Sarah: Mflt.

Couch Baron: Oh, uh…hello?

Sarah: Hpll nn jfft mr spcffft.

Couch Baron: I…think I might have the wrong number.

Sarah: NNMRRRFFFF!

Couch Baron: …Sarah?

Sarah: Mmm hmm.

Couch Baron: Uh…are you…okay?

Sarah: Mmm…hmm!

Couch Baron: Okay, so…the hell?

Sarah: Frrrk, sfff hrrk kfffrrpp n mrr mrff.

Couch Baron: Oh, Jesus. What, now?

Sarah: Sfff hrrk kfffrrpp n mrr mrff!

Couch Baron: Mandy Moore — something about Mandy Moore?

Sarah: Nnnrf. Sfff hrrk kfffrrpp? N mrr mrff!

Couch Baron: Mandy Moore is stuck to your mom?

Sarah: Nnnrf nnnrf nnnrf! Sfff. Hrrk kfffrrpp — n mrr MRFF!

Couch Baron: Mandy Moore is stuck to…the tooth? Of your mom?

Sarah: Frrbfffl.

Couch Baron: Mandy Moore is stuck to the — oh! You have candy stuck to the roof of your mouth!

Sarah: HRRFF!

Couch Baron: Ohhhh. Dude. That’s — not good.

Sarah: Rrr nnnn!

Couch Baron: So you can’t open your mouth at all, then.

Sarah: Nnnrf.

Couch Baron: But you can breathe and everything?

Sarah: Mmm hmm. Brrf rr kffrt drnnngttr fptt, rrn —

Couch Baron: Okay, okay, hold on, let me think. Okay. Go get a Diet Coke.

Sarah: Rrrkp.

Couch Baron: Now take a nice big gulp.

Sarah: Fkkrrp rrfffp, rwwcch rrfff!

Couch Baron: I don’t know, just — let it trickle around the side or something.

Sarah: Rrrkp…ffffllpp!

Couch Baron: Now just —

Sarah: Mmmrfffp?

Couch Baron: No, just let it bubble until it loosens the candy.

Sarah: [Sssssssskkpplllfffp.]

Couch Baron: How’s it going?

Sarah: [Sssssssssssssssss-POP!] AAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Couch Baron: Oh my God.

Sarah: Well, that sucked.

Couch Baron: Yeah, no kidding. I’m paying for this call.

Sarah: I know, I know, I’m sorry, but I knew you were going to be calling any minute and I was right in the middle of a chewy Creme Saver, so I tried to suck on it faster, and then it created a vacuum seal with my palate and —

Couch Baron: Okay, ew.

Sarah: What? Oh yeah. Heh. They’re really good, though.

Couch Baron: Thus the faster sucking.

Sarah: Hee. Ew. Anyway, thanks for freeing me.

Couch Baron: No problem. Okay, so — our costume.

Sarah: I’ve got nothing, dude.

Couch Baron: Me neither.

Sarah: I keep trying to come up with ideas, but it’s either one we’ve already done, or it’s one we can’t do because it would require, like, welding or something.

Couch Baron: Same with me. I was all proud myself when I thought of Lois and Clark, and then I was like, “Shit, 1995.”

Sarah: Or I’ll think of a brilliant one, but it’s completely inappropriate.

Couch Baron: Oh, because Siegfried and Roy was so proper and genteel.

Sarah: True.

Couch Baron: I can’t believe we went out of the house like that.

Sarah: At least your bulge was real.

Couch Baron: My point.

Sarah: I guess we should just do Mulder and Scully.

Couch Baron: It is a pretty easy costume. We’d just wear suits.

Sarah: And my hair is pretty much the same style as Gillian Anderson’s the last few seasons; I can just do a red rinse the night before. And maybe we could make up fake badges or something.

Couch Baron: Right. Yeah, it’s a workable costume.

Sarah: But that’s the thing — it’s workable, but it’s not inspired. I mean, the show is cancelled, and I barely watched it anyway.

Couch Baron: I watched it, but still. It’s cancelled. And what’s our shtick with it, exactly? “It’s aliens!” “No it isn’t.” “It’s aliens!” “No it isn’t.”

Sarah: Right, I know. But people would know who we were — we wouldn’t have to spend the whole night explaining it.

Couch Baron: Yeah, you can’t go too high-concept with this crowd.

Sarah: We could also dress as each other, I guess, but that would require wigs.

Couch Baron: Plus we dress the same anyway.

Sarah: Uch. Someone should start a website for lazy-asses like us who want cool Halloween costumes that don’t involve any effort.

Couch Baron: Seriously. www.itwaslyingaroundthehouse.com.

Sarah: Right on. Or a site that you scan your picture into, and it comes up with a celebrity that you look like, and then you just slap on a nametag with the celebrity’s name on it and go.

Couch Baron: Well, maybe that’s an idea. Who do you look like?

Sarah: Well, everyone says I look like my mom, but I don’t see —

Couch Baron: Your mom is not a celebrity.

Sarah: Oh, what celebrity do I look like. Well, you tell me. Mare Winningham?

Couch Baron: Whaaaaat? Who told you that?

Sarah: My non-celebrity mom.

Couch Baron: Either your non-celebrity mom needs some non-celebrity glasses, or she hates you, because…no.

Sarah: Oh, it was like fifteen years ago, and we kind of had the same hair…I don’t know.

Couch Baron: You kind of look like Linda Fiorentino.

Sarah: You know, I’ve heard that, but I don’t really think I look like her — I just kind of act like her character in The Last Seduction. Except with bigger boobs and less murderous.

Couch Baron: And that’s really not a costume that would work.

Sarah: Well, no.

Couch Baron: Plus, Peter Berg’s teeth…eesh.

Sarah: Right. And how exactly do you put “having sex in the back of a Jeep Cherokee” in costume format?

Couch Baron: You don’t, is how.

Sarah: I agree. Well, how about the Men In Black angle? Then we could still wear the suits. We’d just need sunglasses.

Couch Baron: Wait — I’m black now?

Sarah: No, you’d be the Tommy Lee — oh shit, he wasn’t her partner at the end of the first movie, was he?

Couch Baron: No, he got neuralized or whatever.

Sarah: Yeah, plus we’d need a talking pug. Okay, scratch the Men In Black.

Couch Baron: Hmm…hey, wait, didn’t you say once that someone thought you looked like Angie Harmon?

Sarah: Yeah, but I don’t really.

Couch Baron: You kind of do.

Sarah: Yeah — in that we both have noses.

Couch Baron: No, I can see it. Plus, the voice.

Sarah: Okay, the voice, but she’s all…pointy. And how would you dress as Jason Sehorn, anyway? “I’d like to thank my personal savior Jesus Christ for this here football”?

Couch Baron: He’s one of those?

Sarah: I think so. Yuck, you don’t want to wear a football jersey, do you?

Couch Baron: Well, no, but I was thinking I could be Sam Waterston instead.

Sarah: Ooh, that’s not a bad idea! We still get to wear the suits, and you’d just get that grey stuff for your hair! Brilliant!

Couch Baron: And to get into character, all I have to do is act drunk!

Sarah: And you can skip the acting!

Couch Baron: Right!

Sarah: Except that Angie Harmon left the show like two years ago, and now it’s that blonde girl.

Couch Baron: You could just get a blonde wig.

Sarah: And simper a lot.

Couch Baron: You know, I think maybe that one’s too high-concept too. Like, people would get it once we explained it…

Sarah: But we would have to explain it. No, you’re right. Crap. That’s too bad. I’d love to go around saying “hang ’em all.”

Couch Baron: No one’s stopping you.

Sarah: Okay, seriously. We have to focus. The party is in a week, and we don’t have a costume.

Couch Baron: Well, we have a back-up costume. Let’s just say that Mulder and Scully is the back-up costume and if we think of something better, we’ll go as that instead.

Sarah: Okay. So let’s think of something better.

Couch Baron: Okay.

Sarah: Okay. Something better.

Couch Baron: Something…better.

Sarah: We suck.

Couch Baron: For real. What is our problem? Every other year, we’ve come up with something in plenty of time.

Sarah: I know! Well, except for the tinfoil crowns. That was weak.

Couch Baron: Yeah. And the time you were a Spice Girl.

Sarah: Hey, I made a good Ginger!

Couch Baron: Oh, I know — I just meant that I wasn’t involved in that one.

Sarah: Okay, enough messing around. Let’s just say whatever comes to mind, even if it’s stupid, and maybe it’ll lead to a costume breakthrough.

