Ghoul-O-Rama, a socially distant, outdoor “fun house from hell” art show, is one way to celebrate a Halloween that is all but canceled, and take your mind off the nail-biting election. Photo: @rub_ulad
Heyo BK and welcome to Anxiety City, population: everyone I know. Do you guys ever have that thing where you are walking on a bridge and you think to yourself “man, I really hope I don’t jump off this bridge right now, that would really suck,” or you have to fight an inexplicable urge to just throw your wallet out of a train window or stick gum in a stranger’s hair for no reason or something? Well, when I was voting yesterday at the Park Slope Y, I started legitimately panicking while in the booth that I would suddenly just freak out and vote for Trump for no reason. Just that normal conversation you have in your head that goes something like “OMG, what if I just suddenly blacked out and voted for Trump? Why on earth would I DO that though? PLEASE don’t do that, for the love of everything you care about in this world.” So, just a quick, illustrative example of how things are shipshape over here and mental health is totally under control!
In other stress inducements, the weather sucks, the end of daylight savings darkens our door this weekend, Halloween is basically canceled, apparently it now takes approximately 2 hours to park a car on the street in this town, and the COVID numbers are not looking good. As for what to do with yourself until we know the results of the election next week (or we don’t know! there’s always that fun possibility too!), may I humbly suggest not checking your email unless you want to spend an hour deleting desperate pleas for money from every pol in a tight race, not looking at Twitter unless you want to watch our president descend further into madness, and definitely NOT getting your hopes up about the holidays this year. Ugh.
Have you all watched the new Borat yet? If nothing else, it is good for a laugh and deep regret that we haven’t been calling him McDonald Trump this entire time—it’s perfect! Another way to kill a few hours? Make lasagna! And feel free to improvise—it’s pretty much impossible to screw up a dish that involves so much melted cheese. Sure, there’s no Halloween parade this year, but you can head to downtown Brooklyn to see a live outdoor performance of Thriller! by Jamel Gaines’ Creative Outlet, or to Bushwick to take part in Ghoul-O-Rama, an outdoor, socially-distant haunted house art show sponsored by Rubulad and Artery. Parklife is hosting a Halloween affair complete with a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and you can catch a double feature of Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tonight at the Queens Drive-In or, alternatively, Candyman on Saturday night at the Brooklyn Drive-In.
If you prefer to stay in and pound the fun-size Snickers bars that you ostensibly bought for trick-or-treaters, that’s fine too. Maybe curl up with an Agatha Christie book chosen specifically for you, or watch the Amazon Prime adaptation of What the Constitution Means to Me, or catch That Kindness: Nurses in their Own Words, the streaming play about frontline healthcare workers from the creator of The Vagina Monologues, which ends its run at BAM on Tuesday. Speaking of Tuesday, what are you all planning to do while the returns come in? If the answer is simply “drink heavily,” we’re on the same page, but if you’ve got a more constructive idea please let us know. In the meantime, one last final plug that I’m sure none of you need to hear: please VOTE if you haven’t already and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Let’s together turn the tide of 2020 terror and finally give ourselves something to celebrate next week. We all desperately need some good news right about now, don’t you think?
