Give Me Your Handrew: Tuesday Top Ten: Halloween Costumes 2014

Thursday, November 06, 2014

Tuesday Top Ten: Halloween Costumes 2014

Apologies for the belated Tuesday Top Ten. After spending most of the day Tuesday returning videotapes, yesterday I had a lunch date with Cliff Huxtable, then dinner with Courtney at Barcadia, followed by drinks at Harry's with Bryce and Van Patten.

As you know, Halloween is my favorite holiday. This year, because Halloween was on a Friday, we were blessed with two weekends of Halloween joy, since the traditional Halloween party/bar night is the Saturday before Halloween.

Here in the Your Handrew household, we got into some shit this year. The girls are embracing their dark sides, which is nice. It started on the night of Friday the 24th, a week before Halloween, when we carved some pumpkins. Lollipop is apparently terrified of pumpkin innards.

My stencil this year was Devil Flanders from the Simpsons. Unfortunately, as is often the case with these intricate pumpkin stencils with thin cuts, the pumpkins wilt pretty quickly, so by the time I took this picture a few nights later, old Neddy boy's moustache had shriveled up. The other pumpkins are more standard jack-o-lanterns.

The next night, we had a costume party, which fulfilled a lifelong dream for me. We decorated the house appropriately, with plenty of spider webs, bats, blood-penned threatening messages on the walls, and the like.

There was also this painting, which we've always had up. When we woke up Saturday morning, it was bleeding from the eyes and mouth. Talk about a team player!

For the party, Jester dressed up as a spider web, although I don't have a good picture of that. Daughter was a witch, and Lollipop decided to think outside the box for a three-year-old girl and be Elsa from Frozen. I don't have pictures of them, either. Son went as Freddy Krueger. As expected, I have about twenty pictures of that, although I will only make you look at one.

I went as Patrick Bateman.

I ordered some business cards off of Etsy. That's bone, and the lettering is something called Silian Rail.

At the party, anytime someone was hovering over the food and trying to figure out what to get, I would tell them, "Don't stare at it; eat it!" Later on that night, I went out to a couple bars. Some people asked if I was Dexter. Their bodies are currently dissolving in a bathtub in Hell's Kitchen.

On Halloween proper, Ari and John and their kids were in town for a wedding, so they stopped by to go trick-or-treating before heading out to the burbs for the festivities. It was cold and windy, with gusts over 50 mph. That doesn't stop kids, and nor should it. Here is a shot of Lollipop dressed as Elsa, and her cousins dressed as Elsa and Olaf.

Daughter was Bat Girl.

Son is less than eight months old, so he stayed home with me while I handed out candy.

This year, I dressed up as Teen Wolf on Halloween proper. When it comes to Halloween, I prefer not to half-ass things. The beard that came with the costume had elastic and hooked around the ears, and it was also way too fluffy. It looked more Amish than werewolf. I was not satisfied, so I decided to cut strips off of the beard and attach them to my face using spirit gum, which achieved a more authentic look. I also got fangs that attached to my teeth. They were a pain to put in, but like the Soup Nazi, I suffer for my work. I added some tan makeup to look a little more vulpine. In the end, I was quite satisfied with how things turned out.

One of my favorite new Halloween traditions is costume karaoke, which I started last year, when I dressed up as the grim reaper and sang "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Heaven." So, I went to Rocks with Gregerson (who was dressed like Neil Diamond), since Rocks has karaoke on Friday nights.

When we arrived, the karaoke guy was starting up. I went to the bar and ordered a keg of beer. Apparently, they don't sell beer by the keg, so I just got a twelve-ounce bottle instead. Whether it was nerves or disinterest, the patrons were slow to get up and sing. Karaoke night isn't quite as fun when people aren't singing karaoke, so I did what any good werewolf would do in that situation. I got up on stage and howled my heart out. I tell you this, fair readers: for the next couple hours, I was the King of Karaoke.

Before my first song, I grabbed the mic and asked if anyone out there was starving. "I know I am," I said, right before bursting into a rather randy version of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf." Laughs were had, heads were nodded in visceral approval, and pictures and videos were taken, and after I got off the stage, high fives were administered.

A little while later, I began to walk to the stage again to put in my next song, when I was stopped by a man dressed as Mike Ditka. "Hey Teen Wolf!" he exclaimed. "Yes," I replied. "I'll give you $20 if you sing 'Werewolves of London," he said, immediately regretting his words. "Twenty dollars?" I asked, not telling him that I was about to go put that song in to sing anyway. "Well, I'll buy you a drink," he said, somewhat uncomfortably, as I was bearing my fangs.

I did indeed sing "Werewolves of London," and this time, there were more pictures and videos being taken. Where the fuck was Styles during all this? I wondered to myself, before realizing that I was not actually Teen Wolf. After a deafening round of cheers, I walked back to Ditka, and he bought me a shot of Fireball. Aaaaooooooooooooo!

I sang one more song a little later, Sam the Sham and The Pharoahs' campy classic, "Li'l Red Riding Hood." By this time, women were throwing panties at me on stage, some of them quite bloody. I'm not really a wolf, people, I wanted to cry out, but I was having too much fun signing the entire song while doing a handstand.

Then, at some point, I realized that all of these people didn't like the real me; they just liked the wolf. I'm nothing if not true to myself, so I changed back into Scott Howard at the end of the night, when I beat the Dragons without lycanthropic powers and then boofed Boof.