OK, so now I am in the mood. Last night was the annual Halloween party, and it really got me psyched for my favorite holiday. I admit to being a bit off this year. What happened to all the cable channels having Halloween programming? Where’s all the vintage B&W movies on Turner Classic or AMC? Not even Discovery, TLC or even SciFi have much Hween programming. Last week, I got together with the guys to watch some horror flicks to get in the mood. We watched the original Last House on the Left and House of 1000 Corpses. I was disappointed in both. I’m jonesing to see Saw 5. But the party last night really picked me up. As much as I do love Hween, there is more to the story. And this one starts from last year.
Last year we were confident we had a slam dunk idea. But we had to dye some stuff. Fate would step in (as it will later on down the road) and killed our dryer, so we couldn’t go with our first choice, even though we had a bunch of stuff for it already. While that was a downer, it did result in me slutting up my wife as a cop, so it wasn’t all bad.
Flash to this year, and we are a bit ahead of the game. We have our idea, and we know what we have to do. The first thing is we need to find white stuff to dye. The easiest and most cost effective thing to get is thermal longjohns. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, surprisingly it isn’t. After checking the places you think would be obvious, I track down long under wear at Kmart of all places. And I literally get the last top and bottom that are my size. Seriously, what’s the run on longjohns here? I guess it’s huntin’s season or something, but this search took far more effort than I thought it would. And, OK, I do have a confession here. I did buy my shirt a size smaller. I did it because it was the only one they had, and it might, just might, make me look a bit more masculine. And when you’re wearing purple, it’s all about appearing masculine.
Next up was the dye itself. Again, this proved to be more difficult than I had planned. I did all kinds of searches for clothes dye and fabric dye at the obvious places (Walmart, Target, etc). But the one place I found the shade that was close to what we need was at an arts and crafts store. O man. Talk about swallowing your manly pride to go into one of these stores. I am totally lost. This place looks like it sells all the shit you see at the firehouse Xmas bazaar. I don’t think there is another dude in the store. Now I gotta wander over to the dye section. Did I mention the color I was looking for was purple? Yea, I should just leave my man card at the door. I find something that is close enough, and scurry out, hoping no one I know sees me.
I guess at this point, I should explain my philosophy on Halloween costumes. Basically, in most cases, but certainly not all, the more ghetto it is, the better it is. There are times and places when you can get a real expensive, fancy killer costume. But more often then not, it’s more creative and funny to make it on your own. I don’t care what you think, a real deal Batman costume pales in comparison to one made with Sharpies and duct tape. In fact, a proven Hween equation is the more duct tape on your costume, the more kick ass it is. Really, I didn’t make that one up; it’s one of Einstein’s lesser known theorems.
So we are all about doing this up ourselves. Plus, as it turns out, there is surprisingly no premade costumes for our idea. The only ones we’ve seen have been homemade affairs. Some were quite good, others were pretty damn ghetto. T uses her artistic side to draw up the iron ons we will need. She dyes the thermal stuff Weds night, and we get up at 5:30 the next morning to wring them out and run them through the wash. The color turns out pretty good. It is a bit pinker than my testicles would like, but hey, it is Hween. After the wash, I hang them out on the line to dry. I am sure that got the neighbors talking.
Next up is the accessories. This is where creativity and ghetto comes into play. Our idea wears purple boots and gloves with yellow trim. We handled the boots by getting purple and yellow soccer socks. We rip the yellow socks up and tuck them into the purple socks. Did I mention that it’s fairly hard to find purple and yellow socks? That leads us to the gloves. The idea here was to go with dish washing gloves. After visiting many locations that one would think would sell such items, the closest thing I could find was pink. Ok, so this adds to the ghetto factor that we have all these competing shades of purple.
Now it’s Friday, the day of the party. T comes back from this thing she has-it’s called a job or work or something?-and she is suddenly brimming with ideas. One of which is to nix my hard sought pink gloves. She says she will get yellow gloves and tape them with purple duct tape. She also creates the ’belts’ out of the purple duct tape and yellow felt. Our characters also have these funky collar things going on-they’re too cool for capes or something. She whips those out of purple foam. She even comes up with a cape for our monkey that is part of the costume. I don’t know what the hell she had to come up with all of this, but I hope she has it again when she does my birthday shopping.
