2016 Holiday Newsletter

Greetings! Check out the Wood family holiday newsletter.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful holiday season and prosperous new year...

2015 Holiday Newsletter

Here's our 2015 newsletter - and my wishes that you and yours enjoy a super swell 2016! Click the pic to download...

Difficulties opening via the image? Download the newsletter from here:

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2015-Newsletter.pdf

Halloween 2015

This year saw a return of the Scotts Valley Pirates. Thanks to Vienna's expert help and advice during the set-up, Jenny and I had a fun time with the kiddies (not to mention a few parents wondering if we had any grog to share). And this time we added an extra feature: a real-life plank to test the bravery of any scaliwag who dare sail with us!

Previous Years

• 2014: Alien Autopsy [Pix and Video]

• 2013: The Return of Dr. Freightmarestein [Pix and Video]

• 2012: Pirate Dungeon II [Pix and Video]

• 2011: Just Buried II [Pix and Video]

• 2010: Alien Autopsy II [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2009: Zombie Apocalypse [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2008: Dr. Freightmarestein's Haunted Laboratory of Horrors [Pix] [Video]

• 2007: Psycho Circus [Pix] [Video]

• 2006: Alien Autopsy I [Pix]

• 2005: Just Buried I [Pix]

• 2004: Pirate Dungeon I [Pix]

2014 Wood Family Newsletter

Here's our 2014 newsletter - and my wishes for you to enjoy a happy holiday season! Click the pic to download...

Halloween 2014 - Alien Autopsy

For 2014 we mounted our infamous alien autopsy. There's a crashed UFO, human/alien hybrids, and viscous alien goo!

Agent Fox "Mouldy" analyzes the alien heart!

A disheveled abductee recounts her tale of horror! 

Special Agent Dana Scary peers into the heart of the mystery!

Previous Years

• 2013: The Return of Dr. Freightmarestein [Pix and Video]

• 2012: Pirate Dungeon II [Pix and Video]

• 2011: Just Buried II [Pix and Video]

• 2010: Alien Autopsy II [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2009: Zombie Apocalypse [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2008: Dr. Freightmarestein's Haunted Laboratory of Horrors [Pix] [Video]

• 2007: Psycho Circus [Pix] [Video]

• 2006: Alien Autopsy I [Pix]

• 2005: Just Buried I [Pix]

• 2004: Pirate Dungeon I [Pix]

2013 Holiday Newsletter

Click the image to read our holiday newsletter, or simply download it here!

Dreaming of Pottersville

Last week Jenny, Vienna, Mike, and I saw It's a Wonderful Life on the big screen in Scotts Valley. Naturally the theater projected the unadulterated black-and-white version, but I must admit a fondness for the colorized version - at least for the scenes in which George Bailey stumbles through the post-apocalyptic hellscape that is Pottersville. To be clear, I'm not referring to eighties-era Night of the Living Dead colorization that transformed human beings into ghoulish pastel mutations; I mean the much more subtle revision engineered by Legend Films in 2007.

OK, I get it: Colorization adds nothing substantial to It's a Wonderful Life. You hardly need techno-fakery to identify with young George's wanderlust ("You know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are? … Anchor chains, plane motors and train whistles"). And you certainly don't need a software solution to celebrate Bailey's appreciation for the fortune he finds in boring old Bedford Falls. When considering the larger themes of Frank Capra's masterpiece, the addition of chromaticity offers nothing more than a clever cheat. But for that gloriously nightmarish sequence in Pottersville, color makes a compelling point.

I am reminded of Gary Kamiya's outstanding Salon piece, "All hail Pottersville," which makes a convincing case that monochromatic Bedford Falls, despite its Norman Rockwell charm, is actually a pretty miserable place ("like Bentham’s Panopticon with picket fences"). In colorful contrast, Pottersville, with its hepcat jive music, garish neon, and shoot-first-ask-questions-later cops, could actually be a lot of fun: "Alas, we will never know what delights are hidden behind the door of the Indian Club or the Bamboo Room, the Midnight Club or the Blue Moon." Kamiya is (mostly) kidding, but his point stands. It may be a guilty pleasure, but give me Pottersville in color!

Halloween 2013: The Return of Dr. Freightmarestein

I finally found a haircut that works for me!

For Halloween this year we returned to a classic neighborhood porch show: Dr. Freightmarestein and his haunted laboratory of horrors! There were two-headed monstrosities, hanging skeletons, howling wind and lightning flashes, and a babbling zombie baby who'd managed to confuse rat poison for candy (an adorably common mistake).

"But it looks just like skinny and sweet!"

Igor: "Your experiment is a success, master!"
Me: "Quiet, you!"

But the absolute star of the show was Jenny who portrayed the monster-run-amuck. Aided by my sycophantic assistant Igor (perfectly played by our lovely daughter Vienna), I gave the monster a 10,000 volt kiss of electricity, granting her life, life, life! - only to watch helplessly as the creature broke through her chains and burst through the caution tape, lunging heedlessly toward our guests!

"Hey! That device looks just like the car battery charger in our garage!"

"Candy for the children. Rawr!"

Only the gift of candy to the terrified children could distract the monster enough to save them. Turns out, the charging beast could only be calmed by the sight of smiling kids. Eventually the creature even learned to hand out candy and contain her desire to crush, kill, destroy! I'm happy to report that our guests survived the onslaught. But what horrors will next year bring?...

"Kids! Don't forget to take some candy!"

Now With Video Goodnesss!

• 2012: Pirate Dungeon II [Pix and Video]

• 2011: Just Buried II [Pix and Video]

• 2010: Alien Autopsy II [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2009: Zombie Apocalypse [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2008: Dr. Freightmarestein's Haunted Laboratory of Horrors [Pix] [Video]

• 2007: Psycho Circus [Pix] [Video]

• 2006: Alien Autopsy I [Pix]

• 2005: Just Buried I [Pix]

• 2004: Pirate Dungeon I [Pix]

More Alive at 45

I remember a former SJSU colleague popping into my office a few years back to announce, "Being 50 sucks." This guy was (and I'm sure still is) almost superhumanly fit and active. And here he was standing in the doorway, assuring me that the next decade will be filled with aching joints and cloudy thoughts. Joy. At least this decade has been a blast. I feel more comfortable in my own skin, less concerned about pleasing others, and I'm increasingly focused on challenges and opportunities that seemed invisible just a few years back.

Given that my birthday comes near the beginning of the year, I'm especially inclined to think of this day as an opportunity to look ahead. So far, 2013 is shaping up to be quite an adventure (though I hope it won't be as crushingly packed as its predecessor). I'm just about done working through a delightful holiday bout with pneumonia, a fighter that likes to sneak back into the ring after the bell's already been rung, and I'll soon submit grades for a winter public speaking course. Spring semester is coming. Time to clear the desk.

So what's next? Well, I've received a contract to co-author a book entitled Die ortlose Stadt: Die Virtualisierung des Urbanen [The placeless City: The Virtualization of the Urban - Yep, it's for a German press], I'm working with David Terry on an essay about rhetoric in the DPRK, and I'm collaborating with Kathleen McConnell on a project designed to help students think about writing as a form of navigation. The "Origami Urbanism" piece is in press, and, of course, I've got a gaggle of Humanities Honors lectures to write. My mind is spinning, but in a good way.

Travel plans, strangely, remain inchoate. I hope to spend a week or so somewhere on the road this spring, though I've yet to finalize an itinerary. I'm tentatively scheduled to lecture this summer in Austria - again, details remain to be ironed out - and I'm hoping that Jenny and I will take a side-trip to Russia for a week or so. I'm kinda bummed that there's no China travel in the near future (though looking at pictures of Beijing smog, I might be lucky to take a break from the PRC).

Anticipating the year to come, I've got to acknowledge that my plans wrap too tightly around professional objectives, not enough around friends and family. Sure, the various parts of my life overlap in occasionally surprising ways. And I simply can't imagine a meaningful divide between my work and some of my closest relationships. Still I hope to define myself less by the things I do and the places I go, to be someone who is more present with people. That's my goal at 45.

Here's hoping...

