I Pee'ed on my Moustache

Halloween used to be about the candy. It used to be about the Sweet Tarts, the Snickers, the Gummy Bears, the M&Ms, the Reese's Pieces. It used to be about eggs and toilet paper and little cute girls in princess outfits. It used to be about something pure and noble. Damn it, it used to be about SOMETHING!

*taking a deep breath*

Sorry I get so worked about this. It's just that as you get older, the meaning of Halloween seems to get more and more lost. I mean, our Founding Fathers created Halloween so that Native Americans could ride reindeer and go to each house and look for colorful buried eggs. That innocent and patriotic spirit has been drowned in the painful cacophony of multinational corporate commercialism. Instead of it being about little kids living out their American dream, the holiday is now marketed toward adults who have money to spend on pre-packaged costumes, hideous orange undergarments, and lots and lots of beer. The very least that can be done, I say, is to put M&M's IN the Heineken. That would help. A little.

Halloween in Shanghai was not much more than a blur of this aforementioned yupplie-driven drive to drink and dance and debauche. That's OK when you're in a city like San Francisco, what with all the wonderful freaks and fracas to keep the wicked energy buzzing. The people in Shanghai, for whom the concept of dressing up in hideous and gawdy apparel is reserved for the daily work-day, Halloween is nothing to crow about. For us Americans, who remain firmly entrenched in the quest to make fools of ourselves and show off our insane amount of free time, this narrows the Halloween options down considerably.

I ended up dressing up as Super Mario from Super Mario Brothers. My partner in crime was someone named Tim, who was willing to go as Luigi. Earlier last week we met up with Paulina, who was hosting her own little Halloween shindig at her apartment, to go to the Shanghai fabric market and design and purchase our own costumes. At first I was a little taken aback. I asked her, "Wait, you mean people actually MAKE clothes?"

Paulina laughed. "Where do you think you get your clothes from silly, a magic fairy?"

I was quiet on the outside, but inside I was re-examining the existence of Gwynelda, the Magic Clothes Fairy that I had thought lived in my closet back home and created clothes with her magic wand. Damn, I was sheltered!

Anyway, I was standing with Tim at the tailors that were going to make our Mario and Luigi costumes, and as the gentleman was about to measure our heads for our hats, I heard one of the funniest things anyone has ever uttered in my presence: Tim turned to me and the girls we were with and said, "I have a really big head, so I hope the hat fits."

I spit out whatever I was eating and/or drinking at the time and looked incredulously at his puny head. It was all I could do to keep from laughing my head off...except my head doesn't even come off with the jaws of life. Of course, this non-argument was put to rest when the tailor measured Tim's head with one tape measure, and then had to fetch two tape measures to adequately measure mine.

"Are you sure you want a hat and not a boat-sail?" he asked.

I ended up taking the boat sail.

On the big night, we all started the evening at Paulina's Halloween bash. It was the first time meeting lots of new people, and my initial shyness eventually melted away into uncontrollable fever with each glass of Johnny Walker that I downed. I ended up jumping up and down, pretending to break bricks and throwing imaginary fireballs like the real Mario. I think it was funny for most people up until the point that I began lighting people's faux tails on fire with some matches. We ended up heading out to a few clubs that were hosting Halloween parties. I attraced a lot of attention on the dance floor at the second club we went to, and at first I was feeling pretty good about myself what with all these young girls trying to talk to me, until I found out that they all thought I was Italian.

And then Luigi came up to me, without his moustache. Apparently, he was so drunk that he let it drop into the toilet when he was using it and pee'ed all over it.

"Dude, I pee'ed on my moustache."

I looked at him, my saddened little brother Luigi, and I couldn't stand the thought of him so alone in this world without his moustache there to protect him. So I did the only thing an older, more rotund and mature brother would do.

I ripped off my own moustache, dropped it on the dance-floor, and pee'ed on it myself.

Now THAT, my friends, is Super Mario.

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween!