The Halloween Party

Okay, in my Star Trek fan club, the Halloween Party is the big deal of the year. Even more so than say, the New Year's Eve Party. Some people plan all year for this party. I'm sure that there are people who are already thinking about what they are going to wear next year or what kind of food to make for the weird food contest.

Halloween is pretty much my favorite holiday. Maybe not quite so much as it used to be, because I now have other places to wear costumes and such. But I still really like it and look forward to the party and other stuff that has to do with the holiday.

This year Halloween has almost come and gone without my noticing it. Well, maybe not quite that bad. I did go to a haunted house in Kansas City and spent an hour or so at this thing that the school had, and now I've gone to the club party. But I didn't enjoy the haunted house that much because of the accident, and I didn't put as much effort into getting ready for the party like I had planned. And, with our being out of town half the month, I didn't even bother to put up Halloween decorations.

Or, at least, I didn't bother to put out any more Halloween stuff. I have some Halloween stuff that pretty much stays out all year. But most of it is currently in boxes, and this year most of it stayed in boxes.

Anyway, back to the party.

I took the Soylent Green stuff for the weird food contest. I didn't even get an honorable mention this time, probably since it was obvious I didn't do any cooking or any other sort of food preparation. Soylent Green is supposed to be square, and maybe an inch and a half or two inches across. I found some of that candy that you melt into molds, and it was almost the right color green, and it comes in a sort of disk shape and is about an inch across. I could have melted it and then cut it into squares, but I was lazy. I figured that little Soylent Green disks were close enough. And I put up signs reminding people that Saturday was now Soylent Green Day instead of Tuesday. Anyway, I had fun with it, but did not win anything.

The winner of the weird food contest was the Seven Levels of Hell Dip.

Okay, in years past there has been the big debate on whether or not to continue hiring DJs for the party since a.) that is a lot of money to spend on just the one thing for the one night, and b.) the DJs rarely do exactly what we want anyway. One of us usually ends up doing the announcements and such, so mainly we don't need the DJs so much as we need the DJ's equipment. If we didn't hire the DJ one year, we'd save enough money to buy our own equipment for the next year. So last year, we did not have a DJ, but instead borrowed this and that from club members and friends of club members. And I thought that all went well, though my friend K complained that since the music wasn't loud enough and people weren't dancing. This year, we bought some of our equipment.

Somehow, the music did not go as planned. Not so much because of the equipment, but because of problems with Napster and Sony CDs. We had been working on the music list for months. People requested songs, and people in the club that owned CDs let us borrow and copy the songs, and the songs that weren't on CDs that one of us owned were downloaded from Napster. Only when they were setting up for the party, the stuff copied from Song CDs wouldn't play, and the the Napster stuff had a message that we couldn't play the songs without first paying a license fee. We did pay a license fee. Being good law-abiding citizens was the point of getting the songs from Napster instead of downloading them from a free site.

Anyway, by the time I got there they were playing music, but a lot of it wasn't music that people had requested to hear. So again my friend K complained that no one was dancing. Me, I just don't dance anyway. I think the problem with people not dancing is mostly in K's head. I think people don't dance because they don't want to get too tired before the costume contest or their feet hurt because of the high heeled shoes they bought to wear with their costumes.

If the goal for the party is to get most of the people to dance most of the time, then the should just make a loop with Thriller, stuff from Rocky Horror, Monster Mash, the Macarena, and Star Trekking Across the Universe. Everyone dances then. Everyone except me anyway.

The children's costume contest was won by a girl dressed as a Harry Potter character, Miss Luna Lovegood.

Did I mention there was a couple of special theme prizes for the adult costume contest? I stayed out of the discussion, but the rest of the group thought that Fairy Tales and Fairy Tales gone wrong would be cool. Not that you couldn't wear something else, but you were encouraged to think of something along those lines.

I thought of something right away, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to wear it. But earlier I had threatened to show up in my underwear, or at least, my evil twin's underwear, so I started looking for something that might work. I found a red bustier and red underwear and a skirt that just barely covered my butt. I cut off the pink roses that were on the bustier and added black lace. Instead of wearing red gloves I made something that just covered my arms from between the shoulder and elbow down to the wrist, that way I wouldn't worry that I might lose a glove when I took them off to eat. And I made some boot covers that went higher than my knees. I hate my knees. I already had a black cape, and I thought that was close enough and they would get the idea, but at the last minute I decided to go ahead and buy a red one. And I bought a riding crop on eBay.