2012 Holiday Newsletter

Click the image to check out our holiday newsletter, or simply download it here!

Halloween 2012: Pirate Dungeon II

This year Jenny and I set out to recreate our first Wood Family Halloween Porch, the 2004 Pirate Dungeon. As usual we spent most of our prep time focusing on the set pieces - a treasure chest, some gory "grog," a skeleton captain against whom we'd just mutinied, a baby sailer (who happens to be a zombie), a "porthole" that featured a roiling ocean scene, and even some rigging! Check out the video...

...and stick around for the outtake!



As usual, we found little time to think up characters or backstory. Fortunately Jenny printed up a "Pirate-speak" cheat sheet a few minutes before we started the show. From about 6 to 8:30 we shared our swashbuckling Halloween Porch with hundreds of kids. Folks seemed to enjoy the performance, and I'm already thinking about returning to this theme next year. Now... where can I find a cannon?

Previous Years

• 2011: Just Buried II [Video]

• 2010: Alien Autopsy II [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2009: Zombie Apocalypse [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2008: Dr. Freightmarestein's Haunted Laboratory of Horrors [Pix] [Video]

• 2007: Psycho Circus [Pix] [Video]

• 2006: Alien Autopsy I [Pix]

• 2005: Just Buried I [Pix]

• 2004: Pirate Dungeon I [Pix]

2011 Wood Family Holiday Newsletter

Click the image to read our holiday newsletter, or simply download it here!

And to Woodland Shoppers Paradise fans out there, I will return to my regular blogging schedule starting in 2012. Until then... happy holidays!

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Drinking Game

Watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade? Sorry about that. Here's one way to pass the time. Do a shot of, I dunno, "eggnog," every time you see the following:

• Broadway performance based on a movie you'd forgotten about years ago

• A floating balloon portraying a pop culture character you've never heard of

• Cheesy segue from weather report to some product, film, or television show

• Kid wearing a generic Christmas present-box costume

• Commercial for anything related to Black Friday

• Apple-faced high school marching band-kid drops an instrument

• Musical performance by someone who hasn't had a hit in over ten years

• Stilted interview with the star of new TV show (that won't last the season)

• Musical performance with obvious lip-synching

• Commercial repeats for tenth damned time [2011 ed.: Justin Bieber spot]

Bonus Ten

• Salute to the troops

• TV host who would rather be anywhere else but here

• Performer whose song stops when the float begins to move off-camera

• Reference to 70s-fashion, culture, or music

• Overhead view of marching band

• Earnest country singer extolling the lyrics of simple living

• Awkward reference to Native American traditions

• High-kicking [bonus if performers are not Rockettes]

• Nameless corporate hack waving from car (or on a float)

• Commercial aired for the twentieth damned time

Bonus Death-Match Play-rules

• Anytime someone says the word "Macy's"

• Anytime you're reminded of just how old you are

Halloween 2011 - Corpse Wedding

This year's Halloween porch theme was a throwback to our first all-out family production: a corpse wedding. And with Vienna joining in, our show was a neighborhood hit!

Vienna was a beautifully eerie bridesmaid.

The "sinister" wasn't up to officiating. 

Happy Halloween wishes from Scotts Valley!

The "Fright" and the "Goon" welcome the kids to our creepy wedding.

Previous Years

• 2010: Alien Autopsy II [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2009: Zombie Apocalypse [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2008: Dr. Freightmarestein's Haunted Laboratory of Horrors [Pix] [Video]

• 2007: Psycho Circus [Pix] [Video]

• 2006: Alien Autopsy I [Pix]

• 2005: Just Buried [Pix]

• 2004: Pirate Dungeon [Pix]

Bryce Canyon Family Road Trip

Over the Independence Day weekend, Jenny, Vienna, and I took a 14 hour drive to Utah's Bryce Canyon National Park. Once we completed our initial southwestern sweep toward Barstow, pitching north toward Las Vegas, onward to Utah, I was inspired to recite from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ("Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in..."). How I love desert driving! We arrived in early afternoon under a tranquil blue sky, which meant we had enough time to start our tour with the Navajo/Peekaboo hiking trail. Even as the sun began to set behind the cliffs, we couldn't wait to explore some of Bryce's grand amphitheater. And when we were forced to fight off a swarm of gnats, Vienna borrowed from Hunter S. Thompson's drug-fueled heat-stroke odyssey to forge the perfect response: "We can't stop here - this is gnat country!"

Bryce Canyon is one of those places where the photos barely do any justice to the beauty of the scene. The hoodoos - those towering protrusions for which Bryce is so famous - can't be appreciated in two dimensions. Still, we shot picture after picture (Vienna trying out an old SLR film camera, and producing some lovely images). Afterward we joined the crowds for stargazing under a moonless evening. Just our luck, we arrived in time for the 11th Annual Bryce Canyon Astronomy Festival, which attracts night sky aficionados who offer free telescope tours of Saturn's rings, the M13 cluster, and other celestial objects we could never see under the glare of city lights. Even from our cabin, though, we could also enjoy staring at the Milky Way overhead and feel a million miles from home.

The next morning we plotted out a day of hiking and relaxation, starting at Mossy Cave Trail. Now, I know that this shot (above) looks Photoshopped, but we've got the scrapes and bruises to prove that we made our way behind the waterfall near the cave, all to satisfy our Wood Family sense of adventure, such as it is. After much discussion to chart a relatively safe route from the trail to the fall, we opted to simply scramble down the stony side of the gorge - Rock Surfing, to borrow Jenny's phrase - knowing that we'd have to thread our way along the stream back to an accessible pathway to the trail. The torrents of water froze our feet, but taking a dip in the pool formed by those raging falls offered a welcome respite from the summer heat.

By late morning we decided to drive east along Highway 12 to Kodachrome Basin State Park, where we hiked to Shakespeare Arch and grooved on cool breezes near the green vista nearby. Later, after lounging a couple hours at a KOA pool to escape the broiling heat, we returned to Bryce Canyon, this time to see the orientation film at the visitor center and plan our next adventure for the day. Well, Jenny and Vienna decided to take a quick nap during the film, but we somehow managed to agree on our next hike: Bristlecone Pine Trail [Bryce regulars can surely tell that the Wood Family, no matter how adventuresome we imagine ourselves to be, rarely opts for "strenuous" hikes].

Bristlecone is located 17 miles from the visitor center, climbing over a thousand feet above the canyon floor. We chatted noisily at first but eventually grew more silent, enjoying the sound of our clomping feet while we ambled among spruce and fir trees. From time to time we'd peer over the red panorama of hoodoos that line up like a fortress of stone, occasionally stepping close enough to imagine how easily a gust of wind could flick us into the abyss. After our hike we took a dreamy spiral back down the road, stopping at a viewpoint when our pamphlet's description attracted us to pull over. At one such stop, we met two crows who preened and posed for a growing crowd of shutterbugs. We giggled at the sight (especially seeing one person photographing the birds with an iPad) but we had to join the fun.

We spent some of our second afternoon and the following morning at the park surveying that incredible vista of hoodoos from Bryce Point. Waving off those pesky gnats, we gathered for family photos and surveyed the panorama some more, knowing that we had a long drive ahead to get back home. Already we're planning for a return to Bryce Canyon, ideally sometime in fall or spring. At this altitude, the ice and snow hangs on for months, surely affording some gorgeous photo opportunities. In the meantime, we had our evening stay in Las Vegas to anticipate. So we set off from Utah, barreling north toward one of Sin City's gaudy simulacrums. And once more I found myself reciting those lines from Fear and Loathing: "Every now and then...").

Check out more photos at my Facebook album!

(Photographs by Andy, Jenny, and Vienna Wood)

2010 Holiday Newsletter

Click the image to read our holiday newsletter, or simply download it here! 

I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season. See you in 2011...

Halloween 2004

While searching through our growing collection of digital memories I came across a few pix from that first year when we transformed the porch into a creepy Halloween experience for the kids. In 2004 Jenny and Vienna took the lead on a project that would become a family tradition. They found a plastic skeleton, planted some gothic looking candle holders (with lit candles, of course) and hung chains and a dreary looking wall made from painted construction paper. After dressing up the skeleton with a bandana and sticking a fake cutlass through its guts they labeled their creation Pirate Dungeon.

