Pre-Halloween Update

So far this weekend...well, I've had quite a time.

Friday night I went to the AFI Silver for the annual screening of Nosferatu with live music. It's been the Silent Orchestra mostly in years past, and the Alloy Orchestra last year, but this time we had Not So Silent Cinema, a group out of Philadelphia, doing the music. Surprisingly, very acoustic, not as electronic as others, and very klezmer-influenced. I met a friend for dinner before the show and we had a great time.

Saturday night was Happenstance Theater's Cabaret Macabre 3 at the Round House Theater in Silver Spring. It was opening night of their newest Gorey-influenced Halloween show, and as always a great deal of fun. It's playing till 11/11 and I strongly recommend that any readers who can get there to go. It's an almost dead-on distillation of this blog's aesthetic.

Today I joined others in laughing at the impending weather crisis by attending my first ever Rock Creek Cemetery Potluck, organized by my new friend Phil Powell, the pope of DC-area dandies and goths. It was a smallish, intimate gathering by the infamous Leiter tomb (carved of Carrara marble, and then with a little greenhouse to protect it from weathering), but the food was good, the company scintillating, and I got to try some homemade rose cordial that was perhaps the most seductive liqueur I've ever sampled, with an astonishing scent. When I sipped, it went down like a caress. We were also treated to a private performance by Eli August & The Abandoned Buildings, quite a pleasant coup for this gathering. (That's them above.)

And now? Sheesh. As everyone knows, the east coast is going to get nailed by Hurricane Sandy, or as I've heard it called, the Frankenstorm. Right now it's only windy and lightly raining, but by tomorrow afternoon we're expected to have hard rains and 70mph winds. So I may not be up and going again for a while; we'll see how it pans out. But it's a damned nuisance as we're packing up at the office for our move next weekend, and we're definitely closed tomorrow; local government is urging everyone to stay home and keep off the roads.

So I may be offline for a few days. I'll update as events warrant. Happy Halloween! And stay safe if you're in the Frankenstorm's path.