loaded to shoot guns than are loaded to shoot off their mouths! I, for one, am almost afraid to or at least inhibited by social settings where it doesn't seem appropriate. Oh, I loud off on Facebook and on this website, but to tell the truth I'm not sure anyone around here even knows about or has cared to read corvalliswalkingtours.com.

It's kind of creepy, feeling like you're a ghost. And you are walking around a bunch of strangers who are also like ghosts.

Who are they, really?

*Our Mother's House  This movie about some highly unusual children is pretty unusual itself. It's one of those wishful speculations about what life would be without parents that one suspects were inspired by some pretty unenviable families. 

Madison, IN

As you probably already know, it turns out my instincts were kind of right after all. Sure, yeah, Truman I mean triptych I mean Trumpophiles I mean, well you know who I mean -dT - the symptom of the addiction of the nation - well, yeah he has become the official President-elect of the United States of America.

But Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote! She would be President-elect in a true democracy! She, like Moses, got a glimpse of the Promised Land, but for her sins she was not permitted to enter. It is for another woman to get to live - single, if she wishes - as President in the White House, maybe not by coming as a wife first.

If we're lucky. I don't know, though. Thousands were demonstrating last night in the streets in New York, San Francisco, and other cities.

Hillary won but didn't win just like would-be candidate-elect Al Gore when he won the popular vote in 2000. No big demonstrations then.

The United States of America has completely fallen off the wagon and is in the throes (clutches, grasp) of full-blown Trumpism.

We didn't mean to! Our Spirit is willing! Its physical representatives, the bloodstream of our population, have poured into our arteries to find the source of the problem and root it out - but it is too late, perhaps. Hillary has conceded.

The aristocrats who framed our constitution have fallen prey to what people should always fear, but never seem to - themselves.

They erected the Electoral College to be the voice of reason against an irresponsible populist demagoguery when it really should have been afraid of its own fear of the people. It should have been afraid of itself. "We have seen the enemy and it is Us!"

So the American government - 

Oh, you can't tell which one I am talking about? I'm talking about the big middle one in the northern continent which is now beginning to act like a third world country!

So a slim majority of people want a person who is experienced in governing and has worked hard for human rights as President, but the Electoral College would choose - well, the insanity of addiction.

This is bass-ackwards, as my dad used to say.

My writing like this is also backwards.

When I tune in to the news, I may find out that the demonstrations...

Well. Who knows. I only know that in this small town on the Ohio River and four blocks from the Jefferson County Court House (not that far as the crow (drone to you) flies) it is as quiet as the river. No demonstrations here where two-thirds of the people voted for Trump.

We are already addicted to fat, sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, or meth. Religion. What does an addiction to a TV Reality President matter, anyway?

I predict disaster.

The two extremes of the political spectrum on the far side of the sphere of reason -oligarchy and demagoguery - have come together in the person of Donald Trump.

I diagnose disaster.

On the other hand, we might get lucky. The Electors don't actually cast their votes until the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December!  This year that will be the 19th of December. Maybe there is still hope! Maybe the Body Politic will have an organ transplant! 

I hear a sound outside, not of rioting, but of a garbage truck.

And, I am told, the sun will also rise.

Madison, IN

Well, my intuitions were wrong this time.

If 77% of the people (blacks, Latinos and women) can't manage to get rid of of their laziness, complacency, and above all self-hatred enough to keep this man out of our Presidency I guess, as my mate says, we get what we deserve.

I am stunned. For shame, citizens!

And Donald Trump, you thought you wanted it, you got it, now wipe that smug nasty smile off your face and try do well at your new job.

*Indignation  Really incredible interference and oversight this kid had in his life. Good grief. Good film.

Madison, IN

9:48 p.m. This election night is worse than I even expected. What suspense! I think our whole population has lost a year of life from this damned election.

*Dakhtar  Daughter is a gorgeous film with romance, a journey, and suspense. Wow, those mountains! That bus!

Madison, IN

Tomorrow is election day. Not directly for us - we voted almost a month ago.

Everyone else who has not voted by bedtime today has one last chance, Election Day tomorrow.

My partner and I could have turned off the TV networks on October 13 and let the whole rest of the country stew while we went to the gym and worked out and watched movies and comedy acts in wilful oblivion.

Well, okay, we would have had to stop looking at Facebook, too. Stopped checking our mail. Put on blinders while walking and driving up the street.

