tony

Friends, this has been quite enjoyable looking through all of your Halloween pictures.

Some are frightening, some are sexy, some are just plain weird - and yes we loved them all.

Because this is the big day you have today, tonight, and tomorrow morning to take your Halloween pictures, upload them and tag them with the buzzwords "halloween" and/or "Assignment1"

then we will figure out who is the weiner and all will be joyous in Buzznetland.

below are some more semi-finalists and as always heres a refresher or the instructions:

take pictures!

take a picture of your decorations, of your neighbors' decorations, of creepy trees and scary monsters

take a picture of your costume, of the kids's costumes, of any party you might have this weekend celebrating all hallows eve

each day the four-to-ten best halloween pics will be given Featured Photo status and they will be posted at the bottom of the Buzz Blog.

at the end of the four days the person who has delivered the best photo or best series of photos will be awarded a Featured User.

you know whats creepy, you know whats scary, you know whats funny - take that picture and send it to us

for extra credit, to ensure that we here at Buzznet see it, use the Buzzword "Assignment 1" but dont forget to have a seperate buzzword of "halloween".

Have fun!

im thinking about being a Gitmo prisoner, but i'd probably get beat up and not released after Halloween, so im leaning toward being a huge bong.

only two more days to add Buzzwords to your halloween entries of this assignment.

i love whats come in!

below are today's 10 best...

as a reminder here are your instructions:

take a picture every day and every night starting today through Halloween

take a picture of your decorations, of your neighbors' decorations, of creepy trees and scary monsters

take a picture of your costume, of the kids's costumes, of any party you might have this weekend celebrating all hallows eve

and each night i ask that you post your pictures to Buzznet and use the buzzword "Halloween" and this is what we will do --

each day the four best halloween pics will be given Featured Photo status and they will be posted at the bottom of the Buzz Blog.

at the end of the four days the person who has delivered the best photo or best series of photos will be awarded a Featured User.

you know whats creepy, you know whats scary, you know whats funny - take that picture and send it to us

for extra credit, to ensure that we here at Buzznet see it, use the Buzzword "Assignment 1" but dont forget to have a seperate buzzword of "halloween".

Have fun!

i'm considering being Harriet Meyers for Halloween but i dont think the kids would get it.

the other day the tv weatherman injected a history of halloween that i hadnt heard before so i looked it up, and sure enough the interweb concurred - we dress in costumes to scare away any evil spirits who are allowed to haunt us on on Oct 31.

witness: 

[On Halloween..] the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess

.

read the rest of halloween's history here here

currently, the Buzznet contest is just unbelievable.

im speechless.

below are the top 7 chosen today

as a reminder here are your instructions:

take a picture every day and every night starting today through Halloween

take a picture of your decorations, of your neighbors' decorations, of creepy trees and scary monsters

take a picture of your costume, of the kids's costumes, of any party you might have this weekend celebrating all hallows eve

and each night i ask that you post your pictures to Buzznet and use the buzzword "Halloween" and this is what we will do --

each day the four best halloween pics will be given Featured Photo status and they will be posted at the bottom of the Buzz Blog.

at the end of the four days the person who has delivered the best photo or best series of photos will be awarded a Featured User.

you know whats creepy, you know whats scary, you know whats funny - take that picture and send it to us

for extra credit, to ensure that we here at Buzznet see it, use the Buzzword "Assignment 1" but dont forget to have a seperate buzzword of "halloween".

Have fun!

Last night Tsar played here in Hollywood (some pics below from their Buzznet page). Now they are headed across the country to join up with Juliette Lewis and the Licks  to support them for a month in the US and Canada.

TVT Records and Buzznet are having a TSAR Fan contest, read the ideas below, post your TSAR photos to the Buzzword: tsarfan and you will be entered to win some prizes including a super cool camera phone. 

Examples of good posts.

• Wear your TSAR t-shirt while walking across campus in the snow
• That TSAR poster on your wall
• Hold a handwritten TSAR sign up in front of the Eiffel Tower while talking on the phone with Scooter Libby, and so on...

