HillBuzz

We like to augment our political coverage with highlights of our lives here in Chicago, as many of you out there always seem interested in learning more about the city from locals.  So, in that spirit, here’s what’s going on in Chicago for Halloween 2009 — our favorite holiday.  We’ve been asking everyone we see around town what they are wearing for costumes, and below you’ll find a running list of everything people tell us, as well as all the Halloween activities we hear about.  Please help  make this as comprehensive a list as possible by including ideas of your own: for costumes and for things to do around town.  If you aren’t in Chicago, please feel free to add your two cents too, because maybe what’s going on in your town can inspire us here to do something similar either this year or in the future.  This post will be archived as part of the “Our Chicago” feature on this site, so in the future if you ever need costumes ideas or want to know what Halloween in the Second City is like, it can be a resource for you.  The ultimate goal there is to create a HillBuzz Guide to Chicago in the future, so you can come to town and visit all the things we like to talk about every day…and maybe even run into one of us, too, if we happen to be headed out for some pumpkin ravioli at Nookie’s or Cereal Killer pancake flights at Orange at the same time.

Consider this post a running work in progress through Halloween itself, with as much info and goodies as we can give you.

2009 COSTUME IDEAS:

Will Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ted Kennedy, and other dead celebrities be big Halloween costumes this year?  That’s a major question and point of debate…as the costume shops around town certainly think so (but we personally don’t know anyone going as any of these celebs).  Ironically, this is the first year Michael Jackson allowed his image to be licensed on costumes, so for the first time there are authentic “Thriller”, “Bad”, “Billie Jean”, “Smooth Criminal”, and “Final Metamorphosis” Jackson costumes aplenty.  There are also the cheaper rip-offs that don’t use MJ’s name, but instead call the costumes “80s Pop Star”. That’s actually a fun game to play: go to the costume shops and look at all the unlicensed products and guess who they are really supposed to be.  Patrick Swayze’s wigs are “Dancing Movie” wigs.  Dolly Parton’s wig is “Busty Country Singer”.  Claire McCaskill’s is “Most Terrible Senator”.

The 80s seem like they’re going to be big in terms of costumes in 2009.

The “Children of the 80s” have now all come of age, so nostalgia’s playing big, especially for women who can turn their favorite wholesome childhood dolls into “super sexy costumes”.  There’s actually a licensed line of sexy Strawberry Shortcake costumes, that give new meaning to the Apple Tart character.  We have nothing against any of this, but it’s funny.  They even have sexy My Little Pony Costumes…sexy Rainbow Brite…sexy Care Bears.  It’s a step up from years past where many women just bought lingerie and animal ears and went out as “cats”, “bunnies”, “ducklings”, or whatever.  A bra, panties, and headband with ears does not a kitty make. At least not in Boystown.

It is fun when the women make things “sexy” that totally aren’t sexy in the least.

Like “sexy dinosaurs”…or “pinup zombies”…or “sexy former presidents”, such as Babe-bra-ham Lincoln or Teddy Rose-a-velvet (more on those later).

It’s always funny for us when straight women head down to Halsted dressed up in their “sexy whatever” outfits and realize they’re essentially wearing kryptonite.  What might have gotten them free drinks for days just a block west on Clarke (in Wrigleyville) gets them completely ignored on Halsted.  Guys might think a girl is beautiful, which she probably is, but if she thinks she’s going to cut in line at Sidetracks or get a free drink from anyone in MiniBar, she’s delusional. The looks on these girls’ faces are priceless:  on one hand, they like being able to dress sexy in a safe environment where they won’t be groped and harassed all night…but, weirdly, they also kind of miss the attention of being groped all night by guys who just can’t control themselves.

Which we get, because as much as we don’t like it when random old guys come up and feel our chests (they say, “I just had to see if they were real” or “I’ve been wanting to do that all night”), if we’re in a straight bar after a while we kind of miss the attention too.  We still think that’s a wildly rude and odd thing to come up and do to a stranger, but we also know that someday no one will want to come over and grop anything as we age out of Boystown, so we get what the sexy ducks and squirrels are all about.

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We’ve been hearing a lot of people putting together Lady GaGa costumes.

The woman behind the GaGa is ingenious, because it’s such a simple look to put together with wild ranges of creativity possible.  A blonde wig.  Some kind of hat.  A mask.  Bubble wrap.  Butcher paper.  Sparkly lace.  Whatever you have lying around, you could craft into something GaGa.

The adorable little guy who works at the cupcake store we like is going as GaGa both Friday and Saturday night:  he bought a longer blonde wig so the first night he could have one look and the second night he could cut it and be a slightly different GaGa.

