A procrastinator's guide to Halloween costumes

Halloween is in two days, but most celebrations will be taking place Saturday night.  That doesn't leave much time for costume planning.  If you're like me and wait until the last minute every year, here are some tricks I've learned that I pass on to you.

1.  Take inventory of what you have in the house.  Even the most basic household items could be repurposed as props.  One year at the West Hollywood Halloween parade, I saw a woman dressed as a dinner table.  It was a 3D costume, complete with food and dishes, and even a romantic candle.

2.  Read up on the news.  What stories are getting the most coverage?  Are there any colorful characters that you could impersonate?  Last year my roommate went as Balloon Boy, and her ingenious costume really came down to poster board, an umbrella, and some silver fabric.

3.  Don't discount the advantages of make up.  Even a hefty application of bronzer could get you halfway to being a Jersey Shore cast member.

4.  When all else fails, go to Rite Aid.  This is what I did last year when I was supposed to go to a party and had no idea what to be.  I wandered the aisles hoping a blue wig or something would pop out at me and give me an idea.  Luckily, a light bulb went off over the board game section, and I went home feeling confident in my new purchase of Twister.  Any board game could work, really.  All you have to do is turn the board into a hat by duct taping it to a head band (the soft, sporty kind).  And for the rest of the costume, you could either dress as a character from the game or use the playing pieces as accessories.  With Twister, I wore the mat as a dress and the spinner as a hat.  I cut a hand out of a piece of orange construction paper and taped it to one of the dots on the mat.  Bingo.  Interactive outfit.  You could do the same with Clue or Monopoly and simply dress as Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, or that guy in the top hat who gives away money.  I promise you will make lots of new friends this way.

Happy Halloween!


Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I 
(Round about the cauldron go)  
by William Shakespeare 

The three witches, casting a spell

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights hast thirty one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

I'm Donne! Donne, I tell you!

One of the things they make you read when you are an English major at a liberal arts college is Roland Barthes.  Barthes' most famous work is probably "The Death of the Author." In this essay he questions whether the reader of a text can ever ultimately know or understand the author's mind and true intention at the time of writing it, and therefore whether we need to know the author's intention in order to understand the text.  It's a little bit of a brain tickler, but basically the question is, do you think it's necessary for a reader to know who wrote a piece of writing?  Does knowing who wrote it add any extra meaning to the text? 

Maybe I'm a nerd (okay, definitely), but I've always been intrigued by this question.  Especially since nowadays we seem to be able to find out anything online and everybody has a blog (guilty).  Of course we want people to know when we write something!  We want credit and praise for it.  We want to make a point.  It seems like the only people who don't claim ownership for their work in this day and age are afraid of the repercussions from it. 

So, is it so horrible to think that Shakespeare didn't really write all those plays?  Would you feel betrayed to find out that the author of Romeo and Juliet was really some schmuck who dictated the whole thing to his assistant, who then gave it a rewrite?  Would it change the meaning or the genius of it?  I'll let you decide:


At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

Well . . . that was John Donne.  Do you feel cheated?