1 Grand Prize:
SP3i 1.3 megapixel camera phone
TSAR Band-Girls-Money Album
TSAR 7" single "Band, Girls Money"

5 Runners Up:
TSAR Import 7" single "Band, Girls, Money"

Get ready to let it rock on!

Winners will be chosen randomly based on entries received from 10/26/05 - 12/1/05

Our friend and yours, tomdog, today celebrates his two years as a Buzznet member.

Prolific commentor, photographer, and inventor of fads, tomdog, of the tomdog bug, Buzznet wouldnt be the same without you.

Let's go back, shall we, and have a look at some of his many awesome pics.

 

It looks like lots of people are uploading their Halloween pictures and tagging them with the buzzwords "halloween" and "Assignment1" - nice job!

We will keep this going through Halloween, so keep it up.

as a reminder here are your instructions:

take a picture every day and every night starting today through Halloween

take a picture of your decorations, of your neighbors' decorations, of creepy trees and scary monsters

take a picture of your costume, of the kids's costumes, of any party you might have this weekend celebrating all hallows eve

and each night i ask that you post your pictures to Buzznet and use the buzzword "Halloween" and this is what we will do --

each day the four best halloween pics will be given Featured Photo status and they will be posted at the bottom of the Buzz Blog.

at the end of the four days the person who has delivered the best photo or best series of photos will be awarded a Featured User.

you know whats creepy, you know whats scary, you know whats funny - take that picture and send it to us

for extra credit, to ensure that we here at Buzznet see it, use the Buzzword "Assignment 1" but dont forget to have a seperate buzzword of "halloween".

Have fun!

All right my little ghouls goblins witches and monsters - it's time for your first assignment.

As you know Halloween, my favorite holiday, will be upon us in a mere four days.

So this is what I invite you to do:

take a picture every day and every night starting today through Halloween

take a picture of your decorations, of your neighbors' decorations, of creepy trees and scary monsters

take a picture of your costume, of the kids's costumes, of any party you might have this weekend celebrating all hallows eve

and each night i ask that you post your pictures to Buzznet and use the buzzword "Halloween" and this is what we will do --

each day the four best halloween pics will be given Featured Photo status and they will be posted at the bottom of the Buzz Blog.

at the end of the four days the person who has delivered the best photo or best series of photos will be awarded a Featured User.

you know whats creepy, you know whats scary, you know whats funny - take that picture and send it to us

for extra credit, to ensure that we here at Buzznet see it, use the Buzzword "Assignment 1" but dont forget to have a seperate buzzword of "halloween".

for those of you in foreign lands who do not celebrate Halloween... dress up anyways and take a picture and send it in... it'll be a scream.

Every day we get new users and every week we make deals with bands or labels or stars or newspapers or gnomes,

but today we launched the Buzznet page of one of my all-time favorite bands Tsar.

Formed in Los Angeles in 1999, Tsar recorded their self-titled debut record in the famous Ocean Way Studios on Sunset Blvd with a Grammy-award winning producer.

That record was great, but this year they followed it up with a far more rockin far more punkier far more intense cd called Band Girls Money.

Two of the songs have already been picked up by sponsors. The title track was in a Nestle/Napster commercial, and the tune "Straight" was used by Nissan for an Xterra spot.

Billboard raved, Rolling Stone gave it three stars, hell even Pitchfork didn't hate it which is saying something for a relatively unknown band that skateboards the tightrope over glam and pop without comeing across as fey.

Today they were interviewed by Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones on 103.1 here in Los Angeles, tomorrow they will play at the world famous Tower Records on Sunset at 6pm and at 9:30p they will rock the legendary Roxy theatre just down the strip.

Now here's the good part...

Then they will load up their bus and drive across the country to tour for a month with model/actress/rocker Juliette Lewis and her band The Licks

and they will take pictures and upload them to their page on Buzznet and you will see it all if you add Tsar as your friend and log on every day.

But wait, theres more!

Because Tsar and Marc and I go way back, all the way back to college days, we set something up with their record label TVT Records (home of crunk) where we will be hosting a Buzznet/Tsar contest!

