Sick Weekend

I’ve never spent more than $30 for a Halloween costume, ever. But something told me I should splurge for one this year. Lord knows I shouldn’t. With the economy tanking and my job in a precarious situation, I should be looking for every opportunity to scrimp and save for the (possible) coming storm. But I just can’t refuse a beautiful woman anything.

So $160 later, I’m decked out in a sweet Pirate uniform and I look great. I mean, as good as Jewish pirates get to look anyway.

Ali and I went over to the Halloween parade on 6th avenue and it was every bit the cluster fuck that you’d imagine. We took the 2/3 up to 14th Street and when we got topside we were absolutely *swamped* with people. Everywhere, there were costumes of all varieties swirling around us like the ghosts at the end of Indiana Jones.

“Marion, whatever you do, don’t look at them!”

After squeezing our way over to 6th Avenue, we found a decent spot on the sidewalk and waited for the parade to pass us by. Ali, in her very skimpy and delicious French Maid’s outfit (complete with hot redhead wig), had decided to forego her jacket in favor of showing off her costume. Bad. Move. And yet another tick goes into the ‘bad judgement’ column.

Or maybe it wasn’t so bad? I had to hold Ali real close to me for quite a while to keep her warm. Jedi-Mind tricked again. :-p

The Parade, which I’ve never had the privilege of seeing before, was a hit and miss affair. Some of the costumes on display were pretty elaborate, including a guy dressed as Pac-Man and two of his friends dressed as Pac-Man Ghosts. Also on display were some other really inventive get-ups and a few large scale productions. One of them was a haunted gothic living room, complete with 20 foot tall ghosts with real faces (creepy) on them. But by far, the best part of the parade was the entire Zombie Dance from Thriller performed in perfect synchronization, right in front of us, with about 150 zombies all made up perfectly. It was an incredible sight to see. I can’t believe that 25 years later, the Zombie Dance is still exhilarating to watch and more importantly, recognizable.

After a few hours of watching the parade, we stopped into the Two Boots down in the village for a slice of pizza and a Diet Pepsi and then made our way uptown to a loft party at 37th street, near Penn Station. Getting uptown was a real chore since all the cabs were taken and the streets were infected with people. There was a line leading out the subway station that snaked all the way up to the street and it took us about 15 minutes before we could even swipe the turnstiles! We squeeeeezed onto a train and suffered through it before getting out at 34th street.

The party was fun, if a bit crowded. We were met by Ali’s friend Elizabeth, dressed up as a super hot nurse, and we spent a few hours dancing, grinding and drinking to a DJ who could really use some skillz. The space was pretty cool though and there was an outdoor balcony where we could grab some fresh air if we needed it. The best costume I saw at the party were two guys doing ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’. Pretty cool.

After getting home exhausted, we chilled out Saturday and made some dinner inside. I showed Ali the magic of Shake and Bake Pork Chops and made some of my famous corn relish and string beans on the side. We needed to get to sleep somewhat early in order to catch a ride out to Pennsylvania for a winery tour. Elizabeth, who is an avid athlete, was joining a few other people on a bike tour of local wineries (her family lives in Allentown). We caught a ride with Brian, a mutual friend. As we approached his car, another guy joined us and we all introduced ourselves. The new guy, Jordan, looked at me and said, “You look familiar. Have you ever worked at JPMorgan?”. I told him I did and he said, “I think I played poker with you once”. Awesome. Turns out he was a friend of one of the traders I used to support in Equity Derivatives at JPM and I had organized a big poker game for those guys a few times. If I remember, he won a tourney I had organized. I can’t believe after 4 years he recognized me. Small world.

The ride out was tiring but fun. Tiring because I hadn’t gotten great sleep and I had to be up early. Even worse, I got up at 6AM when I was supposed to be up at 7AM because I completely forgot about Daylight Savings time. Wow. I wait all year for the extra hour and I screw it up. Nice job Jamie.

We got to Elizabeth’s parents house in West Allentown (WOW. Nice neighborhood.) and got settled in. Ali and I would be driving in front of the bikers as a support vehicle and going from winery to winery with them. The biker ended up biking about 40 miles all told and Ali and I ended up drinking quite a bit of wine from 4 local wineries. It was a great time with great people and we picked up a few bottles of some really fun wine that I’m looking forward to quaffing in the coming weeks. By the time we got home to the city at 10PM, we flopped into bed, exhausted from the weekend’s activities.

Next week, I go to Louisiana for a weeklong poker tour/New Orleans thing. SOOOO looking forward to it.

P.S. Jets Won. Giants Won. Bills Lost. Cowboys Lost. Pats Lost. Holy crap, a penta-fecta!