It's Halloween time! A magical season when children get excessive amounts of candy, pumpkins are brutally gutted and carved, and adults get to show off their arts and crafts skills. Figuring out Halloween costumes each year can be stressful. Is it well executed? Is it topical? Are you going to be able to breath in this thing?
The Browmunity has had plenty of experience with going overboard on a costume, but also failing miserably in the execution of one. So we decided to share some of our favorite costumes we've put together over the years and maybe even give you some inspiration for this spooky season.
When you’re in a relationship for longer than a year, couples costumes become the standard. I can look back on my single days for decent costumes; Napoleon Dynamite, a T-Rex, Blues Clues (when I say single, I guess I mean childhood). But, I believe my true best costumes have come in recent years when teaming up with my fiancé, Ashley.
To give you a taste of our costumes, two years ago we were Jack-Jack and the raccoon from The Incredibles and three years ago we were Kronk and the squirrel from Emperor's New Groove. There seems to be a weird Pixar and Ashley dressed as a woodland creature pattern…. But my favorite we’ve ever done is from college when we were Shark Boy and Lava Girl. These outfits featured excessive duct tape and clothes exclusively bought at the local Goodwill. While I wasn’t the most convincing Taylor Lautner, I believe this is the best Halloween costume I’ve ever had and will tell my grandkids all about it. They won’t get the reference of course, but I’ll still tell them.
-- Caleb Tackes
While it never existed yet, it’s always been a dream of mine to dress up as FrankenSeinfeld. “What’s the deal with that crazy name?” you may ask. Well, it’s actually 2 characters combined into 1! What a weird collection of things that could be both appalling and sympathetic. It’s like this idea was designed in a lab of comedy geniuses. If you’re doing a couples costume, throw in a Carl Sagan inspired “Cosmos” Kramer for the Halloween #1 best, do it yourself costume of your life!
If you really want to get the people laughing, throw in a “This hand is my hand, no wait that’s your hand” bit to kill!
--Ryan "Chewe" Gutchewsky
Like most things, my favorite Halloween costume was one I didn't plan. About a week before Halloween I got invited to a costume party last minute. Since Halloween was a week away I didn't have a costume yet, but I still wanted to go to the party. When I showed up costumeless the host wouldn't have it and gave me a big bin of old costumes to put something together. I dug through the bin finding monkey ears, a paint brush, a fairy wand and a princess tiara; I felt so pretty. I hastily put them on and went as a "Fairy Monkey Princess who also liked to paint". I loved this weird mismatch of different costumes and decided I needed more.
The next week was Halloween and I got invited to another costume party. Instead of getting an actual costume together; I put on everything I gathered the week before. I went as what I called "other people's costumes". All night I just asked everyone I could for at least a small part of their costumes. It worked surprisingly well too, people would give me the weirdest things: hats, their cat tails, their face paint. I was no longer just that small town monkey fairy princess anymore, I was a city gal now and boy was I drunk. I managed to wake up with a couple of fake piercings and all of Post Malone's face tattoos. I'm not sure what I ended up being but I had a lot of fun becoming whatever that was.
Either that or Tyrone Biggums. Look it up kids, it's hilarious. Also you get to carry around powder sugar and pretend it's cocaine. 10/10 I've done it like 5 times would do it again.
--Mario "Sex Mex" Garza
***DISCLAIMER: Mario doesn't have any photos of the costume he just talked about so we used a photo of him as the Hamburglar which he somehow didn't write about.***
Well, Caleb already ruined the surprise by mentioning it, but I guess I’ll go ahead and share my side of things. As was mentioned… who doesn’t love a couples costume?! And if you know me, you’d know that I will do anything to be a woodland creature on Halloween. I think they are so sweet and simple minded and cute and just misunderstood. Anyway, I tap into that sort of character quite easily. I’ve been the classic bunny and even a racoon! But, I think my favorite costume was when I got to be a squirrel <3
So, I was a squirrel and Caleb was Kronk from one of the best Disney films, Emperor's New Groove. In the movie Kronk and the squirrel are best friends and speak their own language, much like every good relationship should be! Well on this night, I really took to my character and was a very believable squirrel. I was even stealthing around outside at night in an alley to become close with my other squirrel peers. Caleb did have to pull me aside and say I was being weird and should quit. But for all my ladies out there…don’t let no man tell you what to do! But in this case I listened because it was weird and I think there was glass out there that could have hurt my little squirrel feet. So, I came back inside to join the party. Nevertheless, such a delight getting to be a woodland character.
