Halloween, Bat Crazy and Raven Galore - an eerie meeting at EarlyBird Ghostmasters!

Dear Members, Guests and Friends,

Offshore ever more, TM Jose launched us down eerie pathways....(pun intended).  Aghast, we soon learned that...

* TM Aleta (aka Bugsy Malone irredemption) stuffed herself with pillows and overdosed on sugar while dressed as an innocent tramp in her rural childhood.

* TM Paolo's childhood was Halloween-deprived but he had 100 times more fun than the Halloween a'plenty childhood of today's kids.  Long live tiramisu!

* TM Val depletes the candy shelves of her local stores so her tree-filled brick-facade home will not be toilet papered and egged.

* DTM Mary Helen became a candy hoarder early on in childhood and could care less about political or celebrity costume lookalikes.

* TM Tom's sugar high is provided by sexy revealing dream girl, Elvira.

* TM Emmanuel is scared of carved pumpkins, eerie costumes, skeletons, spiderwebs and candy, but Halloween's one redeeming quality is pumpkin soup.

* I, Ana, no longer decorate my home as there are no kids in my neighborhood but spent my childhood years in Havana dressed up as a zebra for Halloween.

* TM BeckyJo,  in cognito, is scared of driving in the dark.  We all ought to be scared of her driving in the dark. Her favorite costume is as an Italian dinner.  She Won Best Table Topics Award.

* TM Chris revealed that her scary creature of the night is none other than her husband- and the raven that follows them everywhere in the RV.

Along came the prepared speeches and we were to learn that...

* TM Marie was hell-bent on dispeling our fears of bats, on International Bat Week.  Only .333333% of bats drink blood - but boy, are they thirsty.  They have bellybuttons and have good vision.  But they're eerily crazy for sure. She Won Best Speaker Award.

* TM Jim G. delighted us with a rendition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven.  Leonore, Leonore, to the core and nothing more, except for the raven with psychedelic eyes.

Along came evaluations...

* TM Tom confessed that after hearing TM Marie's speech, his new heroes are bats, those cuddly self-grooming mammals with opposable thumbs.

* TM Paolo loved the delivery of The Raven although he asked for subtitles next time.  He Won Best Evaluator Award.

TM BeckyJo evaluated the entire meeting and gave it a gold star but would not reveal where COGNITO is.  More will be revealed.

The Word of the Day was

EERIE, adj.

Strange and frightening

Example " Kid ghosts sit around campfires telling eerie human stories."

Answer to the riddle "Where do deviled eggs come from?"  is:  FROM EVIL HENS!!

Link to the recording:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLVzQJdo6Bg

See you next week!

Ana I.

Recap Ghostamzayas Writer

Pre-Halloween, Parenthood and These Boots Are Made For Walking - a writhing morning at EarlyBirds!

Dear Members, Guests and Friends,

DTM Jim D got us into the swing of things with creepy recollections of Halloween...We discovered that...

* TM Marie was the attention-hoarder Blue Bird of Happiness at her son's elementary school and her son, in turn, became an unhappy ignored Ninja.

* TM Jose and his hippy friends starred in their own Halloween comedy caper in the humorless Halloweenless country of Spain (in the 70s) and almost got arrested.  He Won Best Table Topics Award. 

* TM BeckyJo's wildest costume was as a boxer - to conveniently cover a black eye.

* TM Pam loves treats and has signed up for a birthday freebie of hot bacon popcorn - which sounds more like a trick.

* TM Randolph is getting ready to go trick-or-treating with his kids - at his wife's command- and sad to neglect the trick-or-treaters who regularly count on him dishing out candy for them.  His wife rules, though.

* TM Tom's former wife used to hand out cooked spaghetti dipped in cold water and passed them off as worms, to the squealing delight/horror  of the neighborhood kids.

* I, Ana, created outrageously common average unspooky decorations and left the creativity to my daughters.

Along came the prepared speeches...

* In an amazing Icebreaker, TM Manny revealed to us that parenting is absolutely traumatic with generous measures of pride and joy sprinkled therein; and that insanity is definitely hereditary - we get it from our kids.  He Won Best Speaker Award.

* TM Aleta is in the midst of a strict training regimen to shed the spare tire in her midriff and time travelling via Sony Walkman as she sings "Pretty Woman, Walking Down the Street...." (sung to the tune of "Pretty Woman").

As far as evaluations go...

* DTM Jim D. praised TM Manny for his formidable Icebreaker and for using up the timing requirements to the very last second, all with a captivating smile.

