The Cool Kids Table Vs. Halloween

YO!

As Ben already ably pointed out in his post from the actual holiday, we do it up right for Halloween in CKT country. And aside from our erstwhile editor's own foray into Tony Starkdom, the rest of the blog had a weekend full of playing dressup like children and eating like 40,000 Butterfingers (forget you, R.L. Stein!). Below, we get into each of our experiences on All Hallows Eve, and for more rad costumes, be sure to check out the contributions of our pals Mel Caylo, Ryan Penagos and Chris Ward.


Kiel!

Squeezing one last drop out of the year of Scott Pilgrim, I dressed up as Bryan Lee O'Malley's hero with an eye towards seeing how many people actually knew who I was dressed as (turns out...about 10!).


Is it just me, or is like 83% of the fun of Scott Pilgrim cosplay the act of poorly recreating poses from the book's covers?


My girlfriend Jami ended up going as Ramona Flowers, which it turns out is a much more recognizable look for party people to latch onto. She was a total trooper, even though she was ready to burn that wig by night's end.


There weren't a ton of other comics folks on the prowl at the three parties we hit up on Friday night, but one of them did have a lone copy of Blankets sitting next to a "Peanuts" Jack-O-Lantern. Instant photo op!


I took more than a few pics of the sword because it cost about $40 to make, and unlike the Plumtree t-shirt and the six XL women's winter coat from Old Navy, I'm never going to have any use for it ever again. The nice thing about the sword though is that when people did recognize who I was, they'd instantly go, "Holy shit! You earned the Power of Love!"


Our gimmick for the night was that whenever someone recognized who we were, we gave them chocolate coins. As you can tell, we had quite a few left over at the end of the evening.


This has almost nothing to do with anything else in this post, but I had to share the raddest costume I saw all night: a couple dressed as Finn and Pricess Bubblegum from "Adventure Time!" They were super keen. There was also a girl at the first party dressed as Tank Girl, but I forgot to get that pic loaded to this computer. I promise to put it on Tumblr later.


Rickey!

Here's me dressed as Pee Wee Herman. We went to a party on Saturday and then to the [infamous NYC] parade on Sunday. It was freezing and didn't seem organized in ANY way, so we wandered around for about 2 hours trying to find a place to stand. When we finally found a place, which was the run-off of the end of the parade, the organizers started cutting the parade at a block earlier than us, so we had to go in search of another spot to stand. But all the avenues were barricaded, so it was like they didn't want anybody to get in to see the parade. Later, as we were trying to cross an intersection about 2 avenues away from the parade, the cops closed off the pedestrian walkway, trapping about 150 people on each corner. This drunk idiot started shouting at the cos and then some younger guys under him started at him to stop screaming in their ears and then a fistfight broke out literally RIGHT next to us. It was nuts. We ended up having to walk over to Union Square to catch a train all the way back to where we started so we could catch a train home cause the cops blocked every sidewalk heading in the subway's direction. I was like, "Hey, can you tell me where I can catch a train form here if the sidewalks are all blocked off?" and the cop I spoke with was like, "Uh...To be honest, we're closing off this whole neighborhood cause the crowds are turning into mobs."

So we walked way way out of our way to get home.


Kevin!

Every year, me and a few of my friends attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween event at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. It's a pretty rad tradition where Disney dresses up the Magic Kingdom all Halloweeny and there are special parades and fireworks and such. Tons of people show up in costume and it's a bunch of awesome fun every year. Also when we attend, me and my friends dress in themed costumes – previous years including Peter Pan and Disney Villains, and this year being Princes and Princesses.


As you can see, I totally went with a Beast costume from my favorite Disney film of all time, "Beauty and the Beast." Originally I tried to order a costume, but that fell through pretty hard. Thankfully, my mom and sister totally kick butt and made this costume entirely from scratch. My mom found a suit jacket, altered it to add coat tails, added the gold trim and replaced the regular buttons with gold ones. She also stitched frills to a white dress shirt and made the gold vest. My sister painted the horns and added a clear strap so it fit on my head and she made the gloves with acrylic claws, which she painted brown. My contribution included owning black slacks and picking up fangs from the store to give myself Beast's under bite. Whoo! So, yeah. My mom and sis are awesome.


Anyway, pictures include all of us all pimped out in our Princes and Princesses gear, some fun shots with my friend Amanda, who dressed as Belle, and a totally badass image taken by my friend Bridget (Aurora) of us all in shadow. Enjoy the pics and I hope everyone had a Happy Happy Haaalllllloweeeeen!

Linko! XXVIII

* So these aren't really links, but how could I not start this week with pics of our buddy Eric Drumm and his lovely lady dressed up as Jesse and Tulip from Preacher for Halloween??? Drumm wasn't the only member of our extended crew to have rad costumes this year, but he was the only to send his photos specifically for the blog, so you'll have to click through for pics of Captain Kirk, Batwoman, Scott McCloud and the Goddamn Moon!

* Alex Segura found this hilarious 2012/Raising Arizona mashp-up.

* Also from Alex: This crime books blog project seems pretty cool if you've got the time to wade through and then buy some of the books.

* Random Social Media Link #1: LinkedIn is getting a redesign. Does that mean I'll start using it again?

* Random Social Media Link #2: The demigraphics breakdown between MySpace and Facebook is a little sad.


* This gallery of Iron Giant design sheets is pretty bad ass.

* As is the fact that Africa and South America make a T-Rex.

* Via Roger Ebert: a killer video of images from "The Rumble In The Jungle."

* Speaking of awesome videos, Jah Furry posted this link to a promo video my favorite band Phish released which mashes up a shitload of old school albums that may or may not have been contenders for this year's "musical costume" for their Halloween show. In case you're curious, they ended up going as this.

* I really dug this post on how manga is serialized in Japan and how if affects long terms stories and the careers of the artists.

* Zach Oat found a list of The 15 Top Time Travel Movies Ever, and I think it's pretty great even though they kick off with a Napoleon Dynamite reference. That movie just wasn't good, you guys.

* Finally, my new favorite phrase is "Plot Coupon."

Halloween '09: The Year We All Drank In Costume

You know that headline could almost work any year, but seeing as this Halloween fell on a cherished Saturday night, it seems to me like there were even more people in my immediate circle of friends dressing up and drinking at ramshackle house parties. To celebrate, I thought I'd share the highlights (lowlights?) from my own 10-person soirée as well as what a few of the other dudes were doing over the past weekend. Huzzah!




So my girl Jami and I followed up last year's experiment in couple's comic bookery by dressing up as the meanest couple on trashy TV: Chuck Bass & Blair Waldorf from "Gossip Girl." Since we kept it at our place, I didn't quite get to pull off my planned move of answering everyone who asked what I was supposed to be with "I'm Chuck Bass" only to have them stare at me befuddled, but I got to do it a few times. Plus, I'm totally wearing that vest later this week for my business meetings in NYC.

Jami's pal Chris popped in as the Hulk (posing here with Jami's sis Carries as the Hamburglar). Every year, Chris' Halloween goal involves dressing up as whatever allows him to layer on the most body paint, so mission accomplished on that goal. Also of note was the fact that even though I'd have guessed he'd have to go to eBay, he picked up a pair of Hulk Hands new at "Toys R' Us." Hulk Hands, you guys...more popular than either of that characters movies combined. Some day, we're going to be old men, and there will be young 20-something Turks coming up in the comics industry who talk about Hulk Hands like we do about Superpowers figures and the X-Men arcade game. *shudder*




My guitar player Pauly and his girlfriend Megan came out even though they'd gotten blackout the night before as members of Team Zissou at a party with our bud Nice Peter, so it's all aces for them. Pauly was a cow, and it disturbed everyone to no end that at any given time in the night his hand would absent-mindedly reach down and start jerking as his rubber utters. Later on, we made semi-use of Megan's Beer Pong costume by setting the board up on the ironing board and whipping golf balls at the empty Velcroed cups. I won. Also: grog's little bro Jimi showed up without a costume, so I made him wear a hat and be Hobo Indiana Jones.


