This Halloween, I got a clue early and bought my ticket for the Zombie Ball. I’d heard about it last year, but had gone out of town during my favorite celebration. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise since this year’s Zombie Ball was held in my new favorite venue, the Moody Theatre.
As par for the course with me, I attended this event by myself, but that did not stop me from having a good time…and posing with one of the most impressively costumed guys there. He reminded me of Darth Maul, but definitely devilish whoever he was supposed to be.
As a matter of fact, most of the crowd took pains to be “someone” for Halloween with just a few of us generic zombies. After seeing the caliber of costumes, I’m either going to start making my costume in the summer or save myself the grief and rent a costume. I usually take more pride in making my own, but seeing how Halloween kind of snuck up on me due to all the other activities I got going on, I’m losing my costume-making mojo.
Aside from costume watching, I enjoyed listening to the bands although I’d never heard of any of them before. As a matter of fact, the only entertainers I’d heard of was Brass Ovaries, the professional pole dancing group. Once upon a time, I’d wanted to try out pole dancing classes, but none of my friends would check it out with me. Damn social stigmas!
I was pleasantly surprised to see that a troupe of burlesque dances were on the docket and as one woman commented in the women’s room, they weren’t all a size zero! I was impressed that all the women in that group, who all ranged in different body sizes and shapes were all brave enough to bare all down to their nipple pasties.
One burlesque performance, if I can call it that, involved a guy dressed as the devil on stilts who carried a bouquet of baby dolls parading through the crowd to the stage and several muscle bound men carried a coffin on stage. A vampiress popped out onto the stage from the coffin and another woman appeared from behind a tombstone. At first there was some little cat and mouse dancing between the women. Then it looked like a battle between them. And just when I thought, “I bet those two women are going to start making out,” they did.
In between bands, there were a few aerial dancers, who varied in skill and entertainment level. I’ve seen aerial dancers before and was somewhat disappointed that all the performances were solo. That interaction between the performers was missing for me. At least they varied the medium: rope, hoop and cloth.
I must admit, I could have done without the stripper, who performed before the headlining band, the Bright Light Social Hour. Granted, she was a renown pole dancer and I could clearly see her skill level…I just didn’t need to see everything else! At least in burlesque, there’s a little more tease and entertainment. I got up to use the bathroom when the stripper, wearing nothing more than a love cord around her waist and a provocative smile, hopped off the pole and strode over into a portable glass bowl to bath for the audience.
That’s when I discovered that some drunk wench and broken one of the toilet seats in the women’s room. I have no idea what said beast had done to break a toilet seat clear off its base, but I felt a pang of fear that the action of some bitch would jeopardize the future of Zombie Ball being hosted at such a wonderful venue. The Moody Theatre is less than a year old and I’d hate for it to fall so quickly into disrepair. I reported it to one of the employees after the show was over around 2 am.
Certainly the cherry on top of the evening was discovering that I did not have to pay for my parking! Paid parking alone is usually enough to stop me from going downtown. Yet, I bit the bullet and parked at the Austin Convention Center parking deck since it was only a few blocks away. I’m sure that it was a Halloween special, but in the future, it is good to know about that parking deck whenever I’m going to a concert at the Moody Theatre.
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