Going through my draft blog posts, I came across an unpublished piece from my former life!
If you haven’t been, you’re missing out—with the decline of Toronto’s Entertainment District and the condo set looking for safe places to get their party on, the Royal Ontario Museum’s Friday Night Live (or FNLROM) has become an amazing addition to Toronto’s nightlife!
On Fridays from May 2 through June 27, from 7-11:45 PM, you can dance, explore and wander through the Museum until close—galleries are even open ’til 11 PM!
So let’s take a trip back to Spring 2012, when the ROM first started FNLROM and I discovered that the museum offered more than just a bunch of old bones!
Scorpion posing with some ladies—Scorpion… WINS!!!
It was less than a day to the SauzaSin party and I was screwed.
There was a lesson to be learned here—never buy anything for a costume that’s inflatable!
Ghostbusted
I’d mentioned earlier that Halloween’s usually a bit of a fail for me with costumes—I seriously don’t know how anyone in this city manages to find the time to work on awesome costumes—I commend those of you who do!
I’d stopped in at some It’s My Party discount store to pick up a costume, winding up with a Ghostbusters outfit with an inflatable proton pack, thinking it would be a safe and recognizable costume choice.
Recognizable as a hot mess, maybe!
It wasn’t until the night before the party where I decided to check the costume out (dumb move, right?), only to discover that the proton pack had a huge hole in it!
Problem. After getting work out of the way for the day, I was left with less than 2 hours until the party, and was without a costume—I try to never half-ass anything, so I needed to find something that would make a good impression on the crowd.
And at It’s My Party, I saw it. The costume that would set the tone for the rest of my night…
Y’all Gon’ Make Me Go All Out—Up in Here, Up in Here!!!
Note: No pockets meant no camera, though, so I’m relying on other people’s photos (you down with O.P.P.?!) to tell this story right.
There is no easier way to put this—you don’t know what you missed that night if you weren’t there.
Might sound obvious, but it’s true—PartyPeopleTOknows how to throw down with their parties and there’s no way that Thursday was an exception. These guys just outdo themselves with each new party they throw!
Held at the Stirling Room in Toronto’s Distillery District, SauzaSin was a fine combination of scintillating sounds, savoury Sauza and sumptuous sin! Greeted at the door by Meg herself (the head of this whole PartyPeopleTO deal) in a stunning She-Ra costume, she and the door crew would make sure that we got our drink tickets, welcome shot and that we were good and ready for the night!
Seriously, it was crazy in there with the amount of effort people put into their costumes! Dressed as Mortal Kombat’s Scorpion, I spent the night meeting new people and making sure to show my martial arts prowess (read: flailing) with lots of battle stances and high kicks!
It’s all about staying in character, man!
But let me tell you this—getting your groove on in a full bodysuit and mask? Crazy fun! Not my brightest moment logistically, but I was definitely enjoying myself!
Our drink tickets were good for trying two different drinks—the Witch’s Cauldron and the Diablo’s Curse. People will tell you different, but I thought the odd green-coloured Witch’s Cauldron was the better bet!
But this was all a prelude to who rocked the best costume….
“Scorpion, a priest and a construction worker walk into a bar…” — Nate Kogan
I definitely have to thank everyone at the party for voting me for Best Male Costume! Though my original choice didn’t work out, I wanted to make sure that I still brought the heat with whatever I chose, and it looks like the crowd agreed with me!
Sarah couldn’t believe her ears when I told her that we’d managed to win the trip—we’d been hoping to go to Vegas sometime soon anyway (to coincide with a hopeful trip to Bloggers in Sin City in May), but this was totally some very delicious Sauza icing on the cake!
I have to thank PartyPeopleTO and PRAXIS PR for the awesome party they put together and the amazing opportunity for Sarah and I to explore Las Vegas together! I really look forward to seeing what comes next!
As any good party of Tweeples, though, PartyPeopleTO made sure that no one would be leaving empty-handed and that the Sauza Sin shots would keep flowing well after the end of the party:
And one for the road….
You can catch more of PartyPeopleTO’s photos from the party in their Facebook album.
Great people, great venue, amazing times. If you managed to score an invite — what’s your excuse for missing out???
Until next time…
Tryin’ to outdo me and my costume??? #CmonSon
Tell your wife, tell your kids, tell your husbands:
It’s the time of the year where the crazy outfits come out, and dentists make a killing. Sure, I could always go to a store and buy a Batman costume or something, but this is only an indicator of a pattern that haunts me every year:
I have an amazing idea for a Halloween costume. Past examples include Link from the Legend of Zelda series, King Bowser Koopa from the Super Mario Bros. series or a dark Medieval knight clad in some bad-ass armour. I’d win every costume competition and have every head in the room to see how awesome I looked!
I realize that somehow it’s already late September or early October and there’s no way I’ll be able to put an awesome Halloween costume together in time.
Get through Halloween with some mediocre store-bought costume, vowing that I’ll have something way more awesome next year.
Spend the year doing everything but sort out a wicked costume idea.
Repeat from Step 1.
So while this year saw no deviation from my annual ritual (as Justin would say, “Stay free to lofty ambitions”), there is, fortunately, no shortage of Halloween parties that’ll have me anyway.
Pro Tip: It’s equally as important to do well in FRONT of the camera as you do BEHIND it.
I’ve been taking photos for the better part of a decade but it was always just a hobby that I dabbled in, taking photos of whatever struck my fancy.
But do something long enough, and your approach to it begins to change!
The more photos I took, the better the composition. The better the attention to detail. The better the equipment.
So, PartyPeopleTO marked my first foray into taking a hobby and starting to make it a profession!
Held the same night as Anita Chauhan’s birthday bash and a system-wide TTC stoppage, it was one of the craziest nights of the year so far!
Bottle service, wicked tunes and branded stickers abounded, setting PartyPeopleTO’s party within the party apart from the other club-goers! (Especially when a brawl broke out somewhere around 1:40 in the morning!)
My advice? The next time a PartyPeopleTO event is going down, make sure you sign up because Meg Button and her crew know how to throw down!!!
Well, DoomzDay turned out to be doomsday… for one of us.
I’m pretty sure it was the point where I wound up ejecting the contents of my stomach all over a table where I realised—”Hey! This night did not go as I’d planned it!”
sigh, You’d think that by 29 you’d learn how to tell people to shut the heck up when they offer you shots, but noooo.
Anyway, it was a good party overall—despite what many may think, I do happen to remember much of went down last night, and for the most part what I recall is having a lot of friends around as I celebrated another birthday. Other than how it ended, I appreciate how many people came out and hope that everyone had a good time.
