20 Years of Halloween

Next weekend I will experience my 20th Halloween. I have some pretty fond memories of Halloweens past, as I love coming up with cool homemade costumes. Some people enjoy buying pre-made costumes, but I've never been a fan of those. They just always seem so fake to me, unless it's one of those insanely expensive hundred dollar outfits. Homemade is definitely the way to go. (Homemade might be a slightly inaccurate word as I still buy things here and there to complete my costumes.)

The earliest homemade Halloween costume I can remember wearing is a hand sewn and hand stuffed T-Rex outfit that my Mom made out of an old pair of red pj's. She made a tail out of red material and filled it with stuffing before sewing it onto my pajama bottoms. Then she used more red cloth to sew together a tyrannosaurus head that went over mine. I was able to peer out through the pointy, tooth filled mouth. I remember always bumping into things and people, (sometimes on purpose) my stuffed tail swinging behind me. I think it was that costume that started my love for creating homemade outfits every year. It's just exciting thinking about all of the different ways to create something unique out of items that can be found laying around the house. You can make a great outfit out of practically anything.

Don't believe me? Well here's a list of some of my favorite costumes from my past 20 years of Halloweening, thrown together mostly from things I found around my house (or from cheap items that are easy to buy).

1.) The Robot: This was one of my earliest costumes. I was a shiny metallic robot from the future. I think I even won first place at the school Halloween contest for it.
Materials needed: cardboard box (for the head), toilet paper rolls, flexible plastic tubing,  sweatpants (the shiny kind), rubber gloves, can of silver spray paint (cover everything with this it instantly makes you look futuristic).

2.) The Two Headed Monster: This might be my favorite costume ever. For this my best friend and I went to the Salvation Army and found an enormous shirt, two gigantic pairs of pants, and two pairs of large shoes. Then we cut the two pants up and sewed them together to make a three legged bottom. After this we enlarged the neck-hole of the shirt and sewed the middle together. This completed the construction of the costume. My friend and I struggled into the three legged pants, with my left leg and his right leg both stuck into the middle pant-hole. We also had to fit both our feet into one of the huge shoes. After this, we became the two headed, three legged monster.
Materials needed: large shirt, 2 large pairs of pants, 2 large pairs of shoes.

3.) Neo (from the Matrix): This costume is pretty self explanatory (as long as you've seen The Matrix). The Matrix is one of my favorite movies so I was in love with this costume, plus it was very easy to make.
Materials needed: black overcoat (my Mother's but it worked), black boots/shoes, black sweatpants, black shirt, cool looking sunglasses. You don't have to have one but a fake pistol will really tie the outfit together. Then you can have staged gun battles and show off your "Matrix moves."

4) Evil Hag carrying a baby: This is definitely one of my more interesting costumes. For this I had to dress my face up like a baby's, and then I took the head off one of my sister's old baby dolls (it was practically falling off anyways) and I attached the dolls body to my back. I had to make it appear as if my head was attached to the dolls body. Then I hung a creepy, witch mask around my neck so it rested on my chest. After covering the rest of my body in a black cloak (any black or witchy material will do) it appeared that  I was a humpbacked with carrying a baby on its back. It sounds a little confusing with out being able to see it, but it was a great costume. Everyone I saw that night did a double take when they first saw me out of confusion.
Materials needed: headless baby doll, some make up, witch mask, black witch-like clothes.

Well that's enough costumes for now, I wouldn't want everyone to take ALL my ideas just yet. If you hang around long enough maybe ill let you in on a few more next Halloween.

Blanket Forts Are the Best

When I was young I loved building forts in the basement of my house. There was never much planning involved, I would simply feel a sudden inspiration and then I'd start grabbing anything I could find that could be turned into fort building material. Card board boxes, blankets, pillows, sleeping bags, clothespins, couches, rubber bands. I'd spend hours figuring out how to attach all these objects to each other and to the ceiling and walls. Blankets and sleeping bags were the basic building blocks. They would form the walls and roof of fort. The clothespins and rubber bands were nails and screws. I would use them to attach the blankets to each other and to solid parts of the basement (ceiling, walls, bookcase, couches). Pillows would then become the doorways and beds and couches in my new home. If I was lucky enough to have a large cardboard box lying around (the best were the huge refrigerator and washing machine boxes) then I would create little side-tunnels and hallways to secret rooms of my fort.

I would continue adding and adding to my creation until I became too tired or hungry to build any further, which sometimes took hours and hours. Often the fort would cover a whole half of the basement, making it impossible to get from one side to the other without crawling and winding your way through the tangled maze of my cozy hideaway. I would then leave my fort standing for as long as possible (it depended on how long it took for my mother to become too annoyed with the mess), which could be anywhere from a day too a couple weeks. When I would finally have to take it down, it would only be a matter of time before I started the next one.

