GWARRIORS WEST COAST
COME FORTH, HUMAN.... ENTER THE ANTEROOM OF TORTURED SOULS.
(Don’t forget to wipe your feet, dearie)
IF you're not familiar with the metal group GWAR (who've been around for ~40 years, can you believe it?), Please either Google GWAR or check out GWAR’s Homepage first. It’ll help what follows here make a bit more sense…. maybe. :)
Scroll down for more, or jump ahead to pics-by-year of these cool home-made GWAR costumes I once had:
‘92,
‘93,
‘94,
‘95,
‘96,
‘97,
‘98,
’99,
’00,
’01,
’02.
NOTE: In early-mid 2003, I handed everything off to someone in southern CA. I hope they were seen at maybe Burning Man in Nevada and/or a haunted house somewhere near Temecula CA, probably continuing to evolve with repair. “Have you seen Me?!?” :)
A couple other guys who did their own GWAR costume stuff.
Some pics of the KISS outfits I’d made, before I started on GWAR suits.
FAQ:
Did you win a lot with these?
How do I make a GWAR Costume?
WHY the hell would anyone DO this?
Some of my favorite spots on the web.
A little PREhistory
I wasn’t in GWAR, but that's probably obvious. My little evolving group didn’t sing or give performances (though I tossed the idea around of a tribute/cover band) or officially represent GWAR, Slave Pit or members or interests thereof. These outfits were just like any other costume, but…..
GWAR RULES (duh)
Highly skillful music, lyrics outstanding in theme, quality and delivery, and I really dug their powerful, timeless dark humor. If they'd just been (or, well, stayed) some drunken, growling goofballs wearing sodden paper-mache and belting out crap like Exodus, Overkill, Sepultura, etc... I surely wouldn't have bothered with all this. Even as I have moved on to other artists and genres, GWAR still has a special place in my heart. :)
I first heard of GWAR in mid-'91, when a customer at the RPG/wargame/comic shop I used to run in Citrus Heights CA brought in the video "Live from Antarctica". I'd never seen anything like that, it was quite inspiring. That year I wore my Gene Simmons outfit for the last time. I'd actually been looking to retire Gene, casting about for something more more pointedly grotesque, and suddenly there was GWAR! WHAT a co-inkydink….. As I started scratching enough cash together to start making these suits, I remember going to see GWAR at some place in SanFran later in '91 and asking Dave Brockie outside the venue "Hey, I'm gonna make some GWAR costumes- any advice on where to wear them and not get arrested?"
That consideration turned out to be unimportant. Over the next several years we went to events at hotels, nightclubs, bars/sports bars, renaissance faires, haunted houses, parades and other less costume-specific events, and no one ever asked us to leave or got bent out of shape enough for police intervention. At a ren faire in '96 they made us cover up my butt, but they somehow had no problem with the big blue fish.…… Each year doing this I usually started somewhere in June or July, updating and repairing and improving what I had and building some new parts too. I initially made it all mostly after hours in the back of my game shop. BTW, this wasn’t a sexual thing at all for me, for some reason plenty of people have asked. I imagine some of my audience, esp. the drunk-as-fookin’-ell crowd, could have somehow found it so in the moment. I used to joke about someday wanting to have sex wearing Oderus, though, just to have done it.
The pic above is my favorite picture out of all of what follows, of myself anyway. It’s from Seattle Pride 2000 and shows my Oderus suit at its best, IMHO. This one, I actually made into a poster and framed.
1992
For contrast to the above, here’s the first-year version for Halloween ‘92. It was crude and far too clean, but it was a decent result for a first-time effort. I never used paper-mache, though, like GWAR started out with. This year we made it to the Exotic Erotic, in San Fran.
My wife at the time, wearing the Beefcake the Mighty suit I made her. She was way more into this kind of music at the time, than I was.
A friend of mine (see ‘Odin Makes’ link, below), who made himself a Balsac the Jaws of Death as I scratched together my two, to join/start our group in '92. He'd been doing assorted costume and FX things for most of his life, and taught me a LOT.
1993
My new look for this year, there were many changes and additions: the sword, larger shoulder spikes, kewler shin-fins, longer toeclaws, ridiculous orange fake-tan bodypaint…..
The Beef costume got an updated axe, but no other changes really. My wife had lost considerable weight, and at the time this suit was built around just a t-shirt, snaps and leather straps, so it was all really starting to hang on her.
One common reference people told us we resembled, was something out of “Where the Wild Things Are." I cannot imagine why.
The cute little Sexicutioner who joined us, just for this year:
The perky little Slave we captured and tenderly savaged:
We went back to the (last, it turned out?) Exotic Erotic, but they futzed up the contest so we didn't even get to parade fully before the masses. Oh well, some judgings are run better than others (see Costume Contests advice below). On the other hand, we gave a good showing at Lake Tahoe.
I’d crafted a little sillystring-shooting mechanism into the fish (not unlike some spiderman gear you can get at Toys-R-Us), but it only worked part of the time. Too hard to keep the nozzle clear, mostly. :) This early on it was just a key clapped over the front of the fish and quick-aligned to pull down to activate, but later I made a little lever down-the-side to activate it more ‘gripping the base’-style rather than my hand down in front of its face.
