So the Scores strippers maybe shouldn't have gone to the Daily News with word of their date with all the Park Slope kids. Now the school has disinvited them from the party and may cancel the event altogether. What has our society come to when a group of exotic dancers can't hand out candy to children? [NYM]
Strippers handing out candy to your children! It could happen to you! (If you live in Park Slope.) According to the Daily News, a half-dozen Scores exotic dancers are heading to Brooklyn's Middle School 51 to work the candy booths at this Saturday's Haunted Halloween Carnival Benefit for the Puppetry Art Theatre. And parents are outraged! Well, like one parent is outraged. It's Park Slope, parents would probably only get up in arms about this if one of the strippers said Carroll Gardens kids were better behaved or something.
For those uninspired by our previous Halloween costume suggestions (honestly, we didn't really expect you to go around terrifying children in a Teri Hatcher mask), a thread developing on MetaFilter since yesterday could provide you with a more abstract, but no less timely, alternative that will make you the envy of every terrified, sporadically scribe writer at your local Halloween party:
Thanks to Defamer commenter el smrtmnky for pointing out that the Michael Jackson Halloween mask we linked to this morning bears an uncanny resemblance to Teri Hatcher. It's a fortunate bit of happenstance for the manufacturer, who can now double their profits by re-releasing the item as part of their Stars of Desperate Housewives Do Their Own Makeup collection, which could also include the slightly pricier Nicollette Sheridan/Gollum model.
Considering your Leatherface costume ceased to be scary about eleven Halloweens ago, isn't it time to upgrade to something a little more terrifying? This Michael Jackson mask, unearthed by our friends at Boing Boing, should do the trick, inducing convincing screams from the neighborhood kids as the Kid Nation Koresh grabs his crotch in the doorway and shrieks, "HEEE-hee!," then proceeds to use the same palm to dole out handfuls of bulk Reese's Pieces. A word to the wise, however: inviting just the boy trick-or-treaters inside for an apple-bobbing contest, while true to character, might end up getting you arrested.
Julia Allison needs your help! The newly single Star Editor-at-Large surely must need help topping last year's Halloween costume—though we're all afraid your suggestions will just be different permutations of 'a vulva.' Oh, Jules, of course they won't! America is your fan. Let's all pitch in and help Ms. Allison find the perfect Halloween costume. It's going to be hard to do better than her previous outfit (a costume made entirely out of Magnum XL condoms), but we're sure one of these choices, if executed correctly, could do the trick.
By now it should be sinking in as you sit down at your computer on this post-Labor Day Tuesday morning: Summer is over, burned off in this weekend's triple-digit heat. Make peace with the unofficial beginning of Fall by reviewing the long weekend's box office numbers (we'll list the four-day grosses because we don't want to cheat any studios out of a few million extra holiday dollars):
Halloween (we're in week two — can it please be over?) is still in the Post's reliably Post-y headlines — yesterday's cover story, about a Brooklyn teen named Walter Petryk who was dumb enough to show up dressed as Hitler at Leon H. Goldstein HS (blackface at Martin Luther King Jr. HS might have played better, seriously) gets a follow-up today as the misunderstood Nazi defends his choice. But even larger than the shot of Petryk in his SS regalia is this picture of one Michael Loweth, a "heckler" notable for shouting "You're pathetic!" at Petryk. Also, "This is ridiculous, kid. Grow up! Millions of people died for a schmuck like you!" In a way, we totally understand the prominent coverage of Loweth's insightful heckling. Sure, anyone can toss out a "Boooo" or a "You suck" or a "Go back to (a place)!", but it takes a scholar to come up with that line about the millions of people. Michael, if you're reading this, and you'd like to take your nascent heckling stardom to the next level, get in touch. There are some offices we'd like you to start standing outside.
The Go Fug Yourself girls have snagged a photo of Ann Curry's Cher costume, and what a costume it was:
Intrepid Gawker photographer Nikola Tamindzic didn't stop with just three Halloween parties. Oh no. Last night, Nikola hit two more, these obviously more calendar-appropriate. First up is the Shindig party at the LES's Videloand, a cobbled-together space that was so dank that Nikola's camera occasionally manifested an "until-now-unseen '70s foggy soft-focus look." Enjoy the soft focus here (with Nikola's gallery here). Beyond that, the Motherfucker party lay in wait with a bloody-prom Carrie theme at the Roxy. Completely NSFW, including abortion humor; view the gallery at your own risk (or risk even more for Nikola's version). If you dare, you can also view all this year's accumulated Team Party Crash Halloween photos in one giant gallery. Now, start working on those Thanksgiving costumes.