We wouldn't have had to stop talking to people, though. Never in my whole life have I seen so many people so anxious to avoid talking politics. None of us knows and none of us wants to know you know what.

Why, tonight I thought I might actually go to a Freethinkers Meeting I haven't attended in more than a year, mostly for lack of convenience, and I was kind of afraid to go because people might talk about politics!

Ha, ha, ha!

You know you are living in interesting times when political discussion out-trumps religion in volatility. (Ouch.)

I had the location confused so I came back home. I was not about to walk three times as far in the dark through Trump country to go engage, possibly, his most enthusiastic proponents in fruitless discussion.

And worse yet, walk home.

Tomorrow we will go to the closer tavern, the Off Broadway, and celebrate $2 Taco Tuesday while all the people who postponed deciding until the last possible moment in order to collect the most (improbable) information wait tight-lipped in line to place their tortured votes.

Ah, democracy!

Or whatever.

*A Royal Night Out  Whew! The Queen Mother was right! Great fun.

Madison IN

Went on a walk yesterday and saw a bunch of turkeys in a group. Maybe they were conferring about how to deal with the coming threat.

Ditto the roses! They are still in full bloom, clubs and conferences of them. I don't know what they are communicating with one another, but they are sending me color and cheer to make up for the lesser glories of this year's tree color.

I've been seeing holly flowers for the first time here. I don't know if we are too far north for them to manage to bloom every year, or I am just usually unobservant when it comes to prickly things, but I was excited to see their waxy little white flowers. Hmmm...I never realized before this plant has all three Christmas colors. I thought the white had to come from snow.

Come to think of it, I've never seen a porcupine in the wild, either.

Escallonia - still blooming although I can't catch a scent. Chrysanthemums busting out all over like crazy.

No Jack Frost yet. Maybe he has gotten old and hoary with age, not freeze.

It's enough to make you think the word November comes from a combination of nova and ember! A new source of heat when you think all hope is gone.

So silly. I think today's movie has had some affect on me. Yeah, that's it!

*Dough  Sillier than I expected and not as much fun, but okay.

Madison, IN

When I was in high school civics class I learned about the Electoral College. I kind of resented it a little. I wondered why it seemed necessary to the writers of our Constitution but bought the argument that the People might act as a mob and wiser heads might be needed to stem a vote for a potential demagogue. (And bear in mind this was when a "citizen" was a property owner!) I am not sure those words were used, but it was the early sixties and World War II was fresh in people's minds.

This year, thanks to the Internet, I have learned that at least two electors - one Democrat in Washington State and one Republican in Georgia - have pronounced that they will not vote for the candidate they had pledged before to support. Evidently in about half the states this is allowed.

People who do this are called Faithless Electors and may be subject to fines. The Washington elector said he would be happy to pay the $1000 fine imposed in that state.

According to what I have read, faithless electors haven't yet affected any race for Presdent, but now I'm wondering: what's to stop some unscrupulous candidate from just cutting out all us little middlemen and bribing the whole electoral lot?

Wow, the possible ramifications are mind-boggling! Would the President have to declare martial law to maintain order until equity could be renegotiated? Would someone have to sue to make the Electoral college do its duty?

Who would act as President while the whole mess made its way through the legal system?

Years ago Hillary Clinton expressed the desire that the Electoral College be dispensed with. (Don't have a citation for this but I remember.)

It would be richly ironic if that persistent institution made the difference for her in this most tumultuous of Presidential elections.

Madison IN

During Kerry's run for President, there was a moment when my internal voice said, "He's going to lose." This was not in the last two weeks. It was relatively early on. I tried to ignore it and of course I voted for him, because I'm a Democrat, but he didn't win.

The same thing happened with Romney. I didn't care. I'm a Democrat.

During this election? My intuitive moment came at one of Trump's rallies while he was speaking or maybe between sentences. "He is going to lose and he knows it right now." I saw this moment on TV.

This was at least two or three weeks ago. I have tried to rely on my instincts and relax about this election, but I have trouble trusting my instincts, even when they are telling me we what I want to hear: that Hillary Clinton will be our next President.

Still, my internal voice told me Trump isn't going to win.

If that is any comfort to anyone else, great!

We'll get through this election. Pant, pant, gasp, gasp. 

*The Lady in the Lake  Lousy. Just awful. Too bad, because Raymond Chandler should be wonderful.