As I take a shower, a brilliant idea hits me. There is something about my creative bursts that happen in the bathroom. Most of my brilliant ideas hit me either in the shower or on the shitter. Which is far better than having them hit me on the shower or in the shitter. So there I am in the shower, singing Sinatra, when it hits me. “Fuck! I should have gone as myself!” Remember a while back when I was in the paper for the brewfest. I wrote a whole klog about it, and the picture is on MySpace. I just should have gone as me! Wear the same stuff I had on in the picture, and copy and blow up the picture and tape it to my shirt. No muss no fuss, and bitingly creative. I mean how many people can say they went as themselves for Hween. That would have been fucking cool. But it’s too late, as our costumes are done and ready. Fuck, another great idea, literally down the drain.
Now it’s time to put it all together. I discover that the dye we used apparently loosens the elastic in my pants, so we could have a situation here. Aside from my pants potentially falling off, it looks like I dropped a dump in them, they droop so low. I have to bunch them up in the back, and twist them into a ball that T puts a rubber band on. My nice purple pants….
The gloves go on next. They are taped purple with yellow fingers. They actually kinda look Iron Man-ish. The tape is tight, so getting them off and on quickly is not easy. Next, she runs tape around my stomach for the belt. As it turns out, this too, is a bit tight, which is of no help when drinking copious amounts of beer. At least that is my excuse, and I am sticking to it. We get everything all together, and it actually looks pretty damn good. We are confident that our idea is not very mainstream at all, but just on the edge enough that people will go “Shit! That’s a good idea!”. We will be the toast of the party, and win the prize for best costume. And it’s still ghetto enough that’s it’s funny and creative. This is the most confident I have felt wearing purple. And latex gloves.
So we arrive, do a last minute check over everything. I realize I forgot to stuff myself like I said I was going to. D’oh! We walk up and are greeted by the hostess who is dressed up like Slash. Good idea, minimal work, top hat, wig, shades, fake nose piercing, black vest over white shirt and inflatable guitar. I take the cooler around back to where some people are. OK, this is it, this is where we see if this is a hit or a miss. We made a critical error here. T always wants our costumes to ‘go together’, and we separated upon arrival. So me, just by myself might have lessened the impact. T gets the same reaction inside. Finally some people start to get it. But it’s not the hit I thought it was going to be.
As more people arrive, they come up to us and say Power Ranger. Uh, no, not close. The younger kids have no clue who we are. This is another factor I didn’t take into account. I was talking to a 26 year old, and he had no clue. Keep in mind, he was dressed as Senor Frog, and I have no fucking clue who the hell that is. But more and more kids of that age have to ask us. The older folks do get it, some get it right away, some work their way to it. No one wants to get stuck in a dud costume, and I don’t feel that way at all about ours. Not quite the homerun I expected, but I think we are clearly near the top for idea and execution. I guess we shoulda known when a Yahoo image search revealed less than 2 pages of out brilliant costume idea that this might be a bit of a stretch.
Just to paint the picture, and also as my yearly service to you, my 4 dear readers, is to tell you all the costumes I saw. So if you still have a party to go to, here are some ideas (good and lame) that I saw. The guy from Verizon (simple, black jacket with Verizon ID, phone, etc) and his fiancée dressed the same with a hard hat. Some guy came as Jose Cuervo-belt with bottles, sombrero, Mexican shirt. Another came as the guy from Dewar’s. I didn’t know there was a “guy” for Dewar’s, but he had a beret, flowing white shirt, kilt, shoulder strap with shot glasses, and was giving out shots of Dewar’s. OK, that’s points there. (Plus, he’s halfway to dressing up as Jamie from Mythbusters next year with the white shirt and beret. I wanted to go as the MythBusters a few years ago, but T nixed that idea. We would be Adam & Jamie. I wouldn’t even tart her out as Kari. In the outfit from the balloons flying a lawnchair myth. But I would highly suggest her to do so. Yum)
Last year we were confident we had a slam dunk idea. But we had to dye some stuff. Fate would step in (as it will later on down the road) and killed our dryer, so we couldn’t go with our first choice, even though we had a bunch of stuff for it already. While that was a downer, it did result in me slutting up my wife as a cop, so it wasn’t all bad.
Flash to this year, and we are a bit ahead of the game. We have our idea, and we know what we have to do. The first thing is we need to find white stuff to dye. The easiest and most cost effective thing to get is thermal longjohns. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, surprisingly it isn’t. After checking the places you think would be obvious, I track down long under wear at Kmart of all places. And I literally get the last top and bottom that are my size. Seriously, what’s the run on longjohns here? I guess it’s huntin’s season or something, but this search took far more effort than I thought it would. And, OK, I do have a confession here. I did buy my shirt a size smaller. I did it because it was the only one they had, and it might, just might, make me look a bit more masculine.
