SMILE! It's Halloween '08

Not too shabby for 25 bucks

After very little convincing from Jessica and a visiting Sarah, Chrissty and I decided it would be much more fun to actually dress up and go out Halloween night instead of waiting until Saturday. Originally, over a month ago, we had planned on going as Mario and Princess, but who has the money for a frilly dress, overalls, and a plunger?

I am notoriously bad about waiting until the last minute to come up with a costume. I find this funny considering Halloween is my second favorite holiday with Christmas being my first. If Halloween had catchy songs it would probably be a tie.

Friday afternoon I had a revelation about the cheapness of face paint, so I decided to dress up as The Joker. I loved The Dark Knight and figured I could come up with something pretty creepy in the few hours I had after work before we would head out. I raced to the Halloween store in the mall and bought a bunch of stuff: a pack of face paint and other assorted items for only $7 on sale, an additional pack of white paint for $2, green hair spray for $4, a latex gash for the sides of my mouth for around $6, and glue for about $5.
I wanted scars but I guess they were out. I was concerned that the gashes would be way too large, but after I cut the gash in half and sized the pieces down a bit with scissors, it worked out pretty well. I already had the shirt and tie and green 70's polyester suit jacket from a past St. Patty's Day. After Chrissty got off work, she put together an 80's outfit and we were off for a thrillerific time at O'Corleys. We ran into Jessica and Sarah in the parking lot. Jessica was dressed as Lady Luck and Sarah was dressed as Lady Liberty.

The Joker wasn't very original, so I was happy when I saw only two others at O'Corley's, where we spent the majority of the night, and none at Jak's Library, when we eventually ended up there. This was the first Halloween that I have received compliments on my costume (along with freaked out looks), so I thought I had a decent chance of placing in the costume contest. I didn't, but the night was still great fun. In fact, it was one of the better bar nights I have had in a long time. We ran into a few friends and made some new ones. It reminded me of old times at the bar before friends graduated and moved away and were replaced by young strangers.

O'Corley's costume contest was pretty weak though. I'm not bitter that I didn't win because there were so many terrific costumes. They just did it in kind of a passing way where they pretty much just threw gift cards at people. I still cannot tell you who won in the "Best Costume" category. Jak's Library approached theirs better allowing the audience to pick the winner, although the winners are usually just the people with the biggest posse. On a completely random note, I don't know the name of the band that was playing at Jak's but Renyi was excellent on the sax.

Good times with good friends. Until next Halloween. I'm thinking I'll be Alex from A Clockwork Orange.