I was happy for them to run the show, leaving me to help hand out candy to the kids. It was a simple but memorable night. Oh, I sometimes moan, if only we'd stuck to that model: dig through the garage, round up whatever's lying around, and spend a couple hours throwing it together. Halloween since 2004 has become a much more complex event in the Wood family household, with video, music, costuming, and design that takes weeks to develop. Just breaking down the set of this weekend's Alien Autopsy took an hour - and we've still got to pack up all the gear (a full-sized skeleton, a gory alien corpse, a stainless steel UFO, and a hundred other tiny details) and somehow stuff it all back in the garage. Just think: all that work was inspired by Jenny and Vienna's lark of a Halloween six years ago.

One last memory: Vienna's 2004 costume. For some reason our daughter was obsessed with Al Pacino back then - especially with his Tony Montana Scarface character. I mean, literally, this kid had a foot-tall Scarface action figure! Maybe we should have counseled against her fascination with such a blood-soaked antihero, but we knew that these things generally pass. Anyway, we could hardly be surprised when Vienna announced that she was dressing up as "Mrs. Tony Montana" for Halloween, complete with a version of her hero dressed up on skates as a prop. She looks back on that choice with horror now, but what can I say? Halloween brings out the best in our family!

Halloween 2010 - Video!

Following up on yesterday's review of our 2010 Halloween Alien Autopsy, here's a video of the show!



Difficulty seeing the video? Point your browser here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkt9nPsDk88

Halloween 2010

This year's Halloween show marked a return to a classic: Alien Autopsy, which we first mounted in 2006. That show, an extraterrestrial-themed haunted porch, was our first effort to create a real multimedia experience for the kids, using video, music, set-design, and props to evoke that well-known trope of a Roswell-style dissection of a crash-landed alien. Sure, we'd experimented with music and characterization before, but that show represented our first big attempt at theater. And while we've tried to increase the complexity of our themes since then, there's never been a show like our first Alien Autopsy. In 2010 I asked my family to join me in producing an ambitious remake.

Who said Andy doesn't have a heart?

For this new version, we'd start by creating a semi-lifesized UFO - something we didn't attempt back then. The idea was that a flying saucer had crashed landed into our Area 51 lab (what a coincidence!) depositing three alien specimens. To erect the spacecraft we bought four sheets of stainless steel, along with thin wood beams and two metal vents to serve as engines. After cutting the steel into trapezoidal shapes, I nailed each piece onto a wooden frame (with Jenny's patient help, of course). Since we were both regularly exhausted from our daily duties, we could muster the energy to build only one frame per night. Once we finished I connected the frames with loops of metal wire and topped the saucer with a round metal gadget I found at a local hardware store. I finished the saucer with eerie green rope lights.

Our "saucer": just after being first built in the living room

We only constructed half a saucer, actually, which allowed access to the craft's innards (that's where I bound the wooden frames and wired the lights to the edges). We'd need something to hide that other side. My family solved that dilemma by collecting and cutting cardboard boxes into a large facsimile of a wall. That's where our UFO would appear to have crashed into the lab. Jenny and Vienna fashioned a tall rectangular facade (bracing it with poles and brooms) applied gray spray-paint, and affixed pieces of tape to create a brick-effect. Afterward they cut away a section of the wall and painted jagged pieces of styrofoam to produce rubble. Mounting the thing around the UFO was a bit scary; I could hardly believe that it'd stand. But Jenny made smart use of our porch-swing chains to keep everything upright.

We couldn't find a thin black tie for our "Man in Black," so we improvised.

The rest of the show was pretty much a matter of rebuilding old props. We used a store-bought costume for the alien - though I spent hours making a gory chest cavity - watching Dawn of the Dead for inspiration. For intestines I stuffed pieces of green Play-Doh into fingers I cut from latex gloves, twisting them into gut-like shapes. Jenny made up some jello and green goo to augment the chest with organic-looking viscous material. And like we did back in '06, Jenny and I bought a plate of baby back ribs at Bruno's BBQ, boiled the bones at home, and attached the bones to the alien's chest cavity for a bit of extra-gross realism.

