Hobo Vader: a character you'll never see from Star Wars

I hemmed and hawed. I put it off. I counted on some stuff we loaned to my nephews and promptly forgot about. Sucks to be me.

I am talking about Halloween of course. This year, Ian decided on Anakin Skywalker and Reagan a Vampire. That part you know.

But what you don't is my all too lame attempt to put something together. It was shameful. Shameful except for the sounds system.

That is right. Sound system. My new motto is if you can't look the part, wow them with sound effects. So, I rigged a backpack with speakers and my iPod, then played the Imperial March (bam bam bam bump bah bam...). It is far more fun to pretend to be Darth Vader from Star Wars with music.

Unfortuantely that was the best part of my costume. Here is a quick run down of how not to put together a costume:

1. backpack. Do a dry run in front of a mirror, not when you are sweating like Richard Simmons with kids asking "are you ready yet?". I looked like an odd combo of the hunch back of notre dame and an overweight ninja.
2. Mask. Don't fake a mask. All I could find at our local Walmart with t-minus 2 hours until sunset on Halloween was a Darth Vader candy bucket. Noting it was two piece and about the size of my face, I bought it. I split the bucket making a front and back, then drilled out eye holes so I could see. I then donned a black cycling hat, and taped the front and rear of the bucked with black electrical tape to my head. Horrible. 0/10 on a scale of 1 -10 with 10 be awesome. And I didn't drill the holes in the mask right, I could only see out of one eye at a time. I felt more like a fool with a bucket on his head imitating a pirate.
3. kids costumes are not one size fits all. I borrowed Ians cape. The thing drags on the floor for him, so I thought it would be great for me. No. The cape came down to mid thighs making me look like some kind of nutjob that pops out of cannons at the circus. Embarassing. I also used one of Ian's knight capes as the front of my costume. It is a short cape for him, so I thought it would be a great shirt-like cape for me. Unfortuntely, it was so short it looked more like a bib for an all-you-can-eat buffet I was headed to.
4. When a neighboring Dad you've always thought of as the lamest gives you that look, you know, the look that says, "what kind of freak are you" as you stride by in your bucket/mask playing the Star Wars theme from a back pack that sticks out like an unatural growth, you know this costume wasn't planned out so well.
5. Melon's helpful costume checklist:

• Do you use your lightsaber prop as a blind person would going down stairs? If so, stop now.
• Is your sound system in a back pack preventing you from reducing the volume or outright stopping the music should the need or shame level rise? If so, stop now.
• Does you son ask, "who are you supposed to be Daddy?" If so, stop now.
• If after 5 minutes of walking down the street does it dawn on you that you are masquerading as your son's worst version fast forward 30 years into the future: gut, hobo costume, annoying sound system, and you can't see anything but the sweat droplets that keep falling in your bucket-covered eyes, eject, eject, eject.

I followed this checklist but didn't stop until the last one. I quickly ditched the costume and followed my kids around the hood. Reagan almost didn't want to go trick or treating this year. Making me feel unbelievably old.

*the actual embarrassing photos are coming. My Dad has them...