yesterday was a long, wonderful day-”weather” and all! for us spoiled southern californians, any kind of moisture constitutes rain. after one of the warmest october’s for us on record-novemeber 1st, dia de los muertos, came in with a vengeance-sporadic thunderstorm’s throughout the day. this made for an interesting and challenging event at hollywood forever cemetery’s annual dia de los muertos celebration.  i do an altar every year, and for the majority of the hundred plus families that participate in creating an altar -it is an all day event. the public is invited from 4pm-midnight, however the “the behind the scenes” begin  much earlier. many people start “creating” their altar the  night before. this year, that fri night being halloween , i opted to just drop off my stuff and get the heck out of hollywood before the other 300,000 people came for tricks (no pun intended). my dia de los muertos saturday morning began at 7:30-clear skies in hollywood. by 10am the wind was wicked-prompting myself and fellow altar aficionados to tie down EVERYTHING. at 2pm we had a downpour-even by midwest standards it was WET. (fortunately it lasted only about 20 minutes.) anyway-by showtime the rain gods/goddesses were appeased- thankfully. it was a perfect evening surrounded by family, friends, good food, and the spirits of the hollywood forever crowd (including rudolph valentino, douglas fairbanks, peter lorre, jayne mansfield, dee dee and johnny ramone) what more could one ask for?