A R.I.P-roaring nightmare
Horror's freaks, icons, and legends overrun Tim Yap's Halloween party
By AA Patawaran
At A Glance
- The propensity to evil, most welcome, walks through the gates with its chin up as Alex Delarge and his droogs, Patrick Bateman in his blood splatter-proof raincoat, and the Menendez brothers in '80s preppy sweaters.
It can be liberating to not be good, to not be right, to not be proper, to not be virtuous. But the consequences would be disastrous.
So every year, we have Halloween, the nightmare before Christmas when even Santa Claus takes a break from making a list and checking it twice.
Tim Yap takes over, egging us to get as naughty as we can be, this year as our darkest, naughtiest, most evil (looking) “Freak, Icon, or Legend” at a phantasmagorical party themed “Cirque,” held on Oct. 30 at the Space at One Ayala.
Not to worry, if you are overly uptight and righteous, it was all in the wicked spirit of R.I.P-roaring fun. This year, the unholy dress code, unlike in the past two years, wasn’t confined to Philippine mythology, a big part of Tim’s personal advocacy of pushing all things Pinoy to the front of pop culture.
But last week I came as Alex Delarge, poster boy of youth violence in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. In my arm, as I walked in, was Michelline Syjuco in her own interpretation of Lady Gaga’s iconic Mirror Ball Dress, which won her a trip, courtesy of Philippine Airlines, for best costume.
With us were Sean Syjuco as Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, and Elian Adrada as Harry Potter after he was beaten up by Draco Malfoy at the Yule Ball in the Goblet of Fire. At the party, I ran into LA Aguinaldo as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, Bret Eastman Ellis’ yuppie serial killer, Milka Romero as Audrey Hepburn risen from the dead, Apples Aberin as Frida Kahlo, Niccolo Cosme as Charlie Chaplin in drag, Janeena Chan as a mermaid, and Halloween King Tim as Kokey, the extra-terrestrial in the eponymously titled 1990s science fiction film—He wore the original mask used in the movie!
It was a nightmare come true, the one night this year when the darkness in each of us was given permission to express itself, when eyeballs, and rotting wounds, festering hate, and brains oozing out of cracked skulls were welcome, even given a prize for being out there in the open.
What’s Halloween going to be like next year? I think I know, but I won’t twist and tell.
