Anyway, we went to Ragstock to find something interesting to inspire us, but after spending about 20 minutes sifting through countless wigs, boyscout uniforms, scrubs, and pimp coats, we decided to move on. I was feeling concerned about our costume future when we entered Goodwill, but it was there that i stumbled upon inspiration!
while digging through a pile of ridiculous hats, wondering who in their right mind would have worn them previous to donating them to the goodwill, when i remembered an obscure internet meme! The link there is this cartoonist's attempts at commercials for several different networks, and they are a
ll really disturbing in one way or another, but the one the hats brought to mind was at about 1:54 in the video. Basically, the costume is this.So Andy and i bought like 9 outrageous hats (some of them so outrageous that they were never worn) and made a couple signs. It was simple, mildly clever, and easy to include new people should the need arise.
Anyway, here was our finished product, pre-state street. We dressed up strangely to avoid appearing too lazy. Which made it infinitely more fun. I really enjoy dressing up.In honor of the fall season, we conjured up about 2 gallons of "apple pie" for the weekend, as well as ammo for the beerstick (btw, it will henceforth be known as Excalibur). The apple pie took us a solid 3 hours to make on our first run through (its a crazy process. you mix apple cider and apple juice, bring it to a boil, stir in cinnamon and sugar to taste (it supposedly tastes even better if you have cinnamon sticks to leave in the drink while it cools, but they were in a grocery store far away, and too expensive) then you allow it to cool before adding everclear. again, to taste. The stuff is potent, and it tastes pretty much like apple juice. Its frightening. (best served chilled btw. You're thinking o, apple cider, that woul
d be good hot! We once thought as you did. Honestly, don't do it.)In the end, what was initially set up to be a small gathering at our apartment on Friday became a party that just barely fit in our apartment (comfortably). We ran out of apple pie that night, and so discovered that there's a much easier way to make it really quickly: pour everclear, sugar, and cinnamon into apple juice. tastes almost exactly the same.
ANYWAY my friend Rob and my cousin Sam came down to join us in the celebration of this esteemed holiday. Rob was Clark Kent (which turned out totally awesome Rob) and my cousin forgot his costume in Cincinnati, so he donned a silly hat and marched with us against all wearers of humdrum head ware!
Speaking of humdrum, how was the fun-vee Jake?
Another really fantastic costume.
So our friends from last year (shout out to all my Slichter peeps! Love you guy
s) came over on Friday to warm up for other parties. They drank all of our booze, went off to different parties, then ended up coming back later because of some crazy altercation with the other parties. Which was wonderful!... kinda. It was broken up shortly thereafter by one of my good friends becoming violently ill, but it was still overall a pretty fun evening. Eventful, if nothing else.But Saturday... Ah, Saturday. This was the day we had all been waiting for. We woke up at the crack of 1 PM (Sam got up far earlier, but that's because he passed out at like 11:30. He claims to have been up til 1:30, but i think he's lying. He totally pussed out) and began setting plans in motion. And by that i mean we started drinking again. Everybody whanged, everybody chunged, everybody did a beerstick! Good times were had by all.
Then we went to State Street.
This tradition has changed a lot over the last 5 or so years from the free, crazy,
riotous havoc it used to be to a more regulated, police infested, closed off area for people to prance about and take pictures with everyone in their super cool outfits!! I won't say these changes are for the better, but State IS a much SAFER place to be on Halloween than it once was. With the exception of the bandstand of course. Which i come back to later.People come out in droves for this event, and i won't lie, aside from the many geeky awesome costumes that are witnessed, the best part about State is the women. The ladies go all out for state street, and honestly, it's a bit surprising. Girls, your dedication to the slutty attire in the face of freezing temperatures is inspiring. Really.
Here's a few more of the better costumes I witnessed this Halloween.
In addition to the huge numbers of people
that showed up on State for the festivities, UW hires a band each year to play at the base of the capital. This year they brought in Third Eye Blind, with Cage the Elephant as their opener.Now among my State Street crew was Jake Rohrig (Tony Stark) who loves Third Eye Blind, Rob Finlayson (Clark Kent) who loves Cage the Elephant, Andy and Sam (fellow silly hat wearers) who are mostly indifferent to both of them, and me. I like Cage the Elephant, and i REALLY like Third Eye Blind, but i wasn't sure i wanted to go to the concert. It was kind of a big time commitment, and getting up close would require an amount of effort (ie. shoving) that i didn't really want to participate in. Everyone could sense my aversion to the whole idea, so we decided to forget about the concert and move on.