* TM Paolo was so motivated by TM Aleta's confidence and inspirational talk that he was last seen walking to Miami Airport to catch the next flight to Italy.  He Won Best Evaluator Award.

The Word of the Day was

WRITHE, verb

To twist body or a bodily part, usually in pain.

Example:  The Beatles's first hit was originally called "Twist and Writhe" and later renamed  to honor the resulting sound effect "Twist and Shout".

Here's the link to the recording:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuqF5WQn9qM

See you next week!

Ana

Recap Writer

Influential pictures, Around the Track and Pearly Whites - an intuitive morning at EarlyBirds!

Dear Members, Guests and Friends,

We inducted our newest member, TM Emmanuel - welcome to EarlyBirds, Emmanuel!

TM Aleta got us thinking about influential photographs of momentous times.  We soon found out that...

* TM Val wanted to know what lunch the construction guys sitting on a beam at 15,000 ft of altitude were having.

* TM BeckyJo stated the world has once again lost its collective mind and one person needs to stand in front of those tanks in Tianamen Square again.

* TM Paolo wants to keep the oceans blue so Earth pictures taken from the moon will still have that peak of the camera quality to them.

* New TM Emmanuel reflected on the atomic explosion over Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the scary nuclear threats that are being hurled around today. He Won Best Table Topics Award.  Bravo, TM Emmanuel!

* TM Tom would have liked a marine instead of a squishy sailor to kiss the unknown girl on Broadway to celebrate the last South Pacific performance.

* TM Randolph likened the despairing women with a child in their arms to a Bible story with a happy ending.

* DTM Jim D. marveled at how laborers toted bricks on their shoulders like feathers even before the invention of franchise gyms in our country.

As far as prepared speeches...

* TM Pam took a race driving course for no reason other than to awaken her attention deficit lethargic disorder and to prove to herself that car spinning is lotsa fun.  She Won Best Speaker Award.

* I, TM Ana, asserted that Scottish highlanders in the 17th Century did NOT have beautiful smiles, except in Hollywood.

And then came evaluations...

* TM Val wanted to know, first and foremost, where did TM Pam get her raingear.to go around the race track.

* TM Chris told me in no uncertain terms to read my (funny) speeches at reading school.  She Won Best Evaluator Award.

The Word of the Day was

COUNTERINTUITIVE, adj.

Contrary to intuition or common sense, but nonetheless sometimes true.

Example:  An honest politician is truly counterintuitive but also supercalifragilisticexpialidotious.  

The link to the recording:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI75bsvuTK8

See you next week!

Ana

Recap Writer

Fav Movies, Straight & Wavy, Humor in High Places - a somewhat discombobulated morning at EarlyBirds

Dear Members, Guests and Friends,

I, Ana, led with Table Topics about our favorite movies.... We found out that

* Returning TM Astrid started watching horror flicks at the tender age of 6 and has become a fan of Friday the 13th (now rated G) for life.

* TM Paolo is an absolute fan of gangster movies to the detriment of old "spaghetti westerns"; give him Pacino and DeNiro if only he (and the rest of us) could distinguish between the two.

* TM Tom liked The Entertainers and their slapstick humor which had cars flying over bridges and other hilarious occurrences.

* DTM Mary Helen delighted us in a duo with TM Chris about washing that man right out of their hair.  Ah, those beloved musicals....  She Won Best Table Topics Award.

* TM Jim G. loved Tron, the first CGI (computer graphic imaging) movie, a precursor to the CT-SCAN and the MRI. His all-time favorite is still Flash Gordon.

* TM Val was forever impacted by the restaurant scene in When Sally Met Harry and she's been Sleepless in Macon ever since.

Then came the prepared speeches...

* TM Jose (aka Miguel) inspired us to buy his hair beauty business in Spain after we bleach that gray right into our hair, like in Fame of Phones.   He Won Best Speaker Award.

* TM Aleta regaled us with humor, quips and one-liners of our past Presidents, and taught us the valuable skill of how to diaper a baby like it's a baseball field.  

As far as evaluations go...

* TM Pam was enthralled to be grayishly fasionable au naturel as she is not willing to add one single  penny to the staggering $500 billion a year hair product industry.

* TM Tom praised TM Aleta's nicely woven story and asked her to cut the flushing of the toilet part to meet the time requirements.  He Won Best Evaluator Award.

The Word of the Day was

DISCOMBOBULATE, verb

To confuse or disconcert; to bewilder

Example:  In Toastmasters we learn not to let hecklers discombobulate us when we're speaking in public.  Pathways allows us to practice!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsCIqX3YJQU

See you next week!

Ana