Since I wrote about Halloween costumes the other day, and given that today’s #NaBloPoMo prompt is to write about a favorite holiday memory, I thought I’d post some pictures of couples costumes Alex and I did in past Halloweens. They’re all based, sometimes tenuously, in pop culture, and hopefully you can recognize who they are. Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!
Of course our most recent was this past Halloween, where we were Effie Trinket and Haymitch Abernathy from The Hunger Games.
When a costume works, we sometimes like to bring it back and do it again—especially when I’m running out of time and can’t think of anything else to do. That’s the case with the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper from Ghostbusters. We did it once years ago back in Maryland, and then did it again here in California. Old costumes become new when you have anew audience.
These aren’t really recognizable characters, and we weren’t trying to be anyone specific. We were inspired by Taran Killam’s hysterically funny Saturday Night Live sketch, J Pop America Funtime Now, and dressed as random Anime characters. Hopefully the costume is not offensive, given that part of the joke behind the sketch is that it’s based on a very narrow view of Japanese culture that is largely not true.
We pulled from another SNL sketch for this costume, this time a classic one. This actually isn’t Halloween, it’s a themed New Years Eve party, but it’s a fun costume, so I’m including it anyway. We’re Lisa Loopner and Todd DiLaMuca, aka The Nerds (how appropriate), played by the brilliantly funny Gilda Radner and Bill Murray.
The next three costumes are all based in music.
I’m a child of the 1980s and I love my 80s music, so we decided to go as a couple of my favorite 80s singers: Cyndi Lauper and Adam Ant (a la Prince Charming, of course).
This costume is inspired by Internet superstar Jonathan Coulton and his song, The Future Soon. We’re sort of half-cyborg people, or humans with certain modifications. That splotch on my face is a motherboard.
These two costumes are kind of a stretch as a “couples costume,” but they are related. I love musical theatre, but I worship Stephen Sondheim. My costume is based on my favorite musical ever, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (and it was my favorite long before the Johnny Depp movie came out, though I love the film too). Alex’s costume pulls from a different Sondheim musical, Assassins. He’s John Wilkes Booth. Prophetically, the costume turned out even better than it should have because Alex accidentally took a fall and injured his ankle a few days before Halloween. Oops, talk about realism.
And just for kicks, I’m going to throw in my rendition of Peter Criss, even though it’s not part of a couple.
Feel free to share some of your Halloween pictures (or links to them) in the comments!