Did we mention how adorable this kid is…we deliberately never learn his actual name because we like to call him Cupcake, and like him still even though he wants to dress up like the Lady…where drag’s usually a turnoff for us.  We love drag performers and think they have more guts than we could ever muster, but we don’t especially want to date them.

Halloween brings out the drag gene in so many people, but none of us here have ever done that.  We do, however, suspect our friend Joaquin is actually a secret GaGa impersonator here in Chicago — there’s one named Baby GooGoo that shows up everywhere…everywhere that Joaquin is not, that is.  And there’s a door in Joaquin’s apartment that’s always mysteriously locked, with what looks like sparkles littered on the floor.  ”That’s from the ceiling fan…the blades are rusting off everywhere.  I lost the key to that door.  I am not Baby GooGoo.  Stop telling people that.  And don’t write this on the HillBuzz either.”  Okay, we totally won’t.

He’s totally Baby GooGoo.

It’s like being friends with Bruce Wayne and finding out he dresses up as Catwoman at night.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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One of the bars in the Loop is doing a big “Ripped from the Headlines Party”.  With a week to go before Halloween as of this post, it feels like the Balloon Boy in Colorado will be well-represented (Lil’ Falcon Heene, whose parents put him in the attic so they could pretend he was trapped in a balloon flying over Colorado, costing taxpayers millions in rescue efforts).  It’s a great costume for a trio…the mom, the dad, and the balloon boy.  We’ve heard at least two people doing this…and most Americans heard about the story so they would get it.

We wonder if anyone will be ballsy enough to do a Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne Reunion Costume…with bloated, corpulent murderer and Oldsmobile cum submarine driver Teddy walking in with a seaweed glad 60s dressed blonde Kopechne. Years ago, one of us here had the idea to do a Jack/Jackie Kennedy costume…split down the middle like Victor/Victoria, but with the pink and blue Chanel Jackie on one side and the 60s slim suit Jack on the other. But, people kept wanting us to do Jack’s brains blown out and Jackie covered in blood Stephen King prom style.  We will never be comfortable doing that…so it’s a costume idea we long ago abandoned.

Last year, there were many Sarah Palins out and we think she’ll have a strong presence this year too.  We went to Uncle Funn’s to buy rubber snakes the other day (and met Rachel Dratch there, too…and also saw Miss Foozie there out of drag as her male alter ego, which was kind of like seeing the little college student crawl out of a Mickey Mouse costume) and the adorable bunny rabbit suited guy behind the counter, Billy, said he’d sold out of Palin masks.

The Obama masks were still hanging there…just like in all the other stores we’ve been to.  Uncle Funn’s was the only one to have a Michelle mask.  At  other places, we’ve only seen Obama himself, as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Ronald Reagan, JFK, Al Gore, and John McCain.  There are also lots of Letterman and Bernie Madoff masks, called ‘TV Talk Show Host” and “Ponzi Scam Artist” written on them.  We’ll never understand why people want to wear masks, though.  They’re so hot and smelly inside, especially if you are a smelly person to begin with and sweat a lot, when you are wearing a mask or not.

We hope people stop dressing up like V for Vendetta.  There were so many of those last year…and the year before that…and the Ron Paul kids used to wear those masks in Iowa before the Caucus.  So, we’re pretty sick of them.

In terms of Alan Moore comics, we really, really want to know if any tall buff guys are going to put on blue bodysuits and go as a totally naked Dr. Manhattan from the movie Watchmen.  It would be a great costume for a guy with a shaved head and a blue dildo strategically mounted with blue duct tape somehow (thus precluding any arrests for indecent exposure, as the body suit and dildo would not subject you to charges that you are nude…you’re technically clothed, even though the clothes make you look like a naked giant).

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We’ve heard the guys at Sidetracks are dressing up as the cast of The Facts of Life.

We heard another bar on Halsted is dressing up as the cast of True Blood.

Lots of people say they are going to be vampires this year…either from Twilight or the generic “bloody, gruesome, vampire” variety.  It’s interesting that a generational shift has taken place and absolutely none of the would-be vamps we talked to had any idea who Anne Rice is, or who Louis and Lestat are.  Most of us here graduated high school in the 1992-1994 range or so…and Interview With the Vampire, the movie, came out in the fall of 1994.  That’s forever ago in pop culture…so expect very few, if any, New Orleans, French-inspired, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt lookalikes.  Kind of scary when something that was a big deal for you at one point in your life is totally alien to the majority of people you talk to, most a decade younger than you.  It happens to all of us in the end though, doesn’t it?

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Some of the great group costumes we’ve heard this year are pretty creative.

One group is going as Clue characters…Ms. Scarlet, wearing a noose, holding a plant (with a noose, in the conservatory)…Mrs. Peacock, with the wrench, holding a book (with the wrench, in the library)…etc.

