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In the past, I dressed up as my female alter-ego, Elsa, for Halloween. This year, I decided to try on a different take, that of Apache Chief from SuperFriends! You remember Apache Chief, whose super power was the ability to become a 50 foot tall giant! Umm… err… well they did need to bring some multi-culturalism to the show… who cared if the superpowers of Black Vulcan, Samurai, and Apache Chief were lame, right?!?

After attending the SyncFest 2001 event in San Jose, I raced home to print my facial and body tattoos on my printer. I bought this tattoo-making kit a few months ago from Bel, Inc.. The stuff works with inkjet and laser printers where you print your design on one piece of paper and stick it to an adhesive backing. After a few minutes, you can remove the adhesive backing, press it against your skin, and use a sponge to transfer the sticker-like tattoo. After a few minutes, voila! You’ve got yourself a fake tattoo! These tattoos are great fun, since I doubt that I’ll ever get a real tattoo. With these, I can change my look whenever I want to without being stuck with it for the rest of my life! How about that for dealing with indecision?

Some people thought that I looked more like Commander Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager, than Apache Chief, but hey, who’s counting? It must have been the tattoo right about the eye trick that got ’em. Too bad I put the tattoo on the wrong side of my face! Oh well, next time.

On Saturday night, Rae and I were in San Francisco, attending a performance by Eth-Noh-Tec, a husband and wife storyteller team. They were holding their annual Halloween Ghouls and Ghosts performance at the Randall Museum in the City. The place was teeming with little kids and their parents, and the skits by Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo were tailored to all ages. The funniest one was either the first one about the reforming demon or the one about the demon dog. There was this little kid dressed up like a dragon that Rae and I thought was pretty cute!

Apache Chief didn’t want to scare the kiddies, so he dressed up as a 49er/Redskin fan (i.e. baggie sweats and a big 49ers sweater). Good call, because those kids would probably have been frightened by the sight of Apache Chief over a demon dog!

After the performance, Rae and I whipped out our respective costumes — Rae was Princess Kitana from Mortal Kombat — and we went to have dinner at the Rohan Lounge in San Francisco. For some reason, I thought that place was like some Korean/Asian hangout, but most of the people in there were white and not dressed up! I was a little self-conscious at first, especially since Apache Chief didn’t wear many coverings, but everything become all good when some a whole group of costumed people entered. One of the better costumes was this guy posing as John McEnroe (from the big hair days).

On Sunday, Rae and I saw the new movie, Waking Life. This is one trippy film, and definitely one that I recommend seeing. It’s a little disorienting, the way in which animation is handled. Unless you’re tripping out yourself, you might get a little wobbly-eyed watching the movie. Some of the scenes, conversations, and lines from the movie are really great. You’ve probably met people in your college days who sounded at once soooo intelligent and sooooo completely full of themselves? Perhaps you’ve been one of those people (I know I’ve been guilty of that more than once!)? If so, this is the movie for you.

Waking Life also touched upon one of the things that I’ve been interested in for some time, lucid dreaming. In short, when you become aware in your dreams that you’re dreaming, you’re what they call “lucid dreaming.” Lucid dreaming opens up a whole new avenues in one’s life. No longer is your waking life your sole sense of reality. It’s not easy (at least for me) to lucid dream all the time; usually, it happens when I take a nap (few and far between these days). When it happens, though, watch out, it’s fun! For more information on lucid dreaming, check out Stanford University’s Lucidity Institute.

After Waking Life, Rae and I went by the local comic store to pick up the latest issue of Optic Nerve. It’s been awhile since Tomine has come out with a new issue. Wonder how he keeps himself busy… last I heard, he was doing some artwork for The New Yorker magazine, but I’m not sure if he still has that gig. He does write some good stories, assuming you’re into the whole young angst stuff, that is.

For dinner, we went to the Cha-Ya vegetarian Japanese restaurant in Berkeley. We gorged ourselves on healty sushi, tempura, and miso soup, before calling it a night. Yummy, yummy for our tummies!

On my way to work today, I passed this truck which had one of the strangest billboards pasted on it. It was an advertisement for eating pork. At the Eth-Noh-Tec performance, there was this one skit where the crowd was chanting, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” On the truck was written, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for pork loin!” Strange, eh?