Madison IN

Leaving Halloween behind, in the usual nature of headlong Fall we're looking forward to Thanksgiving.

Unlike All Saints' Day (heh, heh - ever heard of it?) and many religious holidays, Thanksgiving doesn't have an associated eve.

There is no special tradition associated with the evening before Thanksgiving, that I know of, besides flopping down exhausted from the effort of preparatory cooking and baking.

But wait a minute. That is traditionally what the women were probably doing. What about the men? A worm of suspicion wiggles in my mind. On the eve of Thanksgiving I bet the men traditionally went to pubs! Bars!

I figuratively slam down corvalliswalkingtours.com and Google Thanksgiving Eve.

Sure enough "brobible.com" listing ten reasons why this particular night is the best night for drinking in the whole year (incusive of a good deal of salacious semi-autobiographical detail - or masochistic wishful thinking?) is the first reference cited.

Second is a short Wikipedia article informing me that this particular evening has a name: Blackout Wednesday, and no this is not because there are so many kitchen appliances at work that a fuse blows.

Third on the Google first-response list was the most direct response to my question of all. Yes. Thanksgiving Eve is usually The busiest bar night of the year.

No wonder there are so many family blow-ups in life and (evidently what I know more about) the Arts on Thanksgiving!

Oh, well. This news, this revelation that I have for all my life been missing the biggest party night of the year - bigger perhaps even than New Year's Eve! - arouses no resentment in me.

In our home the chef is a male who, come to think of it, has already brought home a winter's supply of liquor.

What can I say? Some of us are too cheap for pub-running. Er, bar-hopping. Or is it lounge-lizarding.

Whatever. My throat is dry from physical empathy with all this silent mind-chatter. I need a drink.

But since it is only seven a.m., I guess it's going to have to be coffee.

Yay! It's coffee-time! White-in Thursday!

*Cafe Society  Hollywood/New York/Hollywood/New York. Poor schizophrenic Americans! What do we really want, really? This dialogue, though the young lead can no longer be Woody, is so Woody. Gotta be one of the most distinctive voices ever. These characters are not as endearing as most of his past leads, though.

Madison IN

Okay November, I admit I'm not really unhappy.

Actually I'm pretty appreciative, compared to how I would feel if you were gray and cold.

It's just that - the way November is behaving this year is so... inappropriate, somehow.

(You know how you feel when your mother acts younger than she is? (from your point of view, of course.) How you feel when she flicks up her heels flirtatiously? Or laughs too loudly? She's your mother for goodness' sake!)

That's how I am feeling about November this year. 

This year Mom's eating the Halloween candy.

Now, I want to thank November. I want to thank this month, which tries to make up for the misery of the weather it inflicts upon us every year by throwing a great big party, Thanksgiving.

I want to thank you, November, for trying.

Thank you for your sunniness, your balmy breezes, your seductive sunsets. Thank you for your postponement of heavy coats and winter boots and indoor disease.

But do you not see that your delay of the rising of this last act's curtain will just make what is to come more suddenly bitter than ever?

Here we remain in the luxurious lobby, the theater lights undimmed, bantering and discoursing and nattering blithely, beginning to picture celebrating Thanksgiving this year as a picnic by the river, for pity's sake.

November, just do your job. Bring on the chill and the bleak cloud cover and the nasty little snow flurries that sting without beautifying! Bring on the freeze that drives us indoors and makes us willing to heat up the kitchen baking pies.

You're on!

I'll give you 'til your laggardly sunrise.

* The Lady Eve  So extravagant! So much fun! Dispels all Halloween gloom.

Forgot to write about 

*All The President's Men  This has got be one of the best films ever. Historical with fine performances. I look forward to seeing it for a third time some year.

Madison IN

I know I should be happy.

No gray clouds, no bitter cold, no snow flurries.

Nothing but sun, a light breeze, and 84 degree weather.

What is the matter with me?

Why am I not happy?

Talk about dark!

Dark, dark, dark.

I have to write about a few movies.

*Stage Fright We did not remember we had already seen this, and I cannot imagine why! This is Hitchcock and it is... charming? Yes! I know it's unbelievable....

*Pay it Forward  I loved this film! I wanted it to be taken from real life - until - but no, I don't want to ruin it for you. Same child star as Sixth Sense - very endearing.

*Carrie The story that made Stephen King famous. Perfect Halloween viewing.