This survivor didn't last long after the crash.

To contribute some narrative material to our show, we dressed a life-sized skeleton I'd used in previous years in a Men in Black suit I cobbled together at the local Salvation Army store. After dressing our agent, we ripping a hole in the shirt and singed the edges to reveal the guy's ribs. Later we'd think of a gross story to explain the effect. To liven the walls, we tacked up posters and diagrams that seemed suitable for an Area 51 Laboratory ("Restricted Area," "Use of Deadly Force is Authorized," that sort of thing). Naturally I added an "I want to believe" poster. [Incidentally, I've recently created an "I wanted to believe" poster - just in case we do this show again one day.]

Behind the Scenes: The LCD needed to be
covered so that our strobe lights would work.

To make it appear that our "lab" window faced outside and not into our house, I downloaded a clip from Earth Versus the Flying Saucers and isolated a four-second snippet of a UFO. After editing the piece into a looping video, I used my LCD Projector to cast the scene onto a white sheet we'd nailed over the window. The resulting image - a flying saucer hovering back and forth - was surprisingly realistic at night (though only then would I notice that our window showed a daytime scene).

Area 51 signs

For background music we looped four selections: "Prelude and Outer Space" from Bernard Herrmann's The Day the Earth Stood Still score, "Alien Spaceship" from Mannheim Steamroller, "Amityville Horror" from Robert Walsh, and a version of The X-Files theme produced by The Stradibrothers Orchestra. Affixing green-colored gels over the lights, illuminating alien figures in the upper windows with strobe lights, and costuming ourselves with lab coats and medical instruments, Jenny and I built an Alien Autopsy porch to inspire a thousand nightmares (and yes, we posted signs warning parents that this presentation was rated PG: "Pretty Gory"). Finally it was 6 p.m., time to start the show.

Andy points at the flying saucers hovering outside our window

The night turned out wonderfully. Hundreds of kids climbed the steps to see our presentation, many transfixed at our weird alien. In my sort-of-X-Files persona, "Fox Moldy," I'd attach jumper cables to the alien's heart, and get a volunteer to flip the charger switch. As the heart would start beating I'd remove the organ to "oohs" and "aahs." Then I'd notice something else in the chest cavity. Drawing the kids nearer, I'd slowly, slowly pull a "symbiotic creature" (actually, a plastic beetle) from underneath the alien's intestines. Sometimes I'd pretend to get bitten by the creature and sometimes I'd toss the creature toward the kids. One older fellow - about 17 - lept back so far that he knocked a sign off the wall.

Jenny takes a break with our baby alien

Jenny (Agent "Dana Scary") bolstered our presentation by describing how the flying saucer crashed through our lab. A "Man in Black" had been assigned to protect us, she explained, but the agent got his skin burned off by another alien's ray gun. Sometimes she'd invite the kids to look out our window, revealing the saucer had been hovering outside all day. She'd also point out a nearby drum covered with biohazard symbols. Inside: alien ooze ("See the hand coming out of the top? That's the alien mutating into form!"). Best of all, "Agent Scary" carried a furry alien baby, which we are trying to raise as a human. Sometimes she'd invite the children to pet him. The kids loved it.

The crashed saucer made quite a mess!

The crowds were huge, mostly kids but also plenty of camera-snapping parents. We had a blast, running through seven bags of candy. A little after nine we turned off the lights and wrapped up another happy Halloween. Just in the past couple days Jenny and I had spent dozens of hours on this show; we were exhausted. But we didn't mind spending one last hour to strike the set and clean the ooze off our props. We had a wonderful evening - and I'm already wondering: what kind of show might we try next time?

Update: Check out the video!

Previous Years

• 2009: Zombie Apocalypse [Pix and Story] [Video]

• 2008: Dr. Freightmarestein's Haunted Laboratory of Horrors [Pix] [Video]

• 2007: Psycho Circus [Pix] [Video]

• 2006: Alien Autopsy I [Pix]

• 2005: Just Buried [Pix]

• 2004: Pirate Dungeon [Pix]