The sixth not-exactly-annual reincarnation of the Famous Dead Person's Ball had new co-hosts and a new location. Our wonderful friends, Scott and Kelly, offered us the use of their spacious home in North San Jose, and the four of us decorated it to the hilt. The crowd was large but managed to keep from bleeding all over the place. Alas, we have no pictures from this party!!! Below is a summary that Trystan wrote a few days afterwards. The Invitation: Artwork by Edward Gorey. You can also read the invitation text. Summary: The sixth not quite annual Famous Dead Person's Ball went off without a hitch, and we had some truly faboo costumes! We had everyone who was anyone there -- Rat Packers Frank Sinatra & Dean Martin, Morgana Le Fay, Divine, Feudalism, Bob Marley, God and Nietzsche (what a great couple!), Mogul Emperor Akbar, Houdini, Patsy Cline, a classic Star Trek red shirt, Anais Nin, Spock, Sam Kinison, that guy from Blind Melon, Richard the Lionhearted, Liberace, Brian of Nazareth, Dorothy Parker, etc., etc., etc. Mad props to Andy, who came as a Heaven's Gate suicide victim -- he had all the details right, down to the $5 in quarters in his pocket. We decorated the night before, which went really well. The day of the party, I still had way too much to do. Bake the coffin cake, make the sign for the door, print the guestbook pages, and get my own costume together. Yes, the crazy ol' Miss Havisham wedding dress did get done and I wore it and I looked ridiculous. Remind me never to wear white at my own wedding! Oh, and right as we were packing up the car with the third load of props for the party, it started to rain!!! And we'd been saying it never rains on Halloween night. We thought we'd have to scrap the entire outdoor setup because the styrofoam tombstones would get soggy and all the electronics (lights, fog machine, tape player) would short out. Luckily, the sprinkles stopped at about 5pm, so the outdoor scene was saved. There were minor scares when the cake started falling apart in the car, and when Thomas thought he'd burned his fingers with the dry ice. But our co-hosts, Scott and Kelly, and their faithful friend, Bruce, all pitched in, and everything went swimmingly as the guests started arriving. The dry ice looked fantastic pouring over the purple-velvet draped loft, but damn, we need to get a dry ice machine because adding hot water all the time is a bother! Thankfully, this year there was no staining of carpets with fake blood or black cake icing. I had a great time, and it sure seemed like everyone else did too. There was plenty of food and tons of drink (you know you're not in college anymore when people are bringing microbrews and cabernet when the invite says BYOB ;-), and Thomas' four-hour mix tape was very well-received, as always. We played Nightmare Before Christmas and The Hunger on the TV in the background, and even got in a few Edward Gorey and Tim Burton readings. And, hey, I wasn't the only one doing the Time Warp! A diehard dozen or so people stayed on till past 3am, playing Celebrity (a really fun party game) and eating up the vodka-spiked jello brains. We got back home around 4am, slept till noon, then went back to clean up and pack all our decorations back into our flat. Ah, dreams of next year's Famous Dead Person's Ball.... maybe we'll rent a hall and sell tickets.... oh, but we've been saying that for three years now....