Holy crap, Halloween is one week away! That means I have candy to buy, inevitably overestimating just how many kids will come trick-or-treating this year, horror film marathons to curate, Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” marathons to enjoy, and the ever vexing choice of which costume to wear. Of course, as a guy my costume conundrum is nothing compared to the opposite sex, whose choices often simply consist of “sexy” and, um, “sexy,” as highlighted in Subway’s recent controversial commercial. Either way, I’ve never been particularly good at dressing up for Halloween. I’m not one of those types who can put together an awesome costume on their own, be it for Halloween or some random convention. I recall that the first time I took a “Do-It-Yourself” approach to costume-building I pretty much grabbed random things from my bedroom because I’d forgotten my middle-school was letting us come to class in costume that Halloween. So, I showed up dressed as a Los Angeles Dodgers player who just happened to have a Freddy Krueger glove instead of a proper baseball mit. I somehow hadn’t anticipated the logistical problems with such a scenario, “But, wait, wouldn’t his knife-fingers simply cut through the baseball every time he tried to catch it? Or is that, like, kind of the point? Are you trying to be funny?”
Um, I wasn’t, but if it got me out of such awkward moments then, yeah, I was totally making a joke, like “Could you imagine Freddy Krueger trying to play baseball?”
I tell that story to illustrate that I am the type of person who could use a little help in putting together a Halloween costume. I’d like to be a little creative, put some work into it, instead of simply buying one from a store. If only there was some website which could help me with that?
There is! (Hmm, did that sound a little info-mercially?) Well, there is if you want to dress up like a character from a beloved 80s film. FoundItemClothing.com, who I admit I was first made aware of when they recently contacted me through e-mail, has a special feature for Halloween they’re calling “An Obsessively Chronicled 80s Movie Costume Guide.” They have looked at movies like Dirty Dancing, Escape from New York, Sixteen Candles, Strange Brew, Heathers, Real Genius, Stand By Me, Teen Wolf, and The Lost Boys and created handy-dandy scorecards for all the costume items you can probably find in your own closet. For example, let’s say that I want to dress up like Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? Well, they have a shopping list for that:
I can find pretty much everything on there at a local Goodwill and in my closet, but what about that darn T-shirt? Without it I’m just a guy in khakis, loafers, and suspenders. Well, that’s where you’ll actually have to spend a bit of money as you can currently buy that shirt from FoundItemClothing for $19.95.
Maybe all of this presents some odd questions, such as why would you even want to dress up like an 80s character to begin with? Hey, that’s between you and your own pop culture tastes, but doesn’t everyone try to dress up like something from the biggest films of the moment? Why not stand out at the risk of dating yourself by going as Axel Folely from Beverly Hills Cop? If people have to ask what you’re dressed up as at least you’re answer will be better than my, “Um, I’m Freddy Krueger as a Los Angeles Dodger.” Good times. Oh, btw, I have no idea why there just happened to be a Freddy Krueger glove in my room that day. If I show up at a costume party dressed up as Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off but also with a Freddy Krueger glove on his right hand I’ll clearly have learned nothing.
What about you? Are you perfectly content with simply buying costumes fully from costume stores? Or do you go full-on with do-it-yourself creativity? Or have you stopped up dressing up for Halloween so long ago you find all of this “What to wear this Halloween” talk quaint?
