The 1st time I dressed up for Halloween I dressed as Pee Wee Herman. I already had a grey plaid suit and white dress shirt so the only things I needed to buy were a small red bow tie (purchased at a kid's store) and a bottle of black temporary hair dye. My friend Debbie helped me dye my hair black. The 1st time it came out charcoal grey, so we did it again to get it black. Then I put on my shirt, tie, and suit and turned the hem of my suit pants under and pinned them so that my white socks would show. The look was complete! Too bad I don't have any photos of it. For years I'd been perfecting my Pee Wee Herman voice and laugh, which came in very handy! I went to a Halloween party and stayed 'in-character' the entire time. It was a lot of fun.
Another year I decided to dress up as a patient in a hospital bed. A colleague gave me the idea, and it was really challenging to put it all together. I started by getting a large sheet of cardboard and cutting a hole in it about 1/3 of the way in from the end. Then I took a pair of panty hose and stuffed them with balled up plastic grocery bags (to fill them up without making them heavy) and stapled them to the cardboard. Then I stepped inside the hole and pulled the cardboard up to my waist, as if I were pulling up my pants. I used some twine tied to small holes in the cardboard and slipped them over my shoulders to act as suspenders to hold up the cardboard. Then I covered the stuffed panty hose (legs) with a white sheet, put on a hospital gown I purchased from a medical supply store, covered the back of the cardboard with another white sheet, and stapled a pillow behind me. Here's a photo of the finished product:
It looks like I'm sitting up in a hospital bed, right? But in reality I'm standing. My friend Jason decided to dress up as a wacky surgeon, and after this photo was taken we added fake blood to his scrubs, arms and face. We went to a party and entered the costume contest. I won 1st place for my hospital patient costume!
Another year 5 female colleagues/friends and I dressed up as the Village People. Now, I have to explain that these colleagues/friends were not 20 or 30 years old like I was at the time. These were mature women, mothers, and grandmothers. In fact, the 'Army Guy' in the fatigues is the mother of a girl I went to high school with, and she had several grandchildren! I honestly don't recall how we decided to do this. I only remember being glad that I'd been assigned 'The Cowboy' because I knew I had a suede vest and that Spouse had a pair of cowboy boots I could borrow. So here we are: 5 women and me dressed as the Village People, doing the "Y.M.C.A." dance in the office cafeteria with the song blaring from a boom box.
Our office mates were so taken with our performance that they requested an encore. We'd only prepared a dance for one song (Y.M.C.A.) but we quickly decided to just wing it and followed up with "Macho Man". Being the big ole' homo that I am, I immediately thought of dance moves to accompany the lyrics, and my fellow Village People took their dance queues from me and imitated what I did as the song went on. It was hysterical. Definitely the best Halloween memory ever!Then last Halloween I dressed up as Boy George. I'd put the costume together earlier in the year for a 1980s party, and easily resurrected it for Halloween. This photo was taken at Freddie's Beach Bar. There's Richard Simmons on the left, me as Boy George in the middle, and the Bride of Frankenstein on the right.
Freddie's had a costume contest too, and I should have won 1st place. Everyone in the bar told me my costume was the best. But during the contest judging another contestant gathered a big group of friends in front of the judges area to whoop, holler and cheer. The judges picked the contestant with the cheer leading friends instead of me, who had the audience vote. I felt like Al Gore in the 2000 election.Spouse & I aren't dressing up for Halloween this year. We were invited to a costume party last Sat night, but we weren't able to go because of my high school reunion cocktail party. I checked all the local joints here and none of them are having costume parties or contests tonight; they all had them last Sat. So we will stay home, dressed as 2 suburban homos, and give out candy. I bet we won't even have 3 kids come to our door. There really aren't any children in our neighborhood. But we'll be ready, just in case.
Drag Queen name of the day: Annie Bellum
3 comments:
Looks like good times. Our favorite was the time we dressed up as geeks. It's somewhere on the blog, can't remember where. No costuming for us this year either.
Your Boy George is fabulous!! You were SO robbed!!! Great blog! :)
WOW, that costume of the patient is awesome.
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