Halloween Improv

Pretty much everyone I know in the city celebrated Halloween over the weekend, whether or not they were going out tonight. The Halloweekend streets were a mix of the normal Saturday night crowd, and people dressed in all sorts of different costumes. Geeky. Elaborate. Girls in sexy costumes. The "I wanted to be cool so I dressed in a suit and said I was a dude from Mad Men" guys.

Well, you know what? My plan for my costume this year was awesome. I thought of it months ago, and like so many things, I ended up leaving the actual execution until the last minute. I was GOING to be the Paper Bag Princess, from the Robert Munsch book of the same title. One of the most awesome stories of my childhood. You may have noticed that I did not say I actually executed this gem of an idea. We'll get there.

Anyhow, Saturday afternoon, I went to the hardware store JUST as it was closing and bought a pack of those big paper bags that are for yard waste. They were about $2.50, and I smugly left, basking in my own cleverness and the joys of cheap costuming. The problem was that they had slogans for saving the planet emblazoned across them. I might be concerned for the environment, but the Paper Bag princess was no damn hippie. The bag was going to have to be inverted for the sake of realism and truth to the source material. I'm an artist, damnit.

After Bek and I both had hilarious turns of trying to flip that sucker inside out, I went to google to try and help me solve all of my problems... And then after that I tried with the paper bag again, because checking WebMD was scaring me more than Are You Afraid of the Dark reruns and nightmares of a world without bacon.

It turns out the only way to flip a paper bag inside out is by disassembling it, reversing it and putting humpty back together again. This would be awesome and easy... except for the fact that I only had weak ass painters tape, all the stores were closed and time was running OUT. 

I broke out my emergency sewing kit, made like an awful surgeon and cut that thing wide open, flipped it and got to work putting it back together. The result was a hilariously huge crinkled, stitched up paper bag with uneven holes for my head and arms. It looked more like an exoskeleton for a 6 year old's robot pal than the dress I had been envisioning. The plan officially failed when Telly crawled into the bag and made it his giant paper cat palace.

PLAN B.

Something I found out about Halloween this year: it's fun to dress up as something you WANT to dress up as, but when your plan backfires and you have to scramble for a solution, the black magic dies, fast. Dressing up as something just to avoid being THAT GUY WHO CAME WITHOUT A COSTUME, it's balls. I wandered listlessly from idea to idea, dragging my feet while Bek tried to cheerfully talk me into any of the ideas I had, while giving a few of her own. 

Somehow, I had enough Neon in my closet to bring back the 80s, as a fitness instructor. 

 

 Crack cocaine not included, surprisingly.

Bek also bailed on her plan of going as a fairy (because although wings were an easy fix, she said she felt juvenile #Halloweenproblems), and decided to go as the complete opposite of my neon nightmare. She dressed all in black and then did bad ass face painting that would make your typical face paint artiste curl up in a ball and bawl for their mother.

So there.

This story ends with us hanging out in a bar, filled with fog, drinking drinks and eating free cupcakes, while sitting in awe as a really tall guy did a skeleton dance in a bowler hat. They played Thriller no less than four times while we were there. FOUR TIMES.