A couple of times a week I do a circuit around Silverlake reservoir. While others run, I sort of half power walk/half amble, listening to whatever’s on my iPod and checking out the cute guys.
Usually it’s uneventful, most people are concentrating on cleaning up after their dogs or babies and so I weave in and out of the throng, smiling and nodding at those I feel deserve to be bathed in my goodness.
But not on Halloween. Oh no. These crazy Americans are bonkers for October 31st, so overnight life in LA becomes like the final act of Shaun of the Dead. Entire houses are covered in cobwebs, front lawns are strewn with tombstones and ghost and ghouls hang from porches.
Last Saturday, the reservoir hosted a charity ‘Zombiethon’, which meant that every time I turned a corner some white-powdered, blood-splattered, bandage-wearing moron in a numbered vest, lurched at me, dribbling, groaning and mumbling.
I’ve had boyfriends who did similar as a matter of course but this was hugely entertaining. I stopped to have a word with a ’sexy bride of Frankenstein’ who was taking a breather. She had blood dripping from her mouth and an axe in her head but she seemed happy enough and offered me a mini Twix.
A few minutes later I saw a tiny Pomeranian wearing a red and black Dracula cape. Cute doesn’t even begin to cover it.
The general rule of thumb for Halloween in Hollywood is that girls dress up as a ’sexy whatever’, meaning you wear a basque, stockings and suspenders and then maybe some token cat ears or fairy wings.
Bucking this trend I decided to go as one of my all time movie heroes, Annie Hall, which meant that last Saturday I was officially the most over-dressed woman in Hollywood, in white shirt, tie, waistcoat and hat.
My friend Julius, who was dressed as Sherlock Holmes, complete with deer-stalker and magnifying glass, insisted we attend the annual Hollywood Halloween Carnival on Santa Monica Boulevard. En route we saw Napoleon waiting for a bus, Pocahontas driving an SUV and more Harry Potters than you could shake a wand at.
It’s impossible to pick a favourite but there were a good handful of Zack Galifianakis’s from The Hangover (wearing fake babies in slings), as well as a hilarious ‘Balloon Boy‘ who was in the news here recently, and a giant foam Beaker from The Muppets.
Julius was irked when someone shouted, ‘Inspector Gadget!’ at him and during the evening I too wondered if anyone had a clue who I was. I realised that with some tweaking my shirt and tie could have been the basic ingredients of a ’sexy schoolgirl’ costume (no-one knows what St Trinians is over here), and I’d have slotted right in with the multitudes of ’sexy somethings’.
But I was committed to Annie and so I put on a brave smile as we drove up Laurel Canyon to hang out with the Brits in LA gang. They were co-hosting a party with some guys from CAA, at a huge house that had even huger bouncers at the door. Eileen was a ’sexy skeleton’ and Craig was one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, which was both scary and brilliant.
For the final stop of the night, we noodled our way even further up the canyon to a smaller house party which boasted a dance floor over-flowing with ’sexy pageant queens’, skeletons and one guy who had no eyes – just bloody holes - which was pretty disgusting to look at, so well done him.
Standing in line for the bathroom, eating some Skittles, a skinny nerd in thick rimmed glasses and a retro leather jacket came up to me and said, ‘Are you Annie Hall?’, to which I replied, ‘I sure am’.
He said, ‘I’m Woody Allen‘, and we high-fived each other for being at the same time intellectual, ironic and more importantly, not alone.
