Then & Now...
One could hardly call it the twilight hour. Tonight a thick amber haze of smoke shrouds Southern California, creating an ideal atmosphere for contemplating the upcoming Halloween weekend. Evening has turned the world into a brooding spectre, the skies swirling with an eerie looking tinge, the rising moon blood red in the west . My usual expansive corner office view over the west side of LA and on to the blue Pacific Ocean beyond has dissolved into slow moving opaque skies.
At my feet Wilshire Boulevard stretches out from Westwood village towards the palm covered bluffs above Santa Monica beach, and the tallest buildings lining the corridor are now fully submerged from top down, gradually disappearing deeper and deeper into the descending gloom.
As I watch them drown in the blanket of rancid smoke they begin to look like monstrous tombstones in an underworld graveyard. It’s a perfect hour to reflect on Halloween, and the colorful pageant this holiday has painted across our lives. Halloween is always such a remarkable and perversely spectacular event in Los Angeles. This quasi-pagan holiday pretty much stands in for American culture’s lack of anything like a real Carnival (in the South American sense). It’s not just a holiday for children anymore, or the slutty poorer relation of our revered winter holiday season.
Halloween’s sense of silly dread and theatrical morbidity has taken such a hold on human imagination that it’s now being seriously celebrated well beyond America’s shores.I've always enjoyed the quotable wit of Oscar Wilde, and one of his more famous sly remarks implied that a man will never tell you the truth unless you get him to wear a mask. When we don our Halloween costumes we get to embrace an alternative and some what primal aspect of our inner being, one that is dying to be expressed, even if we haven’t consciously realized the need.
These glitter and fabric nocturnal facades serve as the disguises that allow us to get away with all manner of overt shenanigans. Who cares how stupid you acted…you were wearing a costume! It’s a basic mortal urge really, the need to put on a dramatic, albeit temporary, alter ego.
Personally I've always been keen on getting done up ‘en’masque’ and working the crowd for a reaction. Half the fun of a Halloween party is seeing how everyone dresses, checking out their ridiculous, sexy, and often astounding getups, and having a shocking, rollicking good time of it.
Thinking back over 30 years of Halloween extravaganzas I can come up with some astounding recollections (some of which I cannot put in print, would rather not repeat in public, or ever mention in mixed company). Many are absolutely dated, with no meaning to anyone but myself, but remain cherished memories of a night of harmless, spontaneous debauchery and outright incognito silliness, probably a good thing in world that is in the main far too serious.
Originally I held to the tradition that Halloween costumes had to be at least marginally frightening…carrying on the tradition of classic monster movies, morbid literature, or anything that had to do with aspects of death or of being deeply frightened. As a boy I thought that a 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' costume was the pinnacle of ubercool.
Nowadays I wouldn’t be caught dead in a rubber monster suit. Times have changed, but the reasons why I love Halloween are still very much the same as they’ve always been.
I guess my seduction with the entire holiday stretches back to my childhood in the 1950’s, a time when our family lived in the countryside surrounding the San Francisco Bay in what was then a ‘modern’ housing development set in a lovely valley primarily occupied by walnut, almond, and apricot orchards, and anchored by a meandering creek hidden in a forest of oaks and wild blackberry vines. It was a pastorial world, where people kept horses and grew vegetable gardens.
Of course the 1950's were simpler times (and whose childhood wasn’t?) and my mother was creative enough in her talents as a seamstress to fabricate remarkable colored fabric and papier-mâché costumes for all the kids. We were always proud of how we looked after she’d finished with us. One of my earliest Halloween memories is sitting in a neighbor's backyard in a wooded canyon, a huge bonfire blazing into the indigo sky. There were 30 or 40 people, mostly young families, and most everyone in simple costumes.
We listened wide eyed to tales of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow and bobbed from giant galvanized metal buckets full of floating local apples. Scarecrows and armies of corn stocks bundled together cast spooky shadows from the dancing firelight on the overhanging oaks . This was a magic world for a kid, and a strange and wonderful night to be alive. And of course there were always the pillow cases full of candies we collected trudging around our rural neighborhood.
