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!

Very Funny Guys, Those Aren't Costumes!

Back in the 70's kids didn't have to lift a finger or use brain cells for their Halloween costumes. A company called Ben Cooper Inc. made things real simple. Their costumes were both cheap and pop-culturally relevant. One can achieve this by selling plastic smocks with very literal images and designs based on popular characters.

My new favorite painting: Brandon Bird "I Am the Night"

During this golden age of Halloween no effort was needed to make anything convincing. How convincing is wearing a plastic smock that says your character's name? Pretty damn convincing. I really don't think anything else is needed beyond that, but the generous, detail-oriented folks at Ben Cooper Inc. added the likeness of your character right on the smock as well. Bonus: the hair color on your mask was accurate.

The Ben Cooper costume suppressed creativity on so many levels:
1. It discourages kids to gather or design clothing and accessories that define their character.
2. The designers at Ben Cooper could not create beyond the smock or leave much to the imagination.
3. Lazy/Overwhelmed parents couldn't help but buy these costumes to make this arduous holiday easier to handle.
4. It eliminates all discussion.
5. No one involved has to think.

Could this era of shitty, shitty (excuse my French) shitty Halloween costumes be more than just an example of cheap manufacturing? Could this style of costume be used to smother individuality?

If you wore a leather jacket in 1975, I can bet people would think you're the Fonz.

Even when you are the Fonz, you aren't really the Fonz, you are a kid in a plastic bag like everyone else. Put on the leather jacket, slick back your hair and say "Heey!" and you're not really the Fonz, but we get it, it's Halloween. Or you can put on a shirt that says, "The Fonz He-e-y!" and not say a word all night under your suffocating mask. As literal as you are, you are now even further from the truth -- further than we ever thought possible, actually. But here you are, doing it; a costume faking a costume. It's a charade to end all charades!

"Go on, you're Flipper now. Go away kid, ya bother me."

This is how I imagine Halloween went down back in the 70s. Kids insisted on being very specific TV personalities -- like minor characters from spin-offs that have very few discerning characteristics. Ben Cooper Inc. tried their best to oblige, knowing little about the new shows, and wanting to spend as little time and money as possible. With so many characters that pretty much dressed like everyday people, Ben Cooper Inc. at least wanted to create a product that was recognizable. Because a little girl's dream is not to be Shirley from Laverne and Shirley for a night: it's to wear a mask made from the same mold as a blow-up doll.

I think Shirley would wear that.

The painfully obvious costumes sure made things easier for adults answering the door. I guess the real problem with Halloween was that children had been wearing costumes that were too realistic. In this day and age how can you trust opening your door, when the real Chachi could be walking around. I'm glad I can tell who's wearing a costume. They all wear the same shapeless bag, but if it said "COSTUME" on the back too I would feel much better.
I personally won't open the door for anyone unless I see that plastic-y shine thought the peephole, or if their "trick or treat" is muffled beyond comprehension behind a claustrophobic mask.

And now I know who all the kids are being this year without having to talk to them. 

Fake Cannibalism / Real Cannibalism

I haven't posted for a while, but I figured I'd come back with a bang. Right now I'm going through a bout of writers block, as well as photographer's block. The funny thing about life though, is every so often something lurks about and finds it's way to inspire you. Just like when I went to the Golden Gate Bridge and was reminded of the chilling documentary, The Bridge, in seeing this BuzzFeed post on gorilla marketing for Resident Evil 6, I was reminded of a VICE documentary about Issei Sagawa.

In case you don't know about the food sculptor Sharon Baker and her installation in the Smithfield meat market East London, or Issei Sagawa, here is a visual.

The "Human Flesh Meat Market" looks quite upsetting. I think the flesh is made of Prosciutto. Not sure what the fingers and other "offal" are comprised of.
I had a familiar feeling when seeing images of this installation. I am very sensitive to bodily integrity (not to be confused with BIID in which case I would want to cut my arm off), so seeing dismemberment creates feelings of dread and way too many introspective thoughts; like how much less of myself would I be without these limbs? It was similar to when I first saw the black and white images of Issei Sagawa's victim.

