also, there was Halloween

Right, Halloween: it’s already happened, as far as I’m concerned. I’m exhausted, haven’t been to the gym in ages, and have a ton of work to finish. I intend to nod approvingly as Charles hands out the massive quantities of candy that he bought, but my holiday celebrations occurred last Saturday. I think I’m even skipping out on a fun-sounding bar outing.

But last weekend was pretty great. Here’s a shot of me as Dr. Doom, looking disoriented:

And here’s a shot of me fighting Galactus.

A few things learned during the costume construction process:

1. I think Dr. Doom probably makes his own outfits. If you find yourself in possession of a lot of green fabric, an enthusiasm for diabolical technology and little to no sewing skill, a Doomesque cape and tunic combo is a not-unlikely result.
2. Dr. Doom’s enthusiasm for goblets is born of necessity: it’s really hard to hold onto a beverage while wearing gauntlets. Cupping your drink from beneath is really the only viable strategy. The fact that it looks good when paired with a menacing glower is just a happy coincidence.
3. Negative ion generators are a nice idea, but they’re also likely to stop working pretty quickly. And you need to think seriously about electrical isolation if you want to build up any kind of charge — ancient sneakers spraypainted silver (and paired with a cape that occasionally drags) are not the best way to keep voltage from leaking into the ground. I managed to give a few people pinprick shocks before the whole thing stopped working, but it mostly served to gently electrocute my right foot. Overall, it was a bit of a disappointment (although thankfully not a very expensive one).

   But I got some late advice from Dan Rutter of DansData.com, which may be useful for aspiring Dooms:

   You might like to try buying one of those “shocking” lighters or pens
   that’re all over eBay and joke shops these days; they’re basically
   just a little Tesla coil inside, I think, and it ought to be quite
   easy to hack one into a shock-glove.

   (A friend of mine made a rather higher powered version of the same
   thing years ago, and installed it in a small project box with
   external contacts, a button, and a label that said “DO NOT PRESS”.
   Needless to say, people picked it up, and pressed the button, and
   sometimes then smashed themselves in the face with the box. :-)

   Sounds promising. Next year: Electro?

At any rate, here are the rest of my photos from the evening. As you might notice, there are kind of a lot of shots of a jack o’lantern sitting in front of a smoke machine’s output hose. That’s because this is totally awesome and should enthrall the lot of you the way it does me. Some people will tell you that on Saturday night I could often be found stumbling around the shrubs, fiddling with the smoke machine. More responsible accounts of the evening will reflect the fact that A) it takes a lot of work to maintain an optimally foggy environment for the enjoyment of all and B) it’s pretty hard to navigate a garden while wearing a cape and cardboard armor regardless of how many beers you’ve just consumed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.