Transformation Complete!

I’ve never been a big fan of Halloween. The whole dressing up aspect just never appealed to me in any real way. Most of my costumes were pretty lame last second ideas that I came up with based on the resources I had at hand the night before. Needless to say, I didn’t have a costume this year… at least not for myself. While some people costume their dog or cat, I wanted to take things a step further: I made a “costume” for the elevator in my apartment building.

When I moved into my building, I noticed that the elevator was manufactured by and labeled as a “Collins Elevator.” One thought about this led to another, and the inevitable conclusion quickly became clear: for Halloween, I needed to turn this into a Phil Collins Elevator.

So I pulled some appropriate pictures off the Internet, printed up a few memorable passages from hits like Sussudio and Against All Odds and in the early morning hours of October 31, installed my “costume” in the elevator. Here’s how it all looked.

Sadly, the only feedback I got was rather negative. The one person on the elevator when I rode down later in the morning took an unabashedly negative view of the situation. “I don’t know what this means,” he lamented in a petulant fashion. Even after pointing out the Phil Collins label, he remained humorless and bitter, chalking the whole thing up to the work of “some nutcase” (no, I didn’t take credit). When I got home from work, it was all gone. The lesson here, I think, is that DC’s reputation for being overly serious and lame may be well-deserved!