1994
This year sucked. Great steaming, shivering, mewling heaps of corpulent ass, it seemed at the time. I wasn’t happy with how my suit’s changes turned out, there was a lack of time to finish parts (admittedly due largely to poor time management on my part), some parts just failed altogether and were abandoned, there were injuries during and after costuming, and other unfortunate issues came up. Notice I’m wearing Beef’s cast-off anklets, this year. I did manage to make a new fish, which failed miserably onstage someplace. I also took the padding out of the football armor I wore, which cut way down on sweat but increased bruises, scars and other cool abrasions (aka 'armor fleas'). Sexy tried to join us and update his outfit, but flubbed his updated head mold and eventually had to back out. I'd been working on a Flattus too, the parts were ready enough but hitching it all together onto someone just didn’t come together in time. The ren faire we tried to go to (supposedly the last at the Black Forest) was too full to let us in, JUST as we arrived after the 100 mi. trip from Sacramento, and then we got blackballed in Lake Tahoe because we weren’t local...
This year, a guy wore Beefcake for the first time. He was taller and heavier, filled it out better and was more into character. He got new anklets.
Our Balsac really did a lot of big and little things to his outfit: little ‘horn’ textures over all of last year’s naked foam round spikes, and new thigh rings and arm bracer matching new shoulderspikes. Much more substance and texture to everything, now.
Perched to ravage the city. This was the first year that we volunteered at GYRO's World of Terror (an indoor ‘haunted’ maze) down in Rancho Cordova CA in some under-staffed but sufficiently decorated rooms/terrain areas to jump out from, and/or as just hall monsters. Sometimes you can get better reactions out of people who are expecting to be scared. Me, I haven’t found a haunted house scary since I was like, 9.
1995
This was the last year I made real changes to my outfit, and things kind of froze appearance-wise at the ‘America Must Be Destroyed’ album. From then on it was just maintenance, repair, cleaning and re-inforcement to keep things serviceable. This year I made many gnarly changes to the sword and did new shoulders, fish, nads, anklets, feet and hands, and added an accidentally perfect texture & camo to the head… plus I installed a brain. This year we made the Black Forest ren faire in Novato CA, finally. I believe we also hit GYRO’s again (2nd year), a few times.
I did camp it up as often as possible and appropriate (where would THAT be, exactly?), adopting what I could manage of the Liberace/Leatherface Oderus persona.
Beef got a new axe and a new chestplate. Hu-FREAKin’-zah!!
Balsac neither made, nor needed, any improvements this year.
Don’t look at me, YOU got his leg a-thumpin’:
Mobbing the GWAR-Mobile, the van I used to haul people and costumes about:
Unca Balsac's traveling lair:
We were an “A” ticket at the ren faire, this year: several people threw themselves at our feet to grovel, which was quite satisfying. :)
Note Balsac’s right shoulder- his improved shoulder spikes were so much heavier now and unfortunately droopier too, that the whole lower rack just fell off along the route. They were certainly more durable though, than before.
From late '92 until we closed in late '96, the evolving heads and weapons and other décor were on display at the back of my shop, as a little GWAR Shrine of sorts. We carried a bit of GWAR merchandise, too: pins, patches, comics, video, T-shirts… This pic was probably right after Halloween ’95:
1996
An interesting year. I started to seriously get into food coloring for fake blood, and it finally achieved the necessary overall color morass I'd been seeking. I believe we made it to GYRO’s a couple of times this year, for a third and final time.
We had 6 people this year, though I don't have a full shot of ALL at once. I made a Slymenstra outfit for a woman actually willing to wear it, and whipped together an armored Banner Slave's outfit out of cast-off Oderus parts. Balsac's builder/wearer made a fantastic 9-foot Battle Standard, and also made what little the Stripped Techno is wearing.
I, Beef and Balsac wore our stuff to the close of my shop in 8/96, to which I invited a bunch of longtime customers and acquaintances for a small costumed get-together.
We made the Black Forest Renn Faire this year again, for the last time. They made us cover our asses this year, because 'someone might have a problem with it'. Took us aside and quick-fashioned little butt-flaps for us out of burlap. Such creeping prudery was misplaced, IMHO, and a symptom of what we then called the unfortunate ‘Disneyfication’ of the faire.
L7 played at a venue we made it to the event for, I remember them mentioning us onstage. I'm glad we happened to come in exactly between opener sets, or the band currently onstage would have been pissed. I think the crowd was actually wondering if GWAR had really showed amongst them...
Four pix of Slymie, from this event. The middle 2 are VHS screenshots.
BLEAAAHHHH!!!! Stepping out of a Halloween event after dancing for three hours; battered, filthy, steaming, still quite jazzed:
1997
We didn’t get to take real ’96 pics until early ’97. These are from a shoot in a freezing warehouse in Rancho Cordova someplace, which Slymie unfortunately couldn't make it to.
My thonged, non-existent frog-butt ass, and the magic-marker simplified Chaos Yog tattoo (pretty small here, usually a lot larger) I always had someone apply to me prior to an event.
Balsac had crafted a mighty fiberglass trapjaw: much heavier, much nicer effect. No other changes though, I think.
Beef loved Techno, our ever-over-eager abuse sponge:
Always the equal opportunity underling-thrasher:
Our stripped Techno was great. Excellent character, Slymie dragged him around by a chain and he made a great human chair:
Larger than life, and twice as ugly:
The Banner was one of our most important and highest-profile features. To all who ever carried it, I salute you:
This pic would be my next choice after my favorite above, for having made into a poster.
My mighty Cuttlefish of Cthulhu: when I handed all this stuff to someone with more time, money, space and people to keep them going, I should’ve kept just these bits and mounted them, deer-head style, on a wall.…
More goofing around:
Now available as poseable action figures:
Pinkety Pokety POUND, I SAY! AD NAUSEAM EX CRUCIO!!!!!
Few mess with us, and wish to survive the experience…..
Bow before our sickness, Thrall!
The above were the last ones taken in CA, in April '97 I moved to Seattle.
In August '97 GWAR played at RKCNDY, a little highly popular dive-area venue downtown that's long since been closed, dozed and built over. I showed up with my outfits, and Hunter was really impressed and said I should come make costumes with Slave Pit. I'll tell ya, if they'd been HQ'd anywhere say, west of the Mississippi, I would have jumped at that offer.
I was invited onstage for a bit as a 'second Oderus', to beat on Techno. It was super-short, and Dave had messed up the quick-and-dirty skit addition to their planned set that they tried to execute to accommodate me, but it was all still ridiculously damn cool. I got to hang out and watch them and their crew set everything up from like noon, and even sampled the legendary deli tray! I recall Slymenstra draped on a couch watching me suit up, she said I was crazy. High praise indeed, Mistress. :)
Halloween this year, I wore Oderus to just one event in Seattle, Bump In The Night. I didn’t go completely alone, my soon-to-be fiancée graciously stepped up to wear the Peter Criss bits I’d made for my ex (our first Beefcake wearer) along with my Gene Simmons suit before GWAR (see far below, with the rest of the KISS costumes’ pics & history):
1998
This year I’d wanted to be in the Seattle Pride parade, but I didn’t manage to contact the Freedom Day Committee. Busy doing other things too, like getting married. The only place I wore Oderus to (alone) was a little rock club a home run’s distance from my place. Like 8 little nobody bands played, and at 2AM there were maybe a dozen people to judge the contest. I got third, lost to a storebought dragonhead-and-robe on construction stilts (see my costuming rant, far below).
1999
These are from our suit-up area, just before our first Gay Pride Parade. Balsac took all these pics except the last one. Just three of us this time, out there in the street, but it still ruled. Nothing like 50 to 60 thousand spectators to work, counting the parade and Volunteer Park showing off afterwards. We got a prize in this and in the '00 parade, to be donated in our name to some relevant cause or other. Both times we pledged it to the Seattle Lesbian Resource Center.
The second girl to wear Slymie. She had a lot of fun, and I was really glad to have her aboard.
After the Parade, a pic from some tourist. Balsac's builder/wearer came up from CA to wear the costume. You can see, he and I had both gained a lot of weight since ‘97. Wearing these suits is punishing when you’re in good shape and it’s NOT overly hot, two situations we didn’t have that day.
2000
Seven people in our Pride contingent, 75,000 spectators estimated.
Some Balsac bitz:
Primping the great shaggy beast:
Getting my pre-event blooding-down with our food-coloring squirter….
Slymie's lovely second wearer from the '98 Parade left WA for school, so Balsac’s wearer hooked us up with his god-daughter, a stripper. Slymie’s face went on powerfully Marilyn Manson-ish, IMHO, and she filled out the costume quite nicely: I don't have a single good front-on shot of her really, but many other nice ones…..
A co-worker of mine picked up the Battle Standard. It only weighed 22 pounds, but it could catch the breeze quite well.
Our two Slaves. Slymie held their chains, and they grovelled and cavorted admirably…..
Here’s my favorite pic from the top of this site again, a lower-res version here. Just standing around, chafing to mingle with the Mundanes, awaiting final pix before buttoning up the van and stepping off. I got a cool fishnet sunburn on the back of my legs, a common occurrence for all the pride years we made it to and also the ren fair:
Okay, ready to roll- Say ‘Sleaze’!
At the staging area…..
A few near the beginning of the parade:
When Balsac’s builder/wearer couldn’t come up to Seattle this year, I was lucky enough to find another guy locally willing to strap him on.
Boo! Heheh…
A fan in the crowd took these three from the sidelines about mid-route and emailed them to us afterward, really great to have..…
A sequence nearer the end (and crowd-thickest part) of the parade route:
Sometimes a costume part just breaks right in the middle of things, usually due to unforseen wear or sudden materials failure, heat & sweat finally stretching something out or working glued stuff loose, etc. THIS failure though, was my fault- This guy was WAY smaller than the original builder of the Balsac suit, so it didn't fit him terribly well and I should have cinched things up better. After the guy tripped several times going up the street, Balsac just started falling off of him below the waist. It was embarrassing, I guess, but no moreso than just BEING out there… He was a real trooper.
GWAR at Work
In wearing the outfit to work, I left the nastier bits at home and put some pants on and got a co-worker to don Beefcake. It was about here that I realized I was essentially wearing a great, bloody clown: the kind of nightmare image that people who are afraid of clowns no doubt sometimes visualize, in their fear. This occurred when someone I worked with, who hadn’t recognized me yet that day, saw me in the hall and backed away defensively kind of wailing (and I hadn’t even said anything or acted out in her direction): later, I found out she had a clown phobia. I don’t know why this hadn’t ever occurred to me before.
2001
Our third year in a row doing the Pride Parade, among other events: we had 7 folks again this year, but had started with only five- Slymie kinda hooked two guys outta the crowd to be slaves and slapped chains on them, they did a great job. This time, I heard that about 100,000 people attended the parade. Last year’s Balsac wearer took up the banner this year, and last year’s Slave with the Shades got into Balsac. It rained a little, mercifully, so we actually made it to the park afterwards without near-dying. Overall, it was a ton of fun. We got a cool trophy with a plastic majorette on it, for this.
So what was it like to make and wear all of this? It was grueling but nothing, I’m sure, like what GWAR goes through in just one day on tour: I don’t even pretend to compare us to that. Our outfits were built far more precisely but less durably, and weren’t made to suvive anything resembling a tour. We typically got on the road at the butt-crack of dawn to make it to a (not usually pre-chosen) suit-up zone: mostly these were just any spot wherever we could park nearest the event, either for all-day or just long enough. We’d pull up in the van, kick everything out onto the ground in neat piles and get cold and kinda naked getting made up and geared up, sometimes the van had to be moved (by someone not too costumed up to drive) to somewhere else for the day or duration of the event. I was usually the last one completing dress-up, as I helped get everyone else into theirs first.
On our way to the staging area, lookin’ for trouble….
We found a cool place to park and ham it up (on the bone, naturally…)
The Standard Bearer and Slymie didn’t do as well as hot-and-sweaty moi, in this year’s light rain and wind.
This guy, you gotta admit, looked a lot more like the real ‘stickboy’ Balsac.
Waiting around for things to start- it was always fun getting to see and talk to some of the other contingents near us, before stepping off....
We are loosed upon on the streets!!
Slymie’s slaves this year:
So afterwards at a given appearance, if we were distant from the suit-up area or parking area when things ended (such as at the far end of a parade route) we typically either sent someone-from-group to get the van or had pre-arranged a driver(/photographer), or in a couple cases got taken back to the van by some random volunteering person happening by with a truck or such. We’d peel everything off in a great steaming heap and toss it carefully into the van, I took it home to dry out, and with a little repair and washing it was ready to go again.
For Halloween this year I wore just the Oderus head/hands/feet with a black robe and staff, to an ex co-worker’s party. Sometimes there was nothing big around worth going to, or other life events precluded a full run-up of people and repair and finding venues and everything.
2002
Our fourth (and last) year doing this in the Seattle Pride Parade. This year, we were #34 out of 100+..
Loaded to the walls the morning-of, ready to go….
This year, before putting that snazzy plywood-and-carpet floor into the van, I first washed out all the blood- er, food coloring that had built up/dripped off my costume bits since I’d started seriously using that in ’96: post-ren faire but certainly by Halloween. Heh....
Suiting up, nearly finished. I had a hell of a time finding any slaves this time, so my cousin came up from Sacramento to be our only one. This year I finally just broke down and got a wig for Slymie, for a standard look going forward. My Banner Slave of last year backed out, so I just carried the lower half myself like a short, fat Citadel figure.
Strike a pose….
Waiting around, for the signal to go baying up the road….
These five pics were shot by a local seattle guy not part of our group. If you like his work, please drop him a line at: james@nawashibari.com
This pic was from yet another helpful spectator. Note the parents bringing their kids right out into the street like it was (again) Disneyland or something, or maybe to show their kids that we’re “not really monsters”. It was a problem the whole length of the route, we eventually had to stick to the suicide lane because throngs of people and their kids were OUT (as it were) in the street, slowing the parade down. This year, the Pride committee asked everyone well ahead of time (not just us) to cover any ass-cracks with a strip of at least a certain width: this was reminiscent of what had happened before at ren faires a few years back. Pride was starting to become more of a ‘family’ event and was being dumbed down/softened up to cope. It’s just as well that I don’t have these outfits anymore, as I’d’ve probably had to stop doing Pride to avoid the creeping kinder in favor of older, more mature crowds at more purely Halloween events.
This horse behind us was kinda cool (‘specially when it pissed all over the street like a freakin’ firehose), even though the carriage RODE OUR ASS all the way. Maybe leave some space? I wonder how many people thought the horse & carriage was part of OUR group…. :)
As usual, everything piled in for sort/dry/repair/storage later back at base.
2003
In late Spring/early Summer, I handed all the costumes, parts & materials off to a guy I met on Hauntworld (a Yahoo group). I’d finally gotten tired of motivating this all pretty much by myself, doing CPR on the outfits for days or weeks as time permitted before each event, trying to drag people together to keep it going, etc… If I ever get pics of the outfits’ appearing someplace, I’ll post them on this site. If YOU’ve seen them someplace, let me know please. If I ever win the lottery or something, I’ll re-make them even bigger and more grotesque and more as GWAR appears today, so watch out… :) Also, in the interim since handoff, I took up gently perverting innocent (mostly country) songs, a la “What if GWAR had raped Weird Al to death, then kept the corpse around to make songs for them?” Some of what issued forth is quite divinely depraved, even _I_ must say. Eh, everybody needs a hobby….. If you’re really interested, ask nicely and I might send you some lyrics.
If anyone cares, I often once looked like this, about mid-2000 for instance:
Other Gwar Nuts
Here are some pics of a guy on the east coast I never actually met, Shambone@aol.com, who made his own pretty damn cool Oderus outfit. For one thing, he nailed Oderus’ ears far better than I did: I worked from the very beginning to make and keep them so WRONG like I did (listen to the perfectionist bitch and whine). And his overall coloring, while perhaps lacking in a proper sheen of murky bloodcum, aptly captured the cartoonish essence of the character I think.
And a guy who made his own awesome Techno outfit back in '11 after I sent him one of my 'how I made these' discs:
Two pics from Halloween 2014, another guy who made his own Oderus costume.
My KISS outfits
I’d made two KISS outfits too, before I did the GWAR suits. I started my Gene Simmons in early ’89 while I was in a Rocky Horror cast: after tiring of doing the Criminologist (and Frank’n’Furter and Magenta a few times each) I moved into a ‘security’ cast role and eventually stalked the aisles (minus the dragon plats, natch), mostly confiscating cigs & bottles. My outfit here is from around the Eric Carr/Creatures of the Night/Music from the Elder era…..I think. I know it was before that stupid ‘Silver Apple Fritters’ armor he wore for a bit… The arms and shoulders are real 14ga. steel left over from when I’d started to assemble SCA fighting armor before repurposing them into this costume.
Halloween ‘90
Halloween ‘91
The ‘Darkness’ in these pics became our Balsac (starting the next year), and also made half of the GWAR stuff we churned out: his Balsac costume, Beef’s first foam-on-t-shirt chestplate, the Battle Standard, and our Techno’s little bits. After the first year of doing GWAR, I held onto but didn’t wear Gene again.
Halloween ‘97
This is my fiancée at the time, who graciously wore this outfit to go with me to Bump in the Night in Seattle in ‘97. We had JUST met, like less than a month prior. :) While I owned these KISS suits, no guy ever wore Peter… um, as it were…
After this, later I sold these 2 costumes to someone who wore the Gene outfit at his wedding in Nov. ’03. Best man wore the Peter (heh), the bride was an Elvira.
Some questions I commonly get:
“You probably won a TON of contests, right?!?”
Actually no, we didn’t. For one thing, competition was, and I’m sure still is, fierce. Tons of people of hugely varied skill and resource levels are into costuming, stage prosthetics, scars and highly detailed costumes and even little skits, it’s quite a widespread thing. Some spend a whole year preparing their entourage, for the express purpose of winning contests. I’ll admit for the first couple years I was trying to be like that too, then I slowly learned the realities of such contests. Here’s my advice to budding costumists, for what it’s worth:
”What do you need, to win Costume Contests?”
HEIGHT: You have to be tall enough for the drunks to see and cheer for you. The dumbest thrown-together crap can win, if it’s up high enough to be seen: I saw one guy go as a bat on stilts, the whole costume was just hefty bags, black duct tape and PVC pipe, and he won. You might want to scout a venue ahead of time to check the ceiling height, maybe even ask what kind of decorations they intend to put up. If they’re too extensive, they might prevent your being able to move easily there. At an event in Tahoe, our Balsac got wrapped up in all the fake spiderwebbing crap they’d strung up near the ceiling. Had to be a fire hazard, it started at a couple feet from the ceiling and got thicker going up. His spikes tore much of it down.
TITS and/or ASS: It doesn’t matter what the character. I can’t tell you how many idiots came up to our Slymie and said “Hey, are you XENA!?!” To a point, it doesn’t matter what the girl looks like. Flaunt it and/or vamp it, and you’ll get more cheering.
SPECIAL EFFECTS: Little fire puffs, a fire extinguisher, lighting, dry ice, a really loud noise, etc. Something flashy, fast, memorable, dependable and most importantly SAFE. Test it out on people standing nearby, electric cords like you’ll probably be standing on/near while onstage at an event, etc. Steer away from liquids, smells, temperatures, glitter, anything that uses chemicals or might leave a residue, etc. Sillystring was probably about as far as a special effect should go, for an on-stage costume contest. Use common sense. , call the venue if you think there might be a problem.
BE RECOGNIZABLE: Excellent ‘Demon’ costumes routinely lose because they don’t have a name. Consider Pinhead, Hellboy or Crypty (or Darkness), something with a known name. GWAR is pretty recognizable, ya gotta admit.
TALENT, ATTITIUDE, maybe even a quickly repeatable verbal exchange or even a little SKIT: You’ve got to work the crowd at whatever opportunity you’re given, even just 5 seconds onstage and with everyone who approaches you before the contest with kudos or picture requests. Lots of people will want your picture: some folks followed us around taking pics for quite awhile, waiting for us to do something COOL. I'm sure I'm on thousands of people's video and still footage, whom I’ll never meet.
FURNITURE: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen some guy wearing an outhouse, or a table on their shoulders for the bloody-head-on-the-plate theme, win a contest against far superior contestants. It’s pathetic, really.
