Remember the ongoing weird similarities between myself and my teenage neighbor? Yeah. His mom recently found the picture of me, above and to right, taken Halloween 2009, on my old site, and immediately e-mailed me the picture of him, to left, taken Halloween 2011. Kinda uncanny, at this point.
I was late off the block for Halloween this year, and didn’t really plan to celebrate, but the sudden attention recently afforded to my 2009 costume on MAKE’s Facebook page inspired me to sponge Cthulhu off and pass out candy on Monday night. My last-minute decor consisted of painting “Happy Halloween” on the door in bloody red washable tempera and making my round porch light up like a Jack-o’-lantern. I use orange “bug light” CFLs year-round, anyway, so all I had to do was add black patches for eyes, nose, and mouth. I’m pretty pleased with the result.
I drew the face on, free-hand, with a Sharpie (the image I used for inspiration is in the gallery, below), then taped over it with bits of black electrical tape trimmed to the lines with a hobby knife. Electrical tape works great for this because it has some elasticity and can be smoothed flat on a round surface.
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The costume was a big hit. One young man, dressed as a super hero, turned and ran when I opened the door. His mother intercepted him at the edge of the porch and veered him back around to face me, and I immediately took the mask off and apologized, saying, “I meant to scare you, but not that much.” His mother laughed, thanked me, and assured me he’d be fine. His little sister, meanwhile, was apparently unphased, taking advantage of the opportunity to hit up the candy bowl for seconds and thirds.
The headline is my favorite entry so far in the ongoing caption contest for this photograph of myself as Cthulhu for Halloween 2009. That photograph was taken by my dear friend Christie Clark, and that is her late, lamented, lovely, little Llhasa-dog Allie in my lap. R.I.P.
Had some good use of the Cthulhu mask, too, during the MAKE online editorial team conference call on Wednesday. Pro tip for Google+ hangouts: You don’t have to point the camera at your head. When this screenshot was taken, the mask was fit over a big plastic jug with a couple of rocks in the bottom for weight, sitting on the desk beside my computer.
I actually have no costume for this year, and since Halloween is on a Monday night I will probably not be doing too much except handing out candy to the neighborhood kiddos. But the caption contest has inspired me to at least sponge Cthulhu off for that purpose. Perhaps there will be more photos to come.