There will be 10 winners.  All 10 will win a super exclusive 7" single of "Band Girls Money" that I dont even have. Thats how rare it is. Serious,

But the Grand Prize winner gets a killer mobile phone whose retail value is so large that i dont even have that many zeros on this keyboard.

All you have to do is take a picture of Tsar, take a picture of you attending a Tsar show, OR take a picture of you wearing some Tsar merch or infront of a Tsar poster or rocking out to their cd or doing anything Tsar-related.

Then add the Buzzword "TSARFAN" to the picture and from those pics we will choose 10 winners.

The grand prize winner will be chosen by the band itself when it returns to LA next month sometime after its show at the Troubador in West Hollywood.

More details about the contest and the prizes will be up on the Tsar page soon. So send in those pictures and Good Luck!

About once a week I will be giving you tips on making your Buzznet experience here more enjoyable.

Some of the tips might appear to be no-brainers but I will do my best to inject at least one little factoid that you might know about in order to make this worth your while.

Today's tip is Buzzwords aka Tags

Buzzwords are a great way to have your pictures seen by others in and around the Buzznet universe. I see a lot of pics out there with no buzzwords or random ones that will never be crossreferenced properly. But that's ok we're all just getting used to this and at least these people are using buzzwords.

Halloween is approaching. Hell, it's next week. Odds are either you will dress up like an iPod or some little angels will be knocking at your door dressed as IRS agents, kanye west, or whores. When you take their pictures and post them on buzznet make sure that one of the buzzwords is Halloween. Similarily, for those of you who want to see lots of halloween parties, crazy halloween costumes, or haunted houses, when you see a Halloween buzzword you should click it and you will see tons of halloween pics. Just like that.

Don't want to wait until you see the Halloween buzzword? Fine, just follow this link http://www.buzznet.com/tags/halloween

want to see a bunch of cars or even fish for that matter, just type "fish" or "cars" instead of halloween and youre off. you can keep clicking the pictures that come up to get to the next one.

in fact if you really like the pictures that you see in this buzzword you can add that buzzword to your Favorites. just click the line in the middle of the page there that says "Add this Buzzword as a Favorite" and any time anyone else adds buzz to a picture with that buzzword it will appear in your far right folder that says Favorites. then everyones happy.

heres the best tip though, people write journal entries but not nearly as many people write journal entries as they post photos, so lets say you wrote something super great and you want it seen, make sure to use some Buzzwords to describe it and it will show up on the page with all the pictures.

For example, Fall Out Boy has a huge amount of fans here at Buzznet. Lots of people post pictures of them, but hardly anyone writes anything about them. If I was a FOB fan who wanted to explain why I loved them so much I would totally write something in the journal, and then add buzzwords like "fob" "fall out boy" "pete wentz" and/or "clandestine" and any time one of their rabid fans clicked those buzzwords, the odds of my journal entry showing up would be far higher than if i added buzz to one of my photos that id have uploaded.

so go through your pics, or as you upload new pics keep in mind that we have this sorta overlooked feature that will help bring together your pictures with all of us here at Buzznet.

in less than two weeks we have now thrown official Buzznet meetup/parties in NY and LA and ive gotta say that theyve been super fun.

on Saturday we held one here at the Buzznet HQ, a loft overlooking McArthur Park near downtown LA.

marc was nice enough to get a keg, he also got a case of wine, much booze, food, i made a crazy ipod playlist, and we invited lots of buzznetters who signed up with LA zip codes.

at first i was afraid that too many people would show up because i got hella RSVPs and everyone said it would be them plus four. now the Buzznet digs are spacious but ive seen parties spin outta control especially when the plus four are hotheaded or folks who dont mix well with free liquor.

fortunately everyone who showed up were very cool and quite friendly and just enough people showed up to make everyone feel very comfortable. in fact there was a little beer left in the keg for marc to down on Sunday morning.

i bring this recap up because we want to throw more meetup parties. in fact we have our eye on you Vancouver. yes you. thinking like 11/4, 11/5ish to coincide with Buzznet-member and rocker Matthew Good's concerts up there. maybe we can have a pre-concert party or an after-party? do they have after-parties in Canada? pardon me as im quite ignorant and have never visited the great white north.