Next up was the dye itself. Again, this proved to be more difficult than I had planned. I did all kinds of searches for clothes dye and fabric dye at the obvious places (Walmart, Target, etc). But the one place I found the shade that was close to what we need was at an arts and crafts store. O man. Talk about swallowing your manly pride to go into one of these stores. I am totally lost. This place looks like it sells all the shit you see at the firehouse Xmas bazaar. I don’t think there is another dude in the store. Now I gotta wander over to the dye section. Did I mention the color I was looking for was purple? Yea, I should just leave my man card at the door. I find something that is close enough, and scurry out, hoping no one I know sees me.
I guess at this point, I should explain my philosophy on Halloween costumes. Basically, in most cases, but certainly not all, the more ghetto it is, the better it is. There are times and places when you can get a real expensive, fancy killer costume. But more often then not, it’s more creative and funny to make it on your own. I don’t care what you think, a real deal Batman costume pales in comparison to one made with Sharpies and duct tape. In fact, a proven Hween equation is the more duct tape on your costume, the more kick ass it is. Really, I didn’t make that one up; it’s one of Einstein’s lesser known theorems.
So we are all about doing this up ourselves. Plus, as it turns out, there is surprisingly no premade costumes for our idea. The only ones we’ve seen have been homemade affairs. Some were quite good, others were pretty damn ghetto. T uses her artistic side to draw up the iron ons we will need. She dyes the thermal stuff Weds night, and we get up at 5:30 the next morning to wring them out and run them through the wash. The color turns out pretty good. It is a bit pinker than my testicles would like, but hey, it is Hween. After the wash, I hang them out on the line to dry. I am sure that got the neighbors talking.
Next up is the accessories. This is where creativity and ghetto comes into play. Our idea wears purple boots and gloves with yellow trim. We handled the boots by getting purple and yellow soccer socks. We rip the yellow socks up and tuck them into the purple socks. Did I mention that it’s fairly hard to find purple and yellow socks? That leads us to the gloves. The idea here was to go with dish washing gloves. After visiting many locations that one would think would sell such items, the closest thing I could find was pink. Ok, so this adds to the ghetto factor that we have all these competing shades of purple.
Now it’s Friday, the day of the party. T comes back from this thing she has-it’s called a job or work or something?-and she is suddenly brimming with ideas. One of which is to nix my hard sought pink gloves. She says she will get yellow gloves and tape them with purple duct tape. She also creates the ’belts’ out of the purple duct tape and yellow felt. Our characters also have these funky collar things going on-they’re too cool for capes or something. She whips those out of purple foam. She even comes up with a cape for our monkey that is part of the costume. I don’t know what the hell she had to come up with all of this, but I hope she has it again when she does my birthday shopping.
As I take a shower, a brilliant idea hits me. There is something about my creative bursts that happen in the bathroom. Most of my brilliant ideas hit me either in the shower or on the shitter. Which is far better than having them hit me on the shower or in the shitter. So there I am in the shower, singing Sinatra, when it hits me. “Fuck! I should have gone as myself!” Remember a while back when I was in the paper for the brewfest. I wrote a whole klog about it, and the picture is on MySpace. I just should have gone as me! Wear the same stuff I had on in the picture, and copy and blow up the picture and tape it to my shirt. No muss no fuss, and bitingly creative. I mean how many people can say they went as themselves for Hween. That would have been fucking cool. But it’s too late, as our costumes are done and ready. Fuck, another great idea, literally down the drain.
Now it’s time to put it all together. I discover that the dye we used apparently loosens the elastic in my pants, so we could have a situation here. Aside from my pants potentially falling off, it looks like I dropped a dump in them, they droop so low. I have to bunch them up in the back, and twist them into a ball that T puts a rubber band on. My nice purple pants….
The gloves go on next. They are taped purple with yellow fingers. They actually kinda look Iron Man-ish. The tape is tight, so getting them off and on quickly is not easy. Next, she runs tape around my stomach for the belt. As it turns out, this too, is a bit tight, which is of no help when drinking copious amounts of beer. At least that is my excuse, and I am sticking to it. We get everything all together, and it actually looks pretty damn good. We are confident that our idea is not very mainstream at all, but just on the edge enough that people will go “Shit! That’s a good idea!”. We will be the toast of the party, and win the prize for best costume. And it’s still ghetto enough that’s it’s funny and creative. This is the most confident I have felt wearing purple. And latex gloves.
So we arrive, do a last minute check over everything. I realize I forgot to stuff myself like I said I was going to. D’oh! We walk up and are greeted by the hostess who is dressed up like Slash. Good idea, minimal work, top hat, wig, shades, fake nose piercing, black vest over white shirt and inflatable guitar. I take the cooler around back to where some people are. OK, this is it, this is where we see if this is a hit or a miss. We made a critical error here. T always wants our costumes to ‘go together’, and we separated upon arrival. So me, just by myself might have lessened the impact. T gets the same reaction inside. Finally some people start to get it. But it’s not the hit I thought it was going to be.
