Halloween Costume Build 2022: Banana Cop & Human Target

Since I broke the seal with my blog entry yesterday, I figured I might as well pare down the blog backlog (backblog?) and keep the streak going.

There are 63 days until Halloween; here are my costumes from 2022.

Costume #1: Banana Cop

First, I had a to put together a hasty interim costume for Friday night, because I'm no longer pulling all-nighters to finish costumes. I came up with Banana Cop.

  

There's not a lot to it; a banana costume under a sheriff's uniform top. Though I thought the holster with a real banana in it was a nice touch. (I had to buy the banana, and I even brought the holster into Safeway to make sure I got one that fit.)

Costume #2: Human Target

The second one for Saturday was an actual build. First up was two pieces of foam core board (with a precisely cut eye slit), hot glued together and reinforced by two Home Depot yardsticks:

 

Next, some straps. I didn't have any nylon webbing handy, so I made some straps by folding over some duct tape. The buckles and keepers I already had:

 

Covering the eye hole is just some black panty hose. I had some left over from early on in the pandemic, when there was a mask hack for improving the effectiveness of surgical masks (just cut a tube of panty hose and put it over the mask to help seal gaps). The forehead pad is so I could wear my glasses; it's just some thick polyurethane foam glued to the board:

 

Assembly is just more duct tape and hot glue. The setup is super light, so strength isn't an issue, though I had to experiment to find the right height for the straps (around the neck and waist):

The front could be any poster sized paper, though the point of this costume was to use a silhouette shooting target (with a hole cut to match the eye slit). 

The holes aren't actually bullet holes; I started with a clean target, put a piece of scrapwood with holes drilled through it behind it, and poked a Sharpie marker through to get holes the right size. The white foam core backing shows right through. Then, I just used some spray adhesive to glue it down:

Wearing the costume:

From the side; this is clearly meant to be seen from the front only:

 

You can also use it after Halloween if you want to rent yourself out as half a sandwich board advertisement.

The Mullet Is Back

I was deep down a Wikipedia rabbit hole when, whimmed, I popped over to the Mullet (haircut) article to see which photos were being used to show the hairstyle. This is because way back in 2008, the article's main illustration was me. (This lasted for a little while, then somewhere along the line [and after a mini-edit war], the photo was replaced. It happens.)

So, I was shocked (and not in the Casablanca, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" way) to see that my photo has made it back in, just below 1970s David Bowie and representing the 1990s:

A man with a mullet in 1992.

According to the edit history (as if there was any doubt that I would scrub through it to pin down exactly when it happened), a user (now banned for sock puppet accounts, and again, no it wasn't me) made the change on March 2, 2022. 

I also note that it replaced a photo of 1980s Lou Diamond Phillips from two revisions prior.

Immediately, I checked the Facepalm article, but alas, it was not to be.

Anyway, enjoy it while it lasts.