It began as it always does…a vision. Specifically, a vision of what costume I was going to wear for this particular event (moogfest) of this particular month. You see, most people go to places like Party City (Farty Shitty) once, maybe twice a year. Somehow our group manages to find some celebratory evening/weekend/entire week about once a month that makes it completely necessary to pillage for things like fairy wings, bunny costumes, wigs, adult diapers, vampire fangs, clown makeup and the like.
In the last couple of years i have been a fairy 3 or 4 times, a bunny twice, Space Ghost, a skeleton, a skeleton fairy, Lil from Rugrats, a “glitter princess” (?) and something with a giant diamond on my head.
Usually though (and I tend to do this without even realizing it) I end up just dressing like the Plastics in Mean Girls, combining what’s essentially underwear with… some sort of hat.
ANYway, it was already the wednesday before moogfest, and I was pretty sure I wanted to be some sort of Catwoman-esque creature. But of course, having left it to the last minute spent about 4 hours the next day at ~Hallowen and More~ fighting a teenage asian girl for the last slutty catwoman costume in stock, waiting in a line about 3/4 of a mile long to check out and shopping at Hot Topic.
The last part was unrelated, I had just never been to Hot Topic before and was very impressed with their selection of kitschy promotional accessories. I also accidentally stole a necklace.
The next morning, after finally completing my contribution to our annual “fall mix cd exchange” (we’re a cutesy bunch of dorks, aren’t we?) and spending two hours trying to pack all of the clothes I might maybe ever need into the same disgusting duffle bag i’ve been using since high school, I ventured to Carrboro where the five of us (carlos, mary, bill, patrick and myself) departed with our ridiculous costumes and a handful of weed crumbles.
By this time, I had been pumping vitamins and lozenges and ibuprofen into my system for about three days. There is a rule engraved in a golden tablet somewhere that every time I want to do a single fun thing ever, I have to either start my period, get seriously injured, or be overcome with a highly contagious degenerative illness.
It is hard to really say what happened next after we got to Asheville. I remember getting to Sarah’s, being exhausted, going downtown to buy liquor and disposable cameras with Carlos in his Pinocchio costume, and that it was FUCKING FREEZING the entire time. Up until last weekend it had been in the upper 60s in the Triangle. We arrive in Asheville and immediately succumb to sub-arctic temperatures, losing what little control we had planned to have over our bodies and minds for the rest of the weekend. It was the beginning of the end.
A review of the actual shows, written by our beloved Patrick, will be posted on brightshinymusic.com later today. The details that I remember are more ambient. Like drinking vodka out of redbull cans for three days, freezing to death on the roof of the Asheville civic center dressed like an Anime prostitute, Bill painting his beard purple and not really looking much different than his usual self, that group of people dressed up as fast food mascots…I pretended to give fellatio to Mary in the crowd of a show. Joe got kicked out of the Orange Peel and hid his “belongings” in a bush, leaving a trail of mulch to find them later. Carlos dressed as a can of Four Loko and completely lost his mind. Linnea reinvented the concept of “bondage” by making her costume completely out of tape. Bill and Patrick contracted narcolepsy, I’m not really sure what happened to Kate, and I lost what was left of my last vocal cord, sounding like a not-so-sultry, sand-eating Marge Simpson by the end of the weekend.
Great vegan restaurants, though.
Monday morning, after everyone else had gone home and Mary and I managed to pull ourselves out of our luxurious, below-freezing concave air mattress, we hit the road back to Carrboro, where immediately upon arrival I drove to Austin and Jesi’s, slaloming through the troves of trick-or-treaters who REFUSED to walk on the sidewalk, and changed back into my catwoman costume. I had gotten a total of 12 hours of sleep since probably thursday. I’m not one to opt out of things, but the next two miserable days of restaurant hosting seemed to indicate that maybe, just maybe, i could have missed out on dancing to Beyonce at Brewer Lane, and dancing to Beyonce and…some other mid-sized random house party…to repair what little was left of my health and dignity. But I’m glad I didn’t.
After all, once Halloween has come, come, come, come again, and is then finally gone, it’s the pictures of your costume that really matter.
