Halloween roundup 1: NERD REFERENCE COSTUMES

Photo and pumpkin by the lovely Alli Katz

When I was but a wee Emily G, I’d throw on whatever leopard suit or fairy dress my poor thankless mother had sewed for me to wear, impatient to get down to the business end of Halloween: ungodly amounts of candy. I mean, I could be a Ninja Turtle anytime, I only was given nigh-unlimited free chocolate for doing so one day a year.

But now that I’m an adult and a wading pool of bite-sized Milky Ways is just a walk to K-Mart away, I just want to dress up. As an adult, I spend inordinate amounts of time coming up with costume ideas, starting about a month ago, but the obsession really begins today, the day after Labor Day.

I am not talking about sexy witch or sexy kitty-cat or Michael Jackson costumes, the latter about to surpass the Heath Ledger Joker as the most overdone costume in America and the formers being eternally boring, and I’m not talking about something that comes in a plastic bag from one of those Brigadoon-ass mall Halloween stores. I love to come up with things that nobody else is gonna  be wearing, but can be done without spending a ton of cash or energy.

So seeing as how it’s no longer appropriate to wear white and I wore a jacket out of the house today, I’d like to kick off the season with the category of The Nerd Reference Costume.

Dressing as something that’s really geeky is made simultaneously easier and more difficult by the presence of conventions and cosplay and the like; it means that while you may be able to find perfect replicas of Leeloo’s orange Gaultier suspenders from the Fifth Element for sale like fifteen years after the movie came out, they’re also priced for people who will be wearing them to the next 20 conventions they go to, rather than just the once. But here’s a few ideas that don’t require too much more than some thrift-store digging and maybe a trip to the Rite-Aid:

COSTUME: Herbert West

FROM: Re-Animator

GENDER: Male

PERFECT FOR: Guys who are or know someone in med school or are in science from whom they can get an old lab coat

BECAUSE: Re-Animator is a 1985 horror movie that probably did more damage to my psyche than 18 years of Catholicism; let’s just say that the phrase “getting head” will never be quite the same after this movie. Herbert West is a mad med student who discovers the secret of reanimating dead tissue (by injecting it with what appears to be glow-stick fluid). This one may be on the obscure side, but if you are lucky enough to run into someone of your sexual preference who recognizes you as Herbert West, you are officially on the fast track to getting laid.

PROPS: Green glowstick mocked up as huge syringe, big ’80s glasses, white lab coat, white dress shirt, black slacks, plain black tie, fake blood with which to spatter self

DIFFICULTY: 3/10

COSTUME: Colonial soldier

FROM: Battlestar Galactica

GENDER: Either

PERFECT FOR: People who have nice muscles

BECAUSE: The casual outfit for soldiers is both easy to throw together from stuff you already have and very distinctive. Plus, if you’re a lady who vaguely resembles Starbuck, you can keep a cigar clamped in your teeth all night, drink your whiskey straight out of the bottle and look like the biggest badass in the room.

PROPS: Gray high-necked tank top, black racer-back tank top worn backwards, dark-ish cargo-ish pants, hexagonal painted-silver cardboard dog tag, combat boots

DIFFICULTY: 1/10

COSTUME: Pris

FROM: Blade Runner

GENDER: Female

PERFECT FOR: Women who went through a goth phase in high school or know someone about their size who did

BECAUSE: Most of the identifiable cues are in the hair and facepaint, thus leaving you to string together the clothes with whatever ratty black stuff is left over from 8th grade. It will also help if you’re very tall, bendy and able to do cartwheels.

PROPS: White and black facepaint, black studded collar, black tube top, sheer black long-sleeved shirt, black shorts, those tights with the weird built-in garters they sometimes sell at K-Mart (ripped up), big black boots, tall black leg warmers, either a poofy Bowie wig or an entire can of hairspray

DIFFICULTY: 5/10 (for the makeup/hair/cartwheels)