Halloween Wrap Up!
So Halloween has now been and gone... and we had a blast! As you can see from the picture above, our night of pumpkin carving was a great success. Christine and I bought a cheap book of templates and carving tools from Fred Meyer to aid us in our endeavours - a great investment! This is my Scary Tree, which would certainly terrify me if I was five years old. Christine did a Black Cat, but in her inimitable way, added some sweet wings to personalise it more. However, once we brought our jack-o-lanterns home, they rapidly disintegrated into disgusting piles of goo and mould as Portland's humidity and our warm house took their effect. Kim reckons that the big chain stores freeze their pumpkins and, because of that, they have a very high water content. Whatever the reason, they didn't live to see Halloween.
Our next seasonal activity was heading out to Suavie Island to the northwest of Portland to experience the Corn Maize (geddit?). Every year, a new maze is cut into a large corn field and people come from miles around to get lost in it. However, in mid-October, the ground has been rained on and trodden on so many times that it has turned into thick, gooey, icky mud that gets almost ankle-deep in parts. We slurped and sucked our way through the maze dutifully before signing up for the real attraction: a ride in the Cow Train! Wheeee!!!!!
Finally, it was onto the main events: costume parties! Christine spent ages on her costume: Tank Girl, one of her favourite cult comic book characters. For the first party, I decided to repurpose my astronaut outfit, paint my face a horrid shade of green and call myself a Space Zombie. Why not?
The Saturday night party was great fun, although the Witches' Brew was 90% vodka and incredibly potent. There were lots of amazing costumes, so I decided to lift my game for the Wednesday Night Actual Halloween party. A quick trip to a thrift store and Fred Meyer's gave me everything I needed to create my Australian masterpiece costume: Dead Steve Irwin, complete with stingray tail piercing my heart. Here's Steve and Tank Girl together:
The blonde wig was cut down from Christine's Tammy Faye Bakker costume from last year and felt every bit as hideous as it looks. The party was down at the White Eagle pub and they had an impromptu costume show. At Christine's insistence, I got up on stage. The compere asked me who I was and I explained: "Crikey! I'm the Croc Hunter and this is me mate, Stingy!" As I said this, at least half a dozen people in the audience were visibly shocked, which I just find hilarious. Is more than a year after his death still too soon? Anna Nicole Smith was already fair game for some people, but the Croc Hunter seems to be revered in these parts! Still, great fun was had by all!
And for the record, we tried Burgerville's Pumpkin Milkshakes. Blame Gene... he insisted that we did. They're actually very good, although they're sweetened with spices and whipped cream, so it's actually pretty hard to detect any real "pumpkin-ness" in them.
Posted in: chaosboy, party time, portland, united states on November 5, 2007 at at 11:16:00 AM