--Ashley T.
In Seventh Grade I wanted to be Santa Claus. Nothing else made sense to me. And as Halloween grew nearer and nearer I knew that my opportunity was in grasp. My mother and I went to a few thrift stores in the South Bend area where we found the necessary clothing. A big red jacket, red pants, black boots. We stuffed the jacket with a pillow and crumpled up tissue paper to give myself a joyous belly. Using wire and cotton balls, we glued together a beard that could hang off my ears in a fashion similar to glasses. We glued the rest of the cotton around the trim of the jacket. We bought a Santa hat, or found one in the attic, I don’t fully remember. I was as close to a 13 year old Santa Claus as I could possibly be, and the concept of dressing up as an entirely different holiday for Halloween was very funny to me. But when you go to a school that has students from Kindergarten all the way through 8th grade, you’ll quickly realize that if Santa shows up to school, Santa needs to deliver. There were a lot of moments of me shouting “Ho ho ho! Happy Halloweeeeen!” And I know that I had to give my candy to kids who just expected something from me because I’m pretty much the “spirit of giving”.
As I was leaving school that day there was a kid in the third grade who lived down the street from me standing outside in the parking lot, waiting to get picked up by his parents. He was shouting “ I know you! You’re not Santa! You live down the street! You’re my neighbor!” Which led to an audience of about 20 or 30 children looking at me with their jaws dropped, in absolute shock that I would dress up and besmirch the name of Santa Claus. Thankfully, as this was happening a kid walked by wearing a George Bush mask, and I got to casually explain, “of course this is a costume. But Santa is still real, do you think that George Bush isn’t real just because this guy is walking around dressed as him?” At the time that felt like a pretty great save, but as we grow older, I wonder if any of those kids question if George W. Bush ever existed. I know I question it every single day. -- Keith Miller
My mother stared at me across the room in barely restrained frustration, a threatening fly swatter in her right hand; “you can't just be Air Bud for every Halloween,” she said. My eyes narrowed to bitter slits. What kind of betrayal was this? What shallow excuse of parenthood is restricting my inspiring creativity, my expression, my bold artistic statements? My mind raced as I carefully chose my next words; “Why the f*ck not?” I asked. Her brow furrowed with discontent, and I flinched as she began to speak; “The neighbors will think you’re weird. You’ve worn your Air Bud costume continuously for the past 4 Halloweens, but also on holidays completely unrelated to Halloween, such as St. Patrick's Day,” she said.
Like a cornered animal, my eyes darted left, and right. I looked for possible escape routes if things went south. “What’s wrong with being air bud on St. Patrick’s Day??” I asked, “all those assholes dressing up as green leprechauns and yet I don’t get to be a dog that is uncharacteristically good at basketb-” She cut me off, with a twisted smirk: “You’re terrible at basketball.” My mouth was wide open in shock. What a heartless thing to say. Cruel even. Very true, but cruel nonetheless. A handicapped orphan from Venezuela could probably beat me in basketball, if they weren’t too busy starving that is. I briefly pondered the injustice of that fact. A sudden whoosh of air. I heard the fly swatter before I saw it. The strike was so fast that I couldn’t completely dodge it, and it grazed the tip of my nose. “GET OUT” she shrieked. “OUT!” I hissed rabidly. She continued to “go ham” with the fly swatter. Try as I might, I was unable to dodge several of the blows, leaving my pride gravely injured as I scampered away (very mysteriously!!) into the night.
--J.C. Lempa
