No Halloween is Complete Without Sinister and Pac-Man
Let me tell you about my Halloween. This was the first year EVER that I lived in a house with a wife and everything. Crazy, man, crazy! We actually got to give out candy to the neighborhood kids. And when I say "candy" I really mean "CANDY." We didn't give out crappy "fun size" candy. What's fun about a tiny-assed candy bar? We gave out KING SIZE candy! Twix, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Crackel, M&Ms, and much, much more, baby.
You think that makes us the cool house on the block? Well, you ain't heard nothin' yet. Nor seen nothin' yet. Because I did something special for those people that I like to call "the kids."
I carved FIVE pumpkins this year.
But not just any carvings. Oh, no. Anyone can make some triangle eyes and a nose and a mouth with two teeth or fangs or something. That's so beneath me.
Here's what I carved for "the kids."
Kinda hard to tell what those are from this distance and during the daylight hours, eh, kids? Let me turn off the sun:
P-P-P-Pac-Man!? And his ghosts!? Those are not, as you might belive, Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde. Those are Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Sue.
I am so extremely awesome that 90% of the kids who came to our door said how much they loved my Pac-Man pumpkins. One little kid, around six years old or so, came to the door with a group of friends or relatives, and didn't say anything, not even "Trick or Treat." After Carrie gave him his candy he stared at her for a couple seconds and then blurted out, "Ilikeyourpumpkins!" and ran away.
In other words, "Ass kicker equals me, baby."
I would have carved eyes for all the ghosts in order to be even more accurate, but even I'm just one guy. And besides, I had more important things to spend my time on... like making everyone run like cowards!
Behold, SINISTAR!
BEWARE, I LIVE! RUN COWARDS!
The mightiest of villains from any 1982 video game, Sinistar was one of the first badguys to actually taunt you as he tried (usually successfully) to kill you. Sinistar was actually terrifying. Just seeing him streak onto screen with that horrendous screech was enough to make a grown man turn into an ungrown girl. Sinistar definitely wasn't rated B: for Babies only.
Who better to embody the regal, cold-blooded supremacy of this sentient evil spaceship better than me?
Nobody, that's whom.
But how to make myself become as Sinistar? What process?
First of all, building materials:
I went to Home Depot and wandered around for a while before finding this foam insulation board. It was about ¾ inch thick, and was covered on one side by a glossy peel-away material that had all this crap written on it (seen above), and the other side with a beautiful blue peel-away material.
This peel-away attribute will be very important later. I know y'all are on the edge of your collective seat.
Okay, so I bought three of those (though I only needed two, but I didn't know that at the time). Now I just needed to design my Sinistar. I chose this picture from the standup art around the screen:
And went into Photoshop or Flash (I can't remember which) and traced it to this:
RRRAAARRRGGHHH! Sinistar! Then using a simple grid system I transferred this design to my foam board:
MENACING, isn't it?!
I then took an exacto knife and cut out around the outermost edges of my Sinistar design:
Little foam bead particles got EVERYWHERE. It wasn't for the faint of heart or lung or bladder. I swear, if Fantastico had been a man and had worn pants, she would have wet herself from the irrational exhuberance she would have displayed over this stuff.
Speaking of Fantastico, she had a rather unpleasing habit of sitting down on Sinistar whenever I turned my back. Displeasing! Here I am at this point:
RRAAARRRGGHHH! BEWARE! I ALMOST LIVE! RUN! RUN! RUN!
I then put this on top of another piece of foam and traced and cut an exact replica of it. Because I didn't want no sissy 2-D Sinistar costume. I wanted one in the Third Dimension, because that's the dimension where we'll all spend the rest of our lives.
After I had two identical Sinistar face pieces, I went back to the one that had the actual drawing of Sinistar on it (above) and cut out the eyes, nose, mouth, and cut away the spiky appendages so I just had the skull head and lower jaw (which I cut apart, but I guess that's not really completely necessary.
Then I cut another piece in the shape of that V-thing on Sinistar's forhead.
Finally, I cut the saucer shape (with the compass-point extensions) out of another piece of foam board, with the blue peel-away stuff facing up.
Then I peeled all the peel-away stuff off from Sinistar's spiky stuff, skull head, jaw, and V-thing, and stacked up all four layers of Sinistar goodness:
I HUNGER!
Would'ya lookit that? I'll be god-damned if that doesn't look about as much like Sinistar as something can look and still cost less than $3.75 in materials!
Before sticking all the layers together, I took a sharpie and filled in the eye, nose, and mouth holes with evil blackness. Then I outlined the skull head and jaw, with a little cosmetic cheekbone accents, and then outlined the V-thing.
I made very shallow slits in the blue peel-away covering of the circular base, and peeled away strips of it to get a design that was much closer to the REAL Sinistar. Of course, I would rather it had been red and/or purple to more accurately match the REAL Sinistar, but beggars can't be choosers. I'm not a beggar. But also, when there's only one color available, choosy moms choose Jiff. And I chose blue, becuase there was no other choice.
But how now to stick all these layers together? Most glues either dissolve foam board like water on sugar cubes, or it just doesn't stick to it at all, or it gets completley absorbed into the foam and won't stick to any other surface.
My wife came up with a solution: Double-sided mounting tape. I'm not talking sissy-style double-sided tape. I'm talking about the stuff that you can use to hang framed pictures on your frakin' walls! You know, ths stuff that's like one-eighth of an inch thick, and will hold that crazy construction worker to the bottom of that steel I-beam. And now...
ARE YOU READY?
REALLY?
BEHOLD: THE MIGHT, THE MENACE, of
SINISTAR!
BEWARE, COWARD!
I found all the samples of Sinistar's taunts online (they're easy to find) and burned them onto an audio CD so I could play them in conjunction with my horrible... or perhaps I should say sinister appearance. As Sinistar.
What do you think, Ocean Shores Pirate?