A GOOD MC OR DJ at an event, can make or break your presentation. Get friendly with them if possible, before or during the contest. Don't count getting to give a little monologue onstage: very few events will hand you a microphone, they know better than that. :)
STOREBOUGHT Parts: Lastly (and unfortunately), don’t shy away from this. Even the drunks seem to be able to tell, but they’ll cheer anyway if it looks good. The range (if not the quality and durability) of storebought stuff had absolutely exploded back when I handed these costumes off, and it just got even bigger over the last 20 years, plus now there’s 3D printing and Etsy: for around-or-less-than the cost of making a costume yourself (including space, time and tools as well as materials) you can often buy or have someone make for you something close enough. Halloween has long been barely #2 behind Christmas in dollars spent for a cultural event (including for gifts), which is only partly candy: it’s mostly house and self-décor. And it isn’t even an actual holiday, though it should be IMHO
Do some looking around- There’s an unholy amount of really decent stuff out there, for a price: I’d bet you could even assemble half of a passable GWAR outfit. Beef’s bare feet were originally storebought, simple oversized latex goofy-foot shells which I trimmed down suitably and built the sandals around. The bannerslave’s head-armor is storebought, it was big enough to hold a basketball before I carefully trimmed it down to fit a human head and glued some velcro into it. These items saved me trouble and helped me make deadlines. Even having a costume made for you by an actual costume shop can come out better-looking, more durable and maybe even cheaper than you’d have had the overall resources to make for yourself.
Costume Contests seemed to run in two flavors, or some mix of the two:
---Judged: Sometimes just during the event, with obvious walkabout judges or anonymous or hidden ones, or a central registration point like a judging table. Sometimes they give you a number to wear. Other times the judging is done on the spot at the end, typically onstage.
---Win-The-Crowd: Based on audience volume, or so they’d have you think. Mostly the audience’s opinion is just taken into consideration, and there’s still a judging group. These are naturally more popular, but less predictable compared with whatever before-judging feedback you’re getting from other/non-costumed attendees.
Some venues wouldn’t have or wouldn’t give detailed information on their Halloween event like prizes, the prize structure, categories if any, judging time, etc. Othertimes it was widely shared. If an ad for a Halloween party in a local/community paper or radio spot said “$2000 in prizes!!!”, the breakdown would likely be $1000 first, $500 second, $200 third and the rest in gift certificates, a DVD player, ski lift tickets, etc. An event like that attracts the biggest and the best costumes within 100 miles: you might consider skipping it if you know there are lots of costume hobbyists in your area, and instead go to smaller or lesser-prized events or those in smaller nearby towns. I’ve seen great costumes show up and then leave well before the contest, after seeing the kind and/or amount of competition.
I suspect that where a given venue was dodgy about event specifics, it’d usually be due to the fact that generally they make most of any event’s money from alcohol. While patrons are screwing around watching or judging the contest, they aren’t buying booze. Management also knows that after the main event of a Halloween evening, a lot of the patrons will leave: sometimes much of an event’s attendance is the costume participants and/or their support crew and groupies, who have no reason to stick around after the judging. So, some contests are held very late or in multiple rounds going right up until they can’t sell anymore, to keep people there and buying. If there IS an early event or two in your area, don’t count on being able to make it and another in the same night. It’s possible, I’ve seen it done. But more likely the early one will be delayed to much later for some or no reason, throwing off your plans.
It is also not appreciated to show up just before (just for) the contest judging, which may be another reason they sometimes didn’t readily give that time info out, or at the actual event often held off the judging by an hour or more past ‘advertised’, or had an early registration cutoff/late judging format. If it’s super-obvious you’re just there for the contest you could find yourself ignored or downplayed onstage (or not called up), or simply barred from participating. Appearing too professional seems to be a no-no too, though this is hard to quantify. There may be bias, among judges at least, against anyone who looks like they do this ‘for a living’. So sometimes the better you look the less likely you’ll win.
If you should’ve won but didn’t, people will tell you this on your way offstage, out the door or to the dance floor, whatever you’re doing after the contest. I can’t count how many said: “You got ripped off! You shoulda won!!” And yes, sometimes, we should have. And sometimes, even better costumes than ours didn’t win either, and should have.
“(Dude!) HOW DO I MAKE A GWAR COSTUME?!?”
This is what I heard the most, and if you’re asking that yourself, this is your lucky day. As I handed off the outfits, I took pictures of ALL the parts and whole costumes, molds, patterns, etc. and typed up a “How I Made These” document that references that. If you want a copy of these pics and words, plus vid bits of my workspace(s) and us screwing around in costume, email me. (legalese bs)- In doing so, you’re saying you’re at least 18 or have parents’ knowledge & permission, it’s ok/legal to send stuff like this to wherever you live, and that I’m not in ANY way responsible for anything you might do with this info. I can’t send it via email though, I’ll need to burn and mail you a disk. Bear in mind this info is specific to how _I_ made them and my evolving history with materials and techniques, while GWAR had long since moved much farther into fiberglass and such. And, while GWAR’s stuff of the day tended to be largely velcro-affixed for quick on/off & adjustment/repair, my parts were mostly snap-oriented such that even slight mods and repairs usually required at least a basic leather kit. Still, you’d probably learn a useful thing or two to build on, from this info pack.
Anyway…here’s what you need to do this stuff, at LEAST:
TIME- Many hours watching GWAR videos/movies, making drawings and notes, etc. If you’re one of the legendary few who can whip together half a credible costume in an afternoon, from the contents of a dumpster, I’m in awe of your mad skillz, seriously..... But I had to (over)plan.
MONEY- I have no idea how much I’ve spent, but I know I’d never have broken even through winning costume contests, even if we’d taken first prize at most of them. Don’t go into this thinking you will, either. Plan on spending hundreds to thousands of dollars for start-up possibly, plus each year you’ll need at least a few things for this or that bit of maintenance and repair and possibly new bits.
