The theme of our annual Samhain party was simple: Comic books: DC vs. Marvel. DC comics, sparing no expense, sent some of its heavy hitters from their Vertigo imprint to represent, vis a vis Papa Midnight from Hellblazer and King Mob from the Invisibles. Marvel called in the services of Rorschach from Watchmen.

James Brown, requisat en pace When I get home, I'll play some good, old fashioned LA Style in your memory, because it was That Song, the first track of Best of Rave volume one that got me listening to you after all.

Lyssa and I got up around 0800 EST/EDT, when our circadian rhythms had decided that we'd gotten enough sleep, and got ourselves going for the long haul back to Pittsburgh to visit my family. Lyssa's father had gone to the nursing home to visit Grandma Pat before we'd awakened, so we waited for a while until everyone …

Back in DC, safe and sound and dead tired.

Congratulations to John Barrowman and Scott Gill, who were wedded in a civil ceremony this morning. Barrowman and Gill have been together for sixteen years and are still going strong.

Wow.. are there only three days left in 2006?? It feels like time's been flying by faster than even the most sensitive of clocks can account for.

Lyssa and I have been back in DC for about two days now, and it's been a hell of a vacation thus far. On the 26th, while we were still in Pennsylvania, Lyssa spent some time at home with a friend of hers while I trekked back to Pittsburgh to see my family some more, and catch up with some close friends thereof who have gone above and beyond the call of duty …

The down-low on Hussein's execution.

My new USB audio recorder rocks all known sheep. I'm currently recording the third tape of.. who knows.. and the damage done to the tapes from listening to them so much over the years aside, the recordings are very clear and clean.

Well, there are slightly more than twenty-four hours left in the year 2006 of the common era, and I am still figuring out what in the hell happened to my vacation. No, seriously. I'm not complaining about not getting a vacation or anything like that, I'm really wondering what happened to it. At …

Pictures under here...

Pictures from the Sisters Show at the 9:30 club, March 2006.

By the way, the picture quality is about what one would expect of a Sisters show, because they use so much fog juice and so many strobe lights in their shows that you can't really see anything.

Photographs from the HOPE 2006 conference, New York City, New York.