Our food spread was defended by Bruce Lee and featured Laffy Taffy (Best joke of the night? Q: Why did the skeletons cross the road? A: They didn't. The dogs ate them.) and Geoff Johns' beloved Monster Cereals. When we took our final pic of the night, Carrie's boyfriend Steve looked at the "Astroy Boy" figures in her Happy Meal purse, asking me whether I thought that movie was just a blatant ripoff of Mega Man or what. I wasn't sure how to answer that.



Meanwhile, several states away, Rickey and TJ dressed as Golden Age superheroes, doubtlessly confusing everyone they were with. I'll let Rickey explain:

"My girlfriend and I were stunningly invited to a superhero costume party by NON-comics industry friends along with TJ and his wife, so I got to wear my first ever superhero costume! Although I DID have a Beast Man outfit from Masters of the Universe when I was 6. My girlfriend made my whole outfit complete with a winged helmet (which held vanilla pudding just 24 hours prior!), red booties and a lightening bolt-emblazoned shirt. I took the helmet off for everything but pictures and TJ lost the cape so we could dominate at beer pong (cause we're a natural, god damned team) before he unleashed the full fury of a fog machine inside the tiny room we partied in. He's a hellion. Also: our ladies are BOSS."



As you can see, Rickey's gal Sam was a convincingly radical Zatanna while TJ's wife Emily went as Black Canary. When I first saw Em's picture on Facebook, the whig had me totally missing that it was her. I guess that shit does work for secret identities after all.


Later, the crew's entire photoset devolved into shots like this one because, as Rickey told me, "TJ just turned the fucking fog machine on full-blast cause he was drunk. And it was funny. We were in that tiy room fiulled with fog for WAAAAY longer than is probably healthy for people. And the guy I was playing beer ping against at that point was getting super annoyed that he couldn't see the cups anymore and went so far as to accuse TJ that we were cheating, hahahaha! I even stopped playing full-on and just started throwing my ping pong ball as hard as possible at their end of the table. Then I stole a handful of Tootsie Rolls and dipped out."



Lastly, I spotted these sweet pics of Sean's Missus dressed up for her school day of teaching middle schoolers to sing as Victoria from "Twilight." Honestly, knowing Sean, I just figured Amy was trying to get super Irish, but the red eyes should have been a giveaway. In a hilarious and unsolvable misunderstanding, Rickey and I both thought she was also wearing makeup to make her look more pale, but apparently that's just how she photographs under the sickly fluorescent lights of America's public school system. Seriously, it's like the secret plan of the government is to take the segment of the population that think about how much they hate their looks more than anything in life and lit their skin to highlight acne. I hope all kids everywhere wore bad ass masks to school on Friday and then went off on a three-day candy binge instead of doing math.



UPDATE!: I knew as soon as I posted this, my brother would get around to posting pics of my too adorable for words nephew and niece, starring as a pirate and Foofa from Yo Gabba Gabba! Bask in the cuteness glow of superior genes.

A Costume Update

2008. Flint & Lady Jaye

Jami and I had a little too much fun dressing up as G.I. Joe's cutest couple this year. But aside from thanking my older brother for the loan of the beret that I'm pretty sure has been to Iraq and back, I thought I'd offer these without comment.

My Life In Halloween Costumes

It's time for the best holiday ever invented, and since I've spent the past month before the annual candy binge helping out at my mother's house, I decided to pull some photos from my Halloween archives and share some of the ridiculous lengths I've gone to for a rocking costume. Enjoy! – KP

1984. A Skeleton



I don't know about the rest of you people, but to me, real Halloween costumes are not bought in a store ready to wear. They're made in part or in full by the wearer. Or in the case of my first costume (and a lot of them on this list), they're made by the wearer's mom.

The Skeleton overthrow I'm wearing here was sewed by my mom along with a matching pillow case-style bag that I used every year after that. They were totally boss.

