A barber's Halloween.

Halloween, in my opinion, is the single greatest thing ever to be thought up. A celebration of costumes and candy, genius. This barber had a super night with various activities enjoyed and many costumes viewed. In honor of my time spent in Colombia, your's truly went as the biggest, richest, most famous and most evil drug lord ever to crawl the planet, Pablo Escobar. Most people don't seem to know who Pablo Escobar is, but that didn't matter, I still offered cocaine to everyone on the streets and in the clubs.

The night started after working all day at the barber shop. I was invited to go to the Avalanche game with a client and I accepted. Dressed as a Colombian man, I was accompanied by my client who dressed in this flight suit from his time in the Air Force. We were a great match, a bastard narco-terrorist, and a part of the team who hunted him down until his very timely assassination on a roof top all those years ago. To our dismay, there was not many people at the game who were in costume. No bother, the Avalanche dominated the game and ended up winning 5-1.

After the game, I wanted to see a friend at the bar where she tends to the needs of drinkers. This time, to our delight, there were many people in costume, as the bar was offering a $1000 prize for best costume. The prize translated into some of the best and most creative costumes I've ever seen. Above is part of the competition; somebody(perfectly)dressed as Bender from Futurama, and two Legomen. Never in my wildest dreams would I ever have thought up the Legoman costume. Made me want to pop their little Lego heads off.

The bar where this costume contest was is a piano bar. Between rounds of the contest, the band and piano players were jamming and I had the pleasure of hearing a live version of "The Devil Goes Down to Georgia". What this means is there was a fiddle player in the band. I was hypnotized with his playing! I have never seen anything like that, the speed and accuracy of the notes was mind-blowing and it actually brought tears of amazement to my eyes as my brain could not process what it was seeing at the rate it was happening. But bastard Colombian drug lords are not sentimental for long and we soon left the bar for a house party.
Now, Pablo Escobar was a super horrible person, causing terror in the lives of Colombians and many others for years. I could not glorify this. Naturally, I chose instead to glorify his assassination with a properly placed bullet hole in the side of my head, the exact spot where he was shot and promptly died. Great job Colombian Ejército. Thanks from all of us! My skin is still stained red from the fake blood, but fortunately for me all the rest washed off.

I have no photos of the house party, which is not important. What is important is that I have a photo of the single most amazing and creative costume I have ever seen. These two women have built a roller coaster seat, made fake legs in front so they could walk around beneath the seat, and appropriately styled their hair to look like they are riding a roller coaster and walked around all night acting like they were at the peak of the thrill. This is beyond genius, this is genuine Halloween commitment, obviously true lovers of all things Halloween. Congratulations roller coaster riders, you are the winners of the costume contest in my head. God bless you Halloween, you bring out the best.

Costumed trivia.

So Denver is a special place, mostly because of the hodge-podge of people that are in this city(not to mention this never-ending summer). What Denver lacks in many cosmopolitan aspects it makes up for in kookiness and downright awesomeness. I explain.
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Last night after getting off work at the barber shop, I decided it was time to deposit some of my earnings in the ATM. I make my way to the Wells Fargo ATM on Blake and 16th Street. I do my business and as I am about to depart for the late night ride home to Littleton I see four women sitting in what appeared to be zombie costumes and eating burritos from the Illegal Pete's that is across the street from the aforementioned ATM. As usual, curiosity got the best of me and I had to find out what was the deal with the costumes. I approached the group and inquire as to the occasion of the costumes. I am told by the lovely ladies that they occasionally get together in costumes, make their way to multiple locations in the city and play Trivial Pursuit in public. Being the month of Halloween, they had decided to do Spooky Pursuit, hence the zombie costumes. It was explained to me that the idea was sort of a "why not?" thing, to which I agreed, and done purely for the entertainment value, which ranks high. The ladies told me about another night aptly named Princess Pursuit due to the princess costumes worn that night. I was beginning to understand the sheer magnitude of awesomeness involved. Amongst the group was a baby girl also in costume, a tiny spider with sprayed purple hair, terribly, terribly cute. I was very impressed with the creativity of the idea and bid them a good night.
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The night really was young, and still warm enough that I did not fear a cold bike ride home yet. As I made my way towards the bike path, I realized how neat all of this really was, and thought myself an idiot to at least not have gotten a phone number from one of the gals for next time. I made my way around the block and arrived back at the bank, announced to the ladies I was genuinely interested in playing to which they promptly invited me to play a round. I saddled up right there on the sidewalk, removed my cycling shoes and helmet and was explained the rules. They play at one location until everybody has at least one chip, and if anyone gets three chips at any one location, they get to choose another player to blacken in a tooth, hillbilly style. This explained the blackened tooth that one player was sporting already. We rolled the dice and began the round.
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I quickly realized I was playing with people whom play on regular basis, and have all the normal habits of anyone whom plays Trivial Pursuit on a regular basis. Everything from, for example, if the questionee doesn't answer the question correctly, everyone else also wants a guess before the correct answer is read, to exclamations of "I was gonna say that!" once the answer is heard. I learned that only one country in the world claims it's official language as Japanese, that Professor Dumbldore has a scar on his knee, and that Marlboro cigarettes are named after a street in London. All valuable knowledge in the trivial world. The baby was staring at me through the first part of the round and after getting antsy in her mom's lap came to me with a squeal and a laugh and as soon as she sat down in my lap, looked up and me and gave me a big "Wow!", it made my week. She was probably amazed that I was the only one not in costume, unless you count cycling spandex with skull and bones leg warmers as a costume. Another woman of my same name was one of the group and as I scolded another player for not putting the used trivia card in the box correctly, I was informed that other Sara(no h for her)is also a card Nazi. We do not need the same questions repeated in the same game, Sarah and Sara will make sure of that.
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At one point the ladies mentioned they had eaten cupcakes earlier in the evening and I must have had a dreamy look in my eyes because they told me there was six more cupcakes available for feasting. I did a back flip of excitement and ate three homemade red velvet, frosting filled cupcakes. One of the ladies in the group is a master baker, I have met my new best friend. In the cupcake tin was also what were described as phalanges, basically giant stick pretzels surrounded with white chocolate in the form of bones. I helped myself to some fingers. The night was really coming together for me; really cool women in costumes, a cute baby that loves me, one of my favorite board games, cupcakes, candy, bahhhhhh! I was in heaven. I even got to witness the hilarity of a player receiving three chips, and the blackened tooth of another player that ensued.
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It was getting late, the baby was sleeping as was her mother, practically. After about two hours of play, we decided to call it a night. As new found friends, we exchanged all pertinent contact information, I thanked them for letting me crash the party and we bid farewell.
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I rode home five degrees cooler but fifteen times happier and awestruck at the randomness of life and the beautiful opportunities that present themselves to be either ignored or stormed like a castle. I have met four really great, and obviously creative women, all of whom have inspired and helped me in my personal pursuit to be more social. I cannot wait for the next Costumed Pursuit, because I will definitely be in appropriate gear this time. Look out Denver.
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