If you could dress up as anyone in history for Halloween, who would it be? October 31, 2004 9:51 AM   Subscribe

For Halloween, if you could dress up as anyone in history, who would it be?
posted by clavdivs to Feature Requests at 9:51 AM (40 comments total)

I'm thinking of President Taft or Paul wolf-o-witz. I could just go around and lick my comb all day, that seems scary enough.
posted by clavdivs at 9:53 AM on October 31, 2004


Zombie Jesus
posted by ZippityBuddha at 9:56 AM on October 31, 2004


Best Feature Request Evar.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:04 AM on October 31, 2004


Jim Goad. Or John Holmes. Or George Clinton.
posted by jonmc at 10:06 AM on October 31, 2004


Mary Magdalene
posted by kamylyon at 10:11 AM on October 31, 2004


Charles Bukowski. Or Zeus. Or both.
posted by chicobangs at 10:12 AM on October 31, 2004


I'd dress as you, clavdis. The costume would put me in a suit that was a giant question mark. ;)
posted by dobbs at 10:36 AM on October 31, 2004


Einstein (or Queen Elizabeth the first) : >
posted by amberglow at 10:45 AM on October 31, 2004


Eng Bunker
posted by mss at 10:51 AM on October 31, 2004


Clavdius is James Joyce?
posted by kenko at 11:24 AM on October 31, 2004


mss: without Chang? oooo
posted by amberglow at 11:31 AM on October 31, 2004


Teddy Roosevelt. The glasses and moustache are fun, and I could 'rough ride' a little hobby horse.
to all of you, yes I know what I just wrote. don't. go. there.
posted by wendell at 11:40 AM on October 31, 2004


Albert Schweitzer. Check out that 'stache!
posted by dhoyt at 11:50 AM on October 31, 2004


Henry Cabbot Lodge.
posted by geoff. at 11:59 AM on October 31, 2004


John Merrick.

Or John the Baptist. I'd dress in camel hair and hand out honeyed locusts to all the kiddies.
posted by Hildago at 12:13 PM on October 31, 2004


amberglow: without Chang?
Yea, He was just a hanger on
posted by mss at 12:13 PM on October 31, 2004


King David.


But only if the harem comes with it.
posted by Stynxno at 12:21 PM on October 31, 2004


Clavdius is The Riddler?

Or Matthew Lesko?
posted by Vidiot at 12:22 PM on October 31, 2004


Wouldn't you want to dress up as someone recognizable? I just dressed up as an animal cookie for this last halloween (white clothing, lots of multi-colored paper punched dots taped on) and 4/5 people didn't get it, and I've decided that's not the point.

Of course, years ago I dressed all in pink, put on a long black beak, and stood on one leg for most of the night, and seriously, most people couldn't get that I was a flamingo. "Toucan Sam?" they'd guess....
posted by weston at 12:27 PM on October 31, 2004


Last year's question. Data point : clav likes Halloween, apparently.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:40 PM on October 31, 2004


Rasputin (including his legendary wang).
posted by ba at 1:36 PM on October 31, 2004


i had joked that my halloween costume would be something truly scary this year...specifically, supreme court justice antonin scalia (complete with duck-hunting gun and bloody wire coathanger). since i was going to a party held by the historical society of my very catholic hometown, i thought better of it.

if i could go as anyone else, i'd probably go as the occasion-appropriate margaretta fox, pioneering fraud spiritualist. a cutie, and very halloween-y!
posted by pxe2000 at 1:53 PM on October 31, 2004


Keyser Soze, internet celebrity (sans shame).
posted by Keyser Soze at 2:06 PM on October 31, 2004


Forget it, Keyser, the quonsar masks are outselling yours by 4 to 1.
posted by wendell at 3:10 PM on October 31, 2004


Count Ugolino.

"Fiero pasto" and all. you don't get any scarier than that.
posted by matteo at 3:36 PM on October 31, 2004


"fiero pasto" = grim repast
posted by matteo at 3:38 PM on October 31, 2004


The Comte Saint-Germain.