SPACE- A garage or a decently sized room you can screw up, at least. At least 100 to 150 square feet for a small area, with shelving up the walls as much as you can. I’ve managed, though, to at least do repairs and upkeep in less than that square footage and shelf availability.
TOOLS- Grab everything in the house, and then go buy more. Sculpting, pounding, cutting, sanding, punching, binding/clamping, drilling, protective eye and hand gear, to start. Repurposement can be key: you might not think that, say, a dbl-ended wrench set is useful for costuming, but you could find yourself needing to splint, weigh down or brace something in a tight space where those would be perfect.
SKILL / TALENT- Can you Sculpt? Draw? Sew? Paint? Have any craft-skill in leather, plastic, latex, cloth, or fiberglass? Can you make more than a mess out of a given material? Without injuring yourself? If you can't do ALL of these things initially, you can learn them as you go. Take a class in puppetry at a local community college to learn to work with foam, and maybe one in leatherwork or other arts & crafts. Stage experience might not be bad to have, too. Hook up with other local costume nuts, they can teach you a lot of things (like the skills above), and some good (and bad) techniques and habits. Gather books, magazine and online articles/advice on doing this sort of thing. There are a some costume 'makers' with youtube vids online. For instance, check out Odin Makes and his many YT videos: this was our Balsac, and now he makes really excellent props semi-for a living.
MATERIALS: Clay(oil-based), plaster, thick leather/large leather swaths (hippie jackets/purses from thrift shops) Watch out for suede and other fake leather-oid substances; you need strength, not appearance. You may become very familiar with assorted kinds of rivets, D-rings, snaps, velcro, glues, etc. (or at least I did). Some glues are useless on some surfaces (like most storebought latex costume bits), even if you apply them just right. Get several kinds of glue for different materials, and read the instructions. I mostly used BARGE Cement, by Quabaug, meant for putting shoes together. Pretty damn strong if used correctly (not inoften stronger than whatever you're gluing together), but good ventilation is a must. I repeat: breathe too many fumes and it will eventually fawking kill you.
NO FEAR: More with GWAR and less with other things of course, you can’t be afraid of being the center of attention. You’ve got to be willing and able to act out at a moment’s notice, in something resembling consistent character, even as you get tired through an event. Still, we made sure to never let people think we were actually GWAR, even as a joke, but it’s telling that we were good enough to fool obvious fans. Going ‘fair crashing’ at the ren fair in CA was quite a charge: visualize stomping into a crowd of a couple thousand people, and not seeing the back of ANYone’s head. If this idea bothers you, don’t make GWAR outfits, at least.
FRIENDS, also with no fear- Unless you’re doing this alone, you’ll need people to build, wear, and finance some of your stuff. Be sure about who you sign up: Some people might say they’re interested, but can’t come up with time for fitting & adjustments, or chip in for materials. Sometimes it was quite hard to find people to wear these suits, mostly I got "Wow, those are REALLY COOL!", followed by "Oh, I could never wear something like that." Buncha damn wussies, I felt at the time. :)
Recommended Product list: (what I’ve used, anyway)
BLOOD: Smart & Final brand (restaurant supply discount), Red food coloring. Great stuff: It washed off (my) skin easily, dried somewhat clear and wetted back to blood with water, and didn’t stain my costume parts neon PINK even upon washing off, like some red food colorings did.
FOAM: Cushion foam, sold in rolls and sheets. Douglas & Sturgess in San Fran, for expanding 2-part squishy and non-squishy-foam, resins, etc. Tap Plastics carries some of these, too.
LATEX: Liquid, Mold Builder brand from Tap Plastics. But I mostly made my parts out of it, only once or twice did I use it for making a peel-off mold back instead of just using plaster. For instance we copied a GWAR medallion in resin several times, to add to more of these suits; that was a latex peel-off mold backed with a plaster one for rigidity while curing.
PAC PAINT: I think that’s what it’s called. Kryolan Prosthetic Adhesive, with Liquitex Acrylic Color mixed in: buy these separately, mix it yourself. Paint it on, seal the outer tacky side with makeup-specific transparent facepowder (not just off-the-shelf talcum powder).
COLORED LATEX: A few of the last parts I made or repaired had this (instead of just painting ‘nude’ latex by hand), but if I’d kept these costumes or started a tribute band, I would’ve moved almost entirely from PAC to colored latex as I replaced/upgraded things; it’s much more durable. I got to see some of GWAR’s stuff close-up back in ’97, it seemed to be largely rough-cut or assembled from foam, then latexed heavily and strengthened with gauze laid down on the surface, and latexed heavily even more.
FOOTBALL ARMOR/Athletic pads. Many of my (and GWAR's) parts are hung on or based around bits of this, typically with heavy modifications.
PLASTER: I mainly used the basic plaster-of-paris found at Aaron Bros. Art Mart or such. There are many grades, some only available through dental supply shops, and I used those sometimes too. The tougher the mold, the more latex skin-pulls you’ll get out of them before they degrade. You can also protect plaster molds with wax-like substances and/or release-agents. Never did that myself, but if you do something like this, you’ll make lots of molds and might want to fortify some of them. With some molds serving more than one costume, about 17 went into Oderus, and about 6 each for Balsac, Beef and Slymie. All of my molds were one-sided, I just never needed to mess with two, three, or more-part molds except for 2-part full headmolds of people.
PLASTIC CHAIN: There are several sizes available in this. It doesn’t take paint well, though you might be able to sandblast or chemically etch the surface so it’ll take metal paint better. I never found metal-colored plastic chain. Probably makes good sense not to make it, someone might mistake it for real chain. Remember, some spots on your costume might need (smaller-link) real chain for support, but Plastic (or maybe aluminum) chain is a better and lighter decorant.
To answer the Question: “WHY?” (did I do this?)
1. Well.... bear in mind that though I’m pretty left-leaning (no!), these suits were mostly made and worn in the Clinton years: even under a democratic regime in the US, things continued to suck in major ways. I was pretty new at the time to the realization that Big Money/Organized Religion/Organized Crime/Governments (which are, in essence, all the same bunch of people just wearing different hats), have about RAPED the life right out of this planet and the body, mind and soul of everyone on it. Sometimes being even marginally socially/globally aware can be a real downer? Perhaps these were ‘armageddon suits’, like those those folks who walk about wearing a sandwich board that says ‘The End is Near!’ I suppose I COULD have been doing something a little more productive….
Coming out of the Clinton administration and into the reign of Prince Dumbya, really took most of the remaining fun out of doing all this: the Idiocracy had won. 2000-2008 saw the poorest decisions made (up to that point), at the worst possible junctures, in any reasonable way you’d care to look at it. It was about time to let the outfits go to someone with more enthusiasm, before they rotted entirely away or something.
Of course, nowadays with the Great Orange Asshat in charge (you don't usually see someone, such as Lady Liberty/the USA, shoot themselves fatally right in the face TWICE...), Dumbya’s span and contributions seem super-quaint, almost nostalgia-inducing.
2. I’d been into costuming since about Jr. high, and the affliction just grew and grew. I sometimes wonder what, if anything, I could’ve built to top THESE outfits.
3. I got the question: “What does GWAR have to do with Gay Pride? Well, I don’t claim to know if any members of GWAR are specifically gay, bi or whatever, nor do I feel that GWAR is necessarily a gay band. I just went by what I saw, which (perhaps until the album We Kill Everything) was a tendency for singer(s) onstage to say things like “Here’s a little song about my penchant for gay sex,” or “I’m Gay and I’m Proud”. Then there’s the strong BDSM theme and of course the powerful earthmother goddess in Slymie. That was all certainly close enough for me to gear up for Pride Parades, as a good excuse to wear the suits sometime other than Halloween. For the record I'm not gay or even bi, just a supporter of same. Blame years in a Rocky Horror cast, if you must. :)
4. I'd long enjoyed being able to shock folks, test their intake limits and sensibilities. You just can’t see something like this without getting SOME sort of impact: these suits were a great combo of assorted popular costume themes: clowns, barbarians, dead things, near-naked things, something borrowed, something blue (my cuttlefish).. heheh.
5. Some folks asked me: Aren’t you embarrassed to be seen like that? Of course not: if I were, would I have been out there doing it? The point was for YOU to be embarrassed at having to see me like that. :) For that matter it wasn’t really ME out there, I was just animating the suit and providing adequate character. By now easily half a million people have likely seen my ass at least fleetingly, but they never really saw ME. It was remarkably freeing…..
“Never Underestimate the Power of a Dark Clown!!!” --Darph Bobo
P.S. Admittedly more than once, I (re)learned that Dave Brockie and I almost share a birthday: his was 8/30, mine's 8/29 (which I share with both Michael Jackson and G.G. Allin...). Very cool but not as much as when I did the Criminologist in a Rocky Horror cast for almost a year before someone pointed out I share Charles Gray's (the actor playing the Criminologist) birthday. Then my sister followed me into cast as Janet, and discovered that she happens to share Susan Saranwrap's birthday of 10/4.
So... R.I.P., Dave. "Blessed are the Cracked, for it is They who let in the Light." Just like G.G., in the end you went out like a rock star, but still: gonna miss ya.
Double P.S.: In GWAR’s Grammy-nominated movie “Phallus in Wonderland”, when calling in the Columbian Airlift to spice up the rooftop movie-release shmooze party, Sleazy refers to flight# OD916. 916 was our area code in Sacramento, and this coincidence has always felt like a little ‘personal easter egg’. Although, PiW was released ~5/12/92 and though I’d informed GWAR we were making our own outfits, that didn’t actually happen ‘til October ‘92. Eh, whichever.
Some of my Favorite Websites
Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive Always been a big fan of nature and space, there are some breathtaking pictures on this site.
Icanhascheezburger.com Who can resist cute cat pix with gut-busting captions? Not me.
GWAR's Official Website
I Love Bacon.com: Just a bunch of weird stuff. Less gore, no nudity anymore I think (they took it all off to another site), but still quite interesting.
Adbusters.org a cool counterculture site.
Burning Man. Official Site, the Pic gallery is not to be believed.
Alternet.org An alternate, perhaps clearer, interpretation of current social and political events.
Snopes.com Urban Legend Clearing House: PLEASE visit here and search, before you forward that latest inspirational, conspiracy or chain letter email you’ve received.
This Is True.com Truth is stranger than Fiction, for Fiction has to make sense. He makes cool ‘Get Out Of Hell Free’ Monopoly-type cards, which I carry one of in my wallet. Just in case, y’know?
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