Look what I just spotted at Cocoon in New Paltz, NY! Gosh, I’m in good company: Walt Disney, colorful insects, and Isabella Rossellini’s new book, which features her dressed as a whale with a six-foot erection. For real. Lastly, there is What’s Your Poo Telling You which is the store’s bestseller. It happens to have been illustrated by my very talented friend Peter Arkle. Poo isn’t normally Peter’s main subject of interest, but he rose to the challenge in order to illustrate this informative tome.
I just saw this couple at the Main Street Halloween parade in New Paltz, NY. She is some kind of platypus and he is an obsolete audio cassette. Oh no wait: he’s a tape and she’s a duck. They’re tape duck. Duck tape! But isn’t it DUCT tape? Clearly it’s cooler to dress up as an audio cassette than it is to dress up like aluminum tubing.
I think the real Broadway-bound costume-making brains are down in NYC tonight. But it’s awfully cute to see all the little kids and adults alike running down main street in tiaras and bedroom sheets.
Conversation with my friends’ daughter Violet. She is 3 and dressed like a princess:
Me: What is your costume?
Violet: Violet!
Me: Do you want a sticker? You have to say “Trick or treat!”
Violet: Trick or treat!
Me: Now you say “thank you.”
Violet: Thank you!
Her mom: Now say “This year your soul will be spared.”
Violet: This year your soul will be spared.
Thank goodness.
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For all you upstate New Yorkers…
Tomorrow (from 10 to 2) and Sunday (from 1 to 4) I’ll be hanging out with my dog Amos and signing
books at HiHo Home Market and Antique Center in lovely Gardiner, NY. Lot’s of stuff going on in the area this weekend: There’s a Gardiner day festival going on, a big used book sale on Main Street, and the Taste of New Paltz event at the Ulster Fair Grounds nearby. There’s also the Survival of the Shawangunks, an eight-stage triathlon that ends up at the Mohonk Mountain House. Exciting stuff, eh? Heidi, HiHo’s owner and the curator of the many beautiful displays in the various rooms at the shop, has collected a variety of obsolete objects, some of which will be on display at the signing, and some of which will be for sale. I was just over there and saw some mock-camera photo albums and cute address books she is offering up—they’re emblazoned with rotary dials.
Really, what will they think of next?
