The Lone Ranger (The Sexy Armpit) and Katy Perry (Miss Sexy Armpit)
I always need inspiration to dress up for Halloween. Playing a character makes me feel like a kid for a whole night, but I require some sort of revelation every year to generate my interest. It takes motivation to create a good costume so I need some sort of spark. If I don’t experience that I won’t be very enthusiastic and I refuse to settle for any old costume off a rack. Mind you, I don’t go crazy insane with my costumes like multiple time costume contest winner Rollie over at Beauty and the Robeast, but I always have fun with it. In the past 10 years or so I’ve gone with a rock star motif and dressed up as Billy Idol, Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue, Gene Simmons (Dressed to Kill style), and Billie Joe from Green Day. Last year I began with a pop culture theme when I was Macho Man Randy Savage circa 1985 during his Intercontinental Championship reign and my girlfriend was Miss Elizabeth. This year, I channeled another childhood hero of mine, one who doesn’t carry Slim Jims, but silver bullets.
Tonto (Nick, Armpit’s cousin) and The Lone Ranger
This year I was inspired by Dynamite Comics’ Lone Ranger series. Ever since my Dad introduced me to the Lone Ranger radio show as a kid, I’ve always loved the character. I grew up collecting the paltry amount of LR collectibles that existed and watching DVD’s of the TV series. I had a feeling that the edgier style of The Lone Ranger’s costume in the latest comic book series, would translate well to a Halloween costume. It felt cool to be a classic character with a modern upgrade. Plus, I didn’t think there would be tons of dudes clamoring for a Lone Ranger costume, not as much as say…The Situation’s fake ab pad.
I began the project early in September and noticed that it would be more of a challenge than I thought. All the pre-made Lone Ranger costumes available online were super cheesy. The shiny blue shirt included was made of rayon and is a few letters short of saying “Hi My Name is The Lone Ranger,” on a name tag on the left side. It came with a terribly cheap and disheveled looking cowboy hat, but that wasn’t all! On the back of the shirt there was a full back graphic of The Lone Ranger riding Silver branded with The Lone Ranger logo. I honestly don’t think The Lone Ranger is so self absorbed that he would wear a shirt with a huge graphic of himself on the back of it, let alone one made of cheap polyester. Obviously, I stayed far away from this $40 dollar piece of crap and put it together on my own.
Finding a reasonable cowboy hat required some digging. Some cowboy hats that claim to be replicas of the one that Clayton Moore used in The Lone Ranger TV series go for upwards of $400 bucks! Screw that! I got mine for less than $40 bucks from an online costume shop and it looked damn good. It was a little tall on top, but it did the job. Don’t be fooled by cheap $5 dollar “cowboy” hats like this one, they suck, so don’t waste your money.
One modernization that you’ll see in the pages of the Dynamite Comics is that The Lone Ranger no longer wears blue pants to match his shirt, but leather pants depending on who does the art/ink in the book. The black leather pants I used when I dressed up as Nikki Sixx years ago came in handy for this. I then found a bandit mask, and a gun holster with a belt on a costume website, two silver toy guns with off white handles, a red bandanna, and bullet belts all on Amazon. The boots are actually motorcycle boots, but look very similar to the ones LR wears in a few of the comic books. I purchased them from Leather Up.
Most importantly was my shirt. I was very particular about this because I refused to walk around in a shirt that did not look similar to how it looked in the comic I was basing it off of. After several days of searching, I finally found Delilah’s Keepe, a website who customized a Lone Ranger style shirt for me! They were great to deal with and the shirt looked absolutely perfect, so keep them in mind if you ever need a shirt for a costume: www.delilahskeepe.com.
Winning The Sexy Armpit’s Halloween Costume Contest this year by a mile was Miss Sexy Armpit who probably put more time and effort into her costume than I did since she had to make the entire thing herself! She made the candy button dress and bracelets, cut and styled the wig, and found comparable shoes. I also took a screen shot of Katy Perry’s makeup from the exact moment in the “California Gurls” video that she wears this getup. From there she took the picture with her to get her makeup done. The “Jersey Gurl” was carrying around an Elmo doll all night which everyone got a big kick out of as well.
All the costumes were worth the effort when seeing how awesome they looked and I’m already devising plans for next year! I can’t wait!