Years ago, I used to love putting on the costumes when I was younger. I still have a pic of me with the Casper costume on somewhere, next to my little brother who was the Hulk. We looked quite cute in that. Over time, the bug never left me. I did some weird ones and so on, just some of the cheap stuff... I nearly abandoned it in middle school and high school, just doing the little things.

Back in college, just for the fun of it, for Halloween, I went to class in my robe, with my regular clothes underneath. Another time I did Groucho Marx, right down to the glasses and cigar. Totally cracked up a couple instructors. Another time I went as a rather cheap cowboy, with waterguns and the like. The guns didn't last long, as they got me in countless water gun wars. One of the guns was stolen, and the other was crushed in a door. All that got me into deaf theatre out there, my second year there.

One friend told me about a fraternity that had a James Bond party, and I felt the urge to go. What did I do? Dress up in my suit, tie, everything, and smoked a cigar. And yes, I'm a James Bond fan, and have just about all of his movies and books.

Around 1989 to 1991, while working as delivery driver, for a local pizza place, I had the opportunity to wear, for promotional purposes, not one, but THREE suits. One was Nickelodeon's Doo-Wop-A-Saur, which was one of the most fun things you can wear. The second was Littlefoot from the movie Land Before time. The third, well, I'm unable to even remember the name of this character, as I was in it briefly. To add insult to injury, NO pics exist of me in them, with the exception of a mother who took a picture of her daughter next to me in suit. Don't ask me to look...

Then since that time, I've still done it, but never had the resources to pull off a really good costume. They were mostly the cheap-looking stuff that I used, that came out looking ok. Then in the last 3 years, I've been adding on, improving them.

In 1996, in the Williamsport/Montoursville, PA area, I was with my friend at a local deaf club, after the meeting they had, I disappeared for a bit to put on my costume. It stopped conversations right there, and was still talked about for two years. It was a purple velvet catsuit, with purple gloves, socks, and face paint, with a clown wig to top it off. After the club, we went out a couple places, one being a donut shop. I stopped conversations right there, for about a minute. That was one of my best that I've done, without going too far on the makeup and so on. My own mother doesn't quite like it, and says it shows everything. Thanks, mom...

Then the next year, at my local deaf club's Halloween party, I used the purple velvet catsuit again. With it, I had a fanny pack, full-face hood, and black gloves. On my back was a huge watergun, the kind with a 2-gallon reservoir. I painted it black, with a little project box stuck onto the reservoir, that had a switch and blinking, chasing lights, No one knew who I was til I took off the mask... They were still talking about it a year later. If I can only *FIND* this pic and the previous one!

Then flash forward to 1998... I heard about the Scream Team from a message on Usenet, in the newsgroups, alt.halloween.boo, and went there. I LOVED what I saw, and wanted to learn more.

So, from there, I started checking around on this sort of thing, and asked questions galore, reading the newsgroups and sites. Then I bought the lycanthus/werewolf mask from a local costume store, and checked out what I needed to get, and get stuff I did, filling a plastic auto toolbox full of makeup, adhesives, brushes, that kind of thing, all that were used in subsequent costumes, nothing unused. I probably packed the thing with around $200 worth of makeup, and about $150 worth of prosthetics, with about $30-35 worth of crepe hair in two two-gallon baggies.

Then my surfing led from Halloween, to makeup, to costuming, to the furry part, and that's when I knew I'd found something I wanted do, building on previous years' costumes and so on, using my sense of humor, to create the weird, offbeat, off-the-wall, and then some.