Another group is going as board games:  Twister, Sorry, Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, etc.  ”Battle Strip” would be a fun one to interpret…with a sailor suit and G-string involved somehow.

We know of two groups of people going as “The Seven Deadly Sins”.  One’s going the MiniBar route, wearing designer black clothes with just little touches that would suggest Pride, Envy, Greed, Lust, etc.  The other group is going a more cartoony route.  Greed’s wearing a jacket made of dollar bills.  Pride’s going as a rainbow coated Gay Pride float.  Gluttony, we kid you not — and swear it was not our idea — is going to be Oprah with a pizza box.

We have not heard of any Batman villain teams or Justice League characters, but those are always fun.  Apparently there’s a BIG group of like 30 people going as Marvel X-Men characters…Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit, etc. That’s one group we’d love to run into…would make a great picture with all the characters.

Speaking of MiniBar from above, one of our favorite outfits — that a group is now doing — is “MiniBar Bartenders”.  They’re just going to wear super tight pants, v-neck white shirts three sizes too small, carry martini shakers, and, we quote them, “be total douches all night long”.  If you live in Chicago, you will totally guess these are indeed MiniBar bartenders. If you are Congressman Aaron Shock, you will promptly run up to them and ask for a drink.

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In the packaged costume section at the Halloween shops, there are some cute “Magazine Cover” costumes out this year:  the kind you slip over your head so that your face pokes through “Men’s Health” or “The Enquirer” or whatever.  They actually got the licenses to use the real magazine names, which is fun (and smart of the magazines).

The usual suspects for costumes are all out there for people who have no imagination…Cleopatra, Ceasar, Musketeers, The Renaissance…so boring.  People in the suburbs will always go this route.  But we wish they would try harder and be original.  You could make an original fun costume for much less than buying a Cleopatra outfit.  Do some new take on these old standards…the way Top Chef or Project Runway contestants are tasked with updating old dinner selections or tired fashions.  At the very least, do a Zombie Cleopatra or something.  That would make it more interesting.

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We’ve seen an odd variety of food costumes this year, which we never really noticed before.

There are a lot of Bacon & Eggs, Ham & Eggs, Green Eggs & Ham, etc. couples costumes.

Ketchup & Mustard

The whole Fruit of the Looms gang.

One group costume could be all the makings of a hamburger — lettuce, tomatoe, buns, a cow, cheese — and someone dressed as a chef chasing them all night, Burger Time style.

Hot Dog and Taco.  This is one that is actually family friendly but if you think about it, it’s dirty, which works on several levels. More obvious if the taco’s pink.

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It would be nice if pirates would go away for a while.

The costume shops are packed with them.

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Another two costumes that are ALWAYS big in the gay community are Boy Scouts and religious figures.

For the Boy Scouts, guys just go to Beatniks at Roscoe and Halsted or Ragstock at Belmont to buy old Boy Scout uniforms.  Most of them just wear those with tight little khaki shorts.  The more clever amongst them make their own “adult” merit badges and sew them on the scout uniforms…that’s fun.  It’s better than not wearing a costume at all, but sort of the uniminative “Cleopatra equivalent” of Boystown.

The religious costumes disturb us and always will.  No matter what you think of religion, a lot of people believe in all of that, no matter what religion it is, and we want to respect that.  We grew up Catholic here, and even if we don’t go to church we don’t like seeing men dressed as pregnant “fallen nuns”.  We think the priest molesting altar boys stuff is personally offensive, since the priests we knew growing up were always so nice and never did anything bad to any of us — so it hurts us to see insenitive, thoughtless fools mocking vocations that many have dedicate themselves to.

Halloween is supposed to be fun — especially when so many of us are hurting for money and are on thin ice with jobs that could be gone by the end of the year.  We really need to have a night of fun…and would love it if everyone wore costumes that made people feel good and didn’t have to bring anyone down.  We’d love it if people retired the pregnant nun and molestation jokes, but that’s too much to hope for.

Why not make fun of Muhammad and all the vile things Muslims do in the world in their great war against the West?  There is certainly much to lampoon there.  But, no, it’s only Christians that are attacked for their religion.  Whatever your beliefs, you have to see that’s not fair…with Catholics getting 90% of this crap directed at them.

Where is the Hope and Change?

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Speaking of which…we wonder how many people will call this current administration out on anything this year.  We doubt there will be many people dressed up as either Dr. or Mrs. Utopia, because they’d be afraid of being called RAAACISTS!, but we wonder if people would be brave enough in Boystown to dress up as unicorns or empty boxes that the Hope or Change supposedly come in.

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Another great group costume cold be Famous Detectives/Criminals:  Sherlock Holmes, Carmen Sandiego, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, The Three Investigators, Encyclopedia Brown, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Agatha Christie herself.