If you were too hungover (or sensible) to make it to last night's Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, fear not: Gawker videographer Richard Blakeley was on the secne, and he's distilled it down to this minute-long clip of fright and fabulosity. Watch if you dare. Or just watch, it only takes a minute.
We'll have some incredible video coverage of last evening's Halloween Parade sometime around lunch; until then we want you to enjoy this photo from last night's celebration. That's right, it's frequent comment-executee Brian Van dressed as New Yorker scribe Malcolm Gladwell. (Looks like that subscription to New York paid off!) Nice work, Brian: If you'd like to comment on this post, we suggest you do it soon: We're banning you in twenty minutes.
A reader sends us saddening news: someone out there is even more dangerously obsessed with AC than we are. She's an enterprising Quebecoise named Robin, and she even has a blog devoted to the man she calls "Anderfox." So there probably wasn't a dry panty within miles of Degrassiland last night when the pumpkin she carved, which features an apparently limbless (but still like sooo hot!) Cooper, made it onto 360.
Sales may not be brisk for Kevin Federline's upcoming East Coast dates, but he's all but guaranteed an enthusiastic hometown welcome when he takes the KIIS FM Stage at tonight's West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval at 8:45. The appearance comes in support of his album, "Playing With Fire," which had its nicely timed debut on record store shelves and iTunes today. ("Be the first to write a review," Apple's online music store plaintively solicits, as K-Fed stares out blankly from behind a desk on his album cover, as though he were hosting one of his own inevitably underattended CD signings.) And while coming to the festivities dressed up as Britney's background-dancing babydaddy might seem so, like, 2005, we'd encourage last-minute costume scramblers to throw on the wife beater, baggy pants, and baseball cap, and show up anyway, taking the stage behind their inspiration as his backing chorus line of high-kicking, hip-hopping K-Fedettes.
Not a bad likeness really. Perfectly captured the unearthly inner glow, not to mention the philosophical implications — you know, a purely decorative creation trotted out to celebrate something that's ultimately fleeting and drained of deeper significance beyond its value as an amusing if temporary distraction.
Expounding on the Truly Tasteless Halloween theme that began with a post on Bill Maher's stingray-speared Crocodile Hunter costume, we continue with this picture of a North Hills residence that has foregone clichéd skeletons and tombstones to decorate their front yard as something far creepier: no, not Courtney Love, but an ultra-realistic plane crash scenario, thanks to the painstaking arrangement of actual airplane parts obtained by the mechanic who lives there. Luckily, the coroner who lives next door refused to supply the scattered body parts they sought to complete the illusion.
Ours is not to cast judgment upon Bill Maher's choice of costume, nor, for that matter, to say what constitutes an appropriate waiting period before a freak celebrity death becomes fair game for laughs—after all, 40 years still hasn't made it possible to show up to a Hollywood Halloween soirée as a "decapitated Jayne Mansfield" without hearing at least a couple tsks of derision from offended partygoers. Still, if Maher simply had to go to the Playboy Mansion (or whatever monster bimbo bazaar he opted to attend this year) dressed as Steve Irwin with a stingray barb hanging out of his chest, one would have hoped he would have more fully embraced the "tasteless mockery of untimely, recent tabloid deaths" theme by throwing Al Franken in a short, blonde wig, giving him an oversized, prop pill-bottle marked "METHADONE," and introducing everyone to his "bunkmate in celebrity heaven, Daniel Smith."
You'd think that in a town where a significant percentage of the population spends the other 364 days of the year slicing, injecting, and restuffing themselves beyond recognition, by the time All Hallow's Eve rolls around, they'd have no energy left for yet further modifications—but you'd be wrong. Something about L.A.'s highly plasticized nature, paired with the bloodcurdling showbiz tales of terror we all know so well, make Hollywood and Halloween a nearly perfect complimentary pairing, resulting in a holiday of heightened horror: Hollyween. In honor of your pre-Hollyween weekend festivites, a round-up:
· The LAT details how the studios have been cashing in on a healthy chunk of what has become a $5 billion-per-year industry, through the licensing of their characters to costume manufacturers. Long ago having outgrown the Disney character kiddie-sector, you can now buy fully authorized costumes of all your grown-up screen favorites, including a Nacho Libre Spandex get-up sure to give everyone at your office party love-handle-related nightmares for weeks. [LAT]