As more people arrive, they come up to us and say Power Ranger. Uh, no, not close. The younger kids have no clue who we are. This is another factor I didn’t take into account. I was talking to a 26 year old, and he had no clue. Keep in mind, he was dressed as Senor Frog, and I have no fucking clue who the hell that is. But more and more kids of that age have to ask us. The older folks do get it, some get it right away, some work their way to it. No one wants to get stuck in a dud costume, and I don’t feel that way at all about ours. Not quite the homerun I expected, but I think we are clearly near the top for idea and execution. I guess we shoulda known when a Yahoo image search revealed less than 2 pages of out brilliant costume idea that this might be a bit of a stretch.
Just to paint the picture, and also as my yearly service to you, my 4 dear readers, is to tell you all the costumes I saw. So if you still have a party to go to, here are some ideas (good and lame) that I saw. The guy from Verizon (simple, black jacket with Verizon ID, phone, etc) and his fiancée dressed the same with a hard hat. Some guy came as Jose Cuervo-belt with bottles, sombrero, Mexican shirt. Another came as the guy from Dewar’s. I didn’t know there was a “guy” for Dewar’s, but he had a beret, flowing white shirt, kilt, shoulder strap with shot glasses, and was giving out shots of Dewar’s. OK, that’s points there. (Plus, he’s halfway to dressing up as Jamie from Mythbusters next year with the white shirt and beret. I wanted to go as the MythBusters a few years ago, but T nixed that idea. We would be Adam & Jamie. I wouldn’t even tart her out as Kari. In the outfit from the balloons flying a lawnchair myth. But I would highly suggest her to do so. Yum)
Another guy came dressed as a pirate captain and his wife came as a Coke can-Captain & coke. This couple always comes up with great couple ideas. Now, I’m not one for dressing up as corporate logos (yea, I’m looking at you Geico caveman), but these were good. Pregnancy was a big thing this year, too. A couple came as a soccer ball (the wife) and a player. She had a soccer ball design over her seemingly 11 month pregnant belly, while he has soccer jersey, shorts, shin guards and spikes on. I said she must not be a good goalie, because obviously he scored. OK, that’s an obvious joke, but funny after 8 beers. Another guy came in a big chef hat and an apron that said Bun Maker, while his wife was dressed as the oven.
Another couple came as a priest and nun, which I think is too obvious. Billy Ray Cyrus was there with Miley, even though I thought it would have been funnier if the dude was Miley’s older boyfriend. An Asian couple came as Dora and Diego. As in every election year, there was a McCain and Palin. That’s real simple with the McCain mask and a suit, but who dafuck wants to wear a suit on Hween? It helped that his wife did kinda look like Palin. Another couple came as the skaters from Blades of Glory. They had body suits on that had glitter and stuff on them. They both had wigs on. Never seeing the movie, I didn’t know who they were. The best part was they walked there dressed up in those costumes. A Las Vegas card dealer (complete with tables and cards, and I only lost $300)and waitress. I think that was it for the couple costumes. There were more couples who came in individual costumes; a zombie and a cat. And speaking of the cat, I think it’s time to retire this idea. There is no work to buy cat ears, draw a nose and whiskers on your face and wear all black. I say if you’re gonna do the cat thing, ya better be dressed as a slut.
More individual costumes; the host was dressed as a ghetto Gene Simmons. There was Moses, a drunk pregnant woman, Caesar salad (toga with salad stuff on it, and a headband made of croutons). Some guy with long hair came dressed as a Norwegian death metal fan or something similar. He had black and white make up on, studded wristbands, etc. I thought he was King Diamond. King Diamond would be a rocking costume, but I don’t think any of his 17 American fans were at the party last night. Of course, there’s always the one person who just writes up a sign and slaps it on for their ‘costume’. This year it was a girl who had ‘jeans $30, shoes $70, shirt $40 not having a Halloween costume priceless’ sign. Boorriingggg. And just a bit disrespectful of this great holiday. BTW, I am not paying $70 for shoes.
I was talking to one of the guys in a dark corner. We were both lamenting the lack of sexy costumes this year. “Yea, the sexy is turned way down this year,” he said. I then punched him for not ogling my wife in her costume. So he did. And then I punched him for ogling my wife. Yea, sometimes you just can’t win with me.
