Random notes on Halloween….

-Considering tonight is Sunday and last night was the night that had all the big parties, tonight being Halloween feels anti-climatic. Yeah, people are in costume and, yeah, the Castro is happening, but, oh well. It's hard to get the party groove on when all I'm thinking about is the couch, some TV, and sleep. Hell, I turned on the TV this morning, saw all these people talking about Halloween and I actually had to think for a few minutes before I realized that today was Halloween and not last night.

-Kids today love (love!) their 80's music. Which means having lots of fun-filled conversations like these while at parties.
Me (as the DJ puts on the always rocking "It Takes Two" by Rob Base & DJ Ez Rock): Just wondering, but how old were you when this song came out?
Friend: I was 7th grade.
Other friend: Wow, you're that old? I was in fifth grade then. How old were you?
Me: Uh, I was in Junior year. Of college.

-Got a pair of cheapo Elvis Presley sunglasses at work for the office Halloween party, the kind that have rock star frames and fake sideburns hanging down from the sides of the stems. Put them on in front of a mirror and I realized it didn't make me look like Elvis, it made me look like a Hasid, albeit the hippest Hasid you'll ever see. So I put on a black hat, black jacket and pants, and went to the party as (take your pick) either a Jewish Elvis or a hip Hasid.

I am such a bad Jew.

-And speaking of being a bad Jew, I noticed that people either got the outfit or didn't, usually depending on their knowledge of Judaism. Sometime early in the party, some girl cornered me and after telling me how much she loved my costume (score!) she started telling me about how much she respects Jewish people because of how we've survived four thousand years of oppression. For fifteen minutes. Now, for a few minutes, I started to think I'm about to have my Portnoy moment, my using white liberal guilt to, as the kids say, "hit it." You know, get a little back for the four-thousand years of oppression. I know it works for other minorities, but didn't realize it still worked for us Jews. But after about fifteen minutes of all of this, I realized that despite all of my Zionist Indoctrination and years of Hebrew school, not even I could play along for fifteen minutes of discussion on the suffering of my people. So I bailed

-Another woman loved my costume. She had a bit of an accent so I asked her about her accent and where was she from. She then proceeded to get upset because I said she had an accent and even though her dad is Nicaraguan and her mother Mexican, she was born in America and most definitely did not have an accent. Sorry. My bad. Bitch did have an accident, though. Guess she didn't respect my people for four-thousand years of suffering.

-Sometime last night at the party, I remembered a Halloween Party I went to while in Paris during the '92 election. Half the people at the party were French and the other half were Americans and a few days earlier, the International Herald Tribune had a big headline about how Bush Sr. was closing the gap in polls with Clinton. As we sat there at this amazing party, Notre Dame in the backround and the Pompidou center off to the side, all of us ex-Pats sat around the table and had a long, half-way serious discussion about whether or not we were going to go home if Bush won. That was a hell of a party. And yes, we all came home. I'm sure that discussion is going on all over the world these days.