Unless you’ve been planning your ensemble for the last three months, right now you’re probably hitting the, “Oh, crap, Halloween is in ONE WEEK and I have nothing to wear!” panic. In today’s Station Conversation, Jill Weinberger and Liz Shannon Miller understand. Jill and Liz feel your pain.
Liz: Hey, happy almost-Halloween, Jill! Do you know what you’re doing yet for a costume?
Jill: Sadly, I do not. I fear it’ll be hard to top last year’s Amy Winehouse costume. What about you?
Liz: Not sure. I had some ideas, but when my friends firmly vetoed sexy Chris Crocker, I ran out of inspiration.
Jill: Oh, the singing-in-panties Chris Crocker?
Liz: Yeah.
Jill: That is a real shame you’d have to give up that one.
Liz: Purely for practical reasons. Apparently I can’t pull off the topless and flat-chested look.
Jill: I was thinking of being Sarah Palin. On account of the fact that I already own glasses. Then I was thinking of being Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, which is just so meta I could kiss myself, but kind of hard to convey. Plus I don’t have bangs.
Liz: Plus, that’s going to be rocked a lot.
Jill: Yeah. Plus, I considered that costume a couple of weeks ago, before the entire concept of Palin started to depress rather than amuse me. I could get me a blond wig and be McCain Girl, but I’m not sure how many people would get it.
Liz: It’s a little obscure. McCain Girl never really took off the way they wanted her to.
Jill: Yeah, even when she sang in an Enchanted Republican Forest. So it’s not like they weren’t trying.
Liz: OK, let’s think about this. Let us think about the last year in pop culture and online video.
Um.
Jill: We’re thinking…we’re thinking…Man, this year has been LAME. I hadn’t even realized.
Liz: Certainly not fruitful with costume ideas. You could go as Juno, or some sort of Juno/Bristol Palin hybrid — though someone already did that.
Jill: I think people would just think I was some old pregnant lady. Unless I found a stripey shirt and a hoodie, I guess. And maybe a Michael Cera lookalike. But I think if I hang out at high schools asking awkward weedy boys to be my costume partner I’m going to run into some legal trouble.
Liz: Ooooh! Be Silver from 90210!
Jill: YOU be Silver. You work out more than I do, and so could schlep the MacBook Air everywhere.
Liz: Yeah! And you could be Jennie Garth.
Jill: I could admonish you that your blogging RUINS LIVES. Oh, wait. That was quarterlife. Where the blogging ruins lives.
Liz: You can go as quarterlife! And then we can have a blogging fight.
Jill: I could vlog and ruin lives and then all of my friends and I could hug a lot.
Liz: I’m intrigued by the idea of being Katie Couric, but in order for that to work, you’d probably need to recruit a Palin.
Jill: And you would have to do some stuff to your face. ‘Cause something ain’t right there.
Liz: Hey, costume idea for the fellas — sexy Bill Gates.
Jill: Oh my.
Liz: It’d be great.
Jill: I’m frightened.
Liz: The glasses, the haircut, the Oxford…but the Oxford unbuttoned temptingly low.
Jill: I’m not listening. Lalalalalalalalalalal…
Liz: This works the best if the gentleman in question is like 6′2″ and built like a Greek god.
Jill: Oh wait. I’m back now.
Liz: Hah.
Jill: I would like to see a guy manage a Stephen Colbert costume that is somehow distinctively Stephen Colbert and not just a dark-haired guy with glasses in a suit. How you’d do it, I don’t know, but the guy who pulled it off would be aces in my book.
Liz: It’s really too bad that there was only one real female character in Dr. Horrible, and that she wore rather generic duds the whole time. I’ve already seen some awesome Dr. Horrible/Captain Hammer costumes (thank you Comic-Con) but Penny goes unrepresented.
Man, this is hard!
Jill: There’s kind of a built-in problem with online-video inspired costumes, in that a lot of people — even young people — actually have jobs and lives and whatnot (freaks) and so don’t recognize online celebrities the way we do. I’m looking at YouTube right now, and the first videos I see are about the iPhone and World of Warcraft, which is certainly representative of online culture, but not so much great for costuming.
Liz: Unless you have a large, flat cardboard box and don’t mind people making jokes about your touchscreen all night.
Jill: Umm…no thanks. You could use the cardboard box to build a frame around yourself, make it your sauna, be naked, be Britney Spears, and sing WOMANIZER WOMANIZER all night long.
Well, somebody could. Somehow I don’t see that appealing to you.
Liz: Well, not for Halloween.
You make a good point, though, about the online video. Sadly, so many trends are flash-in-the-pan that a good costume idea might have come up back in March but is now completely irrelevant.
Jill: I mean, I could get some face paint and be the Dramatic Hamster — but of those who would recognize me, most would think I was tragically passe and lame. Not that my friends are judgmental or anything.
Liz: Yeah. Clearly we need to go to Internet-people-only Halloween parties. THOSE PEOPLE will understand and embrace us lovingly.
Jill: Yes. We would be their queens.
Liz: I’ve always wanted to be queen of something.
Jill: Another problem for us is that many of the recognizable internet celebs are men. Perez Hilton, Crocker, Nalts, etc. LisaNova is the biggest female Internet celebrity (with clothes on, anyway), and she makes most of her memorable impressions portraying other people. The other female celebrities who are big online are not actually online stars — they’re singers who have videos up on YouTube.
Liz: Yeah. Though Avril would be a decent costume.
Jill: And I am NOT going to spend the evening running around going, “HEYhey YOUyou I wanna be your girlfriend.”
Liz: Maybe this year I’ll go as a Republican. I’ll dress normally, but I’ll talk a lot about ACORN and William Ayers.
Jill: Um. I fear, then, that we’ll be attending different parties.
Liz: Did you settle on something?
Jill: I think I’m going to have to go with Naked Britney in a Sauna. It’s a surefire crowd pleaser, and economical to boot. ‘Cause of the naked.
Liz: Where are you going to get the sauna, though?
Jill: I will just put a big open cardboard box around me and paint it with a decorative wood finish. I have mad faux finishing skillz. You sticking with the Republican talking points as a costume?
Liz: It’s simple, what can I say? Plus, it means I can spend up to $150,000 on my outfit.
Jill: Actually, it means someone else can spend up to $150,000 on your outfit.
Liz: It’s a campaign expense!
Jill: That’s where the fun comes in. Your friends will rue the day they vetoed sexy Chris Crocker.
Liz: Sad fact. Sexy Chris Crocker is a lot more fun at parties.
Jill: Hence my choice of Naked Britney in a Sauna. I’m not afraid to pander to get love and attention. Not at all. And pandering for love and affection is basically why Britney was naked in a sauna in the first place. So it all works out. Plus, I don’t have to get bangs.
Liz: And thus America wins.