we also have our eye on you Arizona. from scanning the pictures and knowing some AZ bloggers, it seems like phoenix is ready to rise from the ashes and knock down a few cold frosty ones. am i mistaken?

and also Chicago... the general idea is the Saturday after Thanksgiving. i dont know about you but after three days of my family i could use a shot or six. and i know we have a good amount of buzznetters in the windy who probably wouldnt mind a nice pitcher of Old Style with a friendly face from the west coast.

these are all super-tentative plans, nothing is written in stone and the good mc brown will probably be a little upset if he knew i was sharing this with you, but its my vision to make the Buzz Blog the real truth of whats happening here in the office. we've got nothing to hide so why hide it.

so anyways, if you guys have some good ideas about where we should go in Vancouver, PHX and Chicago, please let us know, and everyone who came to the official bash on Saturday and the unofficial one on Friday thank you and it was a pleasure meeting you all.

Saturday is gonna kill me.  Saturday is the first game of the World Series.

It's going to kill me because it's being held in Chicago, but for this Cub fan, its being held in the wrong part of town - the South Side.

Yes the White Sox have done something that the Cubs have been unable to accomplish since 1945.

In Chicago you pick a baseball team and you root for them and you hate the other team. When I was a kid in school I'd wear my Cubs hat or Cubs shirt and this is what i'd hear walking around:

cubs suck. cubs suck. go cubs. cubs suck. whooo cubs. cubs suck shit. yah cubbieees. fuck the cubs. cubs suck. cubs suck. cubbieeees!

and that was just cruising past the teachers lounge.

so to see the hated white sox demolish the american league for most of the year was brutal because not only did they just work the junior circuit but they have this macho latin manager who is just too cool not to love.

The White Sox haven't won a World Series since 1917 and their competitors for the best of seven fall classic are the Houston Astros who have never won a world series ever.

As a Cub fan it's hard to deny the Sox their overdue championship but since the Cubs havent tasted that sweet victory since 1908, i'm willing to allow the Astros their first ring.

Both teams have amazing pitching so if youre new to baseball or havent been paying attention for the last few years expect some low-scoring games, which might be considered "boring" to the untrained eye, but when you have a would be hall of famer Roger Clemens up there at 75 years old or some shit making them whiff like he did back in the day, this series should be one for the ages.

Here at Buzznet we invite you to take pictures of your world series parties, if youre lucky enough to go to the games send us pics from the tailgate parties, if you live in one of the cities show us whats going on in your town world series-related, or if you're a transplant somewhere far away from your hometown show us how you're celebrating the October Classic.

and when you do tag it "world series" and we will feature all the pics on the front page of Buzznet.

hey rock n rollers, this is your pal tony writing you from the buzznet penthouse high above los angeles introducing myself to those of you who dont know me and saying hey to those who do.

marc and anthony hired me to be the Community Manager of this wonderful site and i hope that in due time you agree that they made the right choice.

basically what i will be doing is blogging about once a day on the Buzzblog, i will be letting you know what new features we'll be rolling out, i will tell you about events that will be going down in your neck of the woods, i will be turning you on to great photos and galleries and photographers and journalists that you would appreciate

and every now and then i might even invite you to participate in an "assignment" that might include showing us the inside of your refridgerator to taking a picture of your best friend.

because Buzznet is a real community that slowly changes every day we want to have daily communications with you, so feel free to ask questions in the comments or write me an email.  i will do my best to answer everything as quickly and as honestly as i can.

this week Marc and I were in New York City for the BlogOn conference and we had an excellent time. Buzznet even hosted a party in the lower east side and it was great to see so many friends of this site there. we hope to have more parties in the very near future, and if you are interested in having a Buzznet meet-up in your town, let me know and i will include it in one of these blog posts.  and of course we will hype the pictures that you post.

keep in mind that this is your community too, so if you have any suggestions or improvements that you'd like to see, dont be afraid to email us and we'll totally do our best to make everyones dreams come true.

ive known Marc and Anthony for about 10 years now and i am so happy to be here working with them, but none of this is possible without you, so please let us know what you'd like to see more and less of.

much love from Buzznet HQ,

tony