For young kids the whole thing was absolute ecstasy. We were so jacked up on candy corn, chocolate bats, and licorice flavored wax mustaches that it really had to count as our first major buzz in life; the simple thrill of being totally doped up on a rude sugar high. And at every door we actually got to command grown-ups...for the first and only time, barking out our “Trick or Treat” in fearsome and demanding tones. It all seemed beyond good, and if you scored a Hershey Bar you felt like the king of the world.
As early teens, now too old to ask for candy, Halloween turned into something more roguish, and became the cover for our first frenzied stabs at juvenile delinquency. Halloween gave us the chance to discover the early effects of testosterone, running around in silly hats and army surplus coats with pockets full of eggs to throw at houses and passing cars, planting cherry bombs in innocent pumpkins and blowing them sky high. And there was always the cloaking of the neighborhood trees with tossed rolls of toilet paper. We were the tricky Halloween demons, and it felt cool.
But it wasn’t until I'd become old enough to vaguely grasp the intrinsic value of Girls that I began to realize how beneficial the innocent costumed debauchery of a Halloween party could be, particularly in regards to copping a feel from some comely witch, or even, eventually, getting some nookie! I lost my virginity at an après Halloween party, so how could I not adore this holiday?
In the late sixties Halloween had finally graduated to the big-time. In the prime of our hippie days everyone had plenty of Afghani hash to smoke or psychedelic mushrooms to chew on, and the wild outdoor Halloween parties took on the vibe of an almost mystical, pagan ritual. Costumes got wilder and came off easier, and the parties went on well until dawn. Strangely enough, life as a hippy was a bit like living in a constant Halloween party, only with gurus and Hopis and Hendrix instead of goblins, ghosts, and vampires. Sweet instead of scary, Halloween in 1969 really ramped up the entire Alice in Wonderland surrealism of that decade. Far Out!
Suddenly it was the mid 70’s, a time when all manner of remarkable parties were happening. People would completely decorate their sleepy canyon houses, turning them into surreal Halloween themed scenes. With their big backyard pools & cabanas, spot-lit palm & sycamore trees, garden pathways and houses illuminated with lanterns and candles, raging live rock bands, and giant tubs of highly potent passion punch to fuel the festivities, the A-list Halloween parties took on a special significance in an era that was well before there were any of the major public Halloween events that you see advertised today.
It was way more exclusive, with Hollywood stars throwing the most opulent bashes. Max Baer (‘Jethro’ of The Beverly Hillbillies) use to really put on some of the wildest Halloween parties. Who would have thunk'd it…Ol' Jethro out by the cement pond with all those naughty witches?
One year we decided to do a marathon So Cal party tour starting in South Laguna Beach (Orange County). Laguna back then was an eccentric little beach village with cozy wooded canyons that led to tiny picture perfect coves, a post card village populated by a high percentage of offbeat fags, stoned surfers, serious hash/Thai scammers, and generations of writers and artists.
Our plan was a simple one; take off in a caravan of exotic cars and go to as many Halloween parties as we possibly could in one night, and to see everyone and everything in the coolest, spooky places the southland had to offer. And believe me…this is exactly what we accomplished. Now that I think back about it I realize what an astounding feat we pulled off.
We went to four Halloween parties in Laguna Beach before we hit Corona Del Mar, Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, Palos Verdes, Hermosa Beach, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Ventura, Summerland, Montecito, and Santa Barbara. That night we went to 36 separate Halloween parties.
The most outrageous costumes were in Laguna Beach, the most outrageous parties were in the Hollywood Hills (naturally), with the most perverse action in Palos Verdes, the most sedate and over hyped being in Malibu, and the grandest and biggest of all being held in the elegant 1920’s clubhouse of the Santa Barbara Country Club in Montecito. It was a true spooky marathon, and while it’s stunning we could even accomplish what we did our successful pilgrimage had much to do with the simple fact that we were only 20 something years old, had every conceivable natural stimulant on hand, and that our shiny new German cars hauled ass (plus traffic wasn’t half as bad back then).
