Meme It Up With 11 Sure-Fire Last-Minute Halloween Costumes
March 20, 2019 | Story | No Comments
According to Google's "Frightgeist" map of trending costumes, there's no way around it: it's gonna be a very Fortnite Halloween. From Miami up to Boston and Anchorage down to LA, the Epic Games title is dominating people's searches for holiday getups. (At least, mostly; New England seems to be really into unicorns and fairies, and Glendive, Montana inexplicably is into "The ’50s" as a costume idea.) You, though, are a free thinker. Just because you can put on some cargo pants or an orange shirt and do the "Shoot" dance doesn't mean you want to look like every other yob out there getting pushed around in a shopping cart.
But at the same time, Halloween is on a Wednesday this year, which means that the parties start tonight—and you, my friend, have likely not gone farther than Googling how to turn "The ’50s" into a costume. (The answer is Brylcreem and taffeta. However, the ’50s was not a better time. Please do not dress up like it.) You need a fix, and fast. What, you're going to drag out that Sexy Pizza Rat costume for yet another year? The madness ends, and it ends here. Thanks to the ceaseless churn of the internet, Fornite is far from the only easy solution to life's sartorial conundra. So take a cue from us, and take a cue from current events and meme culture. Most of these costumes are already lurking in your home, just waiting to be thrown together hastily before you leave the house to dodge the shopping carts.
Spot Mini, the Boston Dynamics Robot
Of course robots aren't going to take over world. So what if they can open doors? Or fight through human resistance to open more doors? Or do parkour? The only thing that would truly strike fear is if they could robo-twerk to Bruno Mars, which is obviously never gonna hap—sorry, what's that? Ah. I see. So then putting on knee-high black compression socks and a yellow tracksuit and doing a herky-jerky Running Man is less of a Halloween costume than a last-ditch effort to blend in. Got it. —Peter Rubin
The American Chopper Argument
This meme, derived from an episode of the reality show American Chopper where Paul Teutul Sr. fired his son Paul Teutal Jr., is actually a great way to lay out the simple facets of a debate. (Just like Plato used to do!) As the argument escalates, each frame of the meme lays out a different point from each side of the debate. For this reason, it probbably lends itself most readily to a duo or couple's costume. To execute it, one person needs to wear jeans, a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and a grey handlebar moustache (also platinum hair and some fake arm tattoos, if you can swing it). The other person needs to wear jeans, a black T-shirt (with sleeves), and a black baseball cap. As for the debate itself, it's possible to pick a debate laid out in one of the many examples of the meme or create your own. Put the points of the debate on signs that you both can walk around with to act out the argument. Also, if you want to encourage interactivity, wear the costumes while carrying dry-erase boards so that your fellow celebrants can use you as props to lay out arguments of their own. —Angela Watercutter
Yanny—or Is It Laurel?
"Who are you supposed to be?"
"Larnef."
"Who?"
"Yannel."
"Wait, what?"
"Sorry, did you not understand me? Laruvel." Yes, simply by printing this out and hanging it around your neck (or just buying a t-shirt from its creator), you too can be as annoying as the many, many news stories about the senseless auditory illusion, none of which actually found the opera singer who recorded the snippet more than a decade ago. Well, none that weren't the one by our own Louise Matsakis, anyway. Nice one, Louise! —P.R.
The A Star Is Born Meme
No doubt Halloween parties this year will have more than a few variations on Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's characters from A Star Is Born. But the meme, that four-panel "I just wanted to take another look at you" bit, that one is not likely to be left in the shallow, either. So how do you do it? A couple of ways: You could make a couple T-shirts, like these superfans. If you have a spare car door lying around—or are handy enough to fashion one by hand—you could roll down the window, get a greasy mop like Jackson Maine's, and just walk around all night saying "hey!" and seeing who turns around to take a look at you. Bonus points if you can get a companion to play Ally/Gaga and find you charming all night long. —A.W.
An Absolute Unit
While the meme officially got its start in 2017, the spring is when the internet's love of majestic rotundity really took root. But here's the thing: you can't just be an absolute unit and expect people to know that's what you're doing. The key here is wordplay. So maybe carry a bottle of vodka in one hand and two plums in the other; now you're an Absolut eunuch! If you're heading somewhere with a lot of programmers, go as an Absolute Unix Terminal. (If you're not going somewhere with a lot of programmers, though, do not do this. Please.)
Gritty
OK, so full disclosure: you might actually need a lion mask to be able to pull off professional hockey's terrifying new mascot. And an Ernie mask to paste it on top of, just to give you the perfect slavering murder-rictus. Oh, and giant googly eyes. And a Philadelphia Flyers jersey. But you've got black sweatpants somewhere, right? I mean, who doesn't have black sweatpants? What, you've never dressed up like someone who skates around during commercial breaks and then lurks in the bowels of sports arenas, waiting to prey on innocents? I'm beginning to question whether you even want this. —P.R.
The "Him Too" Kid
You gotta hand it to Pieter Hanson. After his mom tweeted a (since deleted) picture of him in his Navy uniform and saying he "won’t go on solo dates due to the current climate of false sexual accusations by radical feminists with an axe to grind” and the #HimToo hashtag, Hanson followed it up by creating his own Twitter account denoucing what his mom said, and #HimToo as well. This costume, then, is pretty easy. If you have Navy whites, complete with cap, just wear those. And maybe carry a sign with a big red slash through "#HimToo" for people who may not know the meme and just think your a sailor. Also, be ready to strike Hanson's now-famous pose. —A.W.
Is This a Pigeon?
You may not recognize the name, but you've definitely seen the meme. Derived from a scene in the anime The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird in which a humanoid thinks a butterfly is a pigeon, this year it became the go-to way to demonstrate any person or group's misunderstanding of some concept or topic. To make this a costume, you'll need a pair of black-rimmed glasses, a short black haircut (or wig), a red button-up shirt and grey trenchcoat, a thick hardcover book, and a fake butterfly that you can attach to your shoulder with some kind of spring-y wire. As for how you interpret the meme, that's up to you. Either consult Know Your Meme for some well-known examples, or be a smarty-pants and come up with one on your own. Once you have it, render it in bold type and attach it to your face, chest, and butterfly in the appropriate places. Then, flutter away. —A.W.
Blunt-Hitting Elon Musk
Live in Canada? Or District of Columbia, or one of the eight states that has fully legalized the recreational use of cannabis? Just grab an OCCUPY t-shirt and a pack of backwoods, and you can take it from here. Just don't threaten to take Tesla private and drive, if you know what we're saying. —P.R.
Lime Scooter
Not all memes live on Twitter. Some of them live strewn in the bushes in front of that church down your block, or clustered more than 20 deep in front of your subway station. They're great memes, and they provide a real service to people, they're just a little … annoying sometimes. Why not be a little annoying yourself? All it takes is a QR code slapped on your forehead, a black t-shirt/white shorts/green sneakers combo, and a willingness to fall over in front of people at the worst possible moment. Or, if you've got a friend of high-school age, just give them piggyback rides all night—as long as those rides involve you sprinting into traffic or down crowded sidewalks, with no helmets involved whatsoever. "Last-mile solution" never sounded so spooky! —P.R.
Redpilled Kanye West
MAGA hat? Check. Trump photo? Check. Now just call the photo "dad," call for overturning the 13th Amendment, and watch everyone's face crumple with grief and pity. Don't worry, you're still a genius—it's just that we're trying to bring you down. Yeah, that's it. —P.R.
CULTURE