When I was a missionary in Scotland, Halloween fell on a Sunday, and I was one of the sacrament meeting speakers. They let me choose my own topic--probably a bad move. I gave a talk on how Halloween is like the gospel, because both allow people to be something better than they could be on their own (one involves wearing a costume, the other involves the grace of God--I can't remember which is which). The talk was not good, because I didn't have time to fully develop the idea. Maybe someday.
I was reminded of this incident this week while attending BYU's opera, "Die Fledermaus". At best, I'm a casual fan of the opera, but one of my neighbors is the lead, and another neighbor is in the orchestra, so I went to support them and wound up being thoroughly entertained. If you haven't been to see it already, you're running out of time.
I particularly enjoyed one character, because in the first half he looks like Freddie Mercury (perhaps the most operatic rock star of all time), and at the end he wears a bat costume, and I love Batman. Thankfully, this bat costume had no rubber nipples.
During intermission, the girl sitting closest to me (even though I bought my ticket with a group of friends, I somehow wound up with an empty seat on one side and two on the other--what a waste of a piece of gum!) recognized me as a member of Laugh Out Loud. It's happened before, but it's always kind of a strange situation. Of course, it wouldn't have happened had I been wearing my Batman costume from Halloween 2003.
Yes, I prefer the old school, Adam West Batman, at least when it comes to dressing up. It's much cheerier than the modern black Batsuit, plus when my mom bugs me about getting married, I can pull out the classic line from the '60s TV show: "A wife, no matter how beauteous or affectionate, would severely impair my crime fighting."
It's also great when you have superfriends, like I did that year.
Of course, there are a few differences between myself and the "real" Batman (in the picture you can see that two of the biggest are a lack of devotion to physical fitness and the fact that my utility belt holds no cool gadgets), which allowed my rivals to nail me with a pie in the face on my next birthday, making me look more like one of the all-time great supervillains, Skeletor.
So for the next Halloween I was a little more realistic, and went as "everyman" superhero Matt Foley.
Hopefully it's clear by now that I love Halloween. When you're wearing a costume, it's like you take on a whole new personality, and you lose a lot of your self-consciousness. I get a similar feeling when I put on the LOL "costume" and perform on stage. We get to do and say things on stage that we would be much less comfortable doing in a real-life situation. And we're taking that to a whole new level on Halloween next week.
That's right--we, LOL, your comedy superheroes, will perform our first-ever Halloween show. All players will be in costume. I'm still deciding between two, one of which is a pretty heroic guy whose mustache puts even Freddie Mercury's to shame! [I actually went as Taylor Hicks that year.] There are no presale tickets available, but we've used our superpowers to lower prices at the door to $2 (just $1 if you're in a costume)! Doors open at 7:30, show starts at 8:00, and we'll have you on your way early enough that you can still do some trick-or-treating. With all of the aspiring heroes in the room, the show's guaranteed to be super!
And just in case it's not, we'll bring a bunch of candy to throw at you. That always works.
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