Halloween town

Sorry I'm late with this post - there were a ton of photos for me to upload over the weekend and the first of the month is always a little crazy for various reasons, but here you go! As promised! Photos! Yay!

Thursday night Benni and I carved pumpkins while sipping hot chocolate and humming the Nightmare Before Christmas theme song to ourselves, because we're cool like that. Here's me carving my pumpkin:

and here's Benni's pumpkin:

and here's the four of us, creators and creations, together:

but let's face it, jack-o-lanterns look better in the dark :)

On Friday night we headed over to our friend Zak's party, where we ate too much and watched cheesy slasher flicks playing in the background while bobbing for apples and generally pointing and laughing at other peoples' costumes. Most people got that I was Harley Quinn except for one chick that guessed that I was Mrs. Incredible.

Really? Really?? Last time I checked Elasti-Girl did not wear fishnets. Of course, Harley technically doesn't either, but still...

Benni was kind enough to take some pictures of me getting ready for the party, most without me noticing:

And then we were off to the party!

Benni and I had decided to go into West Hollywood for Halloween - every year, up to 400,000 people (nope, not making that number up) show up and crowd into three or four blocks and it's supposed to be absolutely insane. It's also supposed to be a fantastic way to celebrate Halloween if you can deal with the crowds and parking and insanity and riots and male nudity (West Hollywood is, uh, very liberated). Having been warned to show up early and make a day of it, and having never planned this sort of thing before, that's exactly what I did. If there's one thing us A-types are good at, it's getting into Tour Guide/Cruise Director mode. I can plan with the best of 'em.

So Saturday morning I decided to make breakfast for Benni (see? I do my share of cooking!) and made him poached eggs on english muffins spread with goat cheese, and fresh homemade chocolate croissants right out of the oven. It was yummy.

We headed down to W. Hollywood early, arrived at noon, and parked in a parking structure so we wouldn't have to deal with drunk jay-walking pedestrians when we tried to leave that evening, then we walked up to Sunset Blvd. and caught a movie (New York, I Love You) at the movie theater.

After the movie, we headed back to our car and got changed into our costumes. Now, as an actress, I am fairly skilled at changing my clothes and putting on makeup in my (parked) car, but my costume involved a skirt, two layers of tights, boots that reached to mid-calf and a corset, so there was some...maneuvering. Let's just say I got a good abs workout.

We barely made it to our 5:30 dinner reservation on time, so this is us finally leaving the parking structure, fully (and finally) in costume once again:

and as we headed out of the parking structure towards the restaurant, we literally crossed the street, walked ten feet...and were there. Can I plan like a bad-ass or what? I'd had no idea the restaurant and parking structure were that close. Apparently I'm just that good. (And yes, incredibly humble.)

After making the reservations, I had called the restaurant (Cafe La Boheme) to make sure dining in costume was okay, and the guy who answered the phone practically screamed, "Is it okay? The entire wait staff is going to be in costume!!" So I already knew this was our kind of place.

We walk in, and I kid you not, we are the first ones there - so the staff lets us choose where we want to sit. We end up choosing a small, intimate table on the balcony of the restaurant, over-looking a huge fireplace and gorgeous, blood-red chandelier - this place was practically MADE for Halloween, and it's decorated with spider-webs and glowing pumpkins everywhere. As we pass our waiter, he exclaims, "Awesome, I get to wait on Super-Villains!"

We loved our waiter.

The food was incredible, we were waited on by a shirtless cowboy, the dessert was to die for, and the restaurant was about fifty feet away from the start of the celebration. It was absolutely perfect.

So after dinner, the carnival was well under way, so we started at one end and just slowly walked down to the other, making our way through the thousands of people crowding the streets. The best thing about the costume parade was the fact that everyone was supporting and loving each other's outfits - there was very little ego, just tons and tons of people taking pictures of costumes they thought were cool. And guess who was the hit of the night?

You guessed it. Out of the thousands of costumes we saw, Benni was the ONLY classic Joker, and people went nuts. People followed him down the street, yelling "Joker, over here!" before pulling him aside to take pictures with him. Most of them didn't know who I was at all (HUGE bummer at first) but I got over it fairly quickly because I was just really happy to see Benni getting a ton of attention for his fantastic costume.

There were a lot of Batmans who wanted to take pictures with Benni, and a rowdy group of Australians found him and pulled him into their group for a picture (they had a Batman in their group), but when I tried to step out of the picture all the guys started yelling, "No, you too, you too!" So that was nice. Somewhere in Australia there is a picture of me looking surprised.

Here's a very sweet girl who wanted her picture taken with both of us:

And yes, I'm aware the picture is a bit blurry, but this is what happens when you let 6'4" drag queens use your camera.

That's a West Hollywood Halloween for ya! How was everyone's Halloween??