The year was 1989. I was in the first grade. I didn't have a Halloween costume prepared to go trick or treating at night. So I slapped this together. I borrowed my grandpa's fedora. And found an extension cable. And voila! I'm Indy Jones. The green sweater and sweatshirt was my school uniform. As for those pants... blame my parents for buying me fobby clothes from Chinatown.
Halloween 2006 was an interesting year because I had two sets of costumes. One for work, and one for night time. Lets talk about the work costume first.
Back in 2006I worked for a exactly a year as a graphic designer of sorts, at a company called Sweda LLC. It was basically an imprint company. You know all those free pens you get at conventions and stuff? We're the ones that put the logos on those nifty pens. Anyway, we had a costume contest for the company and the prize for the best group costume was a free pizza party. Our department was unfortunately known as the quiet department that is isolated for everyone else. So we decided eff that. We were gonna take home the prize.
We had seven people, and the right number of males to females, so we decided to go as Gilligan's island. As you'll see later on in the night, I'm a pro at making fast props outta cardboard. In an hour we built a hut of sorts, and a fake boat. We easily took home first place. My favorite had to be my Coworker Jon's Gillian outfit. I was Mr. Howell on the far left. I would have shaved my head for authenticity's sake but I was growing out my hair that time for Locks of Love.
After work was over me and a few friends headed out to west Hollywood.
My friends and I decided to go as Tetris blocks that year. Up to that point I've never seen any Tetris costumes around, so I thought it was a good idea. Making blocks was too complicated for the amount of time we had so we made it out of flat cardboard, construction paper, and white tape.
Prior to heading out to West Hollywood we went to another event as these blocks to the final closing night of the famous Century Club as mentioned by Dr Dre in The Next Episode.
The funny thing was, we were getting all sorts of props from everyone in the crowd. We were encouraged to go up to the stage for the costume contest. Unfortunately we were booed off. Really harshly. My one friend Darrell who was holding the "Z" block unfortunate enough to jump up and say "Yeah!" to the scorning crowd was traumatized as if he saw a ghost. Meanwhile, the rest of us hid behind our respective blocks laughing our asses off avoiding the hostile crowd. At least we lost to the famous Tron guy that frequents the Jimmy Kimmel show and didn't lose to some girl dressed as Slutty _(noun)_.
The year was 2006 and my girlfriend at the time was graduating from the very same college I went to, UC Irvine. Our school mascot was the mighty Anteater. Inspired by traditional Chinese lion dancing, we decided to do our interpretation with an Anteater in place as a performance piece for her after she did her walk.
Just in case you don't know what lion dancing is, look above.
We had a whole band playing with pots and pans for the background... uh, music. The costume was made entirely from cardboard and various fabrics from a local fabric store. Ya can't see it but we actually had a working anteater tongue.
Us giving UCI's Peter the Anteater a friendly hug.
This is the earliest picture I could find of me in costume. The year was 1985 I believe. This was when I was about one or two years old living in Downer's Grove Illinois. I was fishing for some paper at some neighborhood function with my mom. I was a Jack O' Lantern. Wouldn't be the last time I would be a Jack O' Lantern.
Fast Forward to 2008. So my friends and I were discussing Halloween costume prospects at a cafe, and my female friend kept on mentioning how frustrating Halloween was for her, because it was always sexy this, and sexy that for the ladies. I'm replacing sl***y with sexy out of respect for the girls, but ya'll know what I mean. Anyway, I told them, that guys should have the right to dress sexy too. I thought of the most absurd sexy costume I could think of for a guy... without crossing into West Hollywood territory. We were thinking of the most common Halloween costumes, and trying to make them sexy. So why not the Jack O' Lantern? I was dared to execute my own idea. My friends should know better than to dare me to do anything.
Here's the blueprint.
And here's the final result
I ended up using felt for the stem. A speedo for the mouth, and black and a ton of orange acrylic paint for my body. The result ended up looking more creepy than sexy.
Here I was with my buddy Sam who was a floral print ghost.
This was the aftermath in the bathtub when the night was over...
Hi, I'm starting this blog to document all the stupid costumes I've worn over the years. Some of you might think I'm a freak who likes to dress up, but honestly, half of these costumes were made satirically. Then again, I am kind of weird. Well, I hope you enjoy this! I'll try to update every now and then with a few entries here and there. Mostly describing the technical process of making these. Maybe.
