Happy Halloween, Soprano-style

I forgot to post about Halloween! Let me start off by saying that Halloween is a huge deal in the Fantauzzo household. As we are a family that generally enjoys dressing up and scaring one another, Halloween is easily our favorite holiday. That being said, I take my Halloween costumes very seriously. This year I planned on being a Jersey Italian (think Sopranos). The week before the big day, I went shopping at some thrift stores in Brooklyn with Jonah to find the perfect combination of snug-fitting, distasteful, yet somehow not terribly cheap-looking clothes. After turning down an amazingly gaudy fur coat that I didn't feel like paying for, we hit the jackpot at Beacon's Closet.

The night of Brent's annual Halloween party was also the night that a few of us were going out to dinner downtown to celebrate Josh's birthday. I arrived at Yilin's apartment in time for her to curl and tease my hair. We got it up to a nice, respectable height and then sprayed the hell out of it. When Josh got home we headed downtown, me in full costume and the rest of them dressed as normal. We got some strange looks on the subway and on the street, but it was fine because I was with other people. Now let's jump ahead to when I had to take the subway up to Harlem by myself and walk five long blocks to Brent's apartment after 10pm. It felt like everyone was staring at me on the train, every man under 50 years old was shouting at me and I think at one point some people were following me in the subway station. My friend Rockey had to come meet me because I was afraid to walk the rest of the way alone. Note to self: do not dress like a prostitute in an area where people might not realize it's a costume. Anyways, the party was a lot of fun. I think at least half of the people there incorrectly thought that I was dressed up like a certain higher-up of mine. Let's hope that rumor doesn't spread around the lab...