1985. The First Time I Was Batman



I've loved Batman so long I have no memory of not loving Batman, which should be pretty evident by the fact that I was dressing as him at the age of four. I'm not sure if I was routinely crashing my Super Powers Batmobile into everything in our house at every available possibility at this point, but I am pretty sure I'd already taken to watching the old Adam West show and taking it 110% seriously by then. (If you see me sometime, ask me to tell the story about when I met Adam West. It's way too long to post here.)



I don't remember much else from when I was four, but I remember this costume…probably because I kept wearing the mask around the neighborhood for years after that and insisting that my friend Kyle Davis was Robin because he was shorter than me and had black hair.

1986. A Ghost



Everyone should dress up as a traditional "spooky Halloween character" at least once in their life. For me it was as a ghost, and I think the silver-lined costume mom made is still somewhere in our house. Although, both my brother Brian and I got way more mileage out of his Dracula cape and teeth, the latter of which probably gave us more shared colds than we can remember.

1987. A Policeman



When I was a kid, my dad was a police officer in our hometown of Flint, Michigan. His tenure on the force meant that we had both a lot of crazy legendary family police stories (the time my aunt maced herself, the time dad's partner accidentally shot a hole through our bathroom wall) and a lot of old police equipment in our garage, including the real gun belt I'm rocking here. Also, that odd looking helmet comes from my dad's short stint riding with Flint's mounted division (Yes, Flint, Michigan employs police on horseback).

1988. Darth Vader



When you're a little brother, it's a fact of life that most of your clothing comes in the form of things your older brother has grown out of. Sometimes this happens with Halloween costumes too, including this Darth Vader getup. I seriously didn't mind, though, as the costume was super dope. The front piece breathing apparatus my mom made by wrapping a bunch of material around one of those single serving Frosted Flakes boxes with buttons sewn on the front. Pretty slick, mom.



I honestly think the above pic is one of my brother in the costume from the year before, but for reals, how could I not include a picture of FUCKING VAMPIRE SPIDER-MAN?!?!?

1989. The Second Time I Was Batman



When Tim Burton's "Batman" film came out in 1989, I spent the summer collecting every toy, trading card, magazine, glow-in-the-dark Frisbee, mail away bank from a cereal box and Prince "Batdance" cassette single imaginable. Was there any doubt that I'd dress as the black-clad version of the Dark Knight that Halloween? No. But who could have guessed I'd look so bad ass.



In the most telling of our costume pairings, Brian (my real life archnemesis) dressed as the Joker (my fake Halloween archnemesis). We're totally cool now. I think that I wore that Batman costume every day for a week straight…possibly without showering (less gross when you're eight).

1990. Dick Tracy



Unfortunately, I was unable to find any of the pictures of me in the totally awesome Dick Tracy trench coat mom sewed for me out of yellow corduroy which we still have. Fortunately, I was able to find the official Dick Tracy fedora and signal watch I wore to lend authenticity to the ensemble. That watch was fucking awesome because it both told the time and lit up when I decided to call into headquarters Warren Beatty style.

1991. Moon Knight



Unless someone presents evidence to the contrary, I'm going to go ahead an assume that I am the only 4th Grader in the history of America to dress up as Doug Moench, Don Perlin and Bill Sienkiewicz's werewolf-fighting, billionaire, schizophrenic superhero Moon Knight. And you know what? I'm totally cool with that.

1992. Cyclops



In the summer of 1992, my family moved to the suburb town of Grand Blanc, making me change schools for the first time. In retrospect, I probably did myself no favors in terms of fighting the "weird new kid who likes comic books way too much" stereotype by dressing up as Cyclops and answering questions as to who I was by saying, "I'm Cyclops. I used to be in the X-Men, but now I lead X-Factor." But how could I resist dressing up like this sweet Marvel Universe trading card by Ron Lim?



I made the visor myself by cutting out the red lenses from two pair of 3D glasses and affixing them to a felt headband by way of thread and an insane amount of hot glue gun work. I recall walking down the hallway of my new school and having an older kid ask aloud, "Did he seriously make that mask himself?" and thinking, "Uh…yeah! Because I wouldn't really be Cyclops without a ruby quartz visor, you fucking loser!"