Couch Baron: Okay.

Sarah: Okay, you go first.

Couch Baron: Gorbachev.

Sarah: Gorbachev?

Couch Baron: Even if it’s stupid, you said.

Sarah: I know, but — where did that even come from?

Couch Baron: I really don’t know.

Sarah: GOR-bachev?

Couch Baron: Okay, so it’s stupid! Fine! Your turn.

Sarah: Brezhnev.

Couch Baron: Look, brainstorming was your idea, so —

Sarah: Okay, okay, no more Russian premier humor. Um…Priscilla Presley.

Couch Baron: You got from Gorbachev to —

Sarah: It was just floating around in my head, I don’t know.

Couch Baron: Priscilla Presley is floating around in your head?

Sarah: Yeah — Gorbachev?

Couch Baron: Okay, fine. Angelina Jolie.

Sarah: Ew. No. Okay. Liberace.

Couch Baron: Libe– no. And what would you go as? A candelabra?

Sarah: I didn’t say I’d thought it through, I just threw the name out there. I mean, what am I supposed to go as with the Gorbachev thing? Mrs. Gorbachev? Reagan? A crumbling wall?

Couch Baron: I think we have now established that Gorbachev is a bad idea. Okay? But you said that it didn’t matter if it was —

Sarah: There’s stupid, and then there’s —

Couch Baron: Priscilla Presley.

Sarah: If I was unnecessarily judgmental about the Gorbachev idea, I apologize, but you have to admit that —

Couch Baron: PRISCILLA PRESLEY.

Sarah: I’m sorry, okay?

Couch Baron: Is it my turn? Okay, Lisa Marie Presley.

Sarah: Now, see, because then you could go as —

Couch Baron: Forget it. He’s an ape. Also, Windtalkers.

Sarah: But what about in Raising Arizona? Just get a mustache and a Hawaiian shirt, and I’ll wear a police officer’s…oh. Okay, no.

Couch Baron: Your turn.

Sarah: Bob Geldof.

Couch Baron: He died.

Sarah: He did?

Couch Baron: No, but he has silly hair and I don’t want to be Bob Geldof.

Sarah: Duran Duran?

Couch Baron: It’s my turn. And there’s more than two people in Duran Duran.

Sarah: Not anymore. Seriously, it’s like Andy Taylor and a drum machine now.

Couch Baron: But who goes as what?

Sarah: Who cares? Ruffly shirts, mousse, the el cheapo eye shadow, and we’re done.

Couch Baron: But what if people think we’re Flock Of Seagulls?

Sarah: We could just let them think that.

Couch Baron: No, I think we’d wind up explaining it the whole night.

Sarah: Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, your turn.

Couch Baron: Is there anyone from American Idol we could do?

Sarah: No, I don’t th– well, maybe. I guess I could be Kelly, but only if I don’t have to sing.

Couch Baron: And I could just get a curly clown wig and be Justin.

Sarah: Hee. Or Jim Verraros.

Couch Baron: Fuck you!

Sarah: Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that you could sing and then sign at the same time.

Couch Baron: And then I could…kill myself. No way, forget it.

Sarah: How about going as the hosts?

Couch Baron: Hmm. Killing myself again. No.

Sarah: Yeah. The judges?

Couch Baron: You want to dress up as Paula Abdul?

Sarah: Okay, scratch that. Er…Liza Minnelli and David Gest?

Couch Baron: EW!

Sarah: Okay, but you know what’s fucked up? I have the right dress for being Liza.

Couch Baron: EW!

Sarah: The only problem is that you’d have to get five face lifts by next Saturday.

Couch Baron: EW!

Sarah: And ruin your teeth.

Couch Baron: EW!

Sarah: And clamp your entire lower jaw onto my head repeatedly throughout the evening.

Couch Baron: EW!

Sarah: And kill yourself.

Couch Baron: EW!

Sarah: So, no Liza and David, then?

Couch Baron: EW!

Sarah: Duly noted. Your turn.

Couch Baron: Baywatch?

Sarah: Well, the thing is? No.

Couch Baron: I could get a wig, to look more like Hasselhoff.

Sarah: And I could get a bikini wax, to inspire me to kill myself. No.

Couch Baron: Ouch. I forgot about that aspect.

Sarah: Yeah. My turn again? Shit. Okay. President Bush.

Couch Baron: Absolutely not. Well, maybe if…okay, no.

Sarah: Fair enough.

Couch Baron: Jared.

Sarah: The Subway guy? How is that a pairs costume?

Couch Baron: We could do before and after.

Sarah: Okay, but he didn’t have a sex change.

Couch Baron: Well, no, but — hey, what about a before-and-after costume of Renee Richards?

Sarah: Oh my God. That is a horrible idea. We absolutely must do it.

Couch Baron: But not really.

Sarah: Except that yes, really. Okay, seriously — it requires a male-female pair, which we are. It requires tennis attire and paraphernalia, which we have or can get. It’s fairly tacky, which is our hallmark, and nobody else will think it’s all that good of a costume, which, ditto. And most importantly, it allows me to show off my legs.

Couch Baron: Oh, so you’re that girl now?

Sarah: What girl?

Couch Baron: You know what girl — that girl that always has to be a hooker or a belly dancer or something for Halloween so that she still looks feminine and pretty.

Sarah: Yes, Your Baronialness. I am that girl. That surely must explain why I put on six pounds of dark-brown pancake make-up, drew sideburns on my face, stuffed a mat of itchy fake chest hair down the front of my faux-silk shirt, and walked around with a sock down my leggings and a whip while speaking in a terrible German accent and throwing a stuffed tiger through a hoop — BECAUSE I WANTED BOYS TO LIKE ME!

Couch Baron: Okay, okay, I was just jo–

Sarah: So JUST because I want to show a little THIGH now and then does NOT make me THAT GIRL!

Couch Baron: Okay! God! Calm down!

Sarah: Okay! But don’t accuse me of that-girl-ness.

Couch Baron: Okay, already.

Sarah: Because you know it bugs me.

Couch Baron: Oh. KAY. Jesus.

Sarah: THANK you.

Couch Baron: Moooooving on, then. Okay, so I’m the before and you’re the after. What did she do before?

Sarah: Do? Well, she played tennis, and…was a man.

Couch Baron: But wasn’t she a dentist or something?

Sarah: Hold on, let me look it up…ophthalmologist.

Couch Baron: Oh. So I have to wear an ophthalmologist costume?

Sarah: I think we should stick to the tennis aspect. That’s what she’s most famous for, besides the surgery. I mean, unless you have a hankering to give all our friends glaucoma tests or something.

Couch Baron: Heh. “Now hold still while I blow into your eye.”

Sarah: Exactly. But if you really felt strongly about the authenticity thing, I suppose you could make an eye chart.

Couch Baron: Well, there’s making an eye chart, and then there’s watching TV instead.

Sarah: Sounds like a “no” to me.

Couch Baron: I mean, unless you feel strongly about it.

Sarah: Nah. I think the skimpy tennis outfit gets it done here.

Couch Baron: Or we could go as Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

Sarah: Ew.

Couch Baron: “Ew”?

Sarah: Okay, first of all, I’m shorter, so I’d have to be Bobby Riggs — which leads me to my second point, which is, have you seen Bobby Riggs? He’s this greasy little hairball who thinks he’s Neil Young.

Couch Baron: Actually, he’s dead.

Sarah: Fine. He’s a greasy, dead little hairball who thinks he’s Neil Young. With a hump.

Couch Baron: You think I want to dress up as Billie Jean? Where would I even find that hair?

Sarah: Thus the “ew.”

Couch Baron: You’re so right.

Sarah: But there’s always Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors.

Couch Baron: No, there isn’t.

Sarah: What? They made a cute couple!

Couch Baron: No no no. Imagine me. Imagine my hair.

Sarah: Yeah?

Couch Baron: Now imagine me with Connors’s stringy bowl cut.

Sarah: Hee. Hee hee.

Couch Baron: Yeah.

Sarah: HA HA HA HAAAAAA!

Couch Baron: It’s like “If They Mated” on Conan.

Sarah: Oh, man. No, no Connors and Evert.

Couch Baron: Yeah, let’s stick to Richard and Renee.

Sarah: Nobody’s going to get it.

Couch Baron: No, probably not.

Sarah: We’ll have to explain it the whole night.

Couch Baron: I imagine we will.

Sarah: I still think it’s better than Mulder and Scully.

Couch Baron: I think so too.

Sarah: God, remember when this used to be easy?

Couch Baron: When our moms used to make our costumes for us?

Sarah: Yeah! And you started thinking about what you wanted to go as for Halloween practically as soon as the school year started.

Couch Baron: Or in college, when you just didn’t care, and you went as something “clever” like “I’m myself, but five minutes ago,” and everyone was like, “Whoooooaaaa. Coooool.”

Sarah: Or that stupid performance art thing Ernie and Supersize and I did with the little pumpkin.

Couch Baron: I think I missed that one.

Sarah: You know, when we dressed all Dieter-style in black and watered down our hair and put on glasses, and we did this thing where it was like a poetry slam, but about a pumpkin?

Couch Baron: I think Nip told me about that. I think he said it sucked.

Sarah: Oh, it completely sucked. Okay, we passed a little pumpkin around, and each of us was supposed to deliver a freestyle commentary about the nature of pumpkinhood and its role in the male hegemony, except the so-called “funny part” was that I would do a little riff on pumpkin seeds and the circle of life, and then Ernie would do her bit about fertility and women’s spaces entirely in French, and then when it was Supersize’s turn, she would just stand there and not say anything at all because the pumpkin had silenced her voice or whatever, and then we would smash the pumpkin on the floor of the dining room to symbolize the end of our subjugation.

Couch Baron: I don’t get it.

Sarah: Well, there wasn’t really anything to get. It’s a parody of feminist performance art.

Couch Baron: I still don’t get it.

Sarah: Okay, we pretended that the pumpkin was an instrument of male oppression.

Couch Baron: No, I get that part.

Sarah: Then…what don’t you get?

Couch Baron: Why it’s funny.

Sarah: It isn’t. It’s stupid. We thought it up five minutes beforehand because we had nothing else to wear.

Couch Baron: Oh.

Sarah: See? Nobody else got it either. And then they heckled us.

Couch Baron: You got heckled at a Halloween party? Who would heck– oh. Nippon.

Sarah: Yep. Supersize was just standing there blinking at the pumpkin and doing her muted-woman thing, and Nippon said from the back of the room, “Way to forget your lines,” and Ernie screeched at him to have some respect for the process, and then I broke character and started laughing hysterically and it all just fell apart. Well, that and the pumpkin wouldn’t smash properly.

Couch Baron: I…don’t get it.

Sarah: What — why the pumpkin wouldn’t smash?

Couch Baron: Yeah. That, and why you started laughing.

Sarah: Well, you know how Ernie gets — she got genuinely pissed off at Nippon for not playing along with the joke, so she’s like, “Don’t invade Supersize’s silence, it’s voyeuristic and penile and you’re belittling her as an artist,” and Nippon’s like, “Um, IT’S JUST A PUMPKIN,” and Ernie’s like, “Typical dismissive sexist BULLSHIT,” so then they’re actually arguing, and Nip’s like, “Well, Sarah thinks it’s funny,” and then Ernie goes, “Well, then Sarah has been brainwashed by the patriarchy,” and I was like, “And that’ll just about do it for me, folks — Supersize, smash that thing and let’s get drunk already,” so she whaled it down on the floor, but it wasn’t ripe enough to smash, I guess, so instead of breaking, it, like, bounced and rolled away into the corner.

Couch Baron: And then Ernie stomped off all “I cannot WORK like this!”

Sarah: Oh, so you were there.

Couch Baron: No, I just know Ernie.

Sarah: Oh. Heh. So then Nippon’s like, “A hockey player can’t break a pumpkin?” and Supersize and I looked at each other, shrugged, and hid in the taproom for the rest of the night.

Couch Baron: Where Ernie yelled at Nippon some more.

Sarah: Are you sure you weren’t there?

Couch Baron: Heh.

Sarah: Anyway. So, do you think I can get away with wearing pantyhose under my tennis skirt?

Couch Baron: Yeah, I think so. Well, as long as you’re wearing them as a reclamation of the male gaze.

Sarah: Oh, Jesus.

Couch Baron: Just making sure you don’t feel silenced by your hosiery.

Sarah: Patriarchalist.

Couch Baron: Bitch.

Sarah: Hee.

Couch Baron: Okay, I’ll see you Friday. And take it easy with that candy. We can’t explain the costume if you can’t talk.

October 28, 2002

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