The Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade was amazing. I'd built it up in my imagination quite a bit, ever since first hearing about it many years ago when I still lived in Philadelphia. The actual thing lived up to my expectations, every bit.

I bumped into the steampunk ghostbusters, and by wild coincidence it turns out the gentleman on the left is a friend of several friends. We're going to collaborate on the Steampunk Larp - and he says it's entirely possible the Edison might take us, which would be a coup. I'm hoping joemorf can ping him to point him to this entry. He gave me his card which is probably lying somewhere in the tangle of costume bits, empty bottles of rum and wine, faery dust, and assorted other remnants of a hedonistic, magical weekend that are scattered all over my apartment.

The song from the movie Labyrinth, "When the World Falls Down" came on just as the Pyrate Queen and I were out on the dance floor. In the movies, when two people come together at a propitious moment on the dance floor, inevitably they are able to effortlessly dance, usually with a circle cleared around them. From our perspective that's exactly how it seemed, and I can think of few, if any moments in my life that were as suffused with magic as that one. From an outsider's perspective, however, we probably were drunkenly wobbling and lurching around, bumping into people and stepping on toes. Certainly we had a circle cleared around us! But who knows, maybe it really was one of those Hollywood moments, in which she and I seem to keep finding ourselves.

Certainly when an extraordinarily beautiful woman in an elegant costume takes you by the hand, and with a sparkle in her eye fit to make the stars blush says, "I need another shot of rum, then you and I are gonna dance." It is a gentleman's duty to oblige. And also my privilege to remember it forever.

There were performers on stage from time to time, the acts I saw were a troupe of sort-of-Commedia Del'Arte actors/dancers, but only if the Commedia were run through a tragically gothic filter. The place was jam-packed, and the crowd was of such varied and wild costumes that each seemed to outdo the last.

Really a great night, no doubt about it.