First of all, New York City, thank you for all your beyond-the-call-of-duty weirdness and nudity last night. Halloween is always special here. I got a really late start last night, as I was up against a strict writing deadline on All Hallow's Eve. (Thanks for that, whatever the Halloween version of Scrooge is!) Still, at 11:15pm the uptown 1 train did not disappoint with its volume of nonchalant insanity. Special props should be awarded to:
- Puerto Rican Edward Scissorhands (Why are Hispanic teenage boys so moody? And why is their moodiness almost always expressed by dressing like The Crow?)
- Heavyset teenaged girl smashed into train car, asking her friends, "was that the same guy who tried to put his finger in my butthole?" as if someone trying to put his finger in your butthole is a curious matter, rather than a felonious or emotionally-scarring one. Girl Power!
- The three nearly naked young ladies--sized small, medium and xtra-large--waiting together on the subway platform at 27th Street. Good luck, ladies. I'll catch up with you later, when the last few hours of your lives are fictionalized on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Or, if you're really unlucky, amateurishly re-enacted on FOX-TV's "Amazingly Dead and Raped Teenagers.")
- The crazy not-American couple not wearing costumes at the costume party last night, and who may or may not have been Belgian (as some people insisted) but were more than likely Portugese or maybe even Brazilian. Remember when you came up to me and my girlfriend, grabbed us both, and screamed, "We love it we love it we love it--WHAT ARE YOU?" Man, you were NUTS. The best kind of nuts.
- The two ladies dressed as female American Gladiators, Ice and Zapp. You were both totally on your game. Nice one.
- Guy dressed as a vending machine, trying to hail a cab on lower Broadway. Thank you for providing the kind of quiet urban poignancy that people really love to blog about. Tip of the hat!
And, sorry to end on a sour note, but I'd like to call a moratorium on this costume:
Seriously, cut that out. Buying an afro wig, then wearing sunglasses and a fake (or worse, real) gold chain and telling everyone you're "a 70s porn star," just doesn't cut it anymore. You're not a 70s porn star. You're a weird fabrication and possibly the most unimaginative person in the room. That's just not a costume. It's more of a "douche teaser"--something to let you know the person wearing it is not the best. At all. 70s porn star costume, you are in the PENALTY BOX. Now take a seat next to that guy dressed in a pimp costume that came in a plastic bag and fits nicely over a Banana Republic dress shirt and chinos. YOU ARE RUINING HALLOWEEN.
