My head is spinning; I am a carousel

[austin_dern]

Some further stray Halloween thoughts as long as I've got them out: I like Halloween, even though I don't really do anything for it besides be ready to give out candy. I think it's good to have life be a little more strange all around. As a kid I dressed up, since, hey, when else in your life do you get to put the sort of vinyl sheets like are used to make car dealership triangular flags from against your clothes? But I was growing up in the late 70s, and my parents had four kids and not enough time, so for the most part we ended up getting store-bought costumes, and unfortunately back then store-bought costumes hadn't hit on the idea of being ``any good at all''.

You know the sort. They started out with the curious belief that they have an acceptable (for an example) Superman costume by giving out a light blue shirt which has a picture of Superman on it. The goal was apparently not to let someone dress as Superman so much as it was to let someone dress as a fan of Superman. If there were a plastic face mask it wouldn't fit me, but then nothing has ever fit me, although in a refreshing change it also wouldn't fit anyone else. The best we could hope for is to at some point have one eye lined up with one hole. Modern costumes are certainly more advanced what with selling blue T-shirts that actually have the Superman ensign on them and other great innovations like that. One costume I saw in the mall ridiculously enough even included a plastic-moulded abdominal `six-pack' for the kid.

My costuming came to a climax of sorts one year when we got a new washing machine in October, and I was able to commandeer the box. So I was able to go in a truly classic, timeless outfit: the not excessively coordinated kid who's wearing a washing machine box. It was also wrapped in aluminum foil, although not through the whole of school and night trick-or-treating. After that, really, what could I hope to do to top that other than to actually try?

Trivia: In 1918 Samuel Goldwyn signed humorist Will Rogers to a yearlong contract at $2,250 per week, with an option for a second year at $3,000 per week. Rogers had previously been earning a thousand dollars per week touring with the Ziegfeld Follies. Source: Goldwyn: A Biography, A Scott Berg.

Currently Reading: To Rule The Waves: How The British Navy Shaped The Modern World, Arthur Herman. Since he also wrote How The Scots Invented The Modern World I'm counting on seeing a lot of the Scots inventing the Navy.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of just those sorts of costumes the other day, and wondering if anyone else remembered them. I always felt sorry for the kids who had them, because my mom always sewed costumes for me and my brother. The excitement started in September when we got taken to JoAnn Fabrics to look through the Simplicity and McCall catalogs to choose a pattern.

The most elaborate one my mother ever made was Gizmo the mogwai, which I wore in fifth grade. It was every bit as fancy as most of the fursuits I've seen, with painted eyes and a sculpted head. I remember passing someone on my way home from school who was wearing a gremlin costume. It was what looked like a plastic raincoat with... pictures of gremlins printed all over it (why did they do that?), and a plastic mask of a gremlin. And that made me reflect on how lucky I was that my mom always went all out on our Halloween costumes, despite the fact that every year she would get so frustrated and stressed trying to get them done in the last week that she'd swear next year things would be different.

I was very lucky, and I have a lot of really wonderful memories of Halloween now, and I think that's why I like it so very much still.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

We never felt particularly deprived --- well, I didn't, anyway; I suppose I shouldn't speak for my siblings --- although we did keep hoping that perhaps next year the costumes would be better. Our mother was always open to helping us make costumes if we took the initiative (in fact, I think we all were shown, at least, how to use the sewing machine by the time we were nine or so), but that would really have required our thinking ahead far enough to start making something. We didn't really always go with store-bought costumes, although for some reason the annual trips to Toys R Us stand out for me more than the making of costumes, possibly because a full out car expedition for something like that was hard to arrange.

You know, now that I'm talking about it more, I think my youngest brother did make his own costumes a couple of times, although I don't remember what.

Why they thought having pictures of the licensed character instead of impersonating the character is a mystery for the ages. It's like none of them ever thought about what a costume was for.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I should have added that in adulthood I realized that my feeling sorry for those kids was misguided. Wearing really elaborate costumes was the largest part of the fun of Halloween for me, and something I found very compelling. My mistake was in assuming that others must feel the same way, when it's quite likely that many kids regarded the costume bit as simply something you have to do to get candy. Today I have great enthusiasm for costume parties, whereas I sometimes observe others making a minimal and grudging effort. I think that that my fascination with costuming is one of my particular character traits and that it goes way back.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oddly, while I remember being disappointed that when we got store-bought costumes they weren't better, I don't remember feeling jealous of the kids with better costumes. I think that reflects my early-established obliviousness to other people.

I do know that early on I was disappointed to realize that costumes in the real world didn't work the way they did for cartoon characters. I think I'm over that, now, more or less.