Saturday Frustrations and Fun

Yesterday was one of those lessons in patience that only New York City can teach you. Nothing went horribly wrong - yet nothing went smoothly either.

Jacob and I woke up and headed down to Soho to get our haircut (him) and colored (me). Yes, now we officially go to the same hairdressing place, which officially makes us geeky couple of the year. What can you do? Maybe you'll give me a few coolness points back if I tell you my new hairdresser is a tranny? She/he did a great job on my hair, too. And the place is nice - small, quiet and you don't feel like you're in a hair factory - something I hate at the larger salons - even the expensive ones like Fredric Fekkai. (Though I must admit I LOVED LOVED LOVED the end result the one time I went to FF. If I could afford them, I'd go everytime, despite the hustle and bustle of the place.)

But I digress. We got out of the hair salon and went to find food. The deli was out of bagels. The crepe girl was out of strawberries and then it started to rain and my beautifully blow dried hair was out of non-frizziness.

Ducking into an East Village Starbucks, we waited in line as a bathroom bouncer checked each stall after each person exited before ushering the next person in. Now a while back, Liz was wondering why everyone took so long in Starbucks bathrooms and I said that it was a great place for people to duck in and do drugs. They're on every corner, after all, and each bathroom is private. I'm not sure she entirely believed this could possibly be true, so I took my chance and asked the bathroom attendent why he was checking the stalls. Sure enough, they were looking for evidence of drug use. If they find it, they call 911. I felt extremely validated, though also a bit shocked when the guy told me he'd had 7-8 episodes of someone trashing the bathroom this week. It seemed impossible - yet I suppose it must be true; after all, they have to pay this guy to run the bathroom line. They must have felt it necessary.

After Starbucks, we headed to the train, which we found out was not going to Astoria since they were working on the tracks. So we walked up to Union Square and hit Forever 21 and H&M (which were both packed beyond belief - rainy Saturday = long dressing room lines). Still I ended up finding an outfit for the party that weekend, so this was good. Leanna met us at H&M and we took a cab back to Astoria. Long, expensive cab ride, I might add, since everyone who couldn't go by subway had the same idea.

We hung out in Astoria and watched a movie as Jacob fixed Leanna's laptop. Then we got dressed and headed out to Elizabeth "Bitsy" Mahon's birthday party. It was held in a very cool bar called The Dove Parlour in the West Village. We mixed, mingled, took a bunch of photos, then walked to the East Village to go to Pyramid Club to dance the night away to classic 80s tunes. Besides an unfortunate incident with a club tool spitting water at everyone on the dance floor, a fun time was had by all.

The night ended with a $30+ cab ride home since there were no trains and the bridge was closed to cars as well. The cabbie had to take the Williamsburg bridge and then completely went the wrong direction to Astoria. Much grr'ness for that.

In any case, here are some pics from the night! Thanks to Morgan for some of these. No thanks to slacker Liz who hasn't uploaded hers yet... :)

Me, Stacey and Liz (It's Stacey's birthday next!)


The Rebels girls


The birthday girl! Isn't her dress amazing?


The boys don't want to pose for pictures.


Though Jacob doesn't mind taking them...


Just chillin'.


Awh...


Liz, Stacey and Hope chatting.


Silly.


Sillier...


And even sillier!


"Wait! What?"


"It's time to go dancing!"

Halloween Report

It shouldn't be surprising that Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Finally a day when no one's allowed to critcize the donning of wigs, thigh highs, and other costumey apparel. The one day of the year where we're sure never to be called inappropriate by anyone.

Still, for those of us who cosplay on a regular basis, Halloween could be thought of as amateur night. Where those unindoctrinated into the world of costuming transform themselves into sexy "fill-in-the-blank"s which they pulled complete from a bag they purchased at Ricky's or other such Halloween adventure shop. Sexy senoritas, naughty nymphs, cherry red riding hood, captain booty, and, simply, jailbait. If it's sexy and comes in a bag, it's fair game for Halloween.

There's nothing wrong with this per say -- in fact the costumes are usually pretty cute. But it's also, in our opinion, kind of lazy. So we decided to create our own costumes. The theme for us and our friends this year?

Fairy Tales gone wrong.



Left to right: Little Dead Riding Hood, Little Miss Muffet (post spider attack), Geisha Goldilocks, and No-Longer-Sleeping-(Now Dead)-Beauty.

Here's how the night went down.

I arrived to work in the morning to find pirates and fairies milling about and quickly realized this was the one day of the year I could costume at work. So I changed into my zombie red riding hood outfit and put on my makeup. The purple eyeshadow from the Clarin's jazz collection does a mean bruising effect.



My co-worker Sarah (pictured above) later painted herself green and added wings to this ensemble.

Leanna arrived near the end of the day and changed into her Little Miss Muffett outfit in my office.



For a reason unbeknownst to me, she added vampire fangs to complete the look. Maybe the spider's venom turned her into a were-spider? You'd have to ask her... I do know it gave her a wicked lisp, which we kept laughing about all night.



After she'd changed, we headed over to Posner's Books in Grand Central to pick up Dead Beauty and Geisha Goldilocks - aka Stacy and Liz. (Who omg had amazing glitter makeup on.)



I gave Goldilocks/Liz a bear to steal porridge from, but she insisted it was actually a cat. The jury's still out on that one. But in hindsight I guess a Geisha Goldilocks might very well carry a cat around. I mean, cat cafe anyone?



We left Grand Central and managed to snag the only available cab in NYC and rode down to Morgan's where the party would take place later that night. There, we met up with Snow White, aka Hope Tarr.

We dropped off our stuff and headed down to the village parade where police and blocked roads thwarted our every move. You'd think they didn't want us to watch the parade or something! We were subject to a lot of attention. As Riding Hood, I got a lot of wolf calls. I also got accosted by Freddy Kruger while crossing the street.

Freddy: Is your name Mary?
Me Thinking: Uh, do I know you?
Freddy: Cause my favorite drink is...BLOODY MARY!!!

Oh-kay then.

There were some...interesting...costumes.



And what Halloween could be complete without the Scream guy? He followed us for a while.



He even tried to kill Stacy... Or maybe that's his way of flirting. Tough to say.



Even the dogs got into the fun!



We finally managed to snag a spot right outside the old Limelight church/nightclub. Leanna and I posed RIP style for the infamous club we'd never get a chance to patronize.



We waited for the parade. And waited. And waited. And...waited.

It was freezing.

In all, we waited an hour and a half for the seven pm parade. The floats didn't start arriving until 8:20. You'd think a Zombie Red Riding Hood wouldn't feel the chill. You'd be wrong.

But the parade, when it did finally arrive, was pretty darn cool. Which almost made up for it.







After seeing the major floats, we headed back to Morgan's to party. (And get warm!) There, we met up with the rest of our peeps.

Jacob aka David Bowie from Labyrinth.



Kat aka Hockey Mom Sarah Palin. (The devil horns are not random!)



Chris, a prince of a guy.



Our hostess Morgan, a beautiful butterfly.



And Nick the builder.



We played Celebrity and a bros against hoes trivia game. Sadly the three bros kicked we hoes asses. Not sure how that happened!





By the end of the night, everyone for some reason HAD to try on the Bowie wig. With...various results.







All in all, it was a great Halloween!



Zombie Red out.

Happy Halloween

Fairy tales gone wrong girls...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

More soon!

Marianne