Third Annual Boo Bash at PSC

On Sunday, October 28, I joined the Peru State Mascot, students, and Dan and Elaine Hanson at the president's house to celebrate the Third Annual Boo Bash celebration.

Between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm, well over a hundred people came to collect some goodies from Elaine and Dan Hanson and to have their photograph taken with our Bobcat.

I posted just under 150 images from the fun on Flickr.com for everyone's enjoyment, so take a few minutes to watch the slide show.

For those who want to download the images, first click on the image of your choice.  Next, click on "Actions" to activate the drop-down menu.  Then click on the link for "View All Sizes."

I suggest that you now click on "Original (5184 x 2734)" and then you are ready to download the file to your computer--simply give Download the Original size of this photo a click.

 Robert, Ashleigh, Trevor Nelson (Bobcat) Elaine and Dan Hanson

41st Annual Peru State College Show Choir Festival

 

On Tuesday and Wednesday, October 23 and 24, 28 Show Choir groups from schools throughout the area came to Peru State College to take part in the 41st Annual Show Choir Festival.  The groups performed to enthusiastic crowds in the Peru State Theater.

As he has for the past 25 years and more, Thomas Ediger served as the Festival Coordinator.  And this year, the unflappable and popular Annette Layman was the event's Guest Clinician and Adjudicator. 

I published a number of photographs from the event that also included Peru State's own Misty Blues Show Choir under the directorship of Jake Bartlett.  As you will note, this year's Misty blues sport a new look. 

In addition to the photographs, I also recorded three of the groups' performances.

To celebrate their first live performances of the year, I posted in two parts the Misty Blues' entire show.  You can watch Part One and Part Two on You Tube. 

Part One:

 

 

Part Two:

Time and space precluded my including many of the excellent groups that visited Peru State College for this wonderful annual event that gives the young performers to show off their talents and to visit our beautiful campus.

I did, however, record the groups from Bellevue West High School, the West Connection, and Auburn High School's Rhythm in Red.  You can enjoy these groups on You Tube by clicking the links or by  watching on the blog.


Bellevue West:






Auburn High: 

 

2012 Toronto Zombie Walk

 

Thursday Morning, October 18, I flew to Toronto to experience the Tenth Annual Toronto Zombie Walk, A Decade of Decay, the most popular such event anywhere in the world.

On Saturday at around noon, the group of 10,000 zombies gathered in Nathan Phillips "Scare" across the street from the old mayor's building and the new municipal building--and the Sheraton Centre Hotel, the Walk's official hotel in which I stayed.  In fact, I got the last room in the hotel block.

Thursday evening, I walked to the harbor and returned there Friday morning to take a harbor boat tour.  As the photographs indicate, fog dominated that part of the day, but I enjoyed the ride and the bracing lake air. 

After walking back to the hotel, around a half-hour walk, I took the subway to the ROM, The Royal Ontario Museum, and an excellent place to wander for a few hours.

The dinosaur exhibition--with creatures from Africa, Madagascar, and Argentina--is tremendous, and you will find plenty of photographs on the photography link for the first two days of my visit.

But while Toronto, emerging in the preceding photograph from the fog, is a beautiful city, the chance to experience the Zombie Walk drew me there.

And with around 10,000 zombies in attendance, finding interesting photographs does not require a great deal of work!

The second and third sets of images from the day, approximately 200 photographs, focus on the events from around noon until three, when the official march began.

I enjoyed plenty of conversations with people throughout the day, including the two Toronto police officers the zombies attack in the preceding photograph.

The pre-walk events included various prizes for the outfits and featured a Moan Zone station for zombies to record their moans for an upcoming live play production of Night of the Living Dead organized by Grand Marshals of the Tenth Annual Walk, John Russo and Russ Streiner, both long associated with Zombie fare.

The final set of photographs--208 of them--chronicle the actual Zombie walk, over 5km of foot-dragging moans, that included an imaginative and impressive group of zombie-loving folks, around 10,000 of them, from what I understand.

The images also feature some of the post-walk events, including the Montreal based band, The Brains, psychobilly horror punk.  You can listen to some of their music on line, and I recorded a couple numbers that I will eventually post here.
 
Over the next couple days, I will add at least three videos, two from the walk and a third with music.

Zombie Walk Video Part One:


 

Zombie Walk Video Part Two:




Some Zombie Music, including Montreal's The Brains: