BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time whatsoever, you already know that I’ve made no secret of the fact that E K and I were married on Halloween, way back in nineteen-hundred and eighty-sevum…

For several years afterward, in addition to treating ourselves to a night out with dinner and all the trimmings, we would either attend – or on a number of occasions hold ourselves – a costume party. Sort of a combination Halloween Costume/Anniversary bash. There was even a stretch where the parties had “themes” to coincide with the number of years we had been married. Of course, life can tend to get in the way, as we all know, and those parties have gone by the wayside. We’re seriously considering resurrecting them, but not this year.

Still, I thought it might be fun to dig through the archives and see what we had in the way of pictures of our costumes back in the day. Of course, nothing will be able to top our 1987 Bride and Groom costumes pictured above.

Unfortunately, as I began digging I discovered that many of our costumes over the years were never photographed with our own cameras, therefore we have no pictures of them. Someone out there does, I’m sure, but that doesn’t help me much as far as this blog is concerned (LOL). So, I will see if I can rattle off the costumes I can remember, and post the scant few pictures I was able to find.

I’ll tell you up front, a not so surprising theme starts to develop…

1986 – Shortly after moving in together we attended a costume party at the apartment of a couple we knew. Being on a tight budget we used whatever we had on hand – E K was a Dominatrix and I was her Slave. I somehow doubt it surprises anyone that The Evil Redhead already had the necessary clothing and props to pull this off…

1987 – The wedding, pictured above. E K reprised her 1986 costume by attending as a “Dominatrix in White.” Me? Well, I officially became her Property in the eyes of the law. Trust me, she has a piece of paper from the State of Missouri to prove it.

1988 – We attended a MAJOR costume party at the home of a friend of one of  E Kay’s co-workers. This was one of those legendary, long-running, gi-hugic bashes with overflowing attendance, plenty of booze, and a costume contest that required knowing the right people in order to wrangle an invite. Fortunately, we did.  E K was a Dominatrix Cop and I was her Prisoner/Punching Bag.

We weren’t flush with cash at this point in our lives, however we both had good jobs with steady paychecks, and we were keeping the bills paid – and had a little extra. Given that, we used some things that we had on-hand, but also invested in some props and other accouterments to really jazz up the costumes. This involved some trips to surplus stores, toy stores (back when plastic toy guns actually looked like the real thing), and even some sewing. Of course, E K already had the leather skirt and stiletto heels on hand, go figure.

The Evil Redhead spent the entire evening dragging me around the party by my shirt collar or by the handcuffs she had slapped on me (and didn’t take off for several hours). To the delight of the other party goers – and her own as well, I suspect – she kicked, stomped, slapped, beat, and threatened me the whole night as well.

Some of the attendees, while realizing we were in costume, actually thought E K was a real cop, albeit a very mean and nasty one. By remaining in character we were nominated as finalists for the costume contest, which in and of itself was a major accomplishment. When it came time for the vote and the nominees were brought into the center of the party, E K played it up like a pro by slapping me around some more, yelling at me, then tripping me and holding me to the floor with her foot on my chest while posing for countless pictures taken by the applauding crowd. (Not the picture shown here. That one was taken pre-party.)

In the end it paid off. We tied for the win. Actually, the host had previously had a single winner at the parties so he only had one prize, but this particular year he created a single and couple category. We won the couple category hands down. The prize? The winners (single and couple) split a case of Budweiser longnecks. Hey, a 12 pack is a 12 pack, and it’s even better when you don’t have to pay for it.

1989 – 1993 – Costume parties were sporadic during this period. When we did happen to attend one, we resurrected the Cop/Convict, Dominatrix/Slave outfits because we had them on hand. Although, there was one particular party where E K donned a long, frizzy wig and some sixtiesish garb and went as a flower child. For some long forgotten reason I was costumeless at that particular shindig.

1994 – The themes start taking shape. Our costumes that year were simple, but effective. It was our 7th anniversary so we held a huge party. We both wore gray sweatshirts done up like jerseys with a huge number 7 front & back and our names across the shoulders. Of course, our names that night were Itchy and Scratchy. We rented the classic movie “The 7 Year Itch” and played it in an endless loop during the shindig.

1995 – In keeping with the “numeric” theme idea we needed to find something that worked with 8. Being Halloween and all, spiders seemed to fit the bill.

We went with a Bride & Groom sort of idea, but turned it into a creepy “Black Widow” and her bitten, corpsified prey sort of thing. E K looked smoking hot in her long, black lace gown, of course. She also added the red hourglass marking for effect. I did a tux shirt and tie, then she covered me with the fake cobweb stuff and little plastic spiders. As an accessory decoration – one that freaked out many of our guests – we had a huge, twine spiderweb strung up in the exposed rafters of our living room, and in the center was a gigantic, 3 foot wide rubber spider hanging over everyone’s heads. We added to the ambiance of the Addams Family/Muenster Household decor with strategically hidden coolers filled with dry ice to generate a misty fog.

1996 – Anniversary number 9. I have searched high and low for pictures from this party and can find none at all, which is a total bummer. E K focused in on the whole 9 = 9 Lives sort of thing, so our costumes that year were “The Cool Cats.”

The evil redhead did the black turtleneck and leggings thing, with a black cat tail and cat ears sticking up around a beret. I was in similar beatnick garb with an orange tail and ears. I had a toy saxophone hanging around my neck, and we both had our faces painted with whiskers and were wearing cheap sunglasses.

1997 – The big 10th anniversary, and to be honest it snuck up on us. The only quickly doable theme we could come up with was the children’s song, “10 Little Indians.” Not exactly P C, but we were in a rush. We picked up a bag of tiny little “Indian” dolls at a party supply store and sewed 10 each to the front of our shirts. I know, not exactly inspired, but like I said, we were in a rush.

1998 – 11 years and going strong. We had absolutely NO clue what to do with the number 11, so it turned into a free for all. Any guesses on our costumes? Yeah, Dominatrix and Slave. See, I told you there was a definite pattern developing…

That was the last costume party we hosted, and the last one we have attended to my recollection. As I said, we are considering a revival, perhaps next year.

Any bets on what our costumes will end up being?

Hey, I’m not complaining. E K would REALLY hurt me if I did…

Happy Halloween – Samhain – Great Pumpkin Night to all!

More to come…

Murv

The “interwebz” can do some strange things. It’s almost as if the damn thing has taken on a life of its own, which I suppose kinda makes old Al Gore a “Doctor Frahnkensteen” of sorts. (Okay, okay, I know… Gore’s quote was taken way out of context, but the joke worked… gimme a break. I’m actually writing this way early in the A.M. and my caffeine system isn’t up to snuff just yet…)

Anywho, the thing here is this – there are just some places on the internet that seem to have become a multi-headed monster doing whatever it damn well pleases. Social networking sites for instance. In this particular instance, Facebook.

There I was, ditzing about on FB, taking care of my necessary social networking marketing schtuff. E K was at her desk behind me, fiddling about with her own FB page, updating the world on her adventures in grocery shopping and slapping a coat of polyurethane on the O-spring’s chest of drawers.

Yeah, truly exciting stuff there… (Hey, sometimes it’s good to be boring…)

So, anyway, I did a quick refresh of my page to see what was going on and the screen went all willy nilly, flashed a bit, sent some gibberish scrolling around, then settled back into my “Facebook Wall.” Everything looked relatively normal except for one minor – well, actually major, IMHO – detail.

Now, just by looking at the picture on the left you might not see the problem. In reality, it looks pretty normal. In fact, it looks extremely normal. And, if it weren’t for the fact that I happen to use a link that generally resides in that box, I might not have noticed the problem myself. However, on the night in question, after perusing my wall I was going to go have a look at someone else’s wall. Namely, the halo wearing half of The Evil Redhead.

Yeah… I was going to go look at Kat’s page, and the easiest way for me to get there is to click on the link under relationship status, because normally it looks like the picture on the right.

But, it didn’t… It looked like the one above.

According to Facebook, I was still married, but to whom was the question. I checked my info tab and it claimed I was married, but my spouse was a mystery.

Figuring this was just some bizarre glitch, I hit the search box, looked up Kat’s profile – which ostensibly was still there – and clicked on the link. My screen flashed, went blank, then my FB newsfeed appeared. I cocked an eyebrow, grumbled, then tried it again. Same thing.

“Hey legs,” I called over my shoulder. “Did you unfriend me on Facebook or something?”

“No,” she replied.

“Did you block me?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

I grumbled a bit more as FB repeated the redirection each time I clicked, then I answered her. “I can’t get to your page.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t know what that’s all about. I didn’t change anything.”

“Let me try something,” I mused aloud.

I went down the line, clicking on several of our mutual friends. Each time I did so, either I was redirected to my newsfeed or told that this person’s page was no longer available.

Grumbling even more I mentioned this to E K. Of course, she promptly began to click on those links herself.

“I can get to Johnathan’s page just fine,” she announced. “And Tracy’s…” A few more clicks sounded. “And Anastasia’s…”

“But I can’t,” I said, perplexed. “Are you sure you didn’t accidentally add me to your block list or something?”

“I’m sure,” she replied.

Just to be thorough I clicked on some of my other friend’s pages who were not mutual between The Evil Redhead and me. No problem at all. Surfed right to them without so much as a brief pause. I cleared my cache just to make sure it wasn’t a phantom page. They still worked.

I logged out of FB, shut down Firefox, restarted it, cleared cache again, logged back into FB, and checked my page. Nothing at all had changed. No matter what I clicked I was no longer married to my wife, nor could I get to mutual friend pages.

“Well,” I sighed a lament. “It would seem that Facebook has divorced us and you got to keep all of our friends.”

E K giggled, of course.

By now it was pushing midnight and well past my bedtime, yet I was still clicking about on my page because I had no intention of signing the divorce papers, virtual or not.

E K clicked off her monitors (she has two, being the multi-tasker she is) and pushed back from her desk. As she rose to head for the bedroom she said, “I think you should just give up for the night.”

“But, it says I’m not married to you anymore.”

“Get some sleep,” she told me. “Maybe you’ll be married to me tomorrow.”

I guess I’ll have to start checking the calendar on the fridge in the kitchen to see which days I’m married and which days I’m single.

Better yet, maybe I’ll just check Facebook…

More to come…

Murv