Scaring Up Some Awesome Halloween Costumes

It's October, and at BreakMentalDown.com, that means we become BreakMentalScare.com. No, I didn't register that name, because who wants to pony up the scratch for just one month of content. But I am going to use this opportunity to focus entirely on Halloween related activities--everything from candy corn, to candy corn M&Ms to candy corn popcorn, and whatever the heck else people do in this enlightened month.

Key to making a horrorific Halloween is having a good costume, but this presents a great challenge to many people. They think the whole process is annoying and hard, so they compromise and showcase “creativity” by just being someone from Batman.

Those people are kind of lame, but to many, Halloween is about making that special costume that dips into a level of esoteric where roughly three percent of people understand it, but those people will love it 110 percent.

Ash from Evil Dead. Preparation H Raymond. Trotter from Upright Citizen's Brigade. Motherfucking Snakes on a Motherfucking Plane. Flying Spaghetti Monster. Ma-Ti from Captain Planet. Mr. Bananagrabber from “Arrested Development.” Ug from “Salute Your Shorts,” and most recently, the cotton poof with an anal bleed from Don Hertzfeldt's “Rejected.”


One person hugged me... as the anal bleed.

That's the laundry list of costumes I've created over the past decade. Some caused people to whoop with joy, but the majority of people reacted with confused ambivalence. When I explained to one of my coworkers my history of costumes, his response was to roll his eyes and proclaim “Have you ever thought about just being a ghost?” The succinct answer to that question is “No,” but the more in-depth answer is “Oh dear lord no!”

Creative costumes made from random Goodwill items just have a wholesomeness that a Leg Avenue costume could never hope to achieve. But with these creative setups, make sure you have an elevator pitch lined up. A 12 second or so statement to describe what you are. You don't want people thinking you're just in a banana costume; you want them to see you have a cutout of a Segway.

Instead of being the guy who “dressed” as the Guitar Hero guitar by wearing a black jacket, blackface and drawing multi-colored bars on his face, you can be the guy who says “Have you been touched by my noodly appendage? People might not have understood what I was after my pitch, but at least I didn't have to explain it 17 times a minute.

One other thing, never resort to wearing a costume that involves a rubber mask. Those are just stupid and they reek. Reek of both unoriginality and the smell of latex. Neither are fun, unless you use them for fun.




Birdo might get even more than
three percent love!

Instead, feel free to choose a costume from the following list, they're precision designed to make upwards of 12 people give you a hug. And hopefully one of those might be a hot girl who just happens to love your Ina Garten “Barefoot Contessa” Muu Muu ensemble.

Requiem for a Dream
Those kids, they just seemed to have the best time in the first half of the film. Always laughing, talking about the television and getting juiced by Tappy, juiced by Tappy. Sure, the latter part didn't work out so hot for them, but if you happen to have an amputee, a hardcore lipstick lesbian and a black guy in your group of friends, you can definitely pull off this amazing group costume. Oh, and you'll need to be on uppers.

Diabetic
What better way to creep others out than by being a Type 1 Diabetic? Test your blood and inject yourself with insulin whilst trick-or-treating, and everyone will have quite the fright.

Boulder from Indiana Jones

To most people, a boulder just looks like a hobo dressed in a garbage sack. And for all intents and purposes, that’s what it is. But if you coordinate with an Indy, you have a perfect combination.

Birdo from Super Mario Brothers 2
For anyone who wants to be a sweet transvestite but doesn't want to go through the leg-shaving trouble of creating a Dr. Frank-N-Furter (a scientist) costume, Birdo is your next best bet. Apparently the mistranslated Super Mario Brothers 2 manual referred to him as a he, and that identity has stuck through ever game he's since appeared. Just mold some Styrofoam into the proper shape, layer on a pink sweat suit and you're good to go.

Tune in Thursday to find out what I eventually decided to become. Trust me, it's a costume filled with video and power that when I came up with the concept caused me to remark “Well, that might just be the most esoteric costume I could ever imagine.” And that's coming from a guy who went as Mr. Bananagrabber, a one off character who appeared in 10 seconds of one episode of “Arrested Development.”