costumes – It's Been Real!

Be Prepared! I Was Prepared!

Whenever I go to a convention, I dress to impress. Quite frequently, I’m already thinking about the following year’s costumes. When you’ve been dressing up as long as I have, you know how to create a system that works and gets me my costumes in a timely manner.

This year, I purchased my ticket for Tekko, 2018 already and I’ve taken a look at the costumes for next year. I already decided to be Holo, the Wise Wolf one day; and Hela, the Goddess of Death another day. I have an envelope on my desk with all I’m going to need written on the front of it, along with where I can get it and how much it costs.

I reached out to the person who makes most of my props (she made my Kid Loki Helmet, Loki’s scepter, and my gun) and she is going to make my Hela headdress and sword. I am saving my money so that I can get my costumes probably starting in the middle of February to make sure that it has arrived and fits me before April. Some people (my brother) say I’ve got all my ducks in a row way too early. I don’t think so. It’s always nice when you get your costume all together, and then you try it one when you think about the convention and get excited. It breaks up the monotony of your day. And that always puts a smile on my face.

And on that note, it’s been real!

Costumed Craziness

This past weekend was a like a masque affair at my restaurant. We had all the staff dress up on Friday night, which was fun. I dresses up as Worick Archangelo from the anime, Gangsta. A few people thought I was Uma Thurman’s character from Kill Bill, but I had to correct them. We had one of the waitresses, who is very good at makeup, did her face like a clown from American Horror Story. She also did our manager’s face and made him look like a voodoo skeleton man. We had a mermaid sort of server, a kitty cat (she was a little lazy), and a 50’s greaser girl. One of the bartenders was Goose from Top Gun, and the second one was a rebel pilot from Star Wars. In a sense… he was basically wearing a pajama onesie that looked like a rebel pilot on the front, but made him look like a Telly Tubby from the back. We were all dressed up on Friday and we had fun. Except for my lack of depth perception. My character has an eyepatch, and I was doing my best not to bump into everybody.

On Saturday, we had several large parties make reservations, and one of them was an eighteen top costume party. They kept standing up instead of sitting down at the tables we assigned them. The servers couldn’t wait on them until they sat down, so that the two servers could know who they had. My manager had to go over and tell them that they had to sit down in their seats to be served. They sat down, but decided to occupy two extra tables as well as the larger two we had given them.

That was the first annoying aspect of it. The second was an obnoxiously loud six top that was right next to me. One of the women was obviously under the influence, and kept talking about certain, slightly off-color topics in a loud voice. She mentioned the ‘LGBTQIA’ repeatedly and so loudly that I thought she really did want the whole restaurant to hear her. They were there from almost the start of my shift to the very end of my shift. They were there for literally four hours. Anyway…

The costumes this weekend were pretty interesting and I could tell who put time/money into their costumes, and which ones had not. Being a costume connoisseur, it was easy. Halloween didn’t used to be a big holiday for me. As I get older and older, it has changed along with me.

And on that note, it’s been real!

Welcome! To Tekko, 2016!

Tekko 2016 was an interesting year. Completely Marvel for my costumes that weekend. It started on Friday as it always did, and just kind of went from there. That was obviously a couple of months before Suicide Squad came out, and there were an obnoxious amount of Jokers and Harley Quinn’s there. I actually almost through up at the amount of neon green, sparkling purple, and starch white I saw.

On day one (Friday), I dressed as Black Widow. And I did run into the best looking Deadpool and threatened him with my batons. But then, he did have a gun behind me.

There were quite a few people dressed up as Marvel characters. We had a couple of Iron Man’s, we had a lot of Deadpool’s, a few Hawkeye’s, a Thor running around, Jessica Jones, Spiderman, Spider Gwen, Peter Parker, Dark Phoenix, and even a Captain Marvel. And then on the flip side, Jokers, Harley Quinn’s, Batgirl, Batman, and a couple of others.

On day two (Saturday), I went as Loki in his Stuttgart suit with the disguised version of the Chitauri scepter.

On that day, we were asked to a Marvel vs. DC photo shoot. We got a large area to ourselves, then it was us against them. Somebody on the DC side said they outnumbered us. I countered with, “Only because you’ve got repeats galore!” No comebacks from Camp DC.

No voice actors that year I wanted to meet, but I didn’t let that stop me from having a blast. As I walked through the convention center, I would hear people say, “Look! That’s a Loki!” It’s always so nice when people recognize you. Sometimes people don’t remember that a character looked that way (the staff was probably what did it), so when people do remember, it’s refreshing. Got give them what they want. In true Loki style!

And on that note, it’s been real!