Halloween Proper

For Halloween proper, I went, as I do every year, to our friend Roach's for the parade - his apartment conveniently hangs over the route and he can never move.

Usually, Halloween is on a weekday, so I just wander over to his place after work, before humanity descends and the barricades go up. I had forgotten what happens when you decide to take the train from Brooklyn a half hour after the parade's start time.

It took forty minutes to get from the subway to Roach's building (usual travel time: 60-120 seconds). One restaurant - it's new, obviously - had left its outdoor seating out, creating a massive crush of angry and largely drunk New Yorkers. But I got there.

Adam showed up dressed as Wesley Snipes from White Men Can't Jump.

Dan, depending on how you look at it, went as either Ameet in 2008, or a Mexican. I was a lame but sexy lumberjack. UPDATE: apparently my sister dressed up as a lumberjack for Halloween as well. GROUP BRAIN.

(above, Dan's inspiration: Ameet from two years ago).

Adam M., however, took the prize, dressing up as the BP Oil Spill. This is a hard costume to get right and he nailed it. Note the collection of sea creatures from Babies "R" Us, the eyes of which he painstakingly blacked out with electrical tape.

Happy Halloween!

I'm Back!

Dan and I landed at 9 yesterday morning, and both went straight to work, where each of us was respectively useless. We had such a great trip! How is such paradise part of the boring old US? (Hyperbole, guys... hyperbole). Anyway, a lot has happened in the last two weeks, and I'm going to go in order! So you'll have to wait to hear about paradise, sorry.

First... Halloween?

Roach lives over the parade route in the West Village, so until he moves out, I know where I'll be every October 31st. You get to watch the shitshow while avoiding the carnage, so to celebrate the party's third anniversary I wore a jumpsuit, and Dan dressed up as Tony Little! Halloween is such a wonderful, low-stress holiday. It's like St. Paddy's Day with a wider color palette.









Also, this is jumping ahead, but my sister was kind enough to tote the majority of the Colorado clan out to the airport on our layover to Honolulu, and Grace and I played peek-a-boo ahhhhhhhhh.

Hello, Halloween

Halloween totally snuck up this year, like a sneaky rat bastard in a slinky rat costume. This is no good! Due to absolute Halloween success in the past few years, the bar keeps rising, and DUDE. It's the best holiday. I really need more time to prepare. Here are the ghosts of Halloween past.

2005: Evil Tinkerbell. This was probably the best Halloween in the last five years, due to living in LA + Dennis as Yao Ming + general hedonism. Plus, I made it myself out of a kelly green "Dynasty" style dress, which is kind of impressive. PLUS, this is one of the best pictures of me to ever exist.



2006: iPod dancer! I believe Cragin gave me this idea off a "Halloween Costume Ideas For Lazy People" website. As it was too soon for a Couples Costume, Dan was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. FYI, I spelled that without looking it up. Also, important note: in 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had not yet come to Columbia for the speech that suddenly put him in every late night comic's opening monologue and into the id of the casually educated American. In other words, everyone thought Dan was "Who?". The random party we went to that year was fairly sick.



2007: This was a good one too; what can I say? Here we are as Jack and Meg White, and Ameet was the Indian Waldo. We saw 2 other Waldos that night, and the Tallywhacker blew both of them away. Can you find him???




As for this year... stay tuned.

The Saturday Before Halloween Is Sooooo A Holiday

First off, our Jack and Meg costumes were a monstrous success, as was the Tallywhacker's Waldo.




I found him!

But before Stripe-ifying, the host of the show I work for was having a party at the Brooklyn Brewery, and Dan and I went five blocks out of our way to stop by. You all know my feelings on the Brewery: it is manna, heaven-sent. Now imagine that same ideal friend's-basement feeling all classed up with tea lights, make all the beer free, and cater it from Blue Smoke. Add classy people to spot and then feel superior about being able to spot; ie Maureen Dowd. Smug and full from an eighteen-pound plate of pulled pork, wings, ribs, smoked pork butt, mashed potato and the best vinegary-mustard seedy-tangy coleslaw ever, we ran home to dress in red and white and smear white clown makeup all over our faces. I also got to put eyeliner on Dan and he was a big baby about it.




