Halloween

A sample of my famous holiday cards

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.  For as long as I can remember I have always loved dressing up.  Way before I had access to, or they sold cool clothes in suburban malls I always put looks together that were not necessarily popular but undeniably me.  The older I got the more I realized that I could dress up any time and on any day I chose - not just one holiday a year.

     In my mind the holiday season has always begun in October.  1st, there's my birthday on Oct.26th.  Then, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza, and, finally, New Year's Eve.  As a child it was always exciting because it meant lots of time off from dreadful school, dressing up, and, of course, gifts!!  To this day I get excited when autumn approaches even though it's really hard to tell when that is with LA weather.  My mom always made or helped me make my costumes and I have continued the tradition by always creating my own looks.  As a really young child I was a clown, a tiger, a native American Indian, Darth Vader (with a tin foil chest panel), Fozzy Bear and a banana - not necessarily in that order.  Recently, I have been a Chic Sheik, a Cockette, dead Marc Bolan, Frida Kahlo, a harpy, Death by Disco (with a broken disco ball on my head) and a witch.

     One of my gorgeous friends named Alicia has a birthday that is actually on Halloween day.  As a child I was always so jealous of people born on that day but now I realize that Halloween adjacent is pretty good as well.  Alicia, known to most as Trani because that is her actual last name, would always have a big, themed birthday party on Halloween.  One year the theme was The Shining.  Now, there aren't really a tremendous amount of characters in that film and the most glamorous costume option would have been the twins but, obviously, that takes 2 to tango.  I walked around my neighborhood in the East Village of NYC to find some inspiration.  Lo and behold I found the most amazing vintage Shriner outfit complete with fez and whistle and an awesome jacket with braided epaulets.  I decided that would be perfect - surely a shriner had stayed in The Overlook Hotel in all it's illustrious past - I decided that there had to have been a Shriner convention there at one point.

     Part of my attraction to Halloween is the dark side of it - the celebration of all things spooky and spine tingling which I have always thought was super glamorous.  There's nothing more romantic that the whole Dracula story - sure beats the pants off Romeo & Juliet.  I mean, let's see - eternal life or double suicide? Hmmm...So, I decided my Shriner had to be dead to add to the creep factor so I went out and got a bunch of theatrical make up and some silicone to make myself a bullet hole in the center of my forehead.  The make up came out so great that it was hard for people to talk to me for too long because it was so realistic.  I even had 2 perfect streams of blood trickling down either side of my big nose that slowly crept down my face until they were dangling off my chin 2 inches.  That theatrical blood is really thick and lasts all night.

     At one point Alicia made a joke that I should take a photo of myself and make it my Xmas card since it would be so highly inappropriate.  At that moment a really large light bulb went off in my brain and I though I absolutely, 100% am doing that for sure!  In that very moment my own delightfully twisted tradition was born and I have been doing it ever since - at least 12 years now and since my sense of time is so shit it's probably been way more.  I alter between holidays for the theme of the card depending on how Jew-y I look - Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah even Kwanza once and when I was Frida Kahlo I finally did a Feliz Navidad card.  This year I dressed up twice so we shall see what the theme is for 2014 - whatever it is it will be a glittery one.  Pretty sure I will still have some glitter on my face well into 2015.  It's like I'm dating a stripper except the stripper is me.

Chic Sheik, Halloween, 2014