Happy Guy Fawkes Day, America

Like me, I’m sure many of you have been just counting down the days in anticipation to Guy Fawkes Day, which is observed tomorrow in England. For those heathens among us who use this holiday merely as an excuse to drink too much and light things on fire, may I remind you that tomorrow is the 400th anniversary of the day that Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters planned to blow up Parliament simply because they believed they were being persecuted by the Church of England. To commemorate this day, people all across England naturally celebrate with a big drunken hoopty-do of all things fire-related: fireworks, bonfires and a general lighting-on-fire of anything they can get their hot little British hands on. Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they? Fire = celebration.

Interesting. On Halloween last year in London, Better Dark Half and I (please note the introduction of new friend. I’ve been told using real names is so not blog-like…her short bio is at the end) and I asked what everyone would be dressing up as for Halloween. Silence, or shall I say… silent mockery. Use your best proper English accent for this: “What the fuck are you girls talking about? Dressing up is for CHILDREN, if that. You Americans and your silly holidays. You don’t know fuck all about celebrating” Ahhh yes, one of the main reasons I miss living and working in London: honest, verbal mockery. Seriously, you know exactly where you stand and I do so love them for that.

So fast forward a few days to people explaining to us what Guy Fawkes Day is. “It’s this day where people light fires ‘cause some nasty terroristic fucker tried to overthrow the Church o England.” So what happened to him? “Oh, he was hanged and then drawn and quartered. You girls wanna go to a good bonfire?”

You gotta hand it to them. To their point, Guy Fawkes Day is not some silly little day to be trifled with. But then, neither is Halloween if you think about it. Come on, people celebrating the blurring of the lines between the living and the dead. That’s some scary paganistic shit! But there’s just no halfway over there, nothing gets watered down. Let’s go set things on fire! Burn shit up! YEAHH!! Meanwhile, over here in America on our scary little holiday: Let’s go dress up as whores! Wear our push-up bras in public and carry milk jugs and call ourselves milkmaids! YEAAAHHHH!!!

So I was thinking. We still have time to hop on a flight and get there by tomorrow lunch time and share some of our fine Halloween traditions with them. I think they need lightening up just a smidge, don’t you? We can all go in costume! It’ll be FUN! Good times! They’ll LOVE US! Crazy V, you can go as Whore Condi Rice, Concha, you can go as Whore Maid or just come from your gig in your lingerie, Metrodad, if BossLady and the Peanut will allow you a couple of days away to serve your country, you can bring out the drunken priest threads which I’m sure would be a HUGE hit over there given the whole Roman Catholics being persecuted thing associated with the day. Dshaw, you can just show up in your yoga clothes drinking wine, Better Dark Half and I can go as fluffer and shark-with-laser-beams-attached-to-head and Jaime, you can just wear some trash bags and dance. Shopping Diva, you can come as Whore sweat pants-wearer. Janny, as pregnant Britney (bring Brazilian Kevin), Half Listening can dress up as a nursery worker and SteveO you can come as you are and just admire all the milkmaids. Macfisto, I know you want to relive your youth. You've got nothing better to do. Don't use those quadruplets as an excuse.

We’ll have a few pints, light some shit on fire, arm ourselves with the ways of Guy Fawkes Day and return triumphantly with some dark, new knowledge to share with our countrymen for NEXT October 31. Won’t all the kids trick-or-treating at our houses next year be surprised and delighted when the plastic pumpkins on our front porch blow up as they reach for candy??!

Who’s with me, people? The fish are with me! Who else is coming? Onward to London!

Meet Better Dark Half: My dear friend and non-lesbian advertising partner/wife for over a year. Cruelly torn apart by geography, she for her desire to live in NY and mine for SF, our reputation for death, religion and S&M in student ads follows us mercilessly through the advertising industry. Because we lived, worked, drank, traveled and pretty much did everything together 24/7 for 9 months, we still pop up in one another’s dreams like the Microsoft paper clip helper. Missing you, BDH. And yes, I’m doing the Jerry McGuire homage-to-the-screen kissing right now.