Halloween '09: The Year We All Drank In Costume

You know that headline could almost work any year, but seeing as this Halloween fell on a cherished Saturday night, it seems to me like there were even more people in my immediate circle of friends dressing up and drinking at ramshackle house parties. To celebrate, I thought I'd share the highlights (lowlights?) from my own 10-person soirée as well as what a few of the other dudes were doing over the past weekend. Huzzah!




So my girl Jami and I followed up last year's experiment in couple's comic bookery by dressing up as the meanest couple on trashy TV: Chuck Bass & Blair Waldorf from "Gossip Girl." Since we kept it at our place, I didn't quite get to pull off my planned move of answering everyone who asked what I was supposed to be with "I'm Chuck Bass" only to have them stare at me befuddled, but I got to do it a few times. Plus, I'm totally wearing that vest later this week for my business meetings in NYC.

Jami's pal Chris popped in as the Hulk (posing here with Jami's sis Carries as the Hamburglar). Every year, Chris' Halloween goal involves dressing up as whatever allows him to layer on the most body paint, so mission accomplished on that goal. Also of note was the fact that even though I'd have guessed he'd have to go to eBay, he picked up a pair of Hulk Hands new at "Toys R' Us." Hulk Hands, you guys...more popular than either of that characters movies combined. Some day, we're going to be old men, and there will be young 20-something Turks coming up in the comics industry who talk about Hulk Hands like we do about Superpowers figures and the X-Men arcade game. *shudder*




My guitar player Pauly and his girlfriend Megan came out even though they'd gotten blackout the night before as members of Team Zissou at a party with our bud Nice Peter, so it's all aces for them. Pauly was a cow, and it disturbed everyone to no end that at any given time in the night his hand would absent-mindedly reach down and start jerking as his rubber utters. Later on, we made semi-use of Megan's Beer Pong costume by setting the board up on the ironing board and whipping golf balls at the empty Velcroed cups. I won. Also: grog's little bro Jimi showed up without a costume, so I made him wear a hat and be Hobo Indiana Jones.


Our food spread was defended by Bruce Lee and featured Laffy Taffy (Best joke of the night? Q: Why did the skeletons cross the road? A: They didn't. The dogs ate them.) and Geoff Johns' beloved Monster Cereals. When we took our final pic of the night, Carrie's boyfriend Steve looked at the "Astroy Boy" figures in her Happy Meal purse, asking me whether I thought that movie was just a blatant ripoff of Mega Man or what. I wasn't sure how to answer that.



Meanwhile, several states away, Rickey and TJ dressed as Golden Age superheroes, doubtlessly confusing everyone they were with. I'll let Rickey explain:

"My girlfriend and I were stunningly invited to a superhero costume party by NON-comics industry friends along with TJ and his wife, so I got to wear my first ever superhero costume! Although I DID have a Beast Man outfit from Masters of the Universe when I was 6. My girlfriend made my whole outfit complete with a winged helmet (which held vanilla pudding just 24 hours prior!), red booties and a lightening bolt-emblazoned shirt. I took the helmet off for everything but pictures and TJ lost the cape so we could dominate at beer pong (cause we're a natural, god damned team) before he unleashed the full fury of a fog machine inside the tiny room we partied in. He's a hellion. Also: our ladies are BOSS."



As you can see, Rickey's gal Sam was a convincingly radical Zatanna while TJ's wife Emily went as Black Canary. When I first saw Em's picture on Facebook, the whig had me totally missing that it was her. I guess that shit does work for secret identities after all.


Later, the crew's entire photoset devolved into shots like this one because, as Rickey told me, "TJ just turned the fucking fog machine on full-blast cause he was drunk. And it was funny. We were in that tiy room fiulled with fog for WAAAAY longer than is probably healthy for people. And the guy I was playing beer ping against at that point was getting super annoyed that he couldn't see the cups anymore and went so far as to accuse TJ that we were cheating, hahahaha! I even stopped playing full-on and just started throwing my ping pong ball as hard as possible at their end of the table. Then I stole a handful of Tootsie Rolls and dipped out."



Lastly, I spotted these sweet pics of Sean's Missus dressed up for her school day of teaching middle schoolers to sing as Victoria from "Twilight." Honestly, knowing Sean, I just figured Amy was trying to get super Irish, but the red eyes should have been a giveaway. In a hilarious and unsolvable misunderstanding, Rickey and I both thought she was also wearing makeup to make her look more pale, but apparently that's just how she photographs under the sickly fluorescent lights of America's public school system. Seriously, it's like the secret plan of the government is to take the segment of the population that think about how much they hate their looks more than anything in life and lit their skin to highlight acne. I hope all kids everywhere wore bad ass masks to school on Friday and then went off on a three-day candy binge instead of doing math.



UPDATE!: I knew as soon as I posted this, my brother would get around to posting pics of my too adorable for words nephew and niece, starring as a pirate and Foofa from Yo Gabba Gabba! Bask in the cuteness glow of superior genes.