Lab – Page 5 – An Unorthodox Halloween

"Hello, My name is Bob, and I am not like Fred."

So read my son’s homework yesterday.

Highly ironic.

It goes on to read how Bob likes to stare into the sky, gazing upon the stars…

Bob, you see, is a new project. And, he is not like Fred.

Fred is great, but he was REALLY designed for hanging up on a pole, looking down on the world.

Bob, you see, needs to be designed for laying down, looking up at the sky. On the laboratory table. Fred would work fine and all, but he’s a bit heavy to be making to sit up. Bob will be lighter, easier to move.

Now, were I keeping to the whole naming convention of Fred there, we’ld be naming Bob Fred. But, that would get rather confusing. But, more on Bob to come.

Other recent additions to the Lab include a couple of experiment jars. The first being a bucket of Cheese Balls found for $5 at Staples. The Cheese Balls were average…for the first 1/2 or so…I don’t ever want to see cheese balls again at the moment…

From Lab

It’s just screaming for a head to occupy it.

Second on the list is a personal favorite of Red Vines.

From Lab

Not sure just what to put into that yet. Brain, maybe…

Then there is a bucket of pretzels screaming for an arm…but it’s at work still being emptied.

On the Charr front…I needed a break from failure there. So, we’re making the…uh, ‘feet’.

Started with just some PVC, plastic and duct tape.

From Year of the Charr

A little mache later, and we have the beginnings of a foot.

From Year of the Charr

I now have 2 completed, and we’re presently out of both glue and paper. Hoping to finish the 2 this weekend, and start on a third.

Reliving Childhood.

My younger brother showed up the other day with a wee little present for me.

From Halloween buildup '08

Spud and I go back quite a ways for Halloween. From visiting Haunted Houses, to trying to make our own. I recall fondly the days he and I would put on silly masks and hide in the dark, or up in the trees…watching my uncle climb up on his roof to moon us…and winding up on his porch with nothing but blankets, waiting for trick or treaters to pass so we could go flash them in return….

(Yes, we had a fun childhood there…)

Well…He sure knows the right presents to bring these days.

And, as spoken of earlier, back in my childhood days, the first thing I tried to build was a scientist lab that really rather sucked.

Well, I got the opportunity earlier this week to rectify that. So, anyone out there who may have been subjected to my crappy attempt back in the 80’s, I hope you enjoy this a bit more.

As a special treat, here are some very rare sketches of the plan. I don’t typically reveal just how bad I suck at drawing, but it’s fun to see how this come to be.

From Halloween buildup '08

My costume…a rather fancy piece of makeuping. I created the stitch appliances from scratch.

From An UnOrthOdOx Halloween

It was especially fun to stop by a local grill afterward in full costume and have people stop eating to stare while I ordered.

Fred did a pretty good job as well.

From An UnOrthOdOx Halloween

And, all the folks over at Halloweenforum.com were rather impressed by Mary’s performance as well.

From An UnOrthOdOx Halloween

Once it was clear everything was working, I was able to relax and enjoy it.

Back to school…

So….my mother-in-law asked me to do a room for her school’s Halloween carnival.

Now, this is a very special opportunity for me, as it harkens back to the days of my childhood. Days when I was just a lad, trying to find his Halloween way.

It was the same year when my brother was sick on Halloween, dad out of town, and mom not able to leave my brother, or have me wandering the streets alone. The first year I started staying home and handing out candy.

Mom sat and talked, some kids thought she was a dummy, she moved, they spooked, and I thought it was COOL.

However, the first inklings of how to go about making our house into a proper ‘spooky’ house came later in the year. At school.

I don’t know WHAT the assembly was SUPPOSED to be about. I just remember encountering a few things for the first time in my life. Tesla Coils, Jacob’s Ladders, and Black Lights.

They weren’t really being used in a halloween way in the assembly, more of a teaching, hey this is such and such, and it does this because of this way. It didn’t matter. As I sat there, I SAW Frankenstein’s lab. See, I had been to haunted houses before, but this was back in the times when these things were rather pricey. Not the under $20 they are today.

I was hooked. So much that Santa brought me a Tesla Coil lightning ball that year. I SOOOOOOOOO loved that thing. 2nd best present I ever got (best being a fish tank). Made me sad when it became a little…unsafe… 3 years ago.

That following year, I was going to make our porch into a science lab. I had the lightning ball, and I went out with my own money and bought me some makeup, and a ‘blacklight’.

That was a lesson in ‘buyer beware’. “Blacklight” my ass. It was a purple lightbulb. An expensive purple lightbulb packaged to say blacklight. So, I sat in the dark with my little lightning ball, burns on my face and hands (the makeup worked good), and a crappy purple lightbulb on the porch light.

Essentially…it sucked, and I had been ripped off in the process.

It would be years before I was able to purchase a real blacklight. And, by that time, we were doing more hide in the dark and go boo things at the house.

So, when asked to help the school, the Lab was FIRST on my list of ideas. Heck, I still have a habit of collecting things for use in a lab setting even though my theme doesn’t even approach allowing me to use them.

So, more than 20 years (man I’m getting old) after the original idea came to me, it’s time to start building my lab. So, here’s a little teaser with the test video. We’ll get a video of the full thing at the carnival.