Halloween

Halloween was fun this year. Bride-and-groom zombies. I didn’t do a great job on my makeup, but the hair, teeth, and outfit made up for it. This wasn’t my real wedding outfit, just some cheap stuff we got at Goodwill. I think the shirt, pants, and jacket were all six or seven dollars each. The bow tie was a three- or four-dollar novelty item from the party store.

My original plan for messing up the suit was to lay it on the ground and whale away on it with this replica medieval flail I have — a heavy ball with sharp points, connected by a chain to a handle. I was hoping it would create a lot of puncture marks, kind of like a shotgun blast effect. The clothes proved surprisingly flail-resistant, though. It got them dirty, but the holes were few and small. Plan B, hacking away with a kitchen knife, worked a lot better. I also got out the blowtorch — you can see one burn mark on the front of the shirt. Then I dripped on this blood gel stuff. You had to heat it up for it to flow, then it solidified (some) as it cooled. It worked OK, but probably wasn’t worth the trouble vs. red paint or something.

The teeth were effective. They were pretty cheap at the party store, and they came with this epoxy stuff that hardened into a springy rubber compound. I thought it was just a dental glue or something when I bought it, but it was much better. You mashed the two epoxy components together, stuck the result into the bite tray in the teeth, bit down into the hardening rubber and waited the five minutes for it to cure. Once it did, you could take the teeth in and out whenever you wanted, and they fit well since they were molded around your own teeth.