This is Halloween
Hmm, back-to-back weekends of excitement!
The weekend before, Rosemary and I went to Philly for her cousin's wedding, partying down while the Phillies lost the pennant to the Giants. Still, nothing could crash our good times.
And this past weekend was our first Halloween together in Connecticut. I wasn't quite sure how it would go down, especially since Rosemary's so used to our big-city doings such as the Henri David ball. But doing Halloween CT-style really worked out great.
We went as Cinderella and Prince Charming this year. It took a while to decide, but finances won out. I'd bought Rosemary the Cinderella dress last year in post-Halloween surplus. And when I saw the Prince Charming outfits, I thought, "That's just a jacket, sash and pants! I can make that shit!" So I did; took a white corduroy blazer and dressed it up in Christmas ribbons for the collar, cuffs and epaulets, then used the same ribbon for a sash.
Saturday night we went to Collinsville, this tiny former factory town that swaddles itself in its builder history and artistic weirdness. And this year we found out that the place is nuts for Halloween, having held a Halloween parade for the past 14 years. It was a great time. A mad scientist hosts the pre-parade festivities with jokes and dancers and a candy cannon. Igor drags the parade truck carrying a big pipe organ as Jack Skellington (yes, the pumpkin king himself) plays it, and the townspeople process behind it.
We met up with our friend Jenny and her boyfriend Phil, and met a bunch of their friends. We had awesome Mexican food at Husk for dinner, and ran into Liz and her kids as well. We even saw into some Philadelphia folks we met at the reservoir a couple of weeks back; they had their son in a homemade robot costume with light-up circuit boards and eyes. Among the awesome costumes: a full-body LEGO man; Travelocity Roamin' Gnome; dinosaur kid; babies in monkey and bear costumes; Kat Von D with accurate tattoos all over her face; several Supergirls; actually good Chilean miner costumes, including a guy in a tube.
We filled out the rest of the night with an afterparty at ridiculous dive bar Fireplace Cafe, listening to musicians, drinking beers and making new friends. We could have haded out to Snapper Magee's for some punk rock party, or Pole Control Studios to vamp with pole-dance fitness instructors, but small-town charm in Collinsville won out. Very glad it did.
Sunday was pretty great, too. We went trick-or-treating! OK, we went with our friend Liz to chaperone the kids through some developments in tony Avon. It looked like every Suburbia, USA, that you see in movies -- full of brick-front, four-bedroom places and cul-de-sacs. Still funny to me how in the city, there's all this emphasis on not making Halloween violent, yet in suburbia every house is decked out in gore, body parts and gravestones. One dude had his house bathed in red light as he stood there dressed as a dark lord of the shadow realm while White Zombie blared. Rosemary and I got quite a haul of candy ourselves, since we looked so good.
And we did look good. We got stopped all over Collinsville. Especially by other princesses. One little girl, dressed as a princess, went completely agape upon the sight of us, and just went in for hugs. While out trick-or-treating, we had our picture taken by one of the moms giving out candy. We went to dinner at Grants afterward, and had to wave at the diners and even got some applause.
Now I have to go vacuum all the glitter out of my car.