Since this is our first week, we thought we would do something fun. Introduce you to some of the writers on the site while asking them one question. A lot of times these questions come up late and not everyone is around to answer them, but we got a pretty good response from this one. That's the way it works with all these writers. Sometimes they are around when we have a whim. Sometimes not. So anyways...

What was the question?

What’s the worst Halloween costume you have ever worn or seen?

turtle wants to not rock and roll
One year I remember walking up to a store and seeing all these kids coming out in KISS masks. I just remember thinking how god awful is that? Was this the 70's? I still remember it because my dad said if I ever said the word "suck" at anything ever again, he would beat my ass. He didn't like that word. And "bastard". He hates that word, too. Drives him insane.

I looked at those kids and just said, "Those bastards fucking suck."

Hey, if I was gonna get my ass beat, I might as we throw in a few extra words and make it worth it.

kali comes hard next
one halloween i was a wang.
uh. the computer. heh. you know? back when monitors and keyboards were all one big box. i spent hours on end cutting pasting and drawing and gluing on keys (and KNOBS!) on a refrigerator box. it sucked. i could barely move my freaking arms and getting candy was a chore. and of course, my effing mother made me wear a turtleneck.

Michele likes to laugh at hurt children
My daughter went as a box of popcorn one year. I made the most kick ass costume but didn't think my cunning plan all the way through.

She tripped going up to one house. Couldn't get up because of the awkwardness of the box. She was trapped like an upside down turtle, moving her arms and legs around and crying.

Yes, I laughed. Bad mommy.

Deb steps on the ice next
I love Hallowe’en, it's the start of the new year for me, there's all that candy AND you get to dress up and nobody looks at you weird. Well they still look at me addly at work, but that's because I'm the only one in costume.

My favourite costume was one I put together at the last minute about five years ago. My sister had finally convinced me to go with her and her friends to a party at a bar and I needed a costume, quickly. So I went to the tickle trunk* and pulled together the most brilliant outfit ever.

A southeaster, a shirt with clouds and a water gun.

Meet "Partially cloudy with a chance of rain".

I didn't win any prizes, but a very drunk tellatubby thought I was the "Queen of Weather."

Wilhelm has the power
My entire childhood was one long string of horrible Halloween costumes. The last good one was when I was -what?-Five? I was He-Man. That was cool. Then I became a little fat kid and it all went to hell.

I wanted to be Spider-Man one year. That turned out to be more self-parody than costume. I appeared to be exactly what I was--a little, sweaty piggy rolling around in a spandex outfit trying to pretend he didn't look like an asshole.

I've since lost weight, but my over-arching total lack of a fashion sense has prevented me from having a cool costume. A few years ago I went as David Bowie. Try explaining why "Aladdin Sane" was awesome to some 19-year old you're trying to pick up some time. I think she ended up going home with the guy dressed up as Nelly. Or maybe it was Weird Al. I think I just need to give up on Halloween costumes before I get arrested on some sort of twisted, trumped-up criminal charges involving illegal pelts or criminal misuse of polyester.

Paul wants to find home
I remember back in '82, everyone and their sister were dressed as ET. Some of them had bought a costume from a store, but most of them looked like they had ET costumes made by their moms from a template. Since the sewing talents of the neighborhood women wasn't uniform or consistent, this made for a wide range of "interpretations" of the ET character. You'd have some kids walking around in a near-replica of the real costume from the movie, while others looked like a lumpy potato shuffling down the sidewalk.

There were so many of them, that when my dad opened the door to find 10 or 11 ET's standing on our porch, he declared, "Jesus Christ, there's a lot of these little ET bastards running around." He tried to play a long with the whole thing by repeating the famous catchphrase from the movie, but he got it slightly wrong and enthusiastically said, "ET go home!" as he passed out the candy. This slightly upset some children, and if my Dad had known what he was doing he wouldn't have continued, but in a strange twist of semantics, what he thought was polite and friendly chatter was actually a clear and frank expression of his thoughts on the matter.

Apparently, my Dad had earned such a reputation from "The Year of the ET's" that kids would quickly ring the doorbell and jump backwards before my Dad opened the door, while some were simply too scared and ran away before the door even opened. Luckily, this translated into more candy for me when I got home.

Uber is god's gift
Halloween, 2001. I was in college, so there were huge parties. Our frat had one and invited anybody who wanted to come. I walked in and there was some guy I didn't know who had a bow on his head and a large gift tag that said, "To: Women. From: God." God's gift to women--pretty clever, I thought. About ten minutes later, I saw another guy walking around in the same costume. By the end of the night, there were no less than six God's Gifts walking around, and I went from thinking those costumes were clever to thinking those guys were douchebags. Now I see this stupid fucking costume every year. Some idiot always dresses up like this, thinking he's the first guy to think of it, probably fantasizing that his wit will get him laid by some knockout, only to go home by himself and end the night playing Halo 2 and scratching his balls and jerking off to Maxim because guys like that are always too big of pussies to go into a store and ask for hard core porn, so they just get the tame shit and stick with that, and man do I hate that fucking costume, I hate the people who wear it, and I hope none of them ever get laid ever again.

Dan is like all vampire like
Mom was a nurse and had one of those old school capes you used to see them wear. Black on the outside and red on the inside, perfect for a vampire. Not perfect for me though, I was five and I kept walking on the bottom of it and tripping up. I didn't care but Mom told me no way. Unsafe for me and the cape, she said. No dice.
I didn't know what the hell to do, so I stuffed a pillow up a sweater, put on a bald wig, and when people asked me what I was dressed up as, I said either, "the principal" or "a bad man".

From one very small perspective I guess it's kinda scary (the principal was a fat smelly bastard who used to yell a lot and pick his nose in public as if he was alone), but for the most part that's just fucking lame.
I think I was a vampire for about five years after that, which is pretty stupid too.

Dom steals her kids candy
I don't remember a single costume I wore or anything my brothers wore. That should tell you how unfabulous our costumes were. I think we were all three ghosts...OFTEN. The good side is I remember getting a hell of a lot of candy and trading it with my brothers to get our favorites. I do love me some Halloween especially since I have kids and can pull rank and get the really good stuff from them before they inhale it.

pril gets lucky
I think i was a lucky kid. The rule was if i wanted to do something for halloween, i made the costume up myself.

I recall when i was five or so having something of an infatuation with the Virgin Mary. (Shut up.) In the Mystery Box is a picture of me in my homemade Virgin Mary Halloween costume. I had some kind of blanket on my head that was pink with elephants or something, held on by a paper headband i made because i loved stapling things. So there were a lot of staples in it. I think i had shorts on and a shirt that must have belonged to someone else because its huge and that was my robe. There is no halo, i probably couldn't figure out how to make one. And off i went with mom, trick or treating.

Yeah, well, remember, i'm the kid who wore the Sears Cowboy outfit to school in kindergarten.

Bob drops the clutch
I don't know what year, but I went as Gene Simmons from KISS, full makeup. It was a store bought costume, but it really looked like him. I think I was about ten years old.
Mom was like "Uh, okay honey. If that's what you want. Uhm, wouldn't you rather be a mummy or something?"

No. Gene Simmons dude. He was awesome. The boots. The tongue. Hell yeah.
The old ladies in my neighborhood were like "Ohh a scary monster."
I'd roll my eyes and be totally disgusted that they had no clue who I was.

Kory wants to fly
I couldn't remember for the life of me a single costume I ever wore except for towels as Superman capes and Spiderman underoos... neither of which has to do with Halloween.

So I collaborated with my son, since we've always made a big deal about dressing him up for Halloween. Here's what he offered...

"My costumes have been:(Not in order)

Wolverine
Batman
Superman
Spider-Man
The Hulk
Donald Trump
A Vampire
Mario
Bart Simpson
Homestar Runner
A Mummy
Alex from "A Clockwork Orange"

My best one would have to be Wolverine, because that was one that we spent a long time on. It was a good costume, looked like the yellow and blue comic book one, not the movie one.

My worst would be the Mummy because that is so generic and easy to make."

And I'll add that with the exception of Spider-Man, none of these were pre-packaged. The Wolverine one in particular was carefully made and easily of cosplay quality...

Erine was a phantom!
I never really had any super-cool costumes growing up. Most of the time, they were some out of the box thing. One year I was The Phantom.
That was pretty cool. I remember the mask kinda glowed in the dark.
I have a vague recollection of a few college parties where people would get dressed up for Halloween. I think I wore a toga one year. Other than that, I usually just went as a drunk who was looking to get laid. Har.

thefinn gets all teen wolf on us
I'd have to say that the worst idea I ever had for a Halloween costume was the year I decided to go out as the Wolf Man.

Mom searched high and low for a decent costume, but couldn't find anything that didn't have a stupid plastic mask... So, since I already had a ripped up pair of pants and shirt from the year before (I was the Hulk), she decided to give me a haircut. I took the hair, and a little rubber cement and voila ! Instant Wolf Man.

After being out for about an hour, I went rushing home as fast as I could. Apparently I had a reaction to the rubber cement that caused me to break out in hives. It caused my face to swell up into giant splotches of red puffy skin, with two little shit brown eyes poking out.....

Shawna rolls the dice
OK, when I was 12, my friend and I thought it would be soooo cool to be a pair of dice. We found big square boxes, painted them white with black dots. We cut holes in the top for our heads and holes in the sides for our arms. We were so excited. We were going to be so cool at school.

Except there were a few problems. Wearing those boxes was hot, and I don't mean in a sexual nature. We couldn't sit down. We could barely walk through the doorways. And the biggest problem was that my friend and I only had one class together, so by ourselves the costume didn't quite work. People kept asking, "What are you?"

Wasn't the best thought-out costume, after all.

Josh doesn't like clowns
I grew up in Central Ohio. It was pretty much even odds as to whether or not there'd be snow on the ground on Halloween. One year, I think I was 12 or 13 cause it was one of the last times I went trick or treating for the candy and not as a chaperone for my little brother, I went as a hospital patient. Kickass gown, fake butt hanging out the back, the whole shebang. Little brother went as a clown, which was petrifying, because for chrissakes, he was a clown. Both costumes lost a little in translation, though, since we had to put them over our snowsuits.

So that’s ours. Welcome to Halloween. We told you ours. You guys out there have to have one or two to tell us about.

So what were they?

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