From Russia With Hamantashen

Happy Purim!
Tonight I went to Mar Gavriel's (ignore the haters in that comment thread) Megilla reading. It was in-sayn! Ma‘ariv went fine, and then I ran out to the batmobile room after Shemoneh ‘Esreih, and when I get back I get suddenly drafted to be gabbai and doublecheck The Mar's reading! Seemingly because I was one of the few people there familiar enough with the pronunciations he uses in order to tell what's a mistake and what's just funny-sounding.

The reading was fun, and I eventually got used to the hot overhead lights pointed at the bima. Mar Gavriel used a lot of entertaining megilla shtick (voices and sound effects), although I almost FOTBL (fell off the bima laughing) by the extreme neigh-sounding way he was cantillating the word sus (horse) whenever it appeared.

After the reading, we all (that's him, me, and a bunch of people you've probably heard of from his blog) went back to his place for food and Purim silliness. Once there, I finished putting on my costume, because I didn't want to freak people out in public.

Why would my costume freak people out?

For Purim night I dressed up as Антон Городецкий (Anton Gorod^yetskⁱy), the main character of the movie Ночной Дозор (Nochnoy Dozor = Night Watch). Btw, for those of you who don't read Cyrillic, the ch in Nochnoy is pronounced like in chomp, not Chanukka. Anyway, Anton is one of the Others (supernatural creatures), who are divided between Light (good) and Dark (evil). He's a vampire who works for the Night Watch — the Light organization that makes sure the Dark Others don't break the Treaty that exists between the factions.

Anton looks like this:
(riding the subway in Москва — Moscow)

Let's zoom in a little:
(he wears sunglasses inside at night because he's a vampire)

And here's a shot with one of his gloves:
(the red fingerless gloves are probably just to look badass)

He fights other vampires with an ultraviolet flashlight:
(and scares normal people on the subway)

During the course of the movie he gets a charm
that he has to wear around his neck in order to
protect him from the head of the Dark Others.
It looks like this:
(the chain-looking thing)


I wore black pants and boots, borrowed a hooded sweatshirt from an apartmentmate and wore a long black coat over it, bought red gloves and cut the fingers off of them, wore sunglasses [at night and inside], and made a neck charm out of paperclips. Oh and I was carrying around a flashlight that I shone in people's faces to make sure they're not vampires ;-) . And on the way home I reenacted that exact badass "I own the subway" pose on the 1 train.

Night Watch is an amazing modern-fantasy/horror/action movie that just happens to have been made in Russia. Don't fear the subtitles. Go out and see it (assuming you see movies at all)! There's only one very short and easily-avoided "not safe for frummies" scene with a woman covered in feathers and slime taking a bath.

Most of the pictures above are from the trailer.
Go see it, and have an evil-vanquishing Purim!

I HOPE TO HAVE PICTURES OF ME IN MY COSTUME
UP HERE SOONER OR LATER

AND HERE THEY ARE!
(less than a month later)
11 Nisan, 5766 / April 8, 2006




More pictures from Purim, taken by Taylweaver: