Never Question My Methods

The No Effort Halloween Costume is a time-honored tradition.

There are some people who don’t want to dress up like the Green Goblin for Halloween and spend all their time building an air skiff and worrying about Johnny Law confiscating their pumpkin bombs.

Similarly, some folks don’t want to go through the tedious time building a stillsuit from Dune because they A) never work right and B) no one, on any occasion, actually looks like Kyle McLaughlin. Not even Kyle McLaughlin, except for once, but like a long time ago.

And so with so many opportunities for failure as outlined in the two examples above, the no-effort costume was born. Pretty much because of Dune and Spiderman, but maybe there’s other stuff.

In 2000, people wore knitted caps and pretended to be from The Blair Witch Project. This resulted in a rash of supernatural deaths which no one in the Mainstream Media wants to talk about.

In 2003, my friends simply drew a lightning bolt on a guy’s forehead because he looked a lot like Harry Potter. He cooperated, but it’s not clear to me if he knew who Harry Potter was, because he spoke mostly German. Still! He was up for a lightning bolt scar, and that’s cooler than having a costume any day.

And anyone with a t-shirt and a plumber’s helper last year was Joe the Plumber. They were about as useful as he was.

Personally, I prefer simpler approaches, like just turning your watch back about ten minutes, and saying that you are yourself, ten minutes ago. Or pretending to sleepwalk. That type of stuff.

It’s pretty clear that this year most No Effort Costume People are going to be Falcon Heene, the boy who failed to be aboard his father’s stray airship when he needed to be there the most.

Let me be clear: this is messed up. The kid is six. It’s not okay to parody a six year old. You might as well go to a petting zoo and verbally mock all the baby ducks.* But I’m guessing that I’ll be seeing a few people dressed like children with mylar balloons over their shoulders or something like that, whether I want to or not, because that’s Halloween for you.

It looks like the main thing you need for this costume to work is an affable smile that inspires a fair amount of good will for something that was absolutely not your fault. But most of us lose that when we turn eight or nine.

*As opposed to pantomime, which is acceptable.