As promised, GK's (very much belated) Halloween

This post is a few days in the making for a few reasons (and, yes, these are exactly the sort of disclaimers for which one gets charged fifty cents--each--in some writing groups):

1) Halloween is a very big deal in NYC. Some say it's our answer to Mardi Gras. I'm not a huge proponent of the parade, which makes it impossible to get anywhere quickly--though the costumes and floats are often very clever. But there are so many events throughout the city, it's often hard to choose.

2) The internet is down at Chez GK. It will be for another week. Time Warner's monopoly for Brooklyn has them insisting it's normal for it to go out (for a week!) every other month. GK has told them all about people she knows in the mountains, with snow drifts and falling trees, who have better service. Time Warner laughed (through a phone line stretching to another country, surely) and asked if I could take off work next week to be home for a repair person. Grrrrr.

3) This was a very big week for GK. At the end of the week before last, after a great phone conversation, a sought-after author e-mailed to tell GK that she would be the agent of choice. (Squee! Squee! Hyperventilation! Celebratory chocolate!) Now. This had me jumping around the office (most assuredly terrifying a rather stoic intern) going,  "[Book title] is mine! [Book title] is mine!" My boss came running in, thinking I'd seen a mouse or something. I'm not generally prone to breaking "inside voice" rules.

Now. Because of a variety of circumstances, the book had to go out that week. Last Friday, in fact. So everything had been shoved off the desk in favor of getting this amazing work out. Yes. I was up past midnight for two days reading it. I made everyone in the office read it. I blathered on about it to friends twice yesterday. I posted about amazingly creative ways the hardcore (yet very justified) young female protagonist kills people on my Facebook page. Can't get enough.

I've never taken on a work, done several rounds of edits with the author, and sent it out within a seven-day period. It was awesome and thrilling.

Anyway. Halloween. Here you go.

Yes, this is a pumpkin burger--from the very awesome MAKE blog. 

Halloween started, for GK, the weekend before--at a party in a warehouse converted into rent-controlled studios for artists, welders, writers and performance artists. Local artists had carved many pumpkins, and there were various oddities--it seems popular, lately, to bring elements of the country (like pig butchery demonstrations, rooftop beekeeping, and--in this case--hay bales and a wooden petting zoo) into the city. Great fun.

The night before Halloween, GK went to a house party thrown by a friend from school. She'd invested in scary-looking candelabras and ghosts with light-up eyes. The featured drink was a new cocktail our hostess says is all the rage in Paris--called, I believe, the martini bikini (yes, it's pink):

• Splash of rose syrup
• Splash of lychee liqueur
• 1.5 oz Ketel One, straight from the freezer
• Fill the rest of the martini glass with Fresca, straight from the fridge. Stir gently. Serve cold.

Halloween itself, I went to the Edward Hopper show at the Whitney (which is truly fabulous, should you be in town), went for a drink at the Flatiron Lounge (very pretty--and quite reasonable, if you order beer!), then went to a jazz show at The Blue Note. It took about half an hour to go two blocks--that's how crazy the parade's crowd was.

Imagine GK trying to take an elegant out-of-town guest (a family member still not convinced living in the city is a great idea) of 60+ years through a dark, costumed, drunken version of Times Square (with about triple the density--there was no way to not brush against people as you passed them). 

At one point, two women started yelling at each other a few people away from us--the situation is frustrating, given that there are barricades on every block, and the rules keep changing about where you can cross, so I'm surprised we didn't see more of that.

I explained later that I knew they probably weren't going to hit anyone, and if they did, they'd hit each other, so I wasn't particularly worried. But imagine yourself trying to explain this to a (very polite about it) senior citizen and devoted suburbanite. GK was rattled. My guest was rattled, and probably quite tired of being shoved by the crowd--though she was too kind to say so. Not an ideal situation. 

We arrived in one piece--barely--after convincing one of the policemen to let us through the barricade (only after they checked our tickets and questioned us). 

Now, this is the part that requires explanation.

In GK's mind, there are two extremes of jazz shows: 

• The ones that have patrons with posture like the man in the New Yorker logo (monocle not included), who sip exorbitantly expensive glasses of wine or Scotch, maintain a golf-like hush during performances, and only break this behavior to murmur things like, "Hmm, yes, excellent, quite" and to gently tap between four and six of their fingertips together at the completion of each solo. Each performance is just like the one before it--and, thus, the group praises itself for being "consistent."
• The shows where almost everyone in the audience is standing and dancing, the band's having a blast, the neighbors are probably calling the police complaining about noise for the fifth time that week, the musicians are dancing around (sometimes in the audience), the bass players do tricks like spin the bass when possible, everyone's yelling support for the band and clapping until their hands itch, the drinks are reasonably priced, even if there's a minimum--and every show is very different, because the musicians think of music as something that's living. 

Happily, the show was about here on that spectrum:

Formal/quiet/stodgy ---------------------------------X-------Super fun

The band was dressed up in Ghost Busters outfits. They employed someone to dress up as a ghost and run around the audience. We were on our feet for most of the performance. At one point, the trombone player did a few bars of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game"--and someone in the audience yelled, "Go Giants!"*--which the rest of the crowd loved. 

So, yes. We had a blast. Definitely up there with GK's top three Halloweens.

Now that we're, you  know, a week into November and you've probably moved on to other things--um, what did you do? 

___________________________

* GK seconds this sentiment. Several friends from home are going to a parade in San Francisco today.