Wild Rumpus

Last night, Missy and I hit the town, determined to have some fun on HALLOWEEN, despite the threatening rain. The first order of the night was stopping off at THE GRIT for dinner. As we sat and waited for our food to arrive, the restaurant quickly filled with hungry celebrants, almost all of them in some sort of costume. Andy Warhol, The Bearded Lady, The Bride Of Frankenstein, and Mad TV's Ms. Swan sat in the booth behind us...



As the rain started to drizzle down, we made our way over by the 40 WATT CLUB and took shelter under some umbrellas in front of a tattoo parlor. From our vantage point, we watched the freak show pass us by and waited for the WILD RUMPUS PARADE to start. PAULA DEEN and a GIANT STICK OF BUTTER passed us by and I quickly took a blurry photo...



Luckily, we didn't have to wait too terribly long before the procession started...led by MAX from Where The Wild Things Are and DJ LANCE ROCK from YO GABBA GABBA on drums, the parade featured a mish mash of monsters, characters, and costumed oddities, and even included a pair of real live LLAMAS, pulled by none other than ABE LINCOLN himself - just for the heck of it. We fell in line behind the GIANT SKELETON ON STILTS and followed the parade as it snaked through downtown Athens...

WEEN 7341 from Raoul de la Cruz on Vimeo.

WEEN 7345 from Raoul de la Cruz on Vimeo.

After the parade had dispersed, we headed back over by the 40 Watt to wait for yet another parade to start - one that featured GIANT PUPPETS. Along the way back we saw lots of other rad costumes...





This was either the WASHINGTON MONUMENT or else a giant VIBRATOR:

WEEN 7347 from Raoul de la Cruz on Vimeo.

We ran into our friends NICK and MELINDA, who run SATISFACTORY PRINTING. Nick was decked out in a suit that was covered in hundreds of super bright LED LIGHTS, while Melinda was dressed as CORALINE...



We ran into one of our fellow GNOMES and just HAD TO have our photo taken with him!





We eventually headed into the FLICKER THEATRE & BAR to look for our friends JO & ANDRE (Jo owns and runs HONEY'S SALON - it's where Missy gets her hair did). Earlier in the day, we were at their house for Jo's "Birthday Brunch" and there was talk about her PORKY PIG costume which was to incorporate flesh colored tights, some stuffing, and a bald cap...needless to say, we were dying to see how the costume turned out. When we finally found them in Flicker we were bowled over, laughing:





We found Jo's hubby, Andre, dressed up as YOSEMITE SAM, book-ended by a pair of lascivious "ladies"...



A band called ZOMBIE HALO was set up and ready to perform. The band was a ZOMBIE four-piece, with the word "BRAINS" awesomely spelled out in lights on their bass drum head. They wittily entertained the inebriated crowd with very appropriate cover songs, like, "Teenage Lobotomy", by The Ramones, and "Where Is My Mind?", by The Pixies...on our way out of Flicker we ran into DOROTHY, from THE WIZARD OF OZ, who was trying to calm down a very shaky and nervous TOTO. Apparently, the loud zombie rock was a bit too much for the poor thing to bear...