...
Bazinga! (you guys never see my little practical jokes coming)
We totally stayed! Rob heard "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" and we all scrambled forth to be up close for when Third Eye Blind came on. We randomly ran into our next door neighbors from the apartment during said scramble, but during the ensuing press forward, we were separated. Like, extremely. Andy and Rob somehow stayed relatively close together, and Jake, Sam and I got up really close to the bandstand. I'm still carrying my "SiLLY HATS ONLY" sign, and in close proximity there is literally nothing i can do with it. I have to hold it above my head, which is already pretty high up. Of course, this little (relatively speaking) Asian dude starts shouting at me to put my sign down. Like i'm capable of something like that. I can't even tie my shoe, how am i supposed to set my sign down? Asshole. Whatever. I hadn't planned on being this close to the band.
It is at this point that State Street becomes frightening. Everyone is pushing to get closer (unsurprisingly) but there's only so much space to smash together, so we all inevitably get a little closer than we would generally be comfortable with, particularly among strangers. This results in some unplanned and occasionally unintentional grinding with a couple of random cute girls we ran into. I honestly couldn't tell you what their costumes were anymore. I've completely forgotten.
Anyway, when Third Eye Blind finally comes on, people get rowdy. Everyone rushes toward the bandstand, shoving violently. And sorry, i lost track of my story a little but it was at THIS point that State got scary. I lost my footing once and almost fell over, which i am CONVINCED would have been the end of my life. There were points where i couldn't breathe, and i had my feet trampled on and my head kicked by crowd surfers so many times i nearly lost my temper (in an 'i might kill you with my sign' sort of way).
We eventually escaped the madness, (dragging our 2 ladies in our wake, as they had had enough trampling too) because honestly, i couldn't even focus on the music, because i had to focus on survival. I had to think about ways to not die. It wasn't conducive to a good concert.
We finally met up with everyone at the apartment around 1 in the morning, at which point we decided we didn't need to go out to any parties, but would rather just watch a movie. And so we played "Tonight We Drink in Hell," a really intense drinking game to the movie 300. Then everybody passed out. The end. I'm sorry, but that just reminded me of this.
Rob and Sam ended up staying through Sunday and going home Monday, which involved watching the Packers vs. Vikings game, sitting around being lazy, eating a crazy unhealthy meal concocted by my cousin, and eventually watching Battle Royale. Man, every time i think i'm gonna wrap up this post i think of something else that i just HAVE to tell you about!
If you haven't seen Battle Royale... well, you have something in common with 98% of America. But it is seriously so funny. The basic plot is this: the Japanese government
is sick of children boycotting school (or maybe they were just bored? i don't remember the details), so they round up a random class of school children, bring them to a deserted island, strap explosive collars to their necks, and tell them they have to kill each other. They give each child a random weapon, and send them out into the island to murder each other. It's so crazy!!! And the weapons are great. Some kids get guns, and then the less lucky ones get like... well, the protagonist gets a pot lid, and somebody gets a gps, etc. It's pretty awesome. If you are into the "so bad it's good" movie genre, you should DEFINITELY check this one out.We actually enjoyed it so much that Andy went out and rented the 2nd one (that's right, a SEQUEL) which turned out to be nowhere near as good. The plot was crazier, they went way too in depth into each characters back story, and there was a lot less killing.
MY FAVORITE SLUTTY HALLOWEEN COSTUMES FOR THIS YEAR ARE:
The Olsen twins, as slutty... sluts?OK, so there are some wings involved, and what appears to be haloes, but... what are those, butterflies? I don't know what it is, but i like it
And secondly, this slutty sailor. You know what? It's been so long since i started this post that i can't remember where i got this image. It's probably not even from Halloween. Looks like maybe she's just a stripper. Like maybe i just googled "slutty sailor" and saved this image. But ya know what? she's hot, so i'm gonna let it slide.
Alright everyone, it's taken me several hours over several days to finish this damned post, but i've finally done it!! Happy Halloween everyone!
