I didn’t have Halloween plans yesterday — or, more precisely, I had plans yesterday, but not of the Halloween variety. I’d gone to Bean’s legendary Halloween fete the night before, kitted out as Zombie Jackie Kennedy, and while the costume more or less worked on a costume level, it didn’t work quite as well on a “Sarah is able to breathe” level. Evidently, women didn’t have very big boobs back in the sixties, because I had no room up top, and every time I tried to take a deep breath, it put me in mind of that part of A Wrinkle in Time where they end up on the two-dimensional planet and Meg’s heart is beating sideways instead of normally. And then Bean had gotten all these amazing cheeses, and candy corn, and teeny little Snickers bars, and with each snack I ate, I could hear the zipper’s high-pitched whimper of pain, and I kept having to ask Zombie John FitzCouchBaron Kennedy through a mouthful of herbed goat cheese and cracker whether I’d burst a seam yet. On Halloween itself, it seemed like a good idea to spend the day in a nice stretchy t-shirt that allowed me to have two separate, un-Tetrised breasts and eat as many licorice nibs as I wanted, so I put on said t-shirt and packed a bag of nibs and headed into Manhattan to see the Upright Citizens Brigade show with Wing and Glark.

Now, I’d already celebrated Halloween for the year; the rest of the city had other ideas, as I found out exactly one-eighth of a block into the trip. You know those safari parks where you pile the whole family into the car and drive around on a marked road and look at the wildlife from the safety of the station wagon, except all the wildlife is either sleeping or hiding (“Look, a giraffe!” “That’s a tree, Mr. S.” “Look, a hippo!” “That’s a log, Mr. S.” “That’s not a log, Ma.” “It’s a log, Sar.” “It’s not a log. It’s a tire.” “It’s a hippo!” “It’s not a hippo.” “I think it’s actually a boot.” “It’s a tire, Dad.” “It’s a boot.” “Who wears a boot that big?” “A hippo!” “It’s not a hippo, honey.” “It’s a boot, I’m telling you. See, with the rivets on the –” “Let it go, Dad.” “Those are its eyes, Dad!” “I think those are just bubbles, Mr. S.”)? But then you finally see a herd of…something, and the whole family is really excited because it is not a herd of trees or boots or logs or air bubbles but an actual herd of actual…elk? Springboks? You have no idea, but who cares, it’s a herd and it’s crossing the road in front of you at a dead gallop. And then it’s turning around and crossing back the other way at a dead gallop. And then it’s turning around and crossing back. And then it’s doing it again. And again. And…again. And then at last they…wait, no, there they go again.

“Just floor it, Dad.”
“They’re an endangered species, Sar.”
“Well, maybe if they’d get out of the road and stop annoying people enough to want to kill them, they wouldn’t be endangered in the first place.”
“Look, I would pay that lion over there good money to come down here and put an end to this, but the signs clearly say that we’re not supposed to –”
“That’s a tarp.”
“No, the lion. Over there.”
“No, I know. It’s a tarp.”
“No, over there.”
“That’s a…bale of hay. See? How that chimp is just sitting on top of it?”
“That’s a chimp?”
“That’s not a chimp. That’s that ugly kid we saw in the gift shop.”
“It’s a chimp! It’s scratching itself and –”
“Wearing an Epcot t-shirt. It’s not a chimp. What is that kid doing out of the car, anyway?”
“He probably had to pee really really really really really really really really –”
“Okay, Mr. S, we get it, just…cross your legs. Oh, here we go again. What is this, the thirty-ninth time?”
“Fortieth.”
“Dad, can we open the sun roof?”
“No.”

Yeah…that? Welcome driving through South Brooklyn at around sunset on Halloween, except instead of understimulated caribou crossing and re-crossing the road willy-nilly, it’s hordes of tiny Spidermen, pirates, cheerleaders, ladybugs, and one little pumpkin who just could not see through the eye holes in its costume, at all. I pull up to a stop light and the pumpkin is blithely crossing the street completely blind and its dad is like, “Slow down, slow down, wait for –” [Bonk!] The pumpkin walks straight into a light pole and wrecks itself and the dad is all, “Yeah, my point,” and I had to wait for the light to change before I could really start giggling because I didn’t want the pumpkin to feel bad. Well, worse. And the light takes forever to change, and before I can escape, the dad gets the pumpkin back on its feet and dusts it off, and he’s gathering up some spilled candy and the pumpkin is sort of bumbling around untethered on the sidewalk, and here comes a Zorro in the other direction…you can see where this is going, probably. …Zorro? Cape? Yeah. Pumpkin steps on cape, clotheslines Zorro, Zorro hits the deck, pumpkin trips over Zorro and face-plants for the second time in as many minutes. The light turns green. I pull away, tears of mirth leaking out of my eyes, leaving the pumpkin and Zorro to roll around drunkenly on the curb.

The hilarity continues in Chelsea an hour or so later, where Wing and Glark and I have settled in to watch the parade of humanity in a Starbucks, just as we always seem to wind up doing. The first float in said parade comes bombing out of the bathroom in the form of a twitchy woman with a mis-buttoned jacket, hair in a messy bun, face flushed in a wine-drinking kind of way, and she’s obsessing over how…her copy of the Times got…stolen? It’s sort of hard to figure out, actually, as is exactly what she’s on, although she’s clearly on something. Eventually she storms out to buy another copy of the paper, then storms back in because she left her bag at a table, and everyone in the place is fascinated by the menu all of a sudden, because even accidental eye contact with Speedy Gonzalez is probably going to lead to a monologue on the lack of respect for personal property.

The next float is a young lady in a profoundly ill-advised bunny get-up. It isn’t a complete disaster — the ears look fine — but this is where the whole “using Halloween as an excuse to dress slutty” thing can go awry, because she’s wearing a very tight white button-down shirt, which is transparent in a cheaply-made way and also is gapping across the belly; a white mini, which is too short for her to pull off with her build; white thigh-highs, the tops of which are visible; and four-inch black suede ankle-strap pumps. I mean, if you pick your costume based on how sexy you can make it, hey, follow your star — I think it betrays a lack of imagination, and the high concentration of French maids in a one-block section of 23rd Street last night would tend to support that theory — but the thing is, it’s really only “sexy” if it looks good. Showing a mile of leg is not in and of itself hot. Wearing the correct size shirt? Very hot. Knowing how to walk in those pumps? Also very hot.

The bunny and her just-as-skimpily-attired “punk witch” (whatever) friend leave; enter a family with kids, one of whom, Scott, is wearing a pirate outfit and feeling a bit queasy. His dad winds up sprinting to the bathroom with Scott in his arms so that Scott can barf, and the three of us uncharitably rename Scott “Ralph.” Scott emerges little the worse for wear a few minutes later and immediately resumes eating candy, at which time the three of us admiringly re-rename Scott “Iron Man.”

Then we head over to the UCB theater, where we find two lines, one for ticket-holders and one for people hoping to get into the free 9:30 show. At the head of the second line are three friends, a Peter Jackson look-alike, a guy who looks like someone tied a black cocker spaniel in a knot and glued it to his head, and a hippie type. They’ve got a couple of milk crates set up in a makeshift table, brown paper bags for placemats, and…individually wrapped slices of cheese. Oh, excuse me: “pasteurized processed cheese food.” Oh, excuse me again: “off-brand pasteurized processed cheese food.” The half-eaten sandwich in front of Peter Jackson indicates the presence of bread as well — probably “Pepperidge Form” — but we spend a good twenty minutes after the show trying to figure out the thought process there. First of all, why not spring for actual cheese? You “didn’t want to bring a knife”? But you brought crates. And…okay, forget it. But…why not just make the sandwiches at home before your improv-comedy campout? Because then you could use real cheese, and put mustard and tomato on them and everything? “It’s Peter Jackson’s turn to bring the cheese”? I…don’t understand. No, I understand that you brought the cheese the last time, but my point is that if each of you alternate making entire sandwiches…but it is “fair” that way, actually, because…alternating? …No? So…no girlfriends for you guys, then?

Man. Halloween in New York is so rad. Not as rad as the remaindered candy I’m off to go buy now that it’s November 1st, but rad nonetheless.

November 1, 2004

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