Issei Sagawa is a Japanese man, who in 1981, killed and ate part of a young Dutch woman in Paris. Sagawa was detained in a mental institution, declared insane, and shipped back to Japan after the French public expressed outrage of Sagawa's detainment at their expense. Then he appeared to slip through the cracks of the justice system.

 VICE made a short documentary called VICE Meets Issei Sagawa, in which we see Sagawa free as a bird living in Japan, though seemingly trapped in a personal hell. Sagawa explains how cannibalism began as a form of sexual desire as a young boy that escalated into adulthood. While Sagawa claims to attempt remorse to no avail, he simultaneously expresses extreme guilt for being alive, surmising he must be some kind of alien; an abomination.

After Sagawa came back from Paris, his only means of income involved capitalizing on his bizarre crime. Sagawa goes as far as to say "Japanese people nowadays are really stupid" speaking about how he has been asked to write books, make art, and pornography, all exploiting the horrific nature of the incident.  Even he understands the depravity of this. What is most disturbing are the videos film makers made of him, making a freak show of his mental issue, making his cannibalism a sick joke, rewarding his irregularity, and concurrently disregarding the gravity of life lost at his hands.

In Vice Meets... you get a glimpse at a pornographic video in which a Japanese adult film actress interacts with Sagawa (he does not eat or harm her), ending with a tearful interview as she reflects on learning of his crime and obsessions. You will be happy to know that even after such an experience this woman has continued to be a "good friend" to Sagawa. I cannot understand her courage, or her motives.

Below is part 1 of VICE Meets Issei Sagawa. This video is NSFW. It is extremely graphic on many levels.

Mountain Top Removal and Why That is Not Such a Good Idea

Mitt Romney wants to make America independent from foreign oil by 2020. His plan does not include research on clean energy such as biofuels, solar power, and wind power. Instead he wants to drill and mine more than ever. Apparently this will create more jobs (and I did I mention make us more independent). But what about the effects on the land, the miners and drillers, the people living around the drilling, any progress we have made scientifically to improve our quality of life?

Below is a short documentary from Vice.com's Toxic series called,  
Toxic: West Virgina, that exposes the dangers of mountain top removal to access coal. It strips the land of topsoil and pollutes the groundwater. That doesn't just effect the wildlife; it hinders community development. Producer, Meredith Danluck writes,

"The companies try to play it off by saying that they’re developing flat land. On flat land, theoretically, you can put a mall or a Wal-Mart. But when they do mountaintop removal and make the land flat, the substructure is so compromised that the things they’ve built have been condemned. After a couple of years, the walls and plumbing start busting up because of the structure settling."

You may recognize the host, Derrick Beckles, as the face of the WHUDAFXUP branch of the Truth anti-smoking campaign. Fortunately he's not making any awkward stunts to try and freakout the establishment and make his point, though his snark still lingers. This episode of Toxic interviews real salt-of-the-earth people. If you're turned off by listening to bleeding heart hippies, they are nowhere to be found in this film. Though I have nothing against a good tree-hugging hippie, the message is powerful hearing it from the people who actually live there, and are unfortunately physically suffering as the land is. These are people who are constantly sick from the pollution caused by mining, and made to feel stupid for debating the ills of this business. As a man in the film said "They make fun of your commonsense."

"Right there is what I have to take on a daily basis to stay alive."

It's obvious that what we have going for us isn't working, and if that energy "plan" comes to fruition you can expect ten times what you see in this video. The atrocities these people are experiencing will happen to more people, maybe even you if it hasn't already.

Adult ≠ Maturity

Why can't we all just act like adults? I'm not against the concept, I just don't think it's actually attainable.

All throughout childhood, we are accused of acting like a younger person. "You're acting like a 2-year-old." "Stop acting like a five-year-old" "What are you, twelve?" In high school we say, "This whole thing is so middle school!" In college we say, "Why does this have to be just like high school?" Still during college and well into adulthood we are very often caught saying about someone, "Why can't they just act like an adult about it?"

