Fear In the Unknown: Obscure Costume 2012

This Halloween was more awkward than usual. October 31st hasn't happened yet, but I'm calling it. Wednesday is a bad day for Halloween because if you're an adult and want to go to parties, they have to be held the weekend before. This means Halloween lasts nearly a week. It sounds good in theory, but the holiday starts with a bang and ends lack luster. To make things worse, we've got some severe weather with hurricane Sandy. The 31st might consist of cleaning up debris, not trick-or-treating.Thankfully the weekend was spared, that is if you weren't pre-panicking and sandbagging yourself in / your party guests out.

It was hard to not look Photoshopped.

Making things more delightfully awkward,
I wore another obscure costume this year. Despite knowing well that my costume would be lost on people for so many reasons, I make a costume based on my blog post about Ben Cooper Costumes. With inspiration from Brandon Bird's painting
 I Am The Night, I wanted to play on the idea that Ben Cooper seemingly made costumes for every imaginable character, however, all still within the scale of mainstream popularity. What would happen if his costumes still dared to be sold in stores? What characters would the company acknowledge for more modern TV series or movies? I chose to honor one of my favorite TV series Twin Peaks, and "dress" as the tragic Laura Palmer.

I used a plastic trash bag, with printed window decals that I designed in Photoshop. I tried to be as cheesy and literal as possible. But I could not for the life of me find a crappy generic mask anywhere! Standards are just too high these days. I wanted to wear a plain blond girl mask, a la Ben Cooper, but last minute I had to craft my own creepy and realistic Laura Palmer mask out of a photo. At least then I was more recognizable -- to those who even knew what Twin Peaks was. And if they did know Twin Peaks, they didn't necessarily know that Ben Cooper costumes existed. Explaining this was a chore and most people were too trashed to understand. I would try and start by explaining my costume was supposed to be bad, but sympathetic drunk girls would interject "No! No! It's ... nice." The pity imposed on me was neutralized by my prowess for obscure TV shows. The jokes on them! ha...
But like I said last year:

"Halloween is about enjoying yourself and being someone different for a night. It doesn't really matter if people know what my character is, I just know it will still creep people out. And it's not me, so that's step one of having a great costume."

One certain victory for this Halloween was my jello shot display. Last year I tried to make these awesome eye balls from Jelly Shot Test Kitchen, however, I didn't have the skillz then, and they weren't worth documenting. Learning from my mistakes, I used most of this  My Jello Americans recipe for the whites, added raspberry sauce for the bloodshot-ness, and mini M&Ms for the pupils.

Coconut Rum Eyeballs with Raspberry and Mini Brown M&Ms

My second batch was based on this neat Halloween science trick you can see on My Jello Americans here, and Jelly Shot Test Kitchen here. The Quinine in tonic water glows blue under a black light! I was also inspired by the use of pop rocks in this MJA post. I think my jello was too wet for the pop rocks to stick to the top as intended, but they added a nice sweetness to the tangy vodka tonic.

Vodka Tonic Radioactive Tubs with Pop Rocks.

All in all, despite the awkward set up, Halloween 2012 was a good one.
Happy Halloween!