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We’ve seen costumes that turn the classic Universal Monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Werewolf, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the Mummy into “sexy” female versions.

There are also sexy female versions of Napolean, Indian Chiefs, Orville Reddenbacher, Captain Hook, and US Presidents. Here are the Commanders-in-Chief and their potential “sexy equivalents”:

(1) George (dress like the sexy Cindy Crawford first issue of George Magazine from 1995)

(2) Babe-bra-ham Lincoln (short black skirt, black bra, top hat, beard)

(3) Teddy Rose-a-velvet (Teddy, teddy bear, rough rider boots, little roosevelt glasses)

(4) T. J. (sexy version of Thomas Jefferson..Jefferdaughter possibly)

(5) Reagan in a dress (Sarah Palin costume)

(6) William Howard Taft (an albino Oprah costume)

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A morbid group costume we heard about is water-logged zombies wearing life preservers:

Titanic

Lusitania

Andrea Doria

Poseidon

Dukakis ‘88

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People who dress as “animal people” always make us think of The Island of Dr. Moreau, which makes us think about Marlon Brandon in that weird white suit with his little pygmy beside him dressed exactly alike, playing the piano and being all crazy.  People who would actually be part human/part animal would not be sexy, but would be creepy motherf******.

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We spotted two really built bearded guys in one costume shop, where the bigger one bought a little fur hat with bear ears on it that wrapped under his chin…it was for the littler guy, and the big one told him he would be wearing it with just a little brown pair of underwear and some fur boots.

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A lot of people are talking about being Green Absinthe Fairies…like Kylie Minogue played in Moulin Rouge.  This could be because they started making absinthe again, even if it’s not “real” absinthe…but it’s just something green that’s being bottled and called absinthe in the US.  The kinds of people who like shopping on Clark and Belmont at places like The Alley and Architectural Revolution are all about absinthe lately.

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Some people we know are creating their own super heroes.  Not trying to be Superman or Wonder Woman, but getting some spandex, making a cape, coming up with their own logos and creating their own super identities and powers.  That’s a really fun idea, especially if you focus on being a lesser tier hero with stupid and obscure powers.  Like, “The Toaster”, someone who can toast bread to mild degrees.  Or “Amoebic Dysentary”, a hero who can make people have uncontrollable diarrhea.  Or not.  Buy a cape and a mask and go save the world any way you want.

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Another fallback costume for guys is sports gear.  Just wear your hockey jersey, football clothes, baseball pants, and go as an athlete.  If you’ve got the body, wear a speedo and a little water polo cap and go as a water polo player holding a ball.

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We are curious what the posers at MiniBar will be wearing.  Last year, we saw a bunch of them dressed up as the Greed gods, in little gold lame outfits that were revealing and gold body glitter. They weren’t very creative, and didn’t really look like any gods in particular, but one did have a Hermes hat and another had a trident like Poseidon.  Really, they just wanted to wear skimpy gold togas and leave the house as a group.

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Whenever people dress up as cops or firemen, we wonder why they just don’t get off their asses, train really hard, and go be a cop or fireman in real life?  Then they can wear the uniforms they like and also go help people.

And don’t you DARE put on a Marine uniform unless you went through Parris Island or Cape LeJeune.  Marines EARN those uniforms and you better not parade around in one unless you EARNED yours too, Mary.  Not. On. On. Watch.

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Ragstock at Belmont and Halsted had some really fun baseball jerseys from Japan that might be a fun spin on the “athlete” costume.  Foreign sports clothes are always fun.  Another different take on it is to go as an old school ballplayer of some variety.

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A very fertile ground for imagination is ZOMBIES, which we think will be big this year.

You can have a lot of fun with this one.

There will no doubt be a LOT of Thriller-esque MJ zombies.

But you could also go as a group and think of some way you all died…like the shipwreck survivors from above….or a train wreck….or you could do zombie versions of TV shows…like zombie Mad Men…or the zombie cast of I Love Lucy….the zombie Brady Bunch…zombie dead presidents…etc.

There’s actually a comic out now called “President Evil” that has Dr. Utopia, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and John McCain teaming up to stop all the dead presidents from raising an army of zombies to take over the Earth.  There’s a zombie Reagan, zombie Lincoln zombie Washington, etc.

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A sexy costume for guys would be WWII nose cone beefcake pinups.  Instead of doing the female pinups, what if there existed beefcake instead of cheesecake ones?  Since women take male characters and make them sexy…why not take female sexy characters and make them male?

Only in Boystown, for sure, but fun nonetheless

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Here’s a great How To Make Where the Wild Things Are costume tutorial:

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How to do good gothic vampire makeup: