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Need for costume stressful [UPDATED]
Published 7:36am Monday, July 30, 2012 Updated 12:38pm Monday, July 30, 2012Man, how I dislike costumes.
On Saturday, our lake neighborhood — known as Cozy Point — had its annual golfing and fishing tournament. The word “tournament” is certainly taken lightly, since the awards are things like “luckiest shot” and “smallest fish” and the prizes are sleeves of golf balls and traveling trophies.
Every other year we are supposed to wear themed costumes. Some people (like my dress-up queen daughter) love costumes. Why I don’t, I’m not completely sure. Maybe it’s related to the bullying I experienced in junior high school. Ever since then, my credo has been to get through life trying to attract as little attention to myself as possible. OK, I get that doing things like writing this column, playing guitar in front of people and competing in a triathlon with a Speedo tend to contradict this point.
Of course, my refusal to “dress for attention” may have been one of the reasons I never became a rock star (or … the fact that I can’t memorize lyrics, write hit songs or sing as high as the current rock stars without cracking my voice).
Anyway, for the costume years, the stress always builds as the mid-summer gala approaches. You also have to factor in that you have to fit the theme, and play golf and fish in typically hot weather (my daughter, dressed in a felt dress from the main character of “Brave” will likely regret her decision this year), and finding a costume is particularly stressful.
Working with the theme of Fictional Characters (word to the neighbors: Little House on the Prairie characters aren’t really fictional), I racked my brain trying to find a costume that, a.) Would be interesting enough not to be called lame (for example, dressing up as the publisher of the Fictional Daily News will clearly not work), b.) Would be cool and comfortable enough to endure golf and fishing on a hot summer day (referring back to my daughter’s outfit).
Then, the idea came to me. “How could I have not thought of it before?” I thought to myself with a giggle. Heavy metal t-shirts. Shorts. White socks. Black shoes. Beavis and Butthead.
Perfect. My shorter, blond brother-and-law could be Beavis, and I would assume the role of the taller, brown-haired Butthead.
For those who missed out on this craze (under the age of 20 and over the age of, say, 60), “Beavis and Butthead” was a cartoon that appeared on MTV in the mid-1990s. The characters were, in essence, a conglomeration of all the dorky guys you know in high school (not completely unlike myself). If you’re not familiar with the show, the humor derived from it, while funny, is the kind of high-school, mind-in-the-gutter type of stuff that I really would like to but can’t repeat in this column.
Anyway, the only issue for the costume was to find gray and blue t-shirts with the logos of two 1980s heavy metal bands, AC/DC and Metallica, on them.
Considering those bands aren’t in the Justin Bieber/Katy Perry level of hipness these days, you can’t just go to a local discount store to find such t-shirts. While there are online options, they were expensive and, frankly, I thought of the idea too late in the game to get them shipped on time.
So, necessity being the mother of invention, I decided to buy plain t-shirts and paint the logos on myself.
A simple Google search yields plenty of logos. Painting such logos onto cotton t-shirts? Not so easy, as I found out. The process of exacto-knifing a stencil of the logos into a beer can case, taping it onto the t-shirt, and then spraypainting the logo on the shirt through the stencil so it a.) sticks to the shirt while b.) doesn’t leak to the parts of the shirt it’s not supposed to go is, to a novice, really, really hard.
Anyway, provided an in-law didn’t find a better option, our shirts have yellow and red splotches on them that, if someone looked really, really hard, may notice that someone tried to make letters out of them. Identifying the heavy metal bands will be, at best, nearly impossible.
Man I dislike costumes. I’m glad today I don’t have to wear it anymore.
Joel Myhre is The Journal’s Publisher. E-mail him at joel.myhre@fergusfallsjournal.com
