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It seemed a rather ordinary night when Brad Majors and his fiancée, Janet Weiss, left Denton....

... Oops, wrong story. Well, half ways.

Rose and shone (read: shoved the alarm clock off my desk, onto the tile floor where it proceeded to spit out its battery with an amusing twang) at about 5:30 am and hobbled around our frrreezing apartment trying to convince myself I'd warm up once I was in the unitard I'd nearly fallen asleep sewing the night before. Ha, right. Make up application (during which it became clear that I rrreally need a new fine point brush) took roughly an hour, pausing once to feed and tend to the real cat and again to contemplate feeding myself, but settled for a cup of hot, milky tea as I wasn't hungry and bathroom breaks in a shoulder snap unitard can be dodgy in tiny stalls like what I have to run downstairs and around a corner for at work. Roomie came out to help me with the last of my shoulder hooks, and then shoved her camera in to my be-warmerred hands and ordered me to take photos of our mutual former classmates at work.

"whoohoo! I'm an elevator!" Our building apparently goes all out for Halloween, and our usually hideous orange elevator underwent the most improvement.

Upon arrival, I poked my head in to the little sushi cafe on the first floor and startled my favourite chef, before heading up to the ever-fluxed temperature zone of the offices. One of my bosses greeted me with wide eyes and an "Oh my.... Are all of you going to be this elaborate?" (referring, again, to our graphics team of which 7 out of 8 members were classmates at the Art Institute together and the 8th attended the other Campus but took the same program) and I told her I was pretty sure at least some of them would. we're all cartoon & comic loving, nerdy artist types, what're ya gonna do? ;) Another of the bosses didn't recognize me at all, which is saying something given the relatively low headcount for women in the office, particularly my size.

er, me goofing off... I swear I did spend the majority of my work day actually working 0_o	indulging the Austin Powers-wannabe photographer's, "Oooh, you are a wild cat! You are fearsome! Go 'Rawr!'"	behaving.

my desk is right next to our supervisor, so he got a kick out of having a "pet" for the day	We be tha cool kids in the tank, yo.

And I was right about the caliber of costumes. In fact, the only one on the graphics team who dared not show up in some form of costume was that 8th kid who didn't go to class with us; not that we single him out or anything. We had already prepared for that, though, in the form of a jester accessory pack I grabbed on my last trek to Dressew and set aside specifically for whomever ignored the weekly reminders since September to dress up for Halloween. It's funny when the plain clothes guy is the one who stands out like a sore thumb. Our supervisor had brought a goony mask, but still expressed entertained embarrassment at feeling underdone in the room with a kung-fu master, a gothic lolita, the "it came from beneath the earth" head, a vampire bite victim, a pink-haired punk girl (as worn by a 6'+, baby faced but definitely masculine boy), Monarch's Henchman #21 from the Venture Brother's cartoon (my personal favourite of the day) and a big black cat...

our fearless leader	the kung-fu master (complete with long glued on beard, bravo)	Gothic Lolita. Too cute for words.

"it came from beneath the earth..." (little army guys are defendingtheir ravaged city from this monstrous threat)	A vampire bite victim... minimal, but surprisingly effective blood.	... punk girl showing us some leg.

Monarch's henchman #21 from the Venture Brothers (yes, she did the theme song)	Obsidia being cute - whoo.	The odd man out being a very good sport.

aside from the graphics dorks, our favourite project manager came in as Kayako, the scary spirit woman from Ju-on, complete with throat rattling on request, and we were given free reign to refer to everyone else in the offices (stoic, "I'm a grown up." pilots and "please don't notice me, I'm busy being smarter than you" programmers, and the admin-collective) as the "boring people" for the day.

Kayako says *throat rattle rattle rattle* (we do love Hannah)

There was an extensively array of treat sized chocolate bars and snack bags as well as cookies and such laid out up front and the costumed graphics department making semi-regular group appearances from the back offices became a source of great amusement to the pilots and admin whose offices and work stations were within sight of this activity. Enough pizzas to feed a small army with gourmet tastes (chicken jalapeno, feta, curry beef, taco, etc...) were ordered for us for lunch. I tried to eat carefully as not to eat off my make up as always seems inevitable. This amused henchman #21, who works next to me, to no end. There were a flurry of group shots on various cameras, notably separated in to the costumed group, and a big clump of boring people.

The graphics goons and Hannah.	The boring people.

I won the costume contest ^_^ It was a close call between the black cat, henchman #21 and the "it came from beneath the earth!" head, though, and I am really flattered to have been up against those costumes as they were both so original and well executed. We had a lot of fun. And I made out on the deal with a $25 gift card to future shop - score! :D

while this wig seemed to impress many, my right "ear" had decided that this was not its day for structural integrity	giant bouncy pilates ball == fun	hail to the everlasting fluorescent tubes

To top it all off, we were allowed to leave at 4:00 - unprecedented as it's not unusual for a huddle of us to be in until 7 or 8, even midnight on Fridays, and there had been rumour that a midnight deadline might be necessary on Halloween of all days (sacriledge! I'll work Christmas day, but Halloween is precious...) . Until then, we worked our buns off all afternoon, which was still a pretty amusing endeavour in costume. Needless to say, we had a lot of people dropping by the "fish tank" to have a look in at us.

typing in rubber gloves is hard	meeting her deadlines and still so cute	kicking but and taking names... in a graphical sense.

...

... not that there wasn't still time left for some end of the day silliness...

hawt rubber glove strip tease	pelvic thrusting!	yum.

