Cavalcade of Awesome

I have always loved Halloween. I dressed up every year until I was in 8th or 9th grade. It was so much fun wearing costumes and hanging out with my friends going from house to house getting candy. Things have certainly changed. Today, the costumes are infinitely better but you can’t go out in your neighborhood to trick-or-treat anymore because of various nefarious individuals that may (or may not) live in your area. These individuals would love nothing more than to fool you into eating an apple with a razor blade stashed inside. What sick individual gives out apples for Halloween anyway? If that happened when I was a kid that guy would have gotten his own version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that involved nothing but toilet paper and raw eggs. Giving apples for Halloween is just WRONG, people. Write that down.

Anyway, my family was pretty good at documenting our holidays. I was going through some old photos and found some of my all-time favorite Halloween costumes. I have more pictures than this, but I may save those for another time. So, without further ado, here are some of my favorite costumes that I’ve worn throughout the years. Enjoy!

You can click each of the pictures for a bigger version.

Year Unknown – Spiderman. Yes, this is it! The Ben Cooper Spider-man costume. It doesn’t get much more vintage than this. Obviously I’m “shooting my webs” at a villain off camera. Classic, classic costume. You can find these on eBay now for anywhere between 20 and 100 bucks. Check out the boxed version of this costume here.

Year Unknown – Peter Criss (drummer for KISS). How about them jeans and JC Penney’s belt? That’s so rock-n-roll, man. I never really listened to their music, but I LOVED the whole KISS makeup gimmick. I loved they dressed up and spit fire and had these gaudy knee boots. It was awesome. And for some reason, my favorite was always Peter Criss, the drummer. I was walking home from school and found a large drink cup with a picture of Peter Criss on it and told Mom that’s who I wanted to be for Halloween. My mom was great, she used the cup as a guide for all the makeup. She did a great job, didn’t she? Years later she would do the same thing for me when I was a werewolf. She painted on wolf-like features. It was awesome, I wish I had a picture of it.

Year Unknown – Random Pirate. The costume turned out great didn’t it? My mom was great at making costumes out of crap we had around the house. Dig those funky yellow running shoes! So pirate-y. That ginormous sword was borrowed and I only held it for the picture. There was no way I was carrying that monstrosity through the neighborhood trying to collect candy. Check out my younger brother as Big Bird. Yes, yes that is embarrassing. He’s gonna love that. You can see another pic of this costume here.

1989 – Billy the Kid. In this picture I’m trying to mimic the famous photo of the real Billy the Kid seen here. This was the last year I actually went out and trick-or-treated in costume. I was in eighth or ninth grade in this pic and my friend Steve and I had a few teenagers try to steal our bags. We decided that this should be the last night of Halloween fun for us. Very sad. You can see a closer pic here (and the detail of my stubble/sideburns). I don’t know if you can tell, but I was going for the Billy the Kid look from the movie Young Guns (1998) where he was played by Emilio Estevez.

2000 – Dracula. I had always wanted to be Dracula (or a vampire) for Halloween and never did. So when Steph and I decided to throw a costume party I thought it was the perfect time to bust out a Dracula costume. Turned out pretty good, I think. I’m standing here with my friend Jason who came as Michael Myers from the movie Halloween.

2004 – Vegas Elvis. Having always loved Elvis, I had also always wanted to dress up as him for Halloween. Talking with Steph about it, she thought she might be able to, with her mom’s help, make an Elvis jumpsuit for me. I thought it was a great idea, so we went to the fabric store, picked out a pattern and some colors and Steph and her mom went to town. Turned out better than anything I could have imagined. This costume gets so many compliments from so many people. Great, great job by my wife and my mother-in-law. I’m standing here with my friend Himal who’s dressed as Clark Kent/Superman. He even customized a Daily Planet (check out his left hand). Great costume!

There are several other costumes I can’t seem to find pictures for. The aforementioned werewolf is the most notable. I wore a few ripped t-shirts and jeans and my mom painted hair and wolf features onto my face with makeup. I really liked it but I can’t seem to find any pictures of it. I was also Jason Vorhees one year using a costume from my friend Jason (Collier, not Vorhees). Jas may have a picture of that. I’ll see if I can find some of these. Hope you enjoyed them.

I have another article I think I’m going to post for tomorrow on candy (appropriate topic, don’t you think). Until then,

Happy Halloween everyone.

Technorati Tags – Halloween costumes Elvis Ben Cooper Spiderman

This entry was posted on October 30, 2007 at 5:12 pm and is filed under Elvis, Halloween, personal with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2007, costumes, Elvis Presley, Halloween, holiday, pop culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.