For some reason I started to think about my fort building days this past weekend. Maybe it was because I had a lot of excess time to do anything I wanted, like in my childish days, but I suddenly had an urge to relive the joy and adventure of tearing a room apart to make another room of your own design. Since my own college dorm room wasn't really adequate for fort building, I convinced my girlfriend that we should build one in her town-home room. She wasn't entirely thrilled by the idea at first but that was before she knew that I was a master fort builder. It was difficult at first since I had limited space and materials to work with, unlike my work-space back at home, but eventually I managed to throw together a workable blanket fort, complete with a mattress floor, a lamp (which doubled as a ceiling beam) and a mini table for snacks and drinks. Here's what it looked like from the outside:

Kinda shabby by my own blanket fort standards, but it reminded me of easier times, when the biggest issue on my brain was whether Mom was going to make me eat broccoli for dinner (if so I might as well just stay in my fort). The older I get the more responsibilities I take on, and the less time I have to devote to simple things like blanket forts. It may seem childish, but I wish that life could be as simple as it was in those days.

So every once in a while, if I'm feeling bogged down with too much work or stress or I'm just sick of being grown-up, I think I'll check back in on my childhood and throw together another blanket fort. Then I'll crawl inside and push aside responsibilities and worries for a while. Those things simply aren't allowed in blanket forts.

I Think I'm in Love With Clint Eastwood

Who doesn't love a good Western? Alright probably quite a few people. I think it's kind of an acquired taste. They aren't exactly mainstream these days. I love the genre though, with its gritty frontier setting and its courageous, rough around the edges, pistol wielding heroes. There's always a struggle taking place between good and evil, though the line between these two is often hard to see. The best part about Westerns though is the one liners. Epic quotes made by heroes and anti-heroes and villains that are as classic as the genre itself. One of my favorites is a line by Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (if you've never heard of this movie then you might as well just stop reading now). 


"You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."


Classic! I mean it's not quite a ONE liner but still, Clint's a complete bad-ass.

Anyways if you are a fan of Westerns, and you know some of the great classics (Once Upon a Time in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, The Magnificent Seven, any John Wayne movie, and even  Blazing Saddles) then have I got a treat for you. I recently watched the film Rango, which came out earlier this year and at first glance appears to just be an animated children s movie. However, it's actually a film aimed more at an adult fan-base with knowledge of the Western genre and past Westerns classics. I admittedly was drawn into watching the movie because Johnny Depp plays the main character in the story, a lizard named Rango, however as I got further into the film I become more and more exuberant as Western references popped up as fast and furious as microwaveable popcorn. By the end of the film I was practically in tears because I was so happy with the amount of shout outs the film gave. (Does that make me a Western nerd or something along those lines? I might be a little too obsessed.)


I don't want to ruin too much of the movie for anyone so I'll just list out a few of my favorite Western references from Rango.


- When Rango is made sheriff he is given the same outfit that the main character in Blazing Saddles wears when he is made sheriff.
-Soundtrack music from Once Upon a Time in the West (also used in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End) is used during climactic moments in the movie
-Rango wears Clint Eastwood's poncho outfit (worn in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) in the final battle of the film.
-There's a classic scene of a posse riding through Monument Valley, paying homage to John Ford's movies in which John Wayne starred.


These are just a few of the multitude of references hidden in the Rango. However I've saved the best one for last. I'll describe it as I saw it. 


Near the end of the film Rango goes on a spiritual journey and discovers "The Spirit of the West." At first all I could see from the shot was a golf cart full of Oscar awards and the wavering silhouette of a man in the dazzling whiteness of the desert. The "Spirit of the West" was facing away from the camera. Then, as Rango drew closer, I could see that the man was wearing a poncho and looked suspiciously like Clint Eastwood's character from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I started to feel a little bubble of excitement, but I managed to keep my cool. Then the man crouched down with his back to the camera, and spoke. I knew from the first two words that my suspicion was correct, and I immediately jumped out of my seat in pure joy, shouting, "Yes! Yes!" My favorite western hero, Clint Eastwood, was the "Spirit of the West." What a fucking bad-ass.

Hover Lover

When are we going to get our hover-cars? We're more than a decade into the 2000's and society is still stuck in a boring world of rubber to asphalt travel. Airplanes don't count. If technology is progressing so rapidly these days then how come I still can't hop into my own personal flying vehicle? 90% of all futuristic movies and stories depict worlds with crowded, noisy skies full of people cheerily zooming about in hunks of shiny metal.

Well I say the future is NOW. (Hmmmm... that sounds like a campaign add.) All we have to do is figure out how to create an anti-gravity field and Bam! Hover-cars. At least that's about as much as I understand from surfing the web for 5 minutes. So scientists, get on that. Or else. Seriously, I'm going to be real pissed if I die before I get my hover-car.