Happy Halloween!

Yesterday was Halloween in the USA. Well actually it was Halloween everywhere, but no-one seems to celebrate it as widely as they do here in the US. Why on earth people enjoy celebrating a festival of the dead is beyond me!

Anyway, this year’s celebrations seemed much more amped up than last year’s – possibly because the weather was so unseasonably warm. I certainly don’t remember seeing anyone dressed up at work last year – but this year folks went all out! One of the best outfits was worn by Kristy’s friend Ginny, who (as you probably guessed by the photo here) was tripped out as a funky young Flavor Flav. Yo!

After some dinner, Jason and I headed down town to watch the freaks folks walking in the Village Halloween Parade. Boy, what an eye-opener! Some people put tremendous amounts of effort into their costumes! Some of the best ones that we saw included:

• Tetris blocks (3 people walking round with giant, coloured cardboard shaped blocks);
• Homer and Marge simpson;
• The white, dreadlocked twins from The Matrix; and
• Borat (not especially great costumes but seeing Borat made me laugh!)

Old mate pictured here was also particularly funny – not sure who or what he’s supposed to be, but I’d love to know how long it took to scrub all the paint off! And, like Borat, this guy did very well to stay in character, walking strangely and talking in a funny voice. Of course, not actually knowing the guy, that could have been his regular walk and talk…

There was also a lot of people wearing very skimpy outfits, lots of men dressing as women, etc etc – like I said, it was a real eye opener. It quickly became obvious why they hold the children’s parade much earlier in the day!

The most convincing outfit of all though goes to all the people dressed up as New York policemen. There was heaps of them – clearly it was the most popular costume this year! And boy were they in character – bossing people around, giving people bad directions… if you didn’t know any better, you would have sworn they were real cops!