Paper Paper: 2010

not but moments ago
I SCARED A POSSUM

The drama to get these shots of possum, omigato! So much.

These young high school girls ran out thinking I was some creep. Nofault of thereown I guess.

But they were really flippin out trying to pin me like a bad guy. You wanna see the pics? I asked. "Ay PahSuMMM"I had to shout at them. They were frightened (and excited) to believe I had wanted to take there picture from the sidewalk, through the window, thru a curtain. I didn't see you when I first snapped at the pouch man. But the flash frightened them. 1nce again, noFaultOftheirOwn eye guess.

THe possum had froze up in a calm frightent way (pos?) emboldening me to get closer and snap more at his face with the flash.

And the thing that had stopped me? the thing that had stopped me and made me reach for the camera in my bag? That turned me towards the bush that made the rat stir? and made me look up and wonder if that was a giant rat in climbing up that bush and flash in this marsupial's face? That picture?

I turned back and grabbed that flick as the girls from the window were coming out to confront me (because now I was frightnt and wanted to be out there)

But forgot the Zoom was out.

2006 may have been the last time I really tried for Halloween. I did it right that year and the credit goes to my friends who turned to me for help with making their own costumes. Together we ended up designing 3 that year, a personal best. Personally I knew I wanted be a skulleton and had it in my mind to make a boneface mask for myself. My first attempt at making this was fashioned out of an aluminum tray used for catering that I found in the trash. It was really gross when I found it but I cleaned it out well since it was such a prime sheet of material. Basically I tried just wrapping the metal around my head and banging in the parts where I could feel my features. I would blindly pound my face thru the aluminum then take it off and try to sculpt it a little more into what looked like a proper visage. Progress was slow and unsatisfactory on account of the metal being less malleable than I'd hoped so I abandoned this first attempt sometime after I'd cut out the eye holes but before I'd managed to figure out a good way to wear it.

Next I turned to tar paper and some spray paint. This was much easier and since I had a whole roll of the stuff allowed for a lot more trial and error until I came across the proper design: 2 eye holes, triangle for the nasalnous, and toothy grin just over the top lip with a string in the back. Duh.

AFter this I cut a two color heart stencil (red and blue). Put it on a black long-sleeve teeh and sprayed white ribs all about it with shoulder blades and spine in the back. White spray paint really doesn't show up like you'd want it to on colored teehs (not like black spray on white does per se). Even after multiple coats, it just soaks thru and still appears pretty faded looking. But it still sufficed. All of that plus some other accoutrement from the local thrift store (BloomingDeals on Freret St.) and I felt pretty hip.

Next Ned came to me with the idea of being a Ninja Turtle, Micaelangelo specifically. He needed help with the shell so we scavenged up some cardboard boxes and began hacking away at it. We cut it diagonally down the side so the box would jut out form his back instead of just being the flat bottom. Then we cut the corners off so it wasn't so cube like, cut a collar out where his neck would go and cut some curls into the sides that could rest on his shoulders like straps of a backpack almost. I remember it still looking kinda bulky but he wore it well. Finally we painted it all green and put some brown turtle shell patterns on there with some yellow stenciled highlights. I was especially proud of Ned's get-up and he provided the orange bandana mask himself.

Now as the countdown to the 31st began getting closer and more costume plans came to fruition, some of our other friends must've felt the heat to get there own disguises in order. You see this every year on Magazine street: there's a costume shop that quietly sits there all year round ignored by most of the pedestrian shoppers. But come October 29th, 30th, and 31st there's a line that wraps around the block of noobs who waited too long to decide what they wanted to be that year. I imagine when they finally do get inside they just grab the nearest mask from whatever picked-over bin they can and pay whatever inflated rate the shopkeeper demands for it, all the while just relieved they won't have to show up to their friends party's unconcealed ('acognito' as it were) a blaring red flag of somebody who clearly couldn't give enough of a shit to try and make something.

So Mikey RiebelDiebles saw all this activity going around him and vowed not to be that guy at the party. But still he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to be, the arts and crafts weren't his specialty anyway after all. He just sat there in my room and watched as Ned and I carried on oblivious to his plight, perhaps a little bored and touch bummed. Not knowing what to do with himself he just poked around until the spark of inspiration was struck: he had stumbled upon my pile of trash and discarded goods. Scraps of cardboard and empty spray cans with flecks of cutout stencil parts lay scattered about in a heap covering the prize piece of his just born idea.

Doom.

"Are you gonna use this, Bud?" Hmm... I looked up from putting the polish on the turtle shell. In his hand was the aluminum shell.
"No, that's trash to me, Mike. It's all yours if you want it. What are you thinking about?"

"Doom," he said. " I wanna go as MF Doom this year." And there it was. A sight unseen to me. An idea born of the trash but already almost fully formed. We immediately began reshaping it to Mikey's face and found it fit nicely. Where I had struggled to come up with a good solution for the boney teeth, three snips of the shear removed the jaw piece entirely and left two menacing fangs in its place. I believe it was Mike's idea to have the metal band wrap around the back of his head like it did and that allowed for him to pop it up off his face if he felt it or even wear it backwards like a true 2-faced impostor. Undoubtedly it was the mask he was meant to wear that night and he wore it well.