The Bunnyears Halloween Archive

Halloween is cool.

Anybody who is too old to dress up once a year is too old to hang out with me.


Kat and I have something of a reputation now for halfway decent costumes. (And Kat gets most of the credit; without her, there's little I could do on my own.) Here's the reverse-chronological breakdown for the curious.

2006

Revenge of Drinky Mouse

Same spandex, new bottle, more disturbing. I once again wandered around swearing at everybody and slurring my speech in a high-pitched voice.

2005

Cyndi Lauper & Mr. Monopoly

Kat got jammed by deadlines again this year so she opted to revive her earlier Cyndi Lauper outfit, albeit with even cooler silver sparkle shoes. I am an established Monopoly fiend and I had a top hat already, so it didn't take long to find a used tux jacket online and a handlebar moustache that absolutely refused to stay in place, and wham, I was Rich Uncle Pennybags. I bought some spare Monopoly money off eBay to give out to people who complimented my outfit (the better the compliment, the bigger the tip) and made the money bags with fabric and packing paper.

2004

Princess Generica & Sir Not Appearing In This Film

Combine deadline woes with the trepidation of a new job's unknown Halloween customs and you get...not much. A Monty Python knight was my backup idea for a long time--I got a white bunny puppet five or six years ago and said "Someday I'll do this." And that was this year. The rest of the outfit was simply my wedding tunic and the rest of my standard medieval garb (sword, dagger, boots, etc). Kat got the princess dress last year on sale and was happy to use it, and she loves that wig, for whatever reason...

2003

The Osbournes

A little late, maybe, but they were still on the air, and we thought Shelly Reimer looked an awful lot like Sharon with the wig on. Kat did Kelly, I did Ozzy, and Gabe Graziani went as Jack (that's also him apply the Ozzy tattoos like a true artist, using Crayola washable markers). For extra effect, Kat and Gabe fought with each other in British accents. I had a big Brother P-Touch labeler that looked like Ozzy's infamous befuddling remote and shuffled around screaming "SHARON!"

2002

NBA Jam & Princess Packinheat

When I was in grade school, my friend Mike Casey went as a Pac-Man machine. I was wicked jealous and always wanted to do it, but do it better. In late 2001 GamePro bought some new office chairs and one of the boxes looked uncannily like a mid-90s Midway coin-op, so I grabbed it and saved it for a year--and since I am the proud owner of an NBA Jam machine, it seemed like a natural. I reinforced the corners with small metal brackets, spray-painted it in the garage, and installed some crappy used buttons and a busted joystick donated by super-coin-op-restorer Dave Jones. The buttons and joystick were real, and they clicked and moved.

GamePro had a massive color printer so Kat and Shelly printed out equally massive logo scans and a screen shot of Knicks legend Patrick Ewing going up for a monster dunk (thank you MAME). Kat took a high-res digital photo of a coin door. I intentionally did not cut arm holes in the sides because I wanted a clean look, which meant I could do nothing but waddle around in the thing screaming "Boomshakalaka!" and "Is it the shoes?"

I found a box to wear as the hat/marquee. I built in one of those "wash your baseball hat in the dishwasher" plastic cages in the headpiece then wore a black ski cap below that for a snug fit. I am really proud of this costume (I won best overall costume at the office party), and now rather regret selling it the next year (the new owner cut armholes in it too).

This was about the only year that Kat and I did not work together on our costumes. After some discussion about damsels in distress and possibly using one of her existing ren faire outfits, Kat grabbed an AirSoft machine gun and a grenade and went as on original character, Princess Packinheat.

These pictures are kind of shitty but they're all I have.


2001

MTV Icons

Kat went as Cyndi Lauper, I went as Prince, and Kristin Shackelford (now Weigand) went as Madonna. Kat made the Prince coat by hand, and I bought a shitload of those little heavy metal studs from Hot Topic to make the 5x10 grid on on the shoulder patch. I also had a small cigarette pack amplifier in my pocket, so I walked around playing the riff from "Let's Go Crazy." We were aiming for a best group award at the office party. We lost (the group that won was very clever, mind you) and due to some unusual judging calls in most categories (a guy in surgical scrubs wins Most Original?), I think we are all still a little bitter about this one to this day.


2000

Dead Frozen Leonardo DiCaprio & The Powerpuff Girls

Kristin wanted to go as Rose from Titanic, and Kat was up for the challenge of making the dress. I was merely an accessory as Jack, but I refused to go as anything normal, so I went as Dead Frozen Jack instead. Kat apparently didn't have enough to do, so she made three matching Powerpuff Girl outfits for herself, Julie Ramirez (Buttercup) and Kathy Praisner (Bubbles). They won Best Group.

1999

Ghostbusters

From boyhood dream to geek legend. The Ghostbusters outfit, complete with proton pack, was such a big deal that it commands its own site, complete with detailed photos of how we built the costumes and what we did when we got 'em done. This was a shoo-in for the office party; I went Best Overall.

1998

Young Frankenstein

I decided to cash in on my, er, unique ocular peculiarities and went as Marty Feldman's Igor from Young Frankenstein. Kat went as Teri Garr's Inga (somewhat against her will) and Jonathan Rinzler took up the guise of Gene Wilder's Dr. Frankenstein. Requisite props included a squishy brain that said "Abbie Normal" and Kat made the "How I Did It" book cover for Jonathan. We went as a group but I won an award as an individual, almost certainly because of the eye thing. (That's Francis Mao as Duke Nukem, playfully holding a gun to my head.)

1997

Mickey Mouse, Alcoholic

This is how not to introduce yourself to the people at your new office: Don't dress yourself in black lycra, grab a bottle of Maker's Mark whiskey and a cigar, and start swearing in a high-pitched cartoon mouse voice. I really liked this outfit but it made a lot of other people uncomfortable--partly because I didn't want to break character in the presence of children, and partly because they didn't want to see me in spandex. Thankfully, some would say, only one low-res photo remains.