I'm "that guy" in the neighborhood. On October 1, I start putting the Halloween display together. I've got a projected ghost in the upstairs window, about two dozen lights (red, green, black, fire, etc.) illuminating headstones, floating ghosties, standing skeletons. I usually have at least one skeleton on the roof. On Halloween night I run several fog machines, a lightning system that's synchronized to a huge speaker on my porch that plays a stream of about 50 horror movie themes (everything from Saw to Halloween to Exorcist to Walking Dead to yeah, everything.) Also have a random assortment of basic horror tracks. Big Furry Head by Amon Tobin is a good one.
Every year I choose some character and go big on creating it. I've done Peter Criss, Robert Baratheon (Game of Thrones), Joker (before Heath Ledger's version), Two-Face, Slash and I don't know what all. Last year I did Jigsaw (the puppet). This year it was Hellboy.
Benefit? Every hot mom in the neighborhood brings their kids and half of them want to have their picture taken with me. There are some hot, hot moms in this neighborhood. I like seeing them. I've done it long enough that kids from all over come to the house. I probably had 500 kids come through tonight. Fifteen of the giant bags of candy are gone.
I had just about decided this was going to be my last year doing it big. Kid in college, it's really just me and my friend/other. But I was standing out in the yard and had at least a dozen parents tell me their kids beg them to drive by my house at night. And the kids. I heard one kid say he thinks about coming to my house all Halloween and can't wait to get there to see the monsters. Oh well. Maybe another year.
So I did the outfit. Went and had some drinks. Was about to take it off and was reminded that we needed a few things from the store. So I said, well let's give this a shot. I'll just go to Wal Mart in costume and grab the things we need. Just to see what would happen.
I roamed the entire store in full Hellboy regalia. Right hand of doom and all. Nobody in the store batted an eye. I asked one of the people working if they knew where the pancake mix was and she just told me the aisle without even a double take. Asked another where the cat food was and same thing.
When I checked out, the lady who rang it up did the whole thing, didn't acknowledge the outfit until the very end. She gets to the last item and then says, "what, no deviled eggs?" I thought that was good.
But I wonder what it says about Wal Mart that nobody even noticed Hellboy wandering the aisles?
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