Understandablog: Costume Attack

One of the best times of year for me is Halloween. To me, a costume party is the best kind of party. I know it isn't anywhere near Halloween right now but I thought this blog would be a good place to share some of the costumes I have made and worn in the past.

Lets start with a costume I made that, though wasn't for Halloween, was pretty awesome and deserves to shared.

A long time ago, in the year 2004, a group of friends and I decided to stage an event called "BoxFight" where we created robo-costumes out of card board to battle each other with. It was good fun. There were a lot off politically driven box costumes there that we pit against each other, but the grande finally was something special.

Myself and 3 others made 4 very special costumes.
A friend and I chose to be to be Airplanes, while 2 other friends chose to become Twin Towers.
We then re-enacted history.

Let the terror begin.

Planes and Towers collide

And Just like on that historic day, no one won.

That year for Halloween I took a few months to grow my hair so that I could style it in a very recognizable hair style. That was the year I went as Wolverine. Not dressed in super hero attire but in the cost friendly street clothed "Logan" costume.

All it took was some jeans, a mock bomber jacket, a plaid shirt, and some claws fashioned out of coat hangers, some card board, and silver chrome paint. The hair was styled with the use of knox gelatin and a hair dryer.

All in all I really enjoyed that costume a lot.

Cue the next year, where I used...

A red long sleeved shirt.
A hat bought at Sears. ( I painted it later with model paint)
A pair of blue oilfeild overalls.
2 yellow cardboard circles which I cut out of a Panago Pizza box and glued to the overalls.
Black crape hair and some spirit gum to create the mustache.
A pair of white gloves
A pair of brown shoes.

....to become Mario.

Another year later was the aforementioned "Road Warrior" Halloween. Where some friends and I used old sports equipment, fur, old clothes, face paint and chains to create that wonderful Mad Max style.

I was the guy in the red face paint.

There were a couple of shitty Halloween costumes between then and 2008 that I don't really wish to share.

By 2008, though, we were back in the halloween groove, and a group of friends and I put a lot of work, effort and money in to fashioning and sewing together some of the best Halloween costumes I have ever seen. Mine was done with a lot of help from a friend (Alecia) and I think it turned out wonderfully.
We went as some DC comics superheroes.


(from left to right) Martian Manhunter (Kalvin), Wonder Woman (Nelle), The Question (Brent), The Huntress (Alecia), Lobo (James), Captain Marvel (myself)


The tights were fun but they made my ass look like a red tomato.

And finally in 2009 we ordered in some costumes, as we new from the previous year how hard and stressful sewing group costumes could be. There was still some sewing, and constructing, and hair dyeing involved, but it was a lot less work when we ordered the shirts off of Ebay.

The costumes? Star trek.