1993. Clark Kent



Believe it or not, there was a time pretty recently in America where cheap T-shirts with Superman's S-Shield were not sold at every kiosk in the local mall, so when "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" debuted, combining my twin nerd loves of comic book superheroes and romantic comedies, I had to have my saintly grandmother put together this shirt by giving her a Dan Jurgens comic to use as a model.

1994 – 1997. The Lost Years

Two things happened between the time I was in 6th Grade and my Sophomore year of high school: the Phegley family kind of stopped taking photos of any kind and caring about how cool your Halloween costume was became pretty low on the priority list for my peer group (I think puberty may have something to do with the latter). End result in terms of this essay? I have no photos or really a lot of recollection of costumes from that period. I'm pretty sure I did something comic related most of the time and know that in the 8th Grade I was The Shadow because of that not-so-great Alec Baldwin movie, but beyond that…I got nothing. Luckily, things started looking up in high school when I met a group of friends who got back into the costume game for an annual Halloween party at my friend Lauren's house, leading to…

1998. Jay & Silent Bob



I know this costume choice may be perceived as a point against me for some of you, but you know what? When I was 17, the only movies Kevin Smith had made were "Clerks," "Mallrats," and "Chasing Amy" so Cullen Brown and I pretty much figured he could do no wrong. Plus, it allowed me to swear in front of adults and not get yelled at because I was "in character."



Note Cullen's candy cigarettes and my brown bagged bottle of lemonade (we were good kids) and my Clerks comic book T-shirt by the always link-worthy Jim Mahfood.

1999. Starman



James Robinson's Starman comic is still my favorite monthly series of all time, so I had no qualms about going to a party with swim goggles on my head, an ugly Hawaiin shirt (which I actually wore A LOT back then) and a "cosmic rod" I made with half an old hiking stick with a yellow ball from the MacDonald's ball pit glued on the end. What you can't see in this picture of me dancing poorly with my buddy Kegmeister (who apparently went as some sleazy greaseball) is that I had nerd cred on my side that night as my costume included DC's official Starman tin badge that I'd bought at a con that summer. Represent.

2000. Shaggy & Velma



My Freshman year of college, my girlfriend Jami and I had a whole scheme with a bunch of other kids in our dorms to go out for Halloween parties dressed as the gang from Scooby-Doo. Unfortunately, no one else came through, but screw those kids…we looked hot anyway. But you know…without Jami, my costume isn't much of a costume as it consisted of a Phish T-shirt and a pair of hippie pants my brother sewed himself and then gave to me when he joined the army. I would've worn that anyway in college.



Jinkies!

2001. Tommy Chong & Josie



Although I couldn't find a photo of it, Sophomore year of college my roommate Justin and I did a costume team-up going as Cheech and Chong. But really, our costumes weren't that great. They were more or less an excuse to walk around campus blitzed all day. Other such excuse days included Martin Luther King Day, Columbus Day, Bastille Day, Day After Midterms Day and Tuesdays. On the up swing, Jami and her roommates pulled off a rad Josie & the Pussycats trio inspired by the totally underrated movie by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont.

2002. Green Lantern & Hello Kitty



I know nothing about the costume screams it, but in my mind I was always Kyle Rayner and not Hal Jordan, which is funny as the ring I'm wearing is actually autographed by Alan Scott creator Mart Nodell. If you understand anything about that last sentence, you're a nerd.



Above is a picture of me and a guy dressed like "Piano Man" era Billy Joel.

2003. The Third Time I Was Batman



Jami and I returned to the couples theme Senior year as Batman and Catwoman. I know what you're thinking, and you're right…Batman does not wear glasses under his cowl or have a beard. But you know what? He does wear his underpants outside his regular pants, so you've got to give me some credit there, right?

2004 – Present.

The past few years, my few meager attempts at Halloween costumes have been forgettable and unphotographed, but this year Jami and I are making a dramatic return, and I promise to post a photo or two next week.

Thanks, y'all!