After work, I booked it back downtown and took a few minutes to relax while going through some former cosplay constructions with my room mate so she could pick out something suitable to wear for a quick jaunt round the neighborhood to check out house decorations and bite-sized costumers. She settled on my "wood witch" robe and night-shade fairy wings, with an Avalon-esque crescent on her forehead and appropriately tied hair.

not the most thematic backdrop...	gorgeous setting, gorgeous model. I love this picture.	lovely lady of the castle

Highlights of the neighborhood included stops at the fire hall where the firemen warmly received our proposal of trick-or-treating for photos rather than candy, a fortune telling white witch, a goblin jumping out of a hedge growling only to be startled and concede passage as I wheeled, arched, and gave my best imitation of Stella's most fearsome hisses (... I've had practice ;)), some fantastic "prop" grave markers made from sauderring-iron engraved styrofoam, and an all out haunted house by the school playground with gored victims pleading for aid as their attackers buried them alive, a photo booth and tarot readings.

jess likes firemen.	really cool looking grave stones - made from styrofoam!	death? Or just a jawa who likes darker robes?

... have I mentionned that I, too, like firemen?	I also like fire halls.

The piece-de-resistance, as it is every year in the west end, was the heritage house at Bute & Nelson streets, which almost always makes it on to the news for their front yard set up: this year's theme was pirates complete with the jolly roger flying from the rooftop and the full bow of a ship constructed out from the porch. The figure head was a dragon head which periodically opened its maw to release voluminous clouds of smoke, and at the helm was a life sized, bone-to-bone accurate skeleton steering a moving wheel, free of any apparent support. Suitably enough, the treats they offered came in the form of little satchels of (chocolate) gold doubloons.

do these people know how to decorate or what??	ARRR!! (note: jess being "pirate pimped")

Oh, and I rather enjoyed some "down time", chilling out about 20' up in a tree at Barclay Square. The big limbs are really quite comfortable and sprawl worthy (... I'll admit to having hung out there in regular clothes, occasionally) and despite Jess standing near the base with a HUGE grin on her face, we still got at least one startled passer-by who, we're guessing, did not expect to look up and see me.

people watching	"hello down there."

Cold but now fully excited and in the spirit, after a couple hours meandering we headed back to the apartment to change (the intermediate stage of my make up removal proving great amusement to us both) into something "less vulnerable" for the midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. While I applied yet another dose of make up to my only just freed skin, this time to take on as much the appearance of a gaunt, surly man as could be done, Jess changed into an adorably girly get up, complete with frilly white top as he de-virginification was to come in the form of borrowing her for Betty Munroe and later using her for a work out horse (not so much requiring of the white shirt, but really, why not? teehee)

our building didn't do too shabby a job of decorating either.

so... our Magenta didn't have magenta hair this year. I was just filling the gap, really.	Columbia wishes to show you her candy rack.	"Quick, first one to grab the slut wins a prize!"

This was my third year on cast (RiffRaff - fear the wrath of my hunchbacked smarm) and performing with our same Frankie, Janet and Brad, with last year's crim on as a punk-goth, wookie-calling Rocky (a-dor-a-ble!) and newcomers for Columbia and Eddie/Dr. Scott. Having lost the 2000+ seat Vogue as a venue at the start of 2006, we were invited last minute (well, 1 week prior to the day) to the show's return, after over a decade, to the Ridge Theatre where it was first ever shown in Vancouver. 400 seats is a much smaller crowd, but with little to no advertisement we were happily surprised to be informed that it had sold out within a couple days of the show's announcement. Small, but enthusiastic audience, prepared almost every one with candles and toast and a barrage of shout backs to make every Rocky Whore proud :) Having had so little time to prepare ourselves and no time to familiarize with the theatre ahead of time, there were several close call moments but no disasters and everything was handled with finesse, or an inappropriate gesture. Either's good at RHPS, neh?

"That man has no neck and no pants!"	Dammit Janet!

Enthusiastic dancing Transylvanians, groupie, and another pantsless crim, oh my!	an adorably nasty tableau

Some highlights: for starters, the night's random theme was "Jazz hands!". If you're at all familiar with rocky Horror, I'll let your imagination fill in the rest there ;D "Frank" busted one of her 5.5" heels less than a minute in to the creation scene and trooperred on through the rest of the show to the point where half the cast didn't even notice. I pulled a pink, tribble-looking pom pom out of my pants and offered it to Janet in lieu of the bagel-from-pocket (... as I've yet to get around to installing my coat's pockets, woops) during time warp, and the audience member who caught it after literally guffawed. I'm guessing trekkie. "Columbia" didn't wear the pants portion of her pajamas. Ever. And we were all swapping out as the crim since we lacked one this year, throwing on the suit jacket and cravat as we were available to do so and stepping out to a chorus of "BORING!"... Which meant that most of the time, "Crim" was not wearing any pants either ^_^ As mentioned already, rocky took a bit of costume deviation with black hair, mesh top and slave collar, and made wookie noises.

"The spark of life itself? Neat!"	Magenta wants you to GET. IT. ON!

"Give yourself over to absolute pleasure."	"Our noble mission is almost completed, my most hidous Q-tip..."

By the time it let out and we got all packed up, it was 3am. Jess had to be up at 5am for work the next morning. I was up an hour later, likewise...

We are totally, utterly unrepentant >:D All in all, a very Happy Halloween!

Rock on, kids, rock on.

All photos © J. McNichol, H. Hashimoto, C. Cornell, A. Morris, and/or an anonymous fireman with a mop on his head; please do not copy, repost or redistribute without permission (see that "e-mail me" link above? that's a start ;))
"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.