When I was in middle school - host to some of the cattiest times in a girl's life - my parents told me that I would be lamenting people's immaturity and selfishness throughout my whole life. Basically: It doesn't get better. The concept of being a full-fledged adult appears pretty unreachable, and expecting it of anyone will lead down a road of constant disappointment. Especially if you believe once you reach a certain age, it's the time everyone is going to stop doing the things that always pissed you off. 

It was hard to believe, but it is true that some people (not you nor I, of course) will always be (for lack of a better phrase) pieces of total shit from when they are kids until they die. It does get a little better, though. Any high school or middle school teacher can attest, the kids can be remarkably inconsiderate, to say the least. I suppose as a grown person, it becomes more discouraging when the occasional 40 year-old does something that brings you back to the 7th grade. It makes one think, "really? still? now? you? come on." People will do things that we try to characterize as immature; measuring their actions as those made by someone younger and less conscious of the world and how they effect others. While these are characteristics of a many children, most will grow to a good level of thoughtfulness, but some traits unfortunately wont be shaken.

As a 25 year-old I know that aspects of my behavior have definitely improved over the years, and maybe some haven't. No one is perfect, and I don't know anyone who I can confidently say follows all of the criteria of being a so-called adult (no offense). The aforementioned "criteria" is loose and changes to fit a person's needs for argument's sake.

It seems like whenever someone wants to make a person look worse, they can play the adult card. "Oh, grow up!" "You're just being immature." It's really easy to throw those phrases around, take a person down a notch, and make yourself look better. You're the one who is determining maturity so therefore you must be mature. Right? 

Here's the dictionary definition: 

ma·ture

[muh-toor, -tyoor, -choor, -chur] adjective  
1. complete in natural growth or development, as plant and animal forms: a mature rose bush.

2. ripe, as fruit, or fully aged, as cheese or wine.

3. fully developed in body or mind, as a person: a mature woman.

4. pertaining to or characteristic of full development: a mature appearance; fruit with a mature softness.

5. completed, perfected, or elaborated in full by the mind: mature plans.

The definition hints at behavior by using the word "mind" once, but it mostly just talks about fruit.

My boyfriend, Matt uses the phrase, "Be a human" which at first sounds incredibly condescending (of course I'm a human, what are you talking about?), but is actually a much more fair request than "Be an adult." Since acting like a so-called adult is an ambiguous expectation, one should try to be a good human being. It's something you can do at any age.

Apparently I have to start taking photos of rotting fruit for iStock

Once in middle school I saw a girl crying over a break-up, and a male teacher took her aside and told her that because she was crying, it only proved that she was too immature to have a boyfriend. That interaction has stayed with me. I tried to imagine a future where men and women interacted with no conflicts, if only because they were able to hold it all inside and not rock the boat. If there was one bs thing adults always tried to convince kids, it was that adults take care of things with maturity, and maturity means no crying or whining. While it's best to avoid whining and crying, it's unrealistic that it can all be eliminated if we all just bucked up and acted like "adults" damn it!

Considering the concept of not crying over a break-up as the hallmark of adulthood and maturity, (and not the characteristic of a sociopath) I think everyone can agree that no matter how old you are, a break-up is a break-up, and if being an adult means being a robot that amicably shakes hands with a lover as they tell you they found someone new, then I guess being an adult and being human are two completely different things.

Welcome Humans

Obviously people just do random things to each other. If they're lucky the action sticks, grows in popularity and becomes a trend - and not a really awkward moment they will never live down. A simple explanation like that can be the only answer to why passing a newborn baby through a rind of cheese was ever popular.

photo courtesy of buzzfeed.com

According to the Encyclopedia of Superstitions, during the middle ages women would make a "groaning cheese" upon becoming pregnant, which would age for 9 months. Once the baby was born, the family and friends of the mother would eat the wheel of cheese, leaving a rind behind at the time of Christening. On the Christening day, the baby would be passed through the rind of the cheese.

