My boss's wife just had a baby today, so with Chavis's new baby arriving yesterday, that's a total of five new souls who've shown up in the past week to people I know. Holy cow, thassay lot of keed! as Celine Dion would say. (I guess.)

While I was making the rounds to spread the news of Paul's baby, Shandy left me a message asking me to call her for an update on her great Halloween adventure. Who could resist a tease like that? So, I called her, and she told me that she and her husband had taken their kids to a Halloween fair, run by artists, and benefitting a local charity. Being run by artists, it was extremely disorganized, but there were pony rides, and concessions, and a haunted house. "It was really well done," Shandy explained, with elaborate sets, and an underwater scene that included a ghostly mermaid, and a shipwreck featuring a pirate played by Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler.

"What was he doing there?" I asked.
"Um..." she said, negotiating rush hour traffic on the Southeast Expressway, "He was singing. Like, singing this pirate song. To the kids."
"... Huh. What pirate song?"
"It appeared to be an original composition," she answered, and sang a few bars that were clearly improvised.
"Was he singing in his normal voice?"
"Well... not like AAAAAh-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh!" she explained, then emitted a series of guttural, nonsensical words that actually did approximate the general Steven Tyler sound. "It was more like a soft, falsetto voice. And he was wearing boots that were obviously his own rock and roll boots, like, high maroon patent leather, really, really pointy cowboy boots with lots of straps, and this brass fastener contraption." Steven Tyler's character was named "Scurvy Arms," she added. I asked her if she'd known that Steven Tyler was going to be there, and she said no.
"The guide just said, 'Step this way to see Scurvy Arms.'"
"Are you sure she didn't say 'WALK this way'?" (Yes, she was sure.)
"So... Did you guys 'make out'?" I asked. (No.)
Even so, I had to admit, that beat the Trinity Episcopal Church haunted house of my childhood all to Hell.

Star of the day. . .Max Weber