Goat cheese and butternut squash ravioli, in a basil and pesto sauce. With roasted Brussels sprouts (not brussel sprouts, apparently) and a salad of beets, arugula and feta. With challah bread, real butter, sage cheese, apples, hummus, and more cheese. With a Prince Michel 2006 Barrel Select Chardonnay. With the making of roasted pumpkin seeds and pie from this great gourd below. I am a happy Halloween camper.

Halloween brunch
This morning's brunch involved a candy corn mimosa (courtesy candy corn-infused vodka, which tasted as cheerful and seasonal as you'd hope), crawfish cakes Benedict (my first time eating crawfish, a win), and an it's-a-small-world-after-all-singalong-worthy group of friends, whom I met 12 years ago, two years ago, and two months ago, and who have met each other through other wonderful routes entirely.

Taken with a variety of phones by a variety of people as we consumed a variety of beers and sugar-filled, pumpkin-flavored desserts outside. Thanks to friend Beth as always for hospitality and good times. Thanks also to Blue Moon for making vaguely pumpkin beer. Happy Halloween weekend, people! And, yes, a pumpkin drinking his relatives is spooky.

Uncarved.

Carved.

Posed by friend Becky.

Hanging with its pumpkin friends.

Courtesy friend Ellen and her BBQ.

And it's awesome. We knew Bruce loved Halloween, with the opener coffins and one-offs of Haunted House, but he's topped himself this year. A new song and a video for the holiday? With the bullet mic on full distort and the weirdest production he's done on anything taped or live in decades? (We have to stop counting back at the two known performances of Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom, featuring on-stage Monopoly.) So, what the hell? Is this an album preview or the creative desperation of a man who can't put out his holiday decorations? Or maybe he's trying to get his mind off the elections. "That damn crazy Internet, I love it. Patti, get the camera, I'm gonna spookify the barn."

Watch or download A Night with the Jersey Devil.

As candidate Patrick Cooper challenges the residency of mayor-elect Larry Langford, the court date remains set for November 14. Langford takes office the day prior. I still have zero real stake in the race.

Thanks to Birmingham Terminal for writing about this blog ("The other Patrick Cooper"), and thanks to candidate Patrick Cooper's cousin for e-mailing to say he was enjoying the posts.

What's the latest? We're in a bit of coverage break before the court session. But Birmingham News columnist has a piece guessing what candy the various city players may be giving out this Halloween.

Start with Mayor-elect Larry Langford, because he is the easiest. He'd pass out 5th Avenue bars, because he might be able to claim them as a downtown home address. He'd offer 100 Grand bars because, heck, that's what he does. He'd pass out Paydays and Now and Laters, or a combination of both, for all those bond dealers: Pay Me Now and Later.

…

Second-place mayoral candidate and election-challenger Patrick Cooper can give Bit-O-Honey. Like that stuff stuck in your teeth, he just won't go away. His supporters who keep on calling? Almond Joy, I guess. Or Mounds. Sometimes they seem like nuts, but sometimes they don't.

Read the rest. This Patrick Cooper is out of candy. Happy Halloween!

"So, tell me something about Halloween."

In the Joliet Herald-News. "In terms of criminals, I spotted a slew of lads clad in jailbird black and white or correctional orange. Whether this was to promote hometown pride for Prison Break or simply to give the squadron of naughty cops someone to arrest is anyone's guess."

In the Halloween spirit, we turn to Michael Myers. Mike, really. VH1 was showing the first Austin Powers last night, and while that movie satisfied a little, So I Married an Axe Murderer would've been much more appropriate.

Harriet!

Un-love… ed?

Charlie Mackenzie's beat poetry comes to mind when reading Wagner's latest in the Daily. The Friday columnist references Springsteen's Two Hearts, the 1964 Daisy ad, Freud, Uncle Walter, the Simpsons (General Crull or Krull), and Ronald Reagan's corpse. My best guess is that Wagner is encouraging people to vote.

The blind guys were slow getting in the front cab, and the drivers behind began to honk to give the hesitant seeing-eye dog some encouragement. Two paws in and two paws out, the golden retriever wasn't sure about taking a ride with Philadelphia's medallioned finest. You see, the dog hadn't been there a few minutes earlier when the taxi line's hustler was trying to work one of the guys. The hustler had been pitching the line under his breath, half-mutter like an outlawed scalper: "You need a cab? Yellow taxi, right over there, other side of the street, you see it?" The businessman in front of us made the good point that, no, one couldn't see the cab from where we were, and the hustler wound around the line, ending up standing next to the first blind guy who wasn't even in line at all. The hustler says to the guy, red-tipped cane and all, "You see the cab over there?"

Fortunautely, the dog, the other blind guy and a sighted friend of theirs showed up soon, and they were trying to persuade the dog when we got directed to a cab in back of the other lane. My brother Rob took our bags and headed back to campus; I'd call it brotherly love but Philadelphia is now "the city that loves you back." Consider the sisters appeased. Part way into his junior year, Rob was a quick walk away in a U. Penn high-rise. He had met us there at the 30th Street Station, Philadelphia's limestone paperweight on the west side and currently sponsored by iPod. The concourse had Apple's aqua banners draped down over the walls, covering most of the way up and down from the 100-foot ceiling. Who needs ornate when you've got dancing shadows and cash? Poor Richard wouldn't have done it, but you bet Ben Franklin would've.

To be continued Monday….

Added 11/3/03: … or someday. It's Monday now and things aren't working out with what I want to say here. I'm having trouble stringing together thoughts of more than a sentence, here or in my head. I'm realizing I don't have much to say to anyone, and they don't have much to say to me. The information candy seems to be running the asylum right now — ain't that seasonal — and that's no good. I'll get around to whatever I was trying to say here eventually.

A South Philly Halloween Night to Remember. All aboard for night train!