The encyclopedia of Superstitions could not answer why it was called a groaning cheese, and like most odd trends from that long ago, it is explained people thought it would bring good luck, (obvi) but did not further explain why they would believe such a silly thing. You know, prosperity, and wealth, and good health, and good... just good things, all the good things. Stuff the Christening didn't cover.

On that fateful first day the baby could have been passed through anything. I'm thinking watermelon rind, ribcage of a pig, dunked in a wine barrel, large hollowed out loaf of bread; any and all of the major food groups. Maybe somewhere else other foods were experimented with, but the cheese just stuck, and a ridiculous tradition gained some respect for a while.

I swear someone's uncle must have gotten really drunk and thought it would be funny to put the baby in the empty cheese rind after the party. To save embarrassment the family insisted to friends it was an important ritual. Then everyone else wanted to be cool.

Or maybe it was some kind of Pinterest-esq idea a woman had. Just the simple thought of a common denominator between things (9 months in this case), and you got an adorable rustic foodie craft project.

Nowadays she would have made a post explaining how she can make this cheese that takes 9 months to age, and omg how perfect is it that the pregnancy will be just as long! There would be a compelling time-lapse video of her belly growing and the cheese doing it's cheese thing. It would end with an Instagram shot of her and her wax moustachioed husband passing the baby through the cheese as everyone laughs and drinks cocktails out of mason jars.
Then everyone else wanted to be cool.

I'm going to Pin this photo on to a board titled "Newborn Craft Ideas"

Also people just do weird stuff to their kids. This photo above is not of a frozen fetus, though it is a sculpture of one. This is a recent development in pre-birth keepsakes. It's called "Shape of an Angel": you simply have an MRI, and a company in Japan will make a life-sized 3D resin print of your womb and fetus. By the way, I never knew the womb was that angular.
Do I wish my parents had the technology to do this for my birth? Yes. It is creepy, however, ultrasound photos are always pretty grainy, and all babies look the same right when they come out, so your first photo is relatively unremarkable. This though, is a completely accurate copy of yourself at a time you definitely wont remember, your parents otherwise could never envision, and therefore need to commemorate in the most vivid way possible. Right now it costs over $1000 to do, but this could possibly catch on and be just another bizarre tradition in welcoming new humans into this world.

The Golden Gate Bridge Is THE Bridge

I thought taking a week-long vacation in San Fransisco and not watching documentaries would leave me without a proper blog post. Thankfully I was totally wrong.

A photo I took last week on the Golden Gate Bridge, San Fransisco, CA

Walking the 45 minute journey across the Golden Gate Bridge, I saw the sign pictured above. Then my memory was sparked: oh yeah. I'm standing on suicide central.

About a year ago I saw the 2006 film, The Bridge, which investigates the high rate of suicides off the windy and treacherous (I now know from experience) Golden Gate Bridge. Filming for 10,000 hours in 2004 director Eric Steel managed to capture 23 jumps. He gathered interviews from witnesses and family members of the victims. Steel said in a filming application for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area that he intended "to capture the powerful, spectacular intersection of monument and nature that takes place every day at the Golden Gate Bridge." This was only partially the truth; he was directly inspired to film the bridge by the 2003 New Yorker article Jumpers.

The opening sequence is Koyaanisqatsi-esq in it's concentrated  footage of one object, sometimes sped up, focusing on people interacting with the bridge, with no narration; just music. The people laugh and walk, kite board, take photos, work construction. Some stop and look out at the magnificent view or pause to touch the metal cables. The frequency of these close shots increase, and the pause for contemplation starts to seem more sinister, or sad. The tension builds. Finally one of the people looking out... jumps. 

 These are some chilling facts from Wikipedia in their article about the Golden Gate Bridge,

•  "More people die by suicide at the Golden Gate Bridge than at any other site in the world."

• "By 2005, this count exceeded 1,200 and new suicides were occurring about once every two weeks."

• "The California Highway Patrol removed 70 apparently suicidal people from the bridge [in 2006]."