I could wear damn near anything!
posted by yhbc at 4:47 PM on October 31, 2004


Aw hey, Amberglow, I saw the Elizabeth I costume first! Gimme that red wig and those ropes of pearls and that foxy farthingale NOW, I say! ;)
posted by Lynsey at 5:20 PM on October 31, 2004


Cat fight! rrrrrrRRRAWRRrrRR!
posted by chicobangs at 5:22 PM on October 31, 2004


*decides maybe a good Liz I and a zombie Liz I could be fun too*
posted by amberglow at 5:23 PM on October 31, 2004


Increase Mather.
posted by raysmj at 6:17 PM on October 31, 2004


Hannibal Hamlin.
posted by inksyndicate at 7:49 PM on October 31, 2004


God, the God of the Old testament - riding a huge hungry dinosaur that fronts a vast ravening herd of saurians sprung up from bones and clothed in apocalypse, wielding a giant sequoia as a club and a mountain as a bludgeon, lightning bolts springing from his eyes and buna-supercharged gouts of magma from his mouth, type 5 hurricanes whirling to life at his beckon to scour the earth of drive-in churches and the television studios of televangelists who prey on the aged, to lay waste to those who presume to act in his name........

.....and, for good measure, laying waste to pretty much everything (because he is an angry, vengeful God not given to minor discriminations between the wicked, the just, and the innocent) and overlaying ensuing charred, flooded out, corpse strewn flotsam and jetsam - of what was once a great or at least prolific technological civilization - with a neatening overlay of thick mud, and sprinkling seeds for new ground cover and conjuring new flora and fauna from the dust, the mud, and the void - to breathe into them life and give rise to a new age.

On his way out the door, God will casually toss his calling card - as a set of stone tablets engraved with testy warnings such as "I'm giving you one last chance. Don't blow it, or I'll be back. Maybe I'll be back anyway, but much sooner if you make a mess of things like the last time. Keep your nose clean, and don't use my name in vain, ever - God" - towards the mouth of a cave where a small band of humans which has somehow escaped the floods and fires, the winds and plagues of devouring beasts, has huddled in terror. As the winds and thunder die down and the ebbing rains give way to the blessings of rainbows - as they tremulously emerge from their hideaway to peek out at the end of the world they have known and the start of another, they will see a blinding, shifting form - amorphously radiant in terrible beauty - sweep by, and several large stone tablets will arc through the air, crushing several hapless survivors and propelling the rest, shrieking and wailing outwards towards the new age where one day their descendants will mine landfills and garbage heaps for the raw materials from which to build a new civilization.

God's tablets will, lie forgotten at the mouth of the cave, until they crumble to dust, and his word will be forgotten by men and women who will, as is their wont, give rise to a new affront that one day calls God back from duties elsewhere, for another round of creative destruction but - this time - with a new species : dolphins might crawl back on land, or emus grow larger brains and limbs with something like hands. Or perhaps the cephalopods......
posted by troutfishing at 5:15 AM on November 1, 2004


Oh - but I misread the question : I thought it asked "If you could dress up as anyone AS history, who would it be?....."

Or, maybe that still fits.
posted by troutfishing at 5:19 AM on November 1, 2004


Wow, trout.

I was gonna say "Evel Knievel".
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:20 AM on November 1, 2004


crash - whatever happened to Evel Knievel ? He was a big deal when I was a kid.

Did he fail to make another Grand Canyon jump and smack into the canyon wall in a fireball, to bounce - with the charred wreckage of his rocket powered motorcycle - down the cliffside to the ground - to serve as flame cured jerky for hungry coyotes ? Or, is he working as a Hollywood consultant for Vin Diesel movies ?
posted by troutfishing at 6:21 AM on November 1, 2004


TV movie about Evel out this year.
posted by scarabic at 8:46 AM on November 1, 2004


I'm thinking an old spinster's long black dress + hatchet would be pretty versatile. I could be Carrie Nation at one party and Lizzie Bordan at the next.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 9:39 AM on November 1, 2004


One year, I put my hair in two braids, put on my bolo tie and wore a sort of vaguely native-looking jacket, and told everyone I was Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

The following year, I got a haircut and went as the SprintPCS guy.

This year, I did what I do more often, and ignored the whole thing. (Candy gives me a headache, anyway.)
posted by lodurr at 10:38 AM on November 1, 2004


Jack Albertson as Shelley Winters husband in The Poseidon Adventure.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 6:15 AM on November 24, 2004


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