Never Ask if it's a Costume

“So what are you guys going as? Urban Outfitters models?”

That is the question I asked a group of girls. The answer apparently was that they weren’t going as anything, and that I am an idiot. This is when I learned that you never ask someone what he or she is going as unless it’s really obvious. In which case you probably don’t need to ask. It’s like how you never ask someone if they’re pregnant.

Also never go to a hipster indie party where you know nobody if you are going as Ke$ha. 

My friend went as the Black Swan (Natalie Portman)

I did her makeup. She wore a little black skirt and an American Apparel leotard. This movie hasn’t been released yet, but people accepted it when she said it. They nodded and smiled and said, “Ohhhh oh oh, okay cool cool.” But for my costume, I got a bunch of scathing looks. Everyone knows that in college most people dress as total skanks. “I’m a dirty cop!” “I’m a naughty nurse…” 

I simply went as the unbelievably sleazy/awful/fabulous Ke$ha.

I wore a sequin skirt, a bunch of necklaces, a long blonde wig, makeup across my face with stick-on rhinestones, a leopard fur coat and a metallic neon headband around my head. Now, it’s true I wore only a bra under the leopard thing, but my coat was clasped in the front so it mostly just showed my stomach. It wasn’t that bad in the context of a college Halloween. But I chose to go to a stupid party the Friday before Halloween. It was definitely a costume party. But there really were a lot of people not in costume. 

If they were in costume, they were usually costumes that were trying to be clever but really were just pretentious. I asked those girls what they were going as, and they said nothing but exchanged a bunch of looks, that was when I asked if they were going as UO models. Then one of them said, as I walked away, “You really shouldn’t just ask people…” 

But I mean come on, it’s not like I asked one of them if they were going as Fat Albert or anything. "Oh! Don't tell me...Rosie O'Donnell!"

Whatever. 

So I got a lot of “look at that girl…” and “is she wearing anything under that coat?” They were like a bunch of prudish old women, taking handkerchiefs to their trembling lips and exchanging whispers.

But the people who did get it, totally got it. These two fabulous guys called me “Kee-money-hah” all night, and totally understood the costume, and how awesome it was, and how annoying everyone else was by not getting it. But the unbelievable thing was that hardly ANYONE knew who Ke$ha was even when I said it. They all acted like I made it up. When I sang “Tik Tok” they still didn’t understand. So then the conversation would fall flat and I had just sung out loud in a costume no one understood.

So on Sunday when all of my friends and I went to Fell’s Point, a place in Baltimore, MD that just crawls with people in costumes and going from bar to bar (I just wandered around all night pretty much) I made the wise choice to write “TIK TOK” on my stomach. I knew not everyone would get it, but hopefully a few more people would. 

But somehow, I walked past someone whose reaction was—spoken to their friend—“Dick dock? What’s a dick dock?”

Lesson learned. Never, ever go as Ke$ha again, and never ask people what their costume is.

I did my boyfriend's zombie makeup.

Buzz Lightyear, OBVI

Doing the zombie makeup.

Eminem M&M

Nerd, Mad Men Secretary, Eminem M&M

I did excellent makeup on Greg.

ke$ha and captain america. Unstoppable.

Brad Pitt from Fight Club.

The Plus

The Plus of the Wii Fit Plus

It should be noted that when you continue to get one-star ratings, the music sounds as if it’s being played on a xylophone, and that it sounds like the love scene from a Lifetime movie (of which there are mostly the opposite). I just got two stars on “Soccer Heading” which is again, just a line-up of people aiming to hit you with not just soccer balls, but teddy bears and shoes and…panda heads. Apparently the heroic fanfare I get at two stars is for being an “amateur.”

Okay then there’s this one where you have to sit. Still. Sit still and watch a candle melt. The idea is that if you are focused, the flame will stay still. Otherwise it will shake. It may not come as a surprise to find that I was exceptionally “unbalanced” (one star) at this. My boyfriend Sean—here on out referred to simply as ‘Sean’ because I’m not trying to be all ‘may boyfreh’—sits down on the thing and gets ‘Champion’ (four stars) on his first try. The fanfare was overly exuberant. And let me just s ay that while he was on his way to getting this fanfare, the screen was black with only the candle and the light emitting from it, and then there are just footsteps. Just ghosts or something. Whatever they are, these unseen characters walk in, clear their throat—seemingly uncomfortably—and then they leave. Then this moth flutters around. But besides that, nothing much happens.