At first I was going to make a wolf-fur riding hood, but after I bought the fake fur I couldn't bring myself to cut it.
At the party there were about ten of us who went with the theme. A couple of people in fairy wings, a woman in an off-the-rack Snow White costume, a guy who altered his Van Helsing costume to be the Fairy Godfather, and a Wolf.

And five girls in red riding hoods.

Before I arrived someone calling herself Miss Riding Wolf was showing pictures of Mister Wolf and their five puppies. Then there was me. Then my friend K showed up as Miss Riding to the Hood. Another girl came as Miss Rotting Hood, who had come back from the dead to get revenge on the wolf.

Then M and J showed up, and if M and J show up in time to actually be in the costume contest, game over. M was the Wolf, and J was Miss Blood Red Riding Hood. Like Miss Rotting Hood, J was also wearing a bit of zombie makeup, but J was also wearing high heels and a corset and striped nylons and other things one might buy at the Sluts R Us store.

I had thought that maybe one other person would be Red Riding Hood, but five of us? And all of us were after the Best Fairy Tales Gone Wrong award, not just the Best Fairy Tale award. I hadn't really come up with a special name for my character. I ended up with Miss Red Boots and Riding Crop.

Miss Riding Wolf was one of the judges, so she did not receive an award. M and J won for Most Scary. I won for Most Imaginative. Miss Rotting Hood won the Best Fairy Tale Gone Wrong. Miss Riding To The Hood didn't win anything.

Best in Show went to Uncle Festus and his wife. I'm afraid I don't remember most of the other awards.

Since we were all trying to get the Fairy Tale Gone Wrong award, the Best Fairy Tale went to the lady in the off-the-rack Snow White costume. Whatever.

Rende was in charge of the party this year, and she was too tired to come up with any Rende awards. Usually, she has some help with that, but the other person was out of town. So no "My, this chair is cold" award for me.

After the costume contest, one of our younger friends asked where the after party was. After party? What after party? Most of us were too tired to totally enjoy this party.

People were dancing. I don't dance. The Wolf and the five Red Riding Hoods posed for a picture. We posed for more pictures.

About an hour before the party was over, I started getting a lot of attention, mostly from a couple of guys not in our club. I had just mentioned to my friend S that I nearly didn't wear the costume, since I seemed to have put on some weight since I got the idea to do this, and the costume just didn't look as good as when I bought the bustier. And then everyone is telling me how great I look, mostly a friend of Miss Rotting Hood's father and M the Vampire.

Funny, but I don't even remember seeing M the Vampire before, and then he just rushes over to talk to me and stays at our table the rest of the evening. I'm not sure that we had met before. He came with M the Klingon, and is not planning to join our club. As much as we would like to be in everyone's club, most of us just don't have the time.

Then there was a discussion of how I should have put elastic on the boots and the arm pieces. They kept slipping and I kept pulling them back up. At the end of the evening I was having to do that about every five minutes. I could have invented some new dance, like the Macarena or something. Then I'm showing some people how I made the boots and saying how I hated my knees. So I took of the boots and showed the flawed knees, and was told I was seeing some minor thing that no one else noticed.

More guys came over to add their own comments.

It is the last dance, and M the Vampire has noticed that I'm not wearing a ring. That is a long story, and I say that I don't really want to get into it. It's not really a secret, but I think that most people have forgotten about it, and I'd just rather not deal with it during the party. I pack up some leftover food, put on some more comfortable shoes, pack the boots and the wolf fur, and grab a centerpiece. I've got a lot of stuff to carry. M the Vampire helps me get everything to my car.

Not that I didn't appreciate all the attention at the time, or at least most of it, but it did make me a bit nervous. Now I'm feeling a bit weird about it. Probably M the Vampire isn't a vampire most of the year. Does he think I normally walk around hitting people with a riding crop?

Well, except for the after holiday sales, Halloween is mostly over for me this year. I have school Wednesday night, so unless I go to the Boneyard or another haunted house Tuesday, that's about it. And I probably don't want to go to a haunted house by myself.