Hold on to your hats

It's eight weeks to Fantasy Fest, and the king and queen candidates were announced Friday (the winners are determined by how much money their supporters donate for AIDS Help during the run-up, and last year it was about a quarter-million dollars).

As it happens, one of the queen hopefuls, Vicky Gordon, is an old friend of our friend Gene -- who was here for dinner Friday night with Jerry, and Ben and Ken and Toby, and besides shuffleboard and general gossip, we talked costumes: G & J are coming down for the 30th annual bash, and though B & K can't make it then, they are happily visiting later.

At any rate, since this year's theme is Villains, Vixens and Vampires (our friend JT is has yet again won the bakeoff to do the official poster), Robert is having four fetching little bustiers whipped up to unify our foursome in vixenish fashion, with accessories making the difference. Robert is theming his with, erm, black leather stuff. Gene is taking a trip down "I Dream of Jeannie" lane. Jerry is doing something interesting with gold lamé and some things he picked up in India or Burma or wherever.

And after weeks of agonizing, I've decided on my own fruity theme. The only question is whether a fresh pineapple will leak too much to be speared into a headdress.