Beer pong soon followed. It was sparsely attended due to the cold temps. It didn’t affect me and my pink covered balls of steel. After clinking hands and looking for powers to activate, me and T won 2, then lost. I would later team with Senor Frog, who at this point I was calling Frogger, and we would lose. Dora came to life. After claiming to have never playing Pong, and getting blown out the first game, she kicked ass. Asian Diego was there for window dressing.
All in all, this was good, clean fun. We lost out to best costume to the Blades of Glory couple. Goddamn. I have to give credit where credit is due. These guys have come up with some great ideas over the years. This was the same couple that has come as Ric Flair and Elizabeth, Captain Stubing and Vicki and Ron Burgundy and Veronica Corningstone. Fuck. I guess I see where this competitiveness comes to when it comes to Halloween. I think it’s all the guy’s idea. He always know how to slut out his wife. And I guess for this party, coming dressed as two dudes beats our hero idea. I carried a bucket around and T had a monkey on her back for this?
For me, this party had all the aura of Xmas Eve, New Year ’s Eve, etc. It was annual, a marker, a seasonal rite of passage, a harbinger that Halloween was/is right around the corner. Just looking around at the spiderweb lights hanging from the garage gave off that special edge, I just can’t describe it. I felt Halloween. Like a wave, I saw it coming. Somehow, amongst all the PVC hung ghosts, along with all these adults, costumed. Right along side the keg or the buffet table, it finally got to me. Amidst all these adults with varying degrees of costumes, it reached out to me. Yes, it has to burn and settle in my chest for a week. I only have a week left till I scare kids.
Man, how I relish in Hween, what a celebration of the macabre. As I take Bauer for his walks, I see the decorations creeping up. Gravestones, cotton spiderwebs, skeletons. I walked him past that fucking house one block up that kicks my ass Halloween night. They’re already building shit. They got dummies propped up, a tunnel constructed to lead kids to the backyard. They have such an edge over me. They got money and time to build-build!-all this shit, and the people to work scaring the kids. On the other hand, I don’t have the time or money to invest on upgrading my front lawn o’ scares. It’s been an exercise in self restraint to not buy Hween shit. T is a trooper and when we’re out she will ask me if I want to stop by a Hween shop. I grit my teeth and say no because I know my few scheckels need to go to mortgage, food, water, etc. It sucks, it really does.
From above, where irony would step in. As it turns out, we wouldn’t have even needed the dryer to make up our costumes. Yea, that’s a kick in the nuts, but at the same time, it still got me T dressed up as a sexy cop. Good Lord, she can arrest me any day. GGGRRRRRR
OK, so throughout this post, I have made many allusions to our costume. Rather masterful allusions, in my opinion. Now I want to know if anyone has figured out who we are. Much like Jigsaw, I have laid many clues. So please prove there are more than just me reading these posts, and post your best guess. I am reluctant to post my mug here, for many reasons, but I will post me in my costume. Until then, it’s up to you. Would you like to play a game?
Please be sure to check KevolutionTheory in a few days for bonus material I am far too lazy and drunk to post now. I promise it will be worth your while.
DVD Bonus features
Commentary
OK, so this was a classic case of starting out strong and just getting to be shit at the end. I mean, look at that ending. How lame. I apologize for putting you through that. Would you be surprised to know I was buzzogging pretty hardcore at the end there. I was torn because I was all full of inspiration and wanted to get this out in a timely manner. I added a new paragraph, added a gratitutious Kari pic. Added a new costume and tightened a few things up.
Deleted Scene
We were stuck as to where to find good purple stuff. T really looked at the pics we were able to find. She made a good discovery; apparently the previous people who thought of this used tights. OK, not exactly tights, but it’s more like ballerina type stuff. Yea, ballerina outfits. I really believe in this idea, so I say, go ahead and order them. We get them, and now I actually have to try this shit on. This is one of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” type of scenarios. T puts hers on and just laughs. I don’t know why, but I’m guessing that she knows I have to try mine on next. I swallow what’s left of my pride these days, and pull this tight purple ballerina top out of the bag. Christ, it even looks like it’s a panty hose package. So I put it on…..
Yea, it’s not a pretty scene. Some huge hairball stuffed into a purple spandex top. So it’s a chick’s top, and the chest comes really low. There is just no way this thing will work. Even T is laughing at me-at me-like a mental patient. I look in the mirror to see my hairy chest more than overflowing the neckline, my man boobs now a stretched shade of fay purple. Now, I have worn many, many questionable outfits over the years (neon, Zubaz, etc) and this just ain’t gonna work. It is enough to make me laugh, but it’s also enough to make us realize this isn’t the way to go. I try to find the sliver lining in this situation of trying on girls’ dance attire, but simply there is none. Just another memory I hope the booze will soon erase.
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