Pretenders in Paradise

October 27, 2006

Plutonians




The largest and most extravagant of the many costume competitions held in conjunction with Fantasy Fest is the Pretenders in Paradise competition held each year for the past 28 years on the beach at the Pier House Resort. Each year costume creators from around the country enter to compete for over $17,000 in cash prizes. This year all those amazingly creative entrants were joined by a group of ragtag Plutonian refugees who captured neither the hearts nor minds (let alone prize money) of the judges, but who had an excellent evening indoctrinating the earthlings in the audience in the Plutonian way.





We had to sort of rush to get down to the Pier House, the rushing included basically creating my costume, since unlike Kathy…I was ill prepared to participate and ended up basically throwing a costume together in the short time between work and arrival at the Pier House. It actually came together fairly well and we made it with time to spare. There were a fairly large number of Plutonian participants, though far less than will be in the parade on Saturday. We had plenty of time to hang back stage which allowed us at once to watch the competitors as well as get loosened up with the strange earth beverages known as beer. There were many incredible entries, but I really felt we should have taken a prize in the amateur group category, we were clearly better than at least one of the award winners, oh well…it was still a great time.





The crowd downtown and traffic around the island seem to be increasing in a way that portends one of the busiest and biggest Fantasy Fests ever. After all the stress and postponement last year due to Hurricane Wilma…it will be nice to celebrate a return to abnormal. This evening, we are back at it, planning to march in the annual masquerade march and head downtown for the street fair and all the lunacy that entails.