Words cannot do justice to the colors of New England foliage. The leaves don’t turn yellow, they turn golden.
My first visit to New England in the fall, back in 2014, it was a revelation that even the leaves of ivy change colors here. (I’m accustomed to the Boolean green/brown leaves.) This year, I discovered how beautiful trees wrapped in ivy look when the ivy leaves change colors.
As if they’re sheathed in an aureate ghillie suit.
Halloween decorations. Halloween decorations as far as the eye can see.
Blue Sky Studios really goes all out for Halloween. On the afternoon before Halloween, employees brought their kids who went trick or treating from cubicle to cubicle.
It was heartbreakingly adorable. My favorite costume was a girl dressed as a narwhal.
The next day, a coworker wrote in the studio slack channel how her candy bowl had run empty and she was so worried that the little girl walking up would be disappointed. But instead, the girl saw the empty bowl, reached into her own bag, put a handful of candy in the bowl, and walked away.
Heartbreakingly adorable.
Blue Sky Studio’s (smallish) theater has this on display out in front of it. It’s a Moviola. I don’t think I’ve seen one since the “Bullpen” at the Marcia Lucas Post-Production Building swapped them all out for Avids. I cut my partner’s short for CNTV 310 with a Moviola, a grease pencil, and a Hervic splicer. Probably the last generation of film students at USC who used one.
It’s like the last of the V8 Interceptors. A piece of history.
A pre-selfie selfie. (Also, pre-hashtag #pre-hashtag.)
As far as Eric & I can remember, we took this while shooting Eric’s audition video for MTV‘s The Real World up at Universal Studios. That’s a The Far Side t-shirt I’m wearing.
This may be peak early-90s.
A red barn with a rusting grain silo behind it and solar panels on its roof. Seems like the perfect metaphor for progressive rural New England.
There was a covered bridge over a stream leading to Kent Falls. A cute little red covered bridge. Staring at it, a thought occurred to me. Something I’d never though of before.
Are covered bridges covered for a reason? Like to keep snow from building up on the bridge or something?
“What, did you just think it was for aesthetics?” my friend replied, aghast.
Yes. Yes, I absolutely did.
My goal for the day, aside from gorging on apple cider donuts, was to head north to find where autumn was already in its full glory. My first stop was Kent Falls State Park.
I had never heard of apple cider donuts before moving here. I skipped breakfast and drove out to Westchester county to try them for the first time, opting for Salinger’s Orchard over the less appetizing Outhouse Orchard.
Hot and covered in cinnamon sugar.
Mmmm. Donuts.
In my donut-induced trance, I caught myself blurting something out that Homer Simpson himself might say: “How many donuts in a half dozen?”
Driving around the Hudson Valley for the day, I realized that I didn’t know the etymology of the name “Connecticut”.
Apparently, it’s from the Mohican (Algonquian) word “quinnitukqut” which means “at the long tidal river” (from *kwen- “long” + *-ehtekw “tidal river” + *-enk “place.”)
I have an important message for the children of New England:
Look. You don’t need to put up rubber bats and plastic tombstones to decorate for Halloween. You live in a Halloween decoration.
Going through New England is like graveyard, Gothic mansion, creepy cornfield, Gothic church, graveyard, creepy cornfield, graveyard, and then antique shop, antique shop, antique shop (each, undoubtedly, rife with cursed objects.)
If there was ever a place that didn’t need chintzy Halloween decorations, it’s here.
Another shot out the window next to my apartment’s elevator, with rolling clouds stretching to the south. About a quarter of the way from the left, peeking above the treeline, you can juuuust make out the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
Walking back to my apartment, I passed two young women on the sidewalk. This was the snippet of conversation I overheard.
“So, what are you doing?”
“I’m an executive assistant to a life coach.”
It was the most Californian thing I’ve heard since moving to the East Coast.
Went to Sleep No More, an immersive theatrical performance loosely based on the Scottish play, but “through a film noir lens.” It was created by a British theatre company called Punchdrunk.
The audience members don masks and move between the floors of the McKittrick Hotel in Manhattan, each catching different scenes and characters throughout the building. Narratively, I considered it a failure (possibly because it was almost entirely non-dialogue and relied heavily on dance) but aesthetically it was superlative.
I got my Connecticut ballot. I’ll be in Australia on the day of the mid-terms, so my first vote ever as a non-Californian will have to be absentee.
Stamford has a lot of statues. WWI, immigrant experience, etc. The usual.
However, when first driving into town, I was horrified to find lifelike statues on street corners or even lying on public benches at every turn. (Only much later did I find out that every year Stamford hosts a different outdoor statue exhibit. This summer was devoted to the work of Seward Johnson.)
The exhibit included this Ginormica-sized status of Marilyn Monroe which lorded over Latham Park near my apartment building.
But the most horrifying discovery was this nearby vacant lot used for storage of the statues as the exhibit was disassembled!
