Halloween 2005 - Steve Zissou
This year I decided early on that I didn’t want to shave my beard just for a Halloween costume. So the search began for ideas that incorporated the glorious beard I had spent so much time working on. I’m a giant Wes Anderson fan, and though the Life Aquatic isn’t my favorite of his films, Steve Zissou was at the top of my list.
I found a few auctions on ebay where people were selling various Team Zissou shirts, and red beanies. I ended up paying about $15 for one of the t-shirts. Its a baby blue short sleave with the white and yellow racing stripes and a Team Zissou logo. It ended up being pretty cheap material, but for Halloween it would be fine. I picked up a red carhart beanie at a place near by that sells carhart and other “working man’s” gear.
Next I headed to my favorite Halloween material stores; good-will and value village. I ended up visiting about 3 different locations before I found a pair of blue running pants and a great canvas jacket in the general blue colors needed.
I had the idea of buying some temporary gray hair die, and found some really great stuff at a professional costume store in Tukwila, its this stuff that’s used in the theater, and it worked great.
Here’s how it all came together.
The only problem? Aside from 3 friends who are fellow Wes Anderson fans, absolutely nobody knew who I was. I was met with blank stares and confusion, the only person willing to guess said .. “Um, a lumberjack?” Oh well.. I was quite happy with how things turned out, and it’s their fault for having no taste in movies.
Halloween 2004 - Lt. Jim Dangle
For several years now I’ve had an idea of dressing up like “Cochise” from the Beastie Boys sabotage video, but I’m missing a really great wig and fake ‘stache. On the cop theme I started to consider dressing up like Lt. Jim Dangle from Reno 911. I really never know if any of my Halloween ideas will work out, but they all tend to start at the same place; my local goodwill. I knew it was divine providence when I found a military/security style shirt. I knew I could put the rest together as long as I could find the shirt. Who knew finding police gear would be so difficult? Its like they don’t want people running around impersonating law enforcement. I had trouble finding patches, insignias and even a reasonably priced gun holster. In the end I decided to create what I needed and I made my own fake sheriff emblem out of art supplies. I even found some of those iron-on letters to spell out RENO. The shorts started out as pants, and had to be cut shorter several times to achieve the look I needed. In all my excitement, or lack of planning I didn’t have much of a mustache grown, so I brushed it with a little of Joann’s eyeliner and that did the trick.
Our party this year ended up being less lively than usual. A good chuck of our friends were out of town this year so after things died down a group of us decided to head out to find a bigger crowd. I won’t go into details but lets just say I was a big hit.
Mike as “Mike at age 12”; he’s not wearing his paper hat or carrying around his paper sword.
Joann and Indie as Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Grandma’s clothing.
