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They’re All Gonna Laugh at You
Let me preface this engaging story of Halloween with the statement, “My whole body hurts.”
The insanity started yesterday afternoon as we were watching Donnie Darko (a cool movie that I’m going to have to watch again to understand). I, attempting to disguise myself as The Incredible Hulk for Halloween, began to apply green makeup to my body. I wasn’t sure that I’d have enough makeup to do the whole body, but initial results were good and I decided on the full-body shirtless approach. An hour or two later, with some awkward help from Brad to reach the difficult areas, my entire body (minus the region covered by a pair of shorts) was covered in uncomfortable green goo. I felt like a batter-dipped piece of fish ready to be tossed into the fryer at Long John Silvers. Greg and Nick were arrayed as a pretty respectable looking Mario brothers with Shannon representing as the princess, Teej was decked out as the Crow, and Brad was all set as Gambit.
Our first stop of the evening was the Campus Crusade Halloween party in the Memorial Union at ASU. We proceeded to stand around, me extraordinarily cold and everyone else extraordinarily hot, and wait for the costume contest…a contest for which the winner would supposedly receive a monetary prize. Ultimately we all lost to a guy dressed as Wal-mart with lots of miscellaneous things (presumably purchased at Wal-mart) stapled to his shirt. We weep…I could tell Greg is bitter.
We then headed over to Mill Ave. for some parading up and down the street. For those who don’t know, Mill Ave. on Halloween is where tons of people go in their costumes to walk up and down while pointing and identifying costumes and/or creativity. It’s a lot of fun and this is the first year any of us had dressed up for it.
I’ll keep my play by play of this events relative to my reception as the Hulk…I’m sure Greg will cover anything that happened to him on his blog. The evening started strong for me with lots of people correctly identifying me as the Hulk. For every correct identification I either gave the universal thumbs up signal or yelled in my best guttural Hulk utterance, “HULK SMASH!!!” Ahh, the kiddies loved it. As time moved on, I was disturbed at how many people incorrectly identify me as the Jolly Green Giant. I think it might have been my shoddy wig, but who knows? Gradually I came to accept it as a mistake non-nerdy people would make. Besides countless people pointing at me and yelling, “The Hulk,” or, “The Green Giant,” I also got these enjoyable responses:
“(expletive) (expletive), that is one hairy (expletive) (expletive)…disgusting!”
“Put on a (expletive) shirt.”
“It’s the (expletive) (expletive) Hulk!”
*excluding the first double expletive, all of them are the mother form of the word that caused little Ralphie to get his mouth washed out with soap in “A Christmas Story”
I also got these physical responses:
-a girl rubbed my back
-a strange man pinched my nipple…I felt violated
-someone (gender unidentified because of the crowd) grabbed my butt…for the sake of my sanity, I assume it was a girl
-many, many people in plain (sometimes nice) street clothes accidentally rubbed up against me, leaving delightful green smears on their clothes…they’re going to hate me when realize how that happened
We walked up and down Mill many times and then finally decided to walk back to the apartment. I couldn’t wait to get in the shower, so as soon as everyone left I got in. I thought things were going pretty well until I got out and put my glasses back on. There were still green smears all over my body and I had a slight yellow tint on my body. I panicked. I rubbed and rubbed until exhaustion forced me to put a big undershirt on and crawl into bed. I woke up feeling a lot like a piece of greasy bacon on a tray waiting to be served. I instantly ran to the shower and scrubbed until there was no hot water left (sorry Teej). I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed until I was glowing red and still some green persisted. Easy on, easy off my eye! I finally get most of the crap off and staggered out to the kitchen, completely exhausted. I told TJ, who’d already been up to get ready for school, “Covering myself in green makeup has been one of the worst experiences of my life,” to which he accurately and succinctly replies, “yeah, but you got to hear lots of people say, ‘Hey, it’s the Hulk’…almost as many as you heard say, ‘Hey, it’s the Green Giant.’”
So true, Teej, so true. I did have lots of fun and presumably everyone else did, too. We took lots of pictures and they should be posted shortly.