• "As of 2006, only 26 people are known to have survived the jump."

•  "After a fall of approximately four seconds, jumpers hit the water at around 75 mph or approximately 120 km/h."

• "The fatality rate of jumping is roughly 98%."

The blue crisis counseling sign -- which was the only one I saw -- is damaged and worn. It expresses a hopelessness. Obviously people have been fecklessly putting stickers over it; the sign's message helpless to permanent defacement as some remove the stickers in vain to keep the message visible. It says the problem is too big for the tiny sign to solve. 
Below is The Bridge in its entirety. 

Insert Animal, Insert Verb, I Swoon.

Hi-larious photographic viewdinggles of cats from the 1900s

Have you ever seen films and photos from the turn of the 20th century and scoffed at how simple-minded people must have been? Some stereoscopes of cats dressed in people clothes... hours of fun right? Pfft! What would you do, just look at a still photo and laugh to yourself or with friends, and just move onto the next image? What's that about? I bet after the ego stroking remarks you make, you almost feel like their innocence should be revered and respected, because feeling such hubris about your own young mind can only lead to some kind of big gotcha-moment in the near future where our brains melt from all the stimulation, and the ghosts of the past smirk at us beyond the grave, and then we feel so embarrassed...

Well, at the turn of the 21st century, with the progression of the world wide web, decades of Oscar-winning films, and the mores of comedy changing and advancing all the time, some of the most popular and enjoyable videos available are no more intricate or thought provoking than those of the previous century.

10 Pugs Who Look Like Things

Lately I've found myself on Buzzfeed.com at least five times a day. It's really too captivating.  The site is full of very quick, silly, insightful, bits of news and observations, owing much of their material to photos and videos of cute animals. While they have a section of their site dedicated to the squeezy-fuzzyuzums, those images sneak their way into most categories of news and information (much to my delight).

Time to time, as I watch a 5 minute long video of a duck chewing on grass, giggling like a 1 year old with keys dangling in front of them, I will remember my favorite movies: Magnolia, Rushmore, Blue Velvet. I do have a refined palate!  Don't I?

Why am I so enthralled with animals doing such banal things? Take for example the video below, Hamlet the Mini Pig - Goes Down the Stairs. On the very surface, this is a pig walking down the stairs. The dramatic theme is Hamlet's hunger (for that oatmeal) which drives him to defy all odds and go down the stairs. The nuts and bolts of this film, really, is a pig walking down the stairs.
It is one of the best things I have ever seen and it has over 1 million hits on YouTube.



If you liked that, then Baby Turtle eating a raspberry is for you. (Or the more risque, but equally endearing, Tortoise Having Sex With a Shoe, Squeaking).


What it comes down to is, amid all the fast-paced music videos and plot-twisting feature films, it is a timeless fact that humans want to relate to animals. We enjoy seeing animals do things that remind us of ourselves. We can't know what animals are thinking, so when they do something silly, we appreciate the moment as a fluke. That's why I can watch a pig attempt to walk down the stairs for a solid minute. Watching a tiny animal struggle to adapt to a household object humans have mastered is cute. It's cute because the animal has it's situational short-comings, which reminds us of our differences, but their determination is something we both share.
 It warms a place in everyone's heart to see animals living life and trying new things, not just hanging around like a lump. I could sit on my ass and watch that for hours.

Role Models

I found this awesome selection of vintage ladies mug shots.

I know what I'm being for Halloween 2012!
There's a lot of liquid eyebrow left over from last year's costume.

Good to know it wont go to waste.

Comming Attractions: The Imposter

 

Directed by Bart Layton, The Imposter documents a bizarre true story about a Texas child who went missing in 1994, and turned up in Spain three years later. His homecoming raised suspicions about his identity and intentions.

 There's nothing better than a good true-crime drama that has been described as "A full-blown American Gothic horror." After watching the trailer, it seems like this film has the most cinematic reenactments out of any documentary, EVER.

Definitely a must see! Coming to theaters August 24th 2012.