Things changed dramatically when we slid into the 1980’s, a time in my life when it seemed I had plenty of spare cash and had surely lost a significant portion of my innocence. Everybody remembers the 1980's as a decade of ridiculous decadence and silly haircuts, and we were no exception to the rule.
I spent a good many years living in the Hawaiian Islands and commuting backing a fourth to the West Coast (and to other points around the globe).Our 80's Halloween parties in Hawaii defined extravagant, and were usually held in outrageous locations. One memorable year we teamed up with an obscenely wealthy Iranian who lived next door to Ferdinand Marcos in Hawaii Kai and rented Oahu’s Castle Park, the Hawaiian equivalent of Disneyland, and threw a private Halloween party for 5000 people.
We had a blast converting the theme park into a haunted village, and everyone at the party wore an outrageous costume. We wouldn’t let you in without one (a favorite that year was the 16 foot tall Frankenstein Monster…some talented guy on stilts). The Castle Park Party had to rank as the largest private Halloween party I’ve ever thrown, or gone to. Word got out, but we didn’t care. People flew in from every corner of the islands (& the Mainland) for this one. It turned into the BIG EVENT of the decade, as far as parties in Hawaii went. Thank Allah for our Mozzie friend, whose name I can’t seem to recall, and whose bags of oil money covered the 180K we blew on the bash, (a tidy sum in 1983 dollars).
Two years later we held our Hawaiian Halloween party in a far more exclusive, exotic local -- a premier 2000 acre botanical Garden set in the mysterious and ancient Waimea Canyon on the North Shore of Oahu. The valley is legendary for being haunted by the spirits of ancient Kahunas and sacrificed maidens. It’s also the location of a unique restaurant and nightclub called The Proud Peacock, a stunning solid wood villa set snug in a steep jungle clad canyon about a half mile back from Waimea Bay’s white sand beach.
Here on five acres of putting green smooth emerald lawns spread out under huge sheltering Banyan trees we threw a Halloween soirée in that villa that stands as contender for the title of 'Close To The Best Hawaiian Costume Party of All Time'.
The gem-like peacocks seemed to be everywhere that night, and if you're even remotely familiar with these birds you know that when they scream it sounds like someone being murdered. Their presence only added to the bizarre ambiance of this awesomely beautiful place.
In what was an ongoing annual Halloween tradition, the evenings host was globe-trotting surfing impresario Randy Rarick. Already famous for a hosting a continuous decade of stellar Halloween parties, Randy was the last one to refuse our significant contributions to the evenings festivities, which included coughing up 100 magnums of chilled Dom Perignon champagne, and the handing out of rare imported hand wrapped diplomatic quality party favors to a significant portion of the guests (kudos to the Ministry of Agriculture in Cuzco, and the accommodating Consulate).
The setting was opulent, yet remote, serene and spooky, spacious, verdant, lush, and strangely illuminated. At the time the 2000 acre valley property was a privately owned botanical garden and Hawaiian cultural center, the grounds and gardens subtly lit with hundreds of colored outdoor spotlights. The property came complete with a 100 foot high roaring waterfall, and with smooth paved pathways with cushy golf carts to meander through the astounding tropical gardens.
There was an authentic ancient stone Village of the Lost Tribe, and 500 feet above, on the ridge of the canyon, sat the taboo Hieau, the graveyard of the ruling Kahunas, and scene of alleged virgin sacrifices. The surf at the beach was a thundering twenty feet that night. Could the setting be any more…impossibly perfect?
By special request a planeload of professional Hollywood makeup artists flew in from Studio City with trunk loads of paint and costume props & accessories. The entire party staff and a number of guests and friends got the full makeover treatment, and the effect was shocking. These were scary faces of another magnitude, detailed, haunting, and genuinely frightening.
