Dave Vader costume - Gleno School dance October 2009

I have this old Grim Reaper Costume (see pic) that's over 7 feet tall that you wear like a backpack in order to elevate the head to create the height illusion. I have done that shtick where I left it outside a few days before Halloween as a stationary prop before changing into it in my garage Halloween night and slipping back into place as the kids came up to the door (see 2007 video) . I'm not sure which is more fun, giving the kids a scare, or their parents (wait scratch that! BIG kids. They're my favorite).

This year I modified it a bit and turned it into a Darth Vader Costume. I popped an old Don Post Vader mask I had from the early 90's up on there, with a headlamp inside to cast an erie glow from the eye and mouth filters. Then I got my Replica red LED lightsaber prop that ignites and makes the lightsaber sound when swung and collision sound when struck (awesome!) , and went off to my kid's school dance.

I got dressed in the parking lot and strode inside all Vader-like. I've been there before and whatever costume I'm wearing, they all mistakenly make me out to be one of two teachers there, Mr M or Mr A. I'm not sure why they should get all the credit for my costume, but what the hey. I'll impersonate them if it's funny, short of getting them into trouble.
"No homework tomorrow kids!"...

Whenever I have a tall costume on that features a height illusion, I have found that little kids feel the need to kick and beat on me in some way to in order to prove to themselves that I am somehow not real. Kicks to the shins are to be expected, as are punches to the groin area. I don't think it's malicious as they seem to think I'm on stilts and they don't expect to connect with any vulnerable parts of my body. Luckily most parents step in and save me ( next year I'm definitely incorporating some upgraded groin protection).

This year brought an unexpected side effect. I'm carrying a glowing lightsaber in a dark gym and I'm 7 and a half feet tall. Ninjas are making a comeback this year. Star Wars Jedi and King Arther Knights are also popular costumes. There were a few Viking barbarian guys as well. The one thing these costumes all have in common?

Swords..

The one thing I overlooked was that, holding a glowing red lightsaber in a darkened gym with pulsating Katy Perry music, some of these kids might want to take a poke at the Lord of the Sith and make a name for themselves. Swords were coming at me from everywhere. Most of them could not hit the Vader Mask on top of my costume, which was good, but what they could hit was the center mass of Dave Vader, which happened to be where my face and eyeballs were.

POKE!

"ARGGGGGG!"

Slash

"Argggg! That went in my mouth!"

My wife said.
"It was your idea!"

POKE! "ARGGG! It's ok, I have two eyeballs".

The hackers and slashers were easy enough to deflect but this one Nights of the Templar kid would stand directly underneath me and he had this little white plastic broadsword which he'd thrust upwards in a straight line from underneath my arms so that I couldn't bat it away with my lightsaber.

POKE!
"Score kid, I'm going to have a black eye! Darth Vader's going to the ER now.."

I tried to force choke them all with my mind but it didn't work. I think I know how Spartacat feels now..

I'll have to re-think this costume a bit..

GAG 14 geocaching event

Dressed as Jason from Friday the 13th in a cornfield certainly brings back memories of when I was 13 years old. Seems I was always dressing up as him and jumping out of the corn on Kemp Road outside Blackburn Hamlet for as many times as I could talk my friends into taking a walk down there after dark.

The last Gag we did was on a Friday the 13th and Tripper and Kenmore wore their Jason Masks so I made sure not to forget mine this time around for GAG 14! If I'm not mistaken, this is the same one from my Voorhees geocache. They come in handy for pokey branches that want to take your eyes out. Luckily no one called the police on us this time as thy cracked their blinds just in time to see three guys dressed as Jason going into the forest.

There were some neat caches on this trip. At one point we figured out the co-ordinates for the next cache in the nice warm Van as Tripper and Kenmore were tossing a nearby garbage dumpster looking for the cache. I learned an amazing cellphone tactic to deflect spousal suspicion. Gwilliker was talking to his girlfriend on the phone (She was googling and Wikiing for us) and at one point he covered the mouthpiece and mentioned how this was going to cost him big-time. He was going to be forced to go see the movie 'Couple's Retreat' with her sometime this weekend.
We all laughed and she heard us when he uncovered the cellphone. She must have asked:
"What's so funny?" and without skipping a beat Gwilliker said:
"Oh Somebody Farted, Ok, next search.. "

Classic!

Bigfoot scare at Gold Bug

This one's a little late. Back on Tuesday October 6th I got wind that a local geocachers was going for their 1000th find on one of my geocaches because it kinda fit in with her name. It was The Gold Bug geocache which was my homage to an Edgar Allen Poe story I'd always liked..

I was a few weeks away from releasing the next Bigfoot movie so I thought I'd do a little publicity and dress up as the big hairy guy and surprise a bunch of people in the forest. Actually publicity was the last thing on my mind, I just like doing stuff like this!

I packed the suit, bungie-ed it to my trusty old toboggan (this is how I move big things around in the forest like bunny crates and bodies, etc..) threw everything in the truck and headed out with a 15 minute head start.

Being the cache-owner I knew where ground zero was, the path they would follow and the parking lot they would all start at. I parked about 2 kilometers away and hoofed it to the back-end bushwack and arrived pretty early, with about 20 minutes to get dressed and pick a good spot to stand up and be creepy in.

In the end, about 21 geocachers came walking up the hill in a big group, all with their noses stuck to their GPS's. A light raid had started to fall and it was all feeling very surreal.

Congrats to Miss bug of her 1000th find and thanks for doing it on one of my geocaches!

Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 - Released!

It's OUT! Longer than the gestation period of an elephant that was! The film was released tonight in an ammo can outside my front yard where people came by and snagged copies of the film for the upcoming GAG 14 geocaching event. There's also two downloadable versions, one "bleeped" with no cuss words and the real-life talkin' version(grin). The DVD has two audio tracks that you can switch between. This is just a basic version with the feature. Now I'm going to go over the footage and make a "Making of" and blooper reel as well as a "director's commentary" and all that fun stuff. Maybe even a pop up video version! For now here's the two downloadable versions

1. A downloadable link to a 551MB censored copy TPGMBF2-bleeps.wmv

2. A downloadable link to a 551MB UN-censored copy (bad words you can't say on television, and all that). TPGMBF2-badwords.wmv(coming soon! should be active by 1:00pm Thursday oct 15th)

Check it out! And if you're even in Ottawa, stop by the cache, it's in a really cool location! A big thanks to: Ndg8r......................... as himself Kirok..........................Mike Gariepy Zartimus................David Carriere GRizzlyG..................as himself Tripper......................as himself Captain Hook.......Andrew Basque Mr Lifto.................Paul Wyndands GWilliker.............Bryce Crossman Cliffy.........................Andrew Bush Nate the gopher...............as himself

Trailerpark Geocachers meet Bigfoot 2 - Poster #1

Won't be long now! Beepin' swear words, normalizing audio and finishing Music.

Here's a poster by Paul Wynands based on a photo by Tripper.