Costume Contest

We had a blast on Saturday night. The Fairy costumes were so creative with everyone doing her best to play the part. Kathy talked Steve into the Romeo costume, which has it's own whimsical, if not fairy-esque, qualities as well. Joe the Strong looked solid in a Scare Crow costume. Dale out-did himself with his own tribute to Steve Irwin.

Unlike the characature on South Park, there was no blood involved. He dressed up in his safari shirt and shorts, rigged a Sting Ray stinger to be protruding from his chest, and added little haloes to himself and the Sting Ray. The ray was constructed of an inside-out, green T-shirt with reflective red eyes and a long tail, sans stinger. He looked tastefully fantastic; a very creative costume punctuated with the occasional exclamation, "Crikey!"

The bar we chose became quite crowded around 11 p.m. as the Costume Contest approached. Last year this particular bar did a great job of having staff pre-select the finalists. They were well chosen with credit given for originality, quality, and creativity. Unfortunately they failed to live up to that same standard this year and stranded their D-Jay with the overwhelming task of running the contest on the fly.

The poor guy did the best he could given a loud, rowdy crowd. All those who wanted to compete were given an opportunity to be cheered into or booed out of the final selection process - which was more of the same.

This sort of drunken popularity contest is my Halloween pet peeve. It disolves into three categories: lots of attractive flesh showing, clever and crude costumes that makes everyone laugh, or those who happen to look a lot like a celebrity and have succesfully capitalized on their God-given features with a little helpful clothing. Generally, the person who took the greatest risk at partial nudity or crudity, or the person with the most and loudest friends at the bar wins. I hate that.

It's not that I want to win. It's that I want to see prizes awarded for those who were the most creative with original ideas who executed an excellent costume in which they played the part. The good news is that I was so tired and thankful to be out dancing with my friends that I didn't even care that it was a lame excuse for a contest. Besides, it's simply fun to dress up and go play. That's the ultimate goal.