Playing Dress Up

There were several occasions when it fell to me to be a costumed character for Image parties. I had long hair and a beard, so all I had to do was paint them white and put on a red suit to play Santa Claus, which I did several times. The best part of that was riding my motorcycle down Interstate 4 and watching the reactions of the other drivers as I zoomed by.

As I mentioned in the Oz posting, I wore a Cowardly Lion suit twice, once for a full-blown Wizard of Oz party, and once as a game operator in an Oz-themed carnival party. On the first occasion I was walking around among the guests, and the costume got damaged in vicious attacks by children whose parents stood there and laughed at how cute their kids were while they were ripping pieces of the costume off. Little bastards!

The best one, though, was an impromptu "change of plan" thing improvised by Al Caputo himself. See, Image International was a full service agency that would book the flights and hotel rooms and meeting spaces for your hundreds of attendees, arrange rental cars, provide transportation to and from the hotel and whatever attractions anybody wanted to visit, provide audio visual services, and even theme parties. Many many things went on in this regard of which we were not even a little bit aware, which became abundantly clear one late morning.

Al came back to the warehouse with a crazed look in his eye. "Guys! We need to clean the warehouse real good. Pull out all of our casino stuff." We had roulette tables, blackjack tables, craps tables, wheels of fortune, that kind of thing. "Hide the theme party sets and stuff and bring out all of our crates. We're having a "Warehouse Party" in here tonight, like a speakeasy kind of thing!" Alex Ostovich and I were conscripted to be gangsters, fitted into pinstripe suits up in the costume loft, and told we were working the party. We were sent to dinner early and told to be back at 5:00 in costume and ready. To our dismay, once we were dressed we were each issued a firearm loaded with blanks. Mine was a stainless steel sawed off double barrel shotgun. Both guns belonged to Al Caputo.

One of the high-ranking women up in the office, "Patty Paycheck," we called her, was married to a State Trooper, and we were told to go sit in his patrol car. He finally told us what was going on.
Image had arranged to transport two busloads of conventioneers to the "Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre" nearby - but it turned out that the place was unexpectedly closed that evening. Instead of just telling everybody what was up, we were going to hijack the buses and take them to the Image warehouse for a speakeasy casino party instead. Oh, is that all? No.

The warehouse was still being set up and decorated, the booze was being brought in, the bartenders and game dealers were being rounded up and organized - in short, our first job was to stall for time. Our State Trooper mentor suggested a brilliant plan for this. First, as the two buses neared the dinner theatre location, he came up behind them with his lights a-flashing. They immediately pulled over. I believe the drivers WERE told the plan in advance. Then Alex and I, brandishing our weapons, strolled in a liesurely fashion up to the doors of the buses and climbed aboard. Then, using our best improvisational skills, we went one by one to each passenger and demanded a one cent ransom. It was actually great fun, messing with this captive audience that had no clue what was up. And by the time we had collected a penny from each passenger, State Trooper Man got the "all clear" and led the way three blocks to the Image warehouse. When the buses were parked, Alex and I exited and each fired off a round from our guns, just to let the passengers know we were a "serious threat."

After that, it was just a matter of hanging around the party as part of the ambience. At 11:00 Al collected his guns and sent us back to the costume loft to change into our civvies and go home. Just another day in show biz.