I still needed black hair, though. We stopped by the Halloween Outpost in Union Square, which was hopping. And huge. I picked up a spray can and disappeared into the Most Disgusting Starbucks Bathroom on Earth to Goth up. Honestly, I had been secretly indifferent towards doing the hair, because our party was in Park Slope, which is far, and I wanted to keep my Brewery buzz going, and that spray makes your hair feel like a wig, but Dan's Jack turned out so uncannily that it really required a full-out Meg. So, black hair. I kind of like it, actually.





(We're performing. Imagine the instruments).

People were singing Stripes songs to us on the street. It was awesome.

The party was fun, too. A Colbert intern showed up uninvited with eighteen friends, including a very drunk Large Brite.




Kate was not amused.

Halloween

So Halloween is my favorite holiday. It ages so well.

Halloween at 1: your parents dress you up as a pumpkin. You are adorable.

Halloween at 5: unlimited candy.

Halloween at 15: you're too old to trick-or-treat, but do anyway, AND take petty revenge in the form of TPing on those for whom you don't care. Double whammy!

Halloween at 19: candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.

Halloween at 25: um... see previous. Except now you have a job and dressing up as an iPod ad also acts as sweet release.


So this year, Dan and I are taking that all-important step of the Couples Costume. Last year the iPod dancer and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran got along fine (yes, last year. Dan was very ahead of the curve), but this coming 31st, we want people to know we are an ITEM.

Ideas included lederhosen, George & Martha Washington, ketchup and mustard, until j.Lo hit the jackpot:




Can Dan obtain a shady goatee and porkpie top hat by this Saturday? I'm thinking definitely.

iPod Dancer/Cat Burglar

The music was thumpin'!

My heart it was jumpin'!

The bar line was dumpin'

Wonder Woman's spirits down.




Her eyes were a rollin'

At the bartenders' lollin'

Hence a bottle of Stoli

(along with mixers and cups)

Got stolen away.



Who knew it was in us?

Halloween rules.

I'm An iPod Dancer... but I'm a SLU--no, just an iPod dancer

Cragin suggested it, Jen seconded, and I think I'm going to do it. Foregoing "Naughty Nurse, But Like An Actual Naughty Nurse In Scrubs And Crocs Who Goes Around Slapping Asses" and "Jeffrey Sebelia," I have decided to be An iPod Dancer for Halloween. Yes, I'm going to slap on some black layers, braid myself a funky hairdo, and groove the night away with an empty playing card box painted white with little dials on it and maybe a glow stick inside, attached to Mem's broken white headphones. Awesome! And it'll be warm! Fantastic!

Except I can't DO anything with it, because the Saturday before Halloween, my long-lost cousin decided, is the perfect day to get married.

ARGH.

Mr. Saddle Ranch: Part Two

Dear reader, you may or may not remember my dear friend K. meeting some middle-aged porker at Saddle Ranch who professed his love immediately and invited her to party with Hef and his Haunted Honies on Halloween. You do? Because you most likely live outside LA and therefore there are not such abnormal freakazoids waiting to pick you up whereever you go out, so this might actually stick out in your memory? Right. Well, it's gotten even better!

So, he kept calling. K. eventually picked up and they talked a little, and it turns out Mr. "Isn't My Car Sweet?" is retired from his former career. Taking into account the yellow flash car, the regularity at Saddle Ranch, the familiarity with the Playboy Mansion, and drawing from the four types of people who have and do such things, was he a:

a) producer
b) producer
c) opener of Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Clubs
d) producer

You answered C? I know, not that hard. Producers don't really hang out at Saddle Ranch.

Mr. Rhino has continued calling. Mr. Rhino has purchased and sent Katie a gift. Shannen Doherty is on The View? Sorry, got distracted. But isn't her career supposed to be over? Anyway. Mr. Rhino called yesterday while K. and some of us were playing Scattergories, and we got to listen in!

"You are really phenomenal."
"I don't want you to think I'm just some guy laying a line on you."
"I'll buy you a Corvette if I have to!"

K. claims she cannot accept a Corvette.

And seriously, she's right. A Corvette? If we're talking sports cars and sugar daddies we should really go Benz.