Throw in gourmet catering, a suprise performance by a more than famous English rock band (album;Undercover), 400 madcap revelers in first class costumes and a full Hawaiian moon and you have all the elements required to insure a high probability of quirky romance and legendary hi-jinks.I can instantly recall a vision of dozens of couples strolling crisscross over the expansive moonlit lawns, their ghostly pale blue forms flickering in and out of the sheltering banyan trees shadows in a slow tropical cotillion.
One of the evening's many show stoppers was arrival of a Brazilian beauty queen clad as a nearly naked Cleopatra parading into the thick of the action while being carried on a golden palanquin by six refrigerator sized Samoan locals and a half dozen flower tossing dancing goddesses, all in matching Egyptian regalia. It’s fairly safe to say this is a sight not often seen in the South Pacific. As would be expected, there was dancing well into the dawn, and plenty of Kahmana Wanna Leia going on it the Gardenia beds.
Later that same decade I’d returned to California, and located a close friend who at the time was the Captain and proud owner of a 140 foot long solid teak 1938 luxury sailing yacht. Kept in absolutely mint condition the Francis Hershoff schooner Mistral was berthed in the exclusive Mainers Mile district of Newport Beach.
The captain and I agreed on a course for a Halloween cruise, and the elegant sailboat figured prominently in our plans. It was decided we’d carefully motor over to a nearby bay front restaurant and nightclub name of Harpoon Henry's. At the time this rockin’ local hotspot was owned by the former karate champion and bad action movie star Chuck Norris. My costume that night was a natural; a Pirate Captain of the Caribbean. Only fitting given our manner of transportation, don’t you think?
We gently slid the long smooth sailboat into the tight slip in front of the club, tied up, and made our way up the gangway for a wild night of live music, drinking, and shameless flirting. During the hours we were inside the party a minus winter tide had dropped the sea level substantially, and with it the boat sat lower and lower in front of the restaurant, causing the gangway leading to the Mistral to adopt an angle of decent resembling that of a Himalayan crevasse.All night long I'd been chasing after an astounding looking waif beautifully dressed as a mermaid.
Finally the Captain and I corralled the mermaid and her voluptuous naughty nurse sidekick and convinced them to venture down to the yacht for a bit of midnight bubbly. We were all well in our cups, and apparently the mermaid managed to trip over her fish tail on the way down the steep ramp. Well, before you could say Boo she’d slid a good twenty feet down the ramp, bounced cleanly off the side of the dock, and fell with a loud splash and a scream directly into the bay.
Swashbuckler that I am I immediately leapt to her rescue, and despite my Rum soaked condition raced down the ramp in a flash and with some genuine effort fished her soggy floundering form out of the 50 degree water. Among the many recollections I have of Halloween parties past there always stands out that mental snapshot of me dressed in my pirate’s finest, pulling the sputtering waterlogged mermaid out of the ocean and carrying her, now with real seaweed in her hair, onto the aft deck of a classic antique sailboat.
Having that image burned into my brain; Pirate Saving The Mermaid, is exactly the sort of bizarre, improbable, and fantastic scene that's the central attraction, my real motivation, for going to Halloween parties at all... hoping that some serendipitous goof like this could or would in fact happen.
And now, of course, it matters little that I managed to get the mermaid out of her brine soaked tail and proceeded to take her on a soggy midnight sail to a pirate's paradise. That silly, theatrical rum soaked conquest is hardly half as remarkable a treasure as is the indelible image of The Laughing Buccaneer Captain hoisting a wiggling, slippery, and very sexy mermaid aboard a classic wooden sailing ship.
And here comes yet another Halloween, and I find myself mentally sorting which (Hollywood?) spookfest to attend. I’ve arrived at a point where I’m beginning to ask myself if I'm up for this...again? At my ‘advanced’ age how could it possibly be as much fun? Now that we’re well into a new millennium and I have over 30 years of Halloween parties under my ever expanding belt will I have to finally admit to having simmered down considerably? Lord I hope not!
Then here comes that flood of fond memories...turning up as The Royal Court Jester, and with a bit of ‘magic’ (& helped by a long jesters wand with tiny bells and tickling feathers) I could reach into the giggling throng and tickle the backs of beautiful women’s ankles from a few feet away, undetected in the crowded crush and causing a riot.
I'd often score millions in 'Play Money' at the toy section of a local supermarket and later that night laugh my ass off watching the absurd 'double takes' and outright head bumping accidents after I'd clandestinely littered the party's darkened dance floors with crumpled wads of bogus currency. A Joker to the Bitter end...
Then there are my memories of being fully made over by a top Hollywood movie makeup artist, and donning a seven foot tall costume creation he christened “The Bride of Death”. Shrouded in a beautiful antique white lace wedding gown with a mask cast from a real human skull and sporting a pearl studded veil as a crown I could look through black glowing eyes and work the jaw. It was such an authentically frightening visage it gave heart palpitations to anyone seeing me come around a dark corner or who swung open a door to let me in. Being this scary this was beyond fun, and I loved working every gasp I could get!
And so comes again the central question; what will I be this year? A swami, a pirate, Henry VIII, Dracula? Anything with turbans is definitely out. I'm too tall to do Kim Jong Ill, the scariest character around. Whatever I decide it won’t exactly be a last-minute thing, but with my busy working life it'll be darn close. After all these years of joining the masquerade, it seems a tradition that I can hardly tolerate to miss. Perhapd the Pirate Captian. That is sooo me!
Certainly I don't go for the same reasons I used to, and I don't/can't get overtly stoned anymore. My private joy will probably be the same as it’s always been... relishing the freedom to act like someone I’m not, (or was in a previous incarnation) without anyone knowing who I really am, and without any excuses required, at least if only for this one night of the year.
Nowadays I find myself far more enchanted by the happily morbid folk traditions of the Noche de Muerto, the Mexican ‘Night Of The Dead’ festival, and can't help but laugh at the campy monster movies of my childhood. How could I have ever thought ‘The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman’ was seriously scary? No, I’ll do it simply for the pageantry, and for the chance to see everyone at their best and worst behavior.
One of the most outrageous Hollywood moments I’ve ever seen wasn’t an actual party, but happened well after the clubs had closed. I had left an amazing bash at the House of Blues Foundation Room on Sunset Strip and wandered/wobbled down to the International House of Pancakes on Santa Monica Blvd., ground zero in that gayest of gay zones in the heart of West Hollywood (pink shirts aside, I’m actually a straight cat). I just wanted to grab something to eat, and this was the closest place that was open for sure.
I was certainly on Auto-pilot, as tipsy as a lopsided pumpkin, with my stomach leading the charge. Sure, the IHOP is open 24/7, but I soon discovered that tonight wasn’t your usual midnight rooti-tooti fresh & fruiti crowd. So why I was so surprised? Let's just say I've never had such a blast ordering a patty melt, a chocolate shake, and some fries.
I'm positive every flaming drag queen and gay bizarro bondage alien in West Hollywood had descended on this ridiculously over lit greasy spoon to squeeze a last few hours of campy behavior out of the wee hours of the night. It was truly a sight to behold. I've never done Halloween in Key West, but I've been to Mardi Gras in Brazil and Trinidad, and believe me, I know real theatrics. I’ve since come to think of that early morning snack at the West Hollywood International House of Pancakes as being about as outrageous as anything I've ever witnessed.
I’ve no idea how many more years I’ll be able to keep up this sort behavior, and whenever Halloween rolls around I begin to question my sanity, but for now you’ll probably see moi out there with the best of them…but thank God, you won't be able to recognize me. I still hold the belief that life is great if you're weak enough to fully enjoy it.
Glance around...I'll be the oddball with the ridiculous grin on his face standing off to the sidelines dressed like Louis the Fourteenth or Zorro, checking everything out and grabbing what giggles come my way. Wear your best costume and I’ll be happy to give you a complement.
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