Sean is not doing quite as well on everything else Wii Balance Games have to offer. The lifetime music just played for him on the ski jump game (which makes him crouch and then extend his knees), and I heard him say, “Okay, I get it, I can do better.” Then he tries again, only gets 61 meters, and goes, “Oh come—are you serious?”

“I hate all these things,” he just muttered. 

And by the way, let’s talk about besides the balance games. No not the strength training, I’ve gone nowhere near that yet. Just when the little tiny sneaky-sounding voice tells you to ‘step on!’ to the board, and you do, it acts surprised by how incredibly fat you are, but like it’s trying to be polite—kind of an: “Oh...” 

I don’t know why. It’s not explained, nor clear.

He’s doing strength training now. Not interesting. I just know that the woman training him (don’t ask me why he selected the woman) just said “press down on the control panel to view me from the back” while she was on all fours. I’m just saying. 

Wii Are Not Fit, Plus We Look Idiotic

Wii Fit  Plus—A New & Improved Opportunity to Look Idiotic, and Have it Confirmed by a Mildly Snarky Balance Board and Hurtful Scoring.

    I’ll start with the fact that there is a balance game included that is based solely on flapping your arms to get from bulls eye to bulls eye. So not only do you have to flap your arms—wings—and lean from side to side, but you are provided with the sparkling opportunity to see that not only is it possible to fall off of a Wii Balance Board, but that it might actually strain your muscles. For me anyway. I have pipe-cleaner arms. This is not to say that they are attractively skinny, just that they can support just about as much weight as a pipe-cleaner.

Worse than all of this is the fact that a whispered “dammit!” involuntarily emitted from my gritted teeth when I didn’t land where I wanted to. I realized it was time to try another balance game within WF+. 

Yes, my ‘work-out’ is more about things like simulated snowball fights and less about ‘real exercise’ and ‘running.’

Onto the snowball fighting. This is the one where you get to stand in the shivering cold snowy environment so perfect for snowball fighting, without ever having to leave your room/apartment/dorm/house. Video games are providing me with the ski-lodge vs. slopes equivalent of exercise. 

With this snowball fighting, I get to stand in pretend-shivery-cold and basically get bullied. Not by kids or, yes, real people, but by Miis that vary in age from fat little Chinese kids in sunglasses to old, bearded white men that look like that fisherman guy. All of these pretend-people have ganged up on me, and left me to repeatedly lose consciousness from icy snowball hits to the middle of my face. This exercise, which awards me the loss of three calories or something, according to the aptly chosen piggy bank, allows me to feel insulted and even a little shamefully irritated by all of these people, young and old, who won’t stop trying to hurl sharp cold balls at my face. 

Best of all with these is that when you are abominable at the games, as I have been, it plays this dopey music that only emphasizes your imperfection in the Wii World. As your Mii drops to his or her knees in broken self-loathing and shakes their white-knuckled fists at the heavens, you get to listen to the type of music that usually indicates that Goofy is about to tumble down the ski slopes. 

When it rates you with one star—something that you get the feeling is sort of a grudging participation ribbon—it gives you a low-level adjective in keeping with the theme of the game. For example, this game called “Perfect Ten” or something unassuming like that. You have to do this little hip-bumping thing where you swivel your hips unattractively into the mushrooms on the screen in order to add the numbers on top of the ‘shrooms to equal ten. This taught me one thing: I’m still bad at math. Especially when negatives become involved. When I got a 1 star on this one, after a descending of dopey musical notes (the kind that simultaneously joins with a camera zooming in on a character who shrugs and makes that Debbie Downer face), it announced that I was ‘Abacus’ at this game. Fantastic. 

On this tilty-table thing, I got a one-star and was told I was, “Unbalanced.” I realize it is a balance game. But I think that’s still a little harsh. 

When you get two stars, it’s almost worse. You jump up in the air to victorious music, practically a look of rapture on your little Mii face. This is worse than dropping to your knees, a broken Mii, because…biicause…the fact that being just only marginally better gets such a heroic fanfare seems only insulting. It’s like the Sympathetic Smile Score. 

I’ll (